#And your right beta reading is love language | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

asahicore · 1 month ago

Text

fast forward - pjs

pairing. jay x fem!reader

synopsis. After yet another romantic disappointment in the form of one Jake Sim, you go to the well you’ve always believed to grant wishes and ask for your one and true love to appear. That night, you go to sleep in your bed but wake up in a strange house. When you head downstairs, you find a man washing the dishes and telling you your favorite meal is waiting on the table for you. You’ve spent hours glaring at the back of that head, you could recognize it anywhere—it belongs to none other than Park Jongseong, your high school sworn enemy... and future husband, or so it seems.

genre+warnings. high school au, the type of e2l where they never really hated each other to begin with, they act like they're academic rivals even though they're not particularly academically gifted, jay has a thing about german the language, sunoo and kazuha besties, heeseung is a loser, jake and sunghoon are assholes sorry, ive liz is german, 02z get into a white-boy locker-room fight, attempts at banter etc, they're a little bit silly

word count. 26.6k

a/n. had the idea for this listening to fast forward by somi LAST SUMMER... and only wrote it this summer and only posting it now <3 i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it !!!!! jay is an absolute cutie here pls love him as much as i do.... as always let me know what u think and remember to vote for @zreamy president in the upcoming elections, shes the only one i trust to beta-read and hence to run a country <3 no it doesnt matter that shes scottish put this woman in the white house

There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.

Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.

You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.

Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied.

Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.

There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.

You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade.

“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face.

You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around.

“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”

The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”

One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”

“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson.

You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.

Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.

You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.

“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”

As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.

And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.

“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.

Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.

But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.

You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.

“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.

Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.

For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice.

You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.

But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot.

You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.

“And that’s your business, because…?”

You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”

You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”

He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.”

This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”

You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”

You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”

“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves.

Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue.

Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.

Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.

Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”

So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”

“I don’t-”

“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”

“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.

“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”

“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”

“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.

“What are you-”

“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”

The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”

“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”

You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?

“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”

“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.

Then you see it.

Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.

The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.

Your heart sinks to your stomach.

You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice.

Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone.

“Y/N-”

Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone.

The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.

Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic.

Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.

You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.

But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked.

You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”

Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”

When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.

You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.

For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.

Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers.

The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe.

The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.

It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.

A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.

You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.

Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there?

You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.

Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right?

You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist.

The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie.

Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”

Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.

It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of “Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”

Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.

“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”

Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey.

“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?

“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”

He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.

When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.

You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other.

Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.

You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”

He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”

The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”

You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.”

So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder.

“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.

Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.

Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.

“This is so good,” you mumble.

Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”

You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.

“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”

You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?

But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”

Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else.

“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.

He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.

But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.

As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.

“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.

“Hm?”

He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”

“No. I have… things on my mind.”

He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”

You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you.

You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie.

A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.

“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.

It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.

“...Jong?” you try.

“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.

You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.

“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”

You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.

Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.

They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.

“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.

“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”

“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.

Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”

“Exactly!”

“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”

Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”

You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”

Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.

“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”

“Nowhere. Go on.”

“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”

“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.

“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”

Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.

“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”

“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”

“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.

“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.

“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.

“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.

“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”

You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”

“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.

“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”

Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”

“None taken.”

“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.

“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”

Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”

“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.

You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair.

“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.

“She had a dream that she m—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.

Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.

“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.

“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.

For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.

“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.

“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class.

The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.

It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.

Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.

There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.

Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.

Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.

But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.

Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.

It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.

He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.

He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”

And your friends wondered why you hated him?

“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”

When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile.

“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.

You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”

He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”

“No. Stop.”

“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”

This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.

Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up.

If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.

At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.

Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding.

“Jong, your textbook.”

He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.

“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.

“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.

He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”

Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.

Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?

You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.

He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.

You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.

As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.

Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life.

“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”

You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.

“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom.

“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.

And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.

You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.

“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”

He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you.

So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together.

Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.

He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.

For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”

you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined

kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start

you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that

sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being

you he’s not just another person!

sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings

you i hate u

kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason

you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try

“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”

The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”

“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.

“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.

Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”

You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”

He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.

You frown. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh? That’s a recent development.”

“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.

His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”

“Back to hating.”

“Let’s start the assignment.”

You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.

Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”

“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble.

He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”

“That’s not—”

“Let’s just focus on this.”

His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.

He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”

“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.

“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.

“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.

“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”

“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?”

He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”

“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”

“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.

So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.

But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.

Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.

You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.

He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology.

Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.

“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”

“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”

“Love? I know.”

“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.

“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.

“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.

“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.

“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.

“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.

“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.

“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.

“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.

“I never—When?!”

She shrugs. “The other day.”

You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.

“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.

“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.

In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”

Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”

“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.

You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”

They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.

You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”

Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”

You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.

No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”

“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.

“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.

“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.

“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.

“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.

“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”

“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”

You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”

He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.

You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”

“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.

“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier

kazuha WHAAAAT

you KIM SUNOO.

kazuha WHEN?????

sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol

you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass

kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml

you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED

sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart

you were* and no we weren’t

sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his

kazuha sunoo…?

sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him

you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting

sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it

you …

sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of

kazuha cuuuute

you i resent these accusations.

sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will

kazuha ???

you SUNOO?

sunoo WHAT

Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.

Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.

You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.

Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you.

Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”

Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”

Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”

That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.

The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that.

Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.

He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”

“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.

You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.

He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight.

Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple.

It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them.

He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”

But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”

Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”

You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.

He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”

Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”

“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.

“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”

“Y/N…”

“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.

The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.

jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension

you you idiot what did your parents say?

jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month

you boo-hoo

jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…

you … are you feeling better?

jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)

you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?

jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay

you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up

jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon

you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!

jong :) see you tomorrow pretty

The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.

You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.

His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.

Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.

In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily.

In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?

A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.

College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.

May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.”

Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.

In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.

But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…” you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”

Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”

You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.

As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.

You smile. “Never.”

So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.”

It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.

It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.

But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.

You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.

I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.

“Give me five minutes!” you call back.

You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.

A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.

He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says.

He’s still Jong.

You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside.

It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.

When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.

Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.

He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.

So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.

When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.

In any case, he’s hiding something.

The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.

Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is.

Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely.

It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile.

Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?

Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.

From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.

With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year.

Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.

But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.

I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.

Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.

But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.

Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really.

But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.

Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness?

And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you.

Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.

I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on…

I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.

(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)

Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now?

Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.

Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.

He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.

You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.

The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.

You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement.

In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.

You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.

On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does.

Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.

All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.

Until you didn’t.

It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.

He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.

So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.

Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.

And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley.

Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence.

He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.

You said so yourself.

He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.

Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.

And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.

When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.

But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?

You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore.

So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you.

He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?

It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.

Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.

Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles.

You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.

When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.

“Did you guys sit next to each other?”

You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”

He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”

You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.

When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.

Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”

You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”

“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”

“Now?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”

And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.

“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.

“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.

His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”

He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this?

“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes.

But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”

The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”

“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”

“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.

“Really.”

Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.

Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”

Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks.

“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”

“I think I did, too.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”

Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.

He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”

Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.

Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now.

“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”

“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”

You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”

You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”

He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”

“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.

“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”

“Fifty years, huh?”

He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”

There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.

The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls.

The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.

You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway.

Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.

You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.

“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.

You smile. “I am.”

permanent taglist: @zreamy @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts @moonlighthoon @4imhry @rikisly @loves0ft @iamliacamila @theboingsuckerasseater9000 @chaechae-23 @baekhyuns-lipchain @hyuckslvr @vernonburger @amorbonbon @fluerz @jakeflvrz @enhastolemyheart (ask to be removed/added!)

#enhypen x reader #jay x reader #jongseong x reader #enhypen fluff #jay fluff #enhypen fanfiction #jay fanfiction #enhypen au #enhypen imagines #enhypen scenarios

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soaps-mohawk · 9 months ago

Text

Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 12: Fire In My Veins

Summary: Your heat begins. Luckily you have a good alpha to take care of you during your most vulnerable time.

Pairing: Poly 141 x reader

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, smut, oral fingering, p in v sex, unprotected sex, knotting, spanking (it’s like once), fluids so many fluids, heat cycles, mating cycles, lots of talk of breeding and mating, biting, brief mention of blood, this is gross y’all, Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, language, and of course a little fluff

A/N: It was quite the ordeal, this chapter, and it's come a long way from when I first wrote it between Sunday and Monday this week. It's pretty much just smut so enjoy!!

The smut starts after the first scene and goes to the end, so only read up to the first green line if you don’t want the smut. You’re not missing much, just Price biting the reader to claim her, but I’ll talk more about that in the next chapter.

MASTERLIST | <- Previous | Next ->

“You alright, love?”

You look up from where you had been staring at the floor, suddenly pulled back into the real world by Gaz’s voice. He had been organizing the nutrient bars and electrolyte bottles in your room while you sat and dissociated to the sound of rustling paper bags.

You stare at his furrowed brows and worried eyes for a moment before averting your gaze with a nod. “Yeah.”

The carpet under your feet has never looked quite so interesting before.

Gaz moves to sit next to you on the bed, sinking down onto the mattress with a sigh. “Nervous?”

You nod in response, clutching the strawberry pillow in your arms tighter against your chest.

“You’ll be alright.” Gaz says, his hand warm as it presses against your back. “I’m gonna take good care of you, yeah? Both you and Price. I’ll be right outside that door, and I’ll be in and out too. Dr. Keller’s ready in case something happens, but I don’t think anything will.” He wraps his arm around you, pulling you close against him. “You’re in good hands.”

“There’s no going back after this.” You say, leaning into his side.

“No, I don’t think any of us would want to anyway.” He smiles down at your surprised face. “What? I thought that was obvious. We all want you as part of our pack. You are part of the pack already, at least in every way but officially. None of us would trade you for anything.”

Your eyes fill with tears at his words. You know it’s just the stress and the hormones and the impending heat that could start at any time, but his words reach some deep part of you that was worried that they were all faking, that they all actually hated you. His words calm you a bit, easing away that stress and fear that you’ve been carrying for the last almost six weeks.

“Come now, none of that.” Gaz says, wiping the tear that trails down your cheek. “Can’t afford getting dehydrated now.”

You can’t help but laugh, even though you know he’s right. You’ve had so much liquid over the last couple days you feel as though you might burst at any second. It was necessary, considering the amount of fluid you were about to lose.

Gaz leans down, kissing all over your face. You giggle, falling back on your bed to try and escape, but he follows you, continuing to plant little kisses all over your face and neck.

“Kyle!” You shriek, giggling as his kisses tickle your skin.

He pauses, leaning up so you’re eye to eye, a grin on his face. “You called me Kyle.”

“That is your name, isn’t it?” You say, blinking up at him.

“Yeah.” He chuckles. “You can call me Kyle as much as you’d like, love.” He says as he leans down, pressing his lips to yours.

You wrap your arms around his neck, holding him in place as you kiss him back. His arm snakes beneath you, pressing you tightly against his chest. He groans quietly into your lips, body taught against yours. You can feel every part of him, the muscles under his shirt, the strength of his thighs. Your head is spinning, and you know it’s mostly due to your impending heat.

You let out a quiet whine as his lips leave yours, trailing down your neck to your shoulder. He leaves a scalding kiss over your scent gland, nipping playfully at the sensitive skin.

“Can’t wait to see the mark,” He murmurs against your skin, a quiet whimper leaving your lips as your body begins to warm a little. “When Price claims you, makes you his.”

“Fuck.” You breathe, a shudder running through your whole body.

Kyle chuckles, sucking a mark on your collarbone. “You won’t be just his, though, huh? Gonna be ours.”

You let out a whine at his words, your fingers trailing up the back of his neck. He lets out a quiet groan, his body shuddering as you tease the sensitive skin. You feel lightheaded and dizzy from the rapidly shifting hormones of your pre-heat. You’re very close to the start. Any day now you could wake in a sweat with an insatiable ache between your thighs. You're like a ticking time bomb, but neither of the demolition experts you now live with can disarm you.

If only it could be so easy.

Kyle presses one last kiss to your lips before he pulls back, smiling down at you. “You’ll be alright. I’ll make sure of it.”

You can’t help but believe him, especially with those big brown eyes staring down at you.

It’s sweltering. A fire has started beneath your skin, flames licking your veins, your very cells scorching in the fiery inferno that has overtaken you. An arid desert has bloomed in your mouth, your tongue heavy and sticky. Sweat has slicked your skin, consciousness only bringing awareness to the dampness of your sheets and pajamas.

It also brings awareness to the pain.

There’s an intense ache between your legs, your pelvis cramping. Slick has coated your thighs, soaking through your pajama pants, the fabric clinging to your skin. It’s too much, the sensations of your pajamas and the weight of the blankets nearly driving you to insanity. You need to be bare. It’s too hot and the drag of the fabric across your skin makes you want to cry.

Not to mention the intense need burning through you.

The mattress protector crinkles as you shift on the bed, every movement taking an excess amount of energy as you attempt to tug your shirt off with fumbling fingers. It’s like you’re moving in slow motion, your arms heavy and sluggish as you peel the fabric from your sticky skin, letting it fall to the floor. You lay there exhausted, body twitching as your temperature begins to spike. You blindly reach out, fingers trembling as they grasp at your phone. Your eyes are bleary as you blink rapidly at the too bright screen. You fumble with clumsy fingers on the screen, dialing the first number you see, not caring who it is.

“Hello?”

You let out a quiet whine at the rough voice, thick with sleep. You can’t get your mouth to move, to form any words as you lay there pathetically, half undressed and soaked in sweat and slick. There’s an ache between your thighs, pulsing in time with your heart. Your free hand fumbles with your waistband, desperate to try and get your pants down, to remove the feeling of your underwear sticking to your slick folds.

“Help.” You manage a single word, not even sure it was intelligible. You let out a frustrated whimper, your body not cooperating to lift your hips so you can pull down your pants.

A moment of silence passes before you get a response. “Fuck, be right there, love.”

The line clicks, and a moment later a door is opening down the hall. You’re silently grateful you hadn’t locked your door last night, as there was no way you would be able to get out of bed and make it across the floor. It opens just enough for the figure to slip in before he closes it, not wanting to let your scent freely flow down the hallway.

The light of the lamp on your nightstand accosts your eyes as it’s turned on, making you squint. You don’t miss the way Kyle’s nose crinkles for a moment as he catches the sickly sweet, overwhelming aroma of your scent as it pours from your body. His hand is cool against your forehead as he brushes the stray strands of hair sticking to your skin back. Johnny had braided it last night at least to try and keep it out of the way.

“Easy.” He says quietly, shushing you as you whimper in need.

You let out a whine as Kyle pushes the blankets out of the way. You’re incapable of caring that you’re half naked in front of him for the first time, and he pays it no mind. You tug uselessly at your pajama pants again, letting out a frustrated whine as you fail to shimmy them down your legs again. Kyle bats your hands away, slipping his fingers under the waistband and tugging the pants down your legs. You sigh in relief as the fabric is pulled away from your skin, a shiver running through you as the cool air hits your slicked folds.

Kyle gathers your clothes, adding them into the bag of things that would need to be washed as soon as your heat is over before he returns to your side.

“I need you to drink something for me, then I’ll go get Price, alright?” He says, kneeling down next to the bed as he grabs the electrolyte drink from your nightstand.

You flop against his chest as he slips an arm around you, helping prop you up. Your face presses into his neck, inhaling deeply. A whine of disappointment leaves your lips as you realize he’s not what you need, your omega dissatisfied with the scent of beta emanating from him.

“I know.” He says, easing you away from his neck. “Just drink this first and then you can have your alpha.”

“Alpha.” You whimper, leaning against Kyle’s chest.

He helps you drink some of the sweet liquid, and you gulp it down, relieved as it eases some of the dryness in your mouth. He lets you drink half of the bottle before he pulls it away, setting it on the nightstand.

“Good girl.” He praises you, helping you lay back down against your pillow. “I’ll go get Price. I’ll get your alpha.”

You hum contently at the promise of what’s coming, your omega practically screaming for her alpha, for some relief.

Kyle slips back out the door, your head buzzing as the intense arousal and need burning within you gets stronger. Your pussy is pulsing, slick dribbling out of you as the need to mate takes over. The primordial instinct to reproduce is strong, your omega clawing at your mind, screaming to be bred, screaming to be bred, to carry pups. You need your alpha. You need his knot.

You roll onto your stomach, pressing your hips into the mattress. You need something, anything to ease the aching pulse in your body. You begin to rut against the sheets, dragging your clit against the rough fabric. You let out a quiet whine as the friction sends pleasure shooting through you, a slight relief from the pain of your intense arousal.

The door opens, your head shooting up as the heavy scent of alpha washes over you. Your eyes dilate, a shudder traveling from your head to your toes as the familiar scent of damp earth laced with the musk of arousal invades your senses. You let out another whine as John approaches the bed, your hips still rutting desperately against the sheets. You look utterly ruined, wide eyed and sweat-slicked, panting like an animal in heat.

You are an animal in heat.

“Look at you.” John mumbles, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. He stands over you, watching the desperate movements of your hips for a moment. “Needy little thing.” He teases, setting his phone on your nightstand before tugging his shirt over his head.

You watch as every inch of skin is revealed to you, lips parting as you take him in. The strength of his muscles, the softness of his stomach. You want to lick every inch of him. You want to roll around in his scent, cover yourself in his essence, mark every part of your body with him.

You arch into his touch as he drags a hand down your back, rough fingers following the line of your spine. You press your ass into his hand as he passes over it, fingers tugging your thighs apart. He groans again as a wave of your thick, sweet scent washes over him.

“Let me see you.” He growls, sweatpants hitting the floor.

You hear him, but you’re too busy staring at him in awe. More slick slips out of you at the sight of his cock, red and angry and painfully hard already. You can almost swear it’s pulsing in time with your pussy. A harsh gasp is pulled from your throat as he brings his hand down across your ass, the sound of skin striking skin loud enough to pull you back to reality.

“I said, present for your alpha.” He says, the rough rumble of his inner alpha coating the edges of his voice.

You whimper in response, scrambling up onto your hands and knees like a good omega for him as he kneels on the bed behind you.

“Good girl.” He rumbles, a pleased whine leaving your lips at his praise.

You push back into his hands as he cups your ass, his hand smoothing over the burning spot on the cheek he’d slapped. You can’t feel the pain from it, far too lost in your heat-riddled brain to register anything but the need pulsing between your thighs and the alpha staring at your soaked pussy. Thumbs part your folds, slick dribbling onto the sheets as he stares at your pussy.

“So fucking slick for me.” He groans, dragging a thumb along your slit.

“For you alpha!” You gasp, pressing back harder against his hands.

A low growl rumbles in his chest as he drags his thumb through your folds again, pressing the digit against your clit. Your gasp is broken by a whimper, your clit already sensitive from you humping against your bed like a needy pup. You bend your top half down, relaxing against the mattress as you grind back against his hand. He lets you, keeping his hand still as he lets you work yourself to pleasure on your own.

“Please! Please!” You beg, mind going numb with pleasure as his thumb brushes your clit with every rock of your hips. Your legs are already shaking, body trembling as the pleasure starts to build and build, the promise of relief coming at the hands of your alpha.

“Eager little thing,” He rumbles, his breath fanning across your folds.

You moan as his tongue drags along your slit, tasting your slick. Your fingers sink into the sheets, holding on as his tongue prods your entrance, his mouth slurping at the slick dripping from you. It’s obscene, but either of you care, both of you too lost in your need.

Your knees nearly give out, your pussy clenching around his tongue as he applies more pressure against your clit, drawing slow circles with his thumb. He’s groaning against you, the quiet sound rumbling deep in his chest. He’s losing his own sanity, his alpha taking over as your heat triggers his rut instincts. His alpha has to be screaming as much as your omega is to mate.

Your orgasm hits you suddenly, washing over you with a power that almost makes you black out. Slick spills out of you as your pussy flutters, soaking John’s face and beard in your juices. He’s relentless, not giving you even a second as he continues to fuck you with his tongue as his thumb rubs tight circles on your clit. Your legs are shaking, eyes rolling as the pleasure continues to build. Despite your orgasm, it’s not enough. Your brain knows it and your body knows it. You need a knot before you’ll be able to relax, before the pain and the need fades enough for your brain to relax.

Even then, it will only be for a moment.

“Alpha!” You whine, pushing back against his face, seeking out more.

John growls against your pussy, the sound vibrating into your very soul. You let out a whimper in response, clutching at the sheets desperately. He pulls away from your pussy, licking his lips. You wish you could see him, the way his face shines with your slick, his beard soaked with your release. He licks his lips, savoring every last taste of you he can get as he sinks his fingers into you.

You clamp down around the thick digits, a groan leaving his lips as you squeeze around him. You’re desperate for another orgasm, another chance at relief from the blazing inferno under your skin, the painful need still pulsing in your pelvis.

“Please, alpha!” You whine, bucking back against his hand. “Hurts.”

He shushes you, continuing to fuck you with his fingers. The wet squelch of your pussy is loud in the small room, obscene and depraved, but you cannot bring yourself to care who might be able to hear as another orgasm rushes through your body. You whine in pleasure as slick dribbles out around his fingers, forced out by the fluttering of your walls. You can’t stop, don’t stop, as you continue to rock back against him. He watches you, holding his hand still as you fuck yourself on his fingers. You’re still desperate for more, still needing the one thing he won’t give you yet.

He pulls his fingers from you, making you whimper at the sudden emptiness. Your pussy is still pulsing with the aftershocks of your orgasm, still trying to clench around nothing. John curses as he drags his fingers through your folds, spreading your slick and your release across the sensitive skin.

“Tell me what you need.” He rasps, the edges of his voice harsh as his alpha begins to take over.

“Need your knot, alpha.” You whine, pushing your hips back, searching for anything that might offer some more relief. “Please.”

He lets out a pleased rumble, shifting behind you. You bite your lip in anticipation and excitement, your body twitching as his rough hands smooth over the skin of your hips. His touch is electric, amplified by the sensitivity brought on by your heat. You want to feel him against you, you want to feel him inside of you. You need him, every fiber of your being, every cell in your body reaching out to him, inviting him in.

A quiet mewl escapes you as he drags the head of his cock through your folds, gathering your slick on his hard length. Your entire body flutters in anticipation as he pushes against your entrance, meeting no resistance as he presses into you. Your body aids him, relaxing around him as it welcomes the intrusion. There’s no pain, no discomfort as he stretches you open, aided by the copious slick that still seeps out around his cock. You practically shudder in relief as you finally get what you want, what you need.

Your alpha’s cock inside you.

His grip is tight on your hips as he begins to move, rocking his own hips as he presses deeper into you. He shifts his legs around yours, pressing himself closer until he’s flush against your ass. You can feel him deep inside you, and you’re almost certain you could see it if you looked. You brace yourself against the bed, instinct taking over as you begin to move with him, rocking back to meet his thrusts. It’s lewd, the sound of skin slapping skin as he sets an almost frantic pace, sharp thrusts accentuating the wet squelch of your pussy around him, and the sound of his hips meeting your ass.

His fingers dig into your hips almost to the point of pain, but you don’t care. You’re far too lost in your instincts, and the pleasure, to care much about anything. The hormones and endorphins block it out, only one thought on your mind, playing on repeat.

Knot knot knot knot.

You moan loudly as Price ruts into you, not caring who might hear, or who can hear. Price moans and growls, the sweetness of your scent blocking out all thoughts except how much he needs to breed you, how much he needs to be a good alpha and take care of his omega.

You just want to be a good omega for your alpha.

You cum again with a cry, pussy fluttering around his cock as more slick dribbles out of you, soaking the sheets below you. John doesn’t stop, save for a slight falter of his thrusts as you squeeze around him tightly, your pussy trying to milk his own orgasm from him. Your body is shaking, his hands the only thing keeping your hips upright as more and more pleasure continues to build despite now three orgasms that have rocked through you.

You need him to cum, you need him to fill you up with his knot. You need to feel the warmth of his seed inside you, the heaviness of it as it fills you. Drool begins to pool on the sheets below your face, adding to the mix of fluids soaked into your already damp sheets. John’s pace never falters, even as sweat begins to build on his brow, sliding down the sides of his face. You want to lick it, follow the trail of salty liquid as it falls down his neck and onto his chest.

Sweat drips from your own skin as another orgasm begins to build. You can tell John is close too as his grip tightens on your hips, the pain registering just for a moment at the back of your mind. You’ll forget it by the time your heat ends, the momentary pull to awareness lost in the haze of mindless pleasure and a need to mate.

“C’mon.” John growls, his hand wrapping around the back of your neck. “Give it to me.”

You let out a whine, knowing what it is he wants, what it is you need as you push yourself back up onto shaking arms, the adrenaline the only thing giving you the strength to move. John moves your braids to the other side of your neck, his chest pressing against your back. It changes the angle of his thrusts as he grinds against you, the swelling at the base of his cock catching on your walls as he continues to thrust deeply into you.

“Please,” You whimper, bearing your neck to him as he kisses along the line of your shoulder. “Please alpha. Wanna be yours.” You whimper, arching into him in an attempt to get closer as his teeth drag across your skin.

“My good omega.” He growls, teeth nipping at the sensitive skin right next to your scent gland at the junction of your neck and shoulder. “My good girl. Gonna take my knot like a good omega? Let me fill you up with pups as I make you mine?”

You let out a high pitched whine at his words, trying to press your neck closer to his mouth. “Please, alpha! Please! Wanna be a good omega!”

He curses under his breath, his arm wrapping around your body to hold you up. His knot presses into you, stretching you open as it continues to swell until he’s locked inside you. You cum around his knot at the sensation of being filled so completely, his hips continuing to grind against you as he chases his own orgasm.

You nearly black out as his teeth sink into your skin, the pinch lasting only for a second before pleasure rushes through you. You let out a loud, high-pitched sound as he claims you, marking you as his forever. Another, sudden orgasm slams into you, his arm holding you still as you try to writhe on his knot. He growls into your skin as he stills, hips jerking against your ass as he cums inside you.

Your arms give out as he releases your shoulder, blood dripping onto the sheets below you. Your head is spinning as he drags his tongue across the raised skin, cleaning the mark he’s left on you.

He shushes you as you let out little whimpers and whines, gently easing your body so you’re laying flat against the bed. “Easy, that’s my good girl.” He praises you, pressing gentle kisses against your neck. “My good omega. Take my knot so well.”

Your vision slowly fades to darkness as exhaustion takes over, a small smile tugging at your lips from his praise.

His eyes are dark and glazed as he stares up at you, mouth parted as he breathes heavily. Your head is thrown back, the sweetest little moans and whimpers leaving your lips as you bounce on his cock. His hands hold your hips, far too tight to be comfortable against your sweat-soaked skin as he guides your movements, but you offer no complaint. His thighs are soaked with your slick and a mix of fluids that seems to endlessly drip from you. Your own thighs are shaking around him, exhaustion prevalent in your sloppy movements. You’re close, eyes fluttering as your grip tightens on his shoulders. Your nails bite into his skin but he doesn’t care. He can’t feel much of anything but pleasure at the moment.

He guides you through your orgasm as it rocks through you, your body shuddering around him. His hips press up against yours as he reaches his own end, spilling into you as his knot locks into place, connecting you two once again. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, nor does he care. All he wants is to be inside you, fucking his seed into you until you’re swollen with it. He stares down at where you’re connected for a moment, your pussy spread open around his knot.

He guides you against his chest as your body gives out, the haze of his instincts lifting just momentarily. His body aches, soreness settling in as his mind clears. You lick at his throat, tasting his sweat-slicked skin. Sweet little whimpers and whines leave your lips as you rest against him, completely boneless and at his mercy.

He reaches over to the nightstand, wrapping an arm around you to hold you still so he doesn’t tug on the knot as he grabs the bottle of electrolytes. He unscrews the cap, gently easing you back. You’re both still breathing heavily as he cradles the back of your head with one hand, helping you drink the electrolytes. You gulp it down even in your exhausted state, your body recognizing its need for sustenance.

He drinks the rest after you finish, tossing the bottle onto the floor with the others. He picks up one of the nutrient bars, peeling the wrapper off before he begins to eat, feeding you bites of it as he does. You’re half asleep, chewing slowly as you rest against his chest, body still trembling slightly from the aftershocks of another of what’s now a countless number of orgasms.

He gives you the last little bit of the bar before he relaxes back against the headboard, keeping his arms wrapped tight around you. The skin on your shoulder is still angry and slightly swollen from his claiming bite. It doesn’t help that he’s sunk his teeth into that spot twice now since he first claimed you.

He swells with pride upon seeing it, the proof that you’re now his, a warning to others not to mess with you. It’s a slight weight off his shoulders. He has to worry less about someone trying something. Some haughty, cocksure alpha getting it through his head that he wants what he can’t have, that he can just take what’s not his. A low growl rumbles through his chest at the thought.

He shushes you as you stir in response to the warning growl, a purr rumbling through his chest as he eases you back into a relaxed state. His good little omega, his sweet little omega, taking his knot so well.

You make a quiet noise as he twitches inside you, the feeling of being enveloped in your tight heat almost like heaven. He closes his eyes, calming his inner alpha. He knows you need to rest. You need a little break before you start up again, before your heat continues to ravage you.

Before he continues to ravage you.

NEXT ->

Taglist:

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#call of duty #call of duty fic #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #a/b/o #omegaverse #captain price x reader #price x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #kyle garrick x reader #john mactavish x reader #soap x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #x reader

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harunovella · 10 months ago

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*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ love language; s.g.

synopsis: when gojo satoru first fell in love with you content: teen gojo era, fem!reader, gojo is head over heels (love at first sight), hopeless!romantic gojo, 1k+ words of gojo just being an absolute fool in love, not beta read (sorry for any errors!) note: I've been wanting to create a sort of anthology series for some of my favs so here's a test run! I rlly wanna do lil drabbles/oneshots that can both be standalone but also can be read as something continuous revolving around Gojo's story with his soulmate... pls lmk if you'd like to see more of gojo and his mochi (aka you!)

Gojo Satoru didn't entirely know what love was; what with being raised by other people who weren't his actual mother and father, how could he? All he ever knew was a life of being the Honored One, since the day he was born. Nothing but a weapon. Living as the strongest and treated like a god... he never knew what real love felt like. He never knew what it was like to give or receive it. At least, not this way.

Geto Suguru and Ieiri Shoko were his best friends, the closest thing to real family. It wasn't like he didn't have any, at least not while growing up, but were they really family when all they ever did was train him and treat him like the eighth wonder of the world? Unlike everyone else, at least Suguru and Shoko treated him like a human. They loved him for who he was, but didn't hesitate to snap him into place when his ego was too inflated. They were there for him, even when expressing whatever demons that he held within him was hard to manage. If it wasn't for them, he wasn't sure exactly how he'd go about his life. Sure, he'd act like everything was fine and dandy, money could buy him happiness as he had plenty of it... and he was pretty much unstoppable, but the idea of living a life without either of them didn't sit well in his stomach.

So, sure, Satoru did now a bit about love, at least the love he felt for his best friends, but nothing like what he felt in this moment. The moment his eyes first fell on you.

He hadn't a clue as to who you were, only seeing you stroll along the grounds of Jujutsu High with your little uniform. The typical jacket, a skirt beneath, knee high socks, loafers... and your hair in a low ponytail that was held together by an overly large ribbon. Cute was the first thing that came to mind, along with the terrifying sound of his racing heart. Who were you? How come he had never seen you before? Maybe it was because he didn't pay attention to any one else besides a handful of people. He'd be lying if he said he was sure the technical college held more than five students.

In the midst of sipping away at his little box of strawberry milk, walking alongside Suguru and Shoko, Satoru's eyes had aimlessly wandered along his environment as his two best friends had been discussing evening plans. It wasn't like him to care about what was going on around him, so it was quite the miracle that his eyes were looking anywhere but ahead of him... but, maybe this was destiny.

It felt like the world was suddenly moving slowly around him, rather dramatically like a movie. His lips parted as the tiny straw fell out of it, hidden gaze behind his circular frames becoming exposed as the glasses slid down the bridge of his nose. You looked so graceful, the afternoon sun beaming down on you, your smile as bright as his eyes... he had to have been in love. This had to have been love. What else could it have been? Why else was his heart fluttering so quickly? Why else was he caught in a daze by your beauty? No one else, not a single soul, ever caught his attention this way so you must've been his soulmate.

There was something about you, from your gorgeous hair, to the cute bow, down to the uniform and the way it suited your form to the way you... wait, were you laughing with... Nanami Kento? Gojo's heart stopped as his grip on the milk grew tight, causing the contents to squeeze right out and squirt all over his face.

The sound of laughter caught his attention as he quickly looked at his two best friends, embarrassment filling his face as he looked back at you to see you now looking in his direction. Quickly wiping his face and turning away to scold his best friends, Gojo tossed the now empty carton at Geto. "Shut up!"

"What the hell did you do?" Suguru shook his head, wiping his tears as his shoulders shook with every laugh that rumbled throughout his torso. "Losing your cool over a girl, huh?"

"I said shut up!" Satoru snapped, cheeks burning with heat, embarrassed that he was that obvious.

"Must've struck something in him for him to spill milk all over his face like the doofus he is," Shoko snickered as Suguru went for a high five.

Swatting their hands and glaring at the two, Gojo hissed, "nothing happened, I squeezed too hard."

"Right," the two said in sync before eyeing one another, smirking and stifling a laugh.

Shoving past them as he kept walking ahead, grumbling to himself, Gojo couldn't help but peak over in your direction. You had already turned your attention back to the two on either side of you—Nanami along with Yu Haibara. Since when did they have a friend that was a girl? And when did you appear? He should've known seeing as both were his junior and both trained quite close to Suguru and himself. So you must've been new... He supposed he'd find more out about you, knowing he'd find a way to get under Nanami's skin and get anything out of him. He must've known a lot about you...

Gojo smirked to himself. He'd get his way.

"No," Nanami spoke as he crossed his arms. The confidence in Gojo's face instantly fading away. He didn't even hesitate, cancelling his plans with his best friends to bribe Kento into giving him some information. He swore taking his junior to his favorite bakery would help him out, but, no! Kento, being the wise boy he was, took advantage of Satoru paying for food in a false exchange for information. "I'm not going to be your middle man."

"Why not?!" Gojo whined, throwing himself back in his seat dramatically. "Just one thing! Something! Anything! She's the love of my life!"

Narrowing his eyes as he sipped away at his water, Nanami settled the glass down before crossing his arms once again. "Love of your life? You don't even know her name—"

"Because you won't tell me!" Gojo cried, throwing his head back and stomping his foot as if he was about to throw a tantrum. "Please, please! I beg of you, tell me something about her! Besides her name, what's her favorite color? Maybe her favorite food? Or... or what's her favorite date spot!"

"Satoru, I am not about to ask her what her favorite date spot is," Nanami deadpanned. "I'll give you her name and that's all. Everything else is on you. I'm not going to play matchmaker, let alone, set you up with someone so far out of your league."

Gasping in offense, Gojo clutched his chest. "Out of my league? Sure, she's a pure angel, a real heavenly being, but I like to think I am, too!"

"Egotistical..." Kento mumbled as Gojo frowned. "I'm only telling you one thing to get you off my back. You can't ask me anything ever again in order to get close to her. That's on you."

Pressing his hands together and interlocking his fingers, Gojo gave his best puppy eyes as he jutted out his bottom lip. "Please, I promise to leave you be after!"

"You better," the blond man grumbled before giving his senior your name. "She likes to sit under the cherry blossoms on the eastern side of the campus. If you want to find her and talk to her, she's usually there on her down time." At that, Nanami stood up and tucked his seat back into the table. Just as he was about to leave, he stopped in his tracks, turning to face the white haired young man. "All I ask of you is to be... gentle. She's a nice girl. I don't need you breaking her heart."

Sitting up with confidence as a wide grin took over his face, Satoru nodded with his thumbs up. "Believe me, I wont! I know this is love!" Seeing Nanami roll his eyes before leaving, Gojo happily sighed before looking out the window. Leaning his chin in the palm of his hand, he eyed the cherry blossom that had petals delicately swaying in the wind. "She's my soulmate, I know we are destined to be."

#haruno writes;#satoru gojo x you #gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru #satoru gojo #gojo fluff #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo x y/n #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo x you #gojo x y/n #reader insert #fem reader #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk x y/n

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pennyellee · 10 months ago

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𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐀𝐆𝐍𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐈 | 𝐉𝐉𝐊 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐁 𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐔 pairings: heartthrob!jk, yandere!jk x fashion employee f!reader genre: dark romance, smut, porn with plot, 90s word count: 14K beta read by @chaoticpuff17 (ily) masterlist

summary: You, a determined fashion designer, find yourself entangled in a collaboration with the irresistibly charming and egotistic heartthrob, Jeon Jungkook. Will this partnership remain strictly professional, or will he make the lines blur?

warnings: minors dni 18+ | sexual tension, emotional distress, teasing, fingering, unprotected sex, jk is selfish af, jk is delulu, oral (fem receiving), forced oral (m receiving) spanking, squirting, cum swallowing, creampie, yandere behaviour, obsessive behaviour, choking, rough sex, pussy pounding, bruises, manipulation, gaslighting, strong language, oppressiveness

disclaimer: this story is purely fictional, it does not depict real-life events or involve any actual members of BTS. This story will contain strong language, explicit content, obsessive behaviour, alcohol drinking, illegal activities, oppressiveness, which we do not condone.

author's note: so as I said in the preview, this did not go as planned but I really enjoyed writing this to the point that I might do a part 2, perhaps 3, but we'll see about that. JK is delulu af here and the reader does not think through everything. For those who did not read preview and came upon this just now - originally what i wanted to build around was how Rachel Green from Friends was offered a job at Louis Vuitton but it was in Paris and Ross did not want her to go - that was supposed to be the whole plot (with slight changes ofc), well and somehow it went a bit darker than i intended so instead of rom-com, i'd rather listed it as dark romance and yandere. Hope you'll enjoy it! Love, always.

1996

“He said what now?!” The sentence burst out of you with a high-pitched tone, nearly causing your latte to spill all over your pristine white blouse and grey blazer. Not exactly the ideal way to kick off a new month, you mused as your friend dropped the bombshell about a certain someone.

“That you’re the future mother of his children,” said your friend, an amused smirk playing on her face. “I seriously don’t know how you can still resist him, girl.” But resist him, you did.

Jeon Jungkook was undoubtedly one of the most sought-after and sexiest heartthrobs of the decade, possessed the best face card in the industry and carried the biggest ego in all of New York City. You could vividly recall the day he strolled inside of your office with the head of your department. A cocky, playful grin plastered on his face the moment his eyes landed on you.

Right from the very beginning, you made it crystal clear to Jungkook that your relationship would be strictly professional during your collaboration on the Calvin Klein project. He was given his own collection of men’s wear, and the job to work with him fell upon you.

You knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to elevate your standing within the fashion circle. Jeon Jungkook’s fame was immense, and your name would be signed on the collection too. It’s not like you are head over heels that your name would be associated specifically with Jeon Jungkook, but you understood right away that this could put you on the radar. Your boss had even hinted at the possibility of a higher position within the department.

He constantly teased you, flirted shamelessly, and crossed boundaries by touching you as if you were his girlfriend. It was wildly inappropriate, especially given that the two of you had never even gone out for a work dinner or lunch alone. There were always other people from the team, and yet he always managed to find a way to sit right next to you. But it seems Jungkook was still living in an illusion where you were his girlfriend.

Your gaze shifted to the majestic Twin Towers, standing proudly in the distance, as you let out an annoyed puff of air.

“He’s ridiculous,” you finally declared.

“Or cute,” countered your friend, opposing your viewpoint. She found this pseudo-relationship with Jungkook amusing, but a small part of her secretly wished you’d just give in and go out with him. It was quite some time since you were in a relationship, and Jeon Jungkook would definitely be a nice catch. You were not interested. Or you tried to persuade others that you aren’t.

“No, ridiculous,” you retorted again, lips pursed, and brows furrowed.

“Oh, come on, give him a chance finally!!” she exclaimed.

“Absolutely not! He’s egoistic, manipulative, a cocky little bastard with damn good hair,” you said, your tone rising as you reached your final proclamation, which had simply slipped out of your mind that way.

“See? One good thing — good hair. Marry him,” she laughed it off.

“Now you’re being ridiculous, and I’m going to be late for work.” You said while dusting your black skirt, grabbing your purse, and leaving a few bucks for the coffee. The song on the radio stopped your departure for a moment, listening to the familiar voice coming from it, you rolled your eyes.

“That’s a clear sign, Y/N. Give it a chance!” she called after you, and you couldn’t help but throw a side eye her way, though a small smile tugged at the corners of your lips nonetheless.

As the day passed, you found yourself increasingly entangled in the whirlwind of meetings, fittings, and photoshoots with an ever-present Jungkook. The photoshoots, in particular, became a source of both frustration and amusement. However today, a bigger problem surfaced.

“Why’s he half-naked, Lucy?!” You hissed at your assistant. Normally, you are very kind and respectful to everyone, but Jungkook had managed to irk you the moment you stepped into your office, finding him already seated in your chair with that smirk you despised. Bringing a coffee for you, which you never drink, or donuts that you always share with the department - not eating one yourself.

Jungkook, adorned in the latest Calvin Klein designs you two had meticulously crafted together, claimed a personal touch of his persona— at least, that’s how he described it. He looked effortlessly handsome, the camera adoring him, but what grated on your nerves was that his attention was solely focused on teasing you.

“We also have shirts, why is he not wearing one?!” You continued, expressing your disagreement to what was before you. What angered you even more was that you could not stop staring at his abs.

“We shot with shirts earlier. They said the underwear and jeans will appear more artistic if his V line and abs—”

“Alright! Alright!” You stopped her in mid-sentence. You didn’t want to look that way nor you didn’t want to admit that showcasing his V-line would enhance the aesthetics of the jeans. Therefore, you took a deep breath and walked towards the refreshments, you were in need of a second cup of coffee.

You heard the photographer call for a break, but you were focused on calming yourself with a steaming cup of coffee. Despite your irritation, you couldn’t deny that he looked breath-taking in the outfits you had designed, and it infuriated you.

Suddenly, two arms were laid flat on the table’s surface, caging you in between. You could imagine his devilish grin. He did this way too often, whether it was his fingers lightly tracing your arm or tucking a loose strand of your hair behind your ear, looking intently into your eyes until you were fighting yourself to not get lost in his Bambi eyes.

“We’re almost done for today,” he whispered seductively into your right ear, his lips almost touching it. Your breath stammered.

“And yet you did not learn a single thing about professionalism or work ethic.” You bit sarcastically, turning slowly to face him.

Jungkook’s grin only widened at your remark, and you couldn’t decide whether you were infuriated or slightly flustered by his audacity. He leaned in even closer, his breath grazing your ear as he spoke in a low, husky tone.

“Tutor me then, in bedroom — preferably” he suggested, his lips still dangerously close to the shell of your ear.

“I don’t think so. You’re beyond help,” you shot back, trying to assert control over the situation. His proximity was distracting, and you couldn’t afford to let him undermine the fact that you were in charge.

Jungkook continued to hover over you, the photographer calling for everyone to regroup for the next set of shots. You seized the opportunity to escape his magnetic pull, smoothly slipping out from between the table and his arms, deciding to escape to your humble office, seeking solace in the calmness it provided.

It wasn’t long before the shoot officially ended, and you knew damn well, that the man wouldn’t leave you alone. The door creaked open, and you turned to find Jungkook leaning against the frame, that infernal smirk still etched onto his face.

“We did a good job, why don’t we celebrate it over at my place, baby?” he complimented, but there was an undertone of something else in his voice. You overlooked his physique and leaned back in your chair, narrowing your eyes, making a clicking sound with your tongue.

“Jungkook, again, this was a professional collaboration. Nothing more,” you asserted, emphasising each word. If you did not say this sentence at least a hundred times you don’t know. He never takes it seriously; it appears as he is still trying to hammer his way into your guarded heart.

He pushed himself off the doorframe and sauntered closer. “We’ll see about that,” he said, leaving you with a cryptic grin as he exited your office. The only thing you could do is sigh.

Before you went to continue working, you heard how Jungkook’s voice echoed from the hallway.

“I bet I can change your mind, sweetheart!”

You rolled your eyes, muttering under your breath.

“Not a chance.”

The denim collection with Jungkook was taking shape, and the buzz surrounding the collaboration grew with each passing day. A success, your boss was much more than pleased.

This success, however, meant even more for you. You were on cloud nine, basking in the glory of your hard work and the prospect of a ground-breaking partnership. Totally, forgetting to play unreachable when it came to the clinging boy who starred in this iconic collaboration. And that must have given him a false hope, perhaps a narrative in which you were his girl.

You were sitting in your office when you hung up the telephone after speaking with the vice president of Guess that contacted you earlier last week, offering you a part in a project for their brand, in Los Angeles. A dream come true for you. Leaving this place, after years of building your career from scratch, felt overwhelming. You loved working under Klein, yet it was time for you to take it higher. Your boss did not offer you a new position, and therefore, you did not hesitate to take the job opportunity and elevate yourself in fashion ranks.

It was an offer too tempting to resist, and you found yourself diving headfirst into the project, not even looking at the door when someone stepped in without knocking.

“You may leave the reception reports on the table, Lucy,” you said once feeling a presence in your office, not raising your eyesight from your computer, writing the prompts for the project Guess wants you to lead. Your twelve days’ notice already printed out, ready to be signed by your boss. You planned to stop by his office after you would finish writing the draft and sending it to the Guess team together with the copy of your portfolio that you needed to make before you leave.

When there were no reports left on your table after a good long minute, you looked up.

“You can’t just leave.” he said, standing tall in the frame of the door, stepping inside once you finally gave him your attention. You could sense a hint of desperation and anger in his voice.

You raised your brows at him. How does he know? The mere thought of you leaving for LA, leaving him behind, was enough to make him confess the depth of his feelings.

You leaned to the leather armchair and listened to him closely.

“What are you talking about Jungkook?” His eyes betrayed a mix of anxiety and vulnerability as he blurted out his fears.

“What about us? What about everything we’ve built together?” He stepped closer to your desk, looking directly to your eyes. You were taken aback by the raw emotion in his words. The air in the room thickened.

The once-confident man now stood vulnerable before you, stripped of the bravado that had defined him. And you were utterly confused and surprised how delusional this man is.

“What are you even saying, Jungkook?” you questioned, your tone a mix of confusion and frustration.

“You can’t leave me!” He raised his voice an octave higher.

“Calm your tits. I’m a grown-up woman. I can do what I want.” You sassed back at him, tired of this made up situation-ship in his head. He scoffed, a bitter smile playing on his lips.

“We’ve built something special, and I can’t watch it crumble because of some job offer!” He continued his rampage. You took a moment to breathe his words in, closing your eyes and counting to ten to calm yourself.

“Jungkook, I appreciate your honesty, but I can’t give you what you’re asking for.” This caught him by surprise. Instead of screaming at him, you chose to play the I’ll stay calm and professional card.

His eyes widened in disbelief, a mix of confusion and hurt clouding his features. “What do you mean?”

Choosing your words carefully, you said: “I genuinely value this project we worked on together, but it’s time for us to part our ways.” To fool him was your goal.

Jungkook’s shoulders slumped, the weight of your words settling upon him. “Who are you lying to, Y/N?” His words shocked you.

“I’m not lying Jungkook, I’m telling you the truth to your face, as you were too stubborn to hear it before.” You stood up from your chair, moving to lean on the front of your desk, to show him he cannot get to you.

The room fell into a heavy silence as Jungkook looked deep into your eyes, searching for the truth in your words.

“So, it’s all about the career for you? You’re willing to sacrifice everything else, including us?” Your jaw clenched, but you maintained your composed façade and with flaring nostrils and clenched teeth, you spoke.

“There is no us, Jungkook. Get it into your head already!” So much for being calm. The room crackled with tension as the argument reached an impasse. Jungkook shook his head, a mixture of disbelief and frustration.

“I can’t believe you’re throwing away what we have because of some job.” Your eyes widened even more and the fact he would not listen boiled your blood.

“Do I need to spell it out for you? I’m not your girlfriend! I was never your girlfriend, and I will never be your girlfriend!”

But Jungkook wasn’t ready to accept defeat. His frustration reached a boiling point too, and without warning, he grabbed you by the shoulders, pulling you into an intense, angry kiss. It was a clash of emotions, a tumultuous blend of passion and anger that fuelled the fiery exchange.

Your initial instinct was to resist, to push him away, but the intensity of the kiss ignited a different kind of fire within you. His lips moved fiercely against yours, gripping your ass in his hands, making you moan to his lips. Your hands found their way to his hair, fingers threading through the dishevelled locks as the kiss deepened, your frustration causing to tug them. He growled from pleasure at the sensation.

It was a collision of lips and tongues, a heated exchange that spoke volumes without a single word. Once his hands disappeared under your skirt and the heat intensified, a sudden surge of clarity washed over you, breaking the intoxicating spell.

With a forceful push, you broke away from the kiss, creating a space between you and Jungkook. You locked eyes with him, your chest heaving as you struggled to regain control of the situation.

“I need you to leave,” you stated, your voice cutting through the lingering tension, you leaned against the desk, your heart still racing from the intensity of the moment.

Jungkook, still caught in the haze of desire, tried to close the distance again, but you held up a hand, halting his advance.

“Leave!” You growled, turning your back to him. You didn’t want him to see your face anymore, because soon enough, tears would break from your eyes. You’re overwhelmed.

A loud bang of the door signalled that he finally understood and left. Breaking down with tears streaming down your cheeks you gasped for air. Tears blurred your vision as you struggled to regain composure.

You’ve counted to ten again, wiping your tears. You felt taken advantage of. He went too far this time. But this was only the beginning of his tremulous and wicked plan he had for you.

You packed your purse, ready to leave your office, you just needed to grab your work portfolio that you needed to send over to Guess. But the space it always inhabited, on the conference table, was empty. And you had one lucky guess who the thief was. “Fucking bastard.”

In the days that followed, the chaos in your personal and professional life escalated. The stolen portfolio, a representation of your work, became a haunting absence. As if the life source of your hard work was cut down.

Determined to salvage what remained of your career, you began the arduous task of recreating it. But time was not on your side, and as you delved into the meticulous process, news of your termination from Calvin Klein reached you like a punch to the gut.

The phone call was impersonal, a cold voice delivering the news of your dismissal as if reading from a script. Some Jack from the HR department spoke to you, someone you have never ever seen in the building whatsoever. Your boss did not even pick up the call when you wanted to ask what made them push the decision to let you go. You certainly did not deserve this after years of working for the brand. The reasons were vague and you knew this had to source from someone powerful. In simple terms, someone snitched that you’re planning to leave.

As the reality of unemployment settled in, you clung to the remnants of optimism that lingered, but even that proved elusive.

You were hundred percent sure that he is trying to sabotage your whole life when the call from Guess, a reason you did not fight for your position at Klein’s delivered another blow.

Their decision not to collaborate with you crushed the remnants of optimism that clung to your spirit. The dream that had seemed within reach now slipped through your fingers, leaving you in a free fall of uncertainty.

They hadn’t even granted you the courtesy of waiting for your portfolio, even though it wouldn’t be what they expected. Whatever oral agreement had been in place disintegrated. So here you are — jobless.

All this left you reeling with disbelief. The career you had meticulously built, the dreams that had taken years to nurture, all unravelling at the seams. The pain was visceral, a mix of frustration, anger, and a profound sense of betrayal.

You were certain that Jeon Jungkook himself was pulling the strings behind the scenes. And you hated him for it, needed to confront him and say that shit with your chest right to his face— he can go fuck himself. Set the record straight once you’re there.

Whatever he was thinking by ruining your career will force you to do, he better fix it before you’ll sing to the media about his bunny smile and kind heart being all fake. The line had been crossed, and he would face the consequences of pushing you to the brink. Or so you thought it would go how your brain delusional thought it through.

Hence, with a heavy heart and a determination to confront the chaos head-on, you stood before the front door of his infamous penthouse. Emotions swirling within you like a tempest.

With a deep breath, you knocked, the sound echoing through the quiet hallway. The door swung open, revealing Jungkook’s bunny smile reaching his eyes.

“Well, well well, are we ready to talk like adults, pretty?” He mocked this whole situation because he knew this would end up in his favour, nonetheless.

He moved back to let you in, and you stepped into his apartment, a mixture of anger and desperation in your gaze.

“I know you took it,” you said, crossing your arms on your breasts. The heels of your black leather boots echoed in the apartment when you turned to face him.

“Took your breath away by that heated kiss, sexy, certainly. Otherwise, I did not take anything.” Jungkook scoffed, crossing his arms defensively. The tension in the room was palpable as you square your shoulders, refusing to back down. You blinked twice at his cheesiness. The tip of your tongue moved to rest on the bottom of your upper teeth, your smile spreading on your face. The chuckle came out of you so naturally, laughing at his ridiculously ridiculous behaviour.

“Don’t play dumb, I know it was all you. You malicious sabotaging petty boy—” You retorted, articulation perfectly clear while the words laced with underlying frustration and anger.

He sighed, weariness settling over him. “You think I stole your portfolio to sabotage your career? You’re giving me too much credit, love.” Here he comes.

“I said nothing about my portfolio, Jungkook.” You said playing with his name on your tongue. A tense silence hung in the air as he considered your words, clicking his tongue, clearly annoyed and you were just getting started.

“I managed to figure that out. A drink? —” He offered, shrugging her statements of like snow in summer whilst he moved to the small bar that was a part of his spacious living room.

“I don’t want a drink, Jungkook. I want it back now,” you replied, your tone cutting through the casual offer. The anger in your gaze intensified, fuelled by the frustration of dealing with his nonchalant attitude.

“Let’s talk, baby.” He gestured towards the living room, as if trying to usher you into a more comfortable setting for the impending confrontation. He knew this was just a little shower, the real storm was still far away, giving him space to prepare.

As you moved, you could not help but notice the contrast between your demeanour and his. While your arms were still crossed defensively, his posture exuded a calm confidence that irked you further.

You took a seat on the edge of the sofa, not willing to fully settle into the illusion of camaraderie. Jungkook, on the other hand, sprawled onto a nearby chair, the picture of nonchalance.

“I need that portfolio to get a job because a certain someone has to be bitchy and sabotage my whole career because his big ass ego cannot take rejection. Give it to me,” you fired off, your words sharp and accusatory. He leaned back in the chair, smirking.

“Those are very bold words, Y/N. I would prefer to think of it as a wake-up call for you, not sabotage.” Your incredulous glare only intensified.

“Are you fucking serious Jungkook? A wake up call? You’ve just jeopardised everything I’ve worked for, and you’re calling this a wake up call?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his gaze locked onto yours.

“I can get you a better job.”

You scoffed. The audacity of his response fuelled the simmering anger within you.

“You can’t get a shit, so give it back to me, and I’ll be on my way,” you requested.

Jungkook’s smirk remained, an infuriating mix of arrogance and nonchalance.

“No,” he said, smiling. Your hands clenched into fists at your sides, the frustration reaching a boiling point. He leaned back, seemingly unperturbed by your rising anger.

“What do you mean no?!” you shot back, your voice sharp.

“You were about to make a decision that would have consequences beyond your imagination. I had to intervene.”

“What the fuck are you on again?” Jungkook’s gaze remained fixed on you, the intensity of his stare almost unnerving while your voice went an octave higher. Your frustration reached its peak, and you stood up, pacing the room as you ranted. You were breathing heavily, trying to calm yourself.

You needed that portfolio, it was a collection of years of a work and your best work to be specific. The lousy new version won’t get you a job at no high-profile fashion brand and you cannot afford to go lower than your last position.

“Alright—” You said defeated, turning yourself to face him again, you put off your black leather jacket and fixed your low ponytail, slumping back to his sofa. Spreading your arms on the backrest and cross your legs.

Jungkook took a moment to breathe in the sight before him; he was throbbing for you.

“—what do you want?” you asked. He leaned back further into the chair, putting his masculine tattooed arms to rest on the back of his head, showing his abs from under the white tank top he is wearing.

“What do I want?” he mused, as if contemplating the question but he already knew.

“Spill it out.” You barked and he chuckled at your eagerness. He got up from his seat and dangerously slowly walked towards you.

When he reached you, both of his arms pressed to the leather of the sofa inches from you, caging your body. Your breath stammered as you looked at him towering over you, the golden chain around his neck hanging.

“Firstly, I want you to be my good girl, apologise for being a brat the other day and admit there is an “us”. Secondly—” he whispered seductively, closing the approximate distance while doing so. He was right in your face, looking over at your lips evidently, he was controlling himself to not attack them. He invaded your personal space. The sudden shift in atmosphere left you breathless, and you could feel the heat radiating between you.

You squared your shoulders, refusing to succumb to the intoxicating energy he exuded. “I won’t apologise for any shit, now secondly?” You said while trying to hold your horses. You hate to admit your pussy was clenching and leaking under his gaze. He was attractive, and no one could deny that.

His fingers grazed your cheek gently, a teasing touch that sent a jolt of electricity through your body. You swallowed hard, trying to maintain a semblance of composure.

“I want these feisty little plump lips wrapped around my thick cock—” you pushed him away from you once you heard his words. Grabbing your jacket and storming your way out to the door, angry with yourself that you let it go this far.

“You walk out that door, and you’re done in this city, fuck even the whole continent if I want,” Jungkook declared, his tone heavy with a sense of entitlement. The words hung in the air, a threat laced with possessiveness that sent a chill down your spine.

“You’re bluffing.” His eyes darkened, a storm brewing in their depths.

“You’re underestimating the consequences, Y/N. I’ll snap my fingers, and you won’t get a job. Anywhere.” A bitter laugh escaped your lips. You did not believe him one bit, determined to try harder at the job hunting.

“You’ve already done enough. You can’t do worse.” You scoffed, the absurdity of his demands pushing you further away. He stepped closer, the air thick with tension.

“You’re not leaving, Y/N. Either you’ll be my good girl and apologise, or all it will take is one phone call.” As you reached for the doorknob, he grabbed your arm with a force that bordered on aggression.

“I am my own woman, Jungkook.” Your eyes flashed with determination as you wrenched your arm free, emphasising every word of the sentence you just uttered.

With that, you swung the door open and stormed out, leaving Jungkook’s apartment and the tumultuous mess behind. The city lights greeted you outside, a stark contrast to the suffocating atmosphere within.

Your telephone remained eerily silent, devoid of the calls and opportunities that once filled it with promise. Jungkook’s vindictiveness had effectively severed the threads connecting you to your professional life, leaving you adrift in a sea of uncertainties.

A tear escaped your eye as you clutched the piece of paper you fetched out of your mailbox — an eviction notice. You had fallen behind on rent, pleading with your landlord for more time, promising to pay in full for two months once you secured a job. But that ended up not happening, and that’s how you find yourself sitting in a messy apartment full of half packed boxes, no job, little money left, and a bottle of cheap wine.

Moving in with friends or seeking refuge with your parents was not an option. They never supported your dreams enough to provide for you in such dire circumstances, especially at your age. Unmarried, jobless, and on the brink of homelessness, you felt trapped.

Despite your efforts to secure another job, including poorly recreating parts of your portfolio, rejections piled up, and the search for a new apartment proved equally futile. Not like you could afford it anyway.

The city that once held promise now felt like a maze of closed doors and dead ends. The mere thought of dialling his number sent a shiver down your spine, a conflicting mix of pride and necessity wrestling within you.

You drank the last of your wine, hiccupped, and cried. With only twenty-four hours to vacate your flat for the new tenant to come in. The friends you once thought you could rely on were facing their own struggles, unable to provide the sanctuary you so desperately needed. You had nowhere to go apart to his clutches if you of course did not want to freeze to death in the bustling city. It confused you how it came to having no other option.

Taking a deep breath, you dialled his number, each ring echoing the surrender of your independence. The telephone rang in your trembling hand. As the call connected, a heavy silence hung in the air and you desperately tried to calm your breathing.

“Jeon speaking,” his voice crackled through the phone. You were shaking in cold sweat, your eyes blood red from crying and alcohol clouded your mind enough to call him.

“Hello?” you heard his voice speak again, and another sob left your lips. The lump in your throat made it difficult to speak, but you pushed through the discomfort.

“I-I’m sorry.” The man on the other line smirked, seemingly thrilled to hear your voice. The next sentence you uttered, however, was even sweeter music to his ears.

“I need you.”

You heard his car park in front of your building the next morning. The boxes were long gone on their way to the heart of Manhattan where Jungkook’s penthouse awaited. It was only you and your suitcase with only necessities packed inside. The reality of the situation hit you as you looked around at the empty apartment. The purple walls, once full of pictures from trips with your friends, were now bare. The fridge stripped of silly magnets you liked to collect, stood empty. Nothing left.

Taking a deep breath, you gripped the handle of your suitcase with a sense of resignation. You glanced out of the window on your way out, finding Jungkook casually leaning against his shiny black Jaguar, smiling directly at you. Closing your eyes, you mentally said goodbye to your small apartment.

Your hair, lazily put into a hair clip when you woke up, had a few stray strands escaping, framing your face that still showed signs of swelling from crying all night.

As you stepped out into the hallway, the door closing behind you, the weight of the suitcase in your hand served as a physical reminder of the choice you had made. Is this really your only option?

The sound of Jungkook’s footsteps echoed in the corridor, approaching closer with each passing second. He ran up the stairs just as you were locking the door. His gummy smile met your gaze, a clear expression of his happiness. The heartthrob had finally gotten you where he wanted you all along.

He was dressed in a denim jacket and jeans from the collection you worked on. As if he was intent on reminding you of something. His long curly locks were gone, replaced by a short mullet.

You, on the other hand, did not feel to dress classy and elegant as you usually did. You swapped heels for a pair of white sneakers, a tight designer skirt for simple blue boyfriend jeans and your upper body was covered by a white shirt layered with a pink shirt you loosely tight on your waist, leaving the buttons half open.

“Baby?” he called out. You must’ve zoned out, as now he was holding your suitcase in his hand, ready to leave.

“M’sorry, I was in my head,” you apologised. You didn’t want to upset him by negatively reacting to the pet name even though you irked to tell him you’re not his baby.

He smiled softly, putting the suitcase down, walking over to you. He caressed your cheek, leaning in for a kiss. Turning your face, he landed his lips on your other cheek. The man chuckled and put the freed strands of your hair behind your ear. “Don’t worry. I got you now.”

The drive to Jungkook’s penthouse was filled with an uncomfortable silence as the city lights passed by in a dizzying display.

“Welcome home!” The words hung in the air, the irony not lost on you. This was far from a home; it was a gilded cage you succumbed to. You did not answer him. You couldn’t bring yourself to do so.

He was saying something about a closet, but your mind totally spaced out looking at the boxes that you packed hours prior, casually sitting in his living room.

“Baby?” You looked at him, eyes wide when you realised you were not listening to him again.

“Do you want to start unpacking or should we head out for brunch first?” He approached you. Jungkook did not stop smiling since he pulled his car in front of your building.

Unpacking felt like an acceptance of this new reality, while brunch felt like an attempt to hold onto some semblance of normalcy.

“I... I think we should talk,” you finally managed to say, your voice carrying the uncertainty that lingered within. Jungkook’s smile wavered for a moment, but he quickly masked it.

You couldn’t ignore the fact that your life had taken a sharp turn, and the unfamiliar surroundings only intensified the sense of displacement. Jungkook threw himself at his sofa just where you were sitting months prior. He motioned with his hand, silently ordering you to sit.

“I promise not to bother you long. I just need you to get me off the blacklist so I can get a job. I can’t be tied to you indefinitely.” You spoke softly, careful to not anger him just yet. You knew he wouldn’t appreciate the direction this conversation was heading, but you needed to set the record straight. This was temporary, at least in your mind.

Jungkook’s expression shifted, a subtle tension in his features. He sighed. Leaning forward, Jungkook grabbed the remote control of the HiFi that was standing proud, setting it on, and whence the soft tones of Isaak’s “Wicked Game” resonated the penthouse, you could not help but raise an eyebrow.

He petted his knee, a silent invitation. You were not stupid to not understand what he wants, yet you opted to sit next to him instead of where he wanted you.

“Maybe we got lost in translation, love.” He spoke leaning closer to you. The music seemed to underscore the unspoken tension in the room.

“You won’t leave me, baby. I’ll keep you so satisfied and happy; you won’t even want to go.” He whispered to your ear. The atmosphere became charged with a palpable desire. His proximity sent a shiver down your spine, a conflicting mix of temptation and resistance.

“You can’t keep me here against my will, Jungkook,” you asserted, maintaining a thin thread of defiance. Yet, the allure of his touch lingered in the air, clouding your better judgement.

“Try me, love. I’ve got ways to make you stay,” he countered, his tone dripping with confidence.

It took all you have in you to stand up and storm to the large windows that provided a magnificent view of Manhattan. This time, however, he was right behind you.

You heard him growl. He was angry, and he proved so once you found yourself pinned to the large window, your back facing him. He attacked your neck right away, bruising every single inch. His hand roamed over your breast, squeezing them to the point you had to moan. The situation escalated rather quickly, your resistance made him press you to his back even harder.

“I’m so tired of your running,” he groaned into your neck. You put your hands on the glass trying to push yourself away and give yourself space to free from his grasp, but he has put a majority of his weight on you. You can feel his growing pulsating bulge on your heart-shaped bottom.

“Maybe I should show you, who you belong to, princess.” He cupped your sex through your pants, and you whimpered from the sensation. You knew this was utterly wrong; you should not react to his touch this way, but you couldn’t help to notice the wetness pooling in between your legs once he continues to attack your neck with his soft plump lips.

“Jungkook-” You tried to resist, but his hand was already done with unbuttoning your jeans, sliding right down to your core. Your panties were sticky, your head was spinning, and the part of a window was getting foggy right next to your mouth from your hot breath.

“I’m gonna fuck you so good.” He pulled his hand out of your pants for a second to wet his fingers and put them right back on the little bud that was waiting to be touched. He pressed his fingertips on your clit, circling it painfully slow. The heartthrob rutted his hips into your ass, looking for a friction, making you move your hips towards his hand. He chuckled to your ear.

“If you want that job, baby, why don’t you deserve it first?” you could sense a little hint of mockery in his voice. The pulsating beats of the music seemed to echo the rhythm of his movements. Now slow and calculated.

As the song reached its crescendo, his finger entered your vibrating heat. “Hm?” He pried, his finger moving in and out in punishingly slow, drawing silent moans from you when he brushed up the right spot.

“W-what do you want?” You stammered out of yourself.

“You. All of you of course.” Jungkook replied in a heartbeat. Your heart raced and your head was clouded by the pleasure he was providing. Moving his finger slightly faster, you found yourself bowing forward, your body wanted him to reach deeper.

“Please—” you whimpered when he slowed down the tempo again.

“Give me an answer baby, will you be my good girl?” Now it was your mind that raced, grappling with the implications of his question while squeezing your walls around his finger.

“Maybe you need a little more convincing, hm?” He softly bit your earlobe whilst inserting his second finger into your heat, making you moan louder than before. You pressed your forehead onto the glass and looked down at his hand in between your legs. The sight made your pussy clench even harder. A small tear escaped your eye, you are overwhelmed, and the pleasure is clouding your sound judgement.

“What will it be, baby?” His fingers finally raised the tempo, and your eyesight was getting blurry, biting your lip from the sensation.

“Fuck—” you nibbed at your bottom lip a bit harder, trying to fight with yourself. But you couldn’t. He was playing a game, and he was winning this round.

“Yes!” you screamed louder than you intended when he hit the sweet spot, making you see stars. You did not necessarily want to agree. It was more of a reaction to how good his fingers feel inside of you. But Jungkook’s interpretation did not align with yours.

What you did not expect is the sudden feel of emptiness once his fingers abdicated its place. You protested with an unpleasant whine of frustration.

He spun you to face him, being quick enough to grab you below your ass, illocutionary forcing you to jump up. Jungkook leaned in to kiss you while he navigated the apartment blindly, right to the master bedroom.

Now you were feeling thrown. Literally. Your body bounced a little while Jungkook stood at the foot of his king sized bed adorned in black sheets. You could smell his expensive cologne on them. He was very eager to continue what you started.

His shirt was long gone and so were his pants when he was pulling down yours, alongside with your through-and-through wet panties. He very quickly inhabited his head in between your legs. Licking all the dirty juice your pussy was producing.

You could not help but to bury your fingers into his hair, slightly tugging on it once he decided to abuse your clit, sucking on it, his piercing cold against your skin. You were starting to feel the knot inside your lower belly, moaning and panting out loud.

“I’m gonna!—” you breathed out heavily. Squeezing your eyes shut, feeling the heat rushing your body.

“Not yet,” said the heartthrob, parting away from you. You shot your eyes open to look at him towering over you, his briefs thrown away somewhere in the room, and his pride leaning proudly against his abdomen, angry and red. The perfect opposite of soft. You gulped down. He was definitely not lying when he suggested he is thick.

The heartthrob helped you get rid of the rest of your clothes, bending down to lay a single kiss right above your clit, maintaining eye contact with you all the time. Sticking his tongue out yet again, making a straight wet line up your belly, ending at the valley between your breasts.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He groaned, squeezing your tits while pumping his dick, he could not take it anymore.

He spread your legs further, making space for him to fit right in. Your walls are trembling from excitement, especially when he presses the length of his cock to your lips, coating himself in your juices.

“Condo—” you went to say when his lips silenced you in a hard passionate kiss. He moaned to your mouth, pressing the tip of his cock to your entrance, stretching you open. You pressed your hands to his chest, parting away from him. He looked at you with confusion and you repeated yourself.

“Condom, Guk,” you said, using the nickname in an attempt to soften his hard features. Something told you that you might have just pissed him off. The heartthrob sighed and involuntarily got up, walking all the way to the bathroom, giving you a million-dollar view of his ass. Your gaze then shifted to his muscular shoulders, involuntarily admiring his impressive physique. You couldn’t deny he was hot as hell.

Your nipples were perky from the thrill that your body was going through. It was quite some time since the last you got laid. Maybe that’s why it took him minimum effort to turn you into a whiny, needy little bitch.

You heard the light switch going off in the bathroom, and the man himself appearing in the doorframe with the little shiny square in his hands. Tearing it open, he returned to sit on his knees on the bed while sliding the condom on.

He grabbed your legs under your knees with one swift movement, sliding you closer to him. One hand aiming his cock to your entrance the other finding its place on your throat, holding it with the right pressure to elevate your pleasure. Pushing all the way through, you whimpered loudly at the intrusion. He was big, and you felt like you’re going to explode. The heat rushed through you like a momentary fever.

The heartthrob could not wait for you to adjust to his size, and he started to snap his hips into you in a punishing tempo, making your body bounce up at every thrust and clench your eyes shut tightly. Loud moans coming out of you.

“You take me so well, baby.” He whispered into your ear seductively, panting and groaning from the pleasure. He was on cloud nine, finally having the woman he longed for quite some time.

“Got me waiting for this pussy almost the whole damn year.” You met his hungry gaze, your moaning synchronised with his. He crushed his lips to yours one more time before thrusting his cock in and out of your heat faster and deeper.

You bit down on his lip, him groaning at the sensation, slapping your ass in the heat of the moment.

“This pussy was fucking designed for me.” He claimed you.

He was hitting all the right places, making you squeeze your eyes shut again. He upheld his promise to fuck you good. You can regret this after, now it’s not the time.

“M’wanna pound this pretty ass too.” He pulled out of you, turning you to lay on your belly, slapping the already reddened skin before setting you on all fours, ass up. He did not hesitate to rut inside of you again, feeling him all the way in your stomach, you screamed his name.

“Jungkook!” his thrusts set a brutal pace that you were not sure if you’ll survive. Their moans continued to echo in the room.

“You belong to me.” He growled, pounding your pussy, the sound of skin slapping was audible ten times louder than usual. The knot in your lower belly appeared again, got you moaning uncontrollably.

Jungkook sensed that your climax was near and went to rub your clit with the desire to make you cum all over him while getting himself off with you.

“Guk—” you choked on your words, your legs and hands were trembling, tears springing out of your eyes. You desperately needed to cum.

“I know, baby.” He kissed the arch of your back, making his hand and hips move even faster, hitting your cervix. If this is heaven, you don’t want to leave.

“I-I’m gonna cum! I’m gonna cum! I’m gonna cum!” You shouted, feeling the knot untying itself rather quickly. Jungkook growled right to your ear. He was close too, dangerously close.

“Baby!” He whimpered, feeling the tension rising.

Your juice splashed the sheets as you squirted all over his cock, crying, the orgasm hitting you way too hard. Jungkook’s hips did not stop while he chased his own release, complimenting you, your body, and how you are such a good girl while doing so. With a loud moan and one last deep thrust, he came in you, holding you still while he emptied himself. The warmth of his release felt too authentic, but you were too fucked out to notice.

As you were also too fucked out to notice the empty abandoned condom laying on the ground.

“I love you so much baby—”

It was getting dark outside when you woke up, your head pounding as you looked over your naked body and evident ache in between your legs. The sheer curtains that are covering the floor to ceiling windows, once airy and light, now filter the early evening light into a soft, diffused glow, creating a cosy atmosphere. You cuddled the soft sheets that were wrapped around your lower body, thinking that you could sleep some more.

But when you heard the muted notes of En Vogue’s Whatta Man blasting somewhere in the penthouse, any hopes of serenity were shattered. A curse slipped through your lips as the reality of your surroundings hit you.

“Fuck,” you muttered through your teeth, the small fists pounding against the bed. To muffle the scream of mixed emotions, you seized a leopard-patterned pillow, pressing it against your face.

You had willingly let this happen, all for the pursuit of a damn book and damn fucking job and your damn fucking career. But why was it so precious, you might ask? Your portfolio wasn’t just a collection of pages bound together; it was a culmination of dreams, aspirations, and relentless hard work. Each design you made over the years, a carefully curated piece of your artistic vision, held a piece of your soul.

The portfolio was your identity as a designer, a visual storyteller who poured emotions, creativity, and skill into each piece of clothing. It was something you presented yourself with, and you believed it held the power to open doors. It got you your first adult job after you spent two years in the big apple on your own, dreaming big while washing dishes behind the counter.

And it got you the second job of your early fashion career, a higher position than sales assistant, the head designer at the men’s wear division at Calvin Klein. You were aiming to become the head of the department when a better offer came your way, from Guess.

The project they offered you to be a part of was a kind of interview to get through and sit as the executive director of the women’s department. You were thrilled to accept as you always wanted to design for your gender.

And he fucked it up. So, you have to excuse yourself by letting your guard down, giving him a chance to sway you. You are doing this for you and your career.

You sat on the bed, eyeing the modern bedroom that screamed his name as did the smell of the room. Just like you remembered before you blacked out from all the pleasure he forced upon you.

Sighing, you moved your sore naked body to the edge of the bed. A black leather armchair caught your eye, a clean set of underwear laid out on it, burning under your gaze. You gulped down. This was your mess after all. You let him come too close—extremely close, judging by the recurring ache between your legs.

“Fuck it, it’s fine.” You’d manage somehow, or at least, that’s how you decided to play along with his nonsensical fantasy and possessive behaviour.

You tiptoed down the penthouse, searching for the devil. You knew you were going the right way when the music grew louder. Peeking from the narrow hallway into the living room, he was nowhere in sight. Only the RCA telly with MTV on indicated that he must’ve been there.

The sizzling sound of something cooking and a pleasant aroma hit your ears and nose. He was in the kitchen, cooking. Jeon Jungkook was in the kitchen, cooking. A certain degree of domesticity welcomed you as you stepped into the all-blue kitchen. His kitchen was way nicer than yours, you noted. Large cabinets, the island full of food ingredients he was preparing. Your gaze lingered as your eyes traced his masculine, naked back, tattoos shouting at you. Your knees felt weak at the sight, your body reacting to him as if he were the alpha wolf.

You couldn’t help but bite your lip. He was swaying his hips to the rhythm of the song. Even from this point of view, you could tell he is in a very good mood. It seemed like he was glowing.

You leaned against the arch, contemplating whether to make your presence known or observe from the shadows. Before you could decide, he turned around, planning to cut the vegetables, his eyes locking onto yours immediately. Bunny smile plastered on his face, reaching his ears — a juxtaposition to how anxious you looked in his big shirt.

Quickly circling the kitchen island, he reached you in a matter of seconds. The heartthrob was beaming with happiness seeing you in his kitchen, in his shirt, barefoot, face raw, and all his. At least, that was his perspective after he finally got you where he wanted you.

“Baby!” He squeaked happily, pulling you by your wrists. The movement causes your petite frame to collide with his naked torso. Jungkook did not let you speak even if you wanted to, instead he pulled you even closer, pressing his lips to yours. You yelped, surprised by the unexpected collision. The vulnerability you felt in his presence only heightened as he claimed you, his happiness seemingly derived from having you exactly where he wanted—vulnerable and dependent on him.

The kiss lingered for a moment, and as Jungkook pulled back, his eyes locked onto yours again, gleaming with an unspoken mischief you could not decipher. He seemed to revel in the flustered state he had induced, and a cocky grin played on his lips.

“Morning, beautiful,” he whispered, his warm breath grazing your ear as he finally released your wrists, pecking your lips softly again. The shirt you wore clung to your form.

“It’s almost five pm.” You muttered back after you gave the digital clock on the stove a glance. He laughed it off, not replying.

“How do you like your steak?” he asked, his tone casual as if the passionate kiss hadn’t just occurred.

“M-medium rare,” you stammered, still processing the sudden turn of events. He chuckled, the sound resonating in the cosy kitchen as he came back to the stove to resume cooking, what you assumed is your dinner. Your stomach growled loudly when the delicious smell hit your nostrils, loudly. Jungkook even looked your way, encouraging you to take whatever you wanted from the fridge that was next to him, until dinner was ready.

You looked at the silver double-door fridge, and suddenly, your hunger vanished. Those were your magnets that were on your fridge just hours prior. He went through your boxes and unpacked them. The world was spinning, and your stomach was dangerously twisting.

He noticed the change in your expression, the playfulness in his eyes fading as he followed your gaze to the fridge.

“Something wrong, baby?” he inquired. You swallowed hard, attempting to mask the unease that threatened to bubble to the surface.

“No, nothing,” you replied, forcing a tight smile. His attention returned to the stove, the sizzling sounds and savoury aroma filling the kitchen. The clock on the stove continued its indifferent march towards evening. But your mind stopped.

“I-I think—” you stammered, it was hard for you to speak when there was an evident lump in your throat that wanted to emerge to the surface.

“Baby?” he raised a brow at you, letting everything he was doing to approach you again. You gulped down, trying to breathe it out.

“I think... I need—,” you tried, the words escaping in a breathy whisper. Jungkook’s expression shifted from curiosity to concern as he stepped closer. That got you even more anxious and a quick escape was a way you opted.

Your legs carried you back to the room where you knew a bathroom would be near. You heard him calling your name, but he did not run to get you. He must have thought that you’re trying to run again, but when he saw you going the way the master bedroom is, he did not push it.

You slumped right to your knees, emptying your already empty stomach into the toilet. Tears stringed from your eyes. Before you could calm or clean yourself the door creaked open, and Jungkook’s concerned voice seeped into the bathroom.

“Oh my god! Are you okay baby?” He hovered in the doorway, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. You didn’t have the strength to respond, only offering a weak nod as you continued to empty the contents of your stomach.

His footsteps approached, and you could feel him kneeling beside you, one hand tentatively rubbing your back.

“Easy, baby. Easy,” he murmured softly.

After a moment, the nausea subsided, and you leaned back against the cool porcelain, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. Jungkook remained by your side, a true concern readable in his eyes.

As you caught your breath, you couldn’t help but notice the familiar objects around the bathroom. Toothbrush, hairbrush, all your makeup and even your pyjamas, had found a place alongside Jungkook’s in the bathroom. He was blurring the lines between your lives.

Glancing at yourself in the mirror, you winced at the sight of prominent hickeys and bite marks adorning your neck. You caught Jungkook’s worrying gaze but did not pay attention to it longer than you needed to.

“When was the last time you ate properly, baby?” he asked, caressing the small of your back, kissing the top of your head. You touched the tender skin on your neck, a mix of shame and regret settling in the pit of your stomach.

You knew very well that this wasn’t a doing of the lack of nutrition within your body but it did stop you to think for a second. When was the last time you had a proper meal and not a cheap ramen noodles from a convenience store near your building? You did not recall, so you rather opted to shrug your shoulders and reach for your toothbrush that could have melted under your gaze at this point.

“Why don’t you freshen up, and I’m going to finish dinner.” He sighed and kissed your temple. You’ve let him. He has done worse. As he left the bathroom, you couldn’t shake the feeling of being exposed—physically, emotionally, and now even in your most private spaces. Your eyes lingered back on the assortment of makeup and personal items neatly arranged beside his.

Brushing your teeth never felt so foreign and unnatural. Your eyes darted around his room after you finished, and that’s when you noticed what you did not when you woke up —a closet, half-filled with your clothes. Neatly folded, hanged right beside his. Even your jewellery was sorted by the type of metal. Your shoes, your skirts, dresses, everything. He had seamlessly integrated your wardrobe into his, as if signalling an intention far beyond a temporary stay.

Then all your pictures scattered on the walls as you walked down the corridor back to the heartthrob who swayed you here. Feeling the unease building in your stomach again.

Jungkook stood by the table, a knowing smile playing on his lips as he watched you approach. His eyes flickered with a mixture of amusement and possession. This all seemed like a stage for a performance you hadn’t signed up for.

The steak, perfectly cooked to your liking, accompanied by a side of vegetables. The spread looked delectable, and your stomach rumbled again, reminding you that you hadn’t had a proper meal in days. The scent of the meal teased your senses.

As you picked at your food, a question lingered in the back of your mind—how had it come to this? Have you really had no choice but him? Was this worth the trouble? Perhaps.

Your parents would think of you as a failure if you returned home. and your pride did not allow you to pick up your old job and be a girl for everything. You worked in the fashion industry and you were willing to do anything to maintain it.

“Are you listening to me, baby?” Jungkook broke the stream of your consciousness, his voice soft yet insistent. You hummed in response but your ears could not pick precise words that left his mouth.

“There’s Grammys next week, do you have any design for the red carpet so we could match—”

“What about the job?” You interrupted him, setting your fork down, staring at him viciously.

“So the Grammys—” he tried to continue without replying to you but you were having none of it.

“So the job, Jungkook.” You said through clenched teeth one more time. You weren’t about to let him sidestep the conversation about your career.

He sighed, the corners of his mouth twitching with a momentary annoyance. The room crackled with tension, the unspoken power dynamics unravelling before you.

“You’ve been a very good girl so far—” he lifted the handkerchief he had on his lap and placed it on top of the table next to his glass of red wine.

“Why do you have to misbehave now.” His attempt to redirect the conversation towards your behaviour only fuelled your frustration.

“I’m not misbehaving, Jungkook,” you shot back, your voice sharp and unyielding. “I need to know about the job. I need to know that you’re actually doing something concrete to help me, not just playing puppeteer with my life.”

“There’s an opening at Givenchy, and Prada or Dior but—” your eyes were full of false hope.

“—until I can be sure you won’t leave me the second you get the new job. You won’t go to any interview.” He leaned back, a predatory gleam in his eyes, as if enjoying the power play.

Your mind raced, torn between ambition and self-respect. You had worked tirelessly to establish yourself, and the taste of success was within reach. Yet, the cost demanded by Jungkook was steep—an indefinite surrender of your autonomy.

“That’s not what we agreed upon—” You whined out, anxiety clutching your insights in tight grip.

“Oh but we did baby.” He answered swiftly, smiling sweetly.

“I—” you wanted to protest, but he was quick to dismiss any argument you wanted to come up with.

“I said I want you, and you agreed, baby. You can’t take it back.”

“What does that even mean?!” You whined out.

“That I won’t let you slip through my fingers again. You belong here with me, and you better learn your place or prepare for a farewell with the magnificent fashion world of yours.” The ultimatum echoed in your mind as his gaze was trying to make you submit. Jungkook’s possessiveness loomed over you, a suffocating force that sought to confine your wings.

“You can’t force me,” words slipped past your lips, a proclamation of your refusal to succumb to his dominance.

“You underestimate the lengths I’ll go to keep you, Y/N,” he retorted, his voice low and laced with a dangerous edge.

“You’re sick.” You spat out at him, standing up to leave when he grabbed you and held you tight. You were looking up at his face, seemingly angry with your words. His eyes darkened, a fleeting moment of anger crossing his features.

“Aren’t you a bit ungrateful, my love?” he seethed, his voice a low growl. The possessive tone sent shivers down your spine, but you refused to cower under his gaze.

“I’m providing you with shelter, food, money and most of all my love.”

“It’s sick, Jungkook. This isn’t love,” you shot back, your voice unwavering. He leaned in, his face inches from yours, his grip unyielding. He scoffed, a bitter smile playing on his lips.

“You’re testing my patience, Y/N. You’re mine,” he retorted quickly, not letting you go. You wanted to protest, to tell him to fuck off, and even worse things, but he was not finished.

“Think with your pretty little head, won’t you?—” you glared at him, defiance burning in your eyes.

“—you can live like a princess, you can have your dream position and on top of that a loving significant other — me.” The seconds felt like an eternity, the weight of his possessiveness pressing down on you.

“What is success for when you cannot share the joy with someone you love.” He whispered, a sinister undertone in his words. You had a feeling he’s not only talking about you. You had to think, and you had to think quickly.

“You’re asking me to give up my autonomy, Jungkook.” You shot back, your voice unwavering. He scoffed, the air heavy with tension.

“You’re too stubborn for your own good, Y/N. You need me—” He chuckled, a condescending tone lacing his voice.

“—what were you gonna do if you didn’t come to me? Hm? Your mami and papi who are disappointed in you or your fake friends who did not bat an eye to try and help you out?—” You turned your face away from him, not wanting to let his words affect you.

“—I helped you. I am here for you!” He shook you, still holding a tight grip on you.

“All I’m asking in return is you to give yourself to me.” With a defiant push, you broke free from his grasp, leaving him seething in frustration. Covering your face with your palms, you sobbed.

“Love and loyalty is not that big of a price when you think about it.”

“You promise?” you choked out through your tears. You were tired, exhausted to the bone, and this was taking a bigger toll on you than you would expect. You wanted to trick him and instead he tricked you. But you needed to play by his rules to win in the game he started. His eyes softened momentarily, a twisted form of concern flickering in his gaze.

“I promise, baby,” he murmured, his tone almost soothing. The fire has ceased for now. Or so you thought. Despite the fragile promise, you couldn’t shake off the feeling that you were dancing on the edge of a precipice, held by the strings he so skilfully pulled. But the stakes were high, and you couldn’t afford to falter. You had no shelter, almost no money and no one to turn to. For now. You promised yourself, this is temporary. You will find a way out of this arrangement.

You finished your dinner. He insisted. You stripped naked while he was drawing the bath. He again insisted. The penthouse, filled with music and the fragrance of expensive candles. You allowed yourself to be led, like a puppet, your exhaustion overshadowing your instincts. As you sat there in the hot water, vulnerable, he wiped away your tears.

The water lapping against your skin is like an ominous reminder of the depths you found yourself in. Jungkook’s hands traced patterns on your back.

Jungkook, seemingly attuned to your exhaustion, wiped away your tears, the gesture carrying a strange mixture of care and control.

“It’s all gonna feel better once you accept it.” Said he, right to your ear, sending shivers down your naked body. You pressed your legs to your chest to hide yourself, a futile attempt at preserving some semblance of privacy, even though he had seen it all.

“I cannot grasp why you would do this to me, Jungkook,” you sobbed, letting him hold you against his chest.

“I did it for us, baby.” His hands firmly gripped yours now, making them stop hugging your knees. The heartthrob wanted you to relax in his presence. A laughable request considering the circumstances that led you here.

“Stop being delusional. There is no us.” You finally let him move your hands only for you to grab the frame of the bathtub and attempt to pull yourself up and away from him. He did not fancy this attempt of yours, and he let you know that by grabbing a large portion of your hair, dragging you back.

Your body slammed to his naked torso with a loud slap caused by the wet skin on skin contact. It took your breath away for a good minute.

“You didn’t seem to argue about it earlier today when my cock was hitting all-the-right-places, making you squirt, hmm?” Said the raven haired man, still holding your hair in his fist. He did not intend to hurt you, no, it was not as painful as the whole humiliating scenery and the fact you could not break free of him. He’s putting an example of what will happen once you stop behaving again. Putting you in your place — that’s what he called it.

“Matter of fact, Imma show you again that there’s us baby, until you realise it yourself.”

Trying to wiggle out of his grasp, you whimpered every time you pulled your hair back to make you stay still. And as if he changed his mind, your body was pulled out of the warm water, letting your hair go, making you fall down to the bright rug on the floor of the bathroom. Soaking it wet you looked up to him towering over your shivering physique.

“It was about time for you to show me how you are grateful to be my good girl—” he stepped closer. You did not want to look at him, knowing well what he is talking about.

“Open up baby—” you shook your head, pulling away from him and his hard member that he was holding just inches away from your face. You felt it meet your cheek and immediately retrieved yourself again which made him even more frustrated. His cock was painfully hard, and you were not cooperating.

The tattooed hand in your hair pulled you right back, his eyes bore to yours with a hard stare, and you swear they got even darker. His other hand was clutching your jaw, harder and harder until you involuntarily opened your mouth wide enough.

Taking the chance right away, he slipped his thick and hard manhood into your mouth, hitting the back of your throat. He hissed at how your teeth slightly scraped his dick. You choked on it, but he was unfazed by it, continuing to thrust into your throat, making tears fall down your cheeks.

“I knew you could be my good girl.” He groaned, praising you with each of his hard thrusts into your mouth. Your breathing was shallow, and you tried to get as much air as you could. He was moaning loudly, the wet sounds of his cock slipping in and out of your mouth, covered by your saliva made him even more aroused and hungry for you.

“You just need a bit of a re-education.” He was getting lost in the pleasure your mouth was providing him, and you were deprived of the air you needed. Your hand hit his pelvis when you thought you’re going to pass out soon.

“Just a moment more, baby. I know you can take it.” He said through gritted teeth. Jungkook was panting loudly, mixing it with loud moans of your name.

“Fuck, Y/N. You’re my heaven.” Your nails were scratching his abdomen, trying to break free, but his hold was too strong. You were drooling all over his cock, and your hand started to spin from the lack of oxygen and how quickly your head was bobbing.

He was getting dangerously close and his sloppy movements reflected that. He managed to pull one last thrust before he was cumming down your throat. He was letting his dick soften, pressed on your tongue while the hot semen was springing out of his tip.

“Swallow.”

The night wore on, shadows dancing on the walls as you lay there, pressed to his chest, his hand limply laying on your hip, contemplating the surreal turn you took.

If anything arose in you during the intercourse you wish you would wipe out of your mind, it was a determination to break free from the suffocating grasp of the penthouse.

Jungkook laid beside you, his breathing steady, a façade of tranquillity painted on his features. As he drifted into a seemingly serene slumber, you waited for the right moment to seize the opportunity.

When you were certain he was deeply asleep, you carefully extricated yourself from his embrace, a shiver running down your spine as you tiptoed through the room.

The moon cast a pale glow through the sheer curtains, guiding your movements as you tiptoed across the room. Your hand grasped the cold doorknob, the soft creaking of the door threatened to betray your escape. Your body frozen in time, your pupils shaking, fearing what happens if he wakes up. You wait a minute to make sure he is not coming to drag you back before you open the door in one swift movement.

You rethought the tasks you listed in your plan. Find the portfolio and get the fuck out as quick as possible. Everything else is replaceable for you. The mindset that the portfolio is the only key to all your problems, remained.

The adrenaline surged through your veins, the pulse of your heart echoing in the quiet hallway you walked through to get to the front of the penthouse.

He never took you upstairs, therefore you assumed that’s where he must’ve hidden it.

You approached the staircase, the carpet soft beneath your feet. The air seemed to grow heavier with every ascending step. The possibility of him waking up was not zero.

As you reached the upper level, you noticed the subtle shift in the ambiance. The hallway, adorned with pieces of art that whispered tales of luxury, and all his awards he won during his career, displayed to show his success. You passed several open doors, a home recording studio in one of them, be ridden of what you were looking for.

The hallway led you towards a set of double doors. That must be it. The doors creaked open, your gaze scanning for any sign of your portfolio. Your eyes flickering between the meticulously arranged accolades and the sprawling desk. He must be using this room as his office.

The seconds stretched into minutes, the urgency escalating with each passing heartbeat. You began with the drawers of the glass table, trying to be as quiet as possible. You cannot afford to cause commotion.

Anxiety wrapped around you, a vice tightening with every passing moment. You went through the library too, looked under every surface, you could not find it.

With a deep breath, you steadied yourself. There must be another place he could have hidden it. Your eyes fell upon the stack of papers, leaning your head to the side you examined the tabloid underneath with your face on it.

You fished it out in mere seconds, eyeing it unbelievably. If you were on the cover of a tabloid you would for sure know that. But you were not aware that your face appeared in Star magazine, right beside Jungkook. “Jungkook’s Mysterious Muse Revealed!” the headline screamed at you.

It was not only you after all. Society has convinced Jungkook that you two are sort of an item. A clandestine affair, a narrative spun by the society, linking your name with Jungkook’s in a tale of intrigue.

It was dated right when you started working on Klein’s campaign, back in April. It is almost the end of November now, and this is the first time you’re seeing this. You couldn’t fathom how deeply the web had been woven around you. The urgency of the situation intensified, and you combed through every conceivable hiding spot.

A sudden noise from downstairs snapped your attention. Fear gripped you, and your heart raced. Did he wake up? The urgency of the situation intensified, and you felt the weight of the clock ticking against you.

You sobbed and when you went to rub your eyes, they fell upon the other room diagonally from the one you were searching now. The doors were slightly ajar and you could see soft shades of colours within. In a last-ditch effort you marched towards it.

But ever stepping inside you regretted. The whole scenery that was revealed once you opened the door swiftly caught your breath in your throat.

The soft shades of colours painted a haunting picture—a baby room, unfinished and untouched by time. The sight startled you, sending a shiver down your spine. This can’t be.

“No..” You whispered to yourself, panicking. Your hands found their place in your hair. He is one delusional man. There is no other explanation, he is sick in the head if he thinks he is going to baby trap you.

A sense of dread overwhelmed you, and in your shock, you stumbled over something on the floor, hitting your head in the process. You groaned from the pain, forgetting that this commotion must have been loud enough for Jungkook to wake up.

As you rolled to the side, your eyes widened in disbelief. The portfolio was taped to the bottom of a cabinet. Without a second thought, you ripped it free, the sound echoing in the quiet room.

The rain outside intensified, a symphony of droplets against the windows. With the portfolio clutched in your hands, you ran down the stairs, right to the front door you prayed would not be locked. Would he be that careless? Yes. The degree of his mental instability was enough for him to believe that you are his and you would not think of running. He cut off every single option you had.

First, by making sure that your former employer would get to know you’re planning to leave the brand, enough for them to let you go. Second, he successfully obtained your portfolio that you were stupid enough to not make a copy of, which resulted in not meeting the deadline with Guess and losing that job opportunity too.

Third, he did not expect you to not stay the first you went to his penthouse but he was determined to go to extremes. So, every single fashion brand that had department stores in New York and in the rest of the world, backlisted you. No job application you sent, assistant buyer, a visibly lower position to what you had at Klein, would be turned down.

Fourth, make sure your landlord has already a tenant replacing you, ready to pay double for your apartment if they can move in as soon as possible.

That you’re alienated from your parents played his cards right and he never wished anything bad upon someone else, but how he thanked God that your friends have either too small apartments for another person to live in or they were struggling even more than you were. But lucky for you. He was right there, waiting for your call.

The handle felt too cold in your hand once you pushed the front door open merging the distance to the elevators, you were madly pushing the down button.

The seconds felt like an eternity as you waited for the elevator. Your breaths came in short, erratic bursts, mirroring the frenetic pace of your heart. Quickly stepping inside the metal box you heard it.

“Y/N?!” Your heart skipped a beat at the sound of his voice. His eyes momentarily locked with yours. You were clutching your portfolio to your chest, the other hand pressing the close button, praying it will close faster.

He must have heard you running down the stairs, or perhaps when you tripped and fell. You even forgot that you’ve hurt yourself. The adrenaline was overshadowing the pain.

“Come back right now!” He was mad, that much you could tell.

With the last determined push, you closed the door on him, severing the visual link between you. Letting out a relieving breath, you knew that this is far from being over. The elevator descended, carrying you away from the penthouse.

He cannot make it all the way down in time before you’ll disappear from the area. You prayed, he would not.

The lobby welcomed you as the doors opened, the room blurred as you stormed towards the exit, your heart pounding in rhythm with the rain. You burst into the rain-soaked night. Clutching the book tightly, a surge of triumph coursed through your veins.

The cold drops pelted against your skin. The relentless downpour soaking your clothes and hair. Running towards the street, you waved at the cars, hoping a taxi would stop.

It took a minute for some yellow car to appear at the curb, not wasting time, you ran towards it.

A smile appeared on your face after a long time. You did not know where you’re going, nor what you’re going to do next but Jungkook was never supposed to be your option and now you got the chance to choose differently or not? This is your second chance, and you’re willing to take it.

Your hand touched the handle of the yellow vehicle, opening the door and planning to leap inside as quickly as possible.

A strong tattooed hand closed abruptly. You gulped down an enormous lump in your throat, almost not breathing. How could this happen? It was mere minutes. Did he run the stairs? Did you take too long to catch a cab? Should you just run as far as possible?

Every single thing you could have done differently would not change the outcome it seems. And every single thing worked out in his favour, again.

His palm pressed on the taxi door firm, you could not open it anymore nor he would let you hop in the front seat. Your heart pounded in your chest, the tension and fear to face him was killing you. The portfolio now felt like a burden, if you make peace with losing it and your career, would you avoid this?

You could feel his eyes burning holes to the back of your head.

“I will not go back.” You said, voice resolute, but inside you were shaking. You could feel his hot breath on your cold skin, similarly you could feel his body pressing to your back. Once he reached your ear, you felt his lips mere inches from it, whispering.

“You will.”

I N T E R L O G U E

Jungkook settled into the plush leather chair after he finished carefully unpacking all your belongings, believing he is helping you to settle down. His fingers deftly dialled his mother’s number. As the phone rang, he gazed out over the city lights sprawling beneath him, a realm he had conquered with ruthless determination.

His new song, obviously written about you, was an enormous hit, granting him another Grammy nomination. But what was his success for when he did not have his love to share it with?

He smiled to himself, he got you. After long months of chasing you, then giving you the space you needed to realise he is your best shot in this world, you’re finally where you belong. Next to him.

The familiar voice of his mother greeted him, warm and comforting.

“Eomma—” Jungkook said, his tone affectionate.

“Jungkook, dear! How is my baby?” His mother’s voice held a blend of joy and concern.

“I’m doing well, Eomma. I have some news to share,” he said, his eyes glancing toward the bedroom where Y/N lay, unaware of the conversation taking place.

“Oh? Do tell,” his mother replied, anticipation evident in her voice. Jungkook leaned back, a subtle smile playing on his lips.

“Y/N moved in.” His mother’s delight was palpable through the phone. Jungkook let her know the very moment he stepped into your office that he is very much interested in you. That he met the special one he wants to grow old with.

As he spoke, he subtly weaved a narrative of love and destiny, carefully crafting the tale of their supposed connection. His mother listened attentively, hanging onto every word.

“Are you going to propose over Christmas like you wanted, Kookie?” His mother gasped with excitement. Jungkook glanced at the bedroom once more, satisfaction settling within him. The diamond ring well hidden deep inside of the closet. But that’s given and final in his mind, there’s something more he selfishly wants. Not only will it make sure you won’t be able to leave him any more, it will give you reason to grow to love him back. After all, he would be the only person who you can grow old with.

“We’re trying for a baby, Eomma.”

©pennyellee. please do not repost

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Don't be a silent reader, let's be friends chummers! ♥

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dreamwritesimagines · 2 months ago

Text

Sunshine [3] - Downpour

AN: My loves, thank you so so much for your wonderful support and lovely comments and HCs! ❤️ You're amazing! ❤️

I hope you like this as well, and please don't forget to tell me what you think, thank you! 🥰

Thanks to @chibi-lioness for beta reading!

Pairing: Logan Howlett x Female!Reader

Summary: Evening rain comes out of nowhere.

Word Count: 4540

CW: Smoking cigars, explicit language

Series Masterlist

Fine.

Maybe you did have a crush.

And maybe the said crush was taking over all your thoughts to the point that you could barely focus on anything other than him, but that was completely normal.

Just like you and your best friend analyzing every single second of your interaction with your crush was completely normal.

“He actually lifted your car?”

You nodded your head, filling both her glass and yours with wine before tucking your legs under you.

“With one hand,” you said, leaning back to the arm of the couch. “He did that with one hand.”

“And you didn’t jump his bones right then and there?”

“No but I may have rambled about going to jail if the car fell on him and also not knowing who would take care of Theo.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” she asked with a scoff. “I’d take care of Theo. We’d come to visit you every weekend.”

“Thanks Julie.”

“I’d even sign you up for those inmate dating websites.”

You blinked a couple of times. “Uh, no thank you.”

“Hey, if you accidentally kill the ridiculously hot mutant guy—”

“Logan.”

“Yeah, Logan. If you accidentally kill him, you might as well exchange some dirty letters with someone else.”

“Can we please focus on the fact that I actually have a crush on him?”

“We absolutely can,” Julie grinned, swirling the wine in her glass. “Aw look at you! It’s cute.”

“It’s not cute!” you whined, slipping a little on the couch. “Julie, I talk absolute nonsense whenever he and I cross paths.”

“Babe, I mean it in the best way possible,” she said and motioned at your face. “I doubt any guy really listens to any word coming out of your mouth when you look like this, so you’re fine.”

“So not true,” you stated and sipped your wine. “I mean either way, it’s not like anything could happen between us so I’ll just, you know, fantasize about him and gaze at him longingly. Should be fine.”

Julie rolled her eyes at you. “Come on.”

“No seriously, because Theo—”

“Sweetheart,” she said. “You got pregnant at 18. Don’t get me wrong, I think Theo is the most perfect kid in the entire world but keep in mind that while we were all out partying, you were taking care of a baby.”

“It’s fine, I lived vicariously through you.”

“And now that you’re in your twenties and hot as fuck,” Julie said, ignoring your comment. “You don’t think it’s time to live a little?”

“It’d confuse Theo if I started dating around, especially with Logan—”

“Fine, then don’t date Logan. Just fuck his brains out.”

“Nope,” you said, shaking your head. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because the moment I sleep with him, I will be trying to decide on the wallpaper of our future cabin in the woods,” you pointed out, getting a handful of popcorn from the bowl and she scoffed.

“I still can’t believe you want a cabin in the woods.”

“I want a cabin in the woods and I want a horse and a cat and two dogs,” you insisted. “Anyway, the point is, no strings attached is not a thing for me when it comes to a guy that hot. He lifted a car for me, Julie!”

“And you want him to lift you up and down repeatedly,” Julie said with a grin, making you throw a popcorn at her.

“I doubt I’m his type,” you said and she groaned.

“You cannot be serious.”

“No I am, because men like him go for…” you trailed off and threw your head back. “Ugh, I so want to show you his picture so that you’ll know what I’m talking about but I don’t have one!”

“I have this mental image of a very hot lumberjack in mind.”

“That would be correct,” you said before taking a sip of your wine, but then your phone started vibrating on the table and you frowned, then snatched it off the table when you saw the caller ID.

“Theo?” you answered immediately. “Are you alright?”

“Hi mommy!”

You let out a breath at the cheerful tone of his voice, then pressed a hand on your chest and checked the time on the phone.

“What are you doing up, bean?” you asked. “It’s late at night.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m with auntie Julie,” you said and Julie grinned.

“Hi Theo, I missed you sweetheart!” she called out, making Theo giggle.

“Hi auntie Julie!” he said. “Mommy, I thought about it, and I solved how I can have fish.”

You closed your eyes for a moment, a smile pulling at your lips as you shook your head.

“I’m listening, bean.”

“Okay so,” he said. “We will get two fish, and we will put them in an aquarium, but like a bowl, not a huge aquarium.”

You hummed.

“That’s where they’ll stay at the weekends when I’m there,” he said. “And then, on weekdays, I will bring them here, and put them in the lake, and that’s where they can stay within the week! They’d even make friends with other fish!”

You let out a small laugh.

“Theo, my love,” you said. “How will you catch them again if you put them in the lake?”

He paused for a moment.

“Um, I’d call them by their names,” he said. “Cheeto and Popcorn. They’d come.”

“Fish don’t do that baby,” you said softly. “How about you make friends with fish there in the lake and on the weekends they can just spend time with their own friends?”

“Yes but—” he started but then got distracted for a moment by something. “It’s my mom!”

“I know bub,” you heard Logan’s deep voice and your eyes widened. You sat up straight immediately, making Julie tilt her head in confusion. “Tell her I said hi.”

“Mommy, Mr. Logan says hi to you.”

“Uh, tell him I said hi back,” you said after a beat, hearing Theo parrot what you said as you covered the bottom part of the phone with your palm, then mouthed ‘Logan’ to Julie.

“What?!” she whispered and you cleared your throat.

“And tell him to please watch that you don’t have any sweets before bed, for his sake.”

“No!”

“Bean.”

“Ugh fine!” he said. “Mr Logan, my mom says please watch that I don’t have any sweets before bed for your sake.”

You could hear Logan’s chuckle, making you bite at your lip before he spoke.

“Can I borrow the phone for a minute Theo?”

Your jaw dropped and you motioned at the phone frantically, and Julie pulled you by the arm and made you lower the phone a little so that she could hear as well. You pressed your finger to your lips, signaling her to be silent before Theo’s excited “sure!” and there was a shuffling on the other line for a moment before Logan’s voice reached you again.

“So no chocolate before bed then?”

Julie gripped your wrist, mouthing “hot voice!” to you and you let out a giggle, trying to focus.

“Nope,” you said. “Trust me, it’s for your own good.”

You could hear Theo in the background; “I think I can have one chocolate.”

“No no,” you said, shaking your head. “He can’t.”

“Sorry bub, whatever your mom says goes.”

“Um, Logan,” you said, your mind going overdrive again. “If he’s up this late, he will turn the puppy dog eyes on for dessert, and he can be very, very insistent but sugar makes him incredibly energetic, and he will end up blowing a hole in the wall because of his powers so you can’t—”

“Relax princess,” Logan said and you could almost hear his faint smile. “It’s fine.”

Julie’s eyes widened and she fell on her back onto the couch dramatically, kicking her legs in the air while slapping the pillow and you stood up, your heart beating in your ears.

“How’s the car?” he asked and you licked your lips.

“Oh I changed my mechanic, so it’s at the new mechanic’s shop for a couple of days. My friend has been driving me to work—” Julie waved a hand from where she was lying down on the couch. “But apparently it’ll be fixed the day after tomorrow so it’s totally fine.”

“Are you being safe?”

“I am,” you said. “Are you?”

“Am I being safe?”

“Yeah,” you said with a smile. “What with lifting cars and stuff, it can be dangerous.”

“Half a chocolate!” Theo said as if it was the brightest idea in the world. “Half—Mr. Logan, can I have the phone back please?”

You ran a hand over your face and cleared your throat.

“Sorry about that,” you said and Logan chuckled.

“Not a problem,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night Logan,” you said, your head spinning with excitement and you heard the shuffling, then Theo took a deep breath.

“Mommy, half a chocolate!”

“Not at night,” you said. “We’ve talked about this bean. You can have chocolate tomorrow morning after breakfast, okay?”

“But—”

“Theo,” you said. “After breakfast.”

He heaved a dramatic sigh.

“I know bean,” you said softly. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Mkay,” he said with a huff. “I’m going to sleep then.”

“Okay, I love you!” you said. “Call me tomorrow and be nice to your teachers, okay?”

“I will,” he said. “Love you too!”

He hung up and you let out a breath, then tossed the phone on the couch while Julie sat up.

“Oh he talks you through it!” she said, slamming the pillow on the couch. “I just know he talks you through it!”

“Julie!” you exclaimed, your cheeks burning and she let out a laugh.

“Oh please, with that voice…”

“That’s what I mean!” you said and flung yourself on the couch. “He’s…he’s so amazing and Theo adores him and he’s so good with him too and to repeat, he lifted a car for me!”

“Aw,” Julie said. “He’s gonna be such a good stepdad to Theo.”

Your jaw dropped and you shook your head.

“We’re not even thinking about that,” you said, pointing at her. “We’re keeping our expectations very, very low, okay?”

She hummed, then tilted her head.

“Do you want to check Pinterest for cabins in the woods to see which one could be your and Logan’s in the future?”

You paused for a moment, then shrugged your shoulders.

“Yeah,” you said. “That sounds like keeping our expectations low, sure.”

Despite having drunk until midnight and consequently having a hangover in the morning, the next day went without a hitch. You’d only had a couple of rude customers, which in service industry counted as a normal day if not a good one, but because of last night you were more than ready to get home, eat a bunch of snacks and go to sleep.

Towards the end of your shift, rain started pouring and you couldn’t help the whine escaping from your lips, leaning back to the counter. You could hear your friend Stacey’s small laugh as she looked out the window, then back to you.

“It’s just summer rain love,” she said. “It’ll stop.”

“Yeah but I’ll have to walk to the subway under that rain and I don’t have a coat with me,” you pointed out. “Ugh. Great. I’ll look like a horror movie protagonist by the time I get there.”

“This is why I am a huge advocate of waterproof makeup.”

You hummed, chewing on the pen in your hand as you grabbed your phone to check the weather forecast, faintly hearing the door opening behind you.

“It says it’ll rain until—what?” you asked Stacey when you lifted your head to see her raise her brows at something by the tables area and you turned your head to look over your shoulder, your heart jumping to your throat the moment you did so.

“Logan?”

Jesus, he looked way too handsome. He gave you a small smile, running a hand through his dark hair as if he was trying to get rid of the raindrops clinging to it, then approached the counter.

“Hey.”

“H—hi!” you said, your voice going way too high-pitched all of a sudden. “Uh, welcome! It’s so nice to see you, what—what can I get you?”

“I can take his order love,” Stacey said helpfully. “Your shift is over, get home before rain gets worse.”

“No no, I can stay.”

“I’m not here to eat actually,” Logan said, making you pull back a little.

“…Is Theo okay?” you asked, your stomach dropping as the thought hit you and he nodded his head.

“Oh he’s fine don’t worry,” he quickly assured you. “He was trying to name all the fish in the lake with his friends while I was leaving. I came to take you home actually.”

You blinked a couple of times.

“You drove all the way here from the institute just to take me home?” you asked just to make sure you had heard him right and he nodded again as if it was completely normal.

“You said your car is at the mechanic’s.”

One of these days, you were going to melt into a puddle in front of him.

“You really didn’t have to,” you said. “I’d hate to be a bother, and I’m sure you have other things to do, so I can just—”

“What did we say about you being too polite?” he asked, his voice almost chiding in a teasing manner, making warmth spread from your chest to your fingertips and a smile you couldn’t stop lit up your face, making you shift your weight, way too excited to just stand there.

“Um,” you said. “Just—just wait here okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “I won’t.”

You took a step back, and rushed to the kitchen, making the line cook turn his head.

“Hey, leaving already?”

“Yeah. Paul, where’s the pie?”

“Over there,” he said, motioning at the counter. “What’s the rush?”

You grabbed the pie to put it into the container while Stacey entered the kitchen.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend, and more importantly, why didn’t you tell me he was this hot?!”

“What boyfriend?” Paul asked and Stacey motioned at the window.

“Look, right there.”

“He is not my boyfriend,” you said, your cheeks burning and Paul stole a look out the window, then let out a whistle.

“I was going to try to win you over but holy shit, that’s one hot dude.”

“And get this, he came here to drive her home.”

“He’s just being nice.”

“Car sex in the rain, got it.”

“He is my friend!”

“Oh really? So you’d be okay if I went out there and gave him my number?”

You blinked a couple of times and scoffed a laugh.

“Yeah but he…” you trailed off, desperately trying to come up with an excuse. “He has a girlfri—he’s married,” you changed your mind mid-sentence, nodding solemnly. “Yeah. He’s not wearing a ring because he is having it cleaned, and also he has—he has this condition that he can’t have sex with anyone. A disease.”

Out of the corner of your eye through the small kitchen window, you could see Logan tilting his head like a confused puppy.

“When he does, his partner’s… lower region just falls off, and it’s very gruesome, and if you haven’t heard of that condition, it’s because he’s like the only person in the world who has it, they named the disease after him,” you added. “Doctors call him a medical wonder.”

Stacey turned to Paul.

“She’s so gonna fuck him in the car.”

“She’s not gonna do that!” you exclaimed and cleared your throat, pushing the box into a plastic bag. “I’m—I’m leaving, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Theo doesn’t need a sibling yet, use protection!” Stacey teased you and you shook your head, then pushed the kitchen door and stepped out.

“Hey,” you said breathlessly, your whole face on fire and you held up the plastic bag. “The pie as promised.”

He gave you a calm smile, his eyes darting over you.

“You didn’t bring a coat?”

“Um no, but it’s fine—” you started but before you had the chance to say anything else, he had already taken his leather jacket off to put it over your shoulders.

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Logan said as he opened the door for you and you stepped outside, Logan gently steering you to a truck with his hand on the small of your back, making you bite back a smile. As soon as you reached the truck and got in, you let out a breath and put the plastic bag on the back seat, then put your seatbelt on. Logan got in as well, then started the engine and began driving.

“Thank you,” you murmured. “Really.”

“No problem.”

“I could just put it in the GPS or…” you trailed off when you noticed that there was no screen or phone or phone holder in sight so you nodded to yourself. “I don’t—you know, I’m against being a prisoner to technology myself so I can totally relate, and yeah I’ll just put my phone here.”

You quickly found your home address and touched the screen, then carefully placed it on the dashboard and stole a look at him.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said. “As long as it’s not about my condition.”

“Your condition?”

“Yeah, that disease you were talking about just now?”

Your eyes widened, your jaw dropping as embarrassment hit you, your cheeks growing hot and a whine escaped from your lips.

“You heard that?”

“Mm hm.”

You slipped a little in your seat, burying your face into your hands, the sight making him chuckle as you took a deep breath and lifted your head to look at him again.

“I can explain,” you said. “It’s just that…Stacey is—you know, she’s incredibly nice but I don’t think she’s over her last boyfriend and I was trying to spare her feelings. Wait, did you want to get her number? Because if you did—”

“No.”

A small spark of hope shot through your system.

“Oh,” you managed to say. “Okay. Um, sorry I made up a nonexistent STD about you.”

“No problem,” he said with a smirk. “But for future reference, you might want to go with the wife lie. I can’t get diseases.”

You nodded slowly. “Because of clean eating?”

“Because of the X-gene.”

You blinked a couple of times, staring at him.

“Wait, what?” you asked. “But Theo got sick multiple times after his powers showed.”

“Not for every mutant,” he said. “My body heals itself.”

“Against everything?”

“Mm hm.”

“What if we had a car crash right now?”

“I’ve been in car crashes, healed in a second.”

“What if someone attacked you with a knife?”

“Happened before, healed instantly.”

“What if someone shot you?”

“Multiple people did in multiple wars. I healed.”

You tilted your head. “I’m sorry, wars?”

“Like I said,” he said after a beat. “My body heals itself. Against injuries, and time.”

You frowned slightly, trying to make sense of what you’d just heard and as soon as the thought hit you, you gasped.

“Oh my God, Logan,” you said. “Did you know Marie Antoinette?”

“What?” he asked with a grimace, turning to look at you better. “What is it with you and Theo and France? He asked me if I knew Napoleon the other day.”

You raised your brows. “Did you?”

“No!” he said. “No, I was born in 1832.”

Holy shit, Julie was right.

You did have a thing for older men but having a crush on an almost 200-year-old man was just a little bit excessive, even for you.

A silence fell upon the car and he glanced at you out of the corner of his eye. “You okay there?”

“Yeah, just in disbelief,” you muttered. “Do you miss it? Back then?”

He shook his head.

“Not really,” he said. “It was terrible. Now is better, it’s just a little too...”

“Chaotic?” you asked and he scoffed, then nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “A little too chaotic.”

“I mean I wasn’t born in the 19th century but I know what you mean,” you said. “Seriously, if I could just live in a cabin in the woods with Theo and a cat, two dogs and a horse, I’d do it. I even have all their names.”

“What are the names?”

“I’m glad you asked,” you said. “The cat will be Catapult—”

“Are you seriously going to name your cat after a pun?”

“Damn right I am,” you said, counting with your fingers. “The dogs are Underdog and Overdog.”

“Jesus.”

“And the horse’s name used to be Princess Pink Sparkle Her Highness when I was six, but now I think I’m just going to name her Hi-Horse so that someone can tell me to get off my high horse one day.”

Logan looked like he was in actual pain for some reason.

“But listen, the list used to go like, a cat, a dog and a horse, and I figured like, if I get one dog, why not have two, you know?” you asked. “I couldn’t possibly leave Underdog without a friend, because as much as I love cats, they can be kind of assholes sometimes to dogs, they can’t help it, so that’s how Overdog came into being, and there were also ducks named Comma, Colon, Semicolon, and Exclamation, and their babies were going to be named Parenthesis, Dash and Hyphen but then I realized that would mean I'd need to have the cabin next to a lake, and ever since I watched that one creepy horror movie I’m terrified of lakes at night because I really don’t think we should mess with any bodies of water and—” you managed to stop yourself and cleared your throat. “Just…feel free to stop me when I do this.”

“I like it when you do it,” Logan stated without taking his eyes off the road, as if he was talking about the weather and your heart started pacing in your chest while you gawked at him.

“…People usually hate it.”

“People are idiots.”

“Someone I used to know would cover my mouth whenever I rambled too much.”

“And you didn’t break their hand?” he asked and you scoffed a laugh, then shook your head.

“Nope,” you muttered. “That sounds like a good idea though.”

“It is,” he said, reaching out to grab the cigar resting by the gear stick, and opened his window a little.

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” you said. “You smoke cigars?”

“Mm hm,” he said, patting his jeans for a lighter, then looked around the car before his hazel eyes fell on you. “I think my lighter is in the jacket pocket, would you…?”

“Oh sure!” you said and felt around the leather jacket over your shoulders, then pulled out the lighter and flicked it, the warmth caressing your hand for a moment before you held it out for him. Logan stole a look at you, his gaze stopping on your face illuminated by the flame before he leaned in to hold the tip of the cigar to the flame.

You had no idea why, but it felt strangely intimate.

“Thanks,” he murmured and you offered him a hesitant smile, flicking the cap of the lighter back before carefully placing it beside the gear stick.

“Sure,” you said, trying to snap yourself out of it. “Um, I used to smoke cigarettes. Mostly to look cool.”

“Did it work?”

“Not really,” you admitted as he stole a look at the GPS, then back at the road. “Never a cigar though, do you mind if I try it?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

Corners of his mouth curled upwards. “Are you trying to look cool right now?”

“Hey, if you don’t think I’m cool after learning my future pets’ names, I don’t think a cigar is gonna help it.”

That coaxed a chuckle out of him and he held out his hand so that you could take the cigar from him. The moment your fingertips brushed against his skin, his hand twitched, a warmth spreading from your hand to your whole body. You swallowed thickly, your heartbeat getting faster and you brought the cigar to your lips with a trembling hand, then took a drag.

“Don’t inhale—” Logan started but you had already inhaled the smoke, a sharp pain stabbing you in the chest as soon as you did. Logan pulled over and through the coughs, you realized you were right in front of your apartment but you couldn’t even thank him as you pounded your chest with your fist, then took a deep breath and wiped at your eyes with one hand while handing him the cigar back with the other.

“Ugh, that’s terrible!” you whined. “You smoke that willingly?”

“You’re not supposed to inhale it.”

You made a face and wiped at your eyes again, sniffling.

“Not supposed to inhale it?” you repeated as you straightened your back to look at him better, your brows pulled together in almost a petulant manner. “What’s the point of it then?”

The calm smile that graced his lips was almost taunting and he reached out to wipe at the remnant of a tear under your eye with a knuckle, your breath catching in your throat.

“The taste, princess,” he said, his deep voice sending an excited shiver down your spine as he pulled his hand back. “The taste is the point.”

…Oh.

Oh you were so going to melt in front of him one of these days.

That wasn’t supposed to sound as suggestive as it did, you were sure of it but that did nothing to stop the fire spreading over your cheeks, making you shift a little in your spot before he nodded to the window.

“Is this your place?”

You had to force yourself to drag your eyes away from him and looked outside even if you knew where you were, then nodded fervently.

“Yeah!” you said. “Yeah that’s—that’s me.”

A silence fell upon the car and you cleared your throat, trying to snap out of the daze you were in.

“Thank you,” you said after a beat. “For…for all of this, really.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said and you looked outside again, now realizing the rain had stopped so you grabbed your phone off the dashboard, unbuckled your seatbelt and slipped the jacket off your shoulders, his unwavering gaze almost too hot on your skin.

“Good night Logan,” you said softly and opened your door to step out of the car, then made your way to the building. You climbed up the stairs, a giggle you couldn’t stop escaping from your lips as you unlocked your door, then stepped into your apartment and closed the door behind you before leaning back against it.

“Alright…” you breathed out, your heart beating in your ears. “Yeah, okay. I definitely have a crush.”

[4] - Ray of Light

#logan howlett #logan howlett x reader #deadpool #deadpool and wolverine #deadpool 3 #wolverine #wolverine x reader #logan wolverine #logan x reader #logan howlett x you #wolverine x you #james howlett #fluff #logan howlett imagine #logan x you #james logan howlett

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bratbby333 · 7 months ago

Text

rough game...c'mere, brat — ryomen sukuna

𓆩♱𓆪 synopsis gamer!bf sukuna loses his game. while he's taking his anger out on you, he goes a little too far. 𓆩♱𓆪 word count 2k 𓆩♱𓆪 cw established relationship, language, choking, use of safe word, rough sex, hints of cnc, degradation, cervix fucking, smut/angst/comfort 𓆩♱𓆪 an from an anon request! sorry it took so long my love...thank you for being patient with me xx not beta read!

nsfw 𓆩♡𓆪 mdni

“Fuck this dumbass shit,” a grating voice broke through your peaceful silence. The clattering sound of a discarded headset and the angry glide of a chair echoed through the hallway, making your shoulders tense. Not even a minute later, Sukuna’s heavy footsteps stomped toward the room, shoving the door open.

“Rough game?” you inquired, your eyes still focused on your reading. He took quick strides toward you, scowling as he tore your book from your hands. Before you could reprimand him for interrupting your quiet time and discarding your book so haphazardly, his hands were anchored under your armpits and pulling you from your chair. He tossed you onto the bed, your body bouncing against the mattress. Not a single word was exchanged as he clambered on after you, but his hungered eyes scaling up and down your body told you everything you needed to know.

Shock reverberated through your body at how quickly this was unfolding, but the aggressiveness of his actions paired with the animalistic look on his face sent pangs of desire through your core. It was typical for Sukuna to be irritated after a particularly infuriating game, but not like this. Anticipation swirled through your stomach, excited for what was to come. He fucked you so good when he was pissed.

His hands clawed across your body as he tore your clothes away, his feverish kisses turned into battling tongues and clashing teeth as he leaned over you. He ran two digits between your slit before spitting a fat glob of saliva onto your cunt, thumbing at it as he licked the palm of his free hand, wrapping it around his length. He jerked himself off as he pumped into you, his thick fingers dragging against your g-spot with every plunge. His tongue darted from between his lips, the muscle lapping hungrily at your nipple, sucking harshly before latching on, his teeth grazing the sensitive nub. Your back arched toward him, fully immersed in the shockwaves of desire that coursed through you. With a couple rough rubs of his shaft against your clit, he was sinking deep inside you, bottoming out immediately.

You had seen him get like this on multiple occasions– he got riled up pretty easily when it came to his games. The fact that you got any sort of foreplay before the main event was a shock to you as his hips rutted against you. But even then, it still wasn’t enough to prepare you for what was in store. Sukuna gave you no time to adjust to his pace as he pummeled your pretty pussy. His thick cock tugged in and out, the less than optimal amount of lubrication making the stretch of his girth borderline unpleasant. But the sensation of his head rubbing against your sweet spot made your tummy churn with lust, your arousal flooding through you, dampening your cunt after a few of his mean strokes.

He felt your walls flutter around him in an attempt to adjust to the abruptness of his intrusion. He stared down at where your bodies met as he bullied himself deeper, your face twisted as you worked to accommodate him. Small whimpers left your lips as he fucked into you, every brutal rock of his pelvis made the head of his cock carress you in just the right way. Sukuna loved when you struggled to take all of him. Even with the work he did to open you up with his fingers, he knew it wasn’t enough to get you good and ready. But he was hungry, starved even, frustration ripping through him, his carnal urges taking over. This wasn’t enough for him tonight. He needed an outlet to channel his anger into…he needed to break you.

A dark growl emanated from his sternum as he repositioned, pressing your legs toward your chest. You had just barely gotten used to him before the new angle pushed his cock way deeper than your body wanted to allow, and so soon at that. Something was off today. Your eyes frantically darted across his face as his vicious thrusts began to slam into your womb. Sukuna’s dark, demented expression was bone-chilling. And then it clicked. He didn’t care if it felt good…he was happier when it didn’t, when he was the only one getting off. His ego had taken over. He wanted it to hurt, wanted to take all the rage he felt out on you. And that scared the shit out of you.

"Ahh!...'K-kuna...Sukuna!" you yelped, your palms pressed into his abdomen as his hips ruthlessly slammed into you. His hands pushed into the back of your thighs, your legs shaking from the deep stretch. The thick head of his cock brushed meanly against your cervix with every thrust.

"Yeah, brat...take that shit, say my fuckin' name," he growled, pressing your legs deeper. One of his hands was planted by the side of your head, the other wrapped around your throat while he leaned his full body weight against the back of your legs, folding you into yourself, the pressure against your ribs coupled with his bruising grip around your windpipe labored your breathing, making your head spin.

"I...can't....h-hurts," you rasped, your voice a broken whisper as his fingers dug even deeper into the sides of your neck.

“Shut the fuck up,” he growled, slamming himself against you with hungered rage.

He was so caught up in his own bliss, ignoring your mumbled pleas for relief as he bulldozed into you. He didn’t care. The sadistic chuckle that broke through his chest solidified that fact. His eyes were dark, his brows furrowed deep. He was lost in the sloppy sounds of your pussy sucking him in, spurred on by the whines that seeped through your constricted windpipe as he slammed into the soft wall at the back of your cunt. The rough huffs of your breathing and your fragmented whimpers got him off even more.

“Su..kuna,” you stammered, your words caught in your lungs. Your hand wrapped around his wrist, attempting to pull his fist away, but he wouldn't budge.

You were dazed, your eyes watering from the ache between your legs as you slapped his arm, "W-wait–ahh!– shit…’s too mu..ch." You wedged your arm between the two of you, rubbing quick circles against your clit in hopes to alleviate the burn.

But his pace was unwavering and your body couldn’t adjust. His eyes were locked on yours, a demented grin on his face as waves of fear raked through your body…an unvoiced message ringing clear between the two of you: He heard you, but he’s not stopping.

He dipped down to suck harshly at the sweet flesh behind your ear, biting at the sensitive skin. “Stay still n take it, brat…let me have this.” His words echoed in your head as he leaned back, straightening the arm that was anchored around your throat as he mercilessly rutted into you, every smack shooting both pain and pleasure through your trembling frame.

The rough plunges of his cock iinn and ooutt of your sticky walls burned so beautifully. As much as you wanted to surrender to the waves of arousal that were threatening your floodgate, it was too much. The discomfort outweighed the enjoyment. Not this time. It was all too much.

“Fu..ck,” you squeaked, your throat raw and face flushed as anxiety gnawed at your spine. Your heart was pounding in your chest, your vision going dark. “R-red,” was all you could manage through the tightness of your throat. Your eyes glazed over, stars visible behind your heavy lids from your depleting supply of oxygen. Your trembling hands clawed up and down his forearms in hopes he’d hear you. But he didn’t. His rhythm persisted, the vulgar sound of his heavy balls slapping against your ass drowned out your desperate pleas. He was splitting you in half, every rut of his hips sending you closer to your breaking point.

“Ple..ase–unghh…can’t,” tears welled in your eyes as Sukuna smiled down at you. “Too much, huh? Can’t take me like ya used to?” His jaw was tight as he taunted you, his grip around your neck tightening even more as he jostled your head around. Your fearful eyes flipped a switch in his brain as he pulled out and shoved all the way back in, delighted with the way your writhing body attempted to get away from him. His brow arched with amusement as he watched your face contort. This was a game for him. He was getting off on toying with you. A broken scream cut through your lungs while you gasped for air, tears spilling from your eyes.

“Red–fu..uck!–RED!” A perplexed look painted your boyfriend’s face before realization set in. You gasped as his grip loosened and his hips stilled against you. A lingering hint of disappointment flashed through his eyes as he pulled out, pushing himself off you to allow your legs to fall against the bed. You wheezed and coughed, the pulsing ache in your abdomen fully setting in as you worked to regain your composure.

"You don't have to take this shit out on me all the time, 'Kuna!" You swiped away the spit that was dribbling from the corner of your mouth. "You were too rough this time."

"You've never complained about it before," he huffed with a roll of his eyes, his ignorance sending pangs of anger through your body.

"Can you take me seriously for once in your life? You hurt me, Sukuna." You muscled your body away from him, propping yourself up against the headboard. He stood, circling around to you before taking a seat next to you. You avoided his gaze, your stomach churning and head buzzing while you worked to quell your fear.

He watched as your chest heaved, eyes brimming with tears as you massaged your neck, your body twitching from the throbbing pulse in your abdomen while irritation prickled under your skin at his obvious indifference. Sukuna dipped down fast, catching your fallen tears on his tongue, a smug grin on his face as he pulled your hands away from your throat, holding them against his chest. A groan escaped him at the sight of the purple bruises in the shape of his fingertips decorating the delicate flesh of your throat, the look of your fucked out disposition turning him on once more. “I’ll be gentle…if you wanna try again,” he suggested, a small smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“Sukuna,” you warned, shooting daggers toward your pink haired boyfriend. “I’m being serious. It really hurt,” you whined. Your face contorted at his lack of compassion as you rubbed away the trail of spit he had left on your face, but you weren’t surprised in the slightest. He huffed before shifting closer to you. A heavy silence settled in the room as your breathing began to return to normal.

"I...'m sorry," he grumbled, unsure of how to comfort you. It was the first time you’d ever used your safeword. His face was neutral, but confusion flooded his mind, knowing for certain that he’d been far rougher than that in the past. He thumbed the back of your hands before placing a kiss on each one. “I didn’t mean to hurt you… that bad,” he glanced at your face to make sure that comment didn’t upset you. “I thought you were enjoying it, didn’t know that when you said it hurt you actually meant it.”

Your head shook side to side. To be fair, you usually said things like that to boost his ego, especially after he lost a game. The dirty talk exchanged between the two of you during one of your sessions was definitely…specific–not for the faint of heart. You sighed deeply as you worked to calm your nerves, the pain in your core subsiding. It was an honest misunderstanding. You couldn’t stay mad at him for long, either.

“It’s okay,” you conceded, leaning in to give him a gentle kiss on his cheek, before pulling back, a coy smile on your face as you looked up at him. “Just listen to me next time, will ya?” A raspy “mhmm” vibrated through his chest as you curled your body against his.

“Give me 20 and we can try again…but go easy on me.”

“No promises, doll.”

“Sukuna…”

˚₊ ⋆ ☠︎︎ ⋆ ₊˚

an took a break from my gamer!bf sukuna series n i forgot how much i enjoyed writing for him. sending a big thank you to the anon who requested this...i hope you enjoy my love.

also!! i'm almost at 500 followers??? thank you guys so much for your support on my writing...i literally cannot believe it! i love y'all sm xx

tag list @anxious-chick @call-memissbrightside @the-weeb-of-the-uchiha @youliveincassisworld

#—written by jade 🌿#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen writing #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk fanfic #jjk smut #jjk x reader #ryomen sukuna #sukuna smut #sukuna #sukuna ryomen x reader #sukuna x reader #sukuna ryomen smut #jjk sukuna #sukuna ryomen #jujutsu kaisen sukuna #ryoumen sukuna #gamer!bf sukuna #bratbby333

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daechwitatamic · 3 months ago

Text

cherrybomb || csc

(banner by @sailorrhansol)

cherrybomb seungcheol x afab reader || angst smut fluff || exes2lovers, pacific rim universe NSFW - minors DNI

Summary: Piloting a jaeger requires a rare ability called drifting - a neural connection with your co-pilot. You and Seungcheol are masters of the drift... until you have something in your head that you don't want him to see.

wc: 19.5k

warnings: language, heavy angst with happy ending, fight scenes, fight scenes written by an author with zero fighting or martial arts knowledge lmfao thus they are vague as possible, feelings heavy plot light and smut light, kissing and pretty generic (and brief) p in v smut

Author's note: thank you for @sailorrhansol for 1) accidentally sparking this idea, 2) agreeing to collab with me, 3) reading this along the way and hyping me up, and 4) beta-ing my mistakes, a million smooches for you ily

This fic takes place in the Pacific Rim universe but I honestly don't think you need to know the lore, everything you need to know should be explained. If you think something is unclear without prior pacific rim knowledge, shoot me a message privately and I'll make some edits and credit you for the insight!

Also in this universe: storm breaker by @/sailorhansol

Teaser:

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “You were there. You saw what happened. Seungcheol and I can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing has mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did then.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer.

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest.

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

Playlist: you're the smoke in my gun, blowin' like cherry bombs...

The first time you ever saw Choi Seungcheol, he was flipping a man four years his senior over his shoulder and slamming him into the ground. Satisfied, he staggered backwards, chest heaving from exertion, eyes narrowed in preparation for the next move.

That’s what Seungcheol did - he leveled whatever was in front of him, and he started watching for what was coming next before the body could even hit the ground.

That’s what made him a great jaeger pilot. Not the brute strength - strong men are dime a dozen, always have been - but the watching.

You’d marked him as your first choice.

You were both nineteen. You’d grown up in the Shatterdome, the only child to a couple who piloted a neon green jaeger named Charron’s Revenge. You knew everything about how jaegers and their teams worked by the time you were nine. You started training to fight years before that. There was never a question that you would follow in your parents’ giant, mechanical footsteps one day. You just needed the right partner.

You needed Seungcheol.

The jaeger program didn’t turn away recruits - everyone could do something - but there was an organized process to match up compatible pilots. Applying recruits would fight before an audience of previously-accepted but currently-unmatched potential pilots. The pilots would rank the fighters, choosing their top five based on perceived potential for compatibility.

Then, the roles would switch. The applicants became the audience. The audience became the show.

When it was your turn to fight, you silently pleaded with the universe that Seungcheol would mark you high as well. This was the only guarantee that you’d get a chance to spar with him, to test it out before the Marshall, who would make the final call.

Let him see, you begged. Let him see how perfectly we’d work together.

And, by some miracle, he did. In fact, he rated you first, as well.

Your sparring match went exactly how you expected - he barreled at you, and you dodged every move. He could easily take you out with a single blow, but he couldn’t get his hands on you, not when you used his own inertia against him at every turn. What you didn’t expect was your own inability to land a shot. For the whole fight, you were unable to move out of the defensive - keeping out of his reach took all of your effort.

It was a draw - the first sign of strong compatibility.

You didn’t talk after the match - your father whisked you away to recover before your second-rated match, and you didn’t see Seungcheol for the rest of the day.

The second-rated match was a dud. But you already knew, even then, that it didn’t matter.

You’d met your co-pilot. You’d found your partner.

—

He found you in the mess hall that night, dropping into an empty spot on the other side of the table, his tray in his hands. His black hair was loose and wavy, and his right arm sported a sizeable bruise that he definitely didn’t get from you.

“I know who you are,” he said by way of greeting. You raised a brow at him, waiting. “Your parents piloted Charron’s Revenge.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “That better not be why you picked me.”

He gave his head an annoyed little flick. “Of course not. I picked you because you’re fluid - and I’m not.”

Appeased, you felt your hackles settle back down. “That’s true,” you allowed. “You’re not fluid. But you’re purposeful, and-”

You were interrupted when Yoon Jeonghan dropped into the seat to your left, chuckling under his breath as he fixed his long, dark hair into a spiky ponytail at the back of his head.

“Cherry, did you hear?” he asked you, ignoring the new-comer. “The crew for Fatal Rapids got called back in for misconduct.”

“Choi Seungcheol, Yoon Jeonghan,” you said, introducing the two young men. “Hannie does more than gossip, I promise. He’s one of the pilots for Devil’s Advocates. Their drop stats are insane.”

“In practice only,” Jeonghan demurred. “For now.”

“Cherry?” Seungcheol parroted, raising a dark brow. “That’s not what I wrote on my paper earlier.”

“Just a nickname,” you explained. When you were very small, you’d struggled with the name of your parents’ jaeger, calling it Cherry’s Revenge instead of Charron’s, and the crew - who doted on you like their own - started the habit of calling you Cherry. Somehow, it had spread, and stuck. “Only my parents use my real name. But you can call me whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“No,” he said, frowning as if deeply considering his options. “I like it.”

You folded your arms on the table, leaning in to peer at Seungcheol. “So, what’s your story? You’ve heard of me. I haven’t heard of you.”

He shrugged, glanced around, then decided he could talk freely. There’s something about being in a room that’s positively teeming with people and conversation - it gives you privacy without feeling too intimate. You’re not alone.

“Not much of a story, not like you,” he admitted. “I grew up thinking I’d take over my dad’s business. We lost my dad… then, we lost the business. I have no marketable skillset, and university was out of the question. But…” He trailed off, then met your gaze firmly. Something in his look demanded you forgo any pity or sympathy, demanded you take him seriously. “I’m strong. So I came here. I came to fight.”

You sidestepped the bruises he’d bared. “Not like me,” you repeated with a bit of a scoff. “I hate to disappoint you, but my parents are the pilots - the story is theirs. I don’t have one, not yet.”

Something playful glinted in his eyes, the first true sign of personality you’d seen. “So all the rumors about the Princess of the Shatterdome aren’t true?”

Your jaw dropped. You’d heard the nickname before - it was never meant nicely. You tried to ignore it as best you could - people could think what they wanted. When you had a crew, when you had a jaeger, you’d be able to prove them wrong. “What rumors?”

“You’re spoiled,” Jeonghan supplied, having decided he was part of the conversation after all. “Entitled.”

You spluttered as Jeonghan stood, giving you a cheerful pat on the shoulder. “And bitchy! That’s just what I’ve heard. Of course I know better. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Love ya!”

You stared incredulously after him as he disappeared, your face burning with embarrassment and your heart hammering with adrenaline. Fight, your systems told you.

If only you could.

Seungcheol bit back a smile, reaching out to pat your arm placatingly.

“I don’t…” you started to say, but your voice caught in your throat. You cleared it, tried again. “I don’t think I really deserve all that.”

He nodded, lips pushed into a semblance of a thoughtful pout. “What I’d heard,” he said calmly, “is that you’re a hell of a fighter, scary smart, and that you take no shit. Unless it’s from your friends, apparently.”

This made a bitter little laugh bubble from you. You still simmered with humiliation, feared that maybe he’d decide he didn’t want to co-pilot with you after all.

“I think it’s up to you which story gets told,” he said finally.

“Yeah,” you said, nodding. “That’s what I always said. So… let’s get started.”

—

You and Seungcheol lucked out - the team that had been recalled for misconduct were terminated from their posts in the weeks following the sparring trials, and their jaeger Fatal Rapids had been disassembled, the parts up for grabs.

You and Seungcheol repurposed Rapids’s main frame, your crew working to individualize the bot to your needs as best they could. You splurged on quad-processors for her legs to allow your jaeger to keep up with how you move - quick and lithe. Seungcheol lobbied for (and won) some extra power in the top half, and you compromised and chose a mix of red and blue sections for her paintjob.

Duellona Fury, you named her. Duellona for you, the destroyer. Fury for Seungcheol, because that was where his fight came from.

You got to know Seungcheol’s fury very well. Especially when you started trying to drift.

None of it happened fast - not the building of your machine, nor your neural handshake. In fact, you didn’t pilot Duellona Fury together for a whole calendar year.

You started with physical compatibility - you sparred almost all day, every day. You fought - with each other and against each other - until all you could do was lay on the ground and pant, blinking to make the ceiling stay in focus.

Seungcheol may not have grown up training in the Shatterdome the way you did, but he kept up without complaint. You learned his way - force and strength - and he learned the way you favored - to weave and dodge.

The fighting was the easy part.

You had never drifted with someone you had true drift compatibility with. Seungcheol had never drifted at all. The Marshall wouldn’t even consider hooking the two of you up to the machine until you went through the proper training.

On the day you and Seungcheol were officially declared as co-pilots-in-training, you both stood below the half-built shell of your towering jaeger, sparks flying and drills screaming as the crew worked on her.

Your Marshall looked seriously at his new team-in-training. “Starting tomorrow, you’ll meditate together. Talk to each other. Get deep about it. If you’ve talked about it out here-” he swept an arm across the deck, “-it won’t take hold so strongly in there.” He’d jabbed a finger in the upward direction of Duellona Fury.

Seungcheol didn’t look at you, nor the Marshall. Instead, he kept his eyes on Duellona's unfinished frame, stories above you. “Yes, Sir,” he said steadily.

Your parents weren’t technically retired yet, the year you and Seungcheol started training together. Charron’s Revenge still sat in the well below the Shatterdome. They still lived on the base, still took part in daily training. They hadn’t been called into a fight in years, though; the assignments went to the younger crews.

You took dinner in their quarters instead of the mess hall, that night.

“Congratulations,” your father said warmly from across the table. “You worked hard to get here.”

“Thank you,” you said, feeling shy beneath the praise. “I hope the drift will work for me and Choi Seungcheol.”

“What do you think of him?” your mother had asked, her sharp eyes honing in on you, watching your reactions.

“I think he’s a great fighter,” you said. “The rest… I guess I’ll have to learn.”

“Do you trust him? Can you trust him out there, when the sea and the wind are trying to knock you down, and hell itself rises up from the depths?”

You swallowed. She’s right for her intensity - they will be putting their daughter’s life in her co-pilot’s hands, every time there’s a fight. You knew firsthand how terrifying it was to stand in the tech bay and wait, not knowing if your loved ones will make it back.

You thought about how you and Seungcheol fight together in the sparring rooms. You thought about how you weaved and your opponent followed your movement, only to be knocked sideways. You thought of how Seungcheol followed your motion backwards, ducked in tandem with you to avoid a hit, and how you followed his momentum forward and up to attack. Your bodies followed each other like they were magnetized. And Seungcheol was always watching for the next hit.

“Yes,” you said, so quietly that you cleared your throat and said it again. “Yes, I trust him.”

“Then we wish you luck,” your father said, and raised his glass. “To Duellona Fury.”

“To Duellona Fury,” you echoed.

On your way out of the quarters, later, you slowed as you passed the wall where they hung their accolades and awards, the newspaper clippings, photos, and medals. Before your eyes they aged - the photographs changing through the years, no longer showing a bright, fiery couple, instead displaying proof of passing time: a baby bump, then a toddler, then a child beaming alongside them as if she’d done what they had done; greying hairs, softening bodies, deepening of wrinkles. Then the pictures stopped.

You never asked them if they missed it.

—

You and Seungcheol started meditating together the next morning; it seemed logical to begin at the easiest step. In an empty sparring room, you sat facing each other, knees touching.

“Have you done this before?” you asked, as you both settled in, shifting weight and adjusting ankles.

“Not with someone else,” he admitted, lips protruding in a bit of a pout. “Only alone.”

You nodded. You’d grown up learning all of this - the right way to fight as a team member, how to be in tune for a neural connection. It led to you teaching Seungcheol often - yet when you fought together, any leadership fell away.

“Normally,” you explained, “you focus on your breath, keeping your mind clear. But for our practice, you want to focus on our breath. We breathe together. And when your mind wanders, your awareness should be coming to peace with my presence there. Like, making a path for the neural connection - for later. So there’s no resistance.”

“Have you done this before?” Seungcheol asked.

You wobbled your head around - not yes, but not no. “I’ve practiced it - I’ve done the meditation with partners. But I’ve never moved forward to an actual drift with anyone.”

This seemed to appease him, and he settled his weight backwards, letting his hands rest near his knees.

You let your eyes float closed and inhaled, listening and feeling for Seungcheol’s inhale to end, letting your breath out when he did. It took no time to match your breaths, to let your mind go blissfully quiet. You focused on feeling open, readable - any thought that floated through your mind, you pretended he could hear, too. You tried to feel and release any defensiveness, any urge to close off.

When the timer went off, it surprised you. You opened your eyes, and the feeling that struck you was this -

It was surprising to see Seungcheol before you. It hadn’t felt like he was beside you. It had felt like he was you.

You meditated, you fought, and finally, you talked.

Laying on the sparring room floor, your head somewhere near Seungcheol’s shins, he asked you, “Where do you wish you were right now? If you weren’t here.”

You laughed at yourself before answering, knowing how silly you would sound. “In a tree.”

A disbelieving smile played on his lips, almost as if he wasn’t sure you weren’t making fun of him somehow. “A tree?”

“No, really,” you insisted, still smiling a little. “There’s not a lot of nature here, in case you didn’t notice. I grew up in the Dome - never got to leave, much.”

Seungcheol didn’t respond to this, just nodded like he understood, his small smile going a bit tight around the edges.

You frowned, reading him exactly. “You think I’m sheltered,” you observed. It wasn’t a question. He couldn’t say no.

He looked at you, then. “You were sheltered,” he said, voice low. “But when I say it, I don’t mean naive. I just think… there’s a lot of world out there. A lot of things to see. You won’t see any of it if you spend your entire life under the Dome.”

You nod, accepting this. “I won’t see any of it if it gets destroyed, either. There’s a lot of world out there - that we’re trying to keep safe.”

Seungcheol watched you intently for a moment, lips downturned and gaze heavy. Then, he asked, “Have you ever seen a kaiju? I mean - in person?”

“Sort of,” you mumbled.

He’d rolled from his back to his front, closer to you, putting you shoulder to shoulder. “Kind of seems like a yes-or-no question.”

Your lips twisted. “Then, no. But I’ve stood in the bay and listened to Mission Control talk my mom and dad through a fight dozens of times, watched Charron’s Revenge on the screens and prayed I wouldn’t see her get sawed in half.”

You stopped, trailed a finger through the thin layer of dirt on the floor. “I know it’s not the same as looking one in the face myself,” you whispered. “But the fear… shouldn’t that fear count, shouldn’t it feel the same?”

Seungcheol swallowed, trailed his own finger through the dirt until his fingertip just barely touched yours. It felt like energy sizzled in the centimeter between your pointer and his.

“When Menaceclaw attacked,” he said, “he missed my home by one block. We watched him go by from the sidewalk. I wasn’t even as tall as his foot. But even with him towering over the buildings, taking them down without even trying, I don’t think what I felt was afraid. I think I just felt resigned. Like I knew, at seven, that even though we survived this one… nothing was going to be… the same, or okay. I don’t know.”

“You knew what you lost,” you said quietly. “Part of you did.”

He looked up at you, nudged his finger into yours. “You never knew anything different. It wasn’t a loss. The fear was just always part of the deal.”

You rolled sideways, laying your head on your bicep for a pillow, regarding the dark-eyed, dark-haired young man across from you. His face scrunched in a laugh, brows furrowing and lips pouting.

“What?” he asked through the quiet laugh. “Why are you looking at me?”

“What else?” you mused. “What else am I going to find when we go tiptoeing through your memories?”

He smiled faintly and then mirrored you, laying his head on his arm, his eyes swimming as he thought.

“A lot of my family, probably,” he said. “A lot of fighting. Menaceclaw. Probably some very mid sex.”

You laughed without meaning to. “My condolences?”

He grinned at you, pleased. “Eh, what can you do? I try to treat everything like a learning experience.”

You laughed again, and his smile grew, gums showing. “What about you?” he asked off-handedly.

“Mid sex?” you asked, eyebrows raising. “I hate to inform you, Choi Seungcheol, but I don’t do anything mid.”

“No,” he protested, laughing, reaching out to gently shake your shoulder. “I meant - what will we see when it’s your turn?”

“The Dome,” you said, half-joking - but it was true. “Training. My parents. Their fights, their accomplishments.”

And, as a true drift partner should, he understood what you weren’t saying.

“We’ll have our turn,” he promised, pushing himself to sit up, then stand, reaching down to help you up. “We’re gonna be fucking unstoppable. Let’s go again.”

Fire sparking behind your ribs, you nodded seriously, then reached up to take his hand.

—

Weeks of sparring melded into months of meditation and talking. The next phase of training co-pilots was learning to drift in one of the simulators - but not in a jaeger. Not yet.

You and Seungcheol finished training in one of the sparring rooms shortly before dinner would be served in the mess hall.

“Meet you there?” you asked, still half-breathless, your body starting to ache as the adrenaline from a fight melted away.

“Sure,” he agreed, and you disappeared into the changing rooms, scrubbing the sweat and dirt away as quickly as you could. You changed into something clean and made your way to the mess hall.

You scanned for familiar faces, frowning when your normal table seemed to be occupied by a team of new recruits that you didn’t know.

Seungcheol appeared at your elbow, frowning dramatically. “Our table,” he whined.

“There’s Chan and Wylie,” you said, nodding to another corner where your friends sat practically on top of each other. Chan and Wylie had never understood personal space, not when it came to one another. They barely noticed when you and Seungcheol plopped onto the benches next to them, but Seungkwan did.

“You’re bleeding, Cherry,” he said, before inhaling an entire mouthful of rice.

You started to scan your arms - you didn’t feel pain anywhere - but Seungcheol found it first, gingerly swiping his thumb along your cheekbone.

“Sorry, Cherry,” he murmured. “I should’ve pulled that punch.”

“No you shouldn’t have,” you grumbled, swatting at his hand and wiping roughly at the spot, your hand coming away with a small smear of red - nothing to be alarmed about. It would stop on its own. “You pull shots in practice, you’ll hesitate in the field.”

“She’s right,” Chan said from his physical tangle with Wylie. “What you practice will show up in your muscle memory. You’ve got to mean it, every time.”

Wylie reached across his arms and took a bite from his plate, then asked, “Did you guys see the new jaeger?”

“I did,” Seungkwan said eagerly. “Chaser Supernova, or something like that? She’s smaller, but she’s supposed to be fast.”

“Is that her team at our normal table?” you asked dryly, shooting the rookies a dark look over your shoulder. Seungcheol jostled you playfully, sending you a smile that brought you back.

The bench dipped to your left, and you turned to see Soonyoung - one of Seungkwan’s two co-pilots - settle in.

“Talking about Supernova?” he asked, hands busy opening his drink. “They seem okay - they’re a trio, like us.”

“Where is Seokmin?” Seungkwan asked, scanning the room. “I haven’t seen him in like two hours.”

“Talking to Jihoon, I think,” Soonyoung answered absently, focused on his meal. “He lost another co-pilot today.”

“Not again,” you and Seungcheol both blurted, matching levels of exasperation.

“That was freaky,” Wylie said, just as Chan told you, “You two are acting like us, now.”

“We do not need another Chan-and-Wylie,” Seungkwan said seriously, shaking his head.

Seungcheol sent you a sideways, sheepish grin.

“We won’t be,” he promised the group, but his eyes were still on you.

—

The simulators were built to be exact replicas of the conn-pod, so that trainees could get used to the feeling of being strapped in, of moving with the gear. But the real purpose was to practice the neural handshake without risking damage - to the jaeger, to the tech bay, to each other.

“Don’t be nervous,” you told Seungcheol as the tech team worked around you both like a choreographed dance.

“I’m never nervous,” he said, suddenly cocky.

If you could reach his hand from where you were strapped in, you would have. If you understood anything about Seungcheol - if any part of him mirrored you - it was the way he showcased bravado, the way he used it as his most-familiar mask.

“It’s only practice,” you reminded him. “And it’s only me.”

He licked his lips quickly, eyes darting to the side and then back to you. Then, he gave you a small nod.

“Normally,” your chief tech - a beautiful woman with jet-black hair named Nainsi - told you, “right now, you would be ready for the drop. In the simulator, we skip that step because we aren’t dropping onto a jaeger. Instead, we’ll engage the pilot to pilot connection protocol sequence.”

You and Seungcheol nod in tandem.

“You’re all good?” Nainsi checks. “Then I’m going back into the tech bay - you’ll hear me through the intercom.”

Alone in the simulator, you met Seungcheol’s gaze and couldn’t help the excited grin that spread across your face. Finally, finally you were here. Once you could do this successfully, the next step was to fight in your own jaeger - to drop into Duellona Fury and walk into the sea.

He didn’t return your smile, instead giving you a tight nod, expression serious.

Over the intercom, you said clearly, “Ready and aligned.”

Nainsi answered, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

You took a deep breath and steeled yourself as the artificial voice of the simulator’s tech system spoke around you, 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

At first, you thought something went wrong. Everything went red behind your eyelids, and you blinked, instinctively trying to clear it away.

The red faded, and you found yourself in Seungcheol’s childhood home. You didn’t know how you knew that - you just knew. It was as familiar to you, inside the drift, as your own. You knew that to your left was a small kitchen with two broken floor tiles; you knew - without having ever seen it - that to your right was a narrow hallway that led to a bathroom and two small bedrooms.

Two small boys played on the carpet; rather, the smaller one played with some toy cars while the other watched the television with rapture. Behind them, at the kitchen table, a woman typed busily on an outdated laptop, bags heavy under her eyes.

Somewhere around you, a voice floated by, telling you, neural handshake strong and holding.

You could see Seungcheol in your periphery - the adult Seungcheol, the Seungcheol of now - as he looked at his mother, his brother, himself.

“It’s not real,” you reminded him gently. “It’s just a memory.”

“I know,” he said back, voice hushed, as if he might scare them away. “It’s just… good to see them.”

The house evaporated as gently as morning dew under a mid-morning sun; you stood in a schoolyard. Seungcheol, the small one, had a bloody lip and a mean swing.

You felt a rush of affection for him - him, the child, face contorting with misplaced anger, using strength as a bandage. You wanted to stand in front of him, between him and the anger, him and the other kids, and let him take a breath. You wanted to tell him to step with his punch to get more power. You wanted to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him, you’re going to be fine.

And he knew all of it, because he was in your mind.

Seungcheol - your Seungcheol - walked away from the swarm of children egging on the fight and opened a door. You followed.

Inside was not the school, but a hospital room. Your body jolted forward, distracting and alarming. You heard, faintly, a series of beeps, that robotic voice needling in your ears, saying, calibration failure… recalibrating in 3… 2… 1…

“It’s only a memory,” you said again, but the warning beeps were coming stronger, louder, more clearly. The hospital room looked opaque, and Seungcheol walked backwards towards you, away from it, herding you both out of the room. The room - a bed, a pulled curtain, a lot of white - flickered, like a glitch, and then vanished, leaving you standing in the simulator.

Neural handshake disengaged…

“Seungcheol!” you yelled, pulling your helmet off and wheeling on him as best you could with most of your body still strapped in. “What the hell was that? You pushed me out!”

He was breathing hard, eyes a little wild. “Not that,” he said, a little ragged. “I’ll let you in but - not that.”

“You don’t get to choose!” you snapped. Part of you knew this was just growing pains, he’d never drifted before, he was learning. But the rest of you smarted and stung - both from his rejection and from your failure to train, to succeed, to check off this final step before you could get inside your jaeger. “It’s kind of an all-or-nothing thing!”

He let out a billow of air, reaching a hand up to rub at his face. “Sorry. I’ll… let’s try again.”

You didn’t answer, fuming silently instead.

“I’m sorry, Cherry,” he said. “The stuff with my dad…”

“You can’t cherry-pick what we see and what we don’t,” you fired back. His eyes shot to yours and his mouth quirked and you read the joke all over his face. “Don’t you laugh, Seungcheol, it’s not funny!”

But you were laughing through the scolding.

“Stop,” you whined.

Your anger defused, he looked at you again, taking a bracing breath. “It’s not about you,” he tried to explain. “I’m not keeping you out. I’m keeping me out.”

“Don’t chase the rabbit,” you told him, shaking your head. “See what it wants you to see and move on. Find the next door. If you stand there and let your hurt - or your, I don’t know… grief - rise up… that’s when we’re going to have trouble.”

“Find the next door,” he repeated, eyes on the floor. “Got it.”

“You can’t push it away,” you reminded him, “but you don’t have to stay in it, either.”

He nodded, eyes already lighting up, ready to go again.

The second time, you saw him steel himself before opening that same door, watching carefully as he shuffled inside, only looking sideways at the hospital room that materialized around you.

“Seungcheol.”

He turned to look at you, wide-eyed, but you hadn’t called him. The voice, weak and hoarse, had come from the other side of the fluttering curtain.

The glitching started almost immediately - the image around you flickering like a bad wall projection. Something rocked beneath your feet, an earthquake only inside your minds.

You opened your mouth, started to tell him, you don’t have to stay, to remind him that he could move forward. Instead, you heard yourself say, “I’m here.”

The tremors under your feet quivered to a stop. You watched with trepidation and Seungcheol closed his eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Then, he held his hand out, waiting.

You slipped your hand into his, and then he turned and continued walking, ignoring his father’s memory calling out to him. The flickering stopped, the picture you were part of brightening again as you found the next door, stepped through, left his pain behind.

—

It got easier quickly. Seungcheol’s ability to press on, to maintain focus, strengthened.

The strolls through your mind went easier - you’d had years to practice maintaining focus, waiting until after to let the emotions hit you.

Seungcheol learned to be ready for you, after. He’d sit with you, silent, and breathe in tandem as you worked to let go, to release the images of Charron’s Revenge on the tech bay screen, the sounds of your parents’ frantic communication as they fought together, the fear crawling its way up your legs every time until someone in the bay said, “Charron’s Revenge, cleared to return.” The loneliness of being the only kid in the Dome, having no outlet except fighting. Everything that threatened your mind while you piloted, everything that you had to save for later - save for him.

You were both freshly turned twenty when you got green-lit to drive.

“Seungcheol!” you called across the mess hall, practically racing to your table. He turned, eyebrows raised, as you crossed the large room.

“We’re approved to drop!” you told him excitedly. It churned in you - finally, finally you could fight, you could prove what you could do, you could help. “We’re on the drop schedule for tomorrow!”

His grin was unfettered, unfiltered, just for you. He reached up a fist and you bumped it enthusiastically. You were too excited to eat, too excited to sleep. You tossed and turned, imagining experiencing a drop for the first time, imagining striding through the mighty sea like it was nothing, imagining staring down hell itself and bringing it to its knees.

You were still awake when you heard the alarms down the hall. Yours didn’t go off, because you weren’t on duty, weren’t approved to fight.

Down the hall, there was a flurry of commotion - shouting, rushing, people pushing past you as they pulled on boots and jackets.

“Cat-3 in the west bay,” someone shouted.

“Deploying Devil’s Advocate!”

You reached the tech bay, trying to stay out of the way but not unseen. When the Marshall strode by, you stepped sideways.

“Let us drop,” you said quickly, knowing time was precious. “It’ll be like practice. We can be back-up. We’ll hang back.”

“Absolutely not,” the Marshall said, already moving to work past you. “You’re not approved yet. We don’t need a liability right now.”

“We’re scheduled for tomorrow!” you protested, and then you felt a hand on your shoulder.

“We’ll get our turn,” Seungcheol told you quietly. Of course he’d come out, of course he found you.

You deflated. “It could have been us. We are hours from approval.”

He gave your shoulder a tiny shake. “We’ll get our turn,” he repeated. “Don’t make trouble.”

You glowered, but you knew he was right. “Fine,” you grumbled as Joshua and Jeonghan slinked past you in matching jackets and matching shit-eating grins. You stayed out of the way as they prepared to drop.

You stayed through the fight, listened to the control room buzz and chatter, until you heard, “Devil’s Advocate, cleared to return.”

Only then did you try to go back to sleep. Seungcheol gave your shoulder one more squeeze.

“Tomorrow,” he promised.

“Tomorrow,” you repeated.

—

Some people feel God at church. The history of tradition and the sanctity of ritual speak to them, help them feel part of something, help them feel that unnameable swell of something spiritual.

Some people feel God in nature. The patterns of the universe, the way math exists without human touch, the harmonies and patterns that seem too intricate for coincidence help them believe in a planner’s touch. The beauty of the outdoors allows them to wonder, to feel like they belong as a piece of this clockwork.

But you - you felt God when you stood before your jaeger, marveling at the power, the beauty, how it feels like yours, how it feels like Seungcheol before you’re even inside it. Duellona Fury promises you power, promises you purpose.

That hand was on your shoulder again, and it slid down to the center of your back before removing itself.

Beside you, Seungcheol stared up at your glorious machine.

“She looks sick,” he said, the grin taking over his face.

“I can’t wait to fuck shit up,” you murmured, your reverent tone at odds with the flippancy of your words.

“Ready?” the Marshall asked you, coming up to your left. “We’ll get you calibrated and dropped, and then you’ll do a lap of the bay. We’re sending out Pretty Savage just in case you run into trouble.”

The defensiveness rose in you quick, like a snakebite.

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Seungcheol said, voice hard. You reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze - a reminder to watch it, just as his hand on your shoulder frequently did for you.

“It’s just safety protocol.” The Marshall was unphased by the outburst. “Have fun, you two. Enjoy your first joy-ride.”

You screamed when you dropped, the exhilaration rushing out of you as Duellona Fury fell story after story before slowing and attaching to your jaeger’s mainframe.

Goosebumps raised along your arms when the Shatterdome’s sea-doors slid open, shudders traveling your body as you and Seungcheol stepped together, Duellona Fury stepping with you, her gigantic, metal form following every movement.

For the first time in your whole, careful life, you felt powerful. Your jaeger cut through the ocean waves like they were nothing, making an easy perimeter of the bay. In your head, you could somehow both hear and feel Seungcheol’s delight, his low-simmering desire to fight, to do something a perfect mirror of your own.

“How is it?” Soonyoung’s voice crackled in your ears, reminding you that Pretty Savage wasn’t far behind you.

“Incredible,” Seungcheol answered him, at the same time that you said, “It’s everything.”

It didn’t matter that you came from a family of pilots. It didn’t matter that you were raised in the Dome, training since you were young. None of that mattered. You were born for this - born to fight for your planet, born for Duellona Fury, born for Choi Seungcheol.

—

The west bay became Duellona’s playground; you and Seungcheol were often assigned to patrol there.

It was only a few months in that you faced a kaiju for the first time.

“Come in, Duellona Fury,” Nainsi’s voice came through. “We have a reading just a few miles north of you. Cat-2. Approaching at -”

Duellona Fury was turning due north before the command was even given.

“Are you ready for this?” you shouted to Seungcheol as Duellona slid through the water, the adrenaline singing in your system already.

“You know I am,” he answered, something hard in it, and the thrill in your stomach sparked.

When the sea split in half, the kaiju rising from the depths with an unearthly roar, you sank into a defensive stance, feeling Seungcheol move beside you, doing the same.

“Let’s fucking go,” Seungcheol said darkly, and launched forward, your arms rearing back for momentum before the first swing. The punch landed solidly, your whole body shaking once as the kaiju faltered backwards a few steps.

It opened its mouth and you glimpsed three rows of teeth bigger than a cow before it was lunging at you; Duellona Fury lurched. You tried to duck sideways as Seungcheol tried to move towards your opponent.

The moment of indecision cost you - the kaiju got its teeth on Duellona’s shoulder, knocking you back several steps. Beside you, Seungcheol roared as sparks flew near the bite.

“Are we breached?” you yelled, trying to steady your balance again.

“Not yet!” he yelled back, and you swung again, a hit landing hard enough to knock the kaiju loose, spitting it back into the sea.

You tried to move into a defensive crouch again; again, the jaeger faltered.

“Cherry!” Seungcheol yelled, desperation laced in his voice. “Cherry, don’t fight me!”

“Move with me!” you answered, and he did, miraculously, Duellona dodging left before an incoming attack.

Don’t fight me.

You rocked forward with Seungcheol as soon as you were clear of the kaiju’s trajectory, just as you’d done in practice thousands of times. Back in sync, Duellona Fury landed a kick to the kaiju’s middle that sent it stumbling.

“We’ve got him,” you said, feeling a win.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Seungcheol warned you. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the kaiju exploded from the dark ocean, limbs flailing as it flew towards you.

Duellona’s arms came up and locked it in battle, the impact shaking you so hard that your teeth chattered against each other. You groaned with exertion as you tried to match its strength.

“I don’t think we can hold it,” you managed through grit teeth.

“We’ve got this,” your partner promised, and with a mighty shove, you managed to flip the beast over your shoulder and beneath the waves.

“Drop the bombs and head for the east side,” you said quickly, already moving. Duellona Fury followed your command, turning and starting an easy run through the bay’s churning waters, away from where the kaiju was struggling to its feet, furious and vengeful. As she ran, she dropped three small explosives, about sixty feet apart. The explosives slipped into the ocean depths.

“Ready?” Seungcheol asked, a little breathless. “Are we far enough away?”

“Light him up,” you replied. Seungcheol reached up and tapped the button; somewhere behind you, the ocean exploded.

—

“How’s your shoulder?” you asked, later, in the med bay.

“Not that bad,” Seungcheol said, but you could see the blood-stains on the bandaging.

“It won’t happen again,” you promised. “I think I just… practiced alone for so long. I forgot to listen. I’m sorry.”

Seungcheol shook his hand, eyes finding yours. “There’s nothing to forgive, Cherry. Forget about it.” Then, he brightened. “You know what I want to do?”

“What?” you asked, not entirely past feeling guilty.

His smile was devilish. “I want to go celebrate our first fucking kill.”

–

You marked the passing of two years in statistics.

Three hundred and forty-six explosives detonated.

Two hundred and eighty-three drops. Two hundred and eight-three kills.

Seventy-two mainframe repairs.

Twenty-eight achievement awards.

Nine television interviews.

Six upgrades.

One ill-informed “vacation” during which you both itched with anxiety, spending the whole time messaging your friends back in the Shatterdome desperately, praying you wouldn’t miss a fight in which you were needed.

Seven hundred and thirty days of living in and around Seungcheol’s mind and heart. But that stat should’ve gone first.

It was a good high. Your team had a good run.

It wasn’t a kaiju that reduced it to ash, not an attack that took your team out of the rotation of main fighters and sent your jaeger to gather rust and dust below the Dome. It was your own stupid heart.

There were a lot of moments that could have been it. Each time you walked into a fight knowing the danger, each time he ended up in the med bay reeking of antibacterial ointment and resentment. Each time you slid into your place beside him - space he saved only for you. Each time his voice bidding you goodnight from the bottom bunk was the last thing you heard at the end of the day. Any of these moments might have been the one to make you stop, gasp, suddenly slammed with understanding. That you loved him, that he was everything you couldn’t bear to be without, that he was part of you. But they weren’t.

There was no moment of realization at all.

Instead, it slowly seeped into your consciousness, as gently and naturally as morning dew collecting on pre-dawn petals. The knowledge clung to you, as impossible to ignore as damp feet after running barefoot through the yard just after sunrise.

If you knew something, that meant your co-pilot would know it, too.

Unless you tucked it away, pushed it down deep and cast his attention elsewhere, a mental sleight-of-hand. Look here instead.

You were twenty-three, on a routine patrol, when Mission Control radioed Duellona that there was a reading in the bay.

“Looks like it’s only a Cat-1,” Mission Control told you.

“On it,” you told them, feeling your body already mirroring Seungcheol’s as Duellona picked up her pace, striding through the waves.

You glanced sideways at him, and immediately wished you hadn’t. He was already zoned in, eyes focused and jaw sharp as he concentrated.

He caught your gaze for only a second. “Focus, Cherry,” he cautioned. “Don’t get cocky.”

“I would never,” you retorted, and he laughed. You were both cocky; you both knew it.

For a second, things felt better.

The fight was almost easy, when the ocean seemed to split in two and the waves fell away like wrapping paper to reveal the kaiju you’d been sent for.

You swung and ducked, dropping explosives strategically, Seungcheol moving in unison with you. There was something graceful about it - something beautiful in the sync, something holy in the way your muscles mimicked each other’s.

This is what happens when sunlight hits morning dew: it warms, lifts, makes the air humid and sticky until it burns away.

It rose up in you, your love for him, infusing the air around you, infusing the neural handshake that he was deeply imbedded in.

No.

You panicked, tried to do several things at once - tried to shove the feeling down, tried to think of something else, tried to push Seungcheol’s consciousness out of yours.

Duellona Fury lurched around you, shuddering.

“Cherry!” Seungcheol screamed to your left, and then the kaiju hit, its full weight slamming into Duellona’s mainframe.

You both staggered, trying to right yourselves, as the machines around you blinked and beeped and rebooted.

Seungcheol grunted under the neural weight of driving alone as you gasped and closed your eyes, trying desperately to fix it. Around you, you heard the floating words - recalibrating.

“Recalibrate faster!” you shouted, glancing sideways to see your co-pilot struggling to hold the monster in place, his face contorting with effort, arms straining against the machinery. He bared his gritted teeth, exhaling in a hiss between them.

You gave yourself a shake, bouncing on the balls of your feet, desperate for the connection to take again so you could pick up your half, take the literal weight from him. As soon as you felt the neural handshake, you gave a mighty shove and Duellona flipped the monster backwards, the ocean receding and then coming back to slam her shins, swallowing the monster whole.

You both sank into a defensive stance, ready for the beast to rise again.

“What was that?” Seungcheol demanded, later, as he sat in the med bay, waiting for his nosebleed to stop. The nosebleed you’d caused by letting him carry a neural load meant for two.

“I don’t know,” you lied, still panicked and desperate.

“Bullshit,” Seungcheol countered, eyes narrowed. He reached up and pulled the cotton away from his face, examining it. “I’m fine now,” he announced, and tossed the wad into a nearby trash bin, standing.

You fought the urge to cower, knowing he’d never let it go if you did. You followed him silently out of the med bay and back towards your dormitories. Halfway there, he slowed, then stopped.

Then, more calmly this time, he asked, “What happened, Cherry? You pushed me out.”

There was a slight pout to it, a sliver of hurt, and it sliced through you like something tangible, like you were actually wounded from it, like it might actually bleed.

“I don’t know,” you repeated. Guilt poked at you until you relented, gave him something that was at least partly true. “I got scared.”

“That can’t happen, and you know it,” he said seriously, his large frame casting a long shadow to your left as he leaned into your space. “You can’t keep secrets - that’s piloting 101. We’ve got to handle it. You know what’s at stake here.”

You did; you did, and that was entirely the problem. It wasn’t just feelings, it wasn’t just your relationship with Seungcheol at stake. It was your relationship with your co-pilot - your ability to fight was at stake, your ability to keep others safe. Your legacy.

Your parents’ wall of pictures flashed in your mind.

“I’m going to my mom and dad’s for a while,” you said quietly.

He nodded, let you run away - trusted you to come back to him when you were ready, trusted you to let him in.

You weren’t sure if he was right or wrong, as you walked away and left him behind.

You didn’t go to your parents’, though. Instead, you went to the tech bay and sat, watching Duellona undergo simple repairs from her fight. You stayed there, the metal cold beneath your thighs, watching the tech team buff over a scratch on your jaeger’s torso, until someone dropped into the spot next to you, bumping their shoulder roughly into yours.

“Where’s Seungcheol?” Wylie, who co-piloted Fury Striker with Chan, was your closest friend in the Dome besides Seungcheol.

“He’s pissed at me,” you answered, looking sideways, because the question had really meant, why isn’t Seungcheol with you?

You weren’t sure she’d understand what you were going through - she and Chan had been obsessed with each other since they were kids. Neither of them had ever had to fear that their love for each other would mess anything up. It had been part of their deal from the start.

“What’d you do?” Wylie demanded, turning her full, unfettered attention on you. You wanted to shrink from the intensity of it - but that was always how Wylie worked: full wattage, all the time.

“Almost got us killed by a fucking Cat-1 tonight,” you muttered, angry at yourself, angry at your heart.

Wylie smacked your arm hard enough to send you sideways. “Cherry!” she scolded.

“There was something I didn’t want him to see.” You said it in your head first, weighed the words, then forced them through your teeth. You hoped she’d just know what it was, hoped you wouldn’t have to force those words past muscle and bone, too.

Wylie’s face dropped into irritation. “Cherry,” she repeated, disappointment dripping from the two syllables.

You looked up at Duellona Fury again.

“You can’t do that,” she told you, giving your ankle a little kick for emphasis. “You know you can’t do that.”

You can’t love him? Or, you can’t keep secrets from him?

You didn’t ask. You didn’t want to know the answer.

Seungcheol was waiting up for you when you finally returned to the dorm. You opened the door to find the first room - an entryway and kitchen, both - dimly lit. Beyond it, in the small sitting space, Seungcheol sat facing the door, his chin in his hand.

You knew the look on his face. You knew it so well that you almost ran from it, almost turned right around and went back out to the hallway.

Brows slightly furrowed, mouth a straight line, jaw tight. Eyes focused, locked in. It was the face he made in training before he bodied someone. It was the face he made in the field before an offensive strike. It meant he had his sights on a target, a problem, and he was about to throw everything he had at it.

And right now, you were the problem.

“Hey?” you tried meekly.

He nodded. Licked his lips. Stood.

He’s pissed at me, you’d told Wylie. The energy radiating from your co-pilot was much more complex than that, the air around you palpably tense and teetering.

“How was it at your parents’?” he asked, voice low.

You took one tentative step closer. “I didn’t go,” you admitted. One lie between you was already more than you wanted. “I watched them patch up Duellona instead. Talked to Wylie a little.”

He nodded, eyes still on you. Nervousness coursed through you, but it would be a lie - another one - to say it wasn’t laced with a little excitement. He was stunning, always, but like this - it almost took your breath away.

If he was in your mind right now, there’d be no question. He’d know all of it. The attraction, the desire, the fear, the affection, the love, the need. All of it.

His eyes caught on a bruise peeking out from the short sleeve of your top. “You should’ve had them look at that,” he said, reaching out like he wanted to run his fingers over the dark splotch, but he was just too far away, fingertips closing around the air just an inch or two away.

You shook your head. “You needed attention first. You carried the neural load alone.” Because of me.

“Only for a minute.”

“A minute too long. I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

It hung between you. You don’t know if you’d inched forward or he had, or both, but you were close enough to touch now when you hadn’t been just seconds ago.

He lifted his eyes, his gaze locking on yours. In the dim room, his eyes shone black. “You pushed me out.”

It was an accusation, but it was also a question.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated, barely able to say it, your voice coming out in a hoarse whisper. “Seungcheol, I was scared.”

Maybe he was in your head. Maybe he did know all of it.

“Don’t be,” he told you. “Don’t be scared.”

His arms were around you though you didn’t see him move. It wasn’t the first time you’d let him embrace you - after a fight, in relief, or in victorious delight, or sometimes just in sleepy affection at the end of a long day. It was far from the first time that you’d found comfort in the space between his arms, strong and capable around your frame, your forehead pressed against his sternum as his heart beat directly into your bones.

But it was the first time that his fingers, confident and sure, tipped under your chin, guiding you to look up at him, guiding your mouth to meet his.

You don’t know if you melted or exploded - it was somehow both at once. You gripped his back, feeling the muscles move beneath his t-shirt, relaxing into his hold and focusing on the feel of his full lips firm and hungry against your own. This was everything - everything you’d wanted, everything you were afraid of, everything you needed, everything that could rip your life apart.

You didn’t mean to whine, but it slipped up your throat and into the gasped space between your lips and his as you tried to pull in a desperate breath. He responded with a grunt, walking you backwards until the edge of the kitchen counter jutted into your lower back. His hands traveled, up to the back of your neck, back down to the slight curve of your waist, around to the back of your ass. He tugged your hips against his roughly, and you let your head fall back, panting, head spinning.

“Cherry,” he breathed against the newly bared stretch of your neck, his lips close enough to drag against your skin as he spoke.

Your hands found the back of his neck, gave the slightest tug upwards, and he followed, bringing his mouth back to yours. His tongue pressed yours briefly, your moan muffled entirely by his mouth as you tried to press him closer, closer, as if you wanted your rib-cages to meld, to slip together like fitting puzzle pieces.

His hand slipped lower from your ass and wrapped around your thighs, taking only a second to lift you onto the counter behind you. You wrapped yourself around him immediately, pulling him into the space between your legs, arms around his neck, pulling him in, wanting to feel every bit of him against you.

His hands found the hem of your shirt and lifted; you raised your arms in compliance and felt the cotton slip over your head and your hands.

“Yours,” you murmured, but he had already reached back between his shoulder blades, his own top joining yours on the floor.

Your hands found him on their own, sliding over his skin, fingers dipping between muscles, thumbs sweeping over shadows.

You kissed until you turned liquid, molten, your fingers wrapped in his hair. His fingers mapped every inch of your skin, as if his job was to report back on every previously unknown dip, every rough circle, every beauty mark or blemish. His fingers traced them all, his hands passing over you reverently.

The brush of his bare chest against your own was torturous; delicious until you were full, until you couldn’t take it anymore, until the electric-sharp thrill became uncomfortable. You tilted backwards, creating more space between your torsos but pushing your hips firmly into his.

You both groaned at the contact. You could feel the heat and weight of him now, and everything instinctual within you urged you to shift further, to bring that heat and heaviness closer to the part of you that ached for it.

He pressed his hips into you without reservation, your core clenching in response to the movement and the friction.

Then he leaned back, his hands gripping the edge of the counter, his arms bracketing you on either side, his chest heaving as he struggled to control his breathing. He drank you in, his eyes as molten as you felt. You leaned back on your elbows and met his gaze.

The moment expanded; nothing existed but his eyes and the pant of his breath and the way he smelled like he’d just finished a fight and the way he felt between your thighs, unmovable and steady.

Neither of you was connected to jaeger machinery, but you may as well have been, because you knew without a shadow of a doubt that your minds were connected, the drift be damned. Your eyes locked, you knew he felt everything you felt - the gravity of what you were doing, the love that drove you, the fire coursing through you. If there was going to be hesitation or questioning, this was the moment, this was the pause. But you were one, your minds were one, and there was none of that.

His unvoiced question definitively answered by the certainty that flowed between you, Seungcheol moved to lift you again, taking you easily from the countertop into the dark of the room you share, settling you on your back on his bottom bunk.

Above you, mostly shadowed, was your other half, the only person who knew and understood every cobwebbed corner of your consciousness, the only person who had walked through your mind and found himself mirrored in every way that mattered. He was beautiful in the fractured light, his expression serious and gaze intense.

You reached up to slide your thumb along his jaw and his eyes fluttered closed, his breath leaving him as in relief, as if you’d made some kind of admission.

Making love to Seungcheol felt like drifting. His eyes on you as his fingers pulled you apart felt the same as the careful way he’d watch you when your memories got emotional, like he was watching for any sign that you weren’t okay, that you needed more or less or him.

The way his breath and shoulders shuddered when he pressed into you for the first time felt the same as when he faltered in face of his father’s memory; both times, his fingers laced through yours and held tight until you could both breathe again.

He felt how you’d always known he would. Perfect - a perfect fit for you, a physical compatibility you had never tested but had always trusted would be there. He took you apart without even trying, and all you could do was hold onto him, feel all of him, feel all of it, and try to remember to breathe.

You didn’t speak as you moved together in the dark; the only sounds in the tight room were muted gasps, tiny moans muffled against necks, skin on skin, the obscene squelching sounds that accompanied each snap of his hips. You didn’t say the words that your lips tried to form - it’s so much, go slow for a little, Seungcheol, I love you, more - please, don’t stop. Maybe he heard them. Maybe this was a different way to drift, one that didn’t need wires.

You did your best to hold his gaze, losing sight of him only when you strained up to kiss him, when you nuzzled your face into the warmth between his neck and shoulder and gasped against a wave of sensation, when you couldn’t help but close them as they rolled back, your toes curling.

He pressed his forehead to yours when he finished, your name slipping out of him, as if it had been literally squeezed from his lungs. “Cherry… Cherry…”

You lay together in silence for a long time, feeling your hearts slow, your skin cool. Your thumb traced his jaw again and again, slow, worshipful. “Cheol,” you whispered. My Cheol. My everything. You didn’t say the rest as you lay together in the quiet, in the dark, your heartbeats competing.

You didn’t know that you’d drifted together for the last time. You didn’t know that your ability to neural connect could be broken.

–

The wind whips around you, stinging your face. You barely flinch. When you’d first relocated here, three years ago, the cold had made you literally cry during your first month. Just from having to walk from the door of the dormitory across the yard to the mess hall dorm, the intensity of it had sent you spiraling into misery - damning the circumstances that had sent you here, away from everyone and everything you knew and loved, to a place where the air hurt.

You were sure it would hurt, this intensely, forever.

But time eased the sting, and despite your doubts you did adjust. Now the early morning wind feels bracing and refreshing rather than painful. You’ve adjusted to a lot of things since relocating to a small training center in Alakanuk, Alaska: the climate, the food, the no-frills campus you lived and worked on. Being away from your parents, from Wylie and Chan and Seungkwan and Jeonghan and all the other pilots you were friends with at the Shatterdome.

Being away from Seungcheol. Being partnerless, a half instead of a whole.

Being unable to pilot, unable to fight.

Being brokenhearted.

Just like the cold, the pain of your losses was the same - the sting of heartbreak and loneliness and homesickness faded to something ignorable, something you could keep tucked tight in the back of your mind.

You can hear the noise from inside the mess hall before you even cross the courtyard. There are short of fifty girls ranging from ages seven to eighteen being housed here, but from the noise you’d swear it was at least a hundred.

The buildings are single-storied, painted with a heavily-chipping grey-blue that sometimes seems to belong to the mist you often get rolling in from the ocean. When you’d first come, you’d legitimately thought they were painted that way as camouflage, meant to blend in with the sea. The other trainers had a good laugh about that.

As you cross the courtyard between the trainers’ dorms and the mess hall, you breathe deeply, eyes on the birds alight above you. After a lifetime in the Shatterdome, you don’t take for granted the fresh air you’re afforded as you pass between buildings, outside, the sky open and changing above. You don’t take for granted the rhythm of the ocean, the cries of the gulls, nor the distant treeline.

It was Seungcheol who had noted that you were sheltered, having never lived outside of the Dome.

It was Seungcheol you could blame - at least halfway - for your relocation here, where there wasn’t a jaeger or even a city for hundreds of miles.

When you pull open the flimsy door to the mess hall, the noise triples. Several of the girls call out to greet you, and you give them a quick wave as you head to the table where the staff eats.

“You’re later than normal,” one of the other instructors notes as you reach for a piece of bread.

You shrug lightly, unbothered. “Still have plenty of time before the first class. What day is today, Thursday? I’ve got the little ones first, right?”

The all-girls training center is meant to teach fighting and the groundworks for drifting, but no jaegers are housed here, no teams launch into the icy bay. The girls here will grow up to pilot - if they get selected, if they get paired with a partner.

You’re mostly here to teach them to fight, the way you trained in the Dome, but you do plenty more. Help brush hair in the mornings, console tearful faces, teach games and sports, mediate arguments. You also got sucked into running one literacy class a week, though you still haven’t figured out how that happened.

It would be a lie to say this wasn’t fulfilling, that you didn’t love the girls you cared for, that you weren’t happy here with the ocean and birds and trees and laughter. In many ways, the seclusion of this training center is exactly what you needed to get back on your feet, to find strength in yourself, to heal with distance and time.

But, god, what you would give for a real fight. What you would give to feel both loved and threatened by Wylie, to rib at the guys, to hug your mom. What you would give to hear Seungcheol’s teasing pout, to catch his gaze across the span of your jaeger and know what his body and yours will do, to feel his fingers just barely graze your back when he knows you need to be reminded to focus.

The final time you’d tried, the neural connection never took. It was like trying to connect with a stranger. It had simply been still, a thing that was never alive.

“Don’t do this,” Seungcheol had begged, and that had been the nail in the coffin.

Don’t do this, he’d said. It had landed like blame. Like everything was your fault, and only yours. Like you had broken the connection on purpose, were keeping him out, barricading your mind from his when you desperately wanted everything to go right back to normal.

After that failure, you didn’t tell him you were asking to be reassigned. You didn’t want to give him the chance to say don’t do this a second time.

You’ve just ended a class, the girls starting to filter out through the training room’s side door towards the mess hall for lunch, when the center’s Administrator calls your name from the door.

“There’s a call for you on my line. I have them holding.”

A call?

Adrenaline races through you; it has to be an emergency. Your parents and friends can reach you on your own device, which is tucked into your back pocket. To call the mainline here at the center means this is a base-to-base call, not a personal one.

You’ve only been in this office a handful of times in your few years here, and you shuffle awkwardly around the desk and pick up the receiver that sits abandoned on the chipped, wooden desktop.

You greet the person on the line with your real name.

“Cherry?”

Your Marshall - your old Marshall, from the Dome - sounds unsure if he has the right person on the line. No one has called you Cherry in three years. Even your parents have used your given name the few times they’ve said it on your weekly calls home.

“It’s me,” you affirm. “Is everything okay? My parents?”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, and you heave a relieved breath. “Everyone is fine. This is official business. I want to call you in.”

You shake your head, frowning, well aware that he can’t see your reaction. Your body has said no, but you force yourself to ask, “Me? Why?”

“We’re down a few teams,” the Marshall says. “And -”

“You’ve got more recruits than places to put them,” you counter before he can finish. “Call one of the new teams up. Call three new teams up. You don’t need me.”

“We do - we need teams with experience, teams that are ready. Not rookies bumbling around looking for mistakes. We need precision. We need Duellona Fury.”

Your Marshall lays out the situation: the teams that are out, the problems they’re having at the breach - less time between attacks, more monsters at once. You’ve seen this before, you all have, and there’s protocol in place - protocol that starts with all hands on deck.

You shake your head again. From the door, the Administrator of the center watches you seriously, like she knows you’re being taken away.

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “What can I give you? I can’t pilot Duellona.”

Not anymore.

The Marshall sighs, like he knew this argument was coming and didn’t have a good response.

“I think you can,” he says finally. “I’m not saying it will be easy, and I’m not saying it will happen quickly or without effort. But I think you can.”

“No,” you say, the first time you’ve voiced it. “You were there. You saw what happened. We can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. You’ve both had a lot of time to…. You’ve both had a lot of time since then. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

This blow knocks you into silence. You sink your teeth into your bottom lip, eyes steadfastly on the warped wood of the desk, fingers toying absently with the Administrator’s pen.

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing had mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did three years ago. The splitting ache in your chest that you’ve felt every day since you became aware of loving him has only worked its way deeper with time.

And Seungcheol’s anger? The anger and betrayal he’d leveled at you, when he was sure you were keeping him out of your head on purpose? You couldn’t speak for him, but if you had to guess, there weren’t enough years in a human life to let that hurt mellow into something safe enough to drift with.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer.

The Marshall hesitates. “Not yet.”

“You might want to do that first,” you point out. “Before flying me back only to have him refuse.”

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest.

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

The girls cry when you tell them you’re leaving, and it makes you want to cry, too. You hold it together as you give them hugs, hold it together as you pack your single bag of belongings. You hold it together in the passenger seat of the center’s only beat-up van, waving out the back window as the training center fades away.

It’s standing on the deck of the ferry, the coast receding and the sea wind clawing at your face, that you let it go. You bury your face behind your hands and feel it release behind your ribs. You cry for all of it - for leaving the girls behind, for leaving a place that had sheltered you like a sanctuary. For the time you’d lost at the Dome, for the fights you’d sat out, for the years with your parents and friends that had slipped away like sand between your fingers. For your fear that Seungcheol will turn you away, just as hurt and angry as he was one thousand and ninety-five days ago.

You’d been so determined to keep him from walking through the depths of your love for him, in the drift. You were so scared it would be too much, too intense, too much emotion for the drift. You’d been scared it would be too much for him - that the weight of it would inherently ask for more than he could give you in return. You’d been scared it would ruin your partnership, your compatibility, your capability to co-pilot.

But that had happened anyway. You almost have to laugh.

As furiously as your tears begin, they peter out quickly. You take a few deep gulps of salty air, use the backs of your hands to wipe at your cheeks and beneath your nose. As you calm down, you keep your eyes on the horizon, your hands tight on the ship’s railing, and you let your mind wander back to Seungcheol. Here, thousands of miles away, you let yourself think back to those last weeks before you left the Shatterdome. You let yourself wonder, for the first time, what exactly caused everything to crumble.

You’d been so afraid to let Seungcheol into your head once the loving him had taken over. Why had it scared you so badly? As you keep your eyes on the grey of the horizon, you puzzle it out in your mind.

Had it been the uncertainty? That had certainly played a part. Did Seungcheol love you, back then? If he didn’t, everything between you could have changed - your friendship, your partnership, your ability to drift. It hadn’t seemed worth the risk to lose it all - his presence in your life, your ability to fight together.

But maybe he had. If he did love you, back then… that would have changed things, too. What if starting something romantic affected your drift? There were too many maybes, too many variables. It had seemed safe to push it all down, to try and keep him away from it. To try and keep things the same.

Of course, you’d lost it all anyway.

Even if he did love you three years ago, you think as the sea air whips around you, did he love you the way you loved him? What if it had been too much - the way you could breathe once he was with you, the way you kept each other in check - what if he had loved you, but not that much?

Had it been a mistake to keep him out? Maybe. But it could have been just as catastrophic to let him in. There was no way to know, now.

You turn away from the ship’s railing, away from the horizon and the sea, away from your mistakes. There’s no use looking back like this. You can’t change it. You aren’t even sure you can fix it.

You were hoping to sleep on the plane, but you’re woefully awake well after take-off. Determined not to keep ruminating on what had happened before you left, instead you wonder what awaits you now.

The most-likely scenario, you think, professional and polite - but cold. Like you, he takes duty and responsibility seriously. The airplane bumps, a pocket of air jostling the small craft, and your hands find the armrests and cling tight until it stops.

The best case scenario, of course, would be that enough time has passed that Seungcheol’s hurt has faded. Maybe, you think, maybe he’s moved on from harboring that anger. Maybe he’ll greet you warmly, maybe you’ll pick up right where you left off.

This hope, this day-dream, aches, so much that you blink it away and turn to watch the clouds through the window, a desperate distraction. You crave Seungcheol - you crave feeling safe with his arms around you, you crave the elation you’d feel when he entered the room you were in, you crave the peace that comes with two minds engaged in neural handshake - the peace of someone’s mind interlaced with your own, understanding you, operating with you, picking up half of your mental lift.

You crave his giggle when you say something stupid in the dark of the dorm before bed, his pout when he feels like he isn’t getting enough attention, you crave his voice echoing in your head long after he’s gone asleep because you heard him talk to you all day long.

You crave his lips on yours, his teeth on your neck, his hands on your body, even if you only had it once. You’ve craved it ever since.

You crave closing your eyes and pressing your forehead to his sternum, feeling safe and quiet and like you belong. You miss the sanctuary of that space, chest to chest with him, something sacred in the way it exists only for you.

You know you can’t have it - any of it. The daydream isn’t real. Your curse will be to crave it forever, alone.

When you arrive at the Shatterdome, it’s your parents who greet you just inside. For a moment, you’re happy to be back, overcome with emotion as you hug them tight. They’ve aged in these three years. You’ve missed them awfully. You only tell them the latter.

They walk with you to the Marshall’s office, where you’re meant to report upon arrival.

You hesitate, covering the moment by tugging your duffle’s strap higher on your shoulder. Your mother reads you anyway, reaching out and giving your shoulder a squeeze.

“It will be okay,” she whispers.

Your father catches on. “You’ve faced down worse,” he reasons.

You disagree. There’s no monster in the sea bigger than your love for Seungcheol, no wounding possible that could hurt more than losing him has. But you appreciate the sentiment, so you give them each a grateful nod, tell them you’ll visit after dinner, and turn to knock on the door.

“Come in,” the Marshall’s voice carries through the door, and you turn the knob and step inside.

All you see is Seungcheol; the Marshall, the office furniture, the flickering screens on the walls all snap into nonexistence in the presence of your former lover. He’s the only thing in the room that comes into focus. Everything else is just fuzzy noise.

His face wavers for a moment when your eyes meet his, the muscles rippling as he fights to get them under control.

You don’t know what reaction he’s fighting. You don’t know if he’s feeling happiness or hatred. You don’t know if he’s fighting a smile or a scowl.

You give him a quick bow in greeting, and he returns it. His face is stone, now, his mouth tight and eyes flat.

He turns to face the Marshall, to receive orders, so you do the same.

“I trust your travel went well?” the Marshall begins.

You nod, not trusting yourself to speak. Even the single syllable of yes will come out of your mouth like gravel and dirt and sand, getting everywhere, leaving a trail.

“Your orders,” he says then, a bit of a sigh on his tone - as if he knows the uphill battle this will be, “are to reconnect as best you can. You’ll follow your old schedule. You’ll spar, you’ll meditate, and you’ll talk. After some time, we’ll try the drift again, see if the connection has recovered any.”

Seungcheol’s voice startles you when he speaks. “How long do you imagine it will be before we try?” he asks, just cold enough to have a sliver of sarcasm in it.

The Marshall’s eyes narrow, just slightly, as if he’d caught it. “That’s entirely up to you two,” he says evenly. “When you were young and hungry to fight, you trained yourselves into exhaustion. You spent every waking second trying to cultivate the bond that would carry you into your jaeger. With the same intention and drive, I imagine you could be piloting Duellona within the week.”

You fight to keep your chin up, your eyes on the Marshall, instead of ducking your head and watching the floor. The Marshall lifts his arm and glances at his watch.

“Your allotted time in Sparring Room 7 begins on the hour,” he says. This is his way of dismissing you.

In the hallway, you pause. “I’m just going to drop my bag in the dorm,” you say quietly, not looking at Seungcheol.

He gives a tight nod. “Fine,” he says, and turns to go the other way, towards the sparring and training rooms. Clearly he intends to meet you there. You heave a deep breath, and turn back towards the wing with the dorms.

Stepping into the dorm you used to share with Seungcheol hits you harder than you thought it would. You’re not sure what you expected - to feel like coming home, maybe, or perhaps to be slapped with the memories of you and Seungcheol together, dancing around each other as you hurried to get dressed for a drop, lazing around in the sitting area after a full day of training. And, of course, the single night you’d spent together.

Neither thing happens. You aren’t overcome by a feeling of nostalgia and love, nor are you inundated by memories of what you’ve lost. Instead, the room feels exactly as it is: empty and still.

Your footsteps’ echoes taunt you as you walk through the kitchen, the sitting area, and into the bedroom. It’s pristine to the point of detriment; it feels like no one lives there. You set your bag on the floor near the foot of the bed - you can unpack later, after training - and turn to go.

Strangely, it’s stepping into the training room that slams you with memory and nostalgia. The wood cool beneath your feet, the vague smell of sweat and citrus-y cleaner, the sounds of punches landing and grunts of effort from the training rooms on either side - they all cocoon you in history, making goosebumps rise on your arms as the emotions surround you.

It makes sense, you think, as Seungcheol glances over his shoulder at the sound of your arrival. He doesn’t speak to you, just swaggers to the center of the room and takes a stance you recognize from Form One. Your body leads you opposite him, muscle memory guiding you into the first form you ever learned with him. It makes sense that this would be what felt like home - your minds going empty together, your bodies following the steps in unison. The sparring forms are the closest you can get to drifting without an actual neural connection.

Well, that and sleeping together, but you don’t see that on your agenda.

You stare at him across the invisible circle between you and try to read him. His face is cold and empty, but that already tells you so much about what he’s feeling. Seungcheol was never cold with you. When you fought together he slipped into that mode you loved so much - ready to level anything, chin lifted, eyes narrowed, confident and so very strong. But it was when you were together outside the fights that you had loved him best - often pouting, lips protruding, voice lifting into a whine. And the best of all - that smile, dimples creating shadows that beg for your thumb to press them, eyes squeezing shut with happiness or laughter.

Something must show on your face, because you watch the muscles in Seungcheol’s upper body untense, as if he’d been ready to fight and recognized that you weren’t.

“I’m good,” you mutter quickly, before he can ask. It feels better to lie to him before he actually asks you, like that’s somehow less dishonest. “Let’s go.”

Form One is basic - no hits, no fancy moves. At the training center, you’d teach it to the littlest ones until they had it memorized. It was really about control and communication - precision and alignment with your partner. You had to breathe together as your feet traced opposite circles across the knots in the wooden floor. You had to rise and bend in unison. It was about watching and listening.

You and Seungcheol could - literally, you’d tried more than once - do it blindfolded in perfect step with one another. Before. You don’t know if you still can. But, now, unblindfolded, it’s too easy.

You move through forms one through six without incident - both of you flowing as easily as water.

Form Seven is the first form that incorporates actual hits and blocks. You’ll have to touch for the first time, even if it’s forearm to forearm or ankle to shoulder. You move right as he moves left, crouch and circle as his right foot flies over your head, stand and punch where you know his open hand will be waiting to stop you.

It is, and you press your fist against it for just a second before spinning away to continue the form. You ache, even as your body continues following the steps, to have him entirely again - to meet his eyes and smile the way you both used to, because you were pleased with what your bodies could do. Because you had each other, completely.

After the tenth form, you bow, turn, and walk out of the ring. You drink some water, your back to him. Years ago you’d have used this break to chat, but you don’t know what to say to him. You’re scared that he’ll shut down anything you say, whether you choose small talk or go straight for the heart of the problem, and you honestly don’t think you can shoulder his rejection right now. So you stay quiet.

After a few short minutes of rest, you return to the center of the room. This is when you’ll spar for real.

You and Seungcheol had done this for years before things went wrong. You’d long ago adjusted to how hard you should hit, how to dodge his moves, how to make this a dance as much as a fight. Now, you feel like it’s your first time again.

Seungcheol attacks as you’d expect - all offensive, pushy, succeeding in herding you backwards even as you dodge each blow. You know his goal is to flip you, and normally you can avoid that by forcing him to go on the defensive as he avoids your own hits. Simply dodging won’t be enough - eventually he’ll cage you in unless you distract him.

You throw yourself into a summersault and manage to get behind him - an opportune moment to strike. You shift your weight to follow the blow as you twist your hips to send a kick towards his unprotected head. He turns just too late - the blow will land.

You can’t do it. You freeze, your core working to keep you upright as you fight your own momentum, halting the kick inches from his temple.

You know immediately that pulling the hit was a mistake. His eyes narrow, and he sweeps his foot at the ankle you’re balancing on. You crash to the ground, heaving a breath and taking quick inventory.

You aren’t hurt. Not this time.

“Get up, Cherry,” he says darkly, moving back to the center to start again. “And don’t do that shit again.”

He comes at you full force in the next match, too. You dodge and weave, but you don’t try to strike. You know he knows it; this isn’t how it used to work. You can almost feel him get angrier as you fight, but you can’t make yourself hit back. You want him to knock you down, you deserve to take some shots.

You take two blows to the back and one to a shoulder; you fall back unsteadily but manage to find your footing and roll away from his next kick.

The match continues - you taking a handful of blows, though none with the force to level you, and Seungcheol with his lip curled in fury.

“If you’re not going to fight, then leave,” he spits.

“Would if I could,” you retort without thinking. You mean that you don’t want to be here like this - not talking, cold, at odds. But you know it reads as not wanting to be here at all.

It seems like everything you say and do only hurts him more.

“I didn’t mean -” you start, and Seungcheol takes your arms and flips you over his shoulders.

“Don’t waste my fucking time,” he says, brushing his hands together and stepping back to give you room to pick yourself up.

“Don’t curse at me,” you answer, pushing yourself to your hands and knees, pausing to catch your breath before rising fully again.

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes a little.

You hate this side of him.

You know you deserve it. For pushing him out. For leaving him here. For loving him, messing everything up, when he never asked for that.

“Seungcheol,” you say, but he ignores you, pacing a few steps and then turning to face you, lowering himself into a defensive stance, ready to spar again.

“Cheol,” you try again. “Listen to me.”

“Marshall scheduled us time to talk later,” he says flatly. “Right now we’re scheduled to fight. So fight me, Cherry. Let’s go.”

The rest of the hour continues the same. By the time it’s over, Seungcheol storms out without speaking to you, furious over every single pulled punch.

You don’t know what to do to make it all better.

You shower quickly, dressing in dry linens, and then re-emerge for the hours you’re scheduled to meditate together. You hope that maybe this will help the situation - maybe not talking will be good for you, give you a chance to feel your connection without the chance to fuck it up with words.

You’re wrong; trying to meditate together is just as desperately fruitless as sparring had been.

You can’t focus at all - can’t shift your attention to your breath, to your body, to the earth beneath you, to the energy of your partner.

Your partner is the distraction, though he sits perfectly still, eyes closed. He might as well be yelling. His shoulders are tight, his jaw still clenched. Anger radiates off him so strongly that it makes your stomach hurt, makes you want to cower from it. You can’t stop watching him, hoping you’ll see him relax, hoping you’ll see the moment that he lets go.

He doesn’t.

“Your eyes are supposed to be closed,” he murmurs, and you feel your face heat, embarrassed that he knew you were watching him.

“I can’t,” you admit. Maybe, you think, you should just be brutally honest, starting now. It’s not like you could make this worse. “I can’t stop noticing how angry -”

“Then stop pissing me off,” he snaps, eyes opening. “Just a suggestion.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” you cry, and push yourself to stand. You’re not sure why - maybe just to pace. “You never used to talk to me like this. Who are you?”

He looks at the floor, the first sign of guilt you’ve seen since you came home.

“Fine,” he finally bites back, and you know it’s as close to sorry as you’ll get. “I’ll reign it in. Sit back down.”

You shift your weight, arms crossed defensively across your chest, and close your eyes, deciding.

“Sit down, Cherry,” he repeats, and it’s gentler now. That’s what makes you cave, and you settle back across from him.

He’s less tense this time, so you eventually manage to close your eyes and count your breaths. But you’re still feeling for him, reaching for him in your mind, and coming up with nothing between you fingers. Touching him is as possible as touching the fog that used to blanket the training center, thick enough to blind you but impossible to grasp.

The pain feels like a cramp, except it’s behind your ribs instead of in your muscles. The pain grips and tightens, takes over. You want him, you want to be his again, you want to be inside these walls - where you used to fit comfortably. The fact that you’re out here, without him, aches so badly it makes you nauseated.

You want to beg him - let me in again, let me back in, let me be close to you again.

It won’t do any good, and you know it.

He was yours - you had him, you knew him, you could reach out to him and he’d pick you up. You’d taken it for granted, and you’d run away from it. You’d chosen to let it go, and now all you get is this: Seungcheol, cold and closed. Seungcheol, hating you for everything that happened.

—

Dinner is just as bad.

You go to the mess hall eager to see Wylie and Jeonghan and Seungkwan and all the other friends you haven’t seen in years. Wylie screeches like a banshee when she spots you, crossing the mess hall in a blur and hugging you so tightly that you both stagger, off balance, until Seungkwan joins the hug and rights you again.

“I missed you both so much,” you whisper, the only vulnerability anyone’s going to get out of you today.

“Then don’t leave again!” Wylie snaps, but you know the admonishment is full of love.

“I can’t promise,” you admit. Honestly, you’ve already made up your mind - you want to go back to Alaska. You’re not wanted here, not by the person who matters. What good are you, taking up a bed, if you can’t drift?

You’ve already given up hope that he’ll come around.

Seated at the table, you listen while your friends fill you in on what you’ve missed in three years - the fights in the bay, the new teams of pilots, the illnesses and injuries. You almost don’t notice Seungcheol silently takes a seat on Jeonghan’s other side, but something in you prickles, like you’ve sensed him.

The tension around the table heightens; the conversation goes a little stilted. When it’s apparent that he’s going to ignore you two seats down from him, Wylie slaps her hand flat on the tabletop.

“Come on, Seungcheol,” she scolds, and you’re sure no one wonders what she means.

His face goes dark so quickly it’s alarming. “Don’t,” he tells her darkly, one finger coming up to point at her in warning.

Her own eyes narrow and dart to her fork. Beside her, Chan’s eyes pingpong between them. He’s probably wondering if he should hold her back or join her.

“It’s fine,” you mutter, grabbing your tray and making to rise. “I’ll go.”

“Cherry, no,” Wylie protests, and then turns a glower onto your ex-co-pilot as if to say see what you did?

“It’s fine,” you repeat, standing. “I told my mom and dad I’d come by.”

You slink out before anyone else can argue.

You can’t even be mad at him - you did this by pushing him away. You hammered every last nail in the coffin by requesting to transfer. You pushed him out and you left him behind and now you have to face the reality that you can’t have him anymore. He isn’t yours, not anymore.

When you return to your dorm, he’s already in bed, the lights out. He’s facing the wall so you can only see his back, can only see the angry, tight shoulder poking out the top of the sheets. It tells you everything you need to know.

You don’t try to talk to him. You just go to bed.

—

You spend four days identically - fighting while sparring, not meditating, and avoiding Seungcheol’s ice-out. On the fifth day, your Marshall loses patience and changes your schedule. Your entire day is blocked to working on Duellona’s mainframe - buffing, repainting, greasing, and anything else you’re able to handle on your own.

“Since you can’t do anything else useful,” he adds, and you avoid Seungcheol’s eyes, ashamed.

Standing under Duellona’s unlit frame fills you with guilt. It feels like you’re letting her down, disappointing her by letting her rust here, failing your half of the bargain. You run your hands gently over the metal, finding the rough spots that need attention. Somewhere to your left, you can hear the telltale sounds of Seungcheol tightening bolts.

You work in silence for hours.

Eventually, you crack. You’re not sure if it’s the monotony of the task, the tension woven into the silence between you too, or being so close to your jaeger but unable to fight in it - maybe a combination. Something pushes at you from the inside, like a balloon trying to inflate under your skin and running out of room.

You flop backwards on the metal walkway, the grooves digging into your back. “What are we doing?” you ask, and you hear the tool Seungcheol had been using cling loudly as he sets it down.

“Following orders?” he says, stepping around Duellona’s side to look at you. “Fixing up the jaeger?”

“Fixing up the jaeger we don’t get to pilot?” you ask, sitting back up to look at him better.

“Is that what you’re here for?” he asks, the sudden ferocity of it surprising you. “To fight? Is that why you came back?”

You reach up to the walkway’s railing and pull yourself up. You feel yourself frowning at his question, at the heat behind it.

“I’m back because the Marshall gave me an order,” you say slowly.

“And that’s it?” he demands.

You stare at him. You feel sure there’s more to the question, more that he’s asking. You feel sure, after knowing Choi Seungcheol down to the last molecule, that he’s really asking, you didn’t come back for me?

And it confuses you. You try to think about your split from his perspective: you’d shut him out, then slept with him, and then vanished. You’d made a lot of assumptions about his anger since then. You assumed he was angry at you for pushing him out of your head. You assumed he was angry at you for sleeping with him and then leaving. You assumed he was angry with you for ruining your drift, for ripping him away from the ability to fight. You assumed he was angry because he never knew why - never knew what it was that you were so desperate to hide, never knew why sleeping together had made things so much worse that the neural connection had fizzled into nothing altogether.

Is there more to it, his anger?

Should you call him on it, should you ask?

You take too long deciding. Seungcheol scoffs, like he’s disgusted with you. “I should have known,” he says coldly. “Princess of the Shatterdome, I should have known you only cared about piloting - about your legacy.”

This is something you’ve never said to him - that your desire to shine as brightly as your parents has weighed on you. This is something he’d pulled from the drift, something he only knew from tiptoeing around your mind before a fight.

“That isn’t fair,” you say, your voice hard. “Is there another reason I should have come back? I’d love to hear it.”

He hears the challenge as it is - you didn’t ask me to come back, the Marshall did. You let me go.

He has nothing to say for himself, just stares back at you, eyes narrowed in anger, chest moving too quickly as he battles with his temper.

“Exactly,” you say curtly. The victory stings. It doesn’t feel like a win at all. “The bottom line is I’m here now, and we can pilot again if we can get our shit together.”

He shakes his head. “You left,” he says finally. “That’s the bottom line. You decided you were out, you decided you didn’t want me in your head, and then you left.”

He watches you, waits for you to say something. When you don’t, he lets out a derisive little laugh. “We’re both wasting our time here. The drift won’t work. We aren’t going to fix it.”

For the first time, fear slices through you like steel. “You can’t know that,” you say. You hear the fear in the way your voice comes out low and rounded, barely sounding like you at all.

“I can,” he retorts. “You know how I know? Because I don’t want to. You wanted me out of your head so badly? You got it. Can’t turn back now.”

He heads for the ladder, swings around and finds the third rung down with ease.

“So that’s it?” you ask his retreating form. Your heart is hammering and you’re starting to get tunnel vision.

The only answer he gives you are his feet hitting each new rung with a clunk and a vibration that rattles up your legs.

—

You go to the training rooms alone and run through the forms just to do something; your mind turns the problem over and over as your body goes through the motions. After, you take a longer shower than normal, letting the water run hotter than you normally would.

After, you go to the Marshall’s office, determined. Or maybe resigned.

When he opens the door, he already looks irritated, like he knew exactly who would be on the other side.

“Requesting an audience,” you say flatly, fighting the instinct to cross your arms defensively.

He glances at his watch. “Five minutes.”

You step inside but leave the door open.

“I’m requesting transfer back to Alakanuk,” you tell him as evenly as you can manage. You’re sure he’s not surprised. “Seungcheol has made it very clear that we won’t be fighting together again. If that’s the case, then I can’t do anything useful here. But in Alakanuk I can.”

You pause, looking to see if you can read anything on the Marshall’s face - any hint that he’s considering what you’re saying, or that it’s a lost cause. He gives you nothing.

“Please,” you say. “Those girls need me. If I can’t help here, I can help them.”

The Marshall tilts his head just slightly. “Surely anyone can teach little girls the forms.”

You shake your head. “It’s more than that, and you know it. It’s not about the forms. I love those girls. I came back here to follow orders, and I tried. But if it isn’t going to happen… Please, don’t make me waste time here if I can be with them instead.”

The silence when you stop speaking seems to last for hours. Your heart pounds, and you work on keeping your breathing even. If he tells you no, you might just lose it, just give up entirely.

Finally, he takes a breath and seems to consider you. “If,” he says, and your eyes widen with hope, “your co-pilot agrees, then I will reassign you back to Alaska. But only if he will agree.”

“No problem,” you say quickly. Seungcheol was the one who said it was over. He should have no problem letting you leave.

When you step out of the Marshall’s office, Seungcheol steps out of the shadows. You should be surprised to see him, but in the Shatterdome it feels right that he just is wherever you are. That’s always how it was, before.

You look at him disdainfully. “I assume you heard that conversation?”

He nods, once.

“So?” you ask. “Will you tell him you approve, so I can go?”

For the first time since you returned, Seungcheol smiles, tight and sarcastic.

“No,” he says easily, like it’s kind of funny.

Fury erupts inside you; you can’t even pinpoint where in your body it stems from. “Why?” you demand. “Because you feel like I took something from you, so you want to take something from me?”

He doesn’t respond to this. You know you’re right. You know him. You know his mind.

“I hate to fuck up your narrative,” you spit at him, “but I’ve lost out here just as much as you have. You’re not the only one who lost the ability to fight. You’re not the only one who lost their partner.”

You wish you could tell him the rest - you’re not the one who spent three years with a broken heart on top of it. He had lost you as a partner and a friend - you had lost him in the same ways, and you’d had to harbor your broken heart.

He shakes his head. “Poor baby,” he bites sarcastically, and then takes off down the hallway, into the dark.

—

You stop sleeping at the dorm. Sometimes you sleep at your parents’, sometimes on Wylie and Chan’s tiny couch, sometimes in bed with Seungkwan, who kicks at you and whines that you take up too much space. Sometimes you sleep inside Duellona Fury, sitting up, your back against her metal frame.

The Marshall seems to have taken some pity on you. He schedules your mornings training the Dome’s recruits, and lets Seungcheol get back to what he was doing in your absence - which seems to be on track to move up in rank, to maybe become a Marshall himself, someday. It isn’t quite the same as being back with your girls, but training recruits feels at least somewhat fulfilling. And it keeps you and Seungcheol busy - separately - until afternoon.

Then, he schedules you to spar.

In your first week, you’d been unwilling to hit Seungcheol. You’d been feeling guilty for hurting him, sad for your time apart, hopeful that if you were soft to him, then he’d be soft back to you.

Now, you’re fucking furious.

For the first time, when the match begins, you hit him first. He’s surprised for only a second, eyebrows shooting up as he stumbles for balance, and then you watch something delighted and devilish fall over his face. Like he knows exactly what dance this is, and he’s been learning the steps in secret.

The match is brutal, reminiscent of your very first one, when you were both nineteen. You throw hit after hit his way; he blocks or dodges all of them. But he can’t get a hit on you either - you’re too quick, spurred on by fury. You’ve been angry in a fight before. But you’ve never been angry at him.

You spin and throw up a kick, expecting his forearm to rise and block it. Instead, you knock him in the jaw.

He grunts, hand flying up to cover his mouth, and you drop your stance with a gasp.

“Shit!” you cry, hurrying closer. “I’m so sorry! Are you bleeding? Let me look.”

“‘M fine,” he mutters thickly from behind his hand, but you ignore him. For a second, things are how they used to be between you. He lets you peel his hand away, lets you gingerly turn his head this way and that, even opens up so you can check his teeth.

“You’re gonna have a fat lip,” you tell him regretfully. “But nothing’s bleeding. Teeth look okay. Anything loose in there?”

He pokes around his teeth with his pinky. “Nope.”

You take a step back, cowed. “I’m really sorry.”

He laughs a little, wryly. “I bet you feel better, though.”

You bite back a smile. “Actually…” you say, and he laughs again. You both do.

Somehow, this seems to be the thing that cracks the anger you’ve both been encased in, unable to move forward or backward. You feel melted, and you wonder if he feels freer now, too.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” you say. You mean the kick, but the words land heavy.

He avoids your gaze. “I need some water,” he says, turning and heading to the side of the room.

You do the same, sitting heavily on the bench where your water waits for you.

“Hey,” he says, and you look over, brows raised in anticipation. “Tell me about Alaska.”

You can’t help but smile.

“It’s so beautiful,” you tell him. “God, Cheol, the ocean there. And the birds, and the snow…”

He’s watching you, listening, but while he listens he stands and heads to the center of the ring, settling into a starting form. With a small smile, you follow, standing opposite him. He starts an easy match that’s mostly just following the eighth form. It includes some hits and blocks, but you both do them gently, easily, circling each other slowly.

“So you liked it?” he asks. You can hear how hard he’s working to make it sound casual.

“It was so beautiful,” you admit before ducking below a kick. “But it was also… really hard.”

“What was the best part?” he asks.

You smile, block a hit. He almost gets his hands on you for a flip, but you dodge around behind him. He turns to follow you. “Weirdly, it was taking care of them outside of class. We - the instructors - we kind of their moms, away from home, you know? I’m the one who knew Yejin won’t sleep unless someone sits by her bed for a while. I’m the one that knew that Farrah and Salome only argue because they’re competitive. I’m the one that knew that Maria and Anjali don’t know their times-tables, that Ximena can’t brush her own hair, or that Iseul is allergic to fish. I loved them. I loved knowing them.”

He looks at you for a long time. “Maybe you should go back,” he says finally.

It feels like a trap.

You look at the floor, at the wall, then finally back at him. “If you’ll do this for real,” you say carefully, “then I’d rather be here. If we’re actually trying, then I don’t want to go.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Finally, he swallows hard, not looking at you.

“What was the worst part?”

There’s only one answer.

“Missing you,” you say. “Losing you.”

He manages to get both of your arms and hauls you over his shoulders. You land on your back so hard that the air is knocked out of your lungs and your eyes close protectively. For a second, you lay there panting, waiting for the pain in your back to settle down, waiting for the stars behind your eyelids to calm.

When you open them again, the ceiling coming into focus above you, the room is empty.

–

You have a hunch on where you can find him, and you head to the jaeger bay. Sure enough, he’s sitting below Duellona, knees to his chest, staring up at her.

You sit next to him and he doesn’t get up and leave, which you take as a good sign.

“I can’t do this if you’re not all in,” he tells you without looking at you. “You walked away from me once. I can’t let you back in my head if there’s any possibility you’ll walk away again. If you’re with me, I need you to be with me.”

Something prickles in the back of your head. You feel like you’re starting to realize something - the seed of an understanding is pushing delicately through the dirt, but hasn’t yet spread out its leaves under the warmth of the sun yet.

Something about his hurt. Something about why.

“I think we should try to drift,” you tell him.

This seems to startle him - he forgets to be cold, turns to look at you, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I can tell you how much I missed you,” you reason, “and tell you about how I spent every minute just… steeped in regret. Or we can walk through it - you can see for yourself.”

You know what you’re risking. If he gets into your head now, he’ll see it all - he’ll know everything, he’ll be able to feel for himself the depth of your loss, the height of your love.

But what’s the harm, now? You can’t lose him twice. Maybe it’ll be enough for him to realize you hadn’t left him because you didn’t care about him. Maybe it’ll be enough for his forgiveness.

Maybe then, he’ll tell the Marshall to let you go back to Alakanuk.

It’s Seungkwan you bother, since he’d been in mission control before finding his team of co-pilots. The sideways look he gives you as he walks to your conn pod is withering, but you know better than to take it personally.

You buzz with nerves. The last time you’d tried this, the neural handshake hadn’t even connected. There had just been nothing.

The second you hear neural handshake initiating, you almost sob with relief. You can’t even pay attention to the memories - Seungcheol’s memories - floating around you; you want to collapse, to press your palms to the ground and thank the universe for letting you back in.

His first memories are a breeze - the ones you’ve jogged through together hundreds of times: his first home, his school, his father’s hospital room, the Dome. Then you slow your pace, because this is new.

You’re facing the landing dock on the Shatterdome’s roof. Seungcheol stands with his back to you, watching through the glass walls as a helicopter waits, the pilot talking into his headset.

You watch yourself walk towards the chopper’s open door. You watch yourself leave, remember how hard it was to not look back.

You hadn’t known that Seungcheol had been there, that he had seen you go.

The pain that accompanies the memory hits you like you’re drowning, like it’s too deep and you can’t feel the bottom, and you feel the machinery falter around you.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “I’m with you.”

He nods, still doesn’t look at you. But the beeping stops, the connection holding.

There’s knowledge in this memory, knowledge in this pain. Seungcheol’s thoughts in this moment read in your head as clearly as if he said them aloud - I did this. I pushed her too far; I made her run.

You can’t stay here, can’t let him wallow in the memory of pain. You had to move forward - that’s how the drift works. Reluctantly you step towards the door, glancing over your shoulder to see if he’s following.

He is. His jaw is tight and fists are clenched, but he is.

When the next memory - not in order of chronology, clearly - appears before you, you want to vanish into the floor. You’re watching yourselves in Seungcheol’s bed. Thankfully, you’re sleeping - this was after. But in the memory, Seungcheol is awake, laying on his side, his eyes drinking in your sleeping form.

The emotions and the knowledge come with it in an instant. The tenderness and the love he felt in that moment surround you now in the memory, unignorable, impossible to mistake.

He had loved you. He had known you loved him, and he was showing you how he felt. The understanding slams you so hard that you think you stop breathing.

“Seungcheol,” you whisper. Around you, the scene begins to flicker, the connection starting to react to the oversaturation of emotion.

“We can talk about it after,” he says, voice hard. “Don’t stay in it. Find the next door.”

Your eyes find the door, but you feel frozen. You want the connection to drop, you want to unlock yourself from the stupid drive-suit and throw yourself into his arms, you want to apologize for leaving him thinking he’d pushed you away, thinking that he scared you into running.

“Cherry,” he warns. “The drift can’t -”

You know.

And you owe him your side of the story.

You take a steeling breath and head for the door. You don’t take his hand. You don’t know if you deserve to, if he’d want you to.

When you step through the doors, you’re confused - you’re still in your dorm. Your bodies are both in the bed.

Now, though, Seungcheol sleeps, and you - the memory of you - sits on the edge of the bed, your head in your hands.

You feel the emotion the memory holds, which means Seungcheol does, too.

Fear. It’s still fear - fear that he’ll know, fear that what you just did together will make it worse, make it harder to hide.

Beside you, Seungcheol’s eyes go wide.

“We have to move on,” you tell him. He looks at you, then back at the memory.

“You -?” he starts to ask.

“After,” you tell him firmly. “We’ll talk after.”

You open the door, and you’re suddenly outside, surrounded by white.

Alaska.

The emotion knocks you over with the fury of an ocean wave - even though you know you’re not supposed to let it. This was how you had felt every day that you were gone, and it screams at you now, determined to be heart, determined to be felt. The loneliness, the regret, the despair and heartbreak all rise up in you, overtaking you, as snow falls gently and silently around you.

And the love. That never went away. That never mellowed, as the Marshall had put it.

If he didn’t know before, he has to know now. There’s no way he couldn’t.

Seungcheol squeezes your hand, and you almost jump. You look down at your linked fingers in shock, then up at him, eyes wide.

“We should go back and talk about this,” he tells you, but his grip on you is firm, assuring.

“Okay. It’s this way,” you tell him, trying to breathe, and you lead him by the hand through the snow. The fog strengthens as you walk, until you can’t see anything but grey, can’t see anything but Seungcheol’s hand in yours.

You continue on. You know where to go. When you step through, the fog vanishes as if it was never there, nothing gradual about it. With the fog gone, you can see clearly where you are - inside Duellona Fury’s conn-pod.

As you begin to work on the straps, you call through the intercom, “Kwan? We… need some privacy. We’ve got to talk - alone.”

His voice crackles back at you. “Yes, I’m leaving, I’m already gone. If you hear popcorn crunching, no you don’t.”

Seungcheol gives you a flat look. “Let’s go home and talk,” he suggests.

Home.

You are so afraid and so hopeful. You don’t know how to juggle both.

Back in your small living space, you sit like you’re meditating.

“Let’s figure this out,” he says. “No lies.”

“No lies,” you agree. Your knees touch, and you reach to take his hands. He lets you, giving your fingers a squeeze.

“You knew,” you say first, bordering on accusation. “I was trying so hard to hide how I felt about you… but you knew.”

He nods, his eyes on you. “And you,” he says slowly, “didn’t… know? That I knew?”

You shake your head, confirming. “I didn’t know. I thought I hid it.”

He smiles at you, a little placating. “Not as well as you would have liked.”

“And you…” You chicken out, swallow, force yourself to be brave. “You… loved me, too?”

He nods. “I did.”

The air leaves your lungs so forcefully that you bend over, pressing your forehead to the tops of your hands. He pulls his hands from yours and you feel his touch, firm and reassuring, cupping your shoulders and rubbing his thumbs along them.

“We felt the same,” you echo into your shins. “You loved me.”

“Cherry,” he says above you, his voice like a plea. “I don’t understand why - when we… when I… I felt like once I forced you to look at it, it was too much. You ran.”

You sit with this for a minute, stunned and processing. His hands are back in yours, which you take as a good sign.

“You thought… wait. You thought, after that night, that I knew how you felt, too?”

He nods. “I thought you knew,” he says, confusion still present in his tone. “I thought we both knew. I thought if it was out in the open, the glitch in the drift would be fixed.”

You wipe at your face, trying to breathe. “And instead,” you realize, “we couldn’t even connect, because I was still trying to hide it from you, and then you were hurt. I thought it was broken. I thought we really broke it forever.”

He looks at you in wonder. “That’s why you left,” he breathes, and you know he’s understanding this for the first time. “You thought we made the problem worse.”

It’s your turn to nod. “After we…I mean, I knew if I couldn’t hide it from you before that night, there was no chance I’d be able to hide it after. I kept you out in the first place because I… was afraid. I was afraid for you to see how much I loved you. It seemed… hopeless to keep trying.”

The words lay bloody between you, but his grip on your hands is strong, and you take another breath.

You push on, adding, “I was afraid it would be too much. I was afraid everything would change.”

Which it did, you think. He nods, like he hears this, like he agrees.

He releases you and leans back, blowing out a loud breath. “We’re so fucking stupid,” he says, and you splutter out a laugh.

“We really are.”

“I can’t believe we lost three years over that,” he says.

“I can’t believe you thought it was your fault that I left.”

“I can’t believe you left in the first place.”

This makes you smile, guilty. “That’s fair.”

You push yourself to stand; Seungcheol mirrors you, as if you’re already in the neural handshake, bodies working in tandem.

“Cherry,” he says quietly, stepping closer. “It could never be too much. I love you. I’m crazy about you. I’m only me when I’m with you.”

You remember him, the night you’d slept together, telling you, don’t be afraid. He’d told you, after all, and you’d missed it entirely.

You close the distance between your bodies and kiss him hard. His arms circle your waist immediately, like they were waiting for you. He kisses you back hungrily. His mouth meets yours eagerly, his tongue stroking yours confidently before he shifts his attention to your jaw, your neck, then your mouth again. His hands don’t wander this time - instead he holds you so firmly it almost hurts, like he won’t let you move an inch, won’t let you out of his grasp ever again.

You cradle his face between your hands, let your teeth gently scrape along his bottom lip. “Cheol,” you whisper, then kiss him again. “You’re everything.” It’s what you should have said aloud the night you’d slept with him.

When the kiss breaks, he presses his lips to the top of your head and holds them there, melting around you a little. You give his middle a squeeze, revel in his heartbeat surrounding you like music.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I didn’t just say it.”

“Me too,” you tell him, holding him just a little tighter. “I should never have tried to hide it from you in the first place.”

He kisses your temple, and you hold each other, silently, each grappling with the time you’d wasted apart.

You’re interrupted by a knock. You break apart, puzzled. You’re even more puzzled to see your Marshall at the door, and Seungkwan literally bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

“I’ve heard your drift is working again,” the Marshall says dryly.

You look over your shoulder at Seungcheol, grinning. “Seems like it.”

“There’s a Cat-1 reading in the bay. I was about to alarm for Pretty Savage to drop, but Savage’s team insisted I give you the opportunity first. They can follow as backup. How do you feel?”

Seungcheol is at your side. He looks at you, his face open and raw. “Well?” he asks you. “Are you in, or are you out?”

“I’m in,” you tell him seriously. “I’m with you.”

You thrum with excitement as a tech team helps strap you into the drive-suits, and you can’t help but shoot Seungcheol a wild grin, your happiness alive and unbounded.

You tell mission control - Nainsi, probably, just like the old days - “Ready and aligned.”

Mission Control - definitely Nainsi - responds, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

The artificial voice bounces around you - 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

Around you, the machines flicker busily. Neural handshake strong and holding. Now calibrating…

You’re crying, but you ignore it. You beam through tears, looking sideways at your co-pilot. His eyes dance as he smiles back at you. You want to unstrap yourself to the drivesuit and go kiss his dimples, the dimples you hadn’t seen in years. You resist the urge.

“Ready to drop?” He looks sideways at you, sly.

You scoff at him, your own grin cocky and sure, like you’re twenty again, like nothing had ever been broken between you. “Been ready. Let’s light ‘em up.”

– end

thank you so much for reading!!!!

stay tuned for more fics in this universe! Wylie and Chan will get their own fic written by @sailorrhansol, as will Woozi! I'm also planning a Vernon x Reader in this universe, too! Should be a fun time!!

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peachysunrize · 4 months ago

Text

Victory ⥃ boxer!Aemond Targaryen

Summary: after his match, you find him in the locker room and decide to tend to him yourself. Rest assured, the rush of adrenaline in his blood leads to you rewarding him for winning the game.

Warnings: 18+ mdni! Smut, porn without plot, breeding, no prep, boxer aemond, bruise & wounds & blood, dirty talk, tell me if I’ve missed something. English isn’t my first language<3

Word count: 1.9k

A/n: based on this thot I got yesterday! Anon, if you see this, you made my day with this very very insane ask and I hope this does your thot justice🤭 beta-read by beloved @namelesslosers <3 Reblogs & comments are most appreciated!

You used to hate it at first when you started dating. All the bruises and wounds made your heart clench so hard that you cried for him every day while tending to him.

But now? You have toughened up, and Aemond has gotten better, much better in fact, that he’s now fighting for the semi-final of the season against Cregan Stark.

You remember how he’s always hard on himself when he focuses on a goal he sets, and the past few months have been pretty rough on both of you. However hard to maintain and deal with, you can’t deny how hot it was to have your boyfriend all sweaty and topless throwing punches at his coach, groaning and yelling with each movement.

You watch his platinum hair swing with each punch and dodge in his ponytail, his long limbs harshly knocking his opponent down on the ground. You stand beside Criston, fingers fiddling with the necklace Aemond had given you as a promise of his undying love while he risks his life in the ring.

Cregan, the bulky man he is, launches at Aemond, punching him right in his nose. You can hear the groan of pain that leaves your boyfriend’s lips, but soon, he has cornered Cregan, his fists coming down on his opponent’s face at a fast pace that knocks the poor guy out in less than a minute.

The fight has ended, and your Aemond stands with the judge holding his arm up as the winner, winking at you as the blood drips from his nose and lips, his remaining good eye shining with pride.

He truly makes a sight for sore eyes; silver hair unruly from all the jumping, abs covered in a thin layer of sweat, a very smug smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth. The thought of this man being yours makes you desire him even more.

You clap for him, screaming and rooting with Criston and his family from the audience until they lead him to his locker room to tend to him. You follow them closely, finding Aemond sitting on one of the benches with a fresh towel thrown over his shoulders as he takes a swig from the bottle with an open mouth, water dripping on his chin and chest, creating an even more lewd sight for you to devour.

“Leave us please, thank you,” Aemond says, beckoning for you to get closer as soon as his team empties the room for the two of you.

“Congratulations on your victory, Mr. Targaryen,” you say, stepping towards him slowly, sultry, reaching to caress his angular jawline as he spreads his thighs for you, making room to stand before him.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he replies, dropping his bottle on the floor before his gloves and hands make a home on your thighs, slowly caressing the flesh, nodding when you show him the kit his doctor has laid next to him to tend to his wounds.

He visibly relaxes under your touch, wincing and exhaling sharply as you slowly clean the blood off of him, one hand holding his face straight gently while the other dabs a wet clean cloth with betadine around the open wounds. He is gazing up at you through his long light lashes, his thin lips curled into a smirk as he basks in your warm and welcoming touch.

You press a kiss to his forehead, grimacing when your eyes fall on the bruises on his nose and close to his good eye, shaking your head in disapproval. You know there won’t be a change, but you will tell him silently that you don’t wish to see him hurt, that he should care more about his health rather than these games that put his life in dear danger.

You help him pull his hands out of the boxing gloves, the fabric of the gloves torn and your boyfriend’s knuckles are bloody and bruised as well. Sighing softly, you grab his hand, bringing it to your mouth before pressing gentle kisses over the wounds.

He hums softly, his free hand coming back to rest on your thigh, observing you closely as you lean down again to clean his face, wiping the remaining sweat and blood off his skin. His fingers trace shapes on the curve of your ass, long digits praising you wordlessly on your choice of wearing a dress, making it much easier for him to ogle at you.

You can feel the path his eye takes when he lifts the hem of your dress a little, humming with every inch of your skin that comes into his view. You grip his jaw tighter, forcing him to look up at you.

“I have a pretty face, you should keep your eyes on that and your hands to yourself,” you whisper, leaning down to press a warm kiss on the bruise on his nose, “maybe I’ll take pity on you later when we get home.”

“You do have a pretty face, sweetheart,” he says, staring at you with his hooded eye, hands creeping up to your buttocks, “but I need more than just that. Maybe you can offer me your pretty cunt as a reward? I won the game, I deserve it.”

“You need to stay still and stop talking,” you giggle when he pinches your flesh playfully, pulling you even closer to have a better view of your teats in front of his face, “I won’t give you a reward for not getting yourself killed.”

“Oh, come on—” With a tight grip on your waist, he pulls you down on his lap, forcing you to straddle him with your legs on each side of his thighs. You squeal, arms coming down to wrap themselves around his broad shoulders, “stop playing coy with me. I saw you rubbing these pretty thighs together when I had Stark on the mat, punching him in the guy. I’m more observant than you think.”

“Are you now?” You hum when you feel the subtle bulge in his shorts, “so observant, so strong,” you mumble against his cheek, starting kissing his jaw down to his ear, letting him grind your hips down against his growing desire.

“Hmm, baby, I need you,” he tilts his head, giving you more space to prep his neck with kisses, licking a drop of sweat from his throat to the side of his jaw, sinking your teeth into his skin slightly before he grows impatient and cups your cheek and guides your lips to his, his mouth claiming yours in a deep passionate kiss.

Your tongue moves along his, fighting for dominance which you lose pretty quickly. You reach around his head to pull the hair tie off, letting his silver locks fall freely on his shoulders while he kisses you for a long hot minute, stealing the breath from your lungs.

“Let me take care of you, my victorious man,” you mutter against his lips as the two of you breathe the little air between your faces, your clothed pussy rubbing against the rough fabric of his shorts with each move.

He groans against you, his restrain running thin with each second that you spend on marking his already marked neck, hips snapping up into you desperately. But he is not known for his patience, nor his temperament, so when he grabs your face, his bruised fingers digging into your cheeks, you know what is about to come.

“Be a good girl and take out my cock, I can’t wait any longer for you to be gentle with me,” he growls against your lips, his fingers pushing your panties to the side, “I won’t consider myself a winner if I don’t make you come on my cock at least two times.”

You whimper pathetically, reaching inside his boxer shorts to pull out his already leaking shaft, stroking him to full hardness. He is twitching in your palm, his heat and girth make your mouth water, and the way his fingers caress your inner thighs only urge you to guide him closer to you.

Holding yourself up a bit with your knees on the bench he’s sitting on, your lips meet his in a messy kiss as you sit on his cock slowly, feeling the beat of his heart against yours with how hard adrenaline is pumping through his veins.

His cockhead breaches your wet entrance, making the two of you gasp and whine as your warm walls envelop him slowly with every inch of him you take inside you.

“Good girl, taking me so well,” he says with a raspy chuckle, his large hands covering your ass completely as he helps you sheath his cock deep inside you fully, “prettiest girl with the prettiest cunt, now ride me, baby. Make a winner out of me.”

Your brain is already mush, you nod at him, hands bracing themselves against his shoulders as you roll your hips to his liking, skin melting against the skin with each move and grind.

He reaches to pull down the neckline of your dress, leaning down to litter butterfly kisses all over the top of your breasts while he helps you move up and down his cock quicker.

You know what he wants, what he needs, so with one tug, your teats are free from the confine of your bra, and Aemond latches onto your nipple like a starved baby needing to be fed — although he is anything but a baby with how roughly he bites and sucks on your bud, blowing air on the wet flesh that has you shivering and moaning out his name in pleasure.

Matching your enthusiasm, Aemond plants his feet on the ground, snapping his hips up into yours at a wild pace, fucking your heavenly cunt at a brutal pace that has you biting his shoulders to muffle your cries of euphoria.

His nails dig into your flesh while his bruised and bloodied face searches yours for his tongue to lick its way into your mouth. Aemond keeps up his fast pace, pistoning his cock into you with abandon as he bites your bottom lip and sucks on your tongue.

Your release is swift and smooth and world-shattering — your vision goes white for a second when the tip of his dick jackhammers your sweet spot for a good minute. Gushing around his girth, you moan into his mouth as your wetness drips out of you with each rough thrust.

Aemond somehow fastens his movements, driving his cock up into your soaked pussy quicker, deeper, and rougher if possible, chasing his sweet release. His breaking point is when you whisper in his ear about how sexy he looked when he was beating Cregan to the pulp, how you wish he would manhandle you on his bed and fucking you like you mean nothing to him.

He comes harder than ever with a loud groan of your name, hands clamping hard on your waist that you are sure there’ll be bruises that match his in a few hours. He fills you with his hot cum to the brim, his cock twitching deep within your core as he gives you all he has.

Breathless but not done, he kisses the corner of your mouth and whispers, “What a good fucking girl for me. Now, you need to give me the other half of my prize.”

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen smut #aemond targaryen x reader #modern aemond #modern aemond targaryen #boxer!aemond targaryen #rue:smut #pwp

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netherfeildren · 10 days ago

Text

Busy, Dying. Part 1;

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: In an in-between place called his life, Joel Miller is alone. In search of a cure. In need of a miracle. In want of God.

Can I interest you in a cure for loneliness? She'd asked him in a language without words. Taking it is the easy part. Letting her go is impossible.

-OR-

an a/b/o soulmates AU

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No Outbreak AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Soulmates AU, Infidelity, Cheating, HEA!!!!!, Angst, Fluff & Smut, Mating Bites, Knotting, Heat Sex, Breeding Kink, Group Therapy, Social Experiments, Basically puppy training for unsocialized Alphas, And by God that man will be house trained by the time she’s done with him!, Complicated family dynamics, Discussions of self harm, Depression, Existential Angst, Author returns not with a whimper but with a KNOT, I wrote this in a very unserious state of mind beware

A/N: Gray November, I've been down since July - but we're so back, baby. I’ve missed this so bad. I’ve missed you all, I won’t drone on and on. I hope you enjoy, and please talk to me in the comments. Update me on what I’ve missed, let me know how you’ve been and what’s happening in your life.

A great heartfelt thank you to all of my wonderful friends who so supportively cheered me on while I struggled to write this. Sincerely the best people I know.

Love you all madly.

Word Count: 6.5K

Read on AO3

Part 1;

The old linoleum tiles are the most peculiar shade of puce, and Joel has realized that there is someone sitting at the back of the room who smells… strange.

More brown than purple—an ugly color. There’s something about it that fascinates him.

The woman that is currently speaking tells of her husband; it’s the only tale she has to tell. She’s been doing it for weeks, and they all know it well by now. Older, omega, the woman, and at the latter and less comely stage of life. Most of them here can say the same. They usually give their names, those that get up to share—although it’s never a requirement when you attend, it is highly encouraged—the sharing, he means—but he never pays much mind to them—the names, that is. That’s not what he’s here for after all—to make friends. Although, he does see how that’d be the initial assumption.

Joel Miller is here for something more specific.

Six weeks he’s been showing up to these things now, and he’s yet to take a turn. He tells himself he’s working up to it.

What that specific thing is…he hasn’t quite figured out. He’s listening for it, though, and intently, even if he does skip over the names. It’s the details of what they’re telling that matter to him. The hows and intricate whys of what it is that brought them here today.

Her youth had been spent on a drunk, the woman is saying—her husband—and he’d been cruel to her in those days when there was still currency to spend in the form of her vitality. Joel nods at the puce—yes, he thinks, that’s usually the way of it. But later, there’s more to the story she reminds her audience, he drank himself into a fit, and had never been right since. The cruelty had been taken away from the marriage after that, and she’d been put in charge.

“But I wonder,” she says, “If sometimes I don’t miss it, the way he’d been,” —if the reason she was here now, with all of the rest of them that were just like her in their own unique ways, was that she’d been left lonely after her cruel husband had been exchanged for a sick one.

Joel nods again and wonders what sort of face the woman wears as she confesses but doesn’t bother to check. No matter, he knows they’re the same. If not in designation, then in heart.

It’s easy, that thing, he does it too, to wish for the bad. To want to hold on to it, the thing that hurts. Addictive, even, in some cases. Missing it is easy.

It’s why he’s here.

And it’s what they promise you. In their flyers and pamphlets, when they stand on the corners of streets talking people up wearing that look in their eye and that slouch in their step, when they smell it on you—or in the lack there of—a mate or a purpose.

Welcome to our meeting. We’re here to find the cure for loneliness.

That’s what they promise you when you come here.

It’d been that word: loneliness, actually, that had caught him. L-O-N-E-liness. There was something attractive about it to him. Not a label but a state.

You see, it was like this: Joel had seen a therapist once, several years ago, against his will and at the behest of another, who’d said all the wrong things in all the wrong ways.

“You sound depressed, Joel,” the therapist had told him.

He’d worn horn rimmed glasses and had a shiny bald head he could see the reflection of the overhead lights in. And worse—the non-scent of a beta which told him they’d never understand each other in the ways Joel longed to be understood. He’d—not hated him, necessarily—but felt an immense apathy for the man; more so than the regular apathy he felt for most things in his life.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Very, very sad,” was the official diagnosis.

Joel hadn’t liked the sound of the word. The label. He did not like that a word so succinct could be ascribed to him and all that had happened to him in his life. There was no word for it. It just was.

But there was something different about a state of aloneness, which if attributed to himself, he could accept. He had been left alone, in ways. It was a tangible thing he could look around a room inside of himself and recognize.

They’re meetings, is what this place is—encounter groups this coalition offers where lonely demi humans can come to congregate, discuss their aloneness, what had led them to such a state; their lack of attachments, connections, mates—alpha, omega. Held in the basement of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Newbury street, right between his shop and house, although they never talk about religion which he likes because he doesn’t believe in religion.

God is still under review.

He wonders if the Catholics wouldn’t have them.

Sitting forward in his seat, the metal folding chair that always leaves his back aching something fierce, he presses his elbows into his knees to distract with alternative pressure. Focusing on his fingers woven together between his spread legs, he tries to pay attention to the man who’s stood up to speak now. Older than himself, late sixties, no children, no family, no nothin’; he’d run them all off.

But Joel is distracted.

The smell is stronger now. Stranger too. Something full bodied, but metallic like rust, astringent bleach, built in a way that forces saliva to pool heavy between his suddenly aching gums. A mask that sits atop something of a much different chemical architecture—that’s the strange part.

Or—no. The back of his neck itches, and Joel lifts a palm to cup his nape, quell the sting, feel the tender mark. No. The strange part is not the illusion of the smell. What it is, actually, is that he’s fairly certain what he’s smelling is someone else's blockers. Something which he’s positive he’s never consciously noticed on another person in the thirty plus years since he’d presented as an alpha.

He has, suddenly, the quite intense urge to peek over his shoulder, certain that he’ll be caught smelling things he has no business smelling. That there will be someone just there, breathing down the nape of his neck with accusation on their tongue—boo!

Silly. But he’d known today would not be a good day.

It’d started off wrong. The milk had gone sour overnight, the check engine light had come on in his truck, all his socks were suddenly mismatched with not a single pair to be found, and his usual route to work had been waylaid by some freak accident. A tree split in half, one side into a house, the other into the road. Not a sign of lightning in the sky all night long.

Perhaps he might be compelled to believe in God after all.

Joel does not like it when things are out of order or out of the ordinary. His life was organized in a way that never caused him strife or excess. And it was not that he was stuck in his ways, only that he enjoyed his routine and disliked when things were not as they should be. And this—whatever it is he’s smelling, whoever—is not as it should be.

The older gentleman, an Alpha too, is still speaking. He had a daughter, has, who no longer speaks to him. Won’t even take his money. He’d had a long career in government that’d filled him with greed and paranoia and a radical view of life that refused to align with the way young people saw the world now. Perhaps he’d tried to change at certain times, but he was old and set in his ways. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to change as badly as he should have when he still had the chance to. Happily stuck in the past. His wife had died, and his daughter had gone away from him. Too tired of his mediocrity as a father to give him another chance.

The man sounds like he feels sorry for himself. Like he thinks himself the victim, and this one, Joel does look up at. He looks old and worn down, heavy beer pouch and thinning hair and sagging jowls. A sad and lonely man. Joel wonders if that’s how he looks to the other people in this room, as well.

“No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.” Joel blinks, looks at him more closely, tries very hard to find similarities between themselves. But no—not quite right, not the thing he’s looking for. Their plight is different. This man is not alone, he’s got his weakness to keep him company.

The one thing Joel had fought like hell to keep out of his repertoire of issues. He’d run from even the possibility of it as soon as she was dead, left Texas straight for the Northeast and from thereafter, everything he’d done, he’d done with a staunchness of character. If at the end of it, that staunchness was made up of apathy or numbness or dissociative fury, well, then at least he wasn’t still that man who’d been too weak to save his daughter.

That counted very much in Joel’s book.

An overabundance of cold numbness, little anger, everything a static haze—an abstinent winter. That was his whole life. But then, look at him now, he was here, wasn’t he? He’d taken that brochure handed to him on that last warm Tuesday weeks ago as he’d headed back to the shop from lunch.

Hello, sir. Could I interest you in a cure for loneliness? The young omega had said.

It’d started like anything—an experiment or a desperate ploy. The monotony had been steady going the past few years, getting older, colder. He’d grown hard and solitary around his wound, loneliness spread like a fungus, and he’d longed for any sort of change.

“A cure…how?” The terrible shrink had come to mind.

“Oh, nothing to fret over.” The young man had a nice smile, Joel remembers. Kind and straight toothed. Honest in the way that a stranger knocking on your door to sell you a Bible seems honest. “We call it an encounter group. People come, share, tell the tales of their designation and their lives. In the end, the result is different for different people. Some move on to a second step if they need more. Others find what they’re looking for just through the connection of sharing. But no matter the result, you’ll see, you’ll be cured. Promise.” He’d winked, smile deepening, giving him an appreciative once over at the end of his spiel. Joel had blinked back, surprised, confused, but curiosity peaked enough he’d obsessed over it for three short days before he’d found himself stepping into the molted incense smell of the belly of a church so dimly lit he was sure not even God peaked in this sad space any longer.

“It’s that easy?” Joel had asked, childlike in his throat-strangled hope.

“That easy.”

It seemed the smile had been honest enough to sell him the Bible.

The scent insists upon itself as the older gentleman finishes up, and Joel’s nose tickles with whatever it is it’s whispering at him. He wants to get up and walk out, run away, but suddenly his gut is tight and hot, and he isn’t sure he can actually stand up without disgracing himself in front of all these people. A wash of agonized heat moves through him, confused at what’s suddenly happening to his body.

“We have a newcomer today sharing for the first time,” Maria, the woman who leads the group, says at the front of the room. “Everyone give her a warm welcome, it’s her first day and already she’s brave enough to jump on up here.”

There’s the shuffling of bodies in their seats, a cleared throat, the man sitting behind Joel breathes so loudly he thinks he’s gotta have some sort of medical condition, the puce turns more hideous by the second, and his own heart is beating so hard in his ears the rush of blood is dizzying. He feels each thump of the thing against his breast bone in some sick imitation of a fist begging to be let out.

The new voice begins as nothing but a murmur.

An introduction—he misses the name. His breathing goes shallow, he’d tip over in his seat if he didn’t have both boots planted firmly against the puce. The voice gains strength and with it, Joel wishes he’d been paying attention from the start. He didn’t get to hear her name.

It’s a girl.

She’d run away from home in the spring of her sixteenth year to join the opera, she tells them. Had come upon the city in roaring spring and thought the rest of her life would be exactly like that, pure novelty in bloom, nothing like what she’d left behind. And was deeply disappointed when the reality was nothing such.

And Joel hears it, that disappointment in her voice at what she’d not been able to find after searching for it so religiously. This is what makes him look up at her. This, unlike all the others, he thinks he can relate to—just by the sound of her voice. The search for a thing lost which can never again be found. The fruitlessness of it all.

At that first vulnerable, terrified glance, she’s already staring at him, eyes catching like hooks.

He blinks once, twice—color—is sure he can hear the movement of his eyelashes passing through the air, the stick of his lids meeting—color—bright. This is it.

That wash of heat turns into a blaze, every single bead of sweat blooming on his brow is a tell evaporating into the ether. This is what he’d sensed from the start of the evening. Maybe even from the moment he’d seen that split maple.

“My mother always said I needed to be stronger, bolder, not so sensitive.” She looks away from him now. “I grew up in an angry house where you had to fight tooth and nail not to be overrun. Because of this, I left it at a very young age, and it was the greatest fight I could muster, abandoning that house of anger. I found myself something to bring me what I thought would be joy, a job and a city, and for a time, it was enough. But starting your lonely life so young…it’s hard.” After a pause of breath, “It’s been hard.”

“And it’s made me never want to have to—exert myself,” she says, searching for the right words, smiling when she finds them, and Joel has the urgency to smile back. “Now, I never want to have to be strong. I never want to have to try. I want to only be the way that I am. If that’s weak or sensitive or whatever it might be at any given moment, I don’t care. I don’t want to have to fight. I never want to be in an angry house again. I want someone who’ll see this in me and understand and never make me work for it, that they would give it to me willingly, easily, without me having to ask. Do you understand?” She looks about the room, and he hopes her eyes will land on him again, and even though they don’t, he feels she’s speaking directly to him. He nods, the hook of her temptation cast beneath his chin. “This is a fantasy. And it makes for a lonely existence. This idea of how I need it to be for it to be right—love.” She looks down at her hands folded atop the podium where they go to stand at the front of the group and share, and he wills her gaze to find him amidst the crowd again. “It’s so difficult. And this might seem very bad to you, weak willed, but it’s not. It’s only very honest. Which can never be a bad way to be.” That’s why she’s here, she tells them.

Finally, she looks back at him, and it’s that loneliness of two people amidst a crowd, facing one another, knowing themselves mirrored against the other and yet still disparate. There’s something indecent about the way she looks at him in front of all these people, the way he, in turn, looks back. A little bit like finding your own face on a stranger's body in a crowded room. Color rises to his face, and she gives him that same elusive smile from before.

He’s the one to look away this time.

As the crowd disperses for coffee and pastries after the last of the speakers, he searches for her. He needs to ask her name, feels as if he’s some blighted creature without it, swears he’ll never forgo attention during a meeting again if he can fish it out of her.

He finds her at the dessert table, Maria at her side and a hand at her shoulder. Something of a thank you is being imparted between the two women. The girl is saying she’s grateful for the welcome, grateful that they’d found each other.

Joel has things to be grateful to Maria for, too. His brother, mainly. It’d been pure chance that Joel had met her here, that she knew Tommy also. She’d met his brother on a summer trek to Wyoming where they’d become friends and had kept in touch afterwards. The woman has a thing about her that ingratiates people by sheer force of will. Perhaps it’s that she’s an alpha, too. Perhaps it’s just the charisma and wide smile. The fact that she has a countenance that takes no shit from anyone, that makes demands of a person whether they’ve got any give or not. But whatever the case, they’d realize their connection through Tommy, and she kept Joel updated on his brother whom he’d not spoken with in many years.

Watching the two women stand together and share that easy thanks that Joel so urgently owes, and yet which he cannot voice, he feels, suddenly, so angry. So awkward. So humiliatingly inexperienced. So unable to grapple with the pain of human contact, the fascination of it, the humiliating necessity.

That decade old anchor weighing him in place and the guilt of even thinking of it as such.

I feel decrepitly alone and odd, he thinks. And how strange, no? He was a normal man. He has a normal job. He lives in a normal house. Unexceptional in every sense. Everything in his life had been ordinary up until that one great tragedy. And then, as if none of the before had ever existed, it was as if everything afterwards was one great landslide of wrongness. The filth of it slinging mud all over his life so that nothing had ever been right after her.

So that now he cannot even approach this girl whose name he needs to know, and Maria, to whom he owes the last surviving connection to his brother.

As Maria turns to go, she gives him an encouraging nod, sending him into an agony of shyness. She’d sensed him hovering.

The girl remains at the dessert table, perusing the pastries. He can see her fingertips dancing over the golden, sugared confections, before she settles on a plain, glazed donut. He watches the bend of her elbow, bringing it to her mouth and thirty seconds later, the empty hand reaching for a napkin. He can’t help the huff of laughter it draws from him.

Watching the unknown creature with her back turned, he peers down the length of himself. Wood stain marred t-shirt, old work jeans and scuffed boots, he’d come straight from the shop. Looking back at her, she seems perfectly packaged and pristine. The two of them, different as chalk and cheese. He tells himself he shouldn’t do it, turn around and go, leave her alone, as he steps up beside her at the table.

Immediately, there’s the heat of her skin, the smell of her shampoo, and he realizes, and it’s silly because it should’ve been obvious from the get go, she’s an omega. The epiphany, not that she is one, but that he’d been too stupid and oblivious to notice, leaves him feeling vulnerable and angry.

Any sort of hello that’d been coming alive on his tongue immediately dies. And he’s about to make a run for it once again when she speaks up from beside him, “Would you like a donut?” Her small fingers are dancing over the pastries, searching once again. “I haven’t had one yet,” she lies, “I can’t decide which looks best.”

The dancing hand pauses over a golden brown puff pastry, seemingly coming to a decision, when she turns to look up at him. The scent of her isn’t just shampoo, not just the blockers he’d shockingly picked up on before, sharp, burning his nose. It’s her skin now, too. The dry sweat from hustling under her coat to make it to her first meeting on time salted along her limbs. Hot, sweet almonds. The shocking vermillion of the morning’s split maple comes to mind. He can smell her.

“A puff pastry?” She presses, quizzical crook to her brow at his silence and glower. “I think you really need something sweet. It’ll make you feel better.”

He wants to agree, to say he also thinks he needs something sweet. All he can manage is a short grunt because she smells…indescribable. Honeyed musk, something heady, like she herself had just got done baking, straight out of the oven and full of sugar into his waiting mouth.

That earlier anger, it kicks up a notch. Why isn’t he fucking saying anything?

She shrugs, as she lifts the puff pastry to her mouth he finally manages sound.

“You stink.”

He doesn’t know when he became such a liar.

A pause, mouth open, straight, white teeth ready to bite into the fluffy sweet bread. He can see her small, pink tongue, and it makes him go a little woozy.

He might be losing his mind.

She’s got elegant eyebrows that shoot straight up her smooth forehead. The look of her skin is glorious. “Excuse me?”

Now, there seem to be too many words spilling out of his mouth. “You need better meds or somethin’. Need to sort your shit out. Can’t go gallivanting about the world smellin’ like that.” Oh god, shut up.

“Excuse me!” She takes a huge bite of the pastry. “I do not gallivant,” she shoots back, mouth full of sugar and Joel goes hot everywhere. “What is wrong with you?” she demands, the pursing of a prim little mouth as she chews, eyeing him maliciously.

He hasn’t the damndest clue.

She is not wary of him in the slightest, which in turn tells him he needs to be wary of her.

Another large bite, inexplicably she extends her free hand towards him—potentially going into shock and entirely out of his depth when he takes it, the vulnerability of tendon and muscle soft beneath his strength—offering him a firm shake. She gives him her name.

In that moment, she has a look about her that tells him she’ll bite back if he isn’t careful, even if she hurts herself in the process.

And now he knows you.

“We might as well acquaint ourselves if you’re going to insult me. Don’t you think?” Peering up at him, he’s tall, well over six feet, and broad shouldered. Older, distinguished, but in a rough way, hewn oak, gray. “Are you typically this rude? Or is this a special occasion?”

Incredibly handsome.

“I’m being serious.”

“I do not stink. No one has ever said that to me, and my blockers are quality. It must be a you problem.” The puff pastry really is very good. And this man really is very handsome. Coming here today was a good idea.

One of the girls from the theater had suggested it, handing you a pamphlet with Looking for the Cure for Loneliness? emblazoned across the top, and even though she’d done it kindly, any other person would’ve taken the implication as an insult. Hey girl! No offense, but we all in the company think you’re super weird and have you heard about this support group for losers? Kind of like Omegas Anonymous!

Those hadn’t been her exact words, and you hadn’t taken offense. After the initial agony of embarrassment, you’d warmed to the idea. You’d heard of groups like these before. Congregations of demi humans where one could come to find community or connection. Be it socializing or support for people struggling with their designations and all that they implied, they served their purpose. And anyways, you weren’t in a position to be nitpicky.

It’s true, you’re alone.

So alone, in fact, that even the people around you could tell. Strangers, coworkers, your roommate and her girlfriend. Like some noxious cloud of loneliness following you around virtue signaling the desperate need for love and companionship and understanding you’re so in need of.

You increasingly saw yourself as a dancer on her toes, trembling delicately all over, vying desperately to survive to the end of the song. A monster with too many heads. A Cerberus of the richest caliber.

Two or three would’ve been acceptable—heads—but you'd long surpassed that and moved on to something unrecognizable and unpleasant. Desperately in need of a solution.

“Maybe you’re the one that stinks. Maybe it’s your upper lip.” And voila, the monster makes her debut.

“My—” The rude alpha, obvious, that one, lets out a choked sound, a deeper wash of color immediately flooding his cheeks. You dip your head sideways, appraising him as you polish off your second pastry. He has pretty bone structure, masculine, and after he’s done choking and spluttering, he can’t help but laugh a little bit. You see it.

Beneath a mouth that looks forbidding, perhaps even a little cruel, you can sense that he is not an unkind man.

Yet you’re not so green that you can’t recognize the gnawing hunger of loneliness in others. There’s always a reason people find themselves in places like these. His face, edged with the weariness of age, makes this obvious. He has good reason for subjecting himself to this.

Reaching for the lovely eclair you’d been deciding between earlier, you take a large bite of it. Almond cream and a thick layer of icing on top, humming happily as you chew while he stares at you like the three headed dog.

You hold the dessert out towards him, offering. Palm up, he shakes his head no, slightly disgusted look on his face.

“So. You come here often?”

He blinks. “Really?” Patronizing look on his face now.

“Why not? I am actually interested to know if this is worth my time.”

He rolls his eyes. Oh, he’s fun. “Yes, I come here often. Every Friday, for the past two months just about.”

“And you like it?”

“Is this the sort of place one likes?”

“Oh, come on. You never know what you might find.” He watches your mouth as you finish the eclair, swallowing hard. “Anyways, I think the world is kind of over out there. Don’t you? Might as well make the best of it in here.”

Thumb pressed against the edge of the table, he looks down, suddenly awash with shyness once again. A shy alpha, who’d of thought.

“What did you used to do?” He asks, motioning at the crowded room full of chatting alphas and omegas. You wonder how many of them will go home together for a fuck after this.

“When?” You ask, sure he means in lieu of this group, if you’d ever had another form of demi human community.

“Before this.”

“Before this? Nothing.” Smiling at him, certain he isn’t picking up on your teasing.

“Nothing?”

“Nope. I’ve always been here.”

“But— Don’t you…I thought...” He’s cute, shaking his head like you’re just too confusing to sustain. “You sing, right?” He pivots.

“Sing? Me? Whatever made you think such a thing?” The sly look on your face goes completely over his head and slides to the rest of the sweets. If he wasn’t watching, you’d have another.

“You said. You said you’re in the opera,” he gruffs back, looking visibly aggravated now.

Such fun.

“I’m a supernumerary,” you concede as you turn, making your way to an old relic of a pew along the far wall, tragically abandoning the desserts.

He follows as you go, sitting a respectful distance beside you.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“We’re the actors that fill the stage at the opera.”

“No singing?”

You shake your head, flirting with him. “I’m a wench, I’m a courtesan,” You bat your lashes, fingertips pressed coquettishly beneath your chin, “Part of a harem. I’m every woman you’ve never known. It depends on the opera.”

“I’ve never heard of that before.”

“I started as a stagehand when I first got to Boston. Worked my way up.”

“How’s it work? Lines or somethin’?”

“No lines. No anything. I’m a background actor—an extra, basically. If anything, I’m given some simple choreography direction, laugh, sigh, show fear, horror, shock. Whatever. I’m playing pretend without actually having to do anything.”

“No working for it.”

Your smile melts to blandness. So he’d been listening, then.

“Did you want to sing?”

“No. I wanted to be a supernumerary.”

“Strange. I’ve never heard of that,” he repeats.

“You did say, yes.” Now, the smile turns auspicious. Everyone’s here for something. “What do you do?” Perhaps this is it for him.

You eye the rest of the congregation, at the far exit, there’s a large alpha helping an omega into his coat.

“Got a shop, furniture, woodworking and such.”

“You make things?” He nods. “Ah, a man of creation.”

Sitting back to take him in, he’s got the beginning insinuations of silver speckling the dark hair at his temples, a well groomed beard, and large, intimidating hands.

His small huff of laughter is bashful, tinged with something disappointed. “No, nothin’ that grand.” And he’s got an accent heavy at the ends of his words, not Bostonian. Southern.

“But you know, I wanted to say…”

“Yes?” You press when he loses his courage, leaning towards him, inhaling deeply.

“Well, that I know what you meant earlier. Sometimes I can be the angry house.”

You blink once. Sit back. “I see.”

“It’s hard work. I have to try every day at it.”

Hard work being the house, or not? Two opposite sides of the same coin.

“How do you stop yourself?” You cast a line, fishing for his character.

“Don’t know. Keep myself cold, I think.”

“That’s no way to be.”

“No. It’s not.” He sounds amused. You want to bite him.

Everyone’s here for a reason.

“Ah, well. Perhaps that’s what’s brought you here then,” you say, twisting the toe of your sneaker against a scuff on the old hardwood, leaning forward on your palms wrapped around the edge of the pew.

“Maybe,” he says, but a sort of pained, exasperated sound follows it. Your hung head turns to peer at the handsome face, and he’s already looking at you.

There’s something animal afoot. Perhaps in terms of designation, sure, of course, like the rest of the alphas and omegas here. Your designations weigh heavily in the air. But also intrinsic to your two personalities. You feel you know him. That the two of you might have the same sorts of problems, desires. And as you stare at him, you think you may be equally measuring each other’s character, finding that similarity in one another.

His eyes move quickly between yours, over your face, and you can tell that prolonged eye contact isn’t his norm.

He has the most surprising set of bright hazel eyes like river stones.

Suddenly, you feel desperate to pull out a flicker of sexuality in the man, hear it in his voice. Sure, that with him, the experience would be entirely different, exhilarating. Perhaps a challenge. He seems to be more quiet and more patient than any other man you’d ever come across, but also more stern—taking in that soft mouth held so firmly. Far more remote too, by the far away look in his gaze. You want to see how he could be moved and what the sight of it would look like.

“Maybe not,” he finally continues. “I’m looking for something, I think.”

“Something like what?”

“Someone like me.”

“An alpha?”

“No,” he looks away, cringing. The word out loud seems a shock to him. “Did you listen to the woman at the start—missing the bad thing? I struggle…with that. Holding on, not letting go even when I know I should.”

You’re at an age now which sometimes makes it hard to realize or accept that what you’re living is your life. That it’s been time to grow up. That you have to remember to move forward when it’s your turn in line.

Which is to say, that you understand him—the difficulties of knowing when to hold on and when to give up.

“Sometimes you hurt yourself because you don’t have anything else to do. Sometimes, because the alternative is much worse.”

“Holding on ‘cause there’s nothing else to do?”

“Sure. Or you’re used to it.” You’ll be gentle with him, you decide. He’s in need of gentle handling despite the stern face; not a puzzle so arbitrarily solved. And those eyes are still so bright, he doesn’t seem like he needs any more hardship.

“Don’t know why I’m tellin’ you this,” he says, accent heavy.

“Well you did come here for a reason. Didn’t you?” Discreetly, you slide closer to his side, but he doesn’t notice. Apparently lost in the realization that perhaps this was what he’d come here for, to talk to someone, to have someone listen and relate. You’re almost positive he’s never gotten up to share with the group before in all his time coming to the meetings; doesn’t look like the type.

“I came here because I’m going to take better care of myself,” you tell him. “I’m going to try harder.”

“Harder at what?” He blinks as if attempting to come out of a dream.

“Everything. I don’t want to end up like my parents; drunk, angry, alone. I’m scared of it. I’ve avoided at least two of them.”

“I’m afraid of getting older,” the dream moves in his eyes. “That I’ll forget,” he says, but you don’t ask what.

All of a sudden, he seems very real. The swells of grief and loneliness moving through him so similarly, so close to the surface.

Springing up, you turn to face him and he follows to stand too. You can hear the crack of his knees unfolding, and when he lifts his left palm to stifle a gruff cough, the band of gold around his finger is paralyzing.

All of a sudden, he’d seemed like what you’d been looking for here too. There’s laughter coming from the church rafters.

“You’re a widower?” He wants to forget, he’d said he wants to let go.

Hadn’t he?

But instead, “What? No.” You stare pointedly at the ring, and he looks down at it also. “No,” he repeats.

“So’re you looking for a fuck, or what?” You try and hold back the bite it comes with, but you can’t.

“No. No. That’s not what I’m looking for.”

You don’t understand, impaired by your youth, you forget you’d chosen to be gentle with him. “Maybe it’s what you need,” you tell him, turning towards the exit before you can watch him cringe.

He follows at your heels, grabbing his coat from the hook by the doors before he’s stepping out after you into the fall blister. It’s cold and wet and glorious out.

“Don’t you have a coat?” He demands.

“Nope.” You start walking towards Arlington Street and the park.

“Did you walk here? It’s freezing out.”

“I did,” you turn back towards him, still moving, and he starts to follow.

“From where?”

“Downtown.”

“Where?” He scowls at your uncooperation, the married man. Alpha. The truth was that he’d smelt strange to you too. Like no one ever had before. As glorious and shocking as the cold. Like if snow had a scent. Disappointment churns in your gut alongside the excitement at the sight of him stalking after you.

“I don’t think you know it.” Your backward walk is interrupted as a hurrying stranger bumps into you, sending you staggering. Watch it, the Boston snark spits. The alpha turns to scowl, heavy boot forward like he’s half a mind to follow after the person you’ve just inadvertently assaulted.

And it occurs to you, “You didn’t tell me your name.” How silly of you. You’d been so distracted you’d forgotten to ask, and what if you never see him again after this? What if you can’t muster the courage to come back again next week? What if he can’t?

“It’s Joel.”

You think it sounds right.

“I might—know it.” Where you’re headed to. You smile at the dog with a bone. The disappointment pulses. “Is it far?” He presses. You shrug, looking over your shoulder. You’re going to lose yourself in the garden for a few hours, forget about him. “Why don’t you drive?”

“I like to walk,” you tell him, turning back.

He looks at you like he doesn’t like the things you say much less the way you say them much less the way you’re grinning at him. Perhaps he can see the disappointment and is disturbed by the sight of it, but the possibility seems too altruistic.

“You should try it sometime, Joel. You might like it too.”

His huge body seems to be shivering in the cold.

“I think…” The look on his face has turned suspicious now. He takes a step towards you. “You’re very strange. And you’re very young. I don’t think we should be friends.”

Your heart gives a demanding thump. “We’re not going to be friends.” When you’d first spotted him in the crowd, the strangest feeling had come over you. A tug behind your belly button, a scalding heat at the back of your neck, at your wrists. Perhaps it’s merely imagination, the look of disappointment you think you see on his face right before you turn away from him to continue on walking. “And I’m not that young anymore.”

You’d known today was going to be a good day. Extra cinnamon in your latte, a late start to your morning, warm in bed, no rain in the sky despite the cloud cover. And your director, late for rehearsals after some freak accident had befallen the roof of his house.

“That’s what all young people say.”

Part 2;

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moonlight-records · 27 days ago

Text

Rich Boys Don't Have Hearts I LN4 (Pt. II)

pairing: Jock!Lando Norris x Nerd!Reader

summary: Formula Ivy Academy, or FIA for short, is the most renowned private in the world who takes such a select few. Usually those from wealth with status and secrets and so much to lose. Yet, you are selected to join the FIA on a full scholarship. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain scares a lot students, especially their star athlete who will do anything to protect those he cares about. Though, he didn't expect you to have as much of a...bite to you for a little nobody.

warning: jealous!lando. also possessive lando again, ig. bestie!charles, MESSY!FRANCO!!! god it becomes SO messy!!! franco is so smooth too. mention of make out. mention of eating out & fingering (f receiving). um idk after, kinda dying like ferrari's strategy by not having it beta read

fc: none!

a/n: since everyone is asking!!! here’s a new part!!! also once again, i opened a ko-fi! feel free to show extra love 💕

wc: 4.5K

part 1 | current

“Has Lando’s attitude gotten any better since last week?”

“No.”

“Ha! Well, surely he’s been a bit better at practices, no?”

“That, he has. I think it’s because Max snapped at him and the coach backed Max up. Though he still gives me dirty glares during practice when he’s not speaking to me.” Charles shrugs, “though I am unbothered. I wasn’t the one who tried to bribe someone out of this school for people who don’t actually truly like me. Still baffles me that he did that considering how half the school talks poorly about him behind his back. Some are not as subtle as others.”

“Well, everyone has their reasons. Maybe he was more so worried about his friends. Max, Oscar, you—”

“I don't know if I would qualify as a friend anymore.”

“I would consider you a friend if I was Lando,” you admit with a small smile, “friends fight. That’s just the nature of any relationship, romantic or not. I bet he’ll let it go and muster up some apology for being such a dick to you.”

“And you.”

You let out a bitter laugh, “Lando apologize to me? My dear friend, are you sure you don’t smoke anything? Because that sounds like straight delusion. Did you find the delusion at the store? If so, did you get extra because I would love some.” You remark.

“Y/N. I’m serious here.”

“So am I, Charlie. Lando is never going to apologize to me for the shit he tried to pull on me last week.” You lean forward in your seat while making a face at the thought of Lando actually apologizing to you, “Him apologizing means that he was wrong and him admitting that he’s wrong is like hell freezing over or God admitting he was wrong to cast Lucifer out of heaven or like a guy actually knowing where the clit is or—”

“Y/N!” Charles almost shrieks before shuffling closer and murmuring, “you cannot just say things like that! You know how they are about language—”

“Oh bite me.” You groan softly while looking at Charles unimpressed, “The FIA only made that rule because Max was stupid enough to curse at his advisor. Though Marko totally deserved it, if you ask me. Besides.” You take a chance to look on either side of you before looking back at Charles, “we’re the only two here so I doubt anybody heard me. If they did, I think a lot of the girls would be agreeing with my statement and if it was faculty, I will happily take my community service hours because I am not apologizing for telling the truth.” You lean back in your seat with a shrug.

You watch Charles open and close his mouth as he tries to think of something to say and him growing increasingly frustrated because he really had nothing to say besides ‘you’re right, y/n’. You giggle seeing Charles huff and lean back in his chair, grumbling that “ you have some fair points.” You just nod before looking back down at all your notebook. You take a moment before tipping your laptop screen back as you go back to rewriting your notes as silence falls over you and Charles.

“I’ll be right back.” You tear your gaze away from your laptop looking at Charles who is gently pushing his books and laptop back onto the table. “I promised Arthur I would help him with piano and I have to meet him in ten minutes. I’ll be back soon,” Charles is rapidly telling you as he grabs his coat, hastily walking away. You stare, mouth a bit open before just accepting your fate and turning back around. Whatever, it’s fine.

You start finding your groove again as you see just a flash of color across from you. Still, you didn’t even acknowledge the other as you continued to take these notes down. You take a few more minutes to get through the section and let out a sigh of relief. That was one out of four, anyway. Leaning back, you rub your eyes and decide you can take a five minute break. Dropping your hands, you expect to see Charles sitting across from you once again. Instead, someone else sat in Charles' seat.

The universe just loves to test your patience. It has barely been a week since the incident with Lando that you had swore you were done. No more curly hair, greenish eyes, stupid contagious smile, friendly heartthrobs in your life. It was so oddly specific that you were certain the universe would listen but instead the universe decided to test you if you were really done since you now have curly hair, hazel green eyes, stupidly friendly and contagious smile sitting right across from you who was watching you with a gentle smile.

“Franco?”

“Y/N. There you are.” Franco leans forward and puts his elbows on the table, “Leave it to you to find the coolest hidden spot in the library.” He leans over to look at your laptop and then sits back down. “Are you rewriting notes? Gross. I am very sure you have an uh…” he pauses, “photographic memory. That is the word. You already know the things, please put the notes down and have social interactions?”

“Oh why thank you for thinking I have a photographic memory but I do in fact study a lot.” You giggle and feel a blush creep onto your face at the compliment. “I am having social interaction. Am I not talking to you?” You raise a brow at him smiling. “I can talk to you while rewriting my notes, you know.”

“Yes but I do not want you to do that but that means I only have half your attention,” Franco complains as he gently closes your laptop screen shut and grabs your hands. You look at Franco and feel your face turn as red as the school’s hoodie while looking at the other, “and that just will not do.” Franco brings your hand to cup his cheek while looking at you, “you’re always taking notes and talking. I want one hundred percent of your time. Just this once, please?”

You were not the universe’s strongest warrior. The way that Franco looked at you with those wide eyes and small pout. You had found yourself letting your resolve melt quickly as you gently shut your laptop, elbow on the table while resting your cheek against your palm. “Yeah,” you find yourself saying while smiling dreamily at your fellow classmate, “I can do that.”

“Wonderful!” Franco praises as he leans back slightly. “Now, where were we last time we talked?” Franco thinks trying to recall, “I think we were talking about Hamilton—”

“And Toto,” you add on with a grin.

“Right, right,” Franco nods while glancing around before leaning in slightly. “I’m going fucking insane. They have Hamilton coming in as the guest designer for the fashion students this year and they moved the fashion kids into the arts building after that fire. Which means,” Franco grumbles, “I have the fortunate bad luck of seeing Lewis four times a week almost all day.”

“Why is that bad? He’s like your biggest celebrity crush.”

“That’s the thing!” Franco hisses, “He’s a celebrity crush. A crush that was never to see my existence or anything. Now instead of kilometers separating us, it’s just one floor! You think a man that is perfect should be looking at someone like me?” Franco looks at you, horrified, “Y/N. Please. I’ve never been so stressed over my looks before going to class. I don’t know how much longer my fragile heart can take seeing Lewis in all his glorious outfits with all those lovely rings…and tattoos…and stay sane.” Franco drops his head in defeat before looking back up at you. “Well, what about you? How’s your celebrity crush on Toto?”

You sigh and look away defeated. “Sadly, he is no longer a celebrity crush. He’s…” You cover your mouth as you take a moment. You close your eyes before taking a deep breath in and out. “Toto Wolff is…off the roster,” you whisper dramatically while looking at Franco. Franco gasps loudly, covering his mouth.

“What?! Say it ain’t so! Toto Wolff has been on the roster since the day we created the rosters,” Franco stares in disbelief, “What happened? What did he do that was so…dirty that you had to take him off the roster completely.

You stare at Franco before looking away, shaking your head slightly. “He did the one thing that I was terrified of. The only thing that would have me kick a man such as Toto Wolff off the damn roster…he became a full time professor here.” You finally admit, covering your mouth again in disbelief that your worst nightmare came true. You hear Franco gasp again and you nod, “I know. It’s such a sad day. We lost one of our strongest.”

“Here lies Toto Wolff. That man saw the rise of your beautifully curated roster. A moment of silence for our beloved.” Franco whispers as he sits there with you. You two glance at each other and you two break out into laughter. You both lean in, giggling while trying to hush the other so you two don’t get in trouble for being so loud. “Though seriously, he became a full time professor here? Good for him but that truly is a shame. We got new eye candy but at what cost?”

“I know! But hey, at least his teaching style is unique so at least I am very engaged which is really a good thing plus him looking as hot as he does since he’s a psychopath. Who the hell has classes at eight in the morning? I can’t even be happy that it’s once a week because it’s a three hour class that starts promptly at eight in the morning on Monday. Maybe it is a good thing Toto became a professor because this is too much.”

Franco’s been laughing silently the entire time, silently getting more dramatic as you spoke so he wouldn’t scream in the middle of the library. You watch him for a moment before laughing as well, grabbing onto his arms as the two of you laugh.

You two calm down and lean back as someone clears their throat. The two of you look up and your face falls to horror when cold stormy green eyes land on you. You shift uncomfortably as you become defensive. Shoulder a bit further back. Back a bit straighter. Chin a bit higher. You force a smile at the British student while trying to explode him with your mind.

“Y/N.” Lando remarks while looking down at you with pure raging dislike, “Funny seeing you here.”

“I could say the same for you.”

“Ha.” Lando looks at Franco and relaxes slightly. “Dude. Come on. I’ve been looking for you for the past ten minutes, we have to grab Oscar before meeting up with Max and Carlos soon. I really don’t need Carlos getting on me for being late.”

“Oh sorry. I just got so distracted.” Franco tells Lando and stands.

“What were you even doing? Speaking to Y/N?” You glare at Lando. Franco is way too sweet to be dragged into your bullshit with Lando before looking back at Franco. It seems that the Brit has a soft spot for your fellow freshman or something because Lando clears his throat before he keeps speaking, “I didn’t realize you two knew each other. Didn’t mean to sound so rude…sorry.”

Holy shit. Did hell finally freeze over? Maybe it’s pigs flying. Or he’s finally getting laid. It really doesn’t matter the reason why right now because you were still in disbelief that Lando apologized. You never thought you’d live to see the day where Lando apologized in general but apologizing because of the rude tone he had when speaking about you? Did you end up in the Twilight Zone? No no this must be a joke. Okay, cut the cameras. Seriously the cameras can STOP rolling.

“Oh of course I know Y/N! We’re in the same graduating class and we have a few gen eds together. It’s just hard given our schedules but,” Franco grins, “We make it work. Though! Before I leave I actually want to know if you’d be interested in grabbing lunch with me tomorrow” Franco announces as he looks at you, smiling, “could be a date if you want?”

Suddenly the world just freezes and you’re stuck at the library table staring in complete shock at the turn of the events. You hadn’t even told Franco about Lando, not having the heart for his poor heart to be crushed by how Lando could be so nasty. Still, you’re trying to figure out how the hell this conversation got onto the topic of Franco asking you out on a date.

In the heat of the moment, you can’t help but turn to look at Lando as if he heard Franco correctly. Maybe you’ve just fallen asleep and this is some weird dream or something. You come to the shocking yet unsuspecting realization that this is not a dream when Lando meets your gaze having the same idea. You both look back at Franco in a state of shock and confusion. “A date?” You and Lando ask in union.

“Yes.” Franco laughs and smiles widely at you and Lando before looking back at you, “well? Would you like to get lunch with me? As a date?”

“Yes.” You smile while nodding, “I would love to get lunch with you as a date.”

You stare at Franco with a stupid smile. You hadn’t expected this was how your evening would go but you were more than happy about it. You were so happy, that Lando’s look of shock turned to disgust didn’t even phase you. Finally, you’re crashing back to reality when Lando annoyingly clears his throat while looking down at the two of you. “Well, lovebirds,” Lando forces a smile but you can feel the burn his venomous words carry, “sorry to cut the moment short but we really have to leave now, Franco.” Lando manages through gritted teeth.

“Right! Sorry again.” Franco gathers his things and looks at you, “I’ll text you later. Bye Y/N,” Franco waves before Lando sends him off, telling him he’ll be right out.

You watch Franco go off and sigh dreamily. You glance away for a moment before doing a double take. Your smile morphs into a scowl while looking at Lando who—hasn’t moved yet. Looking him up and down, you raise a brow. “Can I help you?”

“Why did you say yes to Franco?”

“You really think you’re entitled to that after the shit you pulled last week?” You raise a brow while clicking your tongue, “besides. Why do you even care?”

“Because Franco’s a freshman and I don’t need him distracted,” Lando snaps and you roll your eyes. Here he goes again about distractions and shit. Lando glances away and huffs. “Also because he’s a bit of a player.”

“Takes one to know one, yeah?”

Lando glares at you and sneers slightly. “So what? I wouldn’t want him wasting any of his time on you.”

“Why?”

“You’d probably bore him to death.” Looking down at you as Lando gives it a beat. “Also I doubt you’d know how to get him off for your first time. Hell, I don’t think you’d know how to get anybody off. Not even yourself.” Giving you a condescending smile, “I would hate for him to be a part of your body count.”

“Oh.” You laugh slightly, “That’s adorable. Well. You know what? I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

Lando’s a bit taken aback. “I—what?”

“You know. I’ve been doing some thinking. I think we didn’t quite see eye-to-eye.” You continue as you pack your things. “Which isn’t really fair because you were truly just looking out for your friends. Like you’re doing right now.” Standing straight, “which I just wanna say is the sweetest thing ever so. I want to thank you and I’ve figured out the best way to do that.”

“…Which is…?” Lando leans in slightly, waiting for your answer.

“Which is…letting you know in great detail not only how good Franco’s gonna fuck me this weekend but you’ll also have to listen how Franco’s not going to want anybody else when I’m done with him.” You feign innocence to Lando as you sling your backpack over your shoulders before walking away.

“Now, don’t you move a single muscle,” Franco kisses your forehead with a smile “You just focus on resting and I’ll handle everything for dinner tonight, okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“Good girl.” Franco winks before leaving your dorm.

You lay in your bed staring where Franco had just left before rolling over, grunting as your legs failed to work with you. Fumbling around the messy sheets and pillows till you find your phone and immediately open the texts messages because you had to tell someone about the date you just had:

A MINX. HE’S A MINX I TELL YOU. - YN

WHO? WHAT? THE FUCK IS HAPPENING??? - CL

FRANCO. FRANCO IS NOTHING MORE THAN A MINX!!!!-YN

??????-CL

So Franco asked me out on a date for lunch today—YN

HE WHAT?! WHEN?-YN

Yesterday after you disappeared. He showed up and Lando came looking for him.-YN

LANDO? WHAT? Oh my god was he nasty to you? I’ll hurt him istg-CL

No. No he was…civil. Or civilish while Franco was around. But anyway, yeah Lando was asking like why Franco was talking to me cause we don’t really talk and like they had to go to Max’s place and Franco was like “oh we’re in the same graduating class” and stuff but before he left he was like “oh do you wanna get lunch with me tomorrow as a date?'“-YN

And I was gagged! I thought it heard it wrong so I looked at Lando who was LOOKING AT ME THE SAME WAY so we realize oh this is real. This is happening and Franco wants to grab lunch with me like a date. So I say yes, obviously.-YN

IN FRONT OF LANDO!?-CL

Yeah cause fuck him!!! If my happiness is his kryptonite to having a good day, then so fucking be it. But wait!! There’s more!-YN

TELL ME! TELL ME!-CL

So Lando hangs behind and Franco leaves. Then Lando looks at me all like “why’d you say yes?” Bitch what do you mean???-YN

Oh my god, he did not!!-CL

He totally did!!!-YN

Ew. Why does it have a jealous undertone?? possessiveness???-CL

It’s giving ‘you belong to me’ or like ‘nobody else can have you because I want you’ like some dark romance MMC. This is not a bully romance with a mafia subplot or some shit!!-YN

PREACH 👏👏👏. So what happened after?!-CL

Oh so I was like “i’m not telling you after the shit you pulled last week” and asking why he cares and he’s going on about how Franco’s a freshman and he can’t get distracted and how he’s a bit of a player, which he isn’t he’s just kind of a himbo, and I was like “oh takes one to know one, yeah?”-YN

YOU DID NOT. SHUT UP OH Y/N I LOVE YOU SO MUCH-CL

I did and that pissed Lando off. He starts going on about how I don’t know how to get anybody off and I’d bore Franco to death and how he would never want Franco a part of my body count. First off I got three bodies and I have pleased all three, thank you very much but also like fuck Lando!! His opinion? Doesn’t matter!! So I started bout how ‘oh we got off on the wrong foot’ and ‘you’re right’ to throw him for a loop before I told him I wanted to ‘thank him’ for ‘opening my eyes’ and his thank you is listening, in great detail, to Franco fuck me this entire weekend and then listening to Franco wanting nobody else 💋-YN

YNNNN!!! OH MY GOOOOOD I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! Ugh yes that’s some queen shit. Though how does that tie into Franco being a minx??-CL

BECAUSE. It’s Friday. He has no classes. Mine got canceled so I decided, oh why don’t we stay in today, right? soooo like, we go to the cafe, i get food (that Franco paid for) cause he’s not hungry right now which is whatever, and then we head back to my dorm. We’re watching tv, we’re talking, and I finish eating. It’s great, right??-YN

Yes, correct.-CL

So as I’m talking, I start talking about Lando. Franco’s apologizing, I’m telling him he shouldn’t be apologizing. He’s asking if he should stop hanging out with Lando and you know me. I’m not gonna police people on their friends so I told him no. As long as he holds Lando accountable, then I don’t care. If Franco wants to drop Lando that’s his own doing.-YN

Anyway, we keep talking and laughing. We’re getting closer. And then…you know-YN

…What happened? 👀👀-CL

We start kissing. Then it turns into a lazy makeout. Hands start wandering, nothing real scandalous ya know?-YN

Uh huh…-CL

Then this mf pulls away and is like “Oh, I’m real hungry”-YN

FRANCO!!! WTFF!!!!-CL

OH WAIT!! Cause that’s what I thought. I was like “Oh really? Like now? I mean I guess we can go back to the cafe.” Meanwhile he’s actively getting off the bed. Then Franco pulls me by my ankles to the edge of the bed. so i'm thinking he’s really hungry so I go to sit up and he pushes me back down talking bout some “where’re you going mami?”-YN

SIR?? EXCUSE ME??? I can hear the accent now, oh my god that’s—wow-CL

OH BUT WAIT. THERE’S MORE!!!-YN

So first, don’t be calling me mami unless you plan on making me an actual mom. Second, I’m looking at him confused like “you said you were hungry” and he’s like “yeah?” and I was like “Oh I’m sorry, I just thought you’d want me to join you going to the cafe to get lunch” and he’s looking at me like I got ten heads before going like “the cafe? Why would we go to the cafe?” He’s actively like leaning over me while holding my thighs and slowly pushing them opening talking bout “I don’t need the cafe when I got a full five meal course right here sprawled out in front of me.”-YN

FRANCO!?! OH MY GOD—I have to fan myself. Wow that was—🥵🥵🥵🥵-CL

RIGHT?!?!-YN

WELL??-CL

…Charles when I tell you. I do not believe in god but I am pretty sure I was knocking on his door. Two hours. I was seeing god for TWO HOURS!!! Charles when I tell you that man had me screaming crying throwing up I MEAN IT. Charles, I'm still in bed. My legs are still shaking. I can’t feel them.-YN

What I wouldn’t give to be sucked off like that—CL

But wait. There’s a cherry on top of all of this.-YN

WHAT COULD TOP THIS?-CL

Franco really had to make sure everyone knew what was happening. I mean, he’s on his knee with my hips hanging off. He’s got one hand gripping my ass like it’s his lifeline to this world. He’s between my thighs and eating me out like he is a man up next on death row and I am his final fucking meal. He pushed all the pillows away. Got my wrists pinned to my stomach with his other hand. I am solely at his mercy and I cannot keep quiet for the life of me and he ate it up. I was so loud, I heard banging from upstairs.-YN

Banging?-CL

Yeah. Like someone was hitting a broom against the floor. To signal to shut up, which Franco and I ignored. More Franco than me, I couldn’t see straight and that was an hour in. Do you know, what the banging was though???-YN

A disgruntled upstairs neighbor???-CL

Yeah. Do you remember who my upstairs neighbor is?-YN

…OH MY FUCKING GOD, LANDO LISTENED TO YOU GETTING THE BEST HEAD OF YOUR LIFE?-CL

Yes SIIIIIIIIRRRRRR. Dude Lando got so mad he CALLED Franco in the middle of it and he answered.-YN

HE ANSWERED?!-CL

Yes. He answered. Pulls back enough to start fingering me and hands be a pillow telling me to bite down on it which I do without a second fucking thought. But tell me why Franco put Lando on speaker and Lando asking “what are you doing right now??” and Franco looks me dead in the fucking eyes going on bout “Oh I’m just having lunch right now with Y/N.” and Lando’s like “oh yeah? Is that so? Then why the fuck is she screaming so god damn loud? Huh? Thought it was a lunch date?” and Charles. I shit you the fuck NOT, Franco without missing a beat goes, “It is. She’s my lunch and my mother always told me to finish everything on my plate and I plan to do just that.” THEN HUNG UP THE PHONE AND WENT RIGHT BACK TO EATING ME OUT.-YN

Y/N…you are the luckiest bitch around. Holy fucking shit. I need a man like Franco—do we know if Franco swings both ways??-CL

He does. Though you might not like him. He’s got a huge crush on Lewis—YN

Never mind. You keep Franco. Gives me an easier chance to steal Lewis' heart. Or just get one chance with him.-CL

I think you can do it. I believe. Anyway, yeah so that happened and—YN

You accidentally send your message to Charles early when a new text comes through. It’s by an unknown number and you click on it.

Lacrosse field. 8pm. We need to talk.-Unk

You think for a moment trying to figure out who this could be. No names come to your mind so you think that someone texted the wrong number. Typically, you’d leave unknown numbers alone but you got the impression that this was something important and urgent that you respond.

Oh I’m sorry, you have the wrong number-YN

I don’t-Unk

Excuse me?-YN

You look up hearing the familiar broom hitting against the floor. You scowl at Lando and his antics before looking back at your phone. Huh. That was…too coincidental. You lay there for a moment before the banging came again, this time a bit more urgent. You send your message before realizing it.

Lando?-YN

The banging stops. Suddenly, your dorm is eerily quiet and you hold your breath. You watch the familiar three bubbles appear and disappear before appearing again as your heart sinks.

Bingo. 8pm. Tonight. Lacrosse field. Alone.-LN

tag list: @dripostsstuff, @tinyhrry, @formulaho, @green--beanie, @brekkers-whore.

@fat-meh, @landossainz, @jaydensluv, @carpediem241108, @rayaharper,

@bookishnerd1132, @asmoothoperator, @loloekie, @kawaiifurychaos

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@poppymelonz, @katiascraft, @fangirl125reader, @taliya8346282844eliviahdgdajs, @norrisleclercf1

#starlight library presents;#rich boys don't have hearts #rbdhh #lando norris x y/n #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #ln4 imagine #ln4 x y/n #ln4 x reader #jock!ln4 x nerd!reader #jock!ln4 #jock!lando norris #jock!lando norris x nerd!reader #jock!lando norris imagine #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #startlight library navigation

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orchidyoonkook · 2 months ago

Text

PG | KTH

Title: PG

Pairing: Older Brother's Best Friend!Kim Taehyung x (F)!Reader

Rating//Genre: (M) | One Shot, Friends to Lovers, Age Gap, Slice of Life, Angst, Smut and Touches of Fluff

Summary: You aren’t delusional enough to think anything would ever happen between the two of you, not for a damn second. Be it the age difference, the fact that he’s your brother's friend, or the extremely high likelihood that he sees you as nothing more than Fourteen’s annoying little sister that he can use to rile said best friend up.

But that’s about it. Nothing more. And reality is something you’re able to keep a solid grasp on when it comes to him. You don’t let it go for the sake of acting on a one sided and unrequited feeling you know will pass… eventually.

Warnings: nicknames! a disgusting amount, language, assholes being assholes but being put in their place, brotherly love, sibling antics, tae is a swimmer and knows judo, also a Dan is--for the lack of better phrasing--a high belt level in judo. think of it like a black belt, OC cant keep it in her pants and neither can tae, mutual pining, lots of great gatsby references because I'm tyring to be that bitch (I am joking), tae has tats, OC's brother is an overprotective idiot but we love him anyway, slight physical abuse not by tae or reader or fourteen--basically someone grips an arm too harshly, some panic but no panic attack,

Explicit warnings under the cut.

Word Count: 11,521

Release Date: September 15, 2024. 12:00PM

A/N 1: The biggest most huge thank you to @violetsiren90 for being my sounding board, tech support and beta. She's a real one and y'all are sleeping on her work if you haven't alread read it. Go check her out!

A/N 2: My access to the adobe suite was aha....revoked. So! this is my first time making a banner and divider without photoshop. Therfore, the banner and the divider are a bit different than what I'm used to having XD. Tumblr is also absolutely destroying the qualty which is sooooo great. It looks wonky and blurry to me on desktop but fine on mobile so it is what it is. If i ever get adobe access again I'll probably come back and update the graphics.

Explicit Warnings: *ahem* nicknames, teasing, kissing, biting, marking (several ways), hand and finger kink (duh), voice kinklet (duhhhh), hair 'pulling' (m rec), semi public if you squint, hella foreplay, tae has a big dick, penetrative sex, oral (m+f rec), fingering, handjob?, multiple orgasms, body worship, switch like activities but mostly dominant tae, posessiveness, confessions, reader takes what she wants but so does tae, exhibitionism if you squint, slight cum play/eating, implied squirting, choking, cream pie. Pretty sure thats all of them. i never reailse how many i need to put until the list is done and wow *chuckes while blushing*

“Oi, can you fucking not? My sister’s right fucking there,” your older brother, Fourteen—nicknamed for his forever mental age—ridiculously and unneededly overprotective as always, says.

It is especially unneeded and ridiculous as he’s saying it to Tae, when all he’s doing is taking off his shirt to go for a swim in your pool. Like he’s been doing since you were tweens.

Well.

Since you were a tween and they were nearing the legal drinking age. But that’s besides the point.

Best friend to your knuckle head of an older brother, you honest to god have no idea how they became friends.

Taehyung is poetry and jazz and button up cotton shirts. Old book smell and expensive cologne, ringed fingers and whiskey, neat. The kind of vibe someone would get from being raised by a very successful lawyer for a father and a top ranking university professor of literature for a mother, while Fourteen is… your older brother.

Maybe it’s a younger sister thing to not understand how her older brother has any friends. Considering you grew up with him, know all of his weird and gross habits, have a lovely dash of sibling bullying thrown in that you two share equally, and more. Yet, by some miracle, he and Tae manage to balance one another out.

Tae—fucking somehow—makes your brother into a more presentable human being. He showers more than twice a week and wears deodorant every day now—even puts the seat down after peeing, a habit you’ve been screaming at him to stop doing since you could use the toilet. While Fourteen gives Tae a rougher edge he previously never seemed to be able to grasp, despite trying his best too.

For example, the several delicate tattoos he now has all over his body, your favourite of which is an old timey record player on the inside of his forearm. They were something he’d been wanting to do for years, but only finally bit the bullet on and did once Fourteen took him when they were twenty two.

Since then the collection’s only grown, much to your inner glee and mental dismay.

And don’t even get you started on the delicate, thin rimmed glasses he occasionally wears—golden and the perfect shape for his face—or the ear piercings that just really fucking cement the tortured poet look that makes your heart clench every. single. time. you look at him.

Similarly to what it’s doing right now, though no one ever knows due to your truly oscar worthy talent for acting completely oblivious to the beautiful shirtless man about to dive in. Call it over a decades worth of practice, and the fact that it’s also nothing you hadn’t gloriously taken in all teenagehood long.

Every time you could get it.

Which was a lot because Tae was on the high school swim team.

For four years.

And then the university swim team.

For another four.

Teenage you was a lucky bitch. Now you’re only blessed with this sight when he comes over to swim laps or attempt to drown Fourteen. Which, admittedly, was still often. But not nearly as much as back then.

The sight in question however, is curled black hair that frames eyes so warm you swear the sun’s relocated to his irises, and a jawline that makes the Statue of David’s pathetic in comparison. It’s fingers that make your mouth water from the way they flip book pages and thighs that make you think thoughts and things you never thought you would.

It’s the scribbled text: ‘To err is human; to forgive, divine’ tattooed across his ribs, and a lean torso, muscled but not outrageously so. Just enough to have you forcing yourself not to stare at the delicate lines of his abdomen every time he comes over for a swim.

Thank god for sunglasses.

“Nah, I’m sure PG can handle it, Dumbass. I’ve only been using your pool every summer for the last 15 years give or take,” Tae says with a quirked brow and a half smile directed at you.

Behind your sunnies, you heat up a touch, and internally sigh. Have you mentioned his smile yet?

Because oh yeah, his fucking smile.

Tae’s a nickname kind of person, hence why even you call your brother ‘Fourteen’. Taehyung’s called him Fourteen for so long now that calling your brother by his birth name just feels wrong.

This being said, PG is Tae’s nickname for you.

It stands for the TV rating ‘Parental Guidance’ because you’re younger by enough that when you were still under the age of 18, they—see: your brother and Tae because they’ve been joined at the hip since they met—were usually assigned babysitting duty. Very much the ‘take your sister with you’ sibling, but they never complained. Not once.

As much as you and Fourteen bully one another, you’re actually quite close when you aren’t verbally sparring—which is where his annoying overprotectiveness comes in. Even when it comes to Taehyung.

“Yeah, Dumbass,” you copy, earning a smirk from Tae as he leans down to take his shoes off. “It’s just Tae.”

“It’s not about that YN, it’s about respect. You’re my little sister, and Fuckass over here,” you brother jabs a thumb in Tae’s direction, which earns you a second hidden smirk from the Fuckass in question, “Still doesn’t know how to respect that fact even after a decade and a half apparently.”

You shrug as Fourteen finishes his point and narrows his eyes at his best friend. Tae gives him a shit eating grin that screams ‘what are you going to do about it’ and your brother gives him a two fingered salute before shaking his head and taking off his own shirt.

You take that as your cue to put your head back down because you don’t need to see that.

Currently in very comfortable linen shorts and tank, you’re sitting on a padded pool lounger, rereading The Great Gatsby for the hundredth time. It’s one of the classics that never gets old for you, has the benefit of being a shorter read—therefore perfect for the poolside—and happens to be the copy Tae’d gotten you for Christmas a couple years ago. Pure coincidence, you tell yourself. Nothing more.

With the beautiful addition of your very darkly glassed sunnies, it also makes the perfect decoy as you watch Tae over the top of the open book without risk of being caught.

You firmly follow the rule of a little looking can’t hurt.

You aren’t delusional enough to think anything would ever happen between the two of you, not for a damn second. Be it the age difference, the fact that he’s your brother's friend, or the extremely high likelihood that he sees you as nothing more than Fourteen’s annoying little sister that he can use to rile said best friend up—see: current shirt stripping debacle. It’s not the first nor the last time he’ll do something like it, and you’re pretty sure you and Tae have an unspoken agreement at this point to push as many of Fourteen’s buttons as you can together, just to see how far he’ll let it go before freaking out.

Despite the flames that rage and roar on in your heart.

Despite the green light on the dock across the way tackling your brother under the water.

You hold on. And only in these little moments of in between do you allow yourself to look. Pockets of time where a peek won’t be seen or recorded, and a moment of self indulgence keeps your sanity from trying to escape its tightly locked box.

You look and look and look until the green light is covered in fog once more, and the lid of the box seals tight.

Another day, another glorious abuse of best friend privileges, Taehyung thinks to himself as he continues his butterfly down the imaginary lanes in Fourteen’s pool.

He tries to come over at least three times a week. Four or five if he’s able, the more he’s over the higher chance he has to see you, not just Fourteen. But he’s rarely able to these days.

Though the wind appears to have shifted in his favour today. You’re sitting on the lounge chairs again, reading away in the afternoon sun.

It’s his favourite view. And it’s sweetened by the fact that you’re in the shorts he loves and reading a book he gave you. Something he’s done since before he could remember, really.

Christmases and birthdays, he’s always given you a book. Usually a classic, sometimes something else. If it caught his eye or reminded him of you, he’d grab it and save it until the next Christmas or the next birthday, whichever came first. And you’ve always loved them, so he’s never stopped.

They’re gifts that seem harmless to Fourteen, and for the most part they are. But these last few have been…different. Had deeper thought put into them. The titles, the story lines, the prose. He swears you notice it, but maybe that’s just his own wishful thinking.

And he sure as fuck can’t be doing any of that.

This cold water isn’t doing its job well enough.

Finishing his set, Tae swims over to rest before starting on his front stroke. Forearms hold him up on the edge of the pool, his chin balancing on stacked knuckles while his breath catches.

He also uses this little break as an excuse to talk to you. He only ever freely can when Fourteen isn’t around, and right now his best friend is inside grabbing drinks, towels and probably relieving himself–which, knowing Fourteen—could take anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty minutes. So he has to take advantage of every moment he gets.

“Got any new recommendations for me PG?”

Books are an easy starting point when it comes to you. Fourteen may be a graphic novel at best kind of guy, but your brain can’t seem to inhale enough books to satiate it. And just the thought makes his temples rush with heat.

He should dunk his head again.

You lower your Fitzgerald by one inch and raise an eyebrow to counter it. Just like your brother, you’re always one to give him a hard time. Make him work for every millimeter of ground conquered. And he’s pretty sure you have a smirk hiding behind the pages, though he can’t be certain due to the sunglasses hiding your eyes.

“Maybe,” you say. “What do I get in return?”

Answering that question about fifty different ways in his head, Tae decides none can be said out loud. He seriously needs to fucking reel himself in. Fourteen could return at any moment and the last thing Tae needs to have is a problem between his legs because you never make it easy for him.

But rather than listening to his very rational thoughts and very logical brain, he instead decides to say fuck it, and croons in the voice that used to fluster you as a teenager.

“What do you want in return, PG?” Hoping to soften you up, even the playing field a bit.

And it works like a charm.

Your body releases its tension on an exhale, your page is marked, book set to the side, and your legs extend and stretch before crossing at the ankle. It makes him wonder if your little girlhood crush on him still exists somewhere in the back of your mind. Probably not.

Scratch that.

Definitely not.

“What if I wanted a new nickname?” you ask.

Both his eyebrows raise in surprise. “What’s wrong with PG?”

“It makes me feel like I’m eleven,” you explain. And then hit him with a dose of his own medicine as you croon, “I’m not eleven anymore, Tae.”

No you sure as hell are not. And it kills him in a way that has him wanting to die over and over again.

He could consider it. But he doesn’t think he’ll change it, not when PG can stand for so many wonderful things. Things you would never think he’d let it when addressing you. Things that would have Fourteen trying for drowning attempt number two thousand four hundred sixty three, and succeeding.

“I’ll think about it—Fair?”

You ponder before agreeing. “Fair.”

“Now about those recommendations…” He reminds you, and that’s all it takes to get you going.

Fourteen comes out about ten minutes later, but by then, Tae has a new list of books to grab from the store, two laps under him with eight more to go, and you’re reading again—one bare leg bent at the knee he’s trying very hard to ignore when he comes up for air.

By the time he’s due for another breather, you’re talking to your brother about plans for the weekend.

“I’m going out early on Friday for Rei’s birthday, remember? And I’ll probably crash at her place after,” you say.

Fourteen is sitting on the second lounge chair across from you, most likely playing a game on his phone if Tae had to guess. But at your reminder, your brother looks up.

“Fuck that’s right. Okay so no dinner then, I’ll just grab something on my way in.”

“Sounds good. What about tonight?”

Fourteen gives it about two seconds of thought. “How about Don’s?”

Your face lights up at the suggestion. “Fuck yes! I’ve been craving their milkshakes for like a week. Hey Tae!” you call to him. “Don’s for dinner? There’s a chocolate shake with your name on it if you’re down.”

Tae pushes himself out of the water onto the pavement and doesn’t miss the sly once over you give him while Fourteen chucks a towel at his chest, covering your eyes with his other hand.

He catches the projectile before it can knock him back into the pool, and uses it to dry his hair.

“Dude! Seriously? Go find a fucking shirt or something, no one wants to see that.”

You swat your sibling’s hand away and give him a look that screams ‘grow up’ while Tae drapes the towel over her shoulders, a hand gripping at each end.

“I’m only down if Dumbass is paying,” he says, smirking at your brother.

“—What—”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” you agree, holding out your hand in his direction.

“—Hey wait a seco—”

Tae grabs and shakes just to watch the steam flee Fourteen’s ears at the contact. He meets your eyes conspiratorially, and you both nod before rushing Fourteen.

“—You fuckers!—” is all he gets out before Tae and you are grabbing an arm and a leg each and throwing Fourteen’s fully clothed ass in the pool.

He curses the both of you out several times as he treads, drenched and dripping, up the stairs and out of the water. Tae throws him the towel.

“You’ll pay for that, Asshole,” Fourteen tells Tae, and Tae grins.

“Oh, I’m counting on it. Worth it though.”

“And you!” Fourteen says, eyes on you. “What the fuck dude? The betrayal to your darling, one and only brother hurts. I’m wounded,” he lays it on thick, walking up directly beside you.

You're a hairsbreadth too late to realize when he shakes his hair out directly over top of you and you shriek, pulling your knees up, protecting the book under your shirt and behind your legs at all costs.

“Fourteen! The book! I will kill you if you damage it!”

Fourteen chuckles. “Payback’s a bitch Little Sister.”

You sneer at him, checking your prized possession for injury. Not a scratch.

“And sopping wet is your colour, Jackass.”

“Big words for someone who can just as easily be thrown in the pool.”

You pause. Eyeing him directly.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Wanna bet?”

Your brother looks at Tae with an evil plot in his eyes and you screech as they both nod once. You drop your book behind you as they yank you up by your arms and fling you into the pool, too much momentum from them and not enough resistance from you leaving you matching your darling, one and only brother.

As you come up for air, two colossal splashes ricochet from the left and right. Tae and Fourteen having both cannonballed in on either side of you. You choke on splattered water for a second before you’re attacking them with splashes, merciless in your pursuit for revenge.

“You both suck!” you half giggle half yell.

“Yet you love us anyway!” your brother falsely—correctly—claims.

You roll your eyes before trudging out, heavier and dripping with your soaked clothes.

And it's not until weekend plans are cast aside for current memories, Taehyung treating you all to dinner, and you treating everyone to milkshakes, that all is forgiven.

It turns out Rei’s dad knows the manager of the most exclusive club in the city—Youth—and managed to call in a favour. So now you, her, and your other bestie, Lea, are all on the dancefloor to celebrate her birthday.

Rei’s first request for the night besides not paying for a single drink, was to dress up in the hottest, sluttiest outfits the club's dress code would allow for.

This, for you, meant a black, square necked, low cut, and thin strapped satin slip dress that hugged you in all the right ways, matching heels adored with ankle strap bows and a sultry makeup look. Lea chose a dark blue shimmery number with a high leg split, vibrant graphic eyeliner, and wedges, while the birthday girl found the skimpiest forest green mini dress you’ve ever seen paired with heels that wrap ribbons up her legs, and a subtle dewy look on her lids.

She’s glowing, and needless to say, they both look hot and so do you.

Rei’s second request for the night was to dance until you either collapsed or threw up, whichever came first. A goal you were all making a steady descent towards as the night progressed.

That is, until your blood runs cold at the sight of your cheating ex boyfriend making his way through the crowd in a direct beeline towards you.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

You’re alone right now. Rei and Lea are taking a bathroom break.

You insisted you’d be fine for ten minutes. It was just ten minutes. What could possibly go wrong in ten minutes?

But apparently god just loves to play jokes because here you are, three shots in, not emotionally prepared enough to be near him, let alone speak to him, and by yourself in this huge crowd of strangers while he’s making very good time on his route to you.

Fuck! You do not want to deal with him right now or—fucking ever, actually.

He’d cheated on you four times that he admitted too throughout your two and a half year relationship, all while faking being blindingly happy directly to your face. He’d lied to you and hurt you and made you wonder what you did wrong for him to do that to you. It took all of your third year of university and more therapy sessions than you care to admit to realize you were never the problem, and that he was a piece of shit.

So, with the fifteen feet between you two quickly shrinking, you try your best to hide from him in the crowd, only to run directly into him when you duck past a fellow club goer.

Son of a b—

“Heyyy Y/N, how’ve you been?” he says like he didn’t destroy your entire sense of self worth for a couple quick fucks.

You want to down three more shots just to be able to puke all over him. Intentionally, you haven’t seen him in years and just the reek of his stale ass cologne has you close.

“Fuck off Micah, don’t you have somewhere you need to be sticking your dick—like a garbage disposal?” You snark, doing your damndest to not let him get close. But the throng of bodies surrounding you have other ideas and you’re thrown against your least favourite person in existence.

Delusional as ever, Micah sleezes, “Doesn’t seem like you want me to leave just yet, Kitten,” and you shove him off you as hard as you can while bile rises at the horrible name you used to beg him not to call you.

You need to get off the dance floor.

Now.

Before you can, Micah grabs your arm and he pulls you back into him, hard.

Tae watches you out of the corner of his eye, wondering why in the hell you came to this club, of all the clubs out there.

The club he was at. Wearing that and truly testing the limits of his self control.

Music blasts through speakers that move the ocean on the dancefloor. Bodies sway like waves, some crashing into one another with teeth and tongues and passion, others pushing with the current, grinding and gripping and grabbing at anything they can get their hands on. The louder and faster the notes whirl over their swells, the harsher the storm rages on, people flowing in and out of the eye when needed.

He’s sitting at a booth on a dais high enough to watch you in the hurricane whilst being out of eyesight, notably with one or two faces he barely recognizes enough to most likely be your friends.

They appear to be currents. They drag you into deeper waters and you let them, helpless to their siren call. Leading you to your place amongst the sea life, and reveling in the way the melodies wash over you again and again with every song that plays.

His eyes follow you as you dance, curious if Fourteen knows you’re here before flinging the thought out of his head as quickly as it entered. You’re grown now, don’t need protection anymore. A lesson he learned the day you returned from university after graduating.

No longer his best friend's kid sister who they kept an eye on, but a woman who was and still is growing into herself beautifully. A woman who is steadfast, strong and more often than not, correct in her opinions. A woman who is well read and equally if not more so well spoken when she deigns to acknowledge his existence. A woman who knows how and when to turn all of that off in order to team up with him in a roast battle for the books against her brother.

He thinks of that day as the beginning of his downfall.

He can humbly admit that his intelligence, demeanor and education are things that have been nurtured into existence by his parents and carefully maintained by himself with practice and both mental and physical exercise. He takes care of himself, inside and out. Exercises regularly, eats well, has good hygiene. He’s level headed and patient. Respectful and responsible. Controlled and competent.

He prides himself on these things. Actively works towards keeping them maintained.

And yet.

Somehow when it comes to you, he is little more than a single brain celled idiot.

All of the things he uses to measure his self worth evaporate whenever you enter his field of vision and he becomes fucking ravenous. And all of his focus goes into controlling himself.

He’d never noticed before, never thought of you in the way he does now. How when your currents break from formation and head towards the bathrooms, their outgoing force creates a riptide that some fuckhead with a stupid haircut uses to sweep in and dance with you.

But you push him away.

He doesn’t get the memo, and the mophead tries his best to yank you out to sea again.

Magma flows through Taehyung's veins, thunder cracks in his ears and all he can think about is storming through the crowd to steal you from said fuckhead by claiming you for himself.

But he won’t.

Can’t.

All because of his darling best friend.

Fourteen doesn’t know about his feelings for you of course. And Tae rather likes being alive and in one piece, two things he most definitely would not remain should he act on any of these feelings.

You are wholly off limits, forbidden. A little too young, a little too immediately related to his best friend, a little too perfectly his fucking type. It kills him every time he can’t even look at you without Fourteen going into what he calls ‘asshole mode’.

So you remain in his very close periphery. Untouchable to the fingertips he aches to caress you with as you dangle your existence in front of him. Your wicked tongue, your delicious intelligence, your sexy fucking legs—fuck!

He has to stop thinking about you like this.

But that only makes him want you more.

It’s like the gods handcrafted you for him. Every piece, every detail of you immaculate, but he committed one to many sins in his past life, and now they’ve locked you away forever as punishment.

You float across the night sky, stuck in a golden cell. Its fourteen bars hold you hostage amongst the stars, all while he’s chained to the bottom of the ocean floor gasping for air.

But fuck the gods and fuck their gilded cages.

He’d break from his chains, swim to the surface of the sea and grow wings. Would break your prison apart with the sheer force of his wanting, then drag you down to the depths if it meant he got to keep you for himself.

He would. He really, really fucking would. If his world wouldn’t implode completely if he did.

So he keeps these thoughts to himself. Forces them down as they try their damndest to bubble over and burn him, because they will if he lets them. If any of them get outside these little moments, the ones where he allows himself to feel, he would burn and burn and burn until there was nothing left.

Therefore, Taehyung has never been more grateful that his best friend was stuck on the night shift while he watched you dance and enjoy yourself, because it granted him this sliver of time to pretend like your brother doesn’t exist.

That you are something he could let himself have, if you wanted him to.

And he’s solid in his decision to only observe, to stay inside his little moment, until fuckhead doesn’t get the message for the third time and Taehyung is out of his seat before he can think.

Because Fourteen isn't here.

And old habits die hard.

“What the hell? Let me go, Micah!” You see his eyes then, red rimmed and glazed. He definitely has more than one thing in his system as his grip on you hardens further. The more you struggle, the tighter he grasps and—ouch, ouch, ouch, yank, fuck! Ow!—it’s really starting to hurt.

“Just give me one more chance Kitten, I promise I’ll do better,” he whisper in your ear over the music, and you cringe back from how loud he is. But that doesn’t stop him from continuing, “I fucked up, I know I did. But that was years ago, and I learned my lesson. Just one more chance Kitten, just one more, and I—I promise. I promise it won’t happen again. It won’t. I really miss y–AH! What the fuck!?”

The hand on your arm releases the second Micah yelps in pain. You look down to see familiar ringed fingers around Micah’s wrist, clutching so hard they’re white knuckled and skin bruising.

A broad chest comes to rest at your back, and an arm snakes around you. Its large palm rests on your stomach and hip as it pulls you tightly against its owner.

Words covered in sharpest ice are spoken from behind you, their baritone so recognizable they have you melting back into him.

Safe.

You’re safe.

Exhale.

“Do. Not. Touch. Her.” Taehyung growls so deeply, so powerfully, you feel the rumble from behind his sternum reverberate into your body.

Micah’s focus shifts from his wrist to the man several inches taller and several years his senior still holding it. You watch as his face contorts from pained to confused and then to murderous.

“The fuck are you to tell me not to touch my girlfriend?” Micah seethes, and you stiffen because no the fuck you are not, and haven’t been for several years.

How blitzed out of his mind is he right now?

You don’t even get the chance to deny his words before Taehyung’s on Micah like fire to dried grass.

“Don’t make me laugh, Asshole. No way in hell an pig faced looking fucker like you could pull a woman like her. Now,” Tae roughly shoves Micah’s hand back to him, and it forces Micah to stumble into the people behind with the force. “Get the fuck away from My Girl before I make you My Problem. And trust me,” Tae says in a tone so dangerous, you’ve never heard him sound so terrifying in the fifteen plus years you’ve known him, “You don’t want me to make you my problem.”

And you realize, that this isn’t the Taehyung you’ve grown up with; seen through his awkward teen years and watched come into his adult life with. This isn’t jazz music and poetry Taehyung.

This Taehyung has only ever come out the handful of times you’ve ever been in trouble. The one who studied Judo with Fourteen growing up, the one who has his fourth Dan.

The one who does not play when it comes to you and your safety.

It’s enough to know that Taehyung is more than pissed off, and more than a little ready to beat the absolute shit out of Micah, if the whiskey on his breath says anything about his loosened inhibitions.

Micah seems to sense this too, and decides to back off. But not without a stupid macho expression and two middle fingers directed at both of you as he disappears into the crowd, and out of sight.

You can feel the tension radiating off Taehyung in waves, a coil so tightly wound that a gentle breeze could set him loose, so you turn around and attempt to safely unwind. His hand moves from your stomach to your lower back, and you ignore the trail of wildfire it leaves in its wake because Tae’s eyes haven’t wavered from the spot where Micah just stood.

“Don’t.” You say, loud enough for him to hear. And his flame filled irises snap to yours, burning. “He’s not worth it.”

Your words seem to bring him back somewhat because Tae sniggers. “Damn right he’s not,” then softens. “Are you okay?”

You look anywhere but at him, the reality of the last three minutes crashing down onto your head like broken glass while the both of you are still caught in the middle of the dancefloor.

The people around you seem to understand something’s happened, and you’re left mostly untouched aside from the gentle nudges of inebriated party goers whose balance isn’t the best at the moment.

Like the mellowed waves in the eye of a storm.

Taehyung seems to make sense of this at the same time you do, and lifts his free hand for you to take. Slipping your fingers into his, he leads you to an unused and out of the way emergency exit hallway somewhere in the back of the club. It’s completely empty and dark, undisturbed besides the occasional server passing by.

It’s private.

It’s safe.

You’re safe.

He lets go of your hand and looks at you again. “Now, are you okay?”

The adrenaline is wearing off, and you can feel yourself start to shake. You ignore it. Sort of.

“I’m okay,” you say. But he’s eyeing you suspiciously and rightly so, so you repeat yourself, trying to convince your own brain more than his right now.

“I’m okay, really! I’m good. I’m–” you exhale a shaky breath and he doesn’t ask before pulling you to his chest. Wrapping both his arms around you, one around your back while the other holds your head protectively to him. Your own go around his waist as you grip him back tighter.

“I’ve got you,” he says.

“I’m okay,” you say again, muffled into his black high necked shirt, taking deep breaths of his soothing, familiar scent. You do it and again, and again. Repeating the pretty lie to yourself again and again until it becomes the truth.

He doesn’t let go until you do, and you don’t let go until you’ve finally stopped shaking.

You look up into his eyes, and all signs of his previous wrath are gone. It seems the hug didn’t ground just you, it grounded him too. Got him out of the headspace that would’ve been required for action first, words later. But now the sun is back, it shines down on you, and you bask in its warmth.

“I’m good now. Thank you,” you say in an even and unwavering voice, because you are. The panic and immense relief having washed over you, and you’re once again simply, pleasantly buzzed.

Though you do have a new problem in the form of the warmth pooling low from the feeling of both his hands still on your lower back.

You’re trying to convince yourself it’s his way of keeping you safe.

But the lock on your box has the key inside it, and it’s just begging for you to turn it.

“Good,” he replies, still not letting go. And it’s chipping away at your sanity. “Who was that guy? I only caught the last bit of his pathetic ramblings.”

You wince. Due to a lovely combination of not being very active on social media, not being much of a picture taker, and the newly dyed hair Micah seemed to be sporting tonight, you’re not surprised Tae didn’t recognize him.

“Ah. Uhm…That was...Micah,” you admit, unable to meet his eyes again. That’s when you notice his outfit tonight is all black.

Oh you are so fucked.

“As in Micah, Micah?” Tae asks neutrally, familiar with what your ex had done, just not what he looked like.

“...Yeah...”

“I see.”

“Yeah...” You say again. Because what else could you say?

Tae cracks a smile. “Should’ve let me kick his ass. The balls on him not only to approach you, but to call you his—” he cuts himself off, biting the inside of his cheek before continuing in a hushed, caring tone. “After everything he’s done to you, you should’ve let me, PG. Consequences be damned.”

Your cheeks flame at the nickname so close to your ears. So tenderly said. And you honestly can’t tell if you still hate it in this moment, or if it’s only adding kindling to the fire his hands are fueling at the base of your spine.

The new name he’d called you earlier, its ignition point.

My Girl.

You swear, even in your panicked state, you’d momentarily forgotten how to breathe before inhaling far too much all at once.

Fuck, what you won’t give to hear him say it again. But you’re 98.9% sure that’s the three shots of vodka talking. Trying their best to turn the damn key. And maybe they succeed in turning it half way—hell, maybe all the way, because you look him back in the eyes and hear yourself say,

“Maybe I should’ve, but I was far too distracted by the new nickname you finally gave me to give a single fuck about anyone else.”

The moment the last word is out Taehyung stiffens beneath your touch, fingers locked on your back, and you’re very pretty sure you just fucked absolutely everything up.

Years of good behaviour, of keeping yourself in check. Of pockets of time and side long glances and knowing nothing would ever happen, stolen from you. By your own big, fat, adrenaline depleted, vodka loosened mouth.

You're a second away from damage control before his grip shifts from your lower back to your hips.

Higher. Tighter. Controlling. Oh fuck.

He leans down to murmur, “Liked the new name, did you?” in your ear.

Shivers shoot from your crown to your core and down to your toes. Having his deep, deliciously inviting voice so fucking close to your pulse point has you millimeters away from drowning in it. You know he can feel it course through you, just like you can hear the smile it makes him display away from your eyesight as he does.

“You did then,” he responds for you, a cat toying with its meal as he lifts his head once more to look into your eyes.

You don’t need a mirror to know the state of your pupils. Your gaze is glazed over in the sinful kind of way.

“I did,” you needlessly confirm, looking up into similarly blown out ones.

The fingers twined behind him release, and make their way around to his abdomen. They pause to splay for just a second at the defined ridges, before slowly crawling up his chest and meeting again at the nape of his neck.

They play with the soft hair there, gently scratching their nails at the skin beneath where it grows and you watch as your ministrations cause his eyes to roll back, flutter shut, and his head to meet the wall behind him. A barely audible moan escapes the confines of his lips before he swallows, the divine bob of his adams apple as he tries to regain his composure is the dawn of your undoing.

“Fuck, PG that isn’t fair,” he groans towards the ceiling, his hands on your waist clamping down harder, pulling you so close your bodies touch in more places they definitely shouldn’t be. The contact has you reeling and all you want is more, more, more of it.

More of him.

“PG isn’t the name you called me earlier,” you hum, yanking on a single loose strand and Tae sucks in a steep breath, biting the corner of his smirking lip with a canine.

You want to hear him say it again. Badly. So you release the sensual grip you have on his nape, and let his head lul slowly back down to where it was, his deepening amber wholly fixated on your now entirely onyx. Your heart is begging for release from your chest, and for a moment you wonder if he can see your pulse thrumming in your eyes, because you sure as hell can feel it.

“No, it’s not. But it also hasn’t meant to me what it means to you for quite some time now,” his voice like honey, thick and dripping its way over your body. It’s making you dizzy and weighty with want. It has your mouth opening slightly as he leans closer still, knocking his nose gently with your own. Inhaling in your exhales. Teasing you. Making you work for it.

“And what does it mean to you?” you ask, barely above a whisper, irises never straying from his as your bottom lip brushes against his in one solitary, intoxicating moment that has you more buzzed in one touch than three shots has had you all night.

“Pretty Girl,” he breathes onto your lips, pushing his thigh between your legs at the same time he pulls you impossibly closer. You hear yourself moan ‘fuck’ at the contact it gives your throbbing cunt. Too focused on the need coursing through you like a live wire—your body pure water—to think about what you’re saying.

It’s a sweet sound and a violent pleasure he devours as his lips finally, finally, finally crash into yours, pinning you in place and allowing him to take every piece of you he wants. One hand slithers up your naked spine to hold you, your backless dress doing you every favour imaginable as his other continues to help you grind over his thigh.

His tongue slips into your mouth and you suck on it, causing him to jerk into you once with the rapidly growing want pressing into your lower belly. But your hands hold firm at his neck as you pull him into you, a knee lifting to meet his hip. Needing more contact.

The electricity filled pathways his fingers leave down your back, over your ass and across the bottom of your thigh to support your search for pleasure do nothing but spur on the overwhelming need to touch him everywhere.

No holds barred. No clothes worn. Nothing stopping you.

He uses his new grip to spin you around and press his hips into yours as your shoulders meet the wall. You’re left to moan sickly sweet sounds of bliss into his ear as Taehyung frees your mouth in favour of your jaw and neck, sucking gentle purple hues down the column of your throat and onto your collarbone.

“Pretty Girl,” he whispers between love bites, “My Pretty Girl.” Over and over and it has you melting so far into him, the only thing keeping you apart is fabric and a potential audience. Though from the colour you’re going to have to cover with far too much concealer tomorrow, you don’t think he quite cares about that last part.

It drives you farther into insanity. Years of want and restraint and pretty white lies you told yourself are crashing down on one another and it shows in the fervor of your touch, your wants, your pleads.

“Fuck, Tae—please. Please, I need you— please,” you beg, and the bite he leaves at the junction where your neck meets your shoulder has you gasping for air that refuses to be consumed gently.

But Taehyung is a man on a mission. One who will not be deterred, and you can’t tell if he will be your pinnacle or your inevitable end.

With what is very clearly great effort, Tae pulls himself back from your decolletage, only to kiss your lips once more. Open mouthed and dirty, tongue clinging to you like the only thing he’s concerned about is swallowing down as much of you as he can while you’ll let him, and you’ve never felt more desired in your life.

He’s hoarse as he says, “Not here. Not for the first time. Not…not here.”

“Then where,” you ask, near impatient and far too eager as you let your hands roam wherever they want. And you find your thumbs tracing the waistline of his pants, dipping a nails width below where they should. They trail over the indented V of muscle you know is hiding under his shirt. He shudders.

It makes you smile wickedly.

“Then where, Taehyung,” you murmur into his neck with that wicked smile in your words as you trace your nose along his jaw.

“Fuck, you’re something,” he says, almost pained, bringing you immense delight. To know you affect him as much as he does you. That you have him as much as he has you.

Sly hands slowly pull his shirt from his trousers in an attempt to urge him on. It works, and his response is quick.

“My place. It’s a ten minu—fuck PG,” he almost scolds as your digits toy with the hair at his navel, dipping lower—enough to feel the beginnings of something—but not low enough to discern anything.

Yet.

“Can you behave for that long?”

You smirk.

Retracting your hands, you hold them up to show you can be good, do a quick once over to make sure you're decent and spin on your heel to walk towards your booth. Tae is behind you immediately, hand placed low on your back, thumb rubbing circles on the sliver of skin it touches. You ignore the goose bumps that arise.

Rei and Lea are at your table, thankfully. You explain to them you ran into Micah and that it really shook you, so Tae’s going to take you home. They know who Tae is, so they’re not worried when they give you goodbye hugs or when they tell you to text them when you're home safe.

You promise you will, and hope that the rest of Rei’s birthday goes well.

True to his word, it’s a ten minute rideshare before you’re pulling up to a tall, black windowed apartment building.

You’ve only been to Tae’s a handful of times with your brother, mostly for things like pick ups for concerts and such, but now that you’re here—alone with him—you’re trying hard not to jump him in the fucking lobby.

The pulsing between your legs has only worsened since you removed your hands from his waistline, and you’re close to crawling out of your skin with need.

His hand stays in its place at your lower back as the elevator climbs.

It’s not helping and completely helping at the same time.

Fuck.

Tae lives on the sixteenth floor and the view is incredible. It’s the first thing you see past the island when you walk in the front door. There’s the kitchen to the left past the entrance, which turns into the living space that’s furnished in a way you can only describe as pure Tae.

Books littering every surface, warm neutral toned furniture to counterbalance the colourful artwork he keeps on the walls. There’s an old record player with a collection of vinyls in the corner and what you assume is this morning's coffee mug on the art book filled coffee table.

To the right of the living space is the bedroom. It’s a studio apartment, but Tae’s managed to keep the flow of the place beautifully with some creatively put, gorgeously decorated room dividers. And the tall floor to ceiling windows wrap around it all, showcasing the lights of the city as they blend into the stars in the night sky.

Mesmerizing.

Just like the man locking his door behind you.

A kiss is placed on the back of your neck as you slide out of your shoes at the front door. You angle your head to allow more space, letting the arm that folds around you bring you closer to him. The feel of his arousal begins to grow behind you once more and you push back against him. A faint grunt meets the shell of your ear before his hand delicately slides up from your lower stomach and past your sternum. It teases your neck for just a moment before it meets your jaw to turn your lips towards his.

He captures them in a brutal kiss, drinking you in for all you’re worth and then some as his other hand replaces the one that now holds your jaw in place. He pulls you into him but you spin in his hold, throwing your arms around his neck once more and dragging him towards the living space. He sheds his jacket in the process, uncaring of where it lands on his floor so long as you are still kissing him.

You only stop when your ass meets the top of the couch and Taehyung palms the back of your thighs to lift you, your legs wrapping themselves around his hips as you sit on its edge.

He growls at the contact and it has you raking your nails down his neck and over his shirt as you open for him once more, tongues clashing and teeth scraping at the desperate nature you both share. You yank his shirt up and he breaks from your embrace for only the amount of time it takes for the fabric to hit the floor before he’s back on you, adding twin bruises to the other side of your throat.

You let the strings holding up your dress fall naturally to the side, revealing your chest to him, and a low, “Fucking hell,” is murmured somewhere below your ear before a nipple is in his mouth and you’re arching into his touch, slices of need shooting straight downwards. Giving no mercy to your attempts to draw out the pleasure.

One large hand cups a breast, molding it to his wanting before he switches and you’re groaning into the air above you, begging him for more, determined to have his tongue anywhere and everywhere you can get it. He lavs at your peaked bud, roaming over the sensitive flesh, making you squirm at the sensations he’s drawing from you.

You never want it to end as he makes his way back up to your mouth, dragging his bottom lip over all of the freshly deepend skin it trails in its wake, making you hazy with the feel of him and his marks.

His delicate touch wanders the insides of your thighs and your cunt aches for it the higher it climbs. But it slides up not down, reaching around to your ass and hoisting you onto his hips.

Turning, he walks the eight paces to his bed, places a knee on the mattress for support before setting you down. His lips never leave yours he crawls over you, settling his hips over yours for mere moments, allowing you to thrust only twice before he’s removing himself completely and sinking to his knees.

The fingers you’ve spent way too much time thinking about can’t get enough of your skin as they skate down your sides, taking the dress bunched at your hips with them. You raise your hips to help him get the scrap of fabric off, leaving a delicate, black lace thong the only thing keeping any of your remaining modesty intact.

You watch as his now fully blackened gaze takes you in, jaw dropped in slight at the sight of you with your legs opened on his bed. Like you were the prize he’s been waiting years to claim, and now that you're here and that you’re his his, he can’t quite believe it.

It’s then you realize that he wants you, and has been wanting you. That your attempts to stay in reality these last couple years weren’t just harder for you, but for him as well.

It hasn’t been one sided.

He wants you.

Taehyung.

Off limits, older brother’s best friend, swim club participating, jazz and poetry loving, judo knowing, book gifting, perfect smile having, protective, Taehyung.

Wants you.

You can physically feel the gush that rushes from your core at the thought and you know Tae can see it through the lace.

“Holy fuck…you’re fucking drenched and I haven’t even properly touched you yet,” he rasps, unbelieving.

“Then touch me and find out just how much I want this,” you whisper. Begging, pleading, praying your words have their intended effect. “How much I want you, Taehyung.”

The sound that leaves his throat is a mixture of a whimper, a groan, and a guttural noise indicative of pure desperate want as he takes hold of your legs and spreads them further. Those mother fucking fingers trace from your ankles to your knees accompanied by the occasional light kiss, back up your inner thighs, and finally to the spot where you’ve been weeping for him for the better part of thirty minutes with a heaping side of ten years yearned.

He places one open mouthed kiss on the top of your clothed clit and that simple touch has you arching, lightning crackling through your veins with the pleasure it brings. Tae slides one single finger down your covered slit before pushing it under and pulling it to the side.

At the mere sight of you he’s swearing so fiercely under his breath that you involuntarily clench and he can’t fucking take it anymore.

His mouth is on you and you buck at the sensation. Yielding you no mercy, his tongue swipes from opening to clit in one long lick that has you gasping, clutching bed sheets above and below your head to keep from screaming.

“Oh my—Fuck—Tae. Ohmygodohmy—” you’re rambling. Incoherent. A mess.

He’s consuming your very being, no nerve left untouched, no reaction too minimal for his learning as he snakes his hands around your legs to haul you closer, pull you deeper into his mouth and you can’t fucking take it. You’re screaming out at the intensity he circles you with, and you can feel your impending orgasm come rushing to the surface. You’ve barely even processed it’s begun before you’re spasming so hard Tae has to remove an arm from your leg to throw around your pelvis.

His devious fucking eyes meet yours for one earth shattering moment as he slips two fingers inside and begins a secondary merciless pursuit on your already overwhelmed senses. Using the pads to press upwards in time to the motions he never ceased with his tongue, a second wave is cresting before the first has ceased and you feel yourself clamping down, legs holding him in place as the intensity of your release climaxes.

You’ve never felt a pressure so intense before, it’s like your body is a volcano and you’re erupting for the first time while someone sets off fireworks from its peak. The lava flows in waves, your hand holding his hair as you ride his face, shuddering at the vibrations his moan into your cunt leaves on the most sensitive parts of your body.

Gentle strokes and licks calm as your pleasure begins to wane and you can breathe in more than just stuttered inhales again.

“Holy fu–” you try to get out, but your voice is hoarse, like you’ve been screaming the entire time.

And fuck, maybe you have been. You sure as hell can’t remember or think of anything more than the warm fuzzy feeling currently radiating from every single pore in your body. The damningly deliciously dizzying feeling in your head not allowing for coherent thoughts to pass. Your limbs are loose, your body wholly relaxed.

You’re…Well. You’re fucking perfect right now. If you could stay in this moment forever you would without second thought. Locked in this room with him for all time sounds like the best way to live out the rest of your days.

Until you wince as Tae blows warm breath on your core and he chuckles, then does it again.

“Hey,” you say, sounding much clearer now, “Stop that and come here.”

You slip your hand down his face and grab him by the jaw, pulling him up and over you. Tae tastes like fire and whiskey and ambrosia and you as you kiss him with abandon, near feral as you take what you want from him and he revels in it.

He’s on his elbows and a knee over you, and you use it to your full advantage to palm him over his pants and—Fuck he’s big. No wonder he was so thorough on you. This is going to hurt no matter how much prep either of you did.

He hisses at the contact and that only spurs you on, grasping firmly at his base and roving up and over the head with the heel of your palm, squeezing gently in time with his reactions.

“Christ PG, if you keep doing that I’m going to cum in my pants,” Tae laughs into your neck before rising to sit back on his heels. He gets as far as undoing his belt buckle and button before you take over, sitting up and pulling him out.

He is disastrously beautiful, just like the rest of him, and your mouth waters at just the idea of him in your mouth.

Licking your lips, you hear him curse quite colourfully as you take the tip into your mouth and swish your tongue over the head. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Tae raises one hand to his eyes and the other behind him to hold him up as you take him deeper, shaking from restraining himself so hard, murmuring to himself, “Oh fuck. Fuck me, can’t believe—so fucking good, pretty—perfect—ohmygod,” and you seal the motherfucking deal by taking him into the back of your throat and looking up into his eyes at the same time.

Taehyung barks and bucks once into your throat before removing himself and throwing you down onto the bed. He looks furious in the way that gets your heart racing, your cunt thrumming and your breathing so fast your chest feels like it might shatter from the crosscurrents.

He grabs each of your hands and raises them above your head, sliding his fingers up your wrists and between your own, holding them in place on his pillow.

Leaning down, he uses his lowest timber to speak darkly into your ear, teasing your swollen clit with the tip of his cock. Sliding back and forth, sending bolts of white hot need through you.

“You drive me fucking insane,” he starts, thrusting, teasing, torturing. And you moan at the contact.

“You make me want to throw away a decades old friendship just for the chance to touch you.”

Thrust, tease, jolt, whine.

“And what’s worst of all is you’re the best thing I’ve ever tasted, the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and you turn me into a complete idiot the second you enter the room. It’s like your fucking presence takes away all the working functions in my brain and leaves me with only the incurable fucking desire to make you cum until you can’t remember you own fucking name. Only mine.”

Thrust, squeeze, glide, jolt. “Tae...” you whine, delirious with pleasure, drunk on his greed and delighted by his torture.

“I call you PG because it’s the only way I can get away with calling you anything more than your name around him.” He sounds almost angry with how low he growls. “And it means so much more than you could think.”

He leans further into you, so close now that his lips brush your ear as he speaks.

“My Pretty Girl,” thrust, “My Precious Girl,” moan, “My Perfect Fucking Girl.”

He releases one hand to line himself up with your entrance. “That’s who you are to me. That’s what I’m calling you when I call you PG. My Pretty, Precious, Perfect Girl. My Girl.” He slips past your walls, sinking deep and you both groan in euphoric unison. “Mine.”

Tae pulls out, slow and controlled.

Blissful.

Then pushes back in, methodically.

Torturous.

Feeling every inch you can take, which is every single fucking one.

Inevitable.

Bottoming out for the second time, you whisper, “Yours,” into his ear, and he turns fucking ravenous.

Setting an absolutely ruthless pace, he claims your body, taking what’s so clearly always been his. Your legs wrap around him again, digging a heel into his ass as you drive him closer, harder with every push. Then lay claim to the one thing you’re able to, taking his lips with yours and biting down hard enough to draw the most sinful groan from the back of his throat. Hoarse, deep, almost broken with how raw it is.

One hand bruises its fingerprints into your hip while the other holds him up over you, and you use this to your advantage, slipping one leg around his and flipping the both of you over.

You trail your tongue down his jaw to his clavicle, he tastes of sweat and lust and sex and it is the most intoxicating thing you’ve ever consumed. Creating your own gardens of little blooming flowers down one side of his neck and up the other, Taehyung moans greedily into your ear as your ride to match his thrusts, sending him deeper while you decorate your willing canvas.

Because as much as he wishes to lay claim to your body, you want to claim his as well.

“Mine,” you say, positioning yourself to take over completely, using the springs of the mattress to do most of the work for you.

“Yes,” he says. But that’s not good enough.

“Mine,” you demand, and let loose, pressing down on the mattress with your knees rapidly, creating the glorious effect you wanted. You watch as the up force from the mattress causes Taehyung to be driven into you so quickly he throws his head back, mouth dropped in pure ecstasy.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, YN, What the fuck—” he rambles, lost to the pleasure, biting his lip, going slackjawed, clenching and unclenching his fists into bedsheets that already have your handprints seared into them.

And you keep going, a little torture creation of your own.

“Mine,” you demand again, and this time, it clicks.

“Yours! Fuck, yours. All yours, only yours,” he surrenders and you slow back down to a regular pace, breathless.

It’s a great move but it’s exerting.

You all but collapse on his chest and he takes over, thrillingly pissed off due to your power play.

“So that’s how it’s going to be?” he asks, and you clench at his tone.

He removes himself and you whimper, but he’s maneuvering you like a ragdoll on the bed and you’re more than fucking willing to be thrown around.

He’s kneeling on the bed, lifting your hips and sliding into you in a doggy style, but then he’s doing the most insane thing you think you’ve ever seen. With an arm around your stomach he brings your back to his torso and twists you both to face the open floor to ceiling windows. One of your legs is thrown over his that’s up to splay you wide for the skyline to see, and you can see your reflection in the glass.

You look beyond fucked out, and so does he, and it’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen. But then his hand is sliding to your throat, and a whispered, “Is this okay?” finds your ears. You nod.

Gripping the sides of your throat, he slides his other hand to graze your clit before beginning his own version of the move you just pulled. Pumping into you at a pace that has your g-spot screaming from all of the attention it’s receiving, his fingers swiping deftly over the bundled nerves at the apex of your thigh whilst lightly cutting off the blood supply to your brain.

It has you twitching and hazy and dizzy in seconds. You can see yourself losing to the feeling so steadily building at the base of your spine in the glass. Mouth open, body willing, the man who’s been at the center of your wanting for longer than you can remember, its deliverance.

Dark, sex tousled hair, muscled forearms holding you up and driving you insane. Blackened eyes focused on you and only you through the mirror the darkness of the night’s sky has created for you.

It’s that visual that sets you over the edge when he releases your throat, and you feel a gush flowing from where you two meet.

“Fuuuck yes. My Perfect Girl, cum all over my sheets, drench my cock. That’s it,” he purrs in your ear and it’s doing nothing but sending shock after shock into your already over sensitive and pulsing cunt, letting your consciousness float somewhere above or below you, you don’t really care.

All you know is that you feel light as a feather and not of this earthly plane.

Taehyung removes himself and lies you down gently. He’s back inside soon after and it just feels right as he fills you, like it’s where he’s meant to be.

He hovers over you once more, and you lift a single knee to his hip, mimicking your position from the club as he thrusts into you with fervor, chasing his own high after delivering three mind shattering ones to you.

Reaching one hand to his cheek, you hold him as he kisses you, working himself to completion.

Using your other to deliver a few expert circles to your clit, so you can come together, you breathe in each other's release and drown in once another’s embrace.

You leave his name on your tongue this time. A gift. A cry so delicate that a tear falls from your cheek and he kisses it away.

Taehyung inhales sharply, before stuttering his exhale and an exquisite warmth fills you.

“F-f-uu-ckkk,” he shudders as he lets the aftershocks of his release claim you in the most basic and animalistic of ways. You drink in the vulnerable sound, taking his mouth with yours one final time as you bask in each other's pleasure. Silent but for catching breaths, exertion evident as you hold one another.

Taehyung rests on your chest. Lines are sketched gently with your nails up and down his spine and into his hair as he comes down, content in the afterglow, where nothing is wrong and everything is perfect.

Before consequences kick in and regrets form.

When he decides he’s ready, Tae lifts and removes himself from you and you can feel the remnants of your combined efforts slide down to the bedsheets.

Tae takes a single finger and gathers it up before pressing it back in. You hiss at the now tender flesh. Though the pain doesn’t stop the warmth newly pooling at the sight and feel and meaning.

He pumps it back in once, twice before removing his finger and placing it in his mouth to clean off. Your cunt flutters at the sight and Tae smirks, leaning forward to share his findings with you in the form of a filthy, open mouthed, tongue filled kiss. It’s slightly salty, slightly metallic but you pull him back for one last lick when he tries to pull away.

Watching him kneeling there, in the glow of moonlight, you realize just how truly beautiful he is. The shape of his illuminated profile, the expanse of his chest as he breathes in, the colour of his skin under silver rays. He’s stunning.

You smile up at him, spent, sated and so astronomically fucked if your brother ever finds out.

Tae must see the thought on your face, because he says, “Don’t worry about him. I’ll handle it.”

But you honestly don’t give a fuck about that right now. That’s a tomorrow issue. What you want to know is, “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what, exactly?” He specifies.

You sit up, eye to eye as he sits on the edge of the bed, one leg on the ground.

“All of it. Any of it.”

There.

Now it was out in the open. And the rest is up to him.

You could drag yourself back down to reality. Chalk this night up to booze and bad timing and perfect timing. Could convince yourself it was just one night and that it would have to be enou—

“All of it,” he interrupts, the most sincere expression you’ve ever seen on him on full display. “Definitely all of it. Every last fucking word.”

You slump on your exhale, so fucking relieved you didn’t have to keep trying to lie to yourself that you could forget this happened.

You’re laughing before you can fight it off, shoulders shaking. Smiling so wide it hurts.

“Uh..YN?” Tae asks, clearly not sure how to take your reaction and you compose yourself.

“That’s PG to you,” you say as you crawl onto his lap, and kiss him into oblivion.

It’s interesting to finally sit on the dock across the way in East Egg.

The fog is gone, the sky is a brilliant blue, and the little box you kept sits open next to you, the lock and its key lost somewhere to the depths below your feet. Funny how harmless it seems now that there’s nothing locked inside anymore, like it could never really have hurt you in the first place.

You take in your newly emptied creation, and quirk a brow when you see it move.

A wiggle at first, before it’s shaking and spinning and shrinking, turning from a box into a glass windowed locket. Golden and delicate and beautiful, with a matching chain. You ponder for a moment what it could be for, before turning to look down at the green light to your right.

An idea strikes.

Unclasping the little window, you lift the opened pendant to the green light. And to your delight, the emerald hue hops into its new home, closing its tiny windowed door.

You smile at the clever little light, lacing the chain around your neck, resting it on the middle of your sternum, right above your heart. Its brilliant hue shining brightly through the pane for all to see.

Funny how the green light you so longed for, longed for you back, and is now yours for keeps.

A/N 2.5: This is what has been rotting in my brain for the better half of two weeks so please enjoy, it was supposed to be short and trope filled to cure my writers block but apparently I am incapable of short. But trope filled it clearly is. Overall tho, I'm quite pleased with this one.

A/N 3: As always, thanks for reading, loves. Xoxo, - Yoon <3

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jubshead · 1 month ago

Text

𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐞'𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐦

Paring: Agatha Harkness x Reader | Platonic Nicholas & Reader

Summary: Visiting your friend has some unexpected benefits when his mother is home.

A/N: This is the biggest thing I’ve written so far and I hope you guys like it!

This fanfiction is inspired by the song Stacy’s mom. There are a lot of references to the lyrics and the clip, so let me now which ones do you guys catch!

OH AND if you guys click on the clothe I’m describing, a link will take you to the image a had in my mind while writing.

This isn’t beta read and english isn’t my mother language, so bear with me.

Warning: Smut, (18+) age difference, (brief) mommy kink, fingering.

Word count: 8.1k

Date: Oct 29, 2024

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome!

Masterlist

Tag list: @nyoclosmom @stayevildarling @sasheemo @thefutureisus2020 @harknessshi

─────── ⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅ ───────

Being back in your hometown feels weird, the feeling of seeing people stuck in time and unsatisfied with their life always gives you a turn on the stomach. You’d rarely come up here after your family moved a few years ago, the main reason for visiting was your bestfriend Nicholas, but more times than not he was the one who traveled to spend time with you. Your city was so much better in multiple senses, especially now that you live at the college dorm.

As you didn’t have any relatives in town, you inevitably stayed at Nickie’s house. This time though, you felt like an intruder. Your friend commented on his parents’ recent divorce and how tension had been high for a while in their house before the separation.

During the years you’ve known Nicholas, you hardly ever saw his parents, they were always on some kind of work trip and left Nicholas to be the host of the house when you were there. Weirder, though, was the fact that they were never together. From what your friend had told you, they traveled at the same time, but to completely different places. Apparently they were both on the enterprise business, you weren’t really sure of what.

You’d cross paths with Mr. Scratch a couple of times, but you hadn't seen his mother since moving away as a child, you just remember her imposing presence and the overwhelming crush you used to have on her.

Your friend had mentioned that she would be home this time. She hadn’t taken a vacation in years, but the separation seemed to bring calmness to her and she was trying to spend more time with her son, at least that’s what he told you, and it wasn’t like she needed to work overtime for money, they were rolling in it.

You shyly roll your suitcase into the house’s pathway, anxiety eats you away and you hope that the person who greets you is your friend. It would feel awkward enough having Mrs. Harkness around the house while you were there, you didn’t want to re meet her after such a long time without Nicholas as a bridge.

Letting out a breath when you see your friend’s smile, you jump into his arms, barely giving him time to catch you. His forearms circle your waist and lift your feet off the ground, shaking you left and right like a ragdoll. You huff and hear the sound of your bag hitting the ground after colliding with your foot.

“Okay, okay. That’s enough.” You playfully pat him on his back and wait for him to settle back down.

“Excuse me for being excited to meet my friend, who I haven't seen in over a year, 'cause she’s too preoccupied with her studies.” He uses your own words to mock you.

“Well…I’m here now, aren’t I?” Your shrug and he raises an eyebrow at you. “Come on, be useful for once and help me with my bag.” You walk past him and leave your suitcase at the door.

“I forgot how insufferable you are.” He complains loud and clear, you turn back around in time to catch the smile in his face and stick out your tongue.

“You know you love it!”

“I might.” He mumbles under his breath and you ignore him, turning back around and going up the stairs.

Your relationship with Nickie has always been light and playful, he was like the little brother you never had and you allowed yourself to act childish in his presence. He reminded you of your childhood in this town and running across the street with the other kids. So, when he’d drop hints of something else, you’d just brush it off.

“Same room as always?” Your head peaks through the top of the stairs and you stare down at him as he struggles with your bag.

“Actually, no. My mom is remodeling that one into a massage room.” You raise an eyebrow and he shrugs. “You can stay at the end of the corridor. It’s a little further from my room, but I’m sure you won’t mind.” He settles the suitcase at the top of the stairs and leads you in the direction you’re not accustomed to.

“I sure don’t.” You assure him. “But I do wanna know where’s the illustrious Mrs. Harkness.” He lets out a chuckle at your nervous joke.

“She went out to run some errands, but said she’d be back soon and bring us pizza for dinner.” He stops at the end of the corridor. At the front wall there’s a door and on its side another one. He opens up the one on the right. “Like I said, my mom is remodeling some stuff, so this is the closest room we have available on this floor. This door is her bedroom.” He points to the other entry and you try not to react. It would be fine.

“Okay!” You exclaim and enter the enclosed space. The place was very similar to the one you were accustomed to, the only difference was spatially.

It had a window, wardrobe, bed and bathroom like all the others you had visited at the residence, but this one was faced to the back of the house. A big window opened up to the backyard and you could see the glistening pool water reflecting the orange light of the sun set. Facing the window was the bed and, on its left side, the bathroom.

Falling backwards, you bounce on the mattress and cover your eyes with the back of your elbow, all the adrenaline of the trip seems to leave your body at once.

Your friend throws your bag by your side. “What the fuck did you bring? It feels like there’s 20 bricks in here.”

“Stuff.” You reply passively, not moving a muscle.

He scoffs at you. “Okay, I can clearly tell you’re tired from your flight, so I’ll let you take a shower, put your ‘stuff’ away and I’ll call you when my mom arrives with our food. Does that sound good?”

“Yes, thank you!” You answer him gracefully and only take your arm away from your face when you hear the door close softly.

Lazily you sit up on the comfortable surface, open up your suitcase and search for your shower essentials. You feel clammy and stinky after spending a few hours at the airport and on the plane, so a bath is the first thing on your mind.

Finding a towel and adjusting the temperature is easy enough and in a few minutes you’re under the water pressure, tiredness mixes with anxiety and you slump against the wall.

You feel an overwhelming excitement at seeing Nichola’s mother and while it feels like meeting your boyfriend’s mom, it is also a completely different feeling. You don’t care if she thinks you are good enough for her son, especially since you don’t have that kind of relationship with your friend, but you wanted it, craved even, that she liked you.

Yeah, your childhood crush hadn’t passed.

You try not to let your thoughts eat you away by focusing on your routine and relaxing into the warm water.

When you’re done, you get out of the shower and wrap yourself up in a towel. Brushing your wet hair, you look out of the window, the day passed and with it the sunlight. You hope your hair will dry before bed.

You hear a soft knock and your friend’s voice. “Can I come in?”

“Gimme a second!” You scream back and hurriedly search your bag, grab a big shirt and pajama shorts. “Yes, come on in.”

Your friend pokes his head into the room and stares at you. You must be quite a sight from the way his eyes rank over your body. Your hair is dripping, wetting your shirt, there’s a brush in your cream slicked hands and your shorts are hardly poking out from the shirt’s waistband. You don’t understand the appeal.

“Yes, what is it?” You drawl out, taking him out of his trance.

“Mom is home, brought us pizza.” He beams at you. “I told her you like pepperoni.”

“And you are right as always, my friend.” You tell him in the worst southern accent someone has ever heard.

He chuckles and you throw the brush on top of the bed, grab the towel to clean your hands and follow him out of the room.

All your anxiety comes back as you go down the stairs, the smell of pizza fills the air and you hear movement in the kitchen. Entering the cooking area, you spot her right away.

“Mom.” Nickie calls by your side.

When she turns around, you feel trapped in a movie. It would be one of those scenes where a character is introduced and turns around in slow motion, with some random song in the back.

You try very hard not to gape at her. She is wearing a light brown loose suit accompanied by a white dress shirt underneath, her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows and on her feet you see expensive pointy black heels. Her hair is dark and matches her gold jewelry, she aged so well you feel like you’re one point away from falling to your knees in front of her.

She opens up the biggest smile upon seeing you.

“Oh hun, come here! Let me take a look at you.” She motions her hands towards herself and you timidly step into her arms.

She places her hands on your forearms and slowly runs her eyes over your figure. You squirm under her intense gaze and uncomfortably think about your choice of clothes. You should have dressed up, she looks so elegant.

She lets out a hum deep in her throat and you feel like a bug caught in a spider’s web when she looks into your eyes and smirks.

“It’s lovely to finally meet you, dear. Nicholas spoke highly of you, but I must say his words don’t do you justice.”

“Yeah? Wait until she opens her mouth.” Your friend says by your side and you shove him slightly.

Agatha laughs at your antics and winks at you when you look back at her, making you blush.

“Let's eat, shall we?” She claps her hands and brings them close to her chest, turns around and grabs the carbon box.

Nicholas leads you into the dining table and you sit in front of him, on the left side of the head of the table, where Agatha settles down. You were starving, eating was the next thing on your mind after a shower and now that you are clean, you can enjoy the meal. Politely, you wait until Nicholas takes a slice and offers it to you, nodding eagerly, you extend your plate in his direction.

You dive in and barely listen to the conversation they are having, that is, until you hear your name.

“Yes?” You swallow hurriedly and feel the piece burning your throat as it slides down.

“I was asking how college has been treating you, hun.” You gulp down the soda in front of you to smooth the pain. You are pleasantly surprised she knows something about you and is interested enough to ask.

“Oh, it’s been great! I really enjoy the course and the professors. It’s also a bonus that I moved out of my parents’ house.” You answer her excitedly.

“I bet you are taking full advantage of that, right dear?” She says with a playful smile and scrunch in her face, before sipping her glass of wine.

“Mom!” Nicholas exclaims by her side and you let out a nervous chuckle at the joke.

“I’m just kidding, honey.” She winks at him and waves her hands in the air in a dismissal movement.

“I sure am, Mrs. Harkness.” You return the jab and she turns to look deep into your eyes, her mouth slowly grows into a grin.

Distantly you hear your friend clean his throat and mumble “I didn’t need to know about that.”

You slowly let go of her intense gaze to turn into your friend’s direction.

“Don’t be a baby.” You throw your napkin across the table and he huffles in response.

After that, dinner doesn't last long. You patiently wait for Nicholas to finish what must be his fifth slice, before getting up and unspokenly offering yourself to clean up the dishes by grabbing the plates.

You feel a light touch on your arm. “You don’t have to do that, dear. You must be tired from your flight, Nicholas will clean up for us.”

“I really don’t mind, Mrs. Harkness.” You feel her hand run lightly up to your elbow and you hold in your shudder.

“Well, I insist.” Looking in your friend’s direction, he gives you a small smile and a nod. “And call me Agatha, hun.”

Rapidly blinking, you turn to face her and are met with a smile.

“Okay, humm…” Gently setting down the plates, you feel her hand slip from your arm.

You hesitate and Mrs. Harkness encourages you. “Go on.”

“Goodnight, then.” You practically run out of the room, stopping to glance back at them and give an awkward smile.

As much as you’d like to protest, Agatha is right. With a full belly, you feel your energy drain, your eyelids become heavy and you can only think about the big warm bed waiting for you.

The worry of being a bad guest slips from your mind as soon as your head hits the pillow.

─────── ⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅ ───────

The detergent runs down your hands and into the drain.

The window in front of the sink gives you a full view of the house’s backyard. The midday sun shines down into the grass, the pool glistens invitingly and a light breeze blows away a stuffy day.

Your night was uneventful, exhaustion seemed to take the best out of you and you woke up practically at lunch time. This time, though, you insisted on washing the dishes and wouldn’t take ‘no’ as an answer.

You got carried away by your task a while ago and now your hands move in their own accord. The idea of spending a day under the sun brings a renewed energy into your body and you practically vibrate in anticipation. It’s been a while since you’ve been to a pool or the beach.

You startled when your friend jumps to sit on the counter next to you.

“Jesus, Nicholas!” You exclaim loudly, stopping your sopped hand midway and preventing a wet shirt.

He gives you a boyish smile and says. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine.” You murmur out.

One second away from articulating your thoughts and suggesting your idea, you are interrupted by your friend.

“Should we spend the day outside?” He says and you look at him with big eyes and a wide grin.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” You exclaim. “I’m almost done here. You can go upstairs and change already.”

“Okay, bossy.” He playfully jabs while hopping out of the counter. On his way out of the kitchen he tells you. “I’m going to ask my mom if she wants to join us.”

Your whole body freezes. The image of Mrs. Harkness wearing only a bikini comes into your mind and leaves you lightheaded, when you look back at him, he’s already gone. Fuck.

You rapidly finish the dishes and dry your hand on a towel, run upstairs into your room and close the door softly.

Placing your suitcase in the bed, you sort through your clothes in an attempt to find your best bikini. Sprawling everything around and leaving a mess behind, you try to breathe and be reasonable. She wouldn’t be looking at you in the same way that you would look at her, there is no reason to be worried. Yeah, right. Just because she wasn't attracted to you didn't mean you didn't want her approval.

Pulling out your favorite red bikini, you let out a small commemorative sound. The two-piece consisted of a top adjustable sideways and held by two strings that made a bow on your nape. The bottom was very similar in style, the front covered you up and was held by little bows on the side that lead to a thong.

You change into it and look at yourself in the mirror. The color complemented your skin tone and the shape matched your body type. You repeat to yourself: there is no need to be worried.

Easier said than done.

You distract yourself by going into the bathroom and grabbing the sunscreen, the last thing you needed was to overthink and start biting your nails.

As you leave the bedroom, you follow the sound of someone in the kitchen and find Nicholas eating some kind of fruit.

His back is turned and you take a moment to really look at him. He was tall and defined, with a boyish light nature that seemed to make life easier. His light brown hair matches his father’s, but, other than that, he was Agatha though and though. Just as attractive as her and definitely broke as many hearts as his mother did. Maybe in another life things would be different between you two.

You shudder at the thought. Definitely not this one, though.

You approach him and grab a strawberry, barely registering his gaze appreciating your body as you lean into the counter and try to casually ask.

“What did your mother say?” You take a bite of the berry.

It takes a hot minute for him to take his eyes off of you and respond. “Said she’s happy to join us. She’s changing, but told us to go ahead if we want to.”

“Let's go then!” You exclaim and rapidly grab your friend and the bowl of fruit.

You open the glass door and a light breeze invades the house, you don’t stop to appreciate it. Afraid of fainting if you saw Nickie’s mother only in a bikini, you struggle to get into the pool before she comes down.

Placing your towel and the sunscreen in one of the chairs, you ignore your friend sitting next to you and move into the pool stair.

“Why are you acting crazy?” He asks with a frown while you step down into the water.

“I’m not.” You reply and he lets out a hum. Fuck him for seeing right through your bullshit. “I’m just excited, that’s all.”

You dive in. The pool is in the perfect temperature for the hotness of the day. It was mostly covered by the shadows of the trees, so, for now, you don’t have to worry about sunscreen.

Resurfacing and pulling your body into the pool’s edge, you throw a bit of water into your friend and say.

“Aren’t you coming in?” He nods and you add. “Bring the strawberries with you.”

Resting your head in the water, you let your body float freely. Your hearing is muffled and you take a moment to breathe in the space and relax. Having Nickie’s mom around was making you more anxious than you were prepared for.

You look up into the bright blue sky and observe the clouds. The day was so beautiful and your need for praise and validation was quickly increasing. There was nothing wrong with having a crush, but if it was affecting you this much, you needed to let it go for a while.

Your arms flow by your side and you clean your mind.

Time seems to stop in this position and you feel your body ease up for the first time since your friend told you his mother would be around. You hear a commotion outside of the pool and remain with your eyes closed, enjoying the empty pool before Nicholas jumps in and disturbs your peace.

That doesn’t last long. A few seconds later you feel drops of water splashing on your face. You look up from between wet lashes to find Nicholas with his feet partially inside the water and his mother by his side. He had been calling you.

“Yeah?” Wiping the excessive water from your face, you stand up.

“Would you mind sharing your sunscreen?” He asks you.

“Of course not.” You reply and change focus.

His mother looks even better than you’d imagine, if that’s even possible. She’s wearing a black two-piece and from afar you can see the lace covering the fabric. It fits her body perfectly, the top is similar to yours, but it isn’t sideways adjustable. The bottom, though, is very different, where your bikini is thin and revealing, hers has thick strands and you can see that it covers her butt a lot more than yours do. You were right in assuming you’d faint if you saw her outside of the pool. The image makes you dizzy.

“Enjoying the water, hun?” She tracks your body with her eyes and licks her lips.

You follow the action and it takes a noticeable second for your brain to process the question.

“Yes, I am, Mrs…Agatha.” You correct yourself and blush, from the slip up and the delay. Your face gets even hotter when she smirks and you realize you’ve been caught staring at her.

You just can’t help yourself. She sits down and spreads sunscreen on herself. This woman is a goddess you’d pray for until the day you die. Her belly is straight and defined, her boobs are small and compliment her body perfectly. When she turns around, asking Nicholas to help reach her back, you blatantly look at her ass. It was round and perky. You feel like a pervert, but that doesn’t change the fact that you wish it was you spreading sunscreen on her back.

God, if you had seen her anywhere else, you’d never guess she was more than 45 and had a son.

She catches you staring for a second time and winks at you. You dive back into the water to hide your red cheeks.

The afternoon runs smoothly. Nicholas joins you in the pool and you try to distract yourself by playing with him. If took a peak or two at his mother bathing in the sun, who could blame you?

It's around 4pm when your friend decides to go inside and grab more fruits. You had devoured the strawberries a long time ago and were now starving after splashing, fighting and swimming with him like a kid. The day had turned out as great as you had expected it to be.

You rest your tired head against the edge and hear a faint sound. You feel Agatha walk behind you, all the way to the pool ladder and fight against opening your eyes to stare at her backside.

It is the first time she joins you on the water and you hear Nicholas from inside in the kitchen. Your thoughts run free and as relaxed as you are, you get distracted by the image conjured up in your head of your friend picking up fruits and washing them.

You get slightly startled when you feel a hand running through your hair ends. Opening your eyes, you breathe in and try not to take a step back. Somehow, in your relaxed state, Agatha has crept up on you and is now standing a foot away. Her eyes are focused on the way her fingers twiddle your tips and in this proximity, you feel how hot her body is from soaking in the sun all day.

“I was trying to remember you as a kid.” She starts and looks up into your eyes. “You were the one with the pigtails, right?”

“Yeah.” You let out a laugh as you remember your signature hairstyle back then and add a nervous joke. “I’m all grown up now, though.”

“Yes, I can see that.” She replies slowly, her gaze drifting to your breasts.

Her hand leaves your hair and descends through the water until you feel a faint touch of fingers in your waist. She smirks, closing up the space between you two. The top of her bikini brushes against yours and pressed against the pool’s edge and her body, you panic when you hear the glass door open behind you.

She laughs at your wide eyes and dips her head into the water. Thanking all the heavens and architects that built this house, you turn around in time to see Nicholas rounding the corner.

“There you go.” He sits on the floor next to your sprawled arms and places the bowl in front of your face.

Feeling your heartbeat on your throat, you shove a grape on your mouth to calm yourself down.

“I think you should put on some sunscreen now. Your cheeks are really red.” You cough and blush even more, he runs his thumb through your face and you try not to flinch at the image he could have walked on.

“I was actually about to get out and stay under the sun for a while, so I’ll definitely do that.” You push yourself out of the water and feel eyes on your backside as you place your knees on the floor before getting up. Like mother, like son.

“Aw, you are getting out already?” He asks you with pleading eyes and you ignore him as you place yourself in one of the chairs.

“Already? I’ve been in there for hours. Look at my fingers.” You raise your palm up to show the wrinkled digits.

“You do look like an old mop.” He tells you with a side smile, you can only roll your eyes and let out a sarcastic laugh. “Come on! My mom just got in, we can’t leave her inside the water by herself.”

“Oh no, I’m not staying.” You both turn to look in her direction. “I just wanted to dip in to cool down. Grab me a towel, will you?” She tells her son with a flourish of hands.

He picks one from the pile while she steps up the pool stairs. You close your eyes, it wouldn’t be good to stare at your friend's mother in his presence.

They exchange a few words and Agatha goes inside. Nicholas sits by your side and relaxes into the lounge, mimicking your facing up position. The bowl is placed between you two and from time to time you brush your hands against his when grabbing a berry.

The sun shines down and your body heats up. The droplets of water evaporate and you avoid thinking about your little moment in the pool, you had promised yourself you would stop getting anxious around the house. What if Nichola’s mother may or may not be interested in you? That doesn’t change anything.

Yeah, right.

God, if Nicholas found out about this crush he’d be heartbroken. It’s been clear for a while that he has feelings for you that aren’t reciprocated.

He doesn't even know you are a lesbian.

“Tell me again, when will your classes start?” You ask and remain in the same position. A plan to let him down gently already formed in your mind.

“Same as yours.” He replies without looking at you.

You hum. “Are you excited for college?”

“I honestly am, which is unexpected.” He holds the conversation and you both remain with your eyes closed.

“Yeah.” You let out a small chuckle. “For a few years there I thought you had given up on the idea.”

“I had. I was thinking of taking over my parents' company.”

“Oh yes, I forgot you are a nepo baby.” You interrupt him and snort when you feel a towel landing on your face.

“As I was saying. I might still do that, but I shouldn’t run the business just because I’m their son. I want the knowledge to back me up.” He looks into your eyes and you give him a small genuine smile.

“Well, I think that’s very mature of you. I’m sure moving out of your mother’s house will help you decide what you want.” Sometimes you forget the 2 year difference between you two.

“Yeah.” He replies and pauses before adding. “Sorry about my mom’s comment yesterday.”

You frown and take a while to remember what he was talking about. The dormitory innuendo.

“It’s fine really, she’s right.” You laugh.

“She is?” He looks at you with big puppy eyes and you brace yourself for the blow.

“Yes. My roommate is cool about it and, more times than not, she thinks the girls I bring in are only friends.” You try to respond to it conversationally.

You look into his eyes and wait for a reaction, his brain doesn’t automatically catch up and he stares at you like you had grown a second head. As soon as it dawns on him you watch in slow motion as his eyes grow abnormally wide and his mouth hangs open. You were more worried about his feelings than a rejection, you know he’d never hurt you intentionally.

“Oh.” He lets out in a breath.

He seems to be stuck in place as he takes in the information, so you decide to move for both of you. Grabbing a towel, you place yourself on your feet and get up from the chair. Stretching your arms up and letting out a small groan, you turn in his direction.

Out of curiosity, you take a second to look at the house and search for your room’s window. It doesn’t take long to find, it’s the second last to the left and by its side a balcony leads to a spaced bedroom. Squinting your eyes against the sun, you try following the movement you see inside. It takes a while, but your eyes settle against the difference in clarity and you almost fall over.

Your brain catches up with the fact that Agatha’s room is next to yours a little late and inside the space you observe as she slowly unties her bikini with her back turned to you. She passes her head through the top knot and stretches her head from one side to another, before smoothing her finger through the indents caused by the bikini. You register your friend calling you and answer without taking your eyes off of her.

“Yeah?” You hum and add. “I’m gonna go take a shower.”

You start walking without waiting for a response. You can’t take your eyes off of the scene being displayed in front of you, wishing she would turn a little more in your direction. When she starts removing the bottom, you feel the ground under your feet evaporating.

Literally.

One second you are walking along the pool’s edge and the next one you feel the breath leave your body as you collide hard against the ground. Your head swims and your left side hurts like a bitch, with your attention somewhere else you forgot the pool floor was wet and slipped on it, hitting your back and hip.

You faintly hear your friend getting up and have difficulty breathing through the pain, the world seems to twirl in front of your eyes and at the back of your mind you hear Mrs. Harkness calling out for her son.

“Did you hit your head?” Nicholas casts a shadow on you as he crouches down to inspect the situation.

Your only response is a groan.

Embarrassment doesn’t even cross your mind, the pain radiates all the way from your ass to your left shoulder and leaves you thoughtless. The only thing you can concentrate on is trying to help your lungs do their work.

“Can you get up?” Your friend tries again.

“Give me a second, will you?” You wheeze out.

“She’s fine!” He turns his back and shouts.

Dropping your head in the direction he’s facing, you see his mother’s face full of concern as she leans over the balcony with a towel on.

Your friend helps you up and you put all your weight on him as you hop into the house.

You throw yourself in one of the kitchen’s chair and your friend grabs a cup of water and pain medication, unspokenly offering to you.

Nicholas helps you all the way upstairs and into your room. When he leaves, you rapidly get under the water stream and wash out all the chlorine sticking to your body before exhaustion leaves you infunctional.

Out of the shower, you take a moment to look at your back in the mirror, purple spots are already forming and you just know you’ll be sore for days.

You throw yourself in bed and immediately pass out, wet hair and naked. A day in the pool has drained all your energy and the medication seems to knock you out completely.

Even as tired as you are, your sleep in conturbed. You turn around and rumble your bed, trying to find a comfortable position for your throbbing left side.

When you wake up, you are completely disoriented, night has fallen over and your room is pitch black, the only light comes from the moon as your open window curtain is blown away by a light breeze. You search around in the dark for your phone, the bright light shines in your eyes and you squint to look at the time: 1AM. You throw your head back and groan, you had fucked up your sleep schedule and everyone else was probably already asleep.

The feeling of an empty stomach gives you enough energy to get up and move to the kitchen. Ignoring the main light, you turn on a few lamps and lighter illuminations around the house, creating a cozy environment. You find a white box on top of the balcony and pop a pill into your hand, swallowing it down with a cup of cold water. The effect of the medication had passed during your afternoon nap.

Opening up the fridge, you find the leftovers of last night's pizza. You settle in the counter and eat it straight from the box, don't even bother heating it up. You shove up three slices and, in the meantime, decide to watch a movie. Throwing the empty box on the trash, you go into the television room and settle yourself laying sideways, your right side resting against the sofa.

You hear a faint sound of steps coming from upstairs and ignore it. Someone must be going to the bathroom. Deciding on a random channel, you relax into the couch, the ambience and light sound from the television helping with your pain.

The medication must be really strong, because you doze off once more. You open your eyes slowly and take a second to realize what has woken you up. Someone’s fingers are brushing through your hair lightly and a voice calls out your name.

Your vision settles on the image of your friend’s mother sitting by your side. She’s wearing a long black robe, its pattern has a mixture of purple and green and her hair is resting mainly on her right shoulder. You thank the darkness for hiding the blush covering your cheeks as she looks down at you and asks.

“How are you feeling, hun?”

“Better. I just took another pill.” You whisper.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your back?” Her fingers move from your hair and settle themselves lightly in your left rib.

You shake your head and lay more into the sofa. A shiver runs down your body as she slides the thin material of your silk pajama blouse and brushes her hands through, what you assume, is the purple blooming on your skin.

“Oh.” She lets out.

“Is it that bad?” You ask, already knowing the answer.

“Yes, but I’ve got just the stuff for it.” She tells you and gets up, disappearing into the house.

You frown at her ways and focus on the television while waiting. Nicholas was probably asleep and wouldn’t wake up until tomorrow, being alone with his mom made you nervous beyond words, especially after earlier. You had no idea if she was only pushing your buttons, because she noticed you had a crush on her or if she was actually interested.

The teasing made the thoughts of her having been with a woman cross your mind again. You could imagine, she traveled a lot, her husband was never around and she didn’t seem to have an interest in him anymore. It would be so easy for her to fall in bed with a woman on one of her trips.

You hear her bare feet walk into the living room and look up to catch a smile on her face.

“Come one, turn over for me.” Her choice of words makes you obey without a second thought.

You cross your arms in front of your face and rest your forehead against them. You feel her presence behind you. Your back is turned to her and this time she doesn’t ask for permission before lifting up your shirt. Her nails run through your skin, following the movement.

“Nicholas has probably mentioned to you that I’m turning the upstairs room into a massage space.” You hear the lid of a bottle opening, before feeling something cold against your back. “Actually, dear. You should remove this.” She grabs your pajama top and you lift your head without a word.

Your bare breasts rests against the cushions and your head swirls.

She hums before spreading the lubricant around, it brings a nice sensation to your heating skin. Inspecting the damage, she concentrates the oil mainly on your left side.

Her movements are light until they aren’t, she puts pressure at the purple spots and you groan, pain blooming from your back and making you arch your chest into the couch, trying to avoid her feeling. She holds onto your waist to stop the motion, her hands are slick and placed much lower than normally appropriated.

“Come on, this will be good for you.” She whispers close to your ear and her hair tickles your back.

Like a child waiting for praise, you relax into her touch.

She continues the torturous massage and you can only let out painful moans that seem to sputter her on. Her fingers focus firstly on your shoulders, the reason for removing the shirt apparent now as her fingers circle around the muscle and ease up the tension. This part doesn’t hurt as much and you’re able to appreciate it when her fingers work on the tired knots. The tension starts leaving your body and from time to time you let out timid groans of appreciation.

The oil heats up against your back and her hands press down into your ribs. Her hands circle your body and her thumbs work hard on liberating the coagulated blood under the skin. The burning sensation brought by the lubrication helps with the pain and the way she aggressively grabs onto you leaves traces behind, you feel your hard nipples brushing against the sofa.

“Oh, honey. This is worse than I thought.” She tells you as her hands cascade into the worst part.

You fell ass first and most of the impact has been on the area. She runs her digits on the lower side of your back, brushing from time to time against the thin material covering your bottom. This part is more painful, but you face it up like a big girl. The bone causes a harder surface and she incessantly moves. You hiss through clenched teeth and pray she will be over soon. The pain is worse than in the other parts and the massage seems to stretch for an absurd amount of time, in agony you can’t even appreciate the fact that Agatha Harkness has her hands on you.

She finally stops and you relax into the couch. The silence hangs around you and you wait for her to get up and go back to sleep.

“Do you mind if I take this off?” She asks, stretching the waistband of your shorts before letting it go.

You blink rapidly and freeze. The question catches you off guard and you don’t have an automatic reaction.

“I’m not wearing underwear.” You whisper shyly.

“Not a problem, hun.” Somehow you can hear the grin on her voice.

Before you can move, she’s already running the fabric down your legs. Changing your body’s weight into your forearms, you help her by lifting your behind.

“Wait. Stay like this.” Your brain short circuits at the demand.

You are practically doggie style and your naked center is squeezed by your thigh in a pitiful attempt to hide it from her. You feel her moving behind you before placing a pillow under your hip.

“There we go. Are you comfortable?” She asks you without reservations.

You inspect the position you’re in. A large bolster props your uncovered ass up, your back is partially arched, following the weight deposited in your arms. Your hair is in a bun and your skin is covered in oil. Your nipples are hard rock and your breasts are begging for attention. You feel wetness in your lower lips.

Biting your lips, you nod.

“Great.” She lightly claps behind you.

You feel the couch dip by your side and tense up as she straddles the upturned side of your legs. Her thighs are pressed against yours and her weight doesn’t bother you. You estimate your ass is leveled with her ribs. If she got on her knees, she could be fucking you from behind.

Oh god, honestly the worst thought you could have when your cunt is practically in her face.

Her body shifts as she picks up the bottle on the table, a light texture is poured on top of your rear and you feel it run down your legs. She places the bottle back down and grabs a fistfull of your ass, you let out an involuntary moan and hear a malicious chuckle behind you.

“Enjoying yourself?” She teases you.

Your cheeks heat up at the joke and you don’t respond, your voice seems to have escaped you.

Her hands wander around and squeeze, you have the vague impression that she’s feeling you up instead of actually doing a massage. The palpation worsens your current aroused situation and you try to close your legs as much as possible without her notice. She focuses all of her attention where the purple is mostly concentrated, her fingers are firm and direct, this time though, the pain mixes with pleasure and you grab hard into the sofa in an attempt to hide your needy moans. Her hands graze your center a few times and everytime it happens, you buck into it.

You feel like a bitch in heat.

The wetness between your legs seems to gather unstoppable and you are barely able to contain your sounds. You’ve never felt this aroused in your life.

You faintly register Agatha calling out for you.

“Yes?” You hoarsely let out, previously unnoticed drools run down your chin and your eyes are shut closed.

“You are making a mess of my hand, hun.” You blush so furiously a salmon would be jealous of you.

You register the wetness of your center sticking in your thighs and joining the oil she was using. You are left speechless for what feels like the 100th time in her presence. Her hands move up through the outside of your legs before harshly grabbing your hip and bringing it close to her own center. She leans over the curve of your back to whisper in your ear.

“Let mommy take care of you.”

You moan aloud at the name.

You feel her breath ghost against your cheek as she laughs at you. Her nails run down your ass and brush your center, ignoring it. You knew in your state it wouldn’t take much for you to come, but, unfortunately for you, Agatha’s number 1 hobby seemed to be teasing.

She pulls back and focuses her attention on your backside, while her white acrylics run from your knees all the way up, her mouth works on scratching her teeth through your right ass cheek.

Her palm carefully grope your purple spot and you let out a small yelp at the harsh bite she delivers on your good cheek. She kisses it better and shows the same light appreciation to your hurt side.

Her lips leave your skin as she manhandles you. The grip on your hip pushes your ass higher and you rise up on your elbows. If you were playing about having your center in her face before, you definitely weren’t laughing now.

“Oh, dear. You are drenched.” On her knees, she parts your folds with her fingers and you lean against her. She runs her digits down and easily finds you clit, pressing it lightly and causing a restrained whine to escape you.

“Don’t do that. I want to hear all your pretty sounds.” She tells you in an almost sing-song voice, but you know she's not asking.

Obeying as she applies more pressure, you let out a free moan. Your face burns and you pant against the couch’s armrest. The oil on your skin seems to be some kind of special brand as it burns you up, your nape feels sticky as sweat starts to leave your body and you can’t focus on anything else besides the pleasure Agatha is giving you.

Your head swims when you feel her digits run up your slit and enter you. She pauses inside and you thrust back, whining from the delay. She seems to find amusement in your torture and laughs before slowly moving her digits.

She takes pleasure in watching you bend yourself to chase her finger and holds into your waist to contain part of your harsh movement. She teases you by letting her finger plunge in the slowest motion possible.

Even with the leisure pace you feel your pleasure building brick by brick. It’s a new sensation to have your orgasm sluggish reach you and, as good as it feels, it’s also not nearly enough to drive you over the edge. You moan, whine and trash against the sofa.

“Agatha, please!” That’s just about what your brain is able to formulate in your aroused muffled head.

“Such a pretty girl using her words.” The praise only seems to worsen your condition and you let out a frustrated cry at the light way her fingers keep moving.

The sound has an effect, though. She applies pressure and curls her fingers, hitting just the right spot to make you sob. She sets a forceful rhythm by using her hips as leverage, enough to make you hit your head against the couch headboard and hold onto it for dear life.

Your moans come out uncontrollably and you barely register, you could be screaming at the top of your lungs and you wouldn’t know. The pleasure comes in waves, your back undulates against her firm grip and your nails scratch at the fabric under your fingers. It’s so much and not enough at the same time. You try to voice your thoughts, but only a groan leaves your mouth.

“Yes, I know.” She smoothes you and gently takes your hair from your face, contrasting her other actions.

She does seem to know, because a few seconds later her hand joins the other one in your center, her movement is continuous and it takes a second for her to find your clit. When she touches it and applies pressure your vision turns black. You’d be worried about your temporary blindness if the circular motions on your clit, coupled up with her finger hitting the perfect spot inside you and her nails leaving a delicious stinging behind, hadn’t made you double over as your climax finally hit you.

You’re sure this is the longest time you’ve spent coming in your life. The waves seem to crash into another as Agatha keeps entering you and drawing out the pleasure. Her pace doesn’t slow down and when you think it’ll be over it starts for a second time. Your head in thoughtless, you had literally been fucked stupid and was pretty sure that somewhere your mind couldn’t reach, you heard yourself moaning like a bitch.

After what felt like minutes, your body completely slumps down into the couch. Your breath is coming out in harsh puffs and you don’t even feel the pain of the fall anymore. Someone brushes fingers through your scalp and you look up to catch Agatha’s dirty smile.

Her robe is rumpled and open, you barely have time to appreciatively run your eyes down her naked figure before hearing.

“Mom?”

Fuck.

#I’m actually proud of this one!#agatha all along #agatha harkness #agatha x reader #agatha harkness x reader #fanfiction

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