#Excited but nervous bc the airplane

[scarecrowgolem]

flying over to live with my partner tomorrow im nervous.....

[myseungsunglove]

The Art of Meeting | Bc

Pairing: Chan x Reader 

Warnings: angst, fluff to wrap it up

Word Count: 5.4k (whoopsies)

Summary: the reader and Chan are meeting up after their unlikely connection via bubble and Instagram. The reader is heading to LA to meet Chan and the boys. Will this meeting be everything she hoped for or make matters more complicated than she imagined?

A/N: Part 3. For The Master of Flirting - This one really, really got away from me. Sometimes I include so much detail because I just feel like you NEED to know, you know? Anyway, I very much enjoyed writing this part, so I really hope you guys enjoy it. 

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Feedback Welcome

「© September 3, 2023 by mysweethannie」

Saturday, August 19th 12:15 AM CST

Chan: *received video*

Hey there, beautiful. We are on the plane and about to head out. It’s a long flight, and I’m exhausted. I can’t believe I’m going to see you in a little over 12 hours. I’m literally on cloud 9 just thinking about getting to see you. 

“Is that our lovely y/n?” you hear Han’s voice in the background. 

“Did someone say y/n?” Seungmin quickly interjects. 

It’s not long before both boys' heads pop into the frame. Stupid, goofy grins plastered on their faces. 

“Oh my god, Y/n Hi! We’re gonna see you soon. Get excited because this is going to be the most exciting weekend of your life,” Han practically yells at the screen. 

Seungmin scoffs, a small smirk briefly appearing on his face. He always pretends to be annoyed with Han, but you know the opposite to be true. His eyes don’t lie. He is extremely fond and protective of Han. 

“Seriously, you’re so loud,” he says, shoving Han playfully. “Can’t wait to see you, y/n,” He waves a tiny little wave that makes your heart squeeze in your chest. Han leans up and kisses the camera before Chan can swat them both away. 

“Anyway,” Chan laughs, rolling his eyes playfully. “Seems I’m not the only one excited to see you,” he smiles fondly. “Maybe for different reasons, but still those two don’t shut up about you. Hell, I don’t either,” he laughs at himself. “Now I’m just rambling, but I just wanted to let you know we boarded and are heading out. I know you probably won’t be up for a few hours, or at least I hope you took my advice and got some rest. I’ll text you when we land. Our flights are scheduled to arrive pretty close together, so I’ll see you at LAX,” he smiles at the camera, his eyes becoming tiny slits. 

“Byeom, darlin’” 

The video ends there and you smile contentedly at your phone. You watch the video over again, laughing at the interruption of Han and Seungmin, your heartbeat quickening when Chan admits that he can’t stop talking about you and is excited to see you. You type out a quick response, hoping you’ll catch him before his phone is put on airplane mode. 

Y/N: I’m so nervous and excited, I can hardly sleep. Though, I am getting a little tired now that I know you’re headed out. I can’t wait to see you. I’m not sure words can even explain how I’m feeling if I’m being honest. 

Chan: I was hoping you’d be asleep, but I get it. I’m gonna have to take something to make me sleep. Ah, they’re telling us to prepare for take off. I gotta go. Please get some sleep, baby girl. It’s gonna be busy once we’re in LA, trust me. My life is kind of crazy. See you soon, y/n

Y/N: I’m not sure how one misses someone they haven’t actually met, but Channie, I miss you. 

Chan: I know exactly what you mean. I miss you more, baby girl. 

Y/N: Travel safe, Channie. G’night babe. 

Chan: G’day, darlin’

You lock your phone, switch it over to silent and place it on the wireless charger. Sleep suddenly feels imminent now that you know the boys are about to be in the air. You smile to yourself as you roll over and cuddle up to your body pillow to fall asleep. 

August 19th 4:30 AM CST

Morning comes much more quickly than you anticipate. You wake with a jolt at 4:30 AM. Whoever is taking you to the airport is due to be at your house at 5:30 sharp. You peel yourself out of bed and drag yourself into the bathroom to go through some kind of morning routine. You debate on whether you are going to travel cozy and casual or dress up and actually put on makeup. You settle for something in between the two, a simple tinted moisturizer, a light powder, and some mascara. You have pretty healthy skin and it is glowing this morning despite your complete lack of sleep. Your freckles, one of your more charming features, dance across your round cheeks. Chan has mentioned absolutely loving them, so you decide to let them shine today. 

Your outfit isn’t complicated. You don’t want to look like you are going on a business trip but equally so you don’t want to look like a bum either. It is hot as hell at home, so you grab a purple sundress with white flowers on it and throw on your favorite pair of cons. 

You slip on your jewelry, a simple diamond pendant necklace, a few low statement rings, and your earrings. You assess yourself in the mirror and figure you are about as ready as you’re going to be. Your hair is short, so a little spray and a few tossles here and there do the trick. You look at the clock and it’s near 5:00, so you move to refill your water bottle and double check your luggage. You are a meticulous planner, so the likelihood you are forgetting anything with all the lists you have made is slim to none, but it doesn’t stop you from triple checking everything. 

Your phone rings at 5:30 on the dot, the person accompanying you on your journey arriving at your door right on time. You swing it open and are immediately greeted by a warm smile and a small Korean woman who looks to be about ten years older than you. 

“Y/n?” she asks. 

“Yeah that’s me,” you bow and reach out a hand to shake hers all at the same time, so nervous about the day ahead. She laughs softly and it’s a pleasant sound that calms you in an unexpected way. 

“I’m Lee Jia. It’s nice to finally meet you. Chan speaks of you with the highest regard,” she smiles and bows. 

You blush. “It’s lovely to meet you. Come in, I’ll grab my things,” you say as you usher her in. Lovely to meet you, you ask yourself. Who even are you right now, y/n? A nervous fucking wreck, that’s who. 

You scurry off to gather your things and you return to see Jia standing in your entry, looking down at her phone. 

“Ready,” you breathe. 

“Shall we?” she asks as you pull open your front door. She leads the way to the car and you’re off. The ride to the airport flies by. When you arrive at the airport, a large Korean man joins your little entourage. He introduces himself as Seok-Jin. He explains that he is your bodyguard and gives you a quick rundown of what to expect. Before you know it, you’re in line to board the plane after clearing security. 

“We can chat more on the plane,” Seok-Jin explains, “but essentially, I say, you do. Your safety may depend on that specific instruction especially once we are in LA.” 

You hadn’t even considered this side of your meeting. And suddenly you are starkly reminded that Bang Chan is in fact a world wide superstar. Internationally known. He doesn’t get to just exist like a normal person, and you’re hit with the fact that, from this point on, you may not either depending on the outcome of this trip. 

“Of course. You say, I do. Got it,” you repeat back to him. He gives you a small nod as you move through to board the plane. Chan had booked first class seats and that experience alone is shocking. You settle into your seat, both Jia and Seok-Jin close by, pull out your headphones and open up your phone. You type out a quick message to Chan even though you know he is currently somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. 

Y/n: Settled and about to take off. 

*picture sent* in the photo you have your eyes closed and your face scrunched up in a cute closed lipped smile. You hold up a peace sign feeling like a goober. 

Y/n: Guess I’ll see you in about 4 hours. I can’t believe this is real. 

You turn your phone on airplane mode, listening to the preflight instructions before take off. You look at your watch. 8:20 Everything is going off without a hitch and that makes you a little nervous but you try not to dwell on or overthink it. Things are allowed to go your way, you tell yourself. 

You stick in your headphones and turn on your music, Chan’s soft voice lulling you to sleep as you close your eyes and settle in for the flight. 

August 19th 11:00 AM PST

The flight is uneventful. You sleep most of the three and a half hour journey. Changing time zones always throws you for a loop, but with the difference only being two hours, you’d adjust easily enough. Easier than the boys would for sure. 

“The boys’ flight just landed,” Jia tells you quietly as the two of you settle at a table outside Urth Caffe & Bar. It’s located close to the terminal the boys will be arriving at. You can tell because the amount of people with cameras around is insane. Some of the people are from News Outlets, but others are just regular people, probably STAYS excited to see the boys arrive in LA.

You order a Green Tea Americano, in desperate need of some caffeine. You run to the bathroom while Jia waits at your table for your order. Seok-Jin accompanies you to the restroom, but waits a respectable distance away from the entry. It feels so weird to have someone right there watching every move you make. 

You take a few minutes to compose yourself in the mirror of the bathroom, giving yourself a little pep talk. You are about to meet someone you never expected to meet. Bang Chan still felt a little bit like a fictional character. Your brain can’t fully comprehend that you are about to actually meet him. Not only that, you are going to meet all of Stray Kids. You had formed a quick bond with Han and Seungmin, but your interactions with the other boys had been minimal thus far. That was all about to change. 

“You can do this you idiot,” you tell yourself in the mirror. “He’s just a guy. At the end of the day, he wants normal as much as you do,” you remind yourself. With that, you straighten your hair and dress one last time and exit the bathroom. 

Seok-Jin leads you back to the table where Jia is seated. Your drink is sitting on the table and you snatch it up, eager to have that rush of adrenaline in your veins that the caffeine will provide. 

“Okay, so the boys are clearing security now,” Jia starts.

You stare at her, your mouth agape. 

“Wait, already?” you ask, a slight panic in your voice. 

Jia smiles softly at you and it’s reassuring as you will your heart to slow down. 

“Already,” she confirms. “Your luggage is already on its way to the hotel. Now we just need to go meet up with them. Chan insisted that you would be riding with them from the airport to the hotel, despite my advice.”

“Your advice?” you ask.

“I’m not sure it’s the best idea for your first meeting to be here. I swear he forgets the level of his notoriety sometimes,” she sighs and you can tell she is a little exasperated. “They all do.” 

“Ah,” you nod in understanding. “That he does. Should we just go ahead to the hotel?” you ask, suddenly doubting the plan to meet with Chan here. 

Jia shakes her head. 

“We’ve got everything figured out as best as we can,” she assures you. “Seok-Jin will be right there. If he says…” 

“I do,” you answer with Jia. 

“Exactly,” she smiles. “Let’s move. We are going to head to the meeting place. We will basically meet up with them. There won’t be time for a grand meeting. Essentially, we will simply walk up and join the group. We will head to the cars from there,” she tells you. 

“Got it,” you nod nervously. 

You both stand, Seok-Jin close behind as you throw your cross body bag over your shoulder. You take a deep breath. You can feel your anxiety bubbling up as you take a step forward. There are so many things you hadn’t accounted for. So many factors you hadn’t considered. You briefly feel a little foolish for rushing into all of this, but there is no turning back. Not now. 

The three of you cover a lot of ground fairly quickly and suddenly you are rounding the corner. The noise of the crowd hits you before you actually see it. It feels like there are hundreds of people around you. They aren’t there for you, though, you remind yourself, though that doesn’t entirely help ease your anxiety. But you have a guard. You’ll be fine, y/n you tell yourself. 

“Oh my god, is that her?” you hear someone say, and you turn to look at whoever the voice is mentioning. You don’t stop moving, but when you look, you realize that the eyes are on you. That isn’t right. No one should be looking at you. 

“It is her!” someone else says, and suddenly it feels like the wolves are descending. There is a swarm of people closing in on you. They are shouting questions and pointing cameras in your face. Seok-Jin’s hand is on your back, his other on your arm as he shields you from the crowd, but he is just one person. It feels like the walls are closing in and you instantly feel like you can’t breathe. 

“Y/N! Y/N! Are you working on a collaboration with Stray Kids?” someone shouts from not far enough away. “Do you have plans to showcase your singing soon?” Another shouts. Your head is spinning. How did these people know your name? Why were they talking about your singing? You can feel your chest collapsing in on itself as you become so overwhelmed you aren’t sure you can keep going. 

You haven’t remotely paid attention to where Jia and Seok-Jin are leading you. At this point, meeting up with the guys is the last thing on your mind. You just want to get into a car and drive away from this chaos. Your breathing is quick and you stop, clutching your chest, trying to will yourself to keep breathing. You had not anticipated any of this. 

It’s then that you suddenly feel a pair of strong arms wrap around you, pulling you into their body. The person is too short to be Seok-Jin. 

“Y/N, I’m here. It’s okay.” 

He strokes your hair and gently kisses the side of your forehead. “We’ve gotta move, baby girl,” he whispers in your ear and suddenly you realize it's Chan. You are wrapped up in Chan’s arms and that’s all the strength you need to move again. You don’t know where he had come from or how he knew anything was wrong, but the two of you move together and head for the door which is much closer than you realize. 

What you hadn’t realized was that Jia had been communicating with Chan’s team the second things went south and people started recognizing you. She had been trying to get to the bottom of why anyone even remotely knew who you were to begin with. Chan had been filled in and demanded that he move ahead of the group to come to you. 

Chan’s arms are wrapped protectively around you as your group of five; you, Chan, Jia, Seok-Jin and Chan’s bodyguard, suddenly becomes a much larger group. You haven’t looked up at Chan yet because you are surrounded by people and completely overwhelmed. You finally take a chance to pay attention to your surroundings and you realize that the rest of the group has joined you. The crowd of people now feels further away as there were many people surrounding you and the boys. You take a deep breath and scan the faces. 

Your eyes meet a pair of round hazelnut eyes and he smiles, giving you a tiny wave. His eyes squint up almost closing completely, and even though you can’t see his smile because of the face mask, you know the person is smiling brightly at you. 

“Seungmin,” you breathe. 

You step outside the doors and the bright LA sun hits you along with a nice breeze and you take another deep breath. You feel as though it’s the first time you’ve breathed since you left the caffe. 

Chan’s guard rushes ahead of you and opens the door to an SUV. Chan’s hand is resting on the small of your back. 

“You first, darlin’” he says, guiding you into the car and following quickly behind you. The two of you settle in the back seat and Han and Seungmin jump in the seats ahead of you which are facing backwards so that you are all facing each other. You toss off your cross body bag, and let your head fall against the headrest behind you.  

“Oh my god,” you whisper, your breath coming out in a shutter as you run your fingers through your short hair. 

Chan places a firm hand on your bare thigh and squeezes lightly. 

“Are you okay?” he asks. You can hear the worry in his voice. “I don’t know what happened,” he says, speaking to the situation back in the airport. 

For the first time you look up and your eyes meet Chan’s. He has a soft, concerned smile on his face, his hand staying firmling on your thigh as his round eyes hold your gaze. His skin on your skin is enough to send a thrill through you despite everything that has transpired in the last twenty minutes.

“I’m okay now,” you chuckle a little. “Hi,” you add, not knowing what else to say. 

He laughs then with his entire body, his head thrown back at the gesture. 

“G’day darlin’” he smiles. 

You grab his hand that is still resting on your leg and squeeze it. He turns it over and interlaces his large fingers with yours. His eyes never leave yours except for the brief moment they dart down to glance at your lips. You can feel the heat rising in your chest at that small action. 

“I don’t know what happened,” he repeats again. “I don’t know how anyone even remotely knows who you are or that you are connected to us in any way,” he says. 

“I don’t know,” you echo. 

Just then Han looks up, a nervous look on his face. He’d been fiddling with a rip in his jeans the entire time you had been in the car. 

“I might know what happened. Shit, I’m such an idiot,” he mutters, looking away from you both, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. 

“Han-ah?” Chan looks at him questioningly. 

“I may have posted that clip of y/n singing Iris to our instagram story before we took off,” Han admits, his head falling into his hands. 

Seungmin clears his throat. 

“And I may have mentioned something in a story post after it about meeting you in LA and not being able to wait until I got to work with you in person,” Seungmin groaned, mimicking Han’s motion, putting his head in both of his hands. If it wasn’t so sad to see them beating themselves up, the gesture would have been cute. 

“Oh,” you breathe out. Suddenly you’re laughing. It’s a little bit panicked, a little bit relieved, a lot of bit manic. “You guys are kind of idiots,” you tease as you pull your hand away from Chan’s to rub your hands over your face. “I was so not prepared for this. For any of this,” you admit looking at all three of them. 

“God, I’m so sorry,” Han half sobs. You can see that he is absolutely beating himself up. Seungmin is quiet and you realize that he is crying. 

“This is all my fault,” Seungmin manages, stuttering out his words before looking away. 

You glance at Chan, a desperate look on your face at the despair of your new friends. Chan’s face is unreadable, but you can tell from his body language that he is frustrated. You on the other hand just want to comfort Han and Seungmin. 

“Hey,” you say softly, reaching across you and putting a hand on Seungmin’s leg. “It’s okay. We made it through,” you smile reassuringly. 

Han reaches out and squeezes your hand that is resting on top of Seungmin’s leg, placing his other hand on the shoulder of his friend, rubbing gently.  

“You guys were excited. Hell, I was too. It could have easily been me,” you tell them. 

“Except you don’t have millions of followers like us,” Han groans. 

“Yeah, except that,” you admit. 

“Actually,” Chan speaks for the first time in a while. “Might better check your Instagram.” 

You grab your phone, open Instagram, and have thousands of requests to follow your account. Thousands. Your message requests are practically overflowing. 

“Oh my god,” you whisper, your small hand clapping over your mouth as you sit up and pull away from Han and Seungmin.  

“Looks like the video was screen recorded and shared a shit ton before anyone on our end realized it was on our story,” Chan says scrolling on his phone. “Look,” he says, scooting closer to you, your legs pressed firmly together.

“Holy shit,” you breathe as Chan scrolls through countless posts, all about you. STAYS had quickly shared your video, most of the feedback fairly positive to your singing. They had also put on their mega detective hats and found your private Instagram handle and shared it far and wide. “I can’t believe this,” you admit. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Chan smiles at you. “Together, yeah?” 

You look up, meeting his eyes and practically melt. The frustration that was there before is now replaced with determination. You’re fascinated by how quickly he can mask his feelings in order to deal with a problem. You admire it, but it also concerns you a little bit. 

“I mean, you deserve all this attention. I just wish you had been able to brace yourself for it,” Chan adds. “Obviously we aren’t the only ones who think you’re incredible.” 

You click off your phone, no longer able to look through all the posts. You’re incredibly overwhelmed and so unsure how to handle yourself. You’ve only just arrived in LA and it feels like your entire life has already been turned upside down. You slide the phone into your bag on the floor and bring your hands to rest on your legs as they ball up in small fists. Your knuckles crack at the movement, and suddenly Chan is reaching out and grabbing your hands once more. 

“It’ll be okay. I promise,” he says, holding both your hands in his, his thumb rubbing the top of your hand in a soothing motion. He has moved so that one leg is resting up on the seat between the two of you, the other resting on the floor. 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” you say before you can stop yourself. 

Chan drops both of your hands and moves them so that he is gently caressing your face. A small tear trails down your cheek and he gently wipes it away. He closes the space between you. 

“I will always protect you,” he whispers, his breath now warm against your lips. His eyes search yours for permission and you don’t pull away. He takes that as a positive sign, and closes the distance that remains between you. 

His mouth meets yours in a tender, hesitant kiss. His lips are soft and full. He tastes like sweet mint and smells like fall. The kiss is short, yet surprisingly intimate for a first kiss. 

“Always,” he murmurs against you and you are chasing after his lips at those words, this time the two of you meeting in a much more desperate kiss. Your hands drape around his neck as he tilts your head slightly, his fingers dancing along the nape of your neck. Your head is spinning again, but this time in the best way possible. You knew the two of you were connected, but you couldn’t have possibly imagined any of this. 

“I think we’re almost to the hotel,” Seungmin meekly whispers. 

You and Chan are reminded then that you are not alone and pull away from each other hesitantly. You’ve never felt this immediately bonded with someone before and it’s a little overwhelming. 

“Okay, good,” Chan chuckles, moving to sit up properly in the seat again, his hand finding yours once more. “Guys, we’ll all figure this out. Don’t beat yourselves up, yeah?” he assures the two younger boys across from him. “We’ve got a busy couple of days ahead of us. We’ll come up with a game plan,” Chan says, looking at all three of you. “I’m sure Jia is already working through it all.” 

“She is,” Jia chimes in from the front seat and you all chuckle. None of you realized she had joined the four of you in the car. “Everyone can get settled in at the hotel, rest up and then we can all meet to talk about logistics.” 

“All meet?” you question. 

“Yes, all 9 of you. Everyone needs to be on the same page,” Jia says and turns back around in her seat. 

You had completely forgotten about the other members that weren’t currently in the car with you. This would likely affect all of them in some way, and you could feel your nerves creeping back in once more. 

“We’ll be fine,” Chan says beside you as if he knows the thoughts running wild in your head. He squeezes your hand reassuringly. “We always are.” 

You chuckle nervously as the car comes to a stop. Someone comes out to the car with key cards for your rooms and Jia passes them out quickly. With that, the four of you retreat from the small cramped space and step back out into the sunlight. It seems that people don’t know where the boys are staying because there aren’t throngs of people waiting here for them. As if Chan can read your mind he speaks. 

“Our hotel is always a safe haven. No one will bother us here,” he says with a confident smile. You walk into the hotel and it’s beautiful. Chan leads you to the elevator, pressing the top floor and entering it with you, Han, and Seungmin. Your car arrived before the others, so you have yet to lay eyes on the rest of the members of Stray Kids at this point. 

The bell of the elevator dings and you all step out of the small space. Your room is the last one on the hall, past all of the boys’ rooms. As Han and Seungmin depart, murmuring their apologies once again, and you realize that you are situated across the hall from Han and Seungmin, their rooms adjoined by a door inside. 

Chan opens the door of his room and pulls you in behind him. You notice a door inside other than the bathroom door and closet door and realize then that your rooms must be joined as well. In fact, the door is open. 

“That room is yours,” he says with a smile, gesturing to the open door. “I didn’t want to have to be caught in the hallway every time I wanted to come see you, so I figured requesting a set up like this would be easier,” he admitted sheepishly. 

“Smart,” you chuckle. 

You walk into your room and see that your luggage is all safely there, just as Jia assured you it would be. You throw your cross body bag on an empty chair and retreat into the bathroom. You take one look at yourself in the mirror and realize what a mess you look like. You glance down at your watch and it reads 1:00 pm. You hadn’t realized so much time had passed from getting off the plane, the whole airport disaster, and the car ride to the hotel. Traffic must have really been crazy, but you were so caught up in your own world with the boys, you had had no time to notice anything like that. 

You wet a hand towel down with cold water and dab your face gently. You decide that you can refresh your makeup later, after you’ve rested. You use the bathroom and exit the room. You immediately notice Chan laying on the edge of your king size bed, an arm draped over his eyes. 

“Are you as tired as I am?” you ask as you sit down gently beside him. 

He chuckles and it's a low pleasant sound that sends a thrill through you. Sitting here with him feels so natural. Like it’s something you’ve done hundreds of times. It feels safe. 

“That’s the understatement of the century,” he says as he moves his arm away from his face and softly smiles up at you. 

You suddenly stand, holding out your hand to him. 

“Then I propose a nap,” you say, offering your hand to him. He takes it without hesitation and stands, his free hand landing on your hip and pulling you close to him. 

“That’s a proposal I don’t think I could possibly refuse,” he smiles down at you and damn it if you don’t go completely weak in the knees as his eyes lock with yours. You can see that he wants to kiss you again, but he hesitates this time. Something about being in a hotel room makes a kiss feel much more intimate and you both know you aren’t ready for where that could lead. Not after a day like today. 

“I’m gonna change real quick. I don’t want to sleep in my travel clothes,” he laughs and steps away and back into his room. 

“You’re too right,” you agree, moving to your luggage. 

You open it up and the urge to unpack everything like you usually do is strong, but you’re also completely exhausted. That type A OCD trait will have to wait, you tell yourself as you search for an oversized T and a pair of shorts. You find your shirt that reads, “President of the Big Tiddy Committee” on it and burst out laughing. You had entirely forgotten that you had packed this. You throw it on and slide on a pair of black shorts. 

You turn around, moving towards your bed and Chan is suddenly in the doorway between your rooms again. He is wearing a black tank top that sticks to him like his skin and a pair of loose black basketball shorts. 

Suddenly he laughs out loud, his head falling backward as he laughs with his entire body. 

“Oh my god,” he giggles, his hand going over his mouth. “Your shirt.” 

You look down at it with a proud smile, pulling it away from you and reading it as if you’re reading it for the first time. You shrug, a smirk spreading across your face as you look back at him. 

“Iconic, right?” you smile at him with a cocked eyebrow. 

“That’s one word for it,” he laughs, shaking his head at you. 

You wink at him and he blushes, a red tint spreading across his chest and face. 

You pull back the comforter on the bed and crawl in, turning on the lamp beside the bed and grabbing the remote that closes the curtains, pressing the button. The room goes practically dark as night despite the fact that it’s 1:30 in the afternoon. 

“You coming or what?” you ask, like you’ve done this with him a hundred times. 

“Yeah, okay,” Chan responds nervously, but doesn’t hesitate to crawl into the bed from the other side. He quickly scoots close to you and wraps his arms around you, pulling you close to his chest without hesitation. You melt into him and suddenly feel ten times more tired than you had just moments ago. You feel him sigh contentedly and you can’t help but look up at him. 

He is smiling down at you, his arm rubbing up and down your back gently. 

“This is gonna be the best nap I’ve ever had in my life, I can feel it,” he whispers, pressing his lips against your temple. 

“Hmm,” you hum in agreement and drift off to sleep, the chaos of the day on the back burner of your mind.

“Sweet dreams, darlin’” Chan whispers against your head before falling asleep too. You aren’t sure what you will have to face when you wake up, but in Chan’s arms, you feel like you can tackle just about any issue that comes your way. 

< Pt. 2: The Mystery of You |Pt. 4: The Complication of Life Connecting >

MoF Tags: @hoeinthehouse @drhsthl @chrizzlaptop @dna-black-and-blue @lynlyndoll @hufflepuffanddurinsdaughter @amararosesblog @flirtyskzbutterfly @spearb-99 @jascurka21 @colorguardlover14 @bangchansbiggestfeet08 @vxllxnsworld

[cowboybarzy]

NYC, Mat Barazl

You’re first vacation together. You’re nervous because you don’t like to fly. However, Mat doesn’t know this bc you’ve never flown together. You start to panic at take off ( you can go from there) you eventually make it your destination (somewhere tropical) and then you can go into as much or little detail as you would like. I hope this makes sense.

tysm for the request! I actually also am terrified to fly and one time this old lady next to me held my hand for takeoff and landing and it was super sweet!

word count: 1.3k

come along the world trip

📍bali, indonesia with mat barzal

"At this moment, we'd like to invite the first class and business class passengers to board the aircraft." Your boyfriend next to you stood, collecting his things. You couldn't stand up, nervously looking around the airport and out the window at the other airplanes in the sky. You hated flying. You didn't do it often and the few other times you did you always had panic attacks. The idea of being suspended in the air and having no control left you panicked the entire time and once turbulence were added, all you wanted to do was run.

"Babe, that's us," Mat said, waving a hand in front of you to get your attention. "I don't get to take a vacation often but when I do, I do it right."

You snapped out of your panicking and gave a small laugh while gathering your things. "Still asleep?," he asked jokingly, to which you nodded. You had to get up very early to leave for the airport and catch your flight and due to your discomfort about flying, you had barely slept that night.

You were able to board quickly and get comfortable in your extra specious seats. Maybe with this extra room you wouldn't feel as cramped and scared.

"You okay?," Mat asked after a while and leaned over his seat ledge to see you better, when he noticed your leg shaking and that you barley answered him in the last few minutes.

"Yeah!" You tried to sound enthusiastic, but failed. "I'm just excited."

"Me, too." He kissed you. "Sand, sun, ocean, you in a bikini. Yeah, this is gonna be good."

You had no doubt about that. It was just getting to Bali that freaked you out and made you consider staying home. But it was your first vacation with him and the pictures you had seen of Bali looked absolutely amazing, so you just had to bite the bullet. Everything would be fine.

Once everyone was on board, it was finally time to leave. Your heartbeat increased dramatically when the plane started moving. Your hands gripped together tightly and your eyes shut tightly, too, turned away from your boyfriend. But that didn't stop him from noticing something was wrong.

"Hey!" He leaned over to your side again and placed his big hand on top of both of yours that were pulling at each other. "What's wrong?"

You couldn't ignore him any longer, so you turned to face him reluctantly. "I hate flying." Your voice was barely a whisper, hating to admit your fear.

"Oh, love." He tried to figure out how to pull you into his arms, but the first class seats were not designed for that. So he settled for his other hand that gently curled around the side of your face and caressed your cheek. "Why didn't you tell me?" You shrugged and in that moment the plane started speeding up, getting enough speed to take off. You shut your eyes again and your entire body went rigid. "It's ok. You're ok." He was able to kiss your forehead before being pushed back into his own seat. His hands stilled cradled you, definitely helping you get through it and once the plane settled in the air you could feel your heartbeat slow a bit.

"Better?" You slowly opened your eyes and looked directly into his green ones. You had fallen in love with them the first time you saw them and were amazed at how well they could calm you. You nodded, actually meaning it as your body began to relax a bit. As long as you didn't look out the window or there wouldn't be any turbulence, you could do this.

"Why didn't you tell me?," he asked again, gently. "We could have gone somewhere else that doesn't require flying or at least somewhere we wouldn't have to take multiple planes and fly for a day."

"No, it's ok. I have to get over this fear. And you got so excited talking about Bali, I didn't want to say no. I wanna go on this trip with you." He smiled when you did and softly placed his lips on yours.

"I love you. But next time please tell me about something big like this." You both laughed. "Honestly, we could have just gone down to Florida. Or even stayed on Long Island. They have beaches there I could see you walking around in a bikini in. That's all I need." You rolled your eyes.

"I promise. I want to see the wolf with you, though. Just don't let go of my hand." And he didn't. For the entirety of the flight, minus meal time, he held on to your hand and even when he dozed off he squeezed it every once in a while, letting you know that everything was going to be alright and that he was always by your side.

The rest of your travels wasn't any different. Takeoff and landing were still hard for you, but the actual flight was fairly smooth. You had a good book with you and the movie selection was great so there were a lot of distractions. Mat also kept you occupied and distracted which you were very thankful for. However, the flying anxiety prevented you from sleeping all day, even during your layover you barely slept a couple of hours. So when you finally, finally, made it to your private little villa right on the water, you crashed in bed almost immediately. You slept for hours and hours, now that the anxiety was gone and when you woke up, you felt like a brand new person.

"Morning, sleepy head." Mat, shirtless by the way, saw you stretch from outside and came walking into the bedroom. He climbed on the bed and laid down right on top of you. His lips started wandering along your cheeks and neck. "Sleep good?"

You nodded and rubbed your eyes again. "What time is it?"

"Almost six. At night." He grinned. If you remembered correctly you had gotten there at eight in the morning. "But I didn't want to wake you. You really needed the sleep."

Your arms wrapped around him, pulling him in first for a kiss and then a hug. Wordlessly, you stayed in bed like this for a while until you had woken up enough.

"Hungry?"

"Starving." Your little villa was part of a resort so Mat ordered room service and while you waited you took a little tour of the place and changed into a new outfit. It was basically one open room, which half walls separating the bathroom from the bedroom and from the living area with a small kitchen. On the deck was an outdoor shower, another sitting area and of course the pool from which you could jump right into the ocean.

"This is so beautiful." You we're standing on the deck looking out into the ocean where the sun was slowly starting to set. You leaned into your boyfriend who came to stand behind you and wrapped your arms around his neck.

"Worth the travel and flying?"

"Absolutely." He kissed your cheek and enjoyed the peaceful moment between the two of you.

After your meal, Mat practically changed you into your bikini himself and then carried you into the pool. The hot tub definitely got used a bit more though and that outdoor shower also got its first use of your stay...

[arachine]

i just.. can't get over the idea of his tail giving him away. i can't remember for the life of me where i read it (it legit could have been you but i consume so much neteyam writing that it flies over my head). like he's swishes and swats at his thigh when he's feeling content, stays glued against his side when he's feeling perturbed or anxious, but when he's just.. when he gets so horny that he's bashful about it, it'll tuck in between his legs, or curl so high up it'll tickle at the top of his spine.

and you're the only one who actually notices, tickling at the base of it or pulling it away from the dip of his spine and cooing with 'aw, with little ol' me?"

which leads me into thinking that it took him a bit to be dominant in the 'bedroom', even if he was superb at keeping you in line or in check outside of it. he'll swat at your backside, or pinch at your inner thigh, or even go so far as to tug on your tail when you're too far ahead of him. but when it came to actually fucking you, he'd be far too nervous at first to actually dominate you dkfja;dslkjf

it could’ve been me or @luvsellie bc ik we talk about his tail giving away his emotions a lot hehe but JESUSSSSSSS 🕳️👩🏾‍🦼

i literally agree with every single sentiment listed here. i know FOR SURE, like for sure, his tail would stand straight up when he gets horny or aroused or smth.

he thinks it’s so embarrassing but it’s just??? so??? cute??? like baby, you’re that excited??? for me??? god i just wanna tease him about it. get him all riled up so that he has to do smth about it—to prove that he’s not cute.

like just imagine him pressing you down into the bed (idk what they sleep on tbh), with a hand wrapped around one thigh, and his tail wrapped around another, spreading you open. and he’s all in your face, just muttering incoherencies through gritted teeth.

“still think i’m cute? when i’m - shit - pushing into you like this?” / “why so quiet, hm? tell me how cute i am when i push into this pretty pussy.”

and we talk about his tail a lot but what about his ears!?? they’re so cute, i wanna see them go airplane mode like a kitty ;(( UGH

[rubdown]

10 & 21!

10. what’s something you’re excited for? I'm going on a trip in May to visit my friends from online in Baltimore!!!!!! My excitement about this is deeply cut with hideous anxiety bc I haven't been on a plane in 10 years and I'm fat and I'm scared everyone on the plane is going to be SO mad at me for being fat. I hardly ever travel outside my beautiful home state of Michigan either... without my CAR???? Plus I'm nervous about my personality and visage... what if everyone hates me and thinks I'm too ugly?????? But I think once I'm off the airplane.... diva I will be Tracy Turnblad GOOD MORNING BALTIMORE 🗣️🗣️🗣️

21. if you could tell your past self one thing, what would it be? Go to public high school (I went to a Seventh-Day Adventist school for 8th-10th grade due to social based anxiety and attachment to only one friend then nearly dropped out then enrolled in adult alternative education for dropouts) ‼️ stop spending money ‼️ these things may have helped me the most

[astral-catastrophe]

Every once in a while, when I think about the crush, I feel like we got lucky. Like we just naturally end up in the same place bc it just feels right.

I mean, we did that big hike together last summer, and I vividly remember holding hands a couple times, and I don’t even remember why, but we were happy and laughing and even if I was in pain, she had said she’d carry me everywhere bc I hurt my ankle, and I just remember being so happy and feeling safer with her than the others there.

Then this year we had classes together some of the time, and when we didn’t, she would come over during lunch to check on me, and we would annoy one of our friends just because I had been oblivious for so long.

And with this summer, she loved her birthday present, the stuffed dino. Then there was the trip, holding each others hands on the airplane when we got nervous, and the time we spent laughing in our hotel room. Throwing the extra pillows across the room and hitting her with said pillows, making her burst into tired giggles. Then she calmed me down at the last hotel when I was on the verge of a bad anxiety attack, then on the ferry ride, grabbed my hand and dragged my attention away from the water. Then the way when we drove to the airport and I pointed out a cool graveyard, and she said she wouldn’t mind hanging out there with me. Then at the last airport, the way she knows me well enough that she saw me get excited, and watched my backpack while I ran off to check something out. Then the dorky lil smile she would give me in the airport as I waited for her to catch up to me. She joked that I’m always moving and always faster than her, despite the joint pain. Saying it’s cool how I don’t let it get me down.

Then the next week with the school thing, when she came to our down during free time and sat with me on my side of the room, rather than on the other side of the dorm. Or the ice cream place where we made single jokes and annoyed the hell out of our friend.

Then camp, getting to hang out almost the whole first day, we didn’t see each other a lot at camp. But we had the first day, we didn’t have anything to catch up on, but we never ran out of stuff to talk about. And that night in the cabin when I made stupid jokes and she held my hands and it was too dark for her to see me grinning like an idiot.

then the hike? It makes me smile to remember the hike, because she’s not much of a hiker, but I’d hurt my ankles again and she said she’d carry me down the mountain. But I didn’t want her to trip, so she resorted to taking my hands through the harder spots of the trail and looking back every time she heard me slip, and when I walked in front, she would grab onto my bag to keep me from slipping. Then the thing with me remembering her favorite wildflowers was so cute. And pointing out the rivers and lakes to her, knowing she likes water, then she in turn pointed out a cave to me, knowing I like caves

If you guys can’t tell, she’s literally the coolest and she makes me feel more normal and happy and safe, thank <3

[itoshiexx]

compass points you home (closer to me)

you are now reading... LENA'S 1K MILESTONE EVENT FIC!

↳ itoshi rin + querencia (n.) — a place where one’s strenght is drawn, where one feels at home; the place where you are your most authentic self.

synopsis: after spending so much time thinking there was no place for him in the world, itoshi rin finally learned what "home is where your heart is" actually means.

notes: hi guys, i'm back with another fic for the event!! i decided to post the fics separately from their asks bc i feel like it really cuts my range. thus, this one was requested by @yoimyas <3 i really hope you like it, it is honestly one of my favorites out of everything i've written!

event masterlist

rin sighed for the millionth time in a short span. although his eyes were seeing a nice view from the city and his body was comfortably positioned in the seat of the first class, he still hated the fact that he was on an airplane with six more hours to go. 

of course, he liked traveling with the japan national team for away matches. it was always like a new exciting adventure, even if it was somewhere the team had been before, and rin liked the adrenaline that only football could bring him. 

but that adrenaline only lasted so much — after every match, he would be drained and lonely in his hotel room, which opened space for the hollowness in his chest to grow. and he dreaded it. because whereas he was used to the sensation of feeling empty, the consequences were never easier to bare. rin felt unsafe, and there was nothing that scared him more than this uncertainty.

“what’s up with you?” he heard reo by his side, effectively breaking him from his train of thought. when turning around, his teammate’s eyes were curious. 

in fact, every other teammate nearby was dying to know why itoshi rin seemed so down, inquisitiveness oozing from their bodies. though no one was stupid enough to ask — it wasn’t as if rin would answer, anyway.

…or, at least, that’s what they thought. 

“i… just miss home,” his voice came out slightly scratchy, perhaps due to the air conditioner that always seemed to be colder on airplanes. everybody’s eyes widened, not expecting rin to actually answer. reo was encouraged to ask more with a slap on the shoulder from bachira. 

“you… you miss japan?” the purple haired male asked, confused. 

rin went silent, his mind wandering elsewhere once again. did he miss japan? no, it wasn’t quite that. he was never particularly attached to his hometown, and things didn’t really change when he moved to the blue lock training facility or even to tokyo. truthfully, rin didn’t really care where he was because nowhere felt like home.

it wasn’t always like that, though. kamakura city used to feel like home back when he was a kid, when sae would care for him and it was just the two of them against the world. even if his parents didn’t pay much attention to him, always focusing on sae’s prodigious tendencies, he still felt like he belonged because his big brother was there. when sae left for spain, the hollowness paid visit for the first time, and it never left after that fateful day on the snow when sae broke his heart. 

so, then, nowhere felt like home anymore. rin didn’t feel the warmth and safety a home is supposed to give. was it, though? he didn’t know anymore. perhaps rin never knew what a home was and only noticed after his brother opened his eyes to the cruelness of the world. 

there was no such thing as a place to call home. 

rin smirked a little, and reo thought he might be hallucinating. although the younger itoshi did improve a lot since his teenage days, it was still shocking to see his twenty four self smiling anyhow.

“why do you assume i miss japan?” the dark haired asked, a knowing glint in his eyes that made reo nervous. 

“uh… because it’s… where we live…?” mikage stuttered. 

rin sighed, and then his features became impossibly soft. all of his teammates were paying attention, and their mouths went agape, incredulous of the fondness on his teal eyes.

“i said i miss home, you idiot. japan is not my home.”

“is it france, then? you miss playing for pxg?” bachira butted in, making rin roll his eyes. 

“are you fucking stupid, bob-cut? seriously.” the said boy pouted, but kept paying attention nonetheless. 

rin wasn’t lying. japan wasn’t his home. france was most definitely not it, either. there was no such thing as a place to call home, because home wasn’t a place — it was a person.

home was you. 

you, who always had your arms open to welcome him back, rubbing his back and threading your fingers through the hairs on his nape because you knew how much it relaxed him. you, whose laugh brought him back to life when he was hanging by a thread and filled the emptiness inside him with the purest form of love. you, who was always so understanding, even when you argued, and managed to make him feel safe to talk about his feelings, to be vulnerable, to apologize. 

home was the soft plush of your lips against his, the curve of your waist under his palms, the texture of your skin every time it touched his and sent a spark of recognition through his veins — because rin is sure he has met you before, in every lifetime, and that you were his home in all of them. he thinks it’s the only thing that can explain this longing that he has for you, so deep that it reaches his bones; and, frankly, he doesn’t mind. 

after so much time thinking there wasn’t and there would never be a place rin could call home, a place where he could rest and recharge, a place he could let go of his armor and be his truest self, he is glad that he found it in you. 

every time the void threatens to swallow him whole, rin thinks of your smile, and how he would die and kill to make sure it never left your face. and, like his lifeline in a bottomless ocean, it’s the echoes of your heartbeat that give him strength to go on.

because, in the end, he gets to hold you and say, “i’m home.”

© 2024 itoshiexx. do not plagarise, translate, or repost any of my work on here or other sites.

[berryunho]

pls i typed that ask at like 4am after the show i’m so surprised i got that many details bc half of the show feels like a blackout i literally ??? have videos of wooyoung that i don’t remember taking so when watching those i was like ah. wooyoung bias indeed i love him <3 AND LISTEN I GET WHAT UR SAYING but the loyal lifestyle just. isn’t for me. i’m loyal to atz only (not even) bc hj would k word me for LoOkInG aT oThEr OpPaS but. wooyoung. is a menace. he deserves the slander sometimes /lh

AND ! no one gets me the way san does bc WOOYOUNG’s hair is black when i wanted oreo but san did everything my delusional little brain manifested (aka wear the outfits i wanted him to) like ?? there is no way there won’t be an era of me having san as my bias </3 like listen.. i don’t wanna be delulu and stuff.. even tho i might be a little.. but a while ago i said i wanted san to wear sage green for a layout that i never even made.. n literally the next day he was on the radio or something wearing a green cardigan.. tell me he’s not meant to be my bias u literally can’t

also when i first started stanning atz it was wooyoung who pulled me in !! and weirdly i stayed loyal for a LONG time even when hongruella looked THAT fine during the last tour (literally. saw hongruella in the flesh on my bday. imagine. how did i stay loyal) but i always thought it was a bit weird?? bc i usually gravitate towards the introverts for literally any group/artist (tho i.. only stan atz rn.. oop hongjoong u better jot this down rn i am the most loyal atiny ever/j) so i thought it was a little bit out of order for me to like and stay loyal to THE extroverted social butterfly.. but then my bias line was completed with both infps aka my mbti.. and it suddenly made sense dhsjsh i just ! gravitate towards san a lil now AND ESPECIALLY AFTER THIS CONCERT he’s truly one of my fav comfort ppl like.. he said something and immediately after i was like WRITE THAT DOWN!!! and opened my notes app to write it down LMAO my friend was like wtf are u doing and i was like uh. comfort words??

last thing before i nap… san shyly dancing to cyberpunk for us again during the concert.. take my heart RN sir it’s literally! urs ! and thanks hwa for making that happen i died a lil

anyway i’m good and i hope you’re good as well <3 mwah mwah -san anon

HI !!!!

4am !!!!??$))(# wow you were quite coherent for 4am im also surprised LOL BUT THATS SO FAIR I GET IT ADJKFLASKJF its inevitable to jump around when you're a kpop stan like when 8 lovable men are presented to you .... why have only one bitch when you can have five ! KJLFDKSJAFSLJKDF

PLS THE MANIFESTING AKLDFJSKDFJ i love it i am a huge fan of being delulu i think life is too boring if you dont let yourself have a little joke around every once in a while AND BELIEVING THAT COINCIDENCES ARE MANIFESTATIONS.... IM HERE FOR IT !!!

eheheh i enjoy learning this lore about you san anon... i agree you are very strong for being loyal despite hongruella on your bday like .... thats crazy .... like i got my american ass on an airplane and flew to germany last may to see hongruella in the flesh .... in a completely loyal to yunho way of course ! JAKDJFSDFLJK BUT omg that actually is pretty interesting !!! id say yunho very much falls in line w my usual bias "type" lol but its funny bc that Type is just. the Opposite Of Me. BUT ANYWAYS hehe i get it ! all of them are just so ... <333 and literally why have i never thought of busting the notes app out that's actually so smart oh em gee ....

but ehehe san is so funny like how are we gonna be shy sir !!! after everything !!! hehe i hope your nap was good <3 im quite good ehehe a little bit nervous ........ but overall good hehe anything else exciting going on in your life san anon? hehe mwahhhh

[indouloureux]

hello love!

I just found out I’m going to be going the uk for Christmas! one of my family member lives there and I’m super excited to go but also nervous because I haven’t been on a plane since 2010 and that was when me and my mom went to the Philippines, my therapist appointment is coming up in like a week? idk I’m not really sure but I can’t help and feel anxious of going there, anyways I love you sm and I hope that everything doing good for you :)

I know this isn’t as much as for the other times I’ve written to you, I hope that’s ok it’s been a pretty boring week

all the love

-🎶

[shakes you around] did u know i live in the philippines [shakes you harder]

anyway, YAY LONDON!! i've always wanted to go there! airplane rides aren't at all scary although i understand your nervousness bc i'll be riding one next week too for my vacation.

and good luck with therapy, darling. trust me, it was helpful for me. sending you all the love and kisses mwah mwah <3

[here2bbtstrash]

ahhhh i was SO EXCITED waiting for you to get to this one ivi 🥲 and i'm so glad you enjoyed it!! 💜

AHAHA i honestly was curious how many people thought the airplane bathroom sex scene was real 🙈 i love the build-up far too much to ever just start a chapter in the middle of sex!!!! but it was fun to trick y'all 🤪

ah yes 💀💀 the racism 💀💀💀

you're so right 🙆‍♀️ she's got her whole internal battle going on of being angry vs. trying not to be angry bc admitting she is would mean admitting she cares and is hurt - but then not being able to admit any of that just makes her all the more angry!!! and round and round. the forced proximity is just the cherry on top 😂

he's a MENACE 👹 always has been!!!! now he's just a menace in glasses!!!!!! 🥵

eeeee i appreciate the commentary about reader and her journey with this job!!! there's more to come on that in the next chapter, is all i'll say, but you were wise to pick up on it 🥲

JUNGKOOK AND HIS PERFECT POWERPOINT SLIDES 😭 i remember making myself actually sad when i wrote that line bc i missed writing him in this chapter, lmfao

omg thank you for all the love on the LA squad 🥰 i had so much fun with their dynamics, and this isn't the last we'll be seeing of them~

and yes 🥺 i liked sharing those little glimpses into reader's thoughts as yoongi creeps ever closer, and her struggles to say what she means without acting like she doesn't care. she's been hurt before! and she's scared! and it's all so confusing! i really feel for her 🫠

AHHHHH YES 🙈 yoongi being nervous makes me heuighdfkjgdfg - he doesn't wanna push her to do anything she doesn't want to do (and there's plenty of self-loathing, we'll get to that 🤪) and so when he's actually finally sharing a bed with her his brain is just !!!!!!!! 😭

eeeeee the morning sex 🥺 one of my fave moments in this whole series! and allllll the little moments of softness between them 🥺

I'M DRINKING COFFEE RN AND WHEN I TELL YOU I CHOKED AT WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT THE GRAMMYS I-- I WILL NOT BE SPEAKING FURTHER THANK U SO MUCH

you're SO right about those assholes, and yoongi being forced to be the bigger person when he has every right to go off on them 😩 especially of note that he seems to have much more practice shrugging off commentary that's not about reader 👀 ooooop~

aha hah hhahahaha we found the self loathing 🥲 yoongi trying so hard to get her to go after baby star candy (who, admittedly, is the perfect man - but she doesn't want him, yoongi!!!! 👹)

i'm so glad you enjoyed the karaoke scene 🥰 i loved writing it - and now, more importantly: HE SAID IT 😭 THE FEELINGS....... 😭

it makes me so happy to hear how you feel about reader's character in this one 🥺 i know she's polarizing to say the least (we'll see how you feel after chapter 10 💀) but i am proud of the way she's slowly grown over this series, and she's about to jump into a lot more of that in the final chapter!!! eeeee i can't wait to see what you think of the angst-fest of ch10, and of the finale once it's up!!! 🥰 thank you as always for reading and sharing your lovely feedback with me ivi!!! 💜

look down on me like that - 9 (explicit)

genre: slow burn enemies to lovers hatefucking coworkers au, smut, angst

pairing: yoongi x reader

summary: your asshole coworker min yoongi has made it his personal mission to ruin your life.

word count: 16k 🙈

contains: explicit sexual content 👀 literally jumps immediately into it (well.... you'll see 🤭) so buckle up!!! serious warning that this chapter does contain a few instances of racism directed at reader/yoongi (being denied customer service, implying they need a translator, and comments insinuating yoongi is psy/bong joon-ho. pls proceed with caution and take care of yourselves 💜) also features: hotel drama, reader being v dumb in classic reader fashion but she gets there, a whole lotta tension and angst and misplaced anger, some new friends!!! and yes they're 3 idols see if you can figure out who 🤪, erotic bed sharing and handholding lmfao, probably the most drinking that has happened in a chapter yet (which is saying a lot honestly), of course the GRAMMY RESULTS.... oh yeah and yoongi in glasses, yoongi in a suit, yoongi playing piano, yoongi almost getting in a fight, yoongi rapping, yoongi WEARING CAT EARS (yes these are all warnings!!!!!! 😩) - ok and here are ur smut specific warnings: semi-public sex (mile high club anyone ✈️), cunnilingus, fingering, sex dreams, nipple play, dirty talk, reader has a voice kink 🥴, clit stim, unprotected sex AGAIN 💀, she squirts again don't @ me lmao, aaaaand some lovely mouth/throat fuckin 🫡

A/N: i feel like i have nothing to say that isn't just overwhelming gratitude to you all for being here 🥺 so i'll keep it short!!! sit back and get comfy bc this one's a lot, here we go y'all..... you ready?? 💜

an eternal thank you to @haliiimede and @monimonimoon for their help betaing!!!

read on AO3!

chapter eight | masterlist | chapter ten

~*~

You don’t know how you let Yoongi talk you into this.

You honestly can’t remember, at least not right now, not with your ass perched on the edge of the sink counter and his hands making quick work to tug your sweats and underwear down and off, one ankle at a time.

The place is cleaner than any airplane bathroom you’ve ever been in, and certainly much less cramped. First class really spares no expense, you’ve learned. It’s an upgrade Yoongi made for both of you at the check-in counter unprompted, his only explanation mumbled into the rim of his iced Americano once you’d settled at a table in the fancy lounge: “Economy seats fuck my back up, and I figured if I left you behind you’d push me into LA traffic at your first opportunity.”

You might still do it, if only because he’s managed to convince you to do this again. Weren’t you supposed to be mad at him?

“I’m starting to think you have a bathroom fetish,” you murmur, not quite managing to keep your voice steady. Your fingers rake through Yoongi’s long dark hair as he situates himself properly on his knees between your legs, his hands pressing your thighs to spread you wider.

“Are you complaining?” he grunts back, and you lose the ability to form a coherent response as he leans in and traces his tongue up your folds.

You nearly bang your head on the mirror with the way your spine instinctively arches at the feeling, your hips tilting up for as much of his mouth as you can get.

“Shit,” you hiss as he starts to fuck the muscle of his tongue into your entrance, his thumb swiping up through your wetness before settling into rough circles over your clit. “Why are you so fucking good at this?”

Once he’s thoroughly tasted you, Yoongi quickly replaces his tongue with his fingers, flexing against your front wall at a brutal pace, like he’s realized you can’t take too long in here. His lips close around your clit as his tongue laps over it in thick strokes, and your hips circle hungrily, grinding on him.

“That’s it,” he pulls off just enough to gasp. “Ride my face. Wanna make you come so I can fuck this tight little pussy.” Just the rough tone of his voice is nearly enough to send you over the edge.

When his lips and tongue return to your cunt, you don’t hold back.

You fist the hand tangled in his hair, your other palm smacking flat to the counter for balance as you throw a leg over his shoulder, and you swear you can hear him laughing while you press your heel into his back to pull him even closer. His mouth is warm and wet and divine, the way he licks and sucks at your throbbing clit overwhelming. He strokes his fingers deftly into your g-spot, working up enough arousal that it’s started to run down the crux of your thighs. You roll your hips again and gasp at the way his tongue drags just right over you.

“Oh god, Yoongi,” you groan, squeezing your eyes shut, too lost in it to worry about being quiet. You can feel it as he keeps his tongue laid out flat for you to use as you please. Everything in you pulls tight as you rut yourself against his face in time to the building pressure worked up in your core by his unrelenting fingers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m gonna—”

The plane dips sharply, and you lurch upright with a gasp as your eyes snap open. There’s a few more seconds of shuddering bumps, and then you seem to find clear skies again.

Your heart hammers in your chest as you sit back and try to steady your breathing, the world slowly coming into focus: the TV screen in front of you, your purse tucked into the shelf beneath it, beige privacy walls surrounding you on all sides.

Fuck. You lean forward, letting your head drop between your knees as reality sinks in. You’re not in the bathroom. You’re in your stupid first-class seat. It was a dream. A fucking airplane sex dream.

Panic carves through you like a knife as questions bubble up in your mind: What if you said something in your sleep? Did Yoongi hear you? Is he sitting on the other side of the wall with that fucking smirk on his face, endlessly smug in the knowledge that he haunts you even in your dreams?

Immediately convinced that he is, you can’t help yourself. You press your hands flat to the divider between you and just barely lift out of your seat so you can peek over it.

But Yoongi looks entirely unchanged from the last time you saw him several hours earlier: he’s got his headphones on and is slouched over his laptop, frowning down at the screen, thoroughly engrossed in work.

Just as you’re breathing a sigh of relief, he glances up, and your eyes widen.

“Can I help you?” he grunts, not even bothering to pull his headphones off. You don’t think it’s a double entendre, but you don’t want to entertain him long enough to find out.

“No,” you snap, and then you slump back down to the safety of your seat, slamming the controller on the wall until you’re fully horizontal. You tug the provided headphones over your ears, hoping they might block out your racing thoughts as you desperately try to ignore the dull ache between your legs.

~*~

Getting any more sleep proves to be an impossible task, your mind too keyed up at the possibility of another airplane bathroom dream. By the time you make it through the rest of the flight, and customs, and the car ride to your hotel, you’re nearly delirious with exhaustion, and your body is thoroughly confused about what fucking time it is, though your phone says it’s apparently the middle of the night.

Your brain feels like it’s been in a blender, your reaction time so slowed that, standing at the hotel check-in counter, it takes you several seconds to process the words leaving the front desk agent’s mouth.

She must be able to read the dumbfounded look on your face, because she repeats herself. “King bed executive suite for three nights?”

“Um, no,” you finally manage to stammer, and though he makes no discernible noise of reaction, it’s like you can feel Yoongi smirking over your shoulder. “No, we need— I booked a room with two queens.”

The agent purses her lips slightly, then shakes her head as she stares down at her computer. “Mm, I’m seeing in the system that we have you down for one king.”

Your exhaustion steamrolls over whatever professionality you might normally have while conducting a business transaction. “I don’t care what your fucking system says, it’s wrong. That’s not what I booked.” Scrolling through your phone for a few seconds, you manage to dig up the email, and you’re almost more compelled to show it to Yoongi, just to make sure he’s well aware— you did not fuck this up.

“See, two queens,” you reiterate helplessly as you extend the receipt on your phone toward the agent.

She tuts once, her eyes barely glancing over at your phone before returning to her computer screen. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like we have any availability to switch you. Given the Grammys are on Sunday, this is quite a busy weekend for us.”

You set your phone on the counter and try to keep your breathing steady, to remain calm despite the overwhelmed panic starting to rise in your chest.

“About that,” you say, doing your best to speak in an even voice. “We wanted to keep a low profile, but my… associate here is actually a nominee. For Song of the Year?” You hate that it comes out more like a question as your gaze flits to Yoongi for the briefest of seconds, then back to the front desk agent. “So, really, if there’s anything at all you could do, we would appreciate it.”

There’s a pause as she regards you for a moment, her lips pressed into a tight smile, and then she speaks again. “I apologize, but due to the volume of bookings, our prioritization for room distribution is based on attending to the needs of our highest priority clients.”

Your jetlag-addled brain can’t keep up with the corporate talk. “And who are your highest priority clients?”

The smile on her face doesn’t falter. “As I'm sure you can imagine, we have quite a wealth of…” she pauses, as if choosing her next words carefully. “Local talent booking with us for the weekend.”

Your eyebrows nearly shoot off your forehead. “I'm sorry, you’re saying you can’t fix the mistake you made because we’re not from here?!”

A muscle in her jaw twitches as she blinks back at you. “I would certainly never say anything of the sort. If something was unclear, I'm happy to get a translator on the phone. It might make things easier for you to understand?”

“Are you fucking kiddin—”

“Hey.” 

A hand pressed to your bicep nearly makes you jump out of your skin. Despite every cell in your body urging you to lunge over the counter, you don’t fight it when Yoongi pulls you back a few paces, giving enough room for him to take your place at the counter.

“It’s fine,” he mutters over his shoulder.

You’re so hot with rage that you can hardly keep up with the soft apology he concedes to the agent. She hands him the room keys without another word, that same fake smile still plastered over her face. With one last nasty look over your shoulder, you angrily follow Yoongi toward the elevators, dragging your suitcase along behind you.

Practically seething, you can barely manage to wait until the doors slide shut before you pounce.

“I can't believe you let her get away with that shit. She was being fucking racist, Yoongi.”

“Yeah,” he sighs wearily, eyes fixed on the overhead number as it counts up to your floor. “I know she was. I've traveled overseas a lot more than you have.”

“What the fuck does that mean?!”

“It means,” Yoongi grunts as the doors slide open with a soft chime, “I've learned to pick my battles.”

You storm after him down the hall to your room, and he continues, pressing the key to the reader and pushing the door open. “Besides, I've stayed here before, and I know these suites have couches.” He holds the door and gestures for you to enter first, and you do.

He's not wrong: there’s a small living room area with a sofa, a desk, and a television mounted into a wall that effectively separates it from the bedroom on the other side, though there isn’t actually a door. The bathroom is immediately to your left as you step inside.

“So,” Yoongi says simply as the door shuts behind him. “I'll take the couch. All good.”

Of fucking course.

The rational part of your brain knows that he has done nothing to upset you. He's been quiet and polite on your long day of travel, and is treating you simply as if you were business acquaintances. It all makes perfect sense, given that you told him your night at his apartment couldn’t mean anything. He's done everything you’ve asked of him, really.

And yet it’s all of it: your stupid sex dream, the lingering bad taste of your encounter with the hotel agent, and the fact that Yoongi can’t seem to even fathom the idea of sharing a bed with you, not here and certainly not at his apartment. Everything has you simmering with a sudden vicious, unreasonable anger.

“Do whatever you want,” you snap as Yoongi sets his suitcase down on the floor of the living room. “I don’t give a shit.”

The rage burns like acid in your gut as you move through your night routine in the bathroom, and it’s only worsened by the knowledge that your alarm will be going off in just a few hours, and you’ll have to drag yourself through a long day of press and prep for Sunday. And that Yoongi will be there, through all of it, just like he’s on the other side of the door right now, inescapably and overwhelmingly present.

It doesn’t make sense to you how he can somehow manage to be too distant and too close at the same time. As you spit toothpaste into the sink, you wonder why the fuck you ever agreed to go on this stupid trip.

~*~

You don’t think you manage more than ten minutes of sleep the whole night. Despite exhaustion weighing heavy in your limbs, you toss and turn and kick at the blankets, too frustrated by all the confusing feelings churned up inside of you to be able to slip into any kind of real rest.

When you glance at the clock for the millionth time, it’s now only thirty minutes until your alarm is due to go off. With a sigh, you decide to give up.

Your mind is already racing with the schedule for the day, and you go over it a million times in your head as you shower and dress and apply your makeup. When you emerge from the bathroom already entirely put together, Yoongi is on the couch blinking blearily at his phone, clearly having just woken up.

“The car will be here at seven,” you call over your shoulder without a second glance back at him.

He grunts his acknowledgement, and after a few moments you hear the sound of the bathroom door sliding shut again. You dig your work laptop out of your purse to double-check everything, and before you know it you’re sucked into confirming specifics and answering emails, and you completely lose track of time.

The sound of Yoongi clearing his throat snaps you back to reality, and you shut your laptop as you glance up to find him standing in the threshold of the bedroom. He’s dressed nicely for his many interviews, in a sky-blue button-down, and you have to blink twice as you take in his appearance.

“You wear glasses?”

The warm lamplight of the bedroom reflects off his lenses as he shrugs. “I don’t like to. But I forgot my contacts.”

“We can stop for some on the way to your fitting,” you answer, adding it to your mental to-do list. The reminder of your booked itinerary is enough to get you to your feet, one arm wrapped around your laptop to press it close to your chest. Trying to remember what else you need to do to get ready proves impossible as Yoongi steps closer, and then you hear him laugh softly under his breath.

“Wow, glasses? Really?”

“What?”

“You have that look on your face,” he says simply, and you can feel an embarrassed heat creep up your neck. You hate that after all this time, he can still read you like a book.

You swallow hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He continues to close the distance between you, and you take a reflexive step backward, only for your thighs to bump against the mattress behind you. “Would’ve worn these more often if I knew they’d get you all flustered.”

You attempt to argue that you’re not flustered, but the words die on your tongue with the realization of how close Yoongi is to you now. His eyes are fixed pointedly on your mouth. “I—” you try again, your voice breaking slightly. “I’m not—”

The sharp buzz of your phone vibrating on the nightstand makes both of you start, and it’s like you can think clearly again when Yoongi steps back to give you room to grab it. You thumb open the text with one hand as you shove your laptop into your purse with the other. “They’re downstairs.”

Yoongi doesn’t say anything else to you until you’re in the car, crawling through Los Angeles traffic. “Remind me what all we’re doing today?”

You stare out the windshield, not wanting to meet his gaze as you recount the schedule that’s permanently seared into your brain. “You have press interviews in Studio City all morning until one. We’ll pick up lunch— and we can grab you some contacts, too— and then you have a fitting in Beverly Hills at two. After that, your boss wants us to tour the office out here and take a few meetings with the team, so that’ll be the rest of the afternoon. And then I guess whenever we’re done with that, the label execs want to take us to dinner after.”

He’s silent for long enough that you’re forced to glance over at him, wondering if he was even paying attention. There’s a small smile on his face, but it doesn’t quite read as smug. You don’t know what to make of it.

“Huh,” Yoongi finally remarks.

“What?” you snap in response, probably a little harsher than he deserves, but you haven’t had coffee yet.

“Nothing,” he says innocently. “It’s just funny, compared to when you first started.” He crosses his arms over his chest, shifting back slightly in his seat. “I remember when you couldn’t even use Outlook.”

You narrow your eyes in his direction. “I guess people change.”

“Guess so.”

The day passes in a hectic blur, and though ostensibly all of your scheduled engagements are meant to be about Yoongi, you find yourself just as busy as he is, if not moreso.

His press interviews run long because of course they do, and you’re forced to drop him at his fitting while you run out to pick up lunch and contacts— and most importantly, more coffee, which you desperately require to survive the rest of the day.

You’re admittedly thankful for the extra tasks. Even if you do feel dead on your feet, it’s still preferable to sitting around and watching Yoongi try on a suit. You can easily recall firsthand how deadly the image is, and putting off that suffering until the real thing tomorrow is perfectly fine, as far as you’re concerned.

The coffee gives you just enough of a caffeine boost to power through your afternoon meetings, reviewing branding strategies and opportunities for collaborative promotions with the label’s overseas team. Your heart sinks a little when you go through the marketing summary slides prepared by Jungkook, not a single detail out of place, and you try to shove thoughts of him to the back of your mind so you can focus on the work.

At dinner, it’s all you can do to not fall asleep over your extremely overpriced sashimi. Yoongi’s been pulled away to the far side of the table for what you can only assume are deeply boring conversations with the Los Angeles production team. Thankfully, your side is a bit more lively.

“Matthew,” the A&R rep who you’re pretty sure introduced herself as Tiffany stage-whispers. You realize she’s speaking to the tall and ridiculously built guy seated next to you when her gaze flits up to him, and then she resumes poring over the extensive drink menu. “Can we get sake bombs?”

“Why are you asking me?” Matthew responds, and you look over to see his face scrunched up in confusion.

“You’re in finance! I need you to tell me that I can get white-girl wasted on the label’s dime tonight.”

He sighs for a moment, like he’s trying to think. “I don’t… actually know if we’re allowed to reimburse that.” Tiffany’s lower lip trembles, dangerously adorable, and he exhales as if he’s been defeated. “Fuck it. I’ll cover it out of pocket if we can’t.”

“God, I love you,” she breathes, chasing the comment with a throaty laugh and quickly flagging down a server to order. “Can we please do thr— Vernon, baby, how old are you?”

The intern seated next to her blinks slowly. “Twenty four?” You’re pretty sure those are his first words of the evening.

“Huh. Your skincare’s doing wonders,” Tiffany shakes her head disbelievingly. “Four sake bombs, please?”

They arrive in an instant, and Tiffany smiles proudly to herself as she balances her shot glass on a pair of chopsticks laid across the top of her beer. You follow Matthew and Vernon’s lead as they set their drinks up to mirror hers.

“To Matthew’s wallet,” Tiffany toasts solemnly. “The only thing bigger than his tits.”

As if in hearty agreement, Matthew bangs his fist against the table so hard it makes everyone in a five foot radius flinch, and all four of your shot glasses plummet into the awaiting beers beneath them.

“Kanpai, motherfuckers!” Tiffany cackles, and you throw your drinks back in perfect sync.

The rowdiness of your corner is too loud to be ignored, and your stomach twists slightly as you set your empty glass down only to catch Yoongi staring from across the table. When your eyes meet his, he quickly lowers his gaze and adjusts his glasses, his mouth pulling into a flat line.

You turn back to your new friends as Tiffany finishes her own drink. As if she just witnessed the silent exchange, she leans toward you.

“So,” she drops her voice a little lower, “What’s it like working with Suga?”

Doing your best to keep your face neutral, you inhale deeply, wondering where to begin, or what would even be workplace-appropriate to say. The jetlag makes your mind move that much slower. “It’s—”

“Oh my god,” she immediately interrupts you. “You’re sleeping with him.”

Vernon nearly spits the last swallow of his drink back out.

“Tiffany,” Matthew interjects, sounding exhausted, like this is a regular occurrence. “Don’t fucking say that to someone you just met.”

“I mean,” you concede, your lips loosened by the warm rush of alcohol. “She’s not wrong.”

Matthews eyes widen, and he purses his lips for a long pause before he finally speaks. “Shiiiiiit, okay. Alright then.”

You sigh, slumping to rest your cheek in your hand, so exhausted that you can barely stay upright. “I don’t know if ‘sleeping with’ is the right term. It’s just a… mistake that we’ve made. A few times. Several, I guess.”

“I bet he’s even richer than Matthew,” Tiffany says, awestruck, clearly more to herself than to you.

“If it’s a mistake, why do you keep making it?” Vernon asks bluntly.

“Damn, Vernon with the deep cut,” Matthew remarks, and you shake your head.

“I don’t know,” you murmur, your words running together slightly. “I’m just trying not to think about it, at least not while we’re on this stupid work trip.”

All three of them nod like they understand, and then Tiffany leans in again. “Let me guess: there’s only one bed in the hotel room.”

“Please ignore her.” Matthew sounds as tired as you feel.

“Yes!” you exclaim, your anger from the night before temporarily reigniting. “The hotel fucked our room up, and the lady wouldn’t fix it because she was fucking racist—”

“Naturally,” Vernon interjects.

“And even though we only have one bed, he chose to take the couch. Like, that’s where we’re at.”

“That’s sweet,” Tiffany murmurs, and you make a face.

“Is it?”

“He’s being respectful. I bet he doesn’t wanna make you feel uncomfortable, or like… pressured. ‘Cause sleeping with somebody is a world of difference from… sleeping with them, you know?”

You roll your eyes. “Or he wants to be as far away from me as possible, even while sleeping.”

“If I was the one nominated for a Grammy, I’d make you take the couch,” Vernon scoffs around a piece of edamame.

“Right?” Matthew chimes in. “Ain’t no way I’m getting good sleep on a hotel couch. Them things are like fuckin’ cement blocks.”

A yawn escapes you before you can manage to stifle it, and you press a hand to your mouth, suddenly overwhelmed from exhaustion as well as the conversation. You scoot your chair back from the table to stand and politely excuse yourself to the restroom.

“You gotta cool it with that shit, Tiff,” you hear Matthew mutter as you depart.

Your mind swims while you traverse the long back hallways of this bougie restaurant. It’s almost laughable now, but you really never thought to give Yoongi the benefit of the doubt for sleeping on the couch— not here, and not at his apartment.

You’re still so used to expecting the worst from him that you’ve just assumed the intention is laced into his every action. Even the nice things have felt like a cause for concern, like a reason to keep your guard up, small gestures meant to distract you so he can get the upper hand, somehow. It’s hard to shake the idea that he’s your enemy, even after everything that’s happened.

And yet you can’t help wondering if Tiffany is right. Is Yoongi really just being… respectful? And if so: what does he want? And how does he feel? You’re torn between wanting to know and hoping you never find out.

A voice saying your name drags you out of your thoughts. You turn back just shy of the restroom door, unable to stop another yawn from slipping out, and you bring a hand to your mouth to hide it. Your eyes widen as your brain works on a delay to process the familiar voice, then the sky-blue shirt and the dark framed glasses. It distantly occurs to you that Yoongi has you all alone in this fancy hallway.

You blink a few times, willing the weight of sleepiness out of your eyes, then finally respond with the first thing you can think of. “I’m not fucking you in the bathroom, Yoongi.”

He blinks right back at you, clearly not expecting that. “I… wasn’t asking you to.”

“What do you want then?” you snap, crossing your arms over your chest.

“I—” he sighs, and you can’t help but wonder if he suddenly regrets coming after you. “You’re tired.”

“Yes, because I barely fucking slept. And?”

You tell yourself that you’re just imagining the way his voice has softened slightly. “Dinner’s over. We don’t have to stay. They’ll get it.”

“I’m having fun,” you retort. “I made friends.”

“I saw,” he remarks, not quite able to hide his smirk.

“So please, don’t cut your boring producer conversation short on my behalf,” you continue dryly.

Yoongi rolls his eyes, to your surprise. “Yeah, it’s brutal. I’d much rather be sleeping.” He quirks an eyebrow. “Or doing sake bombs.”

The question rushes out before you can second guess if it’s a good idea to ask. “How did you sleep? On the couch?”

Yoongi shrugs, then rubs a hand at the back of his neck, making a face as if you’ve put him on the spot. “Like shit.”

You nod, your gaze dropping to the carpeted floor. “Well, I mean. Maybe it would make more sense if, uh—”

“’Scuse me—” a new voice causes your head to snap up again, and you take a step away from Yoongi as Tiffany slips between the two of you, moving quickly toward the women’s restroom.

“Sorry love, I have to break the seal!” she calls over her shoulder before the door slams shut.

The interruption is enough to make you swallow your suggestion, and Yoongi reaches into his pocket for his phone.

“I’ll call a car, because I’m tired,” he murmurs defensively. “You’re welcome to get your own later, if you want to stay out—”

“I don’t,” you say firmly. “It’s fine. Just tell me when the car’s here.” Before Yoongi can so much as respond, you shoulder the bathroom door open and fast-walk to the safety of a stall.

After breaking your own seal, you make your way out to a sink, and you’re a little taken aback to find Tiffany still there waiting for you. She’s hovering over the mirror, blotting at her forehead with a paper towel.

“I wanted to apologize if I came on too strong,” she says softly as you turn on the tap. “Matthew says my mind-reading abilities can be intimidating to people who don’t know me well.”

You can’t help but laugh. “It’s cool. You remind me of my best friend.”

“The highest honor there is,” she says with a knowing nod. When she turns to fully face you, shifting to rest her hip on the sink as you dry your hands, you have a feeling there’s more coming.

“So, can I be honest?”

“Go ahead,” you say, suddenly a little nervous.

“I know I just met both of you today, but— the way Suga was looking at you? Girl. He’s not taking the couch because he wants to.”

You smile politely at her reflection, and her eyes narrow. “I know you don’t believe me, and you don’t have to. Matthew doesn’t believe that he’s in love with me either, but we both have Leo Moons, so obviously we’re each waiting for the other person to cave first.” She shrugs, nonchalant. “Which is fine for us, but all I’m saying is, if you want something, there’s really nothing wrong with asking for it.”

The urge to shut her down is strong. It’s slightly unnerving to feel like a relative stranger is peering into your soul. “You make it sound easy,” you murmur with a dry laugh. “I don’t think bed-sharing is part of our… arrangement.”

Tiffany preens a little more in the mirror, deftly flipping her curtain of dark hair over one shoulder. “Maybe it’s not supposed to be, but trust me on this one. He won’t say no. And if he does, I owe you a sake bomb.”

A genuine smile blooms across your face, and it only widens when she holds up her pinky finger. You lock yours around it for a single shake. “Deal.”

Arm-in-arm with Tiffany, you return to your corner of the table, where she entertains you by bullying Matthew into buying another round of drinks while he groans about burning a hole in his pocket.

“If it helps,” you giggle, “I’m about to head out. So make it three instead of four.”

“Thank god,” Matthew breathes a sigh of relief. “This girl is so damn expensive.”

Tiffany pauses with a spoonful of matcha gelato— also ordered on Matthew’s dime— halfway to her mouth. “I literally have a Leo stellium, what the fuck do you expect?”

While they continue to bicker, your gaze floats down the table. You wonder if Tiffany’s mind-reading powers might be catching as your eyes land on Yoongi just in time for him to look up from his phone and meet your gaze. He nods his head once toward the entrance, and you nod back.

A shoulder bumps into yours, and you turn to see Tiffany subtly shoot you a thumbs-up. “Fighting!” she murmurs under her breath, and you laugh as you get to your feet and bid everyone goodnight.

Yoongi holds the door of the restaurant for you to exit first, then follows you into the large black car waiting for you on the curb.

The drive back to the hotel gives you just enough time to immediately talk yourself out of Tiffany’s suggestion. The thought of asking for what you want feels like a trap, like displaying weakness to the one person who could hit you hardest. Besides, what if she misread Yoongi entirely? She doesn’t know him at all, and has no idea of the way things are between you. It’s a terrible idea, you decide.

So you find yourself right where you were the night before, like a bad dream you can’t wake up from: face washed, teeth brushed, tossing and turning in a bed far too large for one person. You can feel your final thread of resistance snap clean in half as you angrily kick the blankets off, then get to your feet and storm into the living room.

Yoongi is still up, peering down at his phone screen on the couch, his glasses deposited atop the coffee table.

“You’re being stupid,” you huff, and he glances up, clearly not expecting the interruption.

“I am?”

“You’re going to the Grammys tomorrow,” you say, as if that will explain anything.

“So are you,” Yoongi counters.

“Well yeah, but nobody’s going to give a shit about me.”

“I’d argue that’s also true for me,” he murmurs dryly, then squints at you. “Sorry, why am I stupid?”

“Because you’re going to sleep terribly on this couch.”

Yoongi nods once. “Probably, yes.”

You sigh, because of course he’s going to drag this out of you. “And the bed is perfectly big enough for two people. We wouldn’t even be touching or anything. So…” Fuck, saying what you want is hard. “Can you just… stop being stupid?”

There’s a flash of recognition in his eyes, and you’re surprised when that trademark cocky smirk doesn’t spread across his face. If anything, he just seems hesitant as he slowly sits up. “You’re sure?”

You fold your arms across your chest, suddenly feeling exposed like this, standing in front of him in only your thin sleep clothes. “Please don’t make me say it again.”

The corner of Yoongi’s mouth just barely pulls up, so slight you could be imagining it. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

In the bedroom, you leave the lamp at the empty side of the bed switched on, then crawl back under the sheets on your side. Heat blooms in your face as you press your cheek to the cool pillowcase, purposefully facing out, then reach one arm up to turn off your own bedside lamp.

True to his word, a few minutes later you hear the unmistakable sound of Yoongi’s steps across the carpet, then feel the shift of the mattress as he slips into bed on his side. He fumbles on the nightstand with what must be his glasses and his phone, and then you hear the click of the light, and the room disappears into darkness.

There’s a rustle and a sigh as he makes himself comfortable, and you were right: the two of you can easily share the bed without touching, plenty of space on the mattress between you.

Even so, having him closer is somehow… better. Comforting. You try not to dwell too much on it.

Flipping over onto your back, you stare up at the infinite black of the ceiling above you, your eyes already starting to weigh heavy. You don’t know where the question comes from, or why you ask it.

“Are you nervous?”

When he answers, Yoongi sounds half-asleep, too. “About what?”

“The Grammys?”

“Oh.” There’s a stirring sound, and then he speaks, like he’s just remembered you can’t see him shrugging. “I don’t know. A little.”

The only reply you’re capable of is a soft hum, and now you really can’t keep your eyes open. You curl up on your side again, cheek smushing into the pillow, and your consciousness whirs up one last coherent thought before you fully slip under: What else would he be nervous about?

~*~

You wake up to the warm glow of morning beneath your eyelids, and when you blink them open, the room is lit soft, dappled in sunlight that has managed to sneak between the thick hotel curtains. It’s warm in this bed too, and comfortable, and you sigh quietly to yourself as you stir a little under the covers. With a stifled yawn, you move to turn onto your back, and it’s only when you meet a gentle resistance that you realize why you’re so warm.

Yoongi must just be waking up too, because you immediately feel his body start at the realization that he pulled you close at some point during the night: an arm thrown over your waist, his hips pressed flush against yours.

“Fuck,” he mutters, his voice low and rough with sleep. “Sorry.” As the mattress starts to shift behind you, you respond on pure physical instinct and close your hand around Yoongi’s wrist.

“Stay.” The word comes out hoarse, barely more than a whisper.

Yoongi’s response is a soft grunt, and a bolt of panic quickens your pulse. You’re suddenly worried he might not want to stay, that he might even laugh at you for thinking you could have it like this, wrapped in his arms and waking up slowly. The furthest thing from hatred— and isn’t that what this is supposed to be?

But then his grip tightens to pull you that much closer, and he wordlessly presses his face into the crook of your neck. Your heart flutters in your chest, sweet and terrified. The heat of his breath over your skin makes you lean into him instinctively, and when your hips tilt, you can feel the unmistakable bulge of his clothed cock against your ass.

“God,” Yoongi groans. The deep gravel of his voice is enough to tighten your nipples beneath your tank top. “You make me so fucking hard. Dreamt about fucking you in this bed.”

“We woke up early,” you murmur. “So. There’s time.”

He grunts a low note in response. You can already feel the thin material of your sleep shorts growing wet between your legs as you slowly grind your hips back on him. 

Yoongi’s hand slips up your body, fingertips dragging over the fabric of your top until his palm is pressed to the column of your throat. You inhale softly, your head tipping up to allow him better access. His grip just barely tightens, and when he speaks in your ear, you can hear the smile around his words. “Tell me what you want.”

“Want you to fuck me, Yoongi,” you breathe. “In this bed.”

When you repeat his words back to him, Yoongi exhales a laugh, and then you feel him press a kiss to the hinge of your jaw. Something melts open inside of you at the brush of his lips, a sudden rush of an emotion you haven’t felt in a very long time. Something you certainly never expected to feel with Min fucking Yoongi, of all people.

He releases his hold on your throat, and his hand makes short work of slipping the straps of your tank top off your shoulders, then yanking the loose fabric down to expose your tits. You shiver a little at the morning air against your bare skin.

Yoongi’s palm closes around one of your breasts, lazily massaging it, and you rut your ass back on him with a small whimper. The heat of his mouth trails more kisses up your neck, and then his deep voice is in your ear again.

“Did you sleep okay?” He pairs the question with his thumb dragging circles over the stiff bud of your nipple, earning another soft noise from you.

“Y-yeah,” you manage to respond. “Better than the first night.”

He hums against the shell of your ear, the timbre of his rough voice setting every last one of your nerve endings alight. Overcome with desire, you can barely focus on his words as his hand traces along your waist to slip down the back of your shorts.

“Me too. So much better than the fucking couch.”

Two of his fingers tease over your slit, and he huffs a disbelieving laugh at how wet he finds you, how turned on you already are. When he swipes between your folds to circle at your entrance, you can hear your own slickness, chased with a soft noise of appreciation that escapes Yoongi’s mouth as he plunges both digits into your pussy. You can’t help but moan, too.

He could easily make you come just like this, but you want him too much.

“Yoongi,” you murmur, twisting slightly to reach a hand behind you. You trace down the hard muscles of his stomach, apparent even through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, until your palm drags along the thick outline of his cock straining beneath his boxer briefs. He’s so hard that he pulses under your touch, and you’re sure he must be able to feel the way your pussy flutters at the thought of this cock filling you up.

“Needy,” he purrs, his mouth against your neck.

“Shut up,” you answer automatically, not quite able to keep your voice steady with the way he’s fucking his fingers into you.

But Yoongi doesn’t torment you— you only have to give his clothed length one slow pump before his hands are pushing your shorts over your legs, like he can’t get them off fast enough. You kick them the rest of the way off while he works his boxers down, and then you arch back as his cock starts to tease your pussy lips apart.

He slips easily through your folds, painting you both in a mixture of pre-cum and arousal as he grinds himself over the whole of your slit. You bite back a moan when the head of his dick rubs up to your clit, smearing wetness there in steady strokes that make you gasp and writhe.

“Can I go raw again?” he asks so softly in your ear, and your cunt throbs as you whimper your consent.

It’s impossible to keep quiet now, not with how perfectly his cock pushes into you, stretching you open to take him. You press your face into the pillow to slightly muffle your sounds, and you can hear Yoongi groan behind you.

“Fuck,” he hisses roughly. “You’re ruining me. I may never be able to go back to condoms.”

“Yoongi,” you whine as he sheathes himself fully with a grunt of effort, giving you a few moments to adjust before he moves. “If you keep fucking talking in my ear with your morning voice like that—” your own voice breaks off mid-sentence as he drags his cock out just to fuck it back into you, and you have to take a breath before trying again. “I’m gonna come in five seconds.”

When he presses his mouth to your shoulder, you can feel the smirk on his lips. “Is that right?” The low rumble of his question buzzes through you, and your walls tighten around him in response. “You like it that much?”

You can barely remember how to form words with the way he’s started to thrust, the head of his cock sparking hot pleasure each time he rubs himself over the ridges of your front wall. “What if I do?”

Yoongi hums into the crook of your neck, purposefully drawing the sound out to make a shiver run up your spine, and you can’t help moaning. His hand slips between your thighs to nudge them apart, and you’re easily pliant for him, spreading yourself at his guidance so his fingers can find your clit.

“I’d tell you how fucking good you look like this,” he murmurs against your skin. “How well you take my cock.” You roll your hips in time with his strokes, and his free arm slips between your shoulder and the bed to wrap around your chest, giving him leverage to fuck you harder.

“Oh my god.” You nearly choke on your words as he pounds into you, unrelenting now, and your fingertips claw desperately at the pillow beneath your head.

“Pussy’s always so fucking tight, shit,” he groans. “Should’ve just done this the whole weekend. Don’t know how I even let you leave the room.”

Your feet flex helplessly against the bedsheets as Yoongi’s hand rubs a steadily building pressure into your core that threatens to overflow. His fingers move in tight circles over your clit like he knows your body well— which, you guess, he does. The thought of him keeping you here all weekend, tangled up in these sheets, fucking you senseless and making you come again and again and again is dizzying, enough to make your pussy start to pulse around his length.

“Yoongi,” you gasp. “Fuck, fuck, you’re gonna make me come.”

His lips brush over your shoulder, his voice stilted by how roughly he’s fucking into you. “Yeah, come on this cock. Make a mess for me.”

The pleasure is so overwhelming you almost want to squirm away from it, but then his fingers press your clit just right to snap a final thread and send you over the edge. Your thighs shake violently as your climax rips through you, and a rush of fluid squirts out of your cunt to coat the length of his dick and soak a wet spot into the sheets.

Yoongi groans unabashedly at the sight, still fucking you through the waves of your orgasm, his thrusts slowing as if to hold off his own end while your pussy keeps shuddering around him.

You take your time coming all the way down, lost in how good it feels, and then you slump back against the pillow with a ragged sigh, your head swimming. “Holy shit.”

His throbbing-hard cock is still clenched inside your heat, and the bed shifts when he gently pulls out. Dazed, you turn over to watch him as he kneels up on the bed next to you, his knees sinking soft divots into the mattress, and starts to slowly pump himself.

And fuck. He looks so good like this: long hair mussed from sex and sleep, with a half-awake look of concentration on his face, his tongue toying at the corner of his mouth and the muscles of his arm flexing with every stroke. Watching him get himself off has only gotten hotter since you saw it the first time, and you didn’t think that was possible.

It feels like it takes all the effort you have left in your body, but you manage to sit up and turn to face him. In one assured move, you reach down to grab his wrist and pull his hand off his cock.

Yoongi whines a little at the realization of what you’re doing, and he leans back to give you full access as you settle yourself on all fours in front of him.

“Oh fuck yeah, please suck me off.”

“Please?” you laugh, pausing to glance up at him. “Who taught you manners?”

“That fucking mouth did,” he growls, and it’s punctuated with a relieved moan as you drag your tongue up his shaft. One of his hands tangles in your hair while you lick the heady taste of yourself off his cock, then breathe deep through your nose so you can swallow him down.

Yoongi’s breath comes in ragged pants as you hollow your cheeks around him and start to bob your head, letting his tip rub against the back of your throat on every pass. You feel his fingers in your hair tighten, and his hips shove up to match your strokes, like he’s already close to coming undone.

This thick cock weighs heavy and familiar on your tongue, warm like the rays of morning sun that have reached far enough into the room to wash over the bedsheets now. Drool spills out from the seal of your lips around Yoongi’s shaft, and the sound of him fucking your mouth is obscene, pornographic as it floats up to the ceiling.

“God,” Yoongi gasps. “Gonna come down your pretty fucking throat.”

And it’s funny— once, this would have made you feel powerful, in control, like the person with the upper hand. The winner. But in this moment, it occurs to you that you don’t really give a shit about winning anymore. Now his words just make you hum and suppress a smile around his cock in your mouth. When you notice the way his thighs tremble in response, you keep going, vibrating his length while you sink as far down as you can take it.

The hand in your hair releases, and then his palm just barely brushes over the bulge of his cock in your throat as if in admiration. Eyes rolling back, you let your jaw slacken and swallow hard on the stretch of him there.

“Jesus, fuck,” he groans, and then he’s coming, and the throb of him in your mouth still feels like a reward. You pull back a little to keep from gagging as he paints fat ropes of cum into the tight clutch of your throat. Sucking firmly around him through spasm after spasm, you swallow it all down greedily until you feel him going soft on your tongue. 

You finally pull off with a wet pop, dazed and laughing as you roll over and collapse into a heap against the mattress, thoroughly spent.

“Okay,” Yoongi manages to say on an exhale, though you can hear he’s still short of breath, too. You glance up to see him raking a hand through his hair, looking fucked out of his mind. “I’m ready to go win a Grammy now.”

There’s just enough time for each of you to shower and get dressed before a whole team of people arrive for Yoongi: stylists, hair and makeup, and most importantly, coffee delivery. Yoongi blinks wide-eyed at you as you press the largest iced Americano you could find in downtown Los Angeles into his hands, and then you step back to let everyone get to work.

Meanwhile, you spend the next few hours in a rush of attempting to get yourself ready, all while double-checking the schedule, answering emails on the fly from your phone, and trying desperately to ignore the anxiety that’s started to hum in the pit of your stomach.

Once your hair and makeup are as decent as you can get them, you slip the black dress you packed for tonight— a rental, because buying a black tie dress was absolutely out of your price range— off the hanger and step carefully into it. Watching yourself in the mirror, you reach behind you for the zipper only to realize you can’t quite manage to pull it up past the small of your back.

Fuck. You didn’t even think about the fact that Jimin helped you zip this thing up when you tried it on initially, during a night at your place where you split two bottles of wine and he performed his own personal critique of all your dress rental options. This was the only one he’d liked.

With a nervous sigh, you head for the bathroom door, figuring that you’ll be able to subtly grab the attention of one of Yoongi’s many stylists to help.

But when you slowly slide the door open, one hand pressing the fabric of your dress in place over your chest, you realize the room has fallen quiet. As you lean across the threshold, you see why: everyone is gone.

Except for Yoongi, who glances up from where he’s sunk into the couch, scrolling aimlessly on his phone.

“Where is everyone?” you snap, probably a little harsher than you need to be.

He frowns like he doesn’t understand the question. “They… left? Because they were done? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a big awards show tonight. Means the stylists are pretty booked today.”

Yoongi gets to his feet to cross the room, and you fumble awkwardly, trying to keep your dress up. He’s fully put together now in a well-fitted suit and tie, and with his long hair styled and subtle makeup applied to enhance his features, he looks… good. Too good. Deadly. You can’t quite manage to maintain eye contact, and find yourself staring dumbly at the floor instead.

His voice softens slightly as he steps in close to you. “What’s wrong? Does it not fit?”

“It fucking better,” you mutter. “I just… can’t reach the zipper.”

“Are you asking for my help?”

Your gaze flits up to meet his, and you’re a little surprised by his question. “There’s nobody else here,” you retort, stubborn.

When he blinks evenly back at you, like he’s waiting for something, you realize he’s not going to make this easy. Fucking hell. Another tense moment passes, and he just blinks again.

“Yes,” you finally give in with a frustrated sigh. “Will you please help me, Yoongi?”

“Turn around,” he murmurs, and you do.

His hand slides over the small of your back, and then he slowly starts to ease the zipper up. You don’t dare move a muscle until he’s done, and it’s only once he buttons the closure at the top that you breathe a serious sigh of relief. The dress fits like a glove.

You attempt to compose yourself enough to thank him, but the words get stuck in your throat when you feel the heat of his breath against your skin.

His low voice resonates in the quiet of the room as he leans in. “Was that so hard?”

You turn your head as if to argue, but then there’s a split second where you feel his lips brush over your neck, just below your ear. So slight it could’ve been an accident.

“Thanks,” you manage to choke out, and then you slip away from him to get your heels from the bedroom and try to remember how to breathe. You do your best to ignore the fact that your hands are shaking as you pull your shoes on, then pause in front of the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, giving yourself a final once-over.

As you smooth your hands down the black velvet fabric and turn to the side, you glance up to find Yoongi hovering in the threshold, watching you.

“That dress,” he remarks, sounding a little dazed. You have to fight to keep the smile off your face when he trails off, unable to say more— you didn’t think it was possible to make Min Yoongi speechless. It’s not a bad feeling.

And you do like this dress, even though you could never actually afford it. It’s simple but elegant, a sleeveless column style with a plunging neckline and a slit that reaches your mid-thigh. Nothing groundbreaking, but it sticks to your curves like water and makes you feel somewhat more like a person who belongs at a fancy awards show.

“Jimin picked it,” you respond, and you hear Yoongi exhale a laugh.

“He has good taste.”

You turn toward him as your hidden smile pulls into a smirk. “Well, I’m not dressed up for you,” you chide, and you revel in the way his face drops briefly in surprise before he’s able to conceal it. “I’m trying to meet Kendrick.”

“Is that right?”

“Uh-huh.”

You’re thankful that you purposefully padded your schedule with extra time, because you lose nearly every last minute of it stuck in the gridlock of Los Angeles traffic on the night of a huge event.

By the time you make it to the venue, you’re practically nauseous from all the stopping and starting and crawling of the car, and Yoongi looks equally bad, though you suspect his condition might be more anxiety-related.

As it turns out, the Grammys are a lot less glamorous when you’re only mildly famous, at least by American standards. The two of you are shepherded by security to another ‘lane’ of the red carpet and warned not to stop as you make your way into the building. You observe from afar while A-list celebrities pass in a blur, flashbulbs pop bright enough to blind you, and chatter is drowned out by the sound of fans screaming and the clamor of reporters trying to grab the biggest names for an interview.

“I’m so glad I’m not that fucking famous,” Yoongi scoffs, though he doesn’t quite manage to hide the nerves in his voice.

“Come on,” you murmur once you get inside, nodding toward a pop-up bar in a far corner of the lobby. “Take the edge off. And I’m gonna need alcohol if I have to sit through a fucking three-hour show.”

You down your drinks quickly, only a few minutes shy of the time by which you have to be in your seats, and you return from tossing the empties in the trash to see Yoongi eyeing a piano pushed against the far wall, clearly for show. He takes a seat, glancing around as if in fear of getting yelled at, then gently pushes up the key lid.

“Ooh, do Wine!” you tease with a laugh as you drop onto the bench beside him, but he actually does start to play, one foot pressing down on a pedal to keep the sound soft. His fingers alight over the keys, and the song he plucks out is beautiful. It’s a melody that almost feels nostalgic to you, even though you know you’ve never heard it before.

“What is this?” you ask, and he keeps playing as he responds.

“Do you know Sakamoto?”

You hum a no as you shake your head.

His eyes narrow slightly. “Remind me how you work in the music industry?”

A smile plays at your lips, and you roll your eyes. “Shut up. You know I’m a fraud.”

Yoongi doesn’t miss a note when he glances up to meet your gaze. “Are you?”

It’s only now that you realize how close he is: the two of you are basically sitting hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. For a moment, you forget about the Grammys, forget that anyone else is even in the room.

“Excuse me!” A voice snaps you out of the moment, and you scoot away from Yoongi so quickly you nearly topple off the bench. “That’s not meant to be played, and we need everyone to head to their seats, please!” Your face flushes with an embarrassed heat, and Yoongi lifts a hand apologetically as he covers the keys back up.

You stick close to his side so as not to lose him in the large crowd of people. “Bet they’ll let you play whatever piano you want once you have one of those dumb little trophies,” you mutter under your breath, and Yoongi really laughs, like he wasn’t expecting the comment.

Another thing you didn’t necessarily anticipate: the Grammys are fucking long. You knew it would be over three hours, but you realize you severely underestimated how long that time would feel. While the performances are incredible (and you have to dig your nails into the cushion of your seat to keep from squealing when you spot Lil Nas X a few rows in front of you), there’s plenty of filler between them, and it feels a lot drier when you’re physically in the room for it. Even the commercial breaks are far too short for you to have enough time to actually run to the restroom or get another drink.

You’re also starving. “I hate that they don’t serve food at these things,” you hiss to Yoongi during a break, but it’s late enough in the night now that he’s barely speaking, apart from the occasional monotone grunt. 

Though you’ve been waiting for it all evening, you still don’t quite know if you’re ready when the host starts to run down the list of nominees for Song of the Year.

As he’s only credited as a writer, they don’t actually say Yoongi’s pseudonym, but pride still squeezes tight in your chest when you see “Suga” spelled out across the on-stage monitors beneath the name of the song.

They get through all the titles in what seems like less than a second, and your heart feels like it might give out as an anticipatory silence settles over the crowd. The host fumbles with getting the envelope open, and you’re so tense, you flinch hard at an unexpected brush of contact.

You glance down, and it takes a moment for your brain to process what’s happened. He’s not looking at you, hasn’t said anything, but Yoongi has nevertheless reached over to grab your hand. His long fingers lace through yours, gripping surprisingly tight, and the skin of his palm is warm and dry. It’s like your brain short-circuits for a moment as you stare stupidly at your joined hands, and he gives yours a single nervous squeeze.

“And the Grammy goes to…”

You look over at him, still dumbfounded, and then you hear them call a song that isn’t his.

Your heart sinks as you watch Yoongi blink up at the screen, his mouth pulled into a flat line. You realize belatedly you’re supposed to be clapping, but his hand is still clasped in yours. And you don’t want to pull away from him.

But then he moves first, untwining his hand from yours and bringing it up to rake through his hair with a disbelieving laugh. A little delayed, you both join in the applause as the winner makes their way to the stage. You can’t even process who it is.

You have no idea what to say to console him, so you don’t say anything at all.

Thankfully the category is one of the last of the night, so you only have to sit through a few more rounds of acceptance speeches and watching other people’s dreams come true before you can finally get to your feet. You feel like you can’t leave fast enough as you’re herded out of the stadium and into another car to depart for the afterparty.

There’s a heavy silence in the backseat that feels like a chasm between you as you crawl through Los Angeles traffic.

You realize there’s a bottle of champagne tucked into an ice bucket behind the front seat— a thoughtful touch from the label execs, you assume. Yoongi spots it at the same time you do, and he immediately reaches for it. With a grunt of effort, he pops the cork, a little bit of excess foam dribbling onto the floor of the car.

He raises his eyebrows at you, then brings the bottle right to his mouth for a long drink. Longer than long. You watch his adam’s apple jump in his throat as he swallows several times.

“Alright, chill the fuck out,” you snap after a few seconds, reaching over to grab it from him. “At least eat something first.”

“It’s my consolation prize,” Yoongi quips, but he lets you wrest the champagne from his hands without resisting. You take a thorough swig yourself, then recork the bottle and drop it back in the bucket. “Such a good little admin,” he purrs, and you try to convince yourself there isn’t a hint of venom in his words.

The car pulls to a stop at the designated hotel, and you climb out after Yoongi. Upon making it inside, the two of you peel off in different directions: him for the bar, and you to find anything that remotely resembles food. You keep glancing over at him from across the room as it fills with more and more people, nervous to take your eyes off him for too long, unsure of what he might do. Every time you find him again, it seems like he’s downing another glass of whiskey, drinking like the fucking world is ending.

Meanwhile, you’re struggling to find anything that isn’t kale, quinoa, or… whatever grain-free bread is. With a frustrated sigh, you finally decide to give up. If Yoongi wants to drink on an empty stomach until he gets alcohol poisoning, you figure that’s his fucking problem.

When you shove your way through the crowd back toward him, you find that he’s been pulled into a conversation with a bunch of older white men you can only assume to be American industry reps. As you get close enough to make out their words, you quickly understand why he has such a sour look on his face.

“Don’t tell me— oppa gangnam style, right?” The man talking does his best approximation of Psy’s dance, and you consider crawling under the nearest table.

“Nah, come on, he’s obviously the one who did Parasite,” another guy laughs.

Yoongi grimaces politely into his drink as he throws it back, but you can’t seem to find your manners. “Oh good job, Yoongi, I see you found the fucking racists.” You don’t miss the smirk he tries to conceal.

There’s a loud reaction from all of the white men, who clearly seem more entertained than hurt by your dig. “Wow, man,” the one who spoke first chortles, clapping Yoongi hard on the shoulder. “Looks like you need to control your girl.”

Your heart thuds in your chest as you watch Yoongi shrug off the guy’s hand to set his empty glass down on the closest table. He moves slowly, deliberately taking a long pause before correcting them. “This is actually my assistant.” His voice is laced with a deadly calm you know well.

“Assistant?” A third pipes up, acting as if he’s never heard the word before. “Huh. You know, back in my day we just called them secretaries. Or mistresses.”

Yoongi moves so fast you barely have time to process it, lunging forward and shoving the guy in the chest with enough force that he stumbles backwards into his shitty friends. “What the fuck!” one of them shouts, purposefully loud, and you can hear a ripple of shock roll through the crowd, can see heads turning to look your way in alarm.

“No, no, nope,” you immediately mutter. “This is not fucking happening.”

Yoongi is already taking another step toward the group, and you tighten a hand hard around his bicep. “We’re leaving.”

When he whips around to face you, the mixture of anger and pain reflected in his dark eyes is so overwhelming, it hits you like a truck. You try to force yourself to stay calm, because at least one of you has to be.

“Come on, Yoongi,” you say, letting your voice soften. “Fuck this place. I need some real food.” Your eyes search his, pleading. For a moment, you can’t help but wonder if you’re staring down an enemy or a friend.

But then you see the fight go out of him as he nods, and you breathe a silent sigh of relief.

Shifting the hand on his arm to press firmly to the center of his back, you guide him in front of you and wind through the packed room of people until you make your way outside again.

Fate does you one good turn by leaving an empty cab out front, and you push Yoongi into the backseat, then slide in next to him. You lean forward to greet the driver, doing your best to smile politely and act composed, like you didn’t just almost get into a fight at the Grammys afterparty.

“Can you take us to Koreatown, please?”

~*~

The cab drops you off outside a strip of bars and restaurants, lit up with neon signs in both English and Korean. To his credit, Yoongi seems more subdued as he follows you out of the car wordlessly, but you allow him a little more time to cool off in silence. You wander somewhat aimlessly, attempting to shake off your lingering anxiety in the warm evening air, until you stumble upon a food truck parked at the end of the block. Your eyes go wide at the posted signage.

“What do you think?” you ask as you turn to Yoongi, and he shrugs, like he really doesn’t care. Perfect. You’ve never had a problem a gamja hot dog couldn’t fix.

Securing one for each of you, you nod Yoongi toward a small group of tables set up at the curb to sit down. Once seated, you immediately drown your hot dog in ketchup and mustard, and you can hear him scoff before taking the bottles from you to do the same. Admittedly, you must look fairly ridiculous eating fried street food in full black tie, but you’re far too hungry to give a fuck right now.

It’s perfection from the first bite, crispy and hot, the batter studded with potato pieces and the inside loaded with cheese.

You’re also too hungry to bother making conversation at first, but after a few more bites you glance over at Yoongi, and your heart sinks all over again. You really do feel bad, and then the words are leaving your mouth before you can stop them.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur with your mouth full. “That you didn’t win.”

He makes a face as he chews. “We already agreed I wouldn’t have been happy even if I won, right? So it doesn’t really matter.”

You roll your eyes, unconvinced. “It’s okay to have feelings, you know. You’re allowed to be upset.”

Yoongi just shrugs, but he can’t quite meet your gaze. “It’s whatever.” You take another bite as he continues. “If I’m gonna win a Grammy, I want it to be for something that’s all mine anyway.”

The sentence surprises you, and you blink back at him. “You’re going to release your own stuff?”

As if he instantly regrets bringing it up, his face reddens a little, his expression twisting into an unsure grimace. “Ahh… I don’t know, probably not. People know me as a producer. I don’t know that anyone would actually listen to it.”

“I would,” you say without even really thinking, and his eyes widen. “You know,” you continue quickly, adopting a fake-serious tone. “Since I work in the music industry. Strictly business.”

A small smile plays at the corner of his mouth, and you find yourself relieved to see it. “I appreciate that.”

You’re also desperately curious, wondering if he’ll say more about his own music, but he goes quiet again. Given the night he’s had, you don’t exactly want to push it.

Taking the final bite of your hot dog and mourning the loss, you stack your skewer and paper tray on top of Yoongi’s, then get to your feet to toss them in the nearest trash can. When you return to the table, you smack your palms decisively against it.

“Come on. I think the circumstances call for some binge drinking.”

Your first stop is tucked into two seats at a neighboring dive bar, alive and roaring with enough ambient conversation that you have to speak fairly loudly to be heard over the noise. The bar in the center of the room is wrapped around a small open kitchen, where you watch the line cooks hustle to steam, grill, and fry what seems like a never-ending rush of food orders.

You and Yoongi stick to soju, pouring each other shot after shot. On the first one, he tilts his full glass toward you, and you knock yours against it.

“To losing,” he toasts, and you can’t help laughing as you tip your head back to drink. He’s smirking as he swallows his down, then pours you another. “Hey, maybe Jungkook will throw me a commiseration party when we get back.”

You grimace automatically at the name as you take the bottle from him to fill his glass up, and Yoongi doesn’t miss it. “Trouble in paradise?”

With a roll of your eyes, you determine that you need to be drunker for this. You take your shot, then instantly hold your glass out for Yoongi to pour another before he even gets to his. He obliges, and you throw it back immediately. The bottom of your glass hits the bar with a loud thud.

“I kinda… freaked out on him. Right before we left.”

Yoongi’s eyebrow lifts, questioning, as he drinks. “Any reason?” he prompts when he’s finished.

“Yes,” you answer stubbornly, tapping at the rim of your empty glass. He fills you up again, and you return the favor to finish the bottle. Yoongi motions to the bartender for another as you down your shot and steel yourself.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he offers.

“Don’t you want to hear that you were right?”

He shrugs like he can’t argue. “I mean, always.”

“Well for one, he asked if anything was going on between you and me.” You glance over to see Yoongi’s eyes widen slightly as he drinks. “I said no.”

“Uh huh.”

“And then he was like, ‘Good, I’m glad I don’t have to tell you to raise your standards.’”

Yoongi is clearly trying to keep his expression neutral, but it’s a losing battle. You can see the way his shoulders are starting to shake, and then he finally caves in, his palm smacking flat against the bar as he really laughs. “Wow,” he eventually recovers enough to huff, and you reach for the fresh soju bottle that’s been dropped off. “He really just said it.”

“Mm-hmm,” you intone, filling his glass and then handing the bottle back. Yoongi’s still chuckling a little as he pours your drink before taking his own, and you continue. “And then, I don’t know, there was some other stuff, and I was just like… oh fuck.”

“Because you realized he’s in love with you.”

You sigh dejectedly into your soju. “I’m so stupid.”

“Nah,” Yoongi shakes his head, reaching for your glass once you’ve emptied it again. “You wanted to avoid an inconvenient truth. Just makes you human.”

There’s a pause as you take the bottle to pour his drink, and then his next words nearly make you choke as you throw back yours. “You should date Jungkook.”

You’re sure you must look entirely dumbfounded as you stare at him. “What?”

“What?” he retorts, like he hasn’t said anything shocking. “He’d be good for you.”

For a long moment, neither of you speak as you regard him. You finally shake your head, nudging your empty glass toward him until he gets the memo. “Don’t say shit like that,” you mutter under your breath, and you’re not sure if he hears it over the din of the bar.

“Besides,” you continue as you snatch the soju out of his hands to pour his drink, “I’ve tried dating a coworker before. It’s a bad idea.”

“Sounds like a good story.”

“It’s not, really,” you murmur, staring down at the liquid in your glass. “My last job I was a waitress.”

“Mm,” Yoongi interrupts with a hum as he takes his shot. “Waitress. I was close.”

You pour him another, mostly to keep him quiet. “Yeah yeah, you’re very fucking perceptive. Anyway, I dated another server for a couple years. He ended up cheating on me with one of the hostesses, but I was honestly kinda tired of him, so I was glad to end it.” You hear Yoongi snort a little at your fairly heartless admission. “But then I walked in on them fucking in the walk-in, and it put me in a bad mood. Long story short, I ended up throwing a drink on a customer and they had to let me go.”

“Christ,” he laughs, pausing for a moment to fully take in your words. “And now you’re a pain in my ass.”

You roll your eyes as you motion for another soju bottle. “Correct.”

“Sounds like your ex was an idiot.” You glance over to find Yoongi already looking at you. “I mean, in the walk-in is just… nasty.”

“That’s what I said!” Your mouth pulls up at the corners as you try to suppress a giggle. “I don’t think we can really judge anybody though.”

Yoongi blinks, staring blankly into the middle distance. “That conference room trash can condom still haunts me.”

With a loud laugh, you bury your face in your hands, and you can feel your cheeks burning from alcohol and embarrassment. You peer between your fingers as Yoongi sets down a fresh shot for you, and you gladly take it.

“People are stupid,” he remarks wisely. “That’s why I don’t date.” You quirk an eyebrow as he passes you the bottle.

“What, a prize like you?” you deadpan. “You just fuck people in bar bathrooms like a well-adjusted human?”

“Yeah,” he admits with a shrug. “So. Wanna check this one out?”

Your mouth drops open in disbelief, and you immediately smack him on the arm. He nearly spills his drink from laughter, and you can’t keep yourself from laughing a little, too. “I already gave it to you this morning, you freak.”

“Come on,” Yoongi’s voice is teasing, and he bumps his shoulder against yours when he leans in closer. “I had a hard night.”

Pouring him another drink is your only distraction, and you do it with the utmost focus. “This dress is a rental.”

“I can pay for it.” The heat of his breath ghosts over your collarbone as he answers. You shove the bottle hard into his chest, and he takes the cue to fill your glass again, still smirking as he pulls away.

“First,” you say, sounding more confident than you feel, especially with the way your pulse has started to quicken. Your expression is deadly serious as you turn to stare into Yoongi’s eyes and he stares right back. “You have to prove that you can keep up.”

When you swallow your shot easily to punctuate the dare, a look flashes over Yoongi’s face like he’s impressed, and then he follows your lead.

After a few more bottles, the bar is so crowded and so loud that you can hardly hear yourselves think, and you stumble out of it and into the next place you see, and then the next, and then the next. All bets are off tonight, and you’re not about to tell Yoongi that he can’t get fucking trashed considering he just lost at the fucking Grammys. You figure you’ll be able to sleep off your hangovers on the stupidly long flight home tomorrow.

With each stop, Yoongi’s mood seems to improve a little. He eventually drinks enough that his suit jacket and tie come off, and they end up draped over your shoulders, despite your loud protests that you don’t need any more responsibilities. With the sleeves of his white button-down pushed up, it gets increasingly hard to divert your attention away from his hands and the muscles in his forearms, especially as you get progressively drunker and drunker.

Yoongi’s palm brushes over the small of your back as you make your way out of the last place, his touch warm even through the velvet of your dress.

“I know it was your personal nightmare,” he murmurs, words slurring together slightly, “but I really am glad you came on this trip. I mean it,” he insists when you shoot him a look. “I would be fucking insufferable if I was alone tonight. And I definitely would’ve punched that label guy in the face.”

You exhale a laugh and nearly fall over in your heels, and Yoongi’s hand slips to your waist to keep you upright. “He deserved it.” You lean into him, not entirely for balance, and you can feel it when he shrugs.

“Sorry you didn’t get to meet Kendrick.”

The glow of the various open-late establishments and the glitter of the pavement under your feet are all beautiful, especially in your current state, and the night air is still and warm. As you approach the next building and are met with the dull thud of music, your eyes go wide.

“Oh, I just figured out how you can make it up to me.”

The noraebang is surprisingly busy given that it’s a Sunday night, but you’re still able to book a room, and you giggle your thanks as Yoongi opens his wallet to pay the hourly rate like it’s nothing. The two of you work your way through more bottles of beer and soju, and when you start up the karaoke and teasingly pick the HEIZE song he produced, you’re surprised that he actually joins you.

Yoongi must be able to read the expression on your face, because he smirks mid-song. “Let the record show that I am actually a very fun drunk.”

And he is. You sing dramatically and loudly, not caring if you hit the notes, jumping and dancing and occasionally dropping passionately to your knees before dissolving into laughter. At first you monopolize the controller, but after you force a third Kendrick song on him Yoongi gestures for it, and you begrudgingly hand it over.

Crossing the room, you kneel down to dig through the provided box of props, immediately spotting and slipping on a cat-eared headband. You glance up at the screen, eyes widening as you realize he’s searching through Epik High songs. “Do Love Love Love!”

When you look back at him, Yoongi is squinting at you, laughing a little at your new set of ears. “What the fuck do you know about Epik High?”

“What do you mean what the fuck do I know?” you snap back. “I love them! I should be asking you that question, Mr. ‘I don’t listen to music’!”

His mouth pulls into a grin, his tongue toying at the inside of his cheek. “I have a few exceptions, alright?”

Still knelt down, you flop sideways onto the floor when he selects Born Hater. “Ugh, I’m too drunk to say that many words.”

“I got this,” Yoongi reassures you, flipping his microphone coolly with one hand as he gets to his feet. You can’t help giggling dumbly from your spot on the ground as you drunkenly prop your feet on the booth and reach up to pull your high heels off.

If there’s one thing tonight has taught you, it’s that Yoongi has a really good voice, even raw and live and drunk as hell. You don’t know why it surprises you, but it does. To you, performing seems like a different world from writing and producing tracks, but he does it just as effortlessly, with no trace of the anxiety you’ve seen grip him in a crowded room. The passion in the way he growls and gasps out lyrics, even just in the way he moves, it’s all undeniable and exhilarating to watch. He raps like he has nothing left to lose, mouth pulled into a snarl, occasionally reaching up to push his sweaty hair back off his forehead.

You can only gaze up at him, awestruck, wondering how many different versions of Min Yoongi you have left to discover until you hit the bottom.

The two of you trade the controller back and forth until every bottle on the table is empty, until the words blur on the screen, until Yoongi flops over to lay down in the booth with his head hanging off the edge, clearly exhausted. “No more,” he groans. “I’m so tired. And so drunk.”

Hovering above him, you pry the controller from his grip with a smile, slipping the cat ears onto his head for an even exchange. And then you get an idea.

“Last song!” you assure him as you type, and he groans even louder when Cat & Dog starts to play.

“God, this song is terrible,” Yoongi complains, but you’re singing too loud to care about his critiques.

With a severe amount of effort, he pulls himself to a sitting position, and you kneel down in front of him, miming cat paws with your hands and wiggling your hips. “I didn’t know you were into petplay,” he deadpans, and you stick your tongue out, determined not to let him ruin your fun.

You get to your feet and turn toward the screen as the second chorus finishes, yelling over your shoulder, “This is my favorite part!”

“Feel like Cinderella naega byeonae—”

When Yoongi’s voice suddenly reverberates from the other microphone, you almost drop yours. You whip around in complete disbelief. He’s on his feet and moving towards you as he continues the rap verse, the inarguable best part, with a renewed cocky energy. And you have to admit, he’s putting Yeonjun to shame.

“What the fuck!” you practically scream, but he just keeps going.

Seized by full-body drunk laughter, you stumble forward and nearly fall over, knocking into his chest. Though Yoongi’s reflexes are a little delayed, he still manages to right you without missing a word, one arm hooking around your waist. You swallow hard as you suddenly find yourself intimately close to the broad sweep of his collarbone, exposed between the top buttons of his shirt that came undone at some point during your debaucherous evening.

Fumbling for your microphone, you make it back to reality in time for the final chorus, only to fall entirely to pieces when Yoongi starts barking at full volume to match the outro. You can’t take it, and he’s not fast enough to keep you upright, so you drop straight down to the floor on hands and knees, laughing so hard it feels like your lungs might give out.

The microphone rolls dejectedly out of your grasp as you flop over onto your back, and you scrub your hands down your face, trying desperately to catch your breath as the song fades out.

“That was the best thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” you mumble into your palms. You uncover your face to look up at Yoongi, only to find him laughing down at you, still wearing the fucking cat headband. “I thought you hated that song.”

He rolls his eyes despite his smile. “Yeah, well, it was also stuck in my head for like a week after you played it that one night.”

You sit up with a dramatic glare. “Oh, you mean the night you stole my fucking keys?”

A proud smirk flickers over his mouth. “You know, I am sorry about that. Or at least sorry I couldn’t see the look on your face when you realized.” He tosses his microphone onto the booth bench next to his abandoned suit jacket, then reaches down with both hands to pull you to your feet. It belatedly occurs to you that you might’ve left his tie at the last bar, but you’re too drunk to give it another thought.

“I hate you so much,” you say, though you can’t quite keep your expression serious. “Fuck, I should’ve taken a video. Could’ve used it for blackmail.”

Yoongi’s voice is lower when he speaks again, and you’re suddenly very aware of how close to you he is, the fact that his hands are still closed over yours. “Guess you’re the only one who’ll ever know.”

“Mmm,” you hum, swaying a little where you stand. His palms slip to your waist to keep you steady as you blink up at him, and your hands flatten against his chest, your fingertips tracing over the buttons of his shirt. “You look good in cat ears.”

“Shut up,” Yoongi murmurs, and then his mouth is on yours.

Your hands reach up to tangle in his long dark hair, knocking the headband to the floor, and with the amount of alcohol currently coursing through your system, you don’t have a single inhibition left in you. You kiss Yoongi like you can’t fucking breathe without him.

He pulls you as close as he can, until your bodies are flush all the way down, and you don’t ever want it to be any other way. You want it just like this, sucking and nibbling at his bottom lip until his tongue licks your mouth open and you groan into him. Just like this: his palms moving down to grab your ass unapologetically, your grip on his hair tightening, even your teeth knocking together with how drunk and desperate you are for each other. Just like this: two stupid, wildly flawed humans in black tie attire, making out in a Ktown noraebang at two in the morning on a Monday.

The sound of the door opening might as well be a gunshot for how loud it feels, and you just barely manage to jump apart as an employee pokes their head in.

“Hey, we’re closing in five.”

You don’t realize you’re not breathing until you hear the door click shut again, and your gasp for air quickly turns into an overwhelmed, embarrassed laugh. Yoongi groans drunkenly, running a hand through his hair, then sighs out a long exhale, like he’s trying to calm down.

“Come on,” you giggle, still close enough to tug playfully at one of his belt loops. “Let’s get out of here.”

Thankfully a cab is still easy to flag down even this late. The two of you manage to pour yourselves into the backseat and give the driver the name of the hotel. It’s not a terribly long drive, and you watch wide-eyed out the window as the sprawl of Los Angeles rushes by, painted in neon glow and the amber wash of streetlights.

Yoongi slumps against you, and he goes quiet for so long you think he might be asleep. When he finally shifts again, he presses his face into your shoulder with a noise of discomfort, and you’re suddenly worried he might be silent for a very different reason.

“Yoongi,” you murmur, trying to keep your voice low. “Don’t puke in the cab.”

“Stupid,” he responds, and you figure he must not be doing that bad if he can still talk.

You run your fingers through the soft, dark strands of his hair, admiring the texture, the way it’s nearly long enough now to graze his shoulders. “What’s stupid?”

“I’m—” he tries, but the car dips over a pothole, and he’s talking so quietly you lose the rest.

“You’re what?”

It’s quiet for a moment, save for the click of the turn signal.

“In love with you.”

His words stun you where you sit, and you have no idea what to do, say, think. You just keep twining your fingers through his hair, like you’re stuck on auto-pilot, distantly aware that every alarm bell in your inebriated brain is going off. It feels like way too much to try and process any of it right now. It feels like a trap.

“We can talk about this tomorrow,” you finally answer. Yoongi just stays slumped against you, and he doesn’t say another word.

The cab drops you off at the hotel, and it’s quiet between the two of you as you get him up to the room. You feel like you’re watching yourself from a distance, and it’s like your brain isn’t processing any of this as really happening, as if to keep you from thinking too hard about the big picture. From what it all could mean.

In the bathroom, you stand over the sink as you lend Yoongi your makeup remover and you both brush your teeth.

“Contacts,” you remind him through a mouthful of toothpaste when he spits out the last of his, and he nods sleepily.

“You don’t have to… administrate me all the time,” Yoongi slurs as he carefully slips one lens and then the other out of his eyes.

You spit out your own toothpaste, then sigh as you rinse the sink clean. “Well, you’re very drunk, and it’s my fault.”

“It was fun,” he says quietly, fumbling the case closed.

“It was,” you echo. “Really.” 

The bathroom door is half-open on its sliding track, and you glance up in the mirror to see Yoongi hovering in the threshold, looking back at you as you wipe away stray traces of mascara from under your eyes. You think he’s going to leave, but then he steps in behind you again, and you feel his hand slide up the small of your back to ease the zipper of your dress open.

Something in your heart twists as you stare down at the marble counter, and you can already tell this isn’t meant to be flirtatious. That thought is confirmed when you finally look up, only to find yourself left entirely alone.

With a small sigh, you slide the bathroom door shut, then flip the switch to turn on the fan. The white noise still doesn’t feel like enough, so you run the shower as well, then grab a plastic water bottle from the counter to chug. You retreat into the far corner with your phone, scrolling until you find the name of the only person who can possibly help you right now.

“Hey babe,” Jimin answers on the third ring. “I’m at rehearsal so I really can’t chat. You good?”

“Yoongi said he loves me,” you answer immediately, and the reality of it hits you impossibly hard as soon as you say it out loud.

“Uh-oh.”

“But,” you lean back until your head knocks against the wall. “He’s drunk as shit. I— we are drunk as shit.”

There’s a pause, and you swear you hear Jimin laugh a little under his breath. “He really said it, huh?”

“Yes, Jimin,” you groan. “In love.”

“And?”

You grimace at the flippant response from your supposed best friend. “What do you mean and?! What the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Well, that depends,” Jimin starts.

“On?” you snap, impatient.

“Have you realized you’re in love with him yet? ‘Cause if I have to hear you babble on about this man for another week without piecing it together, I really might lose it.”

His words actually make your stomach churn. “Jimin!”

“I—” he sounds like he’s preparing to explain himself, but then he pauses, and his voice is quieter when he speaks again. “Fuck, I’m getting yelled at. I gotta go. Call me tomorrow.”

You want to scream at him to stay, to help, that he can’t just unravel you like this and then leave you to figure it out for yourself. “Mochi, I’m on the fucking plane tomorrow—”

“I’ll come over when you get home!” Jimin interrupts. “And then you can tell me the entire story of you two finally figuring out how to be normal humans with feelings.” You scoff at his biting remark, but he’s already talking over you. “You’re smart, you got this, I love you!”

You hear him blow a dramatic kiss into the speaker, and then the line goes dead.

The world spins around you as you stare helplessly at the silent black screen of your phone, and you can’t shove it all down anymore. It’s overwhelming, all of the things that you’re feeling in this moment, so much so that you can’t even identify what you feel. It’s just a giant, tangled mess, in your brain and in your heart. The tears spill out like you’ve been holding them in for weeks, hard and fast, until you can scarcely catch your breath. You scrub at the first few that roll down your cheeks, but they continue relentlessly, and you eventually give up and just let it all pour out.

You don’t know how long you stay like that, crying on the bathroom floor. You can’t even really explain why you’re crying, except that everything inside of you feels like too much to handle.

There’s a dull ache in your head by the time you finally manage to cry yourself dry, and then you peel yourself off the floor to slip out of your dress and shut off the shower. You pull on the tank top and sleep shorts you’d grabbed earlier from the bedroom, trying to avoid your swollen face in the mirror as you turn the lights out and shut the door behind you.

Yoongi has left the lamp on your bedside on, and you immediately flip it off to plunge the room into darkness, not wanting him to see you like this. He stirs slightly when you slip under the covers, and you can feel the mattress shift as he turns over.

Like it’s the most natural thing in the world, his arm slides over your stomach to pull your body flush to his, and his lips brush at the join of your neck and shoulder. As confusing as it should be, there’s something about the weight of him pressed into you that relaxes you, even through your current haze of emotion. You allow yourself to sink back against him, to breathe deeper, though your inhales are still a little shaky.

Yoongi’s rough voice in your ear pulls you up from the edge of sleep. “Did I fuck everything up?”

You sniff softly, and your own reply is barely more than a whisper. “No, Yoongi, it’s okay. Let’s just sleep."

As you hear him settle in beside you again, you make a promise that you’ll deal with the fallout tomorrow. You’ll figure out how you really feel, and how he does, and what you want, and what the hell you’re supposed to do about it all. But tonight, you just want this: to lay here with Yoongi and pretend your entire world isn’t about to change when you wake up.

chapter eight | masterlist | chapter ten

A/N: oh hiiiiii, super secret bonus author's note down here!!! just wanted to share that, now that we're officially through the grammys, that means we are down to just two more chapters left in the series!!! i held off confirming the full length of LDOMLT until we got to this point (and honestly i could've easily split this into two chapters but i am NICE and i did not give you the WORST CLIFFHANGER OF ALL TIME LMAO) - but now i'm sure. chapter 11 will be the final one. gonna do my best to get 10 and 11 up before end of year, or by very early 2023 at the latest!!! and thank u, as always, for reading 💜💜💜

[waitineedaname]

just letting y'all know that I'm flying to europe tomorrow and will be there for the rest of the summer, which means I'll be online a lot less and at weirder hours bc of time zones! so if you send me something and it takes me even more of an eternity to answer than usual, that's why

if we're mutuals or have talked a couple times, dm me and I'll give you my snapchat and/or discord! I'll be posting touristy pictures on snapchat lol

[tvrningout-archived]

i barely got to any messages, but i’ll work on that later — getting ready to take off now!! y’all take care this week and stay safe 💜 mwah!

[nolaimagines]

Baby Love

Request: hi, can you do Klaus Mikaelson imagine, where y/n is bartender in Rousseau's(i think it was that name, sorry if its incorrect) and friends with Hayley bc reader is werewolf too, and when she is playing with little Hope in living room, and klaus walks in and sees reader for the first time, and takes interest in her or something like that? hope it wasnt too much and too cliche😊thanks

Notes: It's been a long time, but here's a post. Hope you enjoy it! Part 2?

---

You sighed, wiping down a table ready for the next group of customers. You signalled them over before going behind the bar and preparing more drinks. Just as you set the glasses on the counter, and got the remaining ingredients, and strong perfume filled your nostrils.

You smirked to yourself, “What do you want Hayley?” You looked up to see your best friend sitting at the bar.

Hayley smiled and shrugged her shoulders, “Nothing, I just wanted to see you, and ask what you were up to tonight?”

You tilted your head, knowing she was after something, “Well depending on what you really want, I’m working.”

Hayley groaned, “I need someone to look after Hope, I don’t trust the Mikaelsons-“

“YES! I’ll do it. I finish at 5, and can be at yours for 5:15?” You squealed with excitement. Hope was more like your niece than just your friends daughter, and Hayley saw you more as Hope’s aunt which was nice.

Hayley smiled, “Perfect timing. See you then, you’re the best.” She downed the drink you just made for another customer and took off.

--

“Here comes the airplane” You smiled, waving the spoon of food in the air towards Hope as you attempted to feed her. You opened your mouth as Hope followed your instructions and took a mouthful before letting it spill down her chin. You laughed, “Not quite, let’s eat the rest of it, not much more to go.”

“No.” Hope pouted and pushed the food bowl onto the floor.

You laughed a little, and leant down to pick up the bowl, “Okay, I get it. No more food, you could have just said.

Hope giggled and threw the spoon on the floor in response. You looked at her with fake disappointment, but Hope continued to giggle as she wriggled out of her chair and walked over to her toys.

You smiled after her, and set the bowl back on the table, quickly running after her and sitting beside her.

“Full of energy isn’t she?” A deep voice came from behind you; Klaus.

You looked up and smiled, trying to contain your surprise his good looks. How did Hayley fail to mention that Klaus was this handsome? “Yes, she is. And unfortunately, she’s eaten most of her dinner so I won’t be surprised if she is awake all night.”

Klaus laughed, “Well, in my 1000 years of existence, this little one is the only one who has managed to tire me out…aren’t you?” Klaus sat next to Hope and minded her curls from her face.

You smiled, “I’m Y/N, Hayley’s friend…”

“Yes, Hayley’s mention you a lot actually. You were a great comfort to her during her pregnancy so I hear, and you’ve looked after Hope more times I can count…I’m just glad I’ve finally got the chance to meet you.” Klaus offered a kind smile.

You smirked, “Well, I’m known to annoy people, and I hear you don’t have much patience, so I didn’t want to take the risk.”

Klaus chuckled, “And you do now?”

“Well…I had to come and see what the fuss is about didn’t I? Is the original hybrid as scary as the legends say?” You knew he was of course, but you couldn’t help but attempt to wind him up.

Klaus’ eyes darkened, but his lips were smiling slightly, “and what’s your verdict?”

You smiled, and picked Hope up in your arms, “I’d say you were a big soft teddy bear, don’t you agree Hope? Your daddy is just a big squishy teddy bear.” Your voice softened as you tickled hope, her giggles echoing in the room. You glanced behind Hope’s shoulder, and you saw Klaus smiling but his eyes filled with a little more than lust.

“Right, I better put Hope to bed.” You got up and cradled Hope in your arms as she leant her head on your shoulder.

Klaus got up and followed you, “Yes…I’ll give you a hand.”

--

You switched off the light and closed the door quietly before turning around and bumping into Klaus.

“Oh…sorry….” You muttered as you moved past him.

“That’s alright love…my bad…Y/N…” Klaus grabbed your arm softly, pulling you back.

You turned around and looked up at Klaus, “Yes?”

“I was wondering….” Klaus’ eyes were darting everywhere…why was he nervous?

You smirked, picking up on his nervousness, “Ooo, is the original hybrid getting nervous? Around me?” you fake gasped, “Are you feeling okay? You lift your hand to feel his forehead as if he was getting hot as a human would.

Klaus smiled, and grabbed your hand keeping hold of it, “Love…I was wondering if you wanted to go out for drink…I’m quite intrigued by you…”

You raised your eyebrows a little, “Sure. I finish at 5 tomorrow evening. You can pick me up, but don’t be late because I hate people being late and I have this awful temper…but I wouldn’t-“

Klaus chuckled, interrupting you with a kiss to your cheek, “I’ll be there, love.”

[extremelyblackandwhite]

innocence - 25

PAIRING: bodyguard!bucky barnes x innocent actress!reader

WARNINGS: smut (18+)

A/N: me to me “you shall not write smut. BEHAVE” also me “mILE HIGH CLUB”. 2021 barely started and i already need jesus. also rip me attempting to post this before christmas but hey i refuse to let christmas end bc christmas is my only hope and love and it’s over.

NEXT CHAPTER

Bucky was the first one up as the clock struck 5AM. He was anxious for the flight, for everything really. Y/N had assured him she had bought first class tickets so he’d be comfortable with the long trip but he was still reticent about flying. As an Avenger he used to do national missions, preferring not to fly as it brought him some memories he didn’t like to relieve. Sam had suggested he took some sleeping pills while the flight was going but Bucky refused not to be there to support Y/N who’d been getting called by her team 24/7 about her “mishap” as her manager like to refer to. As if a 20-something dating was something weird. Bucky knew Steve did way worse things than that but of course, she had stepped off the line, off the good girl, virgin ‘til marriage, girl next door yet just gorgeously unattainable and if Y/N hadn’t told him to stay out of it, he would’ve threatened everyone.

Anyway, other than flying he kept wondering about her family. Y/N had a big family, at least more family than he had and he wasn’t entirely sure how they would react to him. Bucky knew he wasn’t the type of man you’d like your daughter to bring in. Who’d want to say that their daughter was dating an assassin? No one. He had wanted to say no, he wanted her to have a nice holiday but looking at her there was no denying her. 

Y/N woke up half an hour later, extending her arm towards Bucky’s side only to feel the cold of the sheets on her side. She rose her torso, rubbing the sleep off her eyes before the blurry room became clear. He was sat on the big armchair, staring at the flight tickets.

     - Someone’s an early bird. - she leaned on the bed, hands under her chin as he gave her his charming smile. - Excited?

     - Nervous. - he rose from his chair to kiss her forehead. - Do you need anything, princess?

     - Just need to get dressed. - she lazily got up from her bed. - You’re gonna love it, Buck. There’s snow on the ground, we can get spiced mulled tea and go see the decorations at the West End. 

     - I’m sure I will. Now get dressed unless you plan on going to the airport in your underwear.

     - I don’t see you complaining. - she flirted, hips moving side to side as she opened his wardrobe to grab her burgundy long sleeve dress and pair of black flats. Bucky tried his best not to ogle at her and her figure in a matching black set of star motif bra and panties with garters to see through black stockings. Sometimes he had to slap himself to convince himself the woman standing in front of him actually liked him. - You’re okay with going, right?

      - Of course, princess. Whatever makes you happy.

      - Okay but what makes you happy? We don’t need to go if you don’t feel comfortable. 

      - Just regular meeting the parents nerves. - he pulled her hair away from her face to kiss her forehead. 

      - Based on the photos Rebecca has, I would say you’ve met enough parents not to be nervous anymore. 

      - Come here, you little minx. - he wrapped his arms around her waist pulling her in close to him. - I will have you know that I never met any of the girls’ parents. It was not a good thing for a lady to be seen alone with a man in my time, so we had to keep it a secret.

      - Mhm, were you destroying ladies’ reputations in your day, Mr. Barnes? Is that it?

      - Not my fault they couldn’t resist me. - he leaned down to kiss her but she turned her face away, naughty smile on her lips. - Don’t do that to me, princess. It’ll break my tiny heart.

      - Stop playing Romeo and grab your bags before we’re late. - she swung her hips side to side to grab her own cary on, a small matte black suitcase with her initials on the bottom left in a small size. 

Bucky followed her into the airport. He couldn’t seriously remember the last time he had been in an airport, maybe during his youth but right now everything seemed so different yet he didn’t feel scared. He looked to his right and there she was, holding his hand as the other pulled her trolley, dark sunglasses on to hide who she was but still sporting that smile that was truly hers, something he could pick out of a crowd. He never really liked the word or feeling of possession, neither did she, but they didn’t really mind the feeling that a ship’s rope held both their hands together in a nautical strong knot. It was that sort of feeling that disconnected them both from what surrounded them, the sound of echoed and at the same time murmured silence. Y/N didn’t mind, Bucky didn’t mind. The flashlights went by dim and the announcements went mute for both of them.

Y/N however did not like airports. For her, airports signified goodbyes, harmful and painful goodbyes those were you wave goodbye to your loved ones and walk into security checks with tears lodged in her throat, telling herself to put herself together as she approached the beginning of that line. It represented waving goodbye to her comforts to travel somewhere she was not happy, not that her life in the US after she left the UK didn’t made her happy, it did but it was a faux happiness. It was locked inside a bought apartment with people who didn’t or refused to understand her, with friends she loved and cared for but didn’t really check on her them too lost on their own lives, it was yearning for a love that took years to come and everyone told her it would come but never did. It was an odd feeling being at the airport but being with Bucky twisted that. It was no longer leaving loved ones, it was departing with them, it was leaving all the mess that haunted her behind yet she couldn’t help feeling like something lingered in the wind, some cut throating emotions and actions which would return to her. 

She decided not to dwell on it, smiling at Bucky as he picked some snacks to bring inside the plane besides her telling him they probably would have the peanut M&Ms rather than his beloved chocolate only ones. She watched him as someone watched something that reminded them of a childhood memory or something that touched them, with a tinge of sadness, almost knowing it would never happen again. She felt tied to him but she felt at any time this knot could worn out and she feared he would leave. Things fade, nothing lasts forever and she wondered when he would realise that he was dating a ticking time bomb controlled by others. She had control over her own heart but her face, her reputation, that would never be hers to control. 

     - Y/N? - he laid his hand on top of her shoulder. - Are you okay, princess?

     - Yeah, just thinking. - she handed the lady the tickets, holding Bucky’s hand as he led her inside the airplane.

Y/N was lucky to be used to first class, she spent in life in it but for Bucky it was a jarring new experience. His parents used to be well off, better than most however they were never well enough to afford flying anywhere. The closest he’d been to flying was in military helicopters but all his experience to commercial flying had been watching on magazines but even this looked so different. It looked like a perfect first class bedroom in a five star hotel with individual little places for each passenger and some for couples which he guessed was one for the two of them. As they approached their cabin, a polished dressed lady signalled them inside their own seats. She looked at Bucky who had star filled eyes as he noticed all the comfort of his seat.

    - Is this how you travel? - he sat down by the window, looking at the small bottles of water, juices and fun sized treats. - Now I know why you travel so much. It’s like a damn hotel room here. 

    - Peanut M&M’s. - she grabbed one of the snacks from his side. - I believe you’ll be donating those to me. 

    - That’s a travesty, princess. I cannot believe you prefer those with peanuts

    - Peanuts are great. 

    - Unless you’re allergic to them.

    - You’re not allergic to peanuts. Steve would’ve told me if you were and I saw you eat a peanut energy bar yesterday. - she crossed her arms. 

    - First, I hate peanuts so it’s almost as if I were allergic to them. Second, KIND bars don’t count, you know how good they are, they add that little caramel drizzle.

    - I guess we’re gonna have more than my nephews and nieces for a picky eater this Christmas. - she laughed, picking the remote to shuffle through whatever the company offered. Bucky leaned on her shoulder, leaving a kiss on it right before he did. - Thank you for coming with me. 

   - That’s not a problem, princess. Besides, who would guard you if I were not to come?

   - Is this overtime then, Mr. Barnes? - she looked down at him, his childish yet charming smile whenever he meant to tease her which he so easily could do both meanings of the word. - We should prepare for take off. 

It couldn’t be too different from take off in the quinjet. Bucky had done it once after the train incident but it always brought him back to it. He wasn’t like this and it pained him that the slightest of turbulences in any travels now made him feel like a kid. He didn’t use to be like this, he was fearless, going on the Cyclone time and time again and now ... now he was a shell of a man afraid of take off. He shouldn’t be afraid, it was not his role, right? He knew things were different then and were different now but he always wanted to be strong, strong for her as if any insecurity would throw her away. He knew it didn’t, Bucky knew Y/N was there to stick around and didn’t care about what the war and HYDRA had done to him but he cared. Bucky wanted to be her hero, her safe harbour and with this ... 

His mind shattered into snowflakes as she held his hand, the captain’s voice muffled as the plane gathered speech. Y/N never hand cold hands or a cold touch, she was just warm, a little ray of sunshine burning his icy exterior and forcing him to see the beauty of winter. Bucky clearly mostly got distracted by her own beauty but her holding his hand, the rings on her fingers which she had gathered from little shops along the street against his hand, made him want to remove the dagger he had stuck on himself so he could feel pain forevermore. 

The plane move upwards, both of them being pulled against their seats by the laws of physics on an endless climb and he still had his eyes closed, finding comfort in the darkness. 

    - Buck. - her finger caressed his jaw. - Look out the window. 

Bucky peaked open one of his eyes, looking out the window near him to see a full blue sky, completely different from the dark skies of the winter filled New York they had just left.

   - We fly above the clouds. Isn’t it beautiful? - she leaned against his shoulder. 

   - You see this everytime?

   - Unless I’m flying at night, yeah. Sunsets and risings are particularly stunning. 

   - Now what?

   - Now we wait for round 6 to 7 hours. We can put a movie on, maybe. Whatever you’d like.

Bucky took to shuffling through the movie catalogue himself. Some of the movies he’d never heard about and some he’d heard from Sam or from Steve’s list of movies he had to watch yet he never did. Capitan America himself stuck to the old classics, the movies they used to sneak through the backdoor of the theatre. He himself liked the classics too and Y/N, as a film/acting major herself, also had a soft spot for them. Bucky’s favourite was the Wizard of Oz, despite later knowing how controversial filming had been, yet he couldn’t help but always remember the wonder on his sister’s face and his own wonder as he watched the vivid colours. He could still feel it now, however the movie ended and soon the food came in and he found himself bored. There wasn’t much he could do on a plane and he found himself jealous of the 5 year old running up and down the cabin, despite most of Y/N’s laughter. 

He covered himself in the company’s blanket and snuggled against the pillow and still he couldn’t sleep. Y/N on the other hand had fallen asleep the moment she pulled the leg rest, wrapped around in her blanket, face facing his which gave Bucky the excuse to look at her while she slept. Bucky always found it wildly amusing how she slept, lips slightly puckered, eyes fluttering until she fell in deep and hands fisting the blanket up to her chin. Eventually, Bucky got frustrated, moving around in his seat to find a comfortable position. How come he couldn’t find a comfortable position on a first class seat?

    - Buck ... - she groaned, opening her eyes. - Stop moving around. 

    - I’m sorry, princess. I’m just ... so bored. How do you do this?

    - I sleep. - she placed the blanket on her lap. - Why don’t you get something else to eat?

    - How many hours left?

    - You don’t wanna know. - she rubbed the sleep of her eyes, Bucky still laid against his seat, blanket on his lap, head against the head rest. Y/N started thinking about how to entertain him until her gaze fell onto his lap. Looking around the cabin was quiet, no cabin crew or passengers on their feet, just a calm cabin. 

She moved closer to him, head against her shoulder, facade of a glistening angel on a renaissance painting. Her fingers traced the soft finish of his blanket, the embodied company name until her fingers were under the soft fabric. She slide her hand under his shirt, feeling his warm skin as her hand travelled downwards towards the Hugo Boss boxers he wore, fingers hooking on the waistband. Bucky swallowed dry, wondering if he had finally gone to sleep and this was finally a good dream or if his sweet, innocent girlfriend was actually about to do what his mind was rushing to as her fingers wrapped around his softened member. He grunted, looking at her like she was a fever dream, hips mindlessly thrusting into her soft warm hand. He would say there was no better feeling, had it not been for the fact he had been inside of her. 

Y/N bite her lip, insecurely swiping her thumb over the tip, his pre cum dripping onto it. She didn’t know what she was doing, mostly going by the erotica she had read and seen before, guiding herself by his low sounds, mumbled by his own hand which laid against his own mouth. She looked up at him, cerulean eyes looking at the ceiling as if all his strength would break loose were he to look at her and she thought that was the most gorgeous he’d look. She straight herself up, pushing his hand away from his mouth to start kissing him, something which would look rather innocent to anyone who passed by. Her kiss was warm, hot and sinful, much more different than the shy ones she would lay on him each morning yet he guessed it matched with her movements, fast and tighter against his cock. He tried to remain still, allow her to do what she wanted to do but his body had a different idea, hips thrusting and gyrating against her hand like some idiot teenager as her mouth lowered to kiss his pulse point. His breathe quickened, coming into staccatto as her movement quickened. The environment was blurry and all he could think about and hear were her movements and his body shuddering until he was spurting thick ropes of white liquid onto her hand and his breathe came out knocked as if he had finished a race. 

She cleaned her palm with a tissue, bringing her fingers up to her cherry tinted lips from her chapstick, disappearing within the plumpness of them. He swore he could cum again just from that sight. As he tried to regain his breathe from the latter event, she gave him a shy smile, pushing her blanket up to her chin. Whatever she did to him, whatever release she had given him had made him comfortable enough on that cloud nine that sent him into sleeping, only awaking once the plane wheels hit British soil. 

It was dark, around 9PM the captain had said and Bucky himself thought the trip was over until both of them disembarked onto the airport which was a completely different world. Had it not been by Y/N’s unwillingness to spend more time in an airport, he would’ve possibly stood behind taking pictures yet once she spotted a man with a sheet with her name written in, she had his hand on hers and dragged him up to it.

Bucky had been in London, he remembered it from the war and some buildings were the same yet everything was brighter. His eyes shone against the decorations, wondering how bigger they could get and Y/N took great pleasure in seeing him so happy. All she wanted was to make him happy, all she wanted was to see him happy. The taxi driver stopped in front of her childhood home which gladly always seemed to look the same with christmas lights and garlands. Both of them step out the car and the nerves finally hit Bucky. How do you meet someone’s parents? How do you meet the person who just gave you a handjob’s parents and make a good impression? How could he make a good impression? He was a hundred year old never aging man with a metal arm dating the little rose that everyone put on an altar. He didn’t belong. Maybe he could stop her, maybe he could convince her not to ring the bell except she was already ringing the bell and the door was opening up.

A short woman in a white jumper and jeans opened the door. She had Y/N’s eyes, the same eyes Bucky would recognise anywhere and based by the tight hug she gave Y/N, he would guess she was his mother.

   - Mum, this is Bucky. - she held Bucky’s hand. What should he do? Should he wave?

   - Oh my, you’re tall. I thought that with a nickname like that you’d be small. Oh, here I am again rambling. We are so happy here, you know, you’re the first man Y/N brings home.

   - Mum!

   - What? It’s true. You’re my oldest child and only now have you brought a man. Aunt Petunia is really proud of you.

   - Mum!

   - Come in, Bucky. Can I call you Bucky? Come meet the family.

taglist: @disasterbii​ @lookiamtrying​ @buckysteveloki-me​ @americasass81​ @jamesbarnesappreciationclub​ @lostinthebeans​ @mariahthelioness29​ @buckyandsebastian​ @peaches-roses-sins​ @theadorasabditory​ @sipsteacasually​ @saiyanprincessswanie​ @booktease21​ @noiralei​ @learisa​ @everythingisoverratedbutgreat​ @uglipotata72829​ @naturalthrone22​ @husherstan​ @mandiiblanche​ @vicmc624​ @newyorkgoddess​ @itsallyscorner​ @chipilerendi​ @emzd34​ @writerwrites​ @bluevxnus​ @that-girl-named-alex​ @captnrogers​ @nsfwsebbie​ @sarge-barnes-sir​

[tealin]

Basler to the Beardmore 1: You See a Plane, You Take It

As always, the original post is up at the official blog – the formatting definitely works there, if you are having issues with it here.

When planning my research trip with the Antarctic Artists & Writers Program, I had to make a wishlist of places to visit.  One of the more important ones was the Beardmore Glacier, the route by which Scott and his men climbed from the Ross Ice Shelf (or, as they called it, the Barrier) to the Polar Plateau.  It's one of the largest glaciers in the world, but is hardly visited anymore so is rarely photographed, and despite the blessing of Google Image Search, I had too poor a sense of it to draw a journey up or down it with any confidence.

Setting foot on the Beardmore turned out be prohibitively demanding, logistically, but there are regular LC-130 flights between McMurdo Station and the Pole which traverse the Beardmore en route.  The plan we made was for me to get on one of those, and snap as much as I could from one of the small windows as we flew.

November 2019 turned out to be a terrible time for Pole flights – if the weather was OK at Pole, there was a problem with the planes, or vice versa.  However, the weather delays worked in my favour, because they affected not only Pole flights, but one particular season-opening flight, which had been bumped so many times that it still hadn't gone when I turned up. That meant I could get a seat.

The big flights ffor the USAP’s operations in East Antarctica – cargo and passenger flights on/off continent, and to major stations like Pole and WAIS Divide – are handled by the New York Air National Guard, and their fleet of enormous military airplanes, namely a C-17 and small handful of LC-130 Hercules.  There are lots of smaller trips from McMurdo to satellite stations, and these are serviced by Kenn Borek Air, a Canadian company which operates out of Calgary, Alberta.  At the start of every season, they fly their fleet of Twin Otters and Baslers down the length of North and South America, then leapfrog depots down the Peninsula and thence to various hubs including McMurdo.  From there they move people and stuff where they need to go, and also restock those fuel depots.  There was one depot flight that remained to be done, and it happened to be to a cache near the base of the Beardmore, so they agreed to take me along.

I was not the only extra job tacked on to the flight. After depoting the fuel, we were to scout out a camp in the Transantarctic Mountains which had been in regular use until a some fierce winds a few years ago had scoured great furrows in the landing strip.  Was it landable again?  What state was the camp in?  We would find out.  They also wanted to scope out a historic site that left no physical trace, to get updated intel on its condition.  Then we would fly north again via the Beardmore and the coordinates for One Ton Depot.

As soon as the Basler had finished her more pressing engagements, we were put on alert for the depot run.  Everything in Antarctica is weather-dependent, and that can change on a dime, so one is always on standby.  Because they needed to make the most of the Basler's time, they would put two missions on for any given day, then the one with the best prospects would be activated.  For five days I was ready to go – breakfasted, fully suited up, lunch packed, ECW bag to hand – at 7 a.m., in case my flight was the one that was going.  Flight status would be announced on the screens at the entrance to the Galley.

For four mornings I joined the poor Thwaites Glacier team anxiously hanging on the screens – they were trying to get out to WAIS Divide (the high point of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, from which they would catch a flight to the Thwaites camp) where the weather had been abominable for a month.  One of those mornings my flight was activated and I got all the way out to the airfield only for it to be called off at the last minute because of a change in forecast for the depot site.  But finally, the fifth morning, it was all systems go!

There are two airfields that serve McMurdo: Phoenix, which is designed to take the massive C-17s on a packed snow runway where they can land with wheels, and Williams Field, of groomed snow, for ski'd aircraft.  The extra special thing about Williams Field is that it's more or less where Scott's 'Safety Camp' was located – so named because it was far enough onto the ice shelf not to break up and float out to sea – so the view to Ross Island from there would have been very familiar to our explorers.  On the day of my false start, while waiting to find out that the plane wasn't going after all, I got to take some good pictures of the view from there.  It was also a good day to get a sense of the 'bad light' that obliterated contrast on the snow and made navigation difficult:

The Sea Ice Incident took place between us and the conical hill to the left!  Wild!

Anyway, Try no. 5 was on a much nicer day.  Here is the magnificent bird with her spanking new paint job:

It was a funny experience – I mean, besides sharing the fuselage with many hundreds of gallons of flammable liquid – in that it was an island of Canada amidst all the Americans. The crew all lived in BC when they weren't in Antarctica, and next to my seat were the usual set of flight safety brochures, in English and French, just as if we were flying out of Calgary.

Our pilot was named Steve, and I learned from him that, if you're training to be a pilot in Canada, you have to do your qualifying hours in the North.  Most people put in their time and then get a comfortable job flying passengers between major southern cities, but Steve liked the North so much he stayed and stayed, until he got the job with Kenn Borek and ended up South.  As much as I feel obliged to make a facetious quip about my flammable fellow passengers, I can honestly say I have never felt safer in an airplane than this one.  This was just as well, as one of the first things we did once we were in the air was rather exciting.

The Basler is a workhorse, and one of the Antarctic planes (though I never found out if it was this one) had actually flown in WWII – they just keep going and going.  However, the hydraulics that lift the landing gear were designed to lift just the landing gear, not the landing gear plus 650-pound skis, so in order to get them up we had to lose some weight.  And we did this by climbing steeply up and then nose-diving, bringing us temporarily closer to zero G.  We had to do this every time we took off, and it took 2-3 goes to get the skis up successfully.  You'd expect someone with a history of nervous flying and a sensitivity to motion sickness to find this unpleasant, but it was just plain awesome.

This post is getting long already, so I will describe our errands in detail over the next two posts.  I really must take the time here, though, to give my regards to Kenn Borek Air. I don't think anyone in Canada knows how absolutely vital they are to everything that gets done in Antarctica; their vermillion planes keep camps supplied and people moving around, and are the everyday lifeblood of the continent, in the most literal circulatory sense.  Steve and the Basler may possibly have saved the Thwaites Glacier project this season – after a month of delays getting people and freight out to the field camps, it was reaching a point where they might have called off the massive international project for this year.  But they allocated the Basler to the WAIS flights and Steve landed it in conditions that the NYANG wouldn't – the Basler couldn't fly nearly as much cargo as a Herc, but they got enough out there that some work could begin.  I haven't seen this mentioned in any of the Thwaites coverage and I'm sure it hasn't been covered in Canada, but for a country that doesn't even have a national Antarctic program, they should be mighty proud of the central role their people play in making other countries' programs happen.

[spookysanta]

point break. (g.d.)

Summary: they’re headed down a path to destruction... and on GiGi’s birthday, of all days.

Pairing: Grayson Dolan x Reader

WARNINGS: angst, swearing, mentions of divorce

i wrote this in one day sorry if it sucks but i may do a separate little fic for gigi’s birthday just bc i can :)

SLIGHTLY EDITED

*****

The two of them don’t really fight anymore.

And it used to be the only way they would communicate.

But now, unfortunately, Grayson and (Y/N) are on a break—Gray even packed some clothes for a couple days to stay at Ethan’s house in the guest room. But a couple of days turned into a week, and one week turning into three.

Obviously, they don’t want it to be this way, but the constant fighting and bickering would get to be too much. Especially for their daughter; she may have been a daddy’s girl at heart, but her mama was her best friend. So, the toddler now felt that she had to choose, which was a lot for an almost three-year-old to handle.

They’re cordial toward each other, only really interacting when GiGi wants to talk on the phone to the other parent, or when they’re dropping her off during the week.

But it was GiGi’s birthday today, and their sweet angel was now three years old.

The phrase of the day was “wow, time flies”. (Y/N) woke up this morning almost in tears because she was reminiscing of her life over the last three years and the blessing that this little girl was. Everything was so different back then—and now it seems like everything’s shifted in a negative way.

Her phone rang. Where it used to say “Hubby <3”, it now just says “Grayson”. She answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mama! It’s my birthday!”

“Hi baby! Happy birthday, my favorite girl.” Her tears dried immediately, and a smile formed on her face. “You excited for your party?”

“Yup! I wanna wear my dress.”

“The pink one?”

“Mhm.”

“Yeah, you can wear that. Is that with daddy or is that here at home?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice changed and she sounded a bit sad.

“Well, that’s okay,” she reassured her daughter, “we’ll look for it; and if we can’t find it, you can wear your tutu and tiara, okay?”

She sighed dramatically, “yeah.”

“What’s wrong, bug?”

“Nothing, mama,” she managed to lie. “here’s daddy.”

(Y/N)’s heart sank to her stomach. This always happens when she sees him or hears his voice nowadays—she still gets nervous like she used to when they first started dating. “Hey.” She heard him say.

“Hi.”

He was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out what to say to someone who doesn’t like making small talk. “Um… I just wanted to say, that I’m gonna bring her back around ten-thirty.”

“That’s fine.” She shrugged, feeling a lump form in her throat. This was the conversation that she was having with the man of her dreams? “Are you coming to the party?”

“Yeah, of course.” He cleared his throat. She didn’t know it, but a lump was forming in his, too. “It’s at home—I mean, your house, right?”

My house? She thought. Last I checked, both of our names were on the lease. “Mhm. Noon to three.”

“Cool. I’m gonna pick up my mom, your parents, and Cam from the airport after I drop Cookie off and then I’ll be back in time for the party.”

“Okay.”

“See you later?”

“Yep, see ya. Tell GiGi that I love her.”

“Will do. Bye.”

“Bye.”

The doorbell rang, just as (Y/N) was trying to decide how much liquid courage it would require to survive the afternoon. “Ding dong!” she heard GiGi’s excited voice on the other side of the door. She opened it, seeing Grayson for the first time this week, and boy, did he look a wreck.

Good, she thought.

His eyes had bags under them, and they were puffy; his hair was styled but still disheveled from, what she can assume to be, him tugging at it in frustration; and he wasn’t as confident as he usually is—his stance was more contracted, and he looked insecure.

“Hey.” His voice came out hoarse, as if he’d cried all night long.

“Hi.”

“Hi!” exclaimed the little girl in his arms. “Hi, mama!”

“Hi, baby!” he passed her to (Y/N) and GiGi wrapped her arms around (Y/N)’s neck, laying her head on her shoulder. (Y/N) pressed her nose against the little girl’s head, smelling her hair that always smelled like baby shampoo. “Missed you, birthday girl.”

“Missed you, mama.”

“Did you have fun with daddy?”

She felt the little girl nod slowly. “Mhm. Baked cookies.”

“You and daddy baked cookies?”

She nodded again.

“She’s a bit sleepy but clearly very excited still,” Grayson spoke up from the doorway. “she was sleeping in the car.”

(Y/N) hummed. “I can tell. I’ll let her lay down for a few before I get her dressed.”

He nodded, eyes darting around the house. He opened his mouth to say something but shut it in fear of triggering an argument on GiGi’s special day. “Well, I’m gonna head to the airport.”

“Okay. Say “bye, daddy”.”

“Bye, daddy.” GiGi waved, already almost asleep.

He took strides over to them, leaning down and kissing the little girl on the cheek. He could faintly smell the remnants of (Y/N)’s body wash. “I love you…cookie.” He caught himself. “Be good while I’m gone, yeah?”

“Kay.”

He looked at his wife and gave her a thin-lipped smile. “I’ll be back by noon.” He said simply to her, letting himself out.

***

“Nooo, mama, I want this dress.” GiGi whined.

“I thought you wanted the pink one.”

“Uh-uh,” she shook her head, holding a frilly baby blue dress close to her. “wanna wear this one now.”

“Okay, then. Give it to me so I can help you.” (Y/N) held her palm out.

“Nooo.” She whined again, “I can do it.”

“Okay, okay! You can do it.”

The toddler stepped into the unclasped dress, pulling it up her body, and putting her arms through the sleeves. “Can you do this?” she asked, referring to the clasps on the back of her dress.

“Sure, bunny. Come here.” (Y/N) clasped the dress, then helped GiGi into her sandals—much to the little girl’s dismay—then carried her downstairs so she could have something to eat. She set GiGi in her highchair. “What do you wanna eat? Grilled cheese?”

“Yeah.” She said in excitement, because the Dolans rarely—if ever, anymore—eat cheese, or dairy in general; but right now, it’s just her and GiGi, and she thinks they can have a cheat day every now and again. “And ranch.”

“Gross.” She muttered to herself, making what she wanted anyway. “Gia, are you excited?”

“Yessssssss. Super-duper excited.”

She let out a laugh at her response, “I can tell.” She finished making GiGi’s sandwich and cut it in half, putting some potato chips on a plate with it and a small container of ranch. “Here, beans.”

“Thank you, mama.”

The doorbell rang, and (Y/N) looked at the clock on the stove. 11:49 am.

She went to the front door and opened it, “Hey, mom!” She greeted her mother with a hug happily. “How are you?”

“That’s what I should be asking you, right?” She nodded behind her, where Grayson was helping (Y/N)’s dad get the luggage out of Ethan’s Jeep. “We’ll talk.” She patted (Y/N)’s shoulder, moving past her and into the house.

Lisa Dolan walked up the porch afterward. “Hey, honey.” She took (Y/N) in an embrace. And wow, was (Y/N) putting on a brave face—she didn’t think today would be this emotional for her already. Of course, she knew she would be an emotional wreck at some point throughout the day, but she didn’t think it’d be before the party even started. “How’s everything?”

“He told you?”

She just nodded. “Yeah.” She sighed. “I know you don’t want to talk about it right now, but you know I’m always here, no matter what happens, okay?”

“Yes. Thank you, Lisa.” They hugged again, then she went inside. (Y/N) stayed by the door and kept it open so that her dad and Grayson didn’t have a hard time getting the luggage in.

Once they got everything inside, she greeted her dad. “Hey!” he beamed. They exchanged words, then he went into the kitchen to take GiGi out of her chair and swing her around like she was on an airplane.

“So, we can put all of the cups and plates and stuff outside on the present table, and when Ethan comes, he’ll put up the pinata. Does that sound okay, (Y/N)?” asked Lisa, who was helping (Y/M/N) gather all of the utensils in a bag to be set outside. “Then that way, all you and Gray have to do is get her ready and bring out the cake and ice cream.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Mama,” GiGi said from her grandpa’s lap. “I want chocolate ice cream.”

“We got the swirly kind, bunny.” Grayson replied before (Y/N) could. “Chocolate and vanilla.”

“And my own cake?” She asked. “Don’t wanna share.”

(Y/N) laughed. “Yeah, baby. You have a little cake all to yourself.”

She clapped her hands in delight. “Yay!”

***

Once the festivities began, all of GiGi’s friends came from her daycare and around the neighborhood; Grayson even invited Austin, Catherine, Elle, and Alaïa to join in on the fun. All (Y/N) wanted to do, though, was cry (and drink). She managed to step away from the party while the kids played in the bounce house—that was supervised by Ethan, the self-proclaimed bodyguard—and sat in the kitchen at the island, laying her head in her crossed arms and letting out a much-needed sob…which turned into a wail.

Grayson walked inside, grabbing a bottle of water, but stopped as he heard a cry. He turned his head and saw his wife laying against the kitchen island. “Hey,” he said quietly, taking a seat next to her. “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She choked out, sitting up and wiping her eyes. “I just had to let that out.”

“Is there…something going on?”

She shook her head, saying, “No,” and hoping he’ll go away.

“C’mon, there has to be something going on with you…with us.” He fought the urge to comfort her by rubbing her back like she liked. “I just want answers.”

“Well,” she said, really just wanting him to go away. But not really. She’s not sure; but she does know, two weeks without him constantly questioning her was something that she was starting to enjoy. “I do, too.”

“Huh?”

“I just want to know what you’re thinking, since you want to be inside my head so damn bad.”

“I just want to come home.”

“So come home, you do pay half the mortgage.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want though, because you don’t want me here.”

“I never said that.”

“But that’s what it seems like.”

“But that’s not what I said.”

“Okay,” he stood, going into the refrigerator and getting the bottle of water he came into the house for initially. He took a big gulp, leaning against the stove across from her. “so then what?”

“What?”

“Do you want me to come home?”

“Of course, I do.”

“But...?”

“But all we’re gonna do is fight.”

He nodded tightly. “So you’d rather me leave and us drift apart than for us to work it out.”

“I never said that!” she exclaimed. “That’s what pisses me off about you; you always twist my fucking words. If you’d stop trying’ to be right all the time, maybe we wouldn’t fight as much.”

“Maybe if you didn’t say dumb shit all the time, I wouldn’t have to twist your words to make sense.”

“This is the shit that irks me.” She huffed.

“Let me ask you this, though,” he cleared his throat. “are we done?”

“I don’t know, are we?”

His demeanor changed back to how he was when she saw him this morning. “I don’t want us to be.” She could tell, though he was putting on a brave face, he was hurting. “I just…I just don’t want us to give up.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Fight me!” he shouted, making her jump slightly. “Scream at me, call me names, yell at me, anything! Literally anything is better than how we’ve been lately.”

“I don’t want to fight, though.”

“But we gotta get it out. So here we are—right now. Why are you mad at me?”

“Grayson, not right now—”

“Yes, right now. Gia’s being supervised and we have thirty minutes until it’s time to cut the cake. So we have thirty minutes to fight.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.” He confirmed. “You want me to go first?”

“Sure.”

He sighed. “I thought you were sleeping with your boss, but I was too afraid to ask.”

“What?” (Y/N) exclaimed. “Are you fucking dense?”

“No, I’m not. I thought you were fucking him because you kept getting promoted; so I figured he must like you for a reason outside of your job performance—”

“Probably because I’m a good person.” She retorted. “Or, maybe, I’m just really good at what I do.”

“So you weren’t sleeping with him?”

“No. God, no.” She shook her head. “But while we’re on the subject, I was told by one of the other moms at Gia’s daycare that Miss Rodriguez wanted you to leave me for her.”

“Huh?”

“Yup.”

He thought for a moment, his mind racing. “Our daughter’s teacher wanted me to leave you... for her?”

She nodded tightly.

“I literally didn’t know about this until just now—but wait, is that why you didn’t fight me when I left?” He asked lowly, almost scared to ask.

“Yeah.” The lump formed in her throat again. She choked out, “I thought you’d made your decision.”

“Hey.” He rushed over to her, sitting next to her as she started to cry again. This time, he didn’t think twice about pulling her into his arms, feeling her body shake. “Honey, listen to me…I would never, ever leave you. Okay?”

“But you did.”

“Yeah, I did. And I regret every second of me being gone. I just thought you’d wanted space, or you realized that I wasn’t what you and Gia needed.”

She rested her forehead on his shoulder and she really thought she was gonna die because of how deprived she’d been of his scent. “Of course, you’re what we need, idiot. I wouldn’t be anywhere without you.”

“That’s not true.” He snorted. “You’re the most independent woman I know.”

“But you convinced me to move out here after us doing the whole long-distance thing. You, for some stupid reason, persuaded me to elope with you—”

“—but it was fun, and you loved it, so shut up.”

“—and I came back pregnant. But you gave me our little cookie. And in between all that, you built me a house for us to live in, you bought me a car, and when I asked for a puppy, you were more than willing to get a puppy just because I asked.”

“And I really would’ve, if I didn’t like to live.”

She laughed. “I say all that to say,” she sat up and took a moment to really look into his eyes. “you’re the reason why I am who I am.”

“I could say that about you, y’know. I could say that before I fell in too deep doin’ shit I knew wasn’t in my best interest, you showed up and you saved me.” He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding in. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“I love you, okay? A lot. And we have to get better at telling each other how we feel. Because I’m not leaving again, and divorce is not an option.”

“I love you, too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck like she used to, running her fingers through the short hairs at the nape of his neck and pulling slightly. “A lot.” She leaned in and kissed him.

He grinned like a teenager with a crush—which, some would say, he still is—kissing her again, grabbing her by the face. “We’re not doing this shit again, ma’am.”

“Yes, sir.” She winked.

“Do not get me started.” He kissed her again. He pulled away. “So what are we gonna do about Miss Rodriguez?”

“I’m gonna beat her ass.” She shrugged. “She almost ruined my marriage.”

“Or, we could just take Gia to a different daycare.”

“Whatever.”

Lisa walked into the kitchen. “Whew, there you are! C’mon, she wants you guys.”

The couple got up and made their way to the patio, him opening the door for her like he used to. But before she could leave, he grabbed her gently by the forearm. “Hey,” he mumbled. “I love you.”

She smiled. “I know.”