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jensthwa · 3 months ago

Text

we can't be friends (CS x reader).

part of the love's an uncharted path universe ★.

SUMMARY:

San is your first love. He broke your heart and played with your feelings without even kissing you back when you two were in highschool. Now, many years later, you do your best to avoid crossing paths with him because there's just no way you could ever hate him, but there's also no way you two can be friends again. But his best friend is also one of your best friends, so there's only so much you can do to avoid San when he arranges a dinner you're forced to go to.

PAIRING: first love!choi san x afab reader.

GENRE: one shot (fluff, angst, smut)

WORD COUNT: 20k (yikes).

WARNINGS: SMUT ☽ (MINORS DNI) attempt !!! at comedy, unnecesary pinning, a looot of context, bad friends :(, some arguing, tension, drinking and drunk behavior, tears, making out, description of female anatomy, oral (f reciving), fingering, love making, pet names (babe, baby), flirty seonghwa, wooyoung being a little shit again but also a genius, gyuri almost commiting a crime.

NOTES: hi everyone! this is a lenghty one, i know, but trust me when I say the context is necessary to understand what reader goes through with san. also, some of this may or may not have happened to me (have fun figuring out which part) (it's quite obvious tbh). THIS IS PART OF THE SHOW AND TELL UNIVERSE BUT CAN BE READ AS A STAND ALONE, even though there's some references and characters that you can only know if you read s&t lol. this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3

POSTED: august 06 2024.

permanent taglist: @hotteokkay, @potatomountain, @fairylover68

masterlist.

You and Choi San go way back.

Well, it's nine years way back? You were only fourteen when you first saw him.

He moved back to your area of the city a year after you moved from an entirely different one. You thought you knew every school secret there ever was, provided by your new best friend, Gyuri, but she didn't tell you about him at all.

She claimed that it was because he didn't cause any stir the years they studied together before and after spending a whole first period in your eighth grade classroom with him at the back of the class, silently taking notes, you couldn't phantom why.

He was great at every subject, seemed to have a lot of popular friends and was, overall, a pretty nice guy. He was also very cute, skinny but you could tell he was the kind of guy who played a sport outside of school hours and he had a cute pair of dimples that showed everytime you scanned the classroom just to lay eyes on him.

Choi San was a perfect boy to crush on, even a perfect guy just to have as eye candy during recess. You felt really strongly about him, not really forming a full opinion although your gut told you right away you were right. There was something about him… but you only figured that something until later, next year, starting your ninth grade.

Gyuri and you were avid readers. Precocious girls, with minds way above your age. All your teachers praised came laced with the same compliment so you both decided that was the truth. You rejoiced in it, thinking you shared things in common with the grown ups and decided that that was the key to feeling a little superior in comparison to the rest of your classmates, who neither of you liked very much.

Until they all decided to start dating each other and you two realized you were nothing but two kids with great imaginations and a love for school, praise and fictional men that couldn't be translated to the real world without sounding delusional and weird.

So you decided to do something about it. And so, on a random Tuesday recess, you two scanned the crowd trying to find two boys (or a boy and a girl, because you always knew you liked girls too) worthy of your affections. One for her, one for you. Bonus points if the two of them were also best friends, of course.

Double dates were all the buzz at the time anyways.

Besides, only then they could understand the bond you and Gyuri had. Sisterhood like no other, nevermind Gyuri actually had an older sister and a niece at the ripe age of fifteen.

And so when your index finger scanned the crowd and eliminated at least three potential crushes before landing on Choi San, you felt like it was meant to be.

You see, his best friend, Jung Wooyoung, was perfect for Gyuri to crush on. He was almost as tall as she was at the time and his easy, outgoing personality was compatible with her book crush at the time as well.

He also flirted with her on several occasions before that.

So it was meant to be.

Choi San, on the other hand, had never even glanced in your direction before.

Just like your book crush did before he fell in love with the main character.

See? Meant. To. Be.

It was decided then that, although Choi San was not going to be your first crush ever, he was going to be the guy that motivated you to be at school for the time being, because math gets really boring after trying and failing at least ten times.

You thought nothing of it when it felt a little forced, when you couldn't blush at all at the sight of him and you gathered that it didn't need to happen like in the books you read. You simply needed to say his name when someone asked you if you had a crush on anyone and that was enough to be in symphony with the rest of your classmates.

Your longing glances were caught once or twice by him and you brushed the weird flip your stomach did everytime he looked away, blushing a little. You never really cared when it happened, really, knowing his crowd and your crowd (Gyuri and you) would never even cross paths in the first place.

You two kept to yourselves and your little book unofficial book club, sitting on the floor at lunch time and cursing everyone who dared to call you weird for it. San and Wooyoung had a crowd of people at the loudest table laughing with them over stupid teen jokes and, uh, sports? You didn't even know.

And then the unimaginable happened.

Jung Wooyoung sat down, criss cross applesauce and everything, in front of you on a random Monday afternoon while you and Gyuri discussed the english assignment due next period.

Gyuri was not too excited about that.

Turns out, the only one excited to have a crush at school was you. She was very much still in the Lonely Hearts Club phase while you skipped all the way to your The Notebook phase and she was, in her own words, too afraid to admit it when you came up with your crush plan.

You forgave her, of course, and decided to wait for her as long as needed because you were certainly not about to be an individual and have a crush on your own.

And by the time Wooyoung smiled at you both and introduced himself to you, like you weren't in the same class for a year already, you thought your pretend crush on his best friend evaporated and joined the void superficial and fleeting interests you had.

But then Choi San sat beside him, his knee brushing against yours in the process, and you knew you would have to issue a formal apology to your best and only friend for leaving her behind on this little thing.

Because, oh boy, were you crushing on Choi San.

You felt the blush rush to your cheeks and then fell silent while your friend and his friend discussed Fifty Shades of Grey for some reason you never cared enough to discover and you knew you were done for.

It was the first time seeing his dimples in full action, so close to you, so you completely stopped functioning all together. Amazing.

When you decided to have a crush, you never took into account that you were, actually, quite shy. And he really wasn't, but you noticed that he knew when to talk and what to say and with your friend being a lot more outgoing that you were it gave you the comfort that she would speak for the both of you while you admired from the sidelines as your little duo became a group of friends you still miss deeply to this day.

He was funny and you laughed at your jokes even though you pretended to be tired and completely worn out by the school day, resting your head on Gyuri’s shoulder and stealing glances at the boy while she kept arguing with his best friend.

Wooyoung was popular and liked enough to have a few people sit with you later that week, people who never even knew you existed before that. They were good friends with San as well, so you tried your best to keep up with everyone until she sat down next to you one day.

Arin was not really a bad person. She just was a bit conceited, calling herself princess type of conceited and you never really related to her even if she was nice to you to your face. She was absolutely gorgeous and, you found out with Wooyoung’s arm around your shoulder and a whisper to your ear, she had been San’s crush since they were both in elementary school.

That would explain the sudden tension at the table when she sat down next to you, said hello to everyone, offered you a sweet she just bought from the cafeteria, and stared at San for the remainder of lunch time.

You also noticed Wooyoung glaring at her a little and he later explained to you that he didn't really like her all that much. She loved attention and San gave her attention, so she would intentionally flirt with him to get her ego stroked in return.

It didn't really matter how he felt about the girl, though, he didn't have to like her just because his best friend did. And when you caught her batting her eyelashes at San, you knew you didn't even stand a chance.

You tried to hide the disappointed look on your face but both Gyuri and Wooyoung looked at you while the two of them flirted endlessly for the remainder of lunch time and you figured you were doing a pretty shitty job at it. He didn't glance at you once either way, so it didn't really matter.

Arin did but she just complimented your eyes and then started a conversation with someone across the table, her annoying sweet and fake voice making your right ear ring in disapproval.

Either way, you ended up becoming her friend. Gyuri was not very fond of her and neither were you, but you all went to the bathroom together, did your makeup together, did school projects together and then sat everyday at lunch together with the rest of the guys who were, in one way or another, trying to get her to like them.

Because, once again, she was a sight for sore eyes.

It wasn't until later, in the middle of the year, that one of them did. Not Choi San, but Choi Yeonjun.

You remember the day you found out they were together and the gut wrenching concern you felt when you found out that San was not at school that day.

It was after summer break, you remember Wooyoung telling you that San and his family took a few more days of vacation and if you couldn't believe your eyes when you saw the new couple sharing a sweet kiss at the designated lunch table, you could only imagine how San felt the next day when he saw the same image right in front of him.

Yeonjun was his friend, right? He knew about his crush and decided to get together with her anyways. Surely, San was devastated.

But he wasn't. He just cheered them on and then laughed along when Yeonjun shoved his arm playfully after the hollering.

But you saw through it.

Your crush on San made you observant. Made you believe you knew him better than everyone else and so, after lunch, you took out your phone and pulled up the notes app. Writing a simple “are you okay?” in it and passing it to him the next second, you were surprised with yourself before you saw him frown a bit. And then he understood what you meant.

Nodding, he passed you the phone back, before giving you a reassuring smile that you treasured in your heart and saw in your dreams.

You didn't believe him, though, but stayed close enough to everything related to the situation to hold Arin in your arms when Yeonjun inevitably broke her heart.

Starting your tenth year, he moved back to his city and decided to play the I thought we weren't even that serious card on her. Which was nasty, considering love it's very, very serious for a sixteen year old girl.

By this point, you were all a little family and hanging out after school and on the weekends was not unusual, so it didn't surprise you when Arin invited you, and only you, to her house after choir practice on a Thursday.

She lent you her older sister’s clothes to wear (because her's would never fit you. Her words, not yours) and took you to a walk in the park just to break your heart for the first time ever.

“You know… I thought love was something I couldn't find in highschool anymore. But San it's really making an effort, you know? He's been there for me ever since Yeonjun left and… Well, I think he's going to ask me to be his girlfriend tomorrow.”

Grasping the park bench she forced you to sit at, you only nodded and let out a shuddering breath that gave away what she was trying to figure out since earlier that day.

“I'll say yes but only if you say it's okay to do so.”

Arin was not really your friend, the same way Yeonjun was not really San’s friend.

Because there's no way you would ever be okay with it.

And yet, you tried your best to give her a smile and pretend the sound of your heart breaking didn't bring tears to your eyes “Of course it's okay. Why wouldn't it be?”

A week later, they were officially dating. The rumors spread around like a wildfire and it took out of you with everyone calling San a nasty rebound and you doing your best to prioritize the ghost of the friendship you had with him. That whole fiasco lasted a few months.

Months in which your friendship with everyone just grew stronger. Gyuri was still your best friend, Wooyoung was crushing on her hard and everyone knew, Arin and San were a steady couple, a new girl joined your class that year, named Yeri, and the principal assigned her to you because she thought you two would get along really well.

“I like girls,” was like, the third thing she ever told you while you were showing her the school “I'm just telling you now because I don't plan on hiding it and you are wearing a pride pin.”

“Oh, that's cool. I like girls too,” you smiled, looking at your pride pin “I didn't hide it either and no one gave me shit about it, so, don't worry.”

Yeri also liked the mainstream music that you liked and soon she became a new addition to your group. And with Arin spending all of her free time with San, you, Gyuri and Yeri only grew closer and closer. You didn't have Arin’s voice in your ear telling you the million reasons she found Yeri uncool, but you saw it in her face every time the table laughed at one of Yeri’s jokes.

And so, it went on for a while:

Your mom driving all of you around in her car to the beach, to dinner, to the movies and letting you have mixed sleepovers at your house (meaning you, Arin, Gyuri, Wooyoung, Yeri and San) was fun and all, but it was not enough to distract yourself entirely. Everytime you glanced at the couple, that sinking feeling in your chest would appear and sulk your whole mood for, at least, fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes of pretending you were okay with them before forgetting completely for an hour or so and then the cycle would repeat until you were alone staring at the ceiling and doing your best to not cry about it.

All it took was your first kiss being Yeri of all people for you to decide that it was time to retire your crush for Choi San once and for all.

And for a while, it all went according to plan. You decided to tell Gyuri that it was okay because he was your friend first and the guy that you liked second and that you were not fourteen and desperate for love anymore, that it was time to go on with your life as if nothing really happened in the first place.

You were hooking up with Yeri anyways, so it seemed like you were doing just fine.

You grew closer to San as well and even though he mostly talked to you about Arin and whatever tantrum she was throwing at the time, you really started to feel some sense of normalcy within you when it came to just speaking to him.

You no longer blushed when he made you laugh, you no longer looked at him with the longing of a past life lover and you were really happy for him because, at the end of the day, he was really happy with his relationship.

Until winter break came around and Arin decided to give San his first heartbreak ever.

She decided to call for a break in their relationship because she was, in his words, too overwhelmed with the amount of love and attention she was getting from him.

Which was completely fucking insane considering the fact she forced him to save her contact as Princess Arin and all.

So naturally, you sided with him. And she didn't take it to heart because everyone knew you liked San anyways.

She told you the news herself through Facebook after asking you to explain to her the English assignment due next day and then she decided to tell you something you'll never understand because you no longer are on speaking terms with her:

Princess Arin: u know i broke up with him because of u right? :)

Princess Arin: one day I'll tell u all abt it.

She never told you anything about it. And by then, you were starting your last year and San was your best friend who hung out with you everyday after school, calling you late at night and helping you with assignments through Skype. So you didn't really care.

And as the day passed, you started understanding the connection they talked about in books and movies. You thought you did before, Gyuri being your eternal person in this world, but it felt so different with San.

Different and good. Different and achy enough for you to want to keep it in your life.

Your dynamic was friendly, sure, but it was alright. It consisted of banter and daring stares as well as laughter and soft moments you treasured till this day.

“It's way too early to be this annoying, Choi San.”

“Oh, you think this is me being annoying?”

You both got an hour of detention for disturbing the class that day.

You loved it.

But then, after almost a month of picking up the broken pieces of his heart one by one, and your mother giving him a self-help book to make him regain the confidence he lost during the breakup process, you realized that you were in love with him and there was nothing you could do about that.

You noticed one friday afternoon, when he offered to pay for your and your mom's ice cream at the drive through, when he scrambled to get all the change he had on him to leave a tip for the person who handed you guys the sweet treat, that there was no way you didn't love him.

And it was confusing as fuck when everyone else started to tell you he had feelings for you as well.

“Think about it. You text each other good morning everyday” Yeri listed with her finger and you nodded “Then, you go to school, sit together and spend the rest of the day together” another nod “Then after school you either go get ice cream together or hang out for a bit with your mom while she drives him home. And after that, you get on Skype for the reminder of the afternoon and then he calls you on your house phone and you two spend the rest of the night talking before falling asleep on the line together,” she looked at you like you were insane for even denying the accusations made against San, but she continued anyway “And then it's rinse and repeat and it has been that way since… What? Three months ago?”

You nodded again, defeated.

“Girl, he likes you.” she sighed, annoyed and a little tired, before sitting on your lap and kissing your lips affectionately “And you're here making out with me instead of him. You really are a lost cause.”

That didn't stop you from hooking up with her until she found a girl who's heart was not reserved for someone else, though. Said girl went to a different school and was a year younger than all of you, but she looked very happy and stopped secretly kissing you in the school bathroom like a week after they met.

And when she finally told everyone, you were really happy for her, but San not so much.

It was the night you thought everything was about to change. The night you thought he was about to kiss you or you were about to kiss him, whatever happened first.

Laying in your bed, facing each other in the dim light, he thought it was the biggest form of betrayal and pouted the whole time he explained to you why.

He thought you liked her and you realized he didn't really pay attention to you after all. Not the way you did with him.

Bless his heart.

You didn't kiss him that night because he wouldn't shut up about you and Yeri.

“I mean, why couldn't it be you? She clearly liked you if you two were hooking up for over a year” and when his hand came to rest on your back, under your shirt, you breath hitched enough for him to notice it but not enough for him to just don't do anything about it except trace the curve of your silhouette with the pad of his thumb “I don't understand why anyone would pass the opportunity to be with you.”

Huh. Maybe he did have feelings for you.

No. He's just being a great best friend. Don't take that for granted.

But it was impossible for you not to take Yeri’s words seriously as time went on.

You didn't want to think he was giving you mixed signals, but yet again there was that one time when you reached behind your passenger seat in your mothers car to pinch his leg playfully after he pulled on your hair a little bit from behind, only to end up holding his hand the rest of the car trip to his house.

His fingers slowly caressing the back of your hand were just too much for you not to get everything mixed up.

Or that other time when your school held a Woman's Day event, and your class president decided that all the boys in the class were going to give roses to the girls.

When it was your turn to get a rose, you knew no one would give you one. But Yeri stood in line and collected a rose from the bin before the class president had the opportunity to say anything else.

“I'll take that, thank you very much.” She turned to you, smiling. San blocked her way to you a second after.

“And just what do you think you're doing?”

“Giving my best girl a rose, of course.” She peeked around him, giving you a wink that you could only roll your eyes to.

San turned to you, the fondness in his eyes making you question the decision of not pretending to be sick that day. It was too much for you to handle.

“To the back of the line, then. I already called dibs on her,” he turned to your friend, snatching the rose from her hand in one swift move “I'll take that, thank you very much.”

He had no idea what that meant to you back then. It was true that, at school, he behaved a little differently than when you two were alone.

He was athletic, so he had some friends that you were sure used to ask him what the fuck was he doing wasting his time with a girl like you instead of getting a new girlfriend.

He had a family that didn't approve of yours, too. You felt it the first time you met his mom and, even though she was nice to you and your mom, you could feel the judgemental stare she gave both of you when your mom told her she was a single parent.

San told you that it didn't really matter, that his mom didn't have to like you because you weren't her friend, you were his.

He played with your feelings a little too well. Wanting him, adoring him and letting yourself be consumed by the thought of him loving you back was enough to keep it going. To ignore the fluttering way your heart kept beating whenever he talked to you which was all the time.

You assumed the way he behaved with you in private was the real him. The one who didn't care about appearances or his family approval.

The one who cared about you.

It was dizzying and fantastic and you thought he just might've been the love of your life.

But then he would tell you how much it hurted when he saw Arin at school and how much he missed her, the intimacy they shared before, and reality would come crashing down and setting your delusions on fire again.

He had sex with Arin. You would never stand a chance.

Or so you thought he did. Except when you overheard Arin speaking to her friends and that was the first time you ever got mad at Choi San.

“And, you know, me and San were never intimate like that so I wouldn't know but I think boys have no idea how to please a woman if they tried to.”

What?

Oh. So he lied to you.

And you were so upset by the thought of him making up stories of their intimate time together that it didn't even cross your mind that Arin might've been lying to save face.

So when he came back from the bathroom and sat at his usual desk in front of you, you didn't even think about his feelings when you decided to treat him like shit for lying about something so important like sex to your face.

“Leave me alone, San! I don't want to fucking talk to you right now!”

The hurt expression he gave you after that is one you would never be able to forget.

But you grew to be stubborn and a little overprotective of your own feelings, so you thought him playing the part of your best friend all these months and sweet talking to you was just another one of his lies.

“You guys not being friends right now doesn't make any fucking sense, sweetheart.” Wooyoung's tone is careful and laced with affection, but you knew he was playing the devil's advocate on behalf of San. With his arm around Gyuri’s shoulder (by that point, they were a thing for over two months) you could swear you saw him smirk when the nickname brought a scowl to your face.

He might've been worried, but he was also a little shit.

“You really are going to let Arin ruin what you two have?” Your best friend was, of course, on your side. But she was your best friend for a reason and her love included pointing out when you were behaving like an infant at the age of seventeen and a half.

“You two are practically dating and you're going to let the evil ex-girlfriend get in the way? Over something you weren't even supposed to hear in the first place? Come on.”

Again, Wooyoung was a little shit. And you were so upset about everything that you shyness couldn't even help the fury behind your reply:

“Stop saying that! We are not practically dating, he's in love with Arin and I'm not sure I even like him like that anymore!” Getting tired of everyone and their mother (your mother) feeding your delusions, you came to the conclusion that putting a stop to your friendship with Choi San was for the best.

And, in doing so, you ended up breaking your own heart for the second time in your life.

But he didn't put up an easy fight at all. You remember the feeling of pure joy when he grabbed your hand on the way to the cafeteria one day, pulling you so hard you almost ended up sitting in his lap, and the way his pleading eyes begged you to listen to him one last time.

“Us not being friends doesn't feel right, Y/N…” he said and the word he used to categorize what both of you had hurted you, but you pushed the feeling away “Please, let's not fight anymore. I don't even know what happened, but I forgive you for yelling at me and I hope you forgive me for whatever it is you think I did.”

Of course, you forgave him the next second without thinking too much about it. And for a while, everything went back to normal. You Skyped as usual and occasionally you let your other friends join the call even though it didn't really feel like it used to before.

The next thing you knew, your feelings were in full bloom again and when you realized it, it was too late.

Because by then, you had already let your childhood friend, Sunhee, join a few Skype calls and by the fourth one she invited her friend, Minseo, to them as well.

Terrible, terrible mistake. Because even through the screen, you could see that Minseo looked a lot like Arin with the added bonus that she was down to earth and cool and liked the same things San liked.

You liked the same things San liked as well, but it never seemed to matter.

Because not even two months after you decided to stop talking to San over a lie you weren't supposed to find out in the first place and then became friends one more time, he gets together with Minseo and you're sick to your stomach all over again.

You hated her. Not because she was, suddenly, his girlfriend (not girlfriend girlfriend, but in a friends with benefits arrangement you never even knew why he agreed on in the first place) but because suddlenly she was so fucking obnoxious and didn't seem to like you either.

Was it not painfully obvious San didn't have feelings for you? Why was she mad at you then? You literally brought them together!

And all you got in return was her telling him she didn't feel comfortable with him having a girl best friend. That ungrateful bitch.

He stopped calling. He stopped texting, he stopped carpooling with you and your mom after school and he stopped caring whether your math assignment was done or not.

He stared pulling away more and more and it didn't matter how hard you tried to get him to talk to you, it seemed like he never really fucking cared about you in the first place.

And by may that year, you didn't speak to San anymore. Granted, the only person he did speak to was Wooyoung, but even their friendship was falling apart.

For the first time ever, San broke your heart firsthand. And it felt really, really fucking bad.

You cried to your mom about it, she reminded you that you were nothing but a great friend to him and that, if he didn't take the time to appreciate that, that was his loss not yours.

And she started hating him from that moment on. But you couldn't hate San, not even a little bit.

Why would you hate him for not liking you back? For not loving you the way you loved hi—

Your laptop closes down right in front of you and when you try to look up to find out who's responsible for interrupting your writing time, you get interrupted again.

“Ouch! What the fuck, Gyuri?” the slap to the back of your head is quick and fill with rage.

“What the fuck are you even writing. I can read from here, you know?”

“I'm just laying my feelings down and— Ouch! Stop that!” You try to hit her back but she turns away quickly when your hands almost knock her coffee mug out of hers.

“You can't possibly still have love for San, Y/N. It's been years.”

It's been four and a half, to be precise. But who's counting, right?

“And why are you writing it in third person? You don't usually do that.”

“I don't really know, Gyuri!”

“I’m telling you, this celebratory dinner bullshit it's affecting you way more than it should,” she sighs, plopping down on the couch of your shared living room, and you leave your seat at the table to join her “He might not even show up. He has that thing with Kyungmi.”

Kyungmi.

You couldn't get to that part on your open document, but San left Minseo when he met Kyungmi at one of the frat parties they love to attend. Wooyoung told you that he said that it was love at first sight and you even met her briefly when you picked Gyuri up from the apartment he and San got when they started college together.

She’s gorgeous and doesn't look like Arin or Minseo at all. It’s a different type of gorgeous. She's a year older than San and went to the same school as them and Gyuri.

You think you might even like her better than him.

You tried to be happy for San when you found out, but you two barely even speak a word to each other and you convinced yourself a while ago that you couldn't care less if he sees right through you and your fake smiles.

You gathered, after everything happened, that San knew you liked him and took advantage of that. Unintentionally, but he did anyway.

You sigh, resting your head on your best friend's shoulder. “It’s his best friend's celebratory dinner, though, he needs to be there.”

Two seconds pass and then you both say it at the same time: “He’s in love.”

And when San is in love, he has a one track mind with the name of his lover as the goal.

You nod, but you can't help but to be insistent “It's Wooyoung's celebratory dinner, he needs to show up, right?”

“I might not even show up, he's a pain in the ass.” She replies but you can tell her annoyance is not genuine and it makes you smile.

Gyuri and Wooyoung broke up towards the end of your first year of college but you all stayed close friends. A one year relationship was not enough to fuck up the friendship they had and they decided to stay civil until, eventually, they became close friends again.

To this day, you wonder why you and San couldn't rekindle your friendship when it became clear to you that you missed your friend and not the guy that you liked.

Because San was always your friend first and your first love second.

But it doesn't really matter anymore, because Gyuri is forcing you to shower and reminding you that you two need to keep Wooyoung on his best behavior tonight.

“That girl he used to like before me is going, he said. I looked her up, she's single and he needs to get together with her because I can't take him whining about it anymore.”

They keep things with each other way too civil, you think.

“I'm telling you, if we don't show up he's going to do that thing where he gets drunk and makes a fool of himself. I can't have that, I'm on a mission.”

“A mission to get your ex laid?” You ask, shampooing your hair.

“A mission to get him a girlfriend so he can stop crying to me about feeling lonely.”

“Maybe he wants you guys to—” The shower curtain opens and you see your best friend’s scowl before covering yourself up with your hands.

“Gyuri!”

“Don't you dare say what you were about to say or I'm divorcing you.”

You chuckle “Sure you are.”

You're left alone again with the water stream and she goes back to do her makeup “I told you back in ninth grade that we weren't a great fit and I was right. We can't get back together,” she sighs “It'll ruin everything.”

“I doubt it will but you guys have been friends longer than you were boyfriend and girlfriend, so I'll just have to deal with my parents being divorced and civil.”

“God, don't ever refer to us like that again— Oh! Speaking of parents,” you see her beam at her phone when you move the shower curtain to search for your towel and then she shows it to you “Mingi and Love just celebrated their one year anniversary!”

Love being Mingi’s best friend. Gyuri talks to you about her college friend group all the time. The drama fuels your dinner conversations, you even follow a few of them on social media.

“What does that have to do with parents?”

“They're the mom and dad of the group.”

San is in that friend group, you can see him in the back of the picture and you recognize his apartment layout too. He's not the main focus of it but he's all you can see until you notice the couple sitting near him on the couch.

The picture shows both of them, her in his lap and Mingi looking at her with stars in his eyes.

Good for them.

“Is that the girl he was friends with forever before they finally realized that they were in love?”

“Yeah,” she sighs in contempt, looking down at the picture again “I was there the day it happened. I mean, not physically with them, but they left Yunho's party together and I told Wooyoung that it was finally about to happen!”

Gyuri is not a romantic person at all. Her excitement shows you that she really loves them and so you soften at the news that would usually give you and your dry love life a headache “It was the day before you called me to get you out of that awful date.”

Ah, that also happened back then. You shudder at the memory.

“Tell them I say congrats, babe.”

“I'm bringing you as my plus one.”

You laugh, confused “To where?”

“Their wedding, duh.”

“They practically just got together,” you remind her, a year is not enough time to propose “And I don't really know them, Gyuri!”

“They love you,” she assures you as you step out of the shower “I have been speaking about your antisocial ass for years. They can't wait to meet you.”

“So you've been shit talking behind my back for years? Is that what I'm hearing?”

She laughs “No, babe, that's Wooyoung's job.”

Clearing your throat and looking at your friend through the mirror, you try to be as nonchalant as you can when you ask: “Has he… Did he tell you if…”

“No, Y/N, I have no clue if San is going or not and Wooyoung is actually mad at him at the moment.”

“Why?”

She looks at you, sighing “He's been lacking as a friend lately.”

“Hm.”

“I hope you're not planning on swooning if you see him. Fuck him, Y/N.”

“I know…”

“And by fuck him I mean he doesn't deserve you or your forgiveness.”

“He didn't do anything to me, Gyuri,” you remind her, shrugging “Not reciprocating my feelings is not a crime so I don't have to forgive him for anything.”

You can practically feel her starting the San hate train engine, so you step out of the bathroom but her voice follows you.

“And what about that time he ditched you for Minseo when you asked him to go with you to that medical appointment, huh?”

“Cut it out, Gyuri…”

But her head peaks around the corner, into the hall where you're rushing towards your room “Or that time when—”

“Can't hear you!” Turning to look at her, she gives you an affectionate middle finger and heads back to the bathroom.

Closing the door, you lean into the thin wood and sigh, getting San’s face out of your mind so you can focus on getting ready and actually show up for Wooyoung and Wooyoung only.

He just got a permanent position after completing his internship at a company that's your company's rival. He's going to crush you and steal clients from you but you are genuinely so happy for him.

You should've guessed he enjoyed books as much as you did back in highschool. The debates he used to have with Gyuri were not all about flirting with her but also because he has a passion for books.

And now he's going to work in the same field as you.

You're so proud of your friend.

As you get ready, you remember the excitement cruising through your body when your boss trusted you enough to give you the first manuscript of a new client so you could edit it. You're sure Wooyoung is going to do better than you, taking into account that he actually went to college for this.

You didn't.

You met your boss at the part-time job you got in senior year, when you were trying to distract yourself from all the pain and the horrors of becoming a grown up. She was chatty, got a little too drunk on soju and told you she was starting her own book publishing company.

When she returned months later after remembering that you told her you loved books and would love to work for as a publisher one day, she offered you a job in her company right after graduating highschool.

You took it because you didn't think an opportunity like this would show up ever again.

She was truly a blessing, the kind of person you never really believed in until she taught you all you needed to know about publishing and editing and encouraged you to take online classes during the nights so you could get, at least, a certification on what you do.

You're proud of yourself too. The opportunity found you in a specific moment of your life where both your heart and your self esteem were destroyed and now you're not the person you used to be.

Maybe that's why the possibility of facing San makes you so nervous. Collective memories are dangerous because the details never match the ones on the other person's head.

You know who you were back then but… Are you the same person in San’s head?

You don't even want to find out.

Scanning your outfit in the mirror for the last time, you take the shoes you're wearing tonight out of your closet and walk over to the living room.

Only to find Gyuri laying on the carpet under the coffee table, half dressed and on her phone.

“You're going to mess up your hair.”

“I don't care, I'm not going.”

Sighing, you seat down on the couch and staring at the wood of the table covering her face.

“What happened now?”

“The bitch canceled!”

“Wooyoung?”

Poking her head out, she frowns at you “No, his first love.”

“You were his first love.”

“You know what I'm talking about, Y/N!”

Laughing at her, you offer her your hand “Get dressed. Who cares if she's not going? He's not going to sulk because he's going to have you and his best friends there.”

She whines like a child when you pull her up from the floor “I had a plan!”

“Then make a new one, babe. We're going to be late.”

She starts to whine again but then stops mid-groan to give you a once over. You shift uncomfortably on your feet, suddenly self-conscious about your appearance for the first time in years.

“You look really hot…” she tells you and you fake gag at her words “Really pretty. Like a fairy and a smoke show at the same time.”

You can't possibly look like that when you have such a simple outfit on, floor length high waist black pants and a flowy sleeve top that ties in the middle. It's barely formal but now you're thinking too hard about it.

Blushing, you wave your hand to dismiss her compliment “Oh, my god. Go and change!”

She rushes to her room on the opposite end of the hall and you finally breathe, looking down at your choice of fit and wondering if it's too much.

Gyuri would've told you if that's the case, but either way it haunts your mind in the car on the way there, leg bouncing up and down under your best friend's judging gaze that only softens when you pout at her.

“They are going to love you, babe. I'm so serious, they've been waiting years to meet you.”

You nod because, yes, you're concerned that her friend group is not all as welcoming as she paints them to be.

And you wish your doubts would go away but you're really, really not good at making friends. You're cautious, extremely closed off to new people and not as good with conversation no matter how much confidence you gained over the past years.

When you walk to the loudest table at the laid back restaurant their friend Seonghwa made the reservation at, you think you won't be able to fit in with everyone else. You feel like an intruder, like Gyuri is supposed to enjoy this part of her life without you here.

That's why you rejected every invitation they ever made.

You celebrate birthdays with her, with Woo as well, but it's all very intimate and separate from their social circle, the one that includes the man you haven't fully faced in years.

But you can't exactly back out now, not when one of them turns to you and seems to light up when they see you.

“Oh? Is this her?” you recognize Hongjoong from pictures, he's the only one facing you when you approach the table, lowkey hiding behind Gyuri like a child.

“Who?”

“Huh?”

San is nowhere to be seen. Thank god.

Slowly, everyone turns around and you see their faces light up with both delight and surprise. Your heart is pounding, you feel it in your throat, in your eyes, in the heat that colors your cheeks.

But Gyuri just steps aside and presents you with a smile “This is her!”

“Oh, Y/N!” Wooyoung gets up, rushing towards you and crashing into your frame with a crushing hug “I'm so glad you're here,” he murmurs into your hair and then turns to his friends, quiet them down “Everyone, this is Y/N, one of my best friends in the entire world.”

He's such a dramatic human being.

You love him so much.

Raising your hand, you shyly wave at them “Hi.”

The entire table erupts with joy. Some of them greet you, some of them are saying that they are happy to be finally meeting you and Wooyoung grabs your arm and plops you down into the seat next to Gyuri, at the edge of the table.

Laughing, you apologize for not meeting them sooner and then you feel a pair of hands on your shoulders.

Panic raising, you quickly turn around to see who it is before releasing a shuddering, but calmer, breath.

“She's a very busy woman, guys. She works for the competition, my competition,” everyone gasps at that but Wooyoung is smiling at you “and she's very good at what she does. Which means she's busy, get off her case,” he puts a glass and a can of beer in front of you “Drink, babe.”

“Thanks, babe.” You whisper back and he leans in to peck your head before going away.

Gyuri groans “Stop stealing that from us! It's our thing, Y/N, don't indulge him.”

“It's his celebratory dinner…” you argue with a laugh that Hongjoong and Mingi follow.

“Yeah! Can you get off my case tonight, Gyuri?”

She huffs, wrapping her arms around you “I hate you all.”

“No you don't!”

The table laughs and everyone returns to their individual conversations when Woo sits down on his spot.

There's a few seats left, one besides Mingi and one right in front of you but you don't think too much about it because soon Gyuri gets up to ask Yeosang something and Seonghwa occupies her seat right beside you.

You think he can sense that you're more shy than you let on, because he doesn't include you in whatever he and Yunho were talking about and waits until he stops talking to him to turn to you.

“So, you work for a publishing company?”

The question caughts you off guard and you swallow the beer quickly before nodding “Y-yeah, I… Yeah.”

He chuckles “You're nervous.”

“I'm just not as good at meeting people as Gyuri is. She usually does the job and I tag along.”

“I feel like I know you already, though.” He says, leaning back on his chair.

“Because she talks a lot about me?” he nods “Yeah, she tends to do that.”

“Wooyoung also talks a lot about you, San too… Sometimes,” your cheeks heat up and he misinterprets what it means “All good things, I promise.”

You doubt that.

Your brain gives you a hundred and one possible things San could've said about you.

For some reason, none of them are good. But you choose to believe the gorgeous, long haired guy in front of you.

“Well that's good to hear,” you take another sip of your drink before smiling at him “I was sure Woo was trash talking about me.”

He shakes his head with a smile “He wouldn't dare, he has Gyuri on his ass all the time and I'm sure she would kill him.”

“I'm sure she would kill him even if he didn't do it.”

His smile grows wider “That's true,” he says, looking over at them who are, very coincidentally, fighting about something. You let out a sigh and he laughs again before clearing his throat “So, the publishing company. What kind of books do you like to edit the most?”

Your smile grows wider too.

For the next hour, you talk to Seonghwa about your job and how you started in it. He asks you about your classes and the challenges that you face on a daily basis and Wooyoung overhears and ends up joining the conversation as well.

You don't even hear footsteps nearing until a voice cuts everyone off.

“I'm sorry I'm late!”

“Baby!” Mingi gets up from his seat, but no one else does so he's stuck between the table and his girlfriend.

“Oh, that's Love, huh?” you ask Seonghwa, Wooyoung too entertained messing with the couple to hear you anyways.

“Yeah… Is that how Gyuri refers to her?” He frowns.

“Mhm,” you answer, leaning into him like you're about to tell him an important secret “I'm not supposed to call her that, don't tell her.”

Seonghwa leans in too, pretending to zip his mouth shut and you laugh.

The girl wiggles her way into the seat reserved for her and everyone lets out a groan when they smooch each other. You can only giggle and the sound draws her attention to you “Y/N?”

You quickly nod “Yeah, hi, nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you! Finally, I thought Wooyoung and Gyuri had an imaginary friend,” you laugh, shrugging at the joke “Love your outfit, by the way, are those— Oh, San, hi— Are those jellyfish?”

You want to answer. You truly do, the yes right at the tip of your tongue, but words leave you when you turn your head around and find San already looking at you with wide eyes.

He looks great, he's a bit more muscular than what the pictures show and than the last time that you saw him, his arms hugging the fabric of the dress shirt he's wearing like it was tailored for him and everything.

How dare he.

You wonder if his heart is beating as loud as yours is right now. If he's surprised, disappointed or happy to see you at all.

“Her favorite animal.” He answers for you “Hi, Y/N.”

“Hi…” you whisper back and it feels like you're in a trance. He doesn't look away but the table quieting down once again snaps you out of it and you turn to the girl with a wide smile that you hope conceals whatever the fuck you're feeling at the moment “I love jellyfishes. Had a phase as a child when I would exclusively talk about them, too,” you chuckle, nervously, reaching for your earrings instinctively “Gyuri gave them to me as a present last Christmas.”

You definitely overshared just now. From the corner of your eye you catch your best friend getting ready to step in if needed.

Love looks at you, then at San (who's just standing next to you without uttering a word) and then back at you again, smiling like she just figured something out “Well, I love them.”

“Thanks…”

Coughing unnecessarily loud, Wooyoung gets up from his seat “You're late.”

It takes a second but San tears his gaze away from you to look at his best friend and you take the opportunity to chug down the rest of your beer “Sorry, something came up.”

Seonghwa turns at that and looks at him as well “You good?”

“I am. Did you guys already eat? I'm starving.”

“Nope. We're about to order. Let me get you a drink, come here.” And just like that, he disappears from your view and you almost sigh in relief.

“Are you good?” Seonghwa asks you next and you reckon he's very observant. But then again, you're not the most gracious human being when you're in San’s presence, so, you figure everyone else noticed your change of mood as well.

“Yeah, I just… I haven't seen him in a while and I didn't think he was coming. I was surprised, that's all.”

“I can see that,” his eyes move around your face for some reason, frowning a little bit but then he seems to let it go, getting the menu closer to you “Okay, good, um… I actually made the reservation here because they have the best samgyeopsal in town.”

“Do they?”

“Mhm, so…”

He helps you pick your food and when it's time to order, he moves back to his seat. Gyuri asks you with her eyes if you're okay, you nod and grab her hand under the table with a tiny smile and then everyone is moving around to make space for San and Woo once they return.

He doesn't sit in front of you.

Relief floods you and you can finally feel your muscles relax as he is so far away, at the other end of the table and in the same row of seats, so you don't really see him unless you really try.

Which you don't, so your food goes down easy and the rest of the night as well.

Until everyone but you and Seonghwa move around their seats and he ends up right in your point of view as you do your best to ignore him and focus on his friend.

Seonghwa asks you about your hobbies, you tell him that you love to write movie essays on websites no one even cares to read and he asks you to show it to him so he can look it up when he gets home.

“And you've always done this? Since highschool?”

You nod and he beams “I read like the first three lines and it looks really good, Y/N. Is that why you love books so much? Because you're a writer?”

“I wouldn't consider myself a writer but… Sure, I love to write.”

“Did you know this?” he turns to San and your smile drops a little.

“Know what?”

“Your friend is an excellent writer.”

“Oh, I know. She, uh… Used to write stories on her notebook instead of paying attention in math class,” he sips on his drink and at the detail you didn't know he knew, you turn to him fully “I used to read over her shoulder sometimes.”

“She's really good.” Seonghwa is looking at your phone, still reading “Really smart, too.”

San’s jaw tenses a little and you can't understand why “I know.” He says again.

His friend is none the wiser, blocking your phone and returning it to you “I like it,” he says, smiling and you blush “The essay.” He clarifies after a second, prompting a laugh out of you that he joins.

San doesn't laugh, but you don't pay attention to him because Seonghwa is asking you something else.

When it's time to leave the restaurant, Wooyoung suggests going back to his apartment to milk the get-together as much as you all can.

You all throw your napkins at him in feign disgust at the choice of words but you all accept his proposal either way.

So now you're sitting on the couch, legs crossed and head on Gyuri’s shoulder while you listen to all of them talk (more like argue) about something that happened at their university last week, their voices drowning the soft music playing out of the tiny speaker resting on the counter.

San is on the floor, to your right. It's hard to keep your eyes off him when you feel him looking at you when you close your eyes and let the noise fade into the background. It's not like you're able to add something to the conversation anyway and Gyuri seems to be drinking her sorrows (not being able to hook Woo up with the girl she told you about) away.

Your best friend is slurring her words already, drink in hand and index finger pointing at Jongho accusatively because, apparently, the fight they're talking about was his fault.

“You don't—” she hiccups “You don't even know why it was your fault and it pisses me off even more, you know?”

“Okay, let me take that.” Taking the drink from her hand and before she starts complaining you stand up to make your way into the kitchen.

The sink is full and a mess, so you pour the liquid into it and leave the glass sitting right beside it. Distracted by the dilemma of helping Woo out with the dishes or not, you don't notice someone else also entering the space.

That's why you jump a little when you turn and catch Seonghwa leaning on the wall by the entrance. It startles you enough to laugh the nerves out afterwards and he shakes his head, smiling.

“Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. They're boring me to death with the fight story.”

You nod, realizing that maybe that's because he doesn't attend the university anymore. He told you he graduated last year “They're too drunk to let it go.”

“Too drunk to dance to this amazing song, too. Who's playlist is that?” he frowns and you rest your back into the sink, rolling your eyes because he's pretending he doesn't know “Oh! Right, it's mine.”

“And they just don't know how to appreciate it, huh?” he shrugs and you click your tongue “They're such bad friends, Seonghwa, I truly don't know why you keep them around.”

“You appreciate it,” it's your turn to frown and he leaves his spot at the wall to walk towards you “You were singing along to it,” he explains and you let out an ah, nodding as he extends his palm to you, clearly inviting you to dance.

“Oh, I don't… I don't really know how to—”

“I'll show you.”

His kind eyes are asking you to trust him. You really, really shouldn't.

No matter how hard you try to bury the hopeless romantic little girl who decided to have a crush on a guy back in ninth grade, she's still there, begging you to let loose and live a little.

When you grab Seonghwa’s hand, you think the smile he gives you was worth listening to her.

You can't even tell the song that's softly playing anymore, a mellow r&b melody reaches your ear but you are not listening. You're focused on him, on the way he spins you around even if it doesn't fit the bit, on the way he laughs softly against your ear when he pulls you close by your hand and then pulls away just as quickly.

Laughing as well, the spell of this beautiful stranger (because you remind yourself you don't really know him that well) is hard to break.

Until it does.

Someone clearing their throat behind you stops you and Seonghwa's feet from moving any further. When the tall, older guy turns you around, you're face to face with San and his scowl.

“Sorry to interrupt but I need to get started on the dishes. Everyone else is heading out too,” he looks behind you, at the man who's still standing close to you and grabbing your hand “In case you want to ask Mingi for a ride.”

“They finally stopped fighting!” he fakes excitement, finally letting go of your hand and walking in front of you, blocking San with his body. You chuckle, barely clapping your hands to join the pretense as he's pulling up his phone “Can I ask for your number, Y/N?”

Blinking a few times, you're not sure if your heart speeds up because he's asking or because you hear San sigh exasperated behind him “S-sure.”

When you put your information on his phone, he bids you goodbye with a pat on your head and hugs San on his way out the kitchen.

Now that you two are alone, you suddenly want to run and join Seonghwa. You were doing so, so well.

Avoiding San like the plague it's much easier when you're safe hiding behind your two best friends.

Ignoring his stare would be much easier if you weren't stuck into place.

“I—”

“You—”

You both speak over each other and you force out an uncomfortable laugh that he doesn't return. Instead, he motions you to go first while he occupies the space in front of the sink, turning the faucet on. In doing so, he has to grab your waist and move you out of the way which makes you short circuit for a second “I was going to help you with that.” You finally stammer out.

He lets out what you take as an annoyed chuckle.

“You seemed busy, I don't know how you would've done it.”

Ouch.

Why do you allow his words to cut so deep when you stopped caring about what he does a long time ago?

The band aid rips, the stitches come undone and all it took him were five seconds to melt your resolve away like it was never there in the first place.

“I'll… I go get Gyuri so we can leave Woo and you to get to it, then.”

“Bathroom.” You hear him mutter under his breath as you are taking the final step to leave.

“Huh?”

“She's in the bathroom, probably puking her breakfast out,” he looks up at you to give you a tiny smile “You left her alone with Jongho and Woo for five minutes so she got ahold of another drink.”

“God damnit.”

Rushing out, you run into everyone else at the door and Mingi has to let go of his very intoxicated girlfriend when she reaches you to give you a hug “Don't be a stranger, Y/N! It was lovely to be around you, hm?”

The sudden physical contact almost makes you gasp but you cover it up with a shy giggle “O-oh. Yeah, um, lovely to meet you too. All of you.”

“Sorry about that,” her boyfriend grabs her arms and breaks the hug “She's right, though. Don't be a stranger.”

You nod once, smiling a little more sincerely now and everyone says bye to you, including Seonghwa, who grabs your hand one last time and gives it a squeeze before closing the front door of the apartment.

You think you feel your heart skip a tiny bit under all the shit San’s words pulled up to the surface a minute ago. But there's no time to dwell in that: you hear Gyuri opening up the bathroom door before gagging and closing it again with a slam.

Jesus Christ.

You two are really getting old. You stopped drinking like an hour ago, when you were starting to feel tipsy after your second beer, and you know she didn't drink as much as she used to maybe four years ago, but the visage that welcomes you when you open the door and find her crouched down in front of the toilet certainly brings back memories of those times.

“I left you alone for like… five minutes.” Sighing, you lean in to hold her flimsy ponytail and pat her back.

“I'm good,” she gags again and then holds up her hand to stop you from saying anything else “I'm fine.”

Smiling, you help her up and she grabs the counter as she's washing away the taste of whatever she ate earlier today and alcohol “Me when I lie…”

“Y/N!” she hits your arm but the movement somehow almost makes her trip.

“You want to lay down?”

“Is she okay?” Woo’s head peaks into the bathroom and when he sees his ex, he makes a face.

“Does she look like she's okay?” you help her out of the bathroom and start heading for Wooyoung's room.

“Wow, wow— Where do you think you're taking her?”

“To your room, dumbass!”

“Why mine? San's is literally right there.” He whines, pointing at the door you pass by without a second thought. You don't want to know where his room is or what it looks like at all.

“Yeah, well, did San get her this drunk?”

“How was I supposed to know that she was at her almost black-out phase? She never drinks that much in front of me!” he complains again but you're already tugging Gyuri in, who mumbles something incoherent and then flips Wooyoung off “Na Gyuri if you puke on my bed I swear to God!”

If you didn't know Wooyoung so much, the whining and the attitude would probably make you think he didn't care for her at all. But he's brushing her hair out of her forehead, securing the blanket around her and moving to take her socks off when you reach the door.

“I'm guessing you're okay with her staying the night?”

“Of course you guys can stay the night, Y/N.” He says and he stumbles a little to get to you, so you smile and shake your head, about to let him know that you're not staying anywhere near his roommate when he continues “You can come over whenever you like. You know that, right?”

“I know, Woo.”

“I barely even see you these days, I… Oh! I forgot!” he points to the end of the hall, towards the kitchen “You guys don't really like each other so maybe don't come over when he's here because I don't want to see you sad!”

“Lower your voice,” you whisper to him, bringing a hand to his face and patting his cheek a few times to wake him up “Did the alcohol suddenly hit you or something?” you sigh for the umpteenth time “Anyways, you should lay down and I'll get going. I'll come pick her up tomorrow and—”

“That's such a great idea! Oh, I'm a genius.”

“You didn't come up with it, Wooyoung.”

“San!” he calls all of the sudden and you wish he was sober enough to read the panic on your features. He seems much, much sober when his best friend starts walking down the hall and stops right beside you “Take Y/N home, please, she's going to give you a bag that you must protect with your life.”

Said best friend looks at you, his eyebrow arched in a silent question “Gyuri’s stuff.”

“Ah.”

“Go, go. It's getting late, I'll just… I'll cuddle with my ex until you get home.”

And she has the nerve to say he doesn't want her back.

When the door to Wooyoung's room closes and you're left with San on the poorly lit hallway, you make a mental note to never step foot on this place or allow your friends to drink ever again.

You don't even look at the guy before practically running down the hallway and reaching for your bag. You make sure your phone is secured in your pocket as you slip your shoes on and soon you're grabbing the front door knob and twisting it.

Keys jingle next to you but, again, you don't spare San a glance.

“So—”

“I'll get out of your hair, you don't have to… walk me home or whatever he said.”

“Y/N, it's late.”

Turning to him, your smile is as fake as the ones you've been giving him the past couple of years “And I'm a grown up, San, I can walk myself home.”

“What about Gyuri’s stuff?”

“She can wear Wooyoung's clothes, it's not like they never shared before. Anyway… Thank you for having me, it was nice to see you. Goodnight.” Your response comes out fast and it sounds as planned out as it actually is, kinda robotic and devoid of actual emotion.

San can't see through you the way you see through him. It's okay, he won't mind it.

He probably won't mind that you close his own door on his face either.

If that door is what you hear when you're making your way down the stairs in order to make a fast escape, you choose to ignore it.

You have to stop mid-way to compose yourself. You don't know why you feel like crying or why your heart is beating so fast.

You knew going in that there was a possibility of seeing him tonight. You know how San affects you, so effortless and seemingly like no time has passed at all in between senior year and present day.

You know all of this already, it's an endless loop that will keep repeating until you either move away or decide to stop agreeing to Wooyoung's plans all together.

So why is your chest heaving with emotion? Why is nostalgia playing mind tricks with you? Why do you want to turn back and hug him and beg him to turn back time so you can do it all differently now that you know how to look like and what to say to make him love you back?

Ah, you're definitely not sleeping tonight. So you start distracting yourself while walking down the stairs again. You remind yourself to tell a much sober Wooyoung how proud you are of him. You think about Seonghwa, about his kind eyes and the way he grabbed your hand to dance with him just half an hour ago. You wonder how long it will take you to get home if you jog all the way there. You—

Why the fuck is San outside when you get there?

In a comedic way, you can see your attempt to distract your mind off of him slipping through your fingers and evaporating in the warm summer night breeze.

In a realistic way, you're fucking pissed at him for taking the opportunity of a good night sleep away from you.

You pass him and start jogging like you planned a minute ago. Footsteps follow you until his arm brushes yours and you take a step to the side to stop it from happening again.

“Go home, Choi San.”

“Stop fighting it, Y/N. I'm walking you home.”

“It's a twenty minute walk—”

“Drop it.”

You do. And for the first ten minutes, no one utters a word even if the tension feels electric and the street is so quiet so you can hear when his breath accelerates when he jogs to catch up to you whenever you try to leave him behind.

Isn't that ironic. He was the one who left you behind all those years ago.

“I didn't know that you danced.”

He breaks the uncomfortable but safe silence to say that?

“Well, you saw me dance so I clearly dance when I want to.”

“You never danced with me.”

“You never asked me to.”

He laughs “I'm pretty sure I did on several occasions, Y/N.”

“Well, you're wrong,” you're getting annoyed. How dare he think he remembers better than you? “It doesn't matter anyway, what's past is past and—”

“You also gave Hwa your number,” he interrupts, his long legs taking two strides to get in front of you, still walking, facing your direction with his hands on his pockets.

It's dangerous and stupid, even if the streets are practically empty and the sidewalk barely has any bumps.

You hope he falls on his pretty face.

“I did.*

“I don't have your number.”

“Well, I changed it and you never asked for it, so…”

“You could've called me or texted me to let me know you did it.”

He's getting on your nerves.

“San,” you start, taking in a deep breath you hope calms you down “We don't even text anymore, why would you want my number?”

“Do you like him?”

“Seonghwa?” you ask, frowning and he nods “Like… As a person?”

“As a potential love interest.” He clarifies matter-of-factly and you roll your eyes.

“I met him today, San. Why do you want my number?”

“Because we're friends?” he offers after a second, shifting so he's walking by your side again.

“Are we?” you ask, laughing bitterly at that “Because we haven't spoken a word to each other in years.”

“That's not true.”

“It is, San.”

“You… You don't speak to me anymore, so…”

“Well your girlfriend at the time told me she didn't feel comfortable with me speaking to you anymore,” you sigh “so I didn't and you didn't try to talk to me either.”

“Well, I want to talk to you now.”

“And is your new girlfriend aware of that? Is she comfortable with that? Because I don't want anyone telling me what to do anymore and—”

“Why wouldn't she be comfortable? We're friends, Y/N.”

“Are we?” you insist, petty, bitter and overall very, very hurt.

He looks offended at that “I assumed we were?”

He's getting on your fucking nerves.

“We stopped being friends the second Minseo asked me to stay away from you because she didn't like me, San.”

“She’s not in my life anymore—”

The words are coming out of your mouth without even thinking it through. His demeanor, the way he's somehow reproaching you for whatever he saw between you and his friend, the way he pretends nothing happened between you and him, thinking that you two are still friends.

“We stopped being friends when you pulled away from me, saw me do the same and did nothing to stop it from happening, San.”

He stops in his tracks at that. You don't, pushing forward and quickening your step even if your calves burn.

“Either way,” you speak up “Make sure you tell your girlfriend about wanting my number and then you can ask Seonghwa for it if you want—”

“She's not my girlfriend anymore!”

Now that stops you, just a few buildings down from yours, you turn around just to find San closer that you thought he'll be.

“O-oh. I… I didn't know that. I'm sorry.”

“You didn't do anything to be sorry for.”

“Still, it must suck so I'm sorry you're going through that.”

“We didn't want the same things and so we ended it. It is what it is.”

You nod.

He walks the few steps separating you and you have to raise your chin a little to look him in the eye for the first time since you left his apartment “I wanted to tell you.”

“That you broke up with your girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I don't know why. It happened when I broke up with Minseo too, I just… You're the first person that I thought of calling when it happened. I texted you, too, but the messages didn't go through.”

You hum at that.

Why would he even say that?

You resume your step, not really knowing what to say until you reach the stairs that lead to your building’s entrance.

“And you didn't ask Woo for my number?”

He follows you up.

“I don't think he would've given it to me if I asked.”

That sounds like an excuse, so you don't let it slide as you enter the code to your building and let yourself inside, San holding the door so he can get in as well “Why would he do that?”

“Because he…” San sighs, pressing the elevator button “Nevermind. He just wouldn't.”

Frowning, you turn to him “No, now you have to tell me.”

“It doesn't matter, really—”

“Tell me, San.”

He stares for a second and then looks away, like a child, vulnerable and you can't help but soften at that “He didn't like the way I treated you.”

Eating your words from before, you shake your head “You didn't treat me like anything.”

The elevator dings and you get inside.

San follows you.

“Exactly,” he says, resting his shoulder on the metal “Like you said I just did nothing and—”

“Well, sometimes that's just what happens,” you want to end this. You want to pack Gyuri’s bag, give it to him and never see him again.

This conversation hurts, it reopens barely closed wounds and it creates new ones you don't really need when it comes to whatever happened between you two.

There's only so much a person can handle and it really doesn't help that you're a fool for San. He takes advantage of it, of the fact you can't really push him away at this point and the fact that he wants to have this conversation now instead of four and half years ago?

Mean.

He's mean. He's evil. He's… He's staring at you with a spark in his eyes that you recognize too well.

Hope.

When you get to your floor, you try to wipe the image away while busying yourself with your keys. Your hands tremble a little but you're able to open the door of your apartment and get in without inviting him.

He gets in anyway. You take off your shoes as he closes the front door.

He stays silent as he follows you around the apartment and you don't worry about turning the lights on. You get into Gyuri’s room and start picking out a comfy hangover outfit for your friend. Some clean underwear, sweatpants, two shirts and socks.

When you drop to the floor, in front of the closet, to look for a bag to stash all of it in, San silently clutches beside you.

“It shouldn't have happened to us. Never us.”

You can't take it anymore.

“San, what is this? What are you doing? I mean, why are we—”

“I know.”

“It's been years…”

“I miss you.”

He's so mean. But the softness in his tone resembles the one he used all the way back in highschool, when he told you that not being friends with you didn't feel right and you want to cave in right there and then.

Your heart screams at you to do it, your reason warns you that you both have been through this before and it never ends right.

You simply can't stay friends with Choi San.

Your love for him must run too deep, your resentment claws at it and tries to hurt it but it's an immovable force that won't budge even if you try to bury it under the years that have passed, the things he has done.

Tears gather in your eyes and you try to blink them away as you stare at your best friend's clothes on your lap and try to come up with something to close this path up again, reconstruct the picket fence you built around it the second he broke your heart for the first time.

“Yeah,” you whisper back, letting the walls fall a little “I miss you too but I don't think I miss whatever version of you you are right now, San.”

“W-what?”

His shaky voice makes the walls crumble and crash.

Turning to him, your hand shakes as you place it on top of his “And you don't miss the version of me I am right now. You miss what I was back then, the comfort and the shoulder to cry on I offered you when Arin and you broke up. You miss my availability and the way I didn't press my feelings on you because it didn't matter if I liked you or not, you were my friend first and the guy that I had a crush second but—” you choke up, tears falling down your cheeks even if you don't want them to “I can't do it anymore. I'm not that girl anymore and I won't be there for you now that you and Kyungmi broke up because I can't handle it. I can't, I'm sorry.”

He doesn't deny any of it.

He stares at you, tears wetting his cheeks as well and it hurts even more this way. You wish you had the strength to hold it together, to treat him like you did on the street a few minutes ago, but you can't.

There's no way you could ever hate him like you want to.

“You know…” he starts in a whisper, letting out a humorless chuckle “That's what I used to tell myself too.”

“Hm?”

“That you were my friend first and the girl that I had a crush on second.”

How dare he mutter the words you always wanted to hear, the ones you picture being said in a different setting, the ones that haunted your every waking thought that period of time you doubted your friends, your mom, yourself for even believing Choi San could ever have a crush on you.

He doesn't get to say them. You want to tell him but the words die on your throat and form a lump that you can't swallow down.

You don't get to say that. You don't get to say that.

Your hand drops from his and you look away again only to grab the first bag you find on the closet floor and shove Gyuri’s stuff in it.

If the lack of response it's what prompts the hurt in his voice the next time he speaks, you don't want to think about it.

“I wish I didn't. Now it's too late to do something about it, huh?”

This time the rage comes back with a mask on. Feing settlement for all the what if’s covers you like a blanket on a really hot summer night: unwanted, unnecessary.

But you can't sleep without it, so you do nothing to push it away.

“I guess it is.”

You get up from the floor, leaving the room and wiping your face with bitterness coating your movements as you wait by the door for him to get out.

When he does and he steps in front of you, you extend the bag and he takes it without missing a beat.

Voice robotic and words premeditated, you open the front door for him “Thanks for walking me home and taking this back.”

He leans a little into your space and you don't move away. But just as he did in highschool, he takes in your hitched breath and does nothing more.

“Thanks for letting me talk to you.”

He didn't give you much of a choice there but it's okay. This is closure, this is the end of your story with Choi San and you convince yourself you're glad that it is.

“Sure,” you whisper back and he steps outside, turning around to watch you slowly close the door “goodnight, San.”

He doesn't say it back.

When the darkness of your apartment engulfs you, that's when you let yourself breakdown. Covering your mouth with your palm, you descend until your knees are against the wood on the floor and closing your eyes you make it a point to let it all out.

You'll let it all out, drink some water, text Wooyoung and Gyuri to let them know you're safe and go to bed.

And tomorrow you'll begin your day with the freedom of finally knowing what would've happened if you or San ever took the next step.

This is fine. This is moving on. This is—

The doorbell rings.

Opening the door again, you crease your eyebrows in a silent question that San doesn't care to answer, so you look around the floor in case he forgot something you're missing. You wipe your cheeks and under your eyes as you turn to him again “Did you—”

Time slows down when he makes it past the threshold and you can't move an inch, gaping at who you once thought was the love of your life “What are you doing, San?”

“Something about it.”

“What?”

“Forgive me,” he asks, breathless and in a murmur, fueling your confusion. And then he's closing the distance, dropping Gyuri’s bag and cupping your face so gently that it hurts “but I'm doing something about it.”

You stopped dreaming about the possibility of San kissing you that one time you two were on your bed and, another time, you told yourself that, if it ever happened, you wouldn't kiss him back.

It's too late to kiss him back.

But sparks fly when he crushes you against the wall and takes in a breath before slothing his mouth against yours like he's been waiting to do this every single day for the past nine years you've known each other.

There's nothing you can do to conceal the way yearning takes over you, pours out of you, making you breathe into his open mouth and kiss him back like you always wanted to.

You already know it is a mistake by the time you grab his shirt to keep him in place but does it really matter when this is all you ever wanted?

Feeling warmth leave your face, you notice the way he desperately crowds your space as his chest bumps into yours, leg claiming its place in between yours, the palm that leaves you pressing against the wall, next to your head.

The kiss is filled with emotion, with longing and desire and it steals the air out of your lungs tragically and beautifully at the same time. Before, you used to dream about his lips making everything feel right, making you fit in in a world you didn't feel like you belonged to.

But this kiss drops you into uncharted territory, drags you into the depths of something that should be buried by now, after all this time. It brings the flame back to life and it's dangerous.

The fact that it feels this way, both marvelous and catastrophic at the same time, makes you so sad.

Sorrow descends down your face until your mouth is picking it up and your tongue is mixing it with whatever emotion is cruising through San right now.

You have to know.

He spent your entire youth and early adulthood keeping it to himself, knowing when to show his true colors and when to hide them, choosing who to do it with and you realize the San that lives in your head is nothing but a figment of what you wanted him to be.

Because him holding to your waist like it's his only lifeline doesn't fit the San you remember, him telling you he liked you back then doesn't fit the guy who was just your best friend.

You need to know.

“San,” brokenly, you speak into his mouth and he pulls away just enough to see your face. Your eyes remain closed, your chest heaving and your lips trembling “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want you, Y/N.”

You push him away, weakly, almost like you don't really mean it because deep down you don't but he steps away like you're asking to.

Because, of course, your mind scraps the bottom of your resentment to give his words a completely new meaning.

“You can find another girl to fuck and be your rebound, San,” more tears spill down and you wipe them away in anger but more threat to fall down so you cover your face with your hands and groan, desperate “I can't do this, especially not when I know that you know how bad I wanted you. Y-you know what you do to me San so stop—”

“I want you in my life. I don't— What? I don't want you like a rebound, I… Can we sit down and turn on a light so I can look at you when I say this?”

His words should be reassuring but they're not, the way you tend to feel unlovable around him coming up to the surface, preventing you from thinking clearly.

You can also feel his lips on yours still. It's dizzying but you manage to push yourself off the wall and pad around until you hit the switch of the warm light lamp near the couch and the apartment comes to life just like that.

He takes in the space he's never seen before, walking slowly towards the living room and looking over the bookshelf that screams your name all over it. He smiles a bit as he looks over the book titles and you look away before your heart starts acting up again.

You can't stay mad at him for long if he's looking through something so personal to you and smiling that fondly at it. It feels even more intimate than the kiss you two just shared.

Wiping your cheeks once more, you are sure you look a mess but he doesn't seem to mind it once he comes into your point of view, sitting down on the couch, in front of your standing form. He grabs you by your hands until you're sitting next to him, close to him, cologne intoxicating your senses.

“I told you I liked you when we were in highschool, right?”

You nod.

“You seemed surprised but it was dark so I'm not really sure. I thought you knew, everyone knew.”

Oh, he's a comedian.

“How would I have known, San? I… Yeri told me you liked me one time, in senior year, but I denied it. Then, my mom told me you seemed to want me in a non-platonic way and I dismissed her as well,” you take in a deep, shaky breath “For me, the thought of you liking me just didn't make sense. You loved Arin and she's… She doesn't look or act like I did back then at all, so how would I have known?”

You didn't need clues and puzzles and what if’s, you needed words and actions that weren't confusing. You needed him to tell you back then, because telling you right now and kissing you senseless after he broke up with a girl he supposedly was very in love with means nothing but pain.

“I didn't realize you liked me too,” you make a face, about to tell him off, but he interrupts “I didn't! I thought you liked Yeri and I thought you saw me as the annoying guy who wouldn't leave you alone. I only just realized it a couple years ago, because Woo told me.”

You raise your eyebrows and mutter under your breath “I'm murdering him tomorrow.”

The corner of his lips twitch before he shakes his head in dismissal of what you said “I liked you. I really, really liked you and never told a soul because… Well, it's scary when you fall in love, right?”

“San, you had no problem telling Arin, Minseo or Kyungmi that you liked them.”

He looks down to the floor, lost in thought and you want to open your mouth to take what you just said into a new direction, but you don't “Maybe that's because I didn't love them the way I love you.”

Oh.

Love you? As in… He loves you right now too?

No way.

“You didn't love me, San. You don't love me right now either, you… Maybe we both were in love with the idea of love? Maybe that's what happened and—”

“Quit telling me what I'm feeling, Y/N. You always do that, you always assume you know what I'm feeling but you don't!”

Raising your voice a little more, you try to get your point across in the worst way possible: by being stubborn “You don't know me! How can you possibly—”

“I knew you back then, Y/N! And I loved you back then, too!” He looks like wants to say something more but he doesn't, instead, he takes a calming breath and then leans into your space for the third time tonight “And I might not know you now but I want to. That's what I meant when I said that I want you. I want you in my life, I want to know the person you became when we stopped talking, I want to talk to you every single day and I want to hold you and kiss you and be by your side however you want me to, I just… I can't lose you again.”

His confession renders you speechless and you notice his chest is heaving, going up and down in sync with yours.

But the way he pulled away from you senior year still hurts, it paints a picture of what's going to happen if you accept this.

You can't believe his words.

He must feel lonely and confused, like he did when Arin broke up with him. He must be looking for a shelter you can't provide.

“And when you find another girl that's more to your liking? What then, San?”

“There's no one that I love more than you, Y/N and I'm sorry I was shit at proving it back then and I'm sorry that it took so many years for me to come to my senses.”

He's tearing up and your heart pangs absurdly loud at that.

“I saw you with Seonghwa earlier today, laughing and dancing and flirting and I thought: Oh, maybe if I didn't waste that much time pretending I'm someone I'm not, that would be me.”

You stare for a second, you watch a single tear drop down his cheek and then look away.

“Is that what you were doing? Is that why you pulled away?”

“Maybe?” he offers and you turn to him again. Is not enough and maybe he can see it in your expression, because he goes on “I mean, I… I thought I wanted Arin. I thought I wanted Minseo. I had people in my life who were really happy to see me with them and I just…”

“Wanted to keep them happy,” you nod, understanding. He doesn't have to say his mothers name for you to know he's referring to her and maybe his other highschool friends outside of Wooyoung “Were you pretending with me as well?”

“No,” he answers right away “You and Woo were the only ones who saw me for who I really was back then.”

“And why do you think you love me now, San?” you ask, deflating against the couch and ignoring the way your heart soars at his quick response.

“Because I never stopped,” he stammers out and then clears his throat “Because I looked for you in Minseo and Kyungmi and I wondered for years why they couldn't make me feel the same way. And I told myself I didn't need to feel the same way and that I deserved to wonder for the rest of my days but seeing you tonight? I can't.”

Straightening your spine, the pained look you sent in his direction is not intentional but it prompts him to lean closer and closer until he's cupping your cheek again.

“I can't keep wondering.” His voice is a sweet whisper, a siren song that draws you in until your forehead is resting against his.

All these years, you were so self-focused on changing to a better version of who he used to know, learning from your mistakes and closing off to the opportunity of letting him prove himself a better man, you forgot that time passed for him too. He’s telling you he changed, too.

Imagination is a safe space. Is where you hide, where desire can take its wings and fly high without hurting you too much. Make belief has rescued you before but this? The way his nose nuzzles softly into yours and your breaths tangle? This is very real. And reality is prone to hurt you.

But the want you feel is undeniable. The way your entire being wants to cave in and give him an opportunity is suffocating, it makes you choke out a sob that he follows with one of his own.

You kiss him, softly at the beginning, but his hands on you tighten and you let yourself get lost in the way they go down your neck and your arms, caressing you softly until they reach your waist and pull you into his lap.

Pulling away, you grab his chin with two fingers and force his teary eyes to snap open, searching for an answer on yours.

“If you hurt me,” you start, breathless “If you're mocking me, if you're using me to get over Kyungmi, if you are pulling me back in to break my heart again, Choi San, I swear to God I will kill you.”

“I won't do that to you ever again, Y/N,” he returns softly “I love you, I'm sorry if I ever hurt you but I love you.”

Others would argue that it is pathetic how quickly you forgive him. But then again, you could never be mad at San.

You were only mad at yourself for how everything turned out.

“I love you too, Sannie.”

Saying something never felt so freeing before.

“Oh, Y/N…” you can see the way relief washes his worries away “Y/N…” he starts to say but then leans in to kiss you again and never finishes his words.

You don't mind it.

Pouring out all the pent up affection you pretended to bury for years, you explore his mouth and carve into your memory the way he feels. The way he sighs into it when your tongue brushes his, the way he pulls you in closer when your fingers reach the nape of his neck and pull on his hair there, hands splayed on your back so he can keep you in place as he leans down and places you against the worn out couch.

He maps you out, hands going down your waist in a familiar feeling that brings back that memory of you two laying down on your bed. Only this time, he's actually touching you with a purpose. This time, you two have made up your minds and your limbs are tangled in a way you can feel all of him pressing up against you.

It starts to get stuffy, the space on the couch not nearly enough to have him the way you want to. Soon, you're both standing up, mouths still moving against each other and hands roaming everywhere until you're undoing the buttons on his shirt.

He pulls away to fully take it off, eyes never leaving yours, dropping the shirt to the ground, next to the couch and then he's on you again, making your back crash into the wall as he works the knots keeping your blouse together.

He walks you through the hall, stopping only to take your top off and then he's walking you to a room that has a familiar scent that doesn't belong to you.

“Wrong room, wrong room,” you say into his lips and he laughs, looking to your surroundings “Mine’s over there.” you point to the other end of the hall, taking his hand and pulling him towards it.

You don't make it far before he's yanking you towards him again. He looks down, taking your body in and you do the same, his firm and defined stomach a sight you never thought you would be able to see.

“You're so beautiful,” he whispers, backing you against the wall again and kissing your cheek “So, so beautiful.”

Turning your head to chase his mouth, he lets out a heavy sigh when his lips trail a path to your neck and murmurs against the skin there “I never told you how beautiful I found you before but you're so perfect, baby.”

“I always thought I wasn't your type, San,” you let out a noise when he grabs your hips and pulls you forward, crashing his into yours “Fuck.”

“And I always thought you were too much for me, too smart,” he kisses his way back up, focusing on your jaw and chin until he's kissing your cheek again “too pretty,” he moves to your ear, pecking right under it and you hold him closer “too good for me.”

It doesn't really matter that this is all new to you, the way he's speaking, the tenor of his voice, the things he's saying… It sparks something familiar in you. You're pulling his hair back to make him look at you, a moan slipping out of his lips at that.

You want to hear it again.

He's smiling at your reaction, hand tightening on his locks.

However, that smile drops when he seems to recognize the gleam in your eyes.

You gather up courage, feeling empowered by the way his hooded eyes darken but wait patiently for you to speak your mind.

“Maybe I'm too good for you now, too,” you lean in, your lips softly tracing his “Maybe you should prove to me that you deserve me, San.”

It's a dare. One that he seems to like a lot because his eyes sparkle with the same fire they used to back in the day.

“Oh, I'll prove it to you, alright.” He whispers, panting when you let go of his hair and he leans into you to kiss your lips briefly before pulling away again.

His hand tilts your head back and you rest it against the cold wall, his fingers touch your bottom lip before going down and down and down until they rest against the seam of your pants, unbuttoning them in one swift movement.

Going back up, his nails softly dig into your skin and you preen, taking the soft sting of his ministrations like you two have done this a million times before.

His mouth is on yours again, his hands are pulling you off the wall and into your room until you two land on your mattress with a soft tud, a moan spilling out of your lips when he sloths his knee in between your legs and pulls them apart with expertise.

You don't have the mind to break down what that means.

Opening your eyes when he kisses down your neck again, you notice your room is barely lit by the street lights outside, curtains pulled open and windows closed but, this way, you can see the way San kisses between your breasts and your belly, catching his eyes when he looks up to measure your reaction.

You sigh, already feeling some sort of build up going on down there and he hasn't even touched you properly yet.

You don't even want to think about how wet you actually are.

He leans back, open palms going down your legs slowly until they reach your feet. It tickles and you can't help but let out a giggle that he joins short after, his gaze never losing the edge because of it, though.

“San…”

He guides your hips up so he can take off your pants and you sigh when his hands return, raising your leg up “I missed your laugh,” he says low, attaching his lips to your calf “I miss being the one making you laugh too.”

You feel like crying again but then he's letting your leg down and grabbing the other one to give it the same treatment, so your tears can wait.

This time, he moves upwards till his mouth nears your clothed center and your breath hitches.

Yeah, you can definitely cry later.

“You want me to prove to you how much I want you, Y/N?” he murmurs, his lips ghosting your mound now “How much I love you?”

“San, p-please…”

“Fuck, look at you.” He sounds like he's too lost in the heat of the moment and you're kind of grateful, because the moan you let out when his fingers hook on your underwear and pull them to the side to expose your pussy to his hungry eyes is loud.

When he kisses you right where you need him, you let out another moan. And when he parts your folds to lick a stripe up to your clit, you curse him under you breath until he's laughing against you softly, the vibrations accumulating heat on your belly.

He doesn't tease you much longer and you look down at him just to catch the moment his self control slips, eating you out like a man starved while his hand stays on your hip to hold you down and keep you underwear from interrupting his feast.

“This is like,” he dives in again for a few seconds and you grab the sheets beneath you “All my fantasies coming to life but better.”

He's so chatty during this and the only thing you can do is stammer a yeah? and pray for it to reach his ears.

“Mhm,” the circles your clit with the tip of his tongue and your legs shake “Taste even better than what I dreamed, too.”

The heat of his mouth leaves you, lips spreading your wetness through your stomach until he fully reaches your face, your eyes closed and lips already waiting for him.

Tongue caressing yours, your hands trail down his torso and focus on getting his pants off. You're shaking with excitement so it proves to be more difficult than you imagined at first but he helps you in unbuckling his belt.

Once the piece of clothing is one the floor (or the bed, you're not really paying attention on where it lands), you don't waste time in feeling him up through his boxers.

The hiss you get in return makes you smile.

Bringing your lips to his neck, you suckle on this pulse point and gain another pleased noise before grazing your teeth against skin and moving to his collarbone next.

In a way, you get what he means. If he truly was pining over you the way you were pining over him, the thought of exploring his tan skin and making him moan feels like a dream.

So you kiss him again in order to make it all last longer.

The minutes pass between the both of you, softly making out and figuring out what gets both of you going, discarding your underwear in the process.

You realize your moans make San’s cock twitch against your leg and he seems to notice the way your hips buck up everytime his hands handle you more roughly.

After a few minutes of just this, you feel his hand making its way down again and the pads of his fingers circle your clit until you're grasping the sheets again. He gathers your arousal and then enters one finger slowly and when it slides in and out with ease, he enters the next one.

There's really not much prepping he needs to do, already soft and compliant under him, you relax into his comfortable touch before you're aching for something else. And your mouth is preoccupied with his, so you do something else to catch his attention.

Hands caressing his back, you let them drop to his ass with a soft smack that wins you a soft huff on amusement and then a whine when you move his hips towards yours.

“Condom?”

You shake your head “I'm clean and I have an implant.”

“Oh?” he smirks, about to tease you but you squeeze his butt again and he moans “Fuck. I'm clean too.”

“Good,” you whisper against his cheek, laughing as he arranges his position.

And he might've been touching you all this time, kissing you until your mind emptied and your lips are all swollen up, but the look on his eyes when he slowly enters you is what might drive you over the edge.

Grabbing your hands, he pins them on the side of your head as he moves, dropping his head down with a groan as you take him in, nose touching yours and moth whispering sweet things you can't quite pick up.

He feels so good.

This all feels way too good to be real.

In the cloud you're at, you allow yourself to dream a little more before the reality of what your confessions mean dawns on you.

For now, you allow San to make love to you. Sweetly, slowly and with a passion you never were lucky enough to encounter before.

Maybe it's because your previous lovers didn't have your heart the way San does.

He rams his hips into yours hard, closing his eyes and resting his warm cheek against yours, kissing your face inch by inch when you accompany his movements with your own.

When his pace picks up, you hug him close and secure your legs around his hips as you moan.

“Y-yes, fuck.”

“Like that?” he repeats the movement from before, pulling out and then in with such force it rocks the entire bed.

“Just like that, baby, fuck.”

“God, you sound so good,” you smile a little, forehead resting on his shoulder before your head falls down against your pillow again “I love you,” he repeats against your lips, letting your hands go to cup your face with both of his again “I love you so much.”

Teetering over the edge, you feel happy tears stinging in your eyes. Though closed, you can feel San’s stare on you, on your face, on the way you react to his sweet words and relentless pace.

You say it back in a whisper and he repeats it again and again and again until you're both coming and tears are spilling down your cheeks.

He kisses them away.

You wipe his with trembling fingers as you come down, having trouble breathing from everything that just happened.

You don't feel suffocated anymore, you feel like you've been freed. Like this was supposed to happen at some point and you two finally got around to it.

“I love you,” he says once more before slipping out of you with a parting kiss.

Holy shit.

When San gets up from the bed and you point him to the bathroom, down the hallway, you're left with a sticky mess in between your legs and a lot to think about but you settle on four things.

San just made love to you. There's no way that was just sex.

There's also no way you're coming back from this.

Gyuri is probably going to kill you.

And that, obviously, your feelings for San never left. You feel the familiar warmth of them spreading through your post-orgasmic state. They're there, mocking you, asking you who the fuck you thought you were for pushing them away.

He returns, toilet paper in his hands before leaning in and cleaning you up, lips immediately finding home on your skin as he does.

You both giggle at that.

You probably need to shower but you've been crying and there's no way you're leaving this bed tonight. He throws the paper away on your bedroom’s trashcan and then crashes into the bed next to you, still naked, still looking at you with so much love you're wondering what stopped you from seeing it was there before.

Taking his hand, you bring it to his lip and give his knuckles a peck “That was really good.”

“It was.”

“I can't believe we actually just did that…”

He smiles and what he says next shocks you even more than his confession “I want to take you out.”

“San… You just came inside me not even ten minutes ago.”

“And?” you laugh and he shakes his head, leaning into your space again “I spent many years doing everything wrong, let me do it the right way.”

“Making love to me one time and then taking me out on a date is not the right way, sir.”

He nuzzles your cheek with his nose and you let out a pleased sigh “Who said it was just one time, huh?” Attacking your neck with his lips again, you push him away with a laugh.

“Oh, come on!”

He laughs as well “Give me ten minutes and I'll make it two!”

San makes love to you two more times. And by four in the morning, you're snuggled into his arms and sleeping soundly.

When you wake up and find the space next to you empty, you think it was all a dream. Your naked form begs to differ and you quickly put the t-shirt you usually wear to bed on and your panties underneath it to go out and face the feelings of your actions fighting with the blender in the kitchen.

“How do you two live with this stupid thing?”

“We don't,” you answer, startling him “We don't use it. What are you trying to make?”

San’s shirtless, wearing his pants and his hair messy. Looking back at the living room clock, you see it's just five past ten.

Smiling as he approaches you, you forget you must look a mess too when he pecks your lips and barely pulls away “Good morning, beautiful.”

You pretend to cringe at that, pulling away “Oh, God. Morning, dumbass.”

“You like it, you're blushing,” he points out and the pink on your cheek deepens as he's going back to the blender “Does anything work here?”

“The microwave,” you shrug “And the stove. Were you trying to make yourself a…” you look over the ingredients he has pulled out of your fridge “Green juice?”

“I was trying to make both of us a green juice,” he corrects and your heart skips at the immediate domestic attitude he has with you “But now I can tell neither of you drink anything like it, hm? I'm buying you a blender.”

“Please don't.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think that one is broken?”

He hums, huffing out a laugh seconds later and you walk over to him, unsure on how to approach him even though what you did yesterday night and earlier this morning didn't allow your shyness to step in.

Now you're feeling it.

He can tell, because he stops fighting with the steel appliances to grab your waist and pull you close “I wanted to make you breakfast.”

“We can make breakfast together and I can order your green juice,” you compromise and he nods, but he doesn't let you go “And later we can go out on that date you promised me yesterday and we can go over what we're going to tell the two idiots.”

His smile drops.

“Oh, fuck.”

Grimacing, you nod “It was the second thing I thought about after waking up.”

“What was the first?”

“Oh, I was trying to remember if you ever asked me to dance before,” he nods with a smile “Guess what? You didn't.”

He fake gasps at that “I did!”

“No, you didn't!”

“Babe, yes I did,” he insists and you laugh, which prompts him to wrap his hands around you tighter when you try to get away from him “It was when—”

“Oh. My. God. I'm going to be sick again.”

Now when the fuck did Gyuri come back.

And why is Wooyoung with her too, jaw slack as he watches both of you pull away from each other and create a safe distance that doesn't help whatever your best friends just saw.

“It worked?” he asks and you can barely hear him until he hollers like a crazy person “Oh, it worked! I am a genius!”

“Wooyoung, hold me! I'm going to kill them!” Gyuri looks like she's about to launch towards you at any second now, so you close your eyes and accept your fate. But nothing happens “Wait— What worked?”

When you open them again, San is hiding behind you and Gyuri’s back is to both of you as she looks at Wooyoung with, what you assume, murderous intentions.

“Gyuri, let's talk about this,” the black haired guy puts his hands up “You were too drunk to discuss it so I made the choice of— Gyuri, no!”

You burst into laughter when she starts chasing him around the apartment and San giggles as well, only more nervous than delighted by their little cat and mouse game.

He's probably sensing he's next on her hit list.

As if you would let anything happen to him in the first place.

“Stop, stop! I'm sorry, please leave me alone!” you hear Wooyoung’s voice echoing through your hall and in a second he's entering the kitchen, rounding you and San “I'm so happy for you guys, really, this was meant to happ— Stop!” He cries when Gyur catches onto him and yanks his hair to stop him from running.

“Y/N,” she starts, chest heaving and you take a step back, crashing into San’s chest. He holds onto you only to push you a little and protect himself from the fury of your best friend “When I told you fuck him I didn't meant this!”

“I know.”

Wooyoung whines but he can't get away from her grasp so he just accepts it and pouts like a child.

“A-and you!” She points towards the guy resting his chin on your shoulder “How dare you! If this is something casual for you then—”

“I love her.” He defends himself quickly and your heart all but stops at that.

“You do?” Wooyoung coos, amazed at his best friend’s confession.

Gyuri's anger falters at that.

“You… You do?”

“And I love him,” you let out in a shy whisper, smiling a bit “But you already knew that.”

“Of course I already knew that, bitch, I am your other half,” she makes a point to stare at San as she says it, letting Wooyoung go and he massages the part of his scalp that was targeted by his ex “Don't forget that.”

“Y-yes ma'am.”

You laugh again and Woo joins the embrace, eyeing you both expectantly and rolling his eyes when neither of you say anything to him “Well, you are so welcome guys. What are we having for breakfast?”

You and San don't get to go out on that date.

But when you do, he asks you to be his girlfriend the next day.

And when you say yes he almost breaks down in excited tears.

Eventually, even Gyuri comes around and threatens him into treating you right, which means he earned her seal of approval.

You delete the document on your laptop when you find it a month into being his girlfriend and, instead, start drafting your new beginning on it, in first person this time because the story doesn't feel like it belongs to someone else now.

The first line read as it follows:

How did I ever think San and I could be just friends?

If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

#ateez #ateez imagines #ateez x reader #ateez hard hours #ateez reactions #ateez smut #choi san #choi san x reader #choi san smut #san smut #san x reader #san #san imagines #ateez x you #ateez x y/n #san x you #san x y/n #fic; wcbf.

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zreamy · 11 months ago

Text

i'll love you forever

pairing: park sunghoon x fem!reader

summary: you were sunghoon's first everything; first friend, first love, and first heartbreak. after years of quietly crushing on you, he was finally ready to confess. so ready to confess, that he told his parents the two of you were already dating! it was an easy enough lie to keep up and he kept it up for months, what could possibly go wrong? he thought. little did he know, you would have a falling out and stop talking for months.. and then, you'd both get invited to spend a week at home with his parents, who still believe you're his girlfriend.

genre: smut, fluff, angst, college au, childhood best friends to lovers, fake dating

warnings: minors dni, fake dating is pretty mild (sorry), she kinda doesn’t rate him at the start, these two kind of exist in a vacuum a little bit idk i had a self-enforced word count to stick to and broke it.. (im within the 10% allowance !), sunghoon in a vest, sunghoon arms, sunghoon

word count: 21,858

playlist: click here.. (for my non-spotify babes, the main song is light by wave to earth (which for some reason i put last.. whatever))

author's note: for silly @asahicore. happy birthday pooks i hope it's amazing and that u enjoy reading this when u have the time !!! LOL (lots of love) also im never writing without telling you things again this was so absurd.

to everyone else.. ok happy reading also emma did not beta read this so im sure it's missing its charm .. anyway it's for emma not you 😭 anyway i hope u enjoy regardless and lmk ur thoughts! omg this is the first fic im nervous about posting.......... please enjoy or else.

In the three years since Park Sunghoon moved away for university, he’d been doing a pretty good job of going home to see his parents. They’d welcome their baby back to the nest with open arms and wide grins. With a rehearsed level of indifference, his younger sister, Yeji, would say, “Oh, I didn’t know you were coming home this weekend.” when she saw him at the dinner table. Sunghoon pretended to only be marginally hurt by this.

In the last three months, he hasn’t so much as sent a text to his parents.

Or to you.

Ignoring texts from his mother is devastating. Between classes, he watches as, “Hi, sweetie, I love you 😍,” turns into, “Missing you, honey, know you must be busy but spare some time for your old mummy, no?” which turns into, “Getting really worried now, are you doing okay? Has something happened with YN? Talk to me, I love you, my baby boy!”

Ignoring texts from you is easy because texts from you never come.

Sitting at the end of his bed, Sunghoon rereads a text his mother sent a few minutes ago: Please talk to me, son. Really worried and YN isn’t answering calls either. What’s going on with you two?

When he leaves his room, he finds Jake lying on the couch, and with his keys in hand, Sunghoon says, “I’m going home.”

And the drive is great! At least, he tells his mum it is. In truth, the drive home without you was nearly impossible. Your ever-expanding home time playlist buzzed through the speakers in his car, but without you there to screech along to the songs, it wasn’t the same. He felt your absence the most when he stopped to get petrol and you weren’t there behind him struggling to carry enough snacks to feed a small family without offering to pay.

The look of worry on his mum’s face stirs a pit in his stomach. “Why are you so quiet these days? God, you look so tired,” she says, frowning. “Is it school? Or something with YN? It’s not like her not to text back.” Her brows crease as she whispers the word unless. She pulls him into a hug, her chin resting perfectly on his shoulder, and her comforting hand strokes the hair on the back of his head. “Breakups are never easy, honey. I’m so sorry, I know how much you love her.”

Breakups are never easy. The sentence hangs heavy over his head.

Whether she knows it or not, she’s handed him a get-out-of-jail-free card, the opportunity to set things straight, to end this mess once and for all. No further questions, and most importantly, no more lies.

For the first time since he left your flat three months ago, Sunghoon lets himself cry. He’d imagined this moment countless times, his first cry since you ended things. In his mind, it was always intense. Today, as it happens, only a few salty tears leak from his eyes, spilling onto the cuff of his sleeve, darkening the blue cotton in tiny indigo splotches.

“We didn’t break up,” he says in a small voice—for some reason. “I’m just having a hard time.” Neither statement is technically untrue, but the words taste rotten in his mouth.

The tightening grip of his mum’s arms around his body is what brings on the harsh, shoulder-racking sobs he’d been anticipating. For a while, they stand like this, Sunghoon weeping into his mum’s cardigan until she sends him upstairs to lie down, promising a cup of tea that never comes.

His childhood bedroom is chilly, so he changes into clothes he left behind and climbs into bed, pulling his duvet up to his chin. He turns his head to look at the walls and the room around him, everything is exactly where he left it in the summer. It should be comforting, but it’s weird to be home without you.

There are photos of you and him everywhere, growing up and around each other through different stages of life. The two of you together during the summer your family moved in next door, you wore glasses back then and were the first friend he’d made in his life. Sunbathing and sharing earphones at the beach, listening to music together on your iPod classic. Sunghoon in thick glasses with a stiff smile and your arm around him on the first day of high school. Wide grins at the start of this summer, the last time things were okay between you.

Overwhelmed, he stares up at the ceiling, only realising he’s crying when a hot tear slips from his eyes to tickle his ear. Because Sunghoon likes to upset himself, he screws his eyes shut and thinks about the night before you stopped talking.

Though he didn’t know it at the time, you’d left Yeonjun’s place to sit with him in a tiny restaurant on campus, the one you’d only visit to toast to each other’s heartbreaks. It had become a ritual — ever since your first year boyfriend dumped you after two weeks — to cry as much as you wanted and drink as much soju as your bodies could handle before stumbling back to your apartments.

Having spent years suffering from an unrequited crush on his best friend, Sunghoon was always the one to comfort you. But that night was different; you were there to comfort him. It was easy enough to play the part of ‘boy whose crush likes someone else’ because he spent your entire friendship in that role. He’d had no problem accepting his fate, but his composure started to slip when you met Yeonjun. It was the first time you’d dated someone who Sunghoon had reason to be jealous of. In every way, Yeonjun was better than him—taller, funnier, hotter. Sunghoon knew he didn’t stand a chance. He took it personally, you liking Yeonjun instead of him, and let his jealousy consume him from the inside out.

This jealousy led him to start telling you about Minjeong—lying to you about Minjeong, and his feelings for her. She was a girl from a college out of town that he saw on his Instagram Explore page. He followed her by accident, and by some stroke of luck, she followed back. Sunghoon didn’t really have feelings for her — he didn’t even know her — but she was a girl that you didn’t know, so you wouldn’t be able to meddle.

It only took a few weeks for Sunghoon to become so upset about your relationship that he couldn’t hide his emotions anymore. So, in a fit of tears, he told you over the phone that things ended badly with Minjeong, and he was in urgent need of a soju ceremony.

But the night was missing its usual comforts.

It was strange to be the one crying, to see you looking put together and ordering the food. To see you pouring the drinks and raising your glass to propose a toast to ‘Hoonie’s first heartbreak’. You were driving that night, so you only had a tiny sip of soju and let him drink as much as he needed, the way he always did for you, at the same table, in the same restaurant for years.

Hours later, in your car, you entertained his drunken rambles, though he remembers how your lips were set into a frown that he wanted to kiss away while you gripped the steering wheel like you thought it would run from you. Sunghoon was more drunk than he’d been in a while, drunk enough to let you sling his arm over your shoulders and keep him upright until you reached his flat.

The voices coming from Yeji’s room disrupt the memory. He’s thankful.

“Your brother’s going through something, so be nice to him this weekend.” His mother’s voice is her version of hushed—a loud whisper.

Yeji’s response is harder to make out, but he doesn’t miss the way their mum says, “I mean it, missy.”

A dramatic sigh rumbles through Yeji as she barges into his room without knocking. Sunghoon sits up, feeling an ache in his back and crossing his legs.

“Mum told me to lay off you today, which is fine, but before I do, I need to tell you something.”

Yeji pushes the door shut behind her, and the open window makes it slam, both of them flinching from the sudden noise. She pulls her hair out of a silk scrunchie and throws herself on the floor. A pang of irritation forms in his chest, knowing that he could immediately find the empty hanger in his wardrobe where the shirt she’s wearing used to live.

“I hate you and your perfect golden boy image, Hoon. Would it kill you to fail a class for once? I don’t know how I’m supposed to carry on your legacy.” She’s looking up at him, her chin in her hands and irritation written in the crease between her thick brows.

It’s impossible to know if it’s because of Yeji’s complete lack of boundaries or the fact that her ‘perfect, golden boy’ big brother is on track to fail three out of three classes and get cut from the hockey team, but Sunghoon immediately bursts into tears.

“Oh, uh.. I’m sorry?” Yeji offers. “I was kidding if that helps.”

“I’m alright, it’s okay.” The tears don’t stop stinging his eyes. “Why do you want me to change everything about myself?”

With a frown, Yeji pours out her frustration and mild resentment. She doesn’t understand how Sunghoon effortlessly conquers every aspect of life while she struggles. Neither do their parents, who had been baffled by her plummeting grades since she moved to boarding school, especially when Sunghoon’s academic performance has only soared since he left for university. The weight of this perceived injustice pulls Sunghoon’s shoulders down with guilt as she talks about the expectations he has inadvertently set for her.

“But other than that, I’m good.” She shrugs, sitting with her legs out, and leaning back on her palms. “How’s YN?” she asks. It’s clear from the brightness in her voice that she thinks she’s helping.

Sunghoon cries again.

Back on campus, he’s trying to scrape together what’s left of his academic career with the help of two of the smartest guys he knows, and their friend Jay. Though the word ‘friend’ feels a little strong at the moment given the way Jay’s goading him.

Sunghoon rolls his eyes, sitting back in his seat. “There’s nothing you can do that I can’t,” he says, meaning every word.

Jay scoffs, shrugging and raising his brow in a way that, over the years, Sunghoon knows to interpret as his ‘about to say something ridiculous’ look. “Pretty sure I could call YN right now, and she’d answer.”

There’s a pit in Sunghoon’s stomach as Heeseung turns his head in the other direction like he’s been slapped, trembling with stifled laughter. At least Jake doesn’t hide his amusement, throwing his head back in a fit of giggles that draw nasty looks from the other students in the library. Sunghoon doesn’t waste his energy trying to argue because Jay’s right.

Now composed, Heeseung turns back to the table, flipping through some of Sunghoon’s course materials to find whatever his class was doing in class that week. The English Literature class he’s taking — The Modernist Movement: Joyce, Woolf, and Hemingway — is the same class he had to send a million emails over the summer to get enrolled in, but it’s the same one Heeseung aced two years ago. Lucky for him none of the boys seem to be in the mood to make fun of him for trying so hard to have a class in common with you, and then practically failing out of it before the term had started properly.

“This class is, like, beyond easy, dude.” Heeseung pauses to sniffle and twist the stud in his ear. “Everyone in my class aced it. How are you doing so badly already?”

“I only took it because YN thought it’d be fun if we had a class together, but.. I kind of haven’t been going since we stopped talking.” Sunghoon shrugs, pretending to be unaffected.

As if the mere mention of your name has some sort of summoning power, like saying Biggie Smalls in the mirror three times, you appear in his eye line, rounding the corner with a furious stride. Your demeanour crumbles when Jay waves at you, and you grin, waving back, but as soon as you look Sunghoon in the eye again, the rage comes back, and you smack a hand on the table when you reach it, leaning over to him.

“Sunghoon, a word?” you ask.

He thinks you’re asking, but it’s hard to tell with the way you set your jaw afterwards, and the way the warmth of your signature vanilla scent hits him hard. Dazed, Sunghoon lifts a hand, pointing at himself. “Me?”

“Does anyone else at the table answer to Sunghoon?”

“Okay,” he says, somewhat pathetically, nudging Jay for laughing at him.

As slowly as possible, Sunghoon pushes his chair from the table and stands up, following you to the corner of the references section where only anthropology students in scratchy thrift store knits, and Jay, come to check out encyclopaedias by volume. You look good, save for the rage written all over your face—which, honestly, Sunghoon thinks he likes.

Sunghoon isn’t sure what to expect, so he says, “Hey.” He’s being cautious, waiting a moment to gauge your reaction. “What’s gooooood?” His cheeks burn as soon as he closes his mouth around the vowel, but you laugh. You laugh, and it’s beautiful and happy, and you’re laughing because of him—or at him, but he’s glad either way.

Annoyance quickly clears all traces of amusement on your face. “Were you ever going to tell me we’re spending next week at Mum and Dad’s?” you ask.

Sunghoon gasps dramatically, clicking his fingers. “I knew there was something I’ve been meaning to do.”

His attempt at lightening the mood falls flat, and you only nudge his shoulder gently, sighing. “Can you be serious? For once in your life, even for a second, can you please think about how the things you say affect me?” You’re frowning, crossing your arms over your chest and looking at your feet. “It’s not fair, Sunghoon. For you to keep saying things—making plans involving me and then acting like I’m the bad guy when I turn you down.”

“I don’t think you’re the bad guy at all,” Sunghoon admits. “If anyone is in the wrong, it’s me, I guess.”

You scoff, looking at him like you hate him. “You guess? Are you serious?” You look furious, but you sound hurt and Sunghoon hates it. Hates himself. “I can’t have this conversation with you right now. Tell mum I’m sick, and it’s contagious.” You roll your eyes and walk away, leaving Sunghoon alone with his thoughts and judgemental stares from students in crochet scarves so long they graze the floor.

He sighs, slumping against the wall. How does he keep getting it wrong with you?

Back at the table, Sunghoon manages to act like he’s not falling apart and makes some serious headway on his missing assignments with Heeseung’s help before they call it a day as the sun starts to set.

When he gets home, he lies down on his bedroom floor, spending hours poring over the conversation you had. Over the minute changes in your facial expression, the tone of your voice, and the endless list of things he should have done, rather than watch you walk away.

The moment feels familiar, both identical to and worlds apart from what happened after you left three months ago. When he managed to scrape the last shreds of his dignity from the kitchen table, he dragged his feet to his room and lay down like he is now, face to the rug. That day, he left his door open and lay so still that Jake thought he was dead. Sunghoon remembers wishing he had been.

For once in your life, even for a second, can you please think about how the things you say affect me? The words run on a loop in his mind, over and over, until he can’t remember the order of the sentence or where you put emphasis. They’re cutting all the same.

Sunghoon sighs into the itchy fibres of his black rug before rolling onto his back. In the diminishing purple light of the setting sun. he looks at the walls of his room. At the Fleetwood Mac poster, he stole from Jay when they moved out of their first year dorm, that curls away from the wall towards the ceiling—a diagonal strip of shiny tape being the only indication of the otherwise invisible tear through the face of Stevie Nicks.

He’s glad when his phone rings, cutting through the quiet, though the sight of your name and the anatomical heart emoji next to it only dampens his spirit. Reluctantly, Sunghoon answers the phone, holding it to his ear.

“I just got off the phone with Dad..” You trail off. Tangible silence follows, so thick it weighs on his chest. “I’ll go home with you.”

“You will?”

“Yes. Goodbye.”

Sunghoon reaches your flat at five in the evening. You don’t smile when you open the door for him, nor do you invite him in. Instead, you dump your bag at your feet and he cringes, looking from the floor to you. You’re aggressively beautiful and cosy-looking as you pull a jacket over the sweater you wore that night. Sunghoon’s heart aches in his chest and he wonders if you even realise. Suddenly, the memory of the last thing you said the morning after hits him like a truck: Then let’s not be friends at all.

A familiar weight lands on his shoulder—your hand. Concern lines your eyes as you ask if he’s okay.

With a lump in his throat, Sunghoon nods.

In the discomfort of his car, the two of you sit in silence while he starts the drive home.

“How’s Yeonjun,” he asks, eyes flicking towards you but regretting it immediately when he sees how you clench your jaw.

“No,” you say simply, shaking your head. “You don’t get to ask me about him.”

These are the only words you exchange until Sunghoon stops for petrol. He has enough fuel for the rest of the journey, but he feels like dying and thinks the fresh air might quell his thoughts of running his car off the road. Like always, the two of you get out and head into the kiosk, where he follows you wordlessly through the aisles, watching you debate on snack choices before settling on the same things you always get. Sunghoon pays for your snacks and you roll your eyes but don’t protest, mumbling thanks as you take them into your arms, leading the way back outside.

He knows he needs to tell you before you reach the house, but he’s not entirely sure how to say it—so he just does. “My, uh.. my parents think we’re dating.”

You stop so suddenly in front of him that he almost bumps into you. Stepping around you, Sunghoon keeps walking.

Over the top of his car, he watches your face cycle through all five stages of grief until anger comes back around in the loop as you scoff. “Why do they think that?” Your face is devoid of expression now, the blankness over your features dragging a sharp chill over his spine.

He stares blankly at you, processing. “Because I told them we’re dating,” he mumbles.

“Why did you.. do that?” You tilt your head, eyes pressing shut in a long blink. “What are you even talking about? Why did you.. What?”

A thin layer of sweat coats his palms despite the cold. Why did he do that? “We can stage a breakup during the trip or say we broke up right now,” Sunghoon offers. “Just one night, YN, please.”

The wind whistles by, ruffling your hair and jacket that you hug tightly to your chest. Behind you, Sunghoon takes note of the group of girls standing by the pumps, all five of them jerking their heads abruptly when they notice him watching, suddenly finding interest in the scattered litter and flickering halogen bulbs in the steel canopy over their heads.

You’re staring when he looks back at you, nostrils twitching with a sniffle before you sigh. “Or we could say that you’re a liar and end things there,” you say. “Or better yet, you go down there on your own and tell them the truth.”

Sunghoon’s gaze drops, his thoughts racing in his mind. He knows you’re right. At some point, his parents will have to find out, and it’d be better for them to find out now. Sunghoon sighs, nodding. “Alright,” he concedes. “I’ll take you back.”

An angry laugh comes out of you as you shake your head. “No need, I’ll walk.”

The station you’re at is neatly nestled in the middle of nowhere, on a road so narrow he’s not even sure it has a pavement. You’re halfway through the three-hour drive, so there’s no telling how long the walk would be, never mind the fact that the sun is already setting and it’s deep enough into October for the wind to sting.

“From here?” he asks, incredulous.

“Yes, open the boot so I can get my bag.”

Sunghoon can only bring himself to say your name, a desperate whisper.

“Open the boot.”

He repeats your name as if it’ll make a difference, he’s pleading with you, begging—though he doesn’t know for what.

You go to the back of his car where Sunghoon joins you, a pit in his stomach when you step away. With misty eyes, you look up at him and his heart breaks. “Please.”

Sunghoon knows you well enough to know that you’re not actually going to attempt the walk home but also knows that you won’t back down if he keeps challenging you. He nods, opening the boot for you and getting into the driver’s seat—your move.

You stand there, unmoving, and long enough passes that he thinks you’ll actually leave. The boot closes softly and you join him in the passenger seat. You sigh, buckling your seatbelt. “Let’s just get this over with.”

For the rest of the journey, you sit in silence as Sunghoon briefs you on the relationship, fighting a smile as he thinks about being your boyfriend—even if only for a night. You scoff when he ‘reminds’ you that you’ve been together for four months now and the only reason you haven’t been able to come home recently is that your schedules don’t match up very well anymore—which couldn’t be further from the truth as, before term started, you went out to celebrate the fact that your class schedules couldn’t be more suited for seeing each other.

Finally, at Sunghoon’s childhood home, the two of you smile and laugh for his parents before going to bed. Your relationship has only made his mother more averse to the idea of you sharing a room under her roof than she had been when you were younger. He’s relieved about this, and in the solitude of his bedroom, he lies on the duvet of his twin bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the last few hours.

With his parents, you’d sat up in the living room watching TV. They sat on the couch together, his mum nestled in his dad’s side, while you two sat on the couch opposite, mirroring their position. If your complete stiffness was anything to go by, you were less than comfortable with his arm around you and Sunghoon felt terrible for begging you to go along with this. It was after midnight when you all went upstairs and you let him kiss your forehead before all but slamming the door to the guest room in his face. His heart twirled and his mum beamed at him before saying goodnight again.

Now, at 3 a.m. he can’t sleep. Flinching at the knock on his door, he furrows his brows and goes to open it. It’s you. Standing there with your hair scraped away from your face in one of his t-shirts. Your eyes are red, brimmed with tears as you step into his room and sit on his bed.

He closes the door softly, heart aching at the sight of you so upset, and when he sits next to you, his heart tears apart because you move over, putting a distance between you. It falls out of his chest onto the floor when he realises you’re not wearing your necklace.

Sunghoon suspected you might have stopped wearing it, it only made sense that if you didn’t want him, you wouldn’t want the necklace he bought for you either, but at least earlier, your sweatshirt sat so high he couldn’t see if you had it on or not.

It was a gift for your sixteenth birthday, after your first heartbreak. He was so upset and angry that you let some loser hurt you that way, upset and angry that someone could be loved by you and fuck it up. Sunghoon was inspired by Jay, who’d gotten a pretty necklace for his girlfriend, and talked about her cute reaction for weeks, how happy she was to have a piece of him with her all the time. It was a locket, with a picture of Jay in one side and a picture of her in the other so the pictures would kiss when she wore it.

While at the jewellers with Jake, Sunghoon thought something like that might be a bit much for the two of you and eventually picked out an equally pretty piece with his first initial on it. He wrote a corny note to put in the box, something about how ‘boys come and go but Sunghoon is forever’ and gave it to you with trembling hands a few nights later—it was the first time he ever made you cry. Immediately, he thought he’d done something wrong and was ready to snatch the box and run back to the jewellers (even though he trashed the receipt). You hugged him and told him you loved him. Sunghoon’s been riding that high ever since.

Until tonight at least.

“Are you okay?” he whispers.

“I’ll do it, Hoon.” Your eyes lift from the floor to meet his gaze. “For as long as you need me to, I’ll pretend.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, Sunghoon feels lighter, an unbearable weight slipping from his shoulders. You haven’t called him ‘Hoon’ in ages, and he can’t tell if you’ve said it out of vulnerability, or even noticed that you’ve said it at all, but it warms his heart nonetheless. However, he’s not fully at ease, still curious about your sudden change of heart and why you’re crying.

“What happened?”

You pull him into a hug, and his eyes bulge out of his head. “It doesn’t matter,” you say, the words muffled by the skin at the base of his neck.

For as long as he’s known you, you’ve smelled like vanilla, a sweet warmth that grounds him. Yet it’s only after these months apart that he’s able to put a name to the sensation: home. The realisation of how much he’s missed this feeling, missed you, floods him with a rush of emotion so overwhelming he can’t find the words to press the issue. A moment passes before he remembers to hug you back, his arms finally wrapping around you, pulling you close, and you sink into his hold. Months ago, he would have kissed the top of your head and mumbled reassurance into your hair, but tonight, Sunghoon settles for stroking the back of your head and hopes it’s enough.

“You can talk to me, you know? You can always talk to me.”

A heavy silence follows, sharp as a dagger—scraping his skin, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge and lodging itself between his shoulder blades. Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat when you cling onto him even tighter, shifting so close you’ve had to settle in his lap. His heart races in his chest, pounding a rhythm so loud it fills the room.

Finally, you speak, assuring him that you know and that you’re okay. At this, Sunghoon holds you as tight as he can, and neither of you speaks for the rest of the night. You fall asleep like this, in his arms, so deeply that you don’t even stir when he lies down.

Rubbing your back, he watches the clock on his nightstand, the piercing green LED digits cycling through two whole hours right before his stinging eyes until you wake up. Sunghoon presses his eyes shut, pretending to be asleep when you kiss his cheek and leave his room.

For the entire morning, you stay in your room, and although Sunghoon is concerned, he decides not to bother you. In the afternoon, he sits at the dining table with his mum, listening as she talks about work. When she asks him, he gets up to make a cup of tea for her. It’s at that moment when you finally come downstairs, looking so effortlessly pretty. Your hair is still damp from the shower, and you’re bundled up in one of his old sweatshirts. There’s a bright grin on your face that leaves his heart thudding.

“Baby!” you squeal when you see him, charging towards him and wrapping your arms around him from behind. “Good morning.” Your words are muffled against the back of his t-shirt, and the four-letter word, and the sugar coating it, make his cheeks burn.

“It’s great to see you too, YN,” his mum says with a smile. “My night was amazing; I slept very well and had no dreams.”

You let go of Sunghoon and walk over to the table, kissing his mum on the cheek and wishing her a good morning as well. “Sorry, mum, how are you?”

His mother doesn’t seem to have the heart to correct you either, allowing your 3 p.m. ‘good morning’ to go unnoticed.

Sunghoon carefully fills both mugs to the brim and, with extra caution, carries them to the table. He places a steaming cup of peppermint tea in front of his mum and a milky coffee in front of you. A warm smile spreads across your face as you mouth a ‘thank you’, and his knees turn to jelly.

The next day, after eating an early dinner with his parents at the table, the four of you go out on a walk along the bike path you used to take for school. His parents have gone ahead, not intentionally, but because Sunghoon can’t stop you from dragging your feet.

As with most things in the town where you grew up, nothing about the trail has changed. The leaves are yellowing in standard form for the season, and crunching under his feet with each step he takes. The only foreign experience is the silence that you’re determined to uphold. Everything Sunghoon says to you is met with either a hum, a nod, or no acknowledgement at all. At this point, he feels like he could drop dead at your side and the most you’d do is step over his body like a fallen branch.

After letting you go ahead, the weathered slats of the wooden footbridge sag in the middle under his tread. It’s been like this for as long as he can remember and he wonders how nothing has been done about it. The stream rushes under it, loud and unruly, the smell of wet grass both comforting and suffocating as you look over the railing. It’s like something from a postcard, the low-hanging branches sweeping back and forth under the breeze, the grass lush and green around the path, murky water thrashing against the mud and rocks underneath with you in the middle of the frame, peering over the edge.

You keep walking when Sunghoon approaches, leaving him alone on the creaky bridge with nothing but the ache in his chest. He looks up, staring at the grey clouds in the sky through the gaps in the leaves, and sighs.

Eventually, he catches up with you, grabbing your hand and locking his fingers with yours when his parents slow down. You stiffen, looking up at him with cut eyes and a creased brow. “What are you doing?”

Sunghoon matches your clipped tone. “Holding my girlfriend’s hand.”

“No one’s looking, boyfriend.”

“You think my parents aren’t going to wonder why we’re lagging behind?”

A scoff—your fingers remain defiantly stiff. “Do you think your parents are going to care whether or not we’re holding hands?”

“My mum might after the show you put on yesterday afternoon, baby.” Bitterness covers the word like a blanket, a stark departure from how you said it.

A long sigh rumbles its way out of you before you fix your lips into a strained grin. “Sorry, sweetheart, this is my first time pretending to be in love.”

As your words hang in the air, Sunghoon’s emotions brew like a storm within him. Frustration gnaws at his patience. All hopes for a smooth week are dashed, though determination simmers in his chest with a strong resolve to make this work, to fix your relationship. It doesn’t stop the sharp pang of hurt piercing his stomach—he knows you don’t feel the same way, he knows you’re faking, but the word ‘pretending’ hits him like a truck anyway.

“We held hands all the time when we were friends,” he points out.

Your smile drops immediately, hurt flashing behind your eyes. “Yeah, and now we’re not.”

If there was a competition for who could hurt Sunghoon’s feelings the most, you’d be a shoo-in for first place. With distinction.

“Exactly!” he says, feeling the sting of his own words. “Because now we’re dating.”

At the sight of his mum turning around, you switch up in an instant. Lock your fingers with his, wrapping an arm around his bicep, leaning into him, giggling. It’s forced but his parents are far enough away that all that matters is the curve of your lips.

“You two okay back there?” she asks.

“Perfect! I feel like a kid again!” you call back, beaming up at Sunghoon in a way that makes his stomach flutter even though it doesn’t meet your eyes.

The two of you don’t talk at all when you get home, with you hugging his parents goodnight and running up the stairs.

“She’s not feeling too well,” he explains, nodding when his dad tells him to make you some tea.

His parents spend the whole day at work, and you spend the whole day following him around like a shadow until the evening when they return. He doesn’t pretend not to like it.

Sunghoon helps you make dinner, turning leftover rice into fried rice with the help of some eggs and vegetables. It’s nice moving around the kitchen with you, watching you scramble eggs in his t-shirt and bump his hip with a playful frown when he eats some of the peppers you’re chopping.

His parents watch from the table, cooing over the two of you and he does his best to fight the blush forming on his cheeks and neck. Embarrassed, he hugs you from behind, hiding his face in your neck—the scent of your coconut conditioner mixing with your vanilla perfume doesn’t do anything to stop the flush.

Over a bottle of wine, the four of you eat together at the table, swapping stories about your days. Sunghoon tries to hide his surprise as you lie about the time you spent at the play park by your primary school, competing for height on the swings and spinning on the roundabout until you couldn’t stand up. You grin at him, and it meets your eyes as you hold his hand under the table, and kiss his cheek.

After eating, his parents head upstairs, leaving to clean up together. You hum a song he’s never heard as you load the dishwasher, carefully placing the plates and cutlery in the rack, shaking your head when he hands you the glasses you’d used.

“Leave ours,” you say. “If you want.”

Sunghoon nods, putting them back on the table, where you sit in the seat across from the one he was sitting in. He sits too, staying quiet rather than saying the wrong thing. You don’t speak either. It’s reminiscent of the past—the hours you’d spend in the same room, only speaking to share a funny post you’d come across or to ask if you were hungry.

His eyes track your movements—reaching for the half-empty bottle on the table to pour yourself another glass, filling it to the brim. Before putting it down, you offer him some, filling his glass too when he nods. The three glasses of wine he’s already had must be the reason he wants to reach across the table and hold your hand, run his thumb over the soft skin on the back of it.

Sunghoon doesn’t know why you’ve been so nice to him all day or why it makes his chest hurt.

“You know you don’t have to be nice to me when we’re alone, right?” The words come out before he can stop them.

Over the top of your glass, your brows knit together. A sound of confusion, a low hum, comes from your throat as you try to finish your sip. “What?” you ask finally.

“I only asked you to do this because of my parents, you know? You don’t have to sit or talk with me when they’re not around.”

Sunghoon’s known you long enough to recognise the look that flashes across your face. The way your eyes narrow and your brows tug together, the little pout that sets on your lips before you speak; you’re hurt.

“Why can’t I just be nice to you because it’s the right thing to do?”

Because it hurts, is what he wants to say. He wants to cry, to beg you to forget everything he said that day. “Because I don’t want to make you any more uncomfortable than I already have.” Is what he settles for.

Your face softens. “I don’t feel uncomfortable around you, Hoon. We were best friends for ages, I don’t think you could ever make me uncomfortable.” You pause to take a gulp of wine. “Why can’t I just want to be nice to you?”

Sunghoon has to chew on his cheek to distract himself from how much your word choice stings. The implications of were and all of your past tense. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“What for?”

“Everything.”

There’s a sadness in the way you run your fingers on the base of your glass. The way you chew on your lip, how your hair falls when you tilt your head and how it moves when you shake it. “It’s not your fault,” you say. “I don’t know anyone who would choose to have unrequited feelings for their best friend.”

Wow, he thinks. You’re on a roll. Sunghoon wonders if you’re meticulously choosing your phrasing to upset him. Wonders why you feel the need to remind him that his feelings aren’t reciprocated as if he didn’t live through and spend hours reliving the day he confessed.

“But I didn’t have to tell you about it. It was unfair of me to spring that on you when I knew about Yeonjun.”

“Did you.. did you think I was going to leave him for you?”

“Maybe?” Sunghoon chews on his lip—he has no idea what he thought would happen. “I think I thought I loved you enough for both of us, that you might play the part for fun or out of curiosity, and.. I don’t know, just learn to love me.”

“Hoon,” you whisper, frowning. “How could you even think about settling for something like that?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “It’s not settling if it’s you.”

Silence takes a seat at the table after he speaks, interrupted only by the ticking clock on the wall—a glittery mess of scrapbooking paper and washi tape layered over each other that Yeji had decorated at summer camp years ago. You’re picking at your fingernails, letting flecks of black polish fall to the table, stark against the varnished oak.

“I know it’s not my place to ask,” Sunghoon starts after a while, hesitant and only continuing when you nod. “But what did Yeonjun say when you told him? About.. everything?”

You take a long sip from your glass and sit quietly for so long that he thinks you’re not going to answer him—he doesn’t blame you.

“I didn’t.”

He waits for you to elaborate. You don’t.

Sunghoon nods slowly, deciding not to ask any follow-up questions. Instead, he takes another drink, scrunching his nose at the bitter taste. “He didn’t ask why we stopped hanging out?” he blurts out.

“I told him we fell out but I didn’t say why.” You shrug, but your posture is stiff.

“Where did you tell him you were going to be this week?” He knows it’s not his business at all, that he’s pushing your boundaries, but he can’t help his curiosity.

“Nowhere.”

“You told him you were staying on campus?”

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Your gaze shifts, avoiding his as you toy with the stem of your glass. You drum your nails against it, letting the dull clink ring out.

“So you just left?”

“Does it make a difference to you?”

Sunghoon nods.

For a while, you tug at the drawstrings on your hoodie, pursing your lips to the side, considering this. “Yeonjun and I aren’t together anymore.” Your admission is so shocking that Sunghoon’s jaw drops. He tries to cover his surprise by coughing, his tongue sticking out like a small child. “I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want you to think it was because of you.”

Sunghoon’s thoughts move at lightspeed, too fast for him to catch onto any of them and process this information. His emotions compete with each other—disbelief, guilt, and a painful glimmer of hope he hadn’t dared to acknowledge until now all at the forefront.

“Was it?” he asks. “Because of me?”

You scoff—an incredulous sound that doesn’t match the sad look on your face. “I don’t know, Sunghoon. Do you think my boyfriend used me to make his ex jealous because of you?”

He’s not sure what he expected you to say, but this is.. Complete disbelief eclipses him as his heart sinks in his chest, shock, and guilt bubbling in his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he says after too long. “That I wasn’t there. That I haven’t been there.”

“You didn’t know,” you say, gaze softening as you look up at him.

“But I made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me about it.”

You shake your head. “I made me feel like I couldn’t talk to you about it. All you did was change the friendship, I’m the one who ended it.”

“I still should’ve been there.”

“You’re here now, right?”

Sunghoon nods, earnestly. “Always.”

Only one thing comes to mind when you repeat the word ‘always’ before taking a sip from your glass, downing its contents. Sunghoon gets up and crosses the room with wobbly steps to open the fridge, where he pulls out as many bottles of soju as he can hold in his hands and puts them down on the table. He goes back to collect some glasses from the cabinet, puts some of the leftover fried rice from dinner into the microwave, and brings it all over when it’s done, with bowls and utensils. You watch him with a fond smile as he opens a bottle and he hopes you think the flush on his cheeks is from all the drinking you’ve been doing.

“Is it bad that I’ve missed doing this?” You’re grinning now.

Sunghoon shakes his head, raising his glass. “To YN’s fifteenth heartbreak.”

You grin, clinking the rim of your glass against his. “To YN’s fifteenth heartbreak,” you repeat.

Both of you down the glasses, and Sunghoon refills them, pouring the soju with an oddly steady hand. As you eat spoonfuls of rice and sip your drinks, silence settles over the room. The soft glow of the kitchen lights forms a warm ambience, a cosy familiarity that brings up simple memories—doing homework together at the table while gossiping about your classmates, the first New Year after you were both eighteen and had your first drink with his parents.

For at least an hour, the only sounds are the occasional clinks of forks against bowls, glasses hitting the table, the faint hum of the refrigerator and the steady tick of Yeji’s clock. Sunghoon’s eyes meet yours, and he can’t help but notice the slight change in your expression when they do.

You clear your throat, running a hand through your hair. “This is my sixteenth, actually.”

“What?”

You take a small sip of soju, staring down at the table. “My fifteenth heartbreak was losing you. Yeonjun is my sixteenth.”

In the two days since your soju ceremony, Sunghoon finds himself sinking into the role of your boyfriend like a hot bath. But there’s no use pretending it doesn’t hurt. Pretending it doesn’t hurt when you kiss his cheek before bed, or when you reach out to push the hair out of his face or snuggle into his side on the couch; because it does hurt—a lot. It hurts to think that in three days when you put your bags in the boot of his car, you’ll sit in silence all the way home. When he drops you off at your flat, you’ll close the door in his face and stop talking to him again. These realisations are harder to confront when he’s alone in his room, like now.

About an hour ago, you asked if you could borrow his car, saying there was something you needed to do on your own. It seemed important, so he handed over his keys with no question. Sighing, Sunghoon gets up from his bed and heads to the shower, where he jerks off to clear his mind. On his way back to his room, he notices the light leaking from the open kitchen door that illuminates the landing.

He hears the lock on the front door clicking, and stands at the top of the stairs, dripping water onto the carpet while listening attentively. His ears perk up when he hears a gasp—his mother.

“What’s this for?” she asks.

“I just..” You trail off. “I know it’s not much, but I wanted to thank you both for always looking after me.” You pause, and Sunghoon holds his breath, waiting. Your voice trembles as you continue. “It’s been hard since my parents went back home, and I guess it was still hard when they were here, but you both supported me. I don’t think I could’ve managed without you guys. I want to make you guys proud, you know? And I’m trying, really, so this is me saying thank you. I’m sorry it took me so long.”

He grips the railing by the landing, digging his nails into the wood until they start hurting—an ache in his fingertips that makes him wince.

An odd feeling settles in his stomach, a bittersweetness tinged in his fondness for you, and the gentle shock of realising how much his parents have done for you. Growing up, you became an honorary member of Sunghoon’s family. His parents showered you with gifts during holidays and birthdays, which you often celebrated with them rather than your own family.

The memory of your parents’ sudden decision to move across the country still lingers, and Sunghoon vividly recalls the tearful conversation he overheard at the top of the stairs. Your parents understood the enormity of their request but had earnestly asked if Sunghoon’s parents could continue looking after you.

His chest tightens when you start crying.

“You don’t have to thank us for anything, sweetie. Just you being here and taking care of our boy is more than enough thanks. You never forget our birthdays, and you always come and visit when you can. You’re doing a great job, and you should give yourself some credit,” his dad says, a little choked up. “We’ve always been proud of you.”

Sunghoon’s eyes sting with tears and his skin gets dry in the spots where the water from the shower is evaporating. He presses his fingers to his closed eyes, forcing a few tears to fall and walks the rest of the way to his room with his eyes shut. He can’t hear anything through his closed bedroom door, which he decides is a good thing as he coats himself in moisturiser and swipes deodorant under his arms with intention to spend the whole night alone. Once he’s dressed, he gets into bed and pretends not to be bothered by the way his wet hair dampens his pillow. Under the duvet, he tosses and turns before sighing and heading to Yeji’s room.

In her absence, the room’s subtle transformation is stark. The sage green-painted walls, once a backdrop to the A3 faces of Wave to Earth and Beabadoobee, now bear the faint imprints of those missing posters. Tiny, shadowy rectangles are the only remnants of the 6x4-sized pictures of her and her friends, of her and Sunghoon, that she took away with her to school.

Her hairdryer is still on her desk where she’d left it for him to use and he sits in her stiff wooden chair, plugging it in. The airflow starts immediately, hot and loud, humming throughout the space as he runs his fingers through his wet hair, feeling cosy under the heat. His shampoo is fresh and soapy scented under his nose, and his reflection watches him in Yeji’s mirror, eyes red and concerned while his hair blows around his head. Sunghoon closes his eyes and finishes his hair, sighing as he lets his worries slip under the whir of the fan.

Finished, he shuts off the dryer and opens his eyes, flinching at your reflection in the doorway behind him with a soft smile on your face. “Mum and Dad are going to open a bottle of wine if you want to join,” you say, meeting his eyes in the mirror.

Sunghoon can’t find it in himself to speak, only nodding in response. You smile wider but don’t move. He unplugs the hairdryer and leaves it on the desk where he found it before crossing the room. Without giving himself a chance to think about it, he pulls you into a hug and kisses the top of your head, smiling into your hair when you wrap your arms around his waist, holding him closer.

You’re sitting on the edge of the bathtub, mumbling sleepily that you’re never going to drink again, and Sunghoon leans over the sink brushing his teeth, he’s glad you have the decency to cover your mouth as you speak.

“Brush your teeth and go back to sleep then,” he mumbles around his toothbrush.

You don’t respond.

Sunghoon sighs through his nose, spitting foamy toothpaste into the sink, leaving bubbly, blue splatters on the porcelain. “And quit staring at me, I can feel your beady little eyes on the back of my neck and it’s freaking me out.”

“But you’re so pretty,” you coo.

There’s a flutter in his stomach and he rinses off the sink and his mouth, buying himself some time. With a hand on the Listerine, he lifts his gaze to meet yours in the mirror and stops short. You’re still staring at him, features soft and glowing under the afternoon light. You look like an angel; a gentle smile spreading over your lips, and a sleepy glint sparkling in your eyes, wide and gorgeous as you watch him. Sunghoon gulps, mumbling his thanks and looking back at himself. He hopes you can’t see the flush on his cheeks.

“Go back to sleep,” he says.

“Will you come and lie down with me if I do?” Your voice is a sleepy drawl, coming out in a slow, high-pitched slur, and your eyes are closing on themselves.

Lying down doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, especially not if it’s with you, so he nods. “If you brush your teeth, then yeah, baby, I’ll lie down with you.”

You chuckle softly at Sunghoon’s agreement, the sound carrying a mix of exhaustion and genuine amusement, showing no repulsion to him calling you the B-word. He didn’t mean to, it’s been a confusing few days. You nod, saluting to him and getting up to join him by the sink, using your hip to bump him out of the way, but he feels like he’s glued to the spot.

“Move, baby,” you mumble sleepily, reaching for your toothbrush. “We can cuddle in my bed,” you suggest, to which Sunghoon only nods, taking your words as a cue to unstick his feet from the floor and go to your room, playing the word ‘baby’ on a loop in his head.

He stands in the doorway staring at your bed, the duvet is all crumpled in the middle, and the pillows are in an L shape at the top corner. He sighs, he can’t go on like this, can’t stand around hoping even a tiny part of you called him ‘baby’ and it meant something for you as it did for him. It’s not fair for him to project his feelings on you like this, but he can’t help it. You’re already pretending for his parents, so would it be so bad to pretend for his sake as well? Even if only until the day after tomorrow when you leave?

The sound of the bathroom door shutting behind you snaps him out of his thoughts, your bright smile making his heart race when you tug him by the sleeve to your bed where the mattress dips underneath you as you curl into his form, resting your head on his chest and falling asleep. You’ve shared the bed before, countless times, but he knows you’ve only asked him because you’re tired. Because your brain is foggy with drowsiness that clouds your judgement, not because you want him there, not because you miss him when he’s two doors down the hall, tossing and turning at night thinking about you. He wonders absently if you can feel his aching heart beating through his chest, a painful, yet all too familiar rhythm that pulls his own eyes shut, plunging him into a deep sleep too.

It’s dark in the room when he wakes up, the sun already down behind the curtains and the soft yellow of the bedside lamp casting a glow around the space. You’re staring up at him, smiling and you don’t look away when he catches you. “What is it?” he asks, voice thick with sleep.

“Nothing,” you mumble. “I just missed you.” Sunghoon has no time to respond or even register what you said before you clear your throat, speaking again. “Come on, dad’s cooking tonight, he’ll need help.”

Helping Sunghoon’s dad with dinner always looks an awful lot like Sunghoon eating snacks on the kitchen counter and staring at you as you help his dad cook. Tonight is no exception, he’s sitting on the island, and his snack of choice is a family pack of Chilli Heatwave Doritos his mum bought for Yeji. He’ll have to remember to replace them before leaving seeing as he’s reaching the halfway point.

You go back and forth with his dad about measurements, with you rummaging through the drawers for measuring cups while his dad says it’s best to trust your gut. Reluctantly, you nod, chewing the inside of your cheek as you watch him eyeball the seasoning.

The gas stove turns the kitchen into an oven, and you complain about it while opening a window, pulling your hoodie over your head and leaving it in Sunghoon’s lap. Time stops when you grin at him, the light from the stove hood illuminating the necklace you’re wearing, his initial resting on your chest and glowing under the light. He chokes around a crisp when he sees it, catching your attention with his coughing.

“You’ll spoil your dinner, snacking like that, baby,” you scold, using a hand to push his knee. “We’re almost done, I swear.”

All he can do is nod, cheeks burning as he folds the crisp packet over before putting it back in the bread bin where he found it.

“Wow,” his dad says, resting his hands on his hips and shaking his head in amusement. “Being in love looks good on him, he’d never have listened if I said that.”

It’s already your last day when Sunghoon picks up Yeji from school. She grumbles for the entire half-hour drive and all the way to the front door about why the two of you couldn’t have started the trip today instead of ending it, but all of her irritation dissolves when she sees you in the hallway, leaving the front door wide open to fling her arms around you. You and Yeji exchange compliments for a while — You look so pretty. No, you look so pretty. I love your hair. I love your hair. — as Sunghoon locks the door and watches with a smile.

“God.” Yeji sighs, holding you by the waist and craning her neck up to look at you, as you push some of her hair from her face, pinning back her wispy bangs with the palm of your hand. Yeji giggles. “I’m so happy you two are together, even though I have no idea what a girl like you sees in my loser brother.”

Sunghoon rolls his eyes, leaning back against the wall. Despite his mild irritation at Yeji’s words, he finds the sight of you with her so adorable his stomach flutters. Over the top of Yeji’s head, you look at him with a fond smile. “He’s not so bad.”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but Sunghoon takes it to heart.

Like always, Yeji manages to capture your undivided attention and the two of you giggle and whisper with each other all afternoon while Sunghoon watches, too enamoured by the sight to care about being left out. An hour or so passes like this, until his parents get home from work, excited to see Yeji after a few weeks, and you leave her side, coming to cuddle with Sunghoon instead.

It’s nice being home with everyone, laughing and sharing a meal before his family walks the two of you to his car with at least a month’s worth of cooked food for you to share at university. Yeji makes you pinky promise that she can visit you and waves with a pout on her face until the car is out of view.

Contrary to what he’d been expecting, the drive back is nice. Your playlist is on, and you’re telling him about all the new songs you added, catching him up on things with Chaewon and Yunjin, and all the things you got up to in the time you spent apart. You tell him about a new café that opened up near your place and how you’ll have to go together when he has the time, and Sunghoon bites his tongue before telling you that he always has time for you. The first half of the trip goes on like this but you start dozing off around the halfway mark, your sentences becoming few and far between, eventually turning into half-mumbled thoughts that end prematurely.

You’re still asleep when he reaches your flat, head propped up against the window with your soft lips parted, looking too pretty and cosy to wake up. Instead, he drives in circles around your block, deciding to wait for you to wake up on your own. It only takes a half-hour but you blink your eyes open, stretching your neck before looking around and out the car window, recognising the street. You don’t say anything, only smiling when you look at him, a small curve of your lips that makes his heart race.

He gets out of the car with you, opening the boot to get your bag before pulling you into his chest for a hug, liking the way your arms settle around his waist. “Thank you,” he mumbles into your hair.

Sunghoon doesn’t follow you when you take your bag from him, only watching from the back of his car. You don’t notice until you reach the main door, looking over your shoulder and frowning at him. “Aren’t you going to walk me up?”

The two of you walk in silence up four flights of stairs as the lift in your building is out of order. Your bag feels much heavier in his hand now than it did outside. At your door, he watches you dig around for your keys, sighing with relief when you find them.

“Do you want to come in?” you ask from your open doorway.

“I—uh—I have training in the morning and I’m already pretty tired, so..” He trails off.

Unfazed, you nod. “Right, of course. I had fun this week.”

“Yeah, me too.”

You smile at him, sweet and sincere. “Text me when you get home, yeah?”

Sunghoon nods, saying goodbye. Out of habit, he doesn’t leave your doorstep until he hears the lock click shut, and walks back to his car with his head down.

True to his word, he sends you a text to let you know he got back to his place safely and you read it immediately but don’t reply. It’s empty in the apartment, Jake is out with his football team and the space is larger than usual in his absence. Far too tired to even consider going out and joining him, Sunghoon goes through his night routine, putting his phone on the charger and stepping into the shower where he spends entirely too long wishing he could live in this week forever as he scrubs his body. With brushed teeth and damp hair, he goes back into his room where his phone lights up with a notification; a text, from you.

YN🫀: i’m glad you got home okay, i just got into bed :) i don’t want to make you uncomfortable or overstep or anything and you can say no (obviously).. i’ve been missing you so much and didn’t know how to reach out or if you wanted me to but i had soooo much fun this week and spending time with you again made me happy, so i’d like it if we could keep hanging out, like before yk? ik it’s a long shot ahahaha but just say you’ll think about it?

hoonie: You’re not overstepping at all, I’ve missed you too, so bad. I had soooo much fun this week as well and I’d like it a lot if we kept hanging out, thank you for agreeing and coming along 😚 If you’re free after Lit tmrw you could come over? Or we could go out and do something, whatever you prefer

hoonie: I missed you so much..

hoonie: 🤍

The texts greet you as the first rays of Monday morning light filter into your room, instantly lifting your mood. Your bright smile doesn’t escape Chaewon’s notice as you find her in the kitchen, bathed in the soft light seeping through the sheer curtains. The kettle is boiling with a loud rumble that fills the whole room and leaves her yelling as she speaks to you.

“Good trip?” she asks, coming over and hugging you. “Never leave me for that long again,” she mumbles into your shirt.

“It was a week, Wonie,” you say, rolling your eyes even though you missed her too.

She leans away, looking at you with knitted brows. “It was nine days.”

“The longest of my life.”

Chaewon pulls air through her teeth, tilting her head and releasing you. “That bad, huh?” she asks, walking back to her seat at your tiny square table and shooting you a look that tells you to join her.

During your trip, you gave her nightly updates over text, so you know she knows how much you enjoyed yourself, but you elaborate anyway, sitting across from her.

“No, not at all,” you say, shaking your head and trying to fight a smile. “I had fun.” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you have to bite your bottom lip to stop the grin curving them; it doesn’t work.

Chaewon raises a suggestive brow, crossing her arms over her chest. “How much fun?”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I didn’t even say anything!” she defends, holding her hands up. “I made an implication. It was only a matter of time, you two have that whole.. lifelong best friends to lifelong lovers thing going on, and it’s hot.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re telling me, you spent nine days playing lovers with Sunghoon and you still don’t want him? You’re a lost cause, people would kill for that chance,” she says, tilting her head. “I think I would kill for that chance.”

“Don’t touch him.”

“Oh?”

“Jesus, Chaewon, it’s not like that. Hoon’s too sensitive for your roster.”

“I never said it was like anything, you’re the one who’s dangling me over the ledge for saying I want to fuck your hot best friend.”

“Sunghoon isn’t hot; he’s..” You find yourself at a loss for words, unsure how to continue your lie. Of course, Sunghoon is hot, you’ve known since you were seventeen and spent the summer at your grandparents’ house, only to come back to find your previously scrawny best friend having ditched his LEGOs for dumbbells. You sigh. “Just leave him alone.”

Chaewon grins, eyes sparkling as she leaves the table. “Okay,” she says in a singsong voice, leaving you and the irritation in your stomach alone in the kitchen.

You sigh, pressing your eyes shut and trying to will away your discomfort. It’s not like Chaewon would actually try anything with Sunghoon. Right? Even if she did, it wouldn’t bother you, nor would it be any of your business. They’re grownups and reserve the right to explore their options. Still, there’s a nagging feeling you can’t shake, an uninvited guest in the back of your mind.

When you check your phone, you realise you have half an hour before you need to head to campus, so you leave to get ready and text Sunghoon back on the way to your room.

you: sounds good, see u later 🤍

After showering, you stand in front of your wardrobe, towel hanging from your body as you pick an outfit. For some reason, you feel under pressure, picking a pair of jeans that do the most for your ass and a low-cut top that Sunghoon once — drunkenly — said he loved on you.

You have the residual sting of mouthwash on your tongue, and one foot out the door when your phone vibrates in your hand.

hoonie: Do you want to head to class together?

you: sure! i’m omw out, where should i get you?

hoonie: .. I’m outside your building :D

Breathing a laugh through your nose, you don’t fight the giddy smile on your face as you make your way downstairs to meet Sunghoon. Through the glass in the main door, he’s standing at the edge of the pavement and kicking a stone between his feet. The top of his puffer jacket covers the bottom half of his face, and the draught nips your skin when the door opens. Two girls you vaguely recognise stumble in with smudged makeup and heels in their hands, smiling at you while holding the door to let you out.

“Hey!” you call out, jogging over to him.

Sunghoon turns around, his head poking out of his jacket to grin at you, holding a travel cup and an abundance of tinfoil in your direction.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d have eaten anything yet, you don’t normally in the morning,” he says, a sheepish smile spreading over his lips when you take it. “Matcha. Ham and cheese toastie.”

“Did you make these?” you ask, inspecting the familiar cup and appreciating the warmth it provides.

He hums, nodding his head.

You ignore the heat spreading over your cheeks and thank him with a hug, grinning when he offers to hold your drink while you eat on the walk. The toastie is still hot, the cheese coming close to burning your tongue as you chew, but you appreciate it wholeheartedly, humming contently with each bite. When you’re done, you shove the foil into your pocket, taking your drink from him and smiling around the sweet taste of a matcha latte as he tells you about his schedule for the day.

“I’m meeting with Coach after class to talk about my grades, but I’m all yours after that.”

“Talk about your grades? What’s wrong with your grades?”

Sunghoon groans, head falling back and highlighting the bump of his Adam’s apple. “My grades are.. I failed my coursework this month, so I have resubmissions during finals, and I think he’ll bench me if I fail again.”

He sounds like he’s being serious, and if the look on his face is anything to go by, he is. The news creases your brows because for as long as you remember, Sunghoon’s grades were your parents’ favourite point of comparison.

“Really?” you ask. He nods. “What’s up? Is something the matter?”

A humourless laugh slips out of him before he pulls air through his teeth. “Yeah, my best friend didn’t talk to me for three months.”

“Oh..” Guilt stirs your stomach as you look up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not blaming you, it’s not like I was trying to talk and you ignored me.” He nudges your arm with his elbow, giving you a warm smile. “But if you feel as guilty about it as you look, you can tutor me for Lit.”

“Deal.”

Sunghoon grins, wrapping his arm over your shoulders and holding you close; the action itself isn’t unusual, but the increased heart rate it brings about is. “You’re too good to me,” he says, holding onto you for the rest of the walk to class.

At his request, you sit with Sunghoon in the back row, watching as the lecture hall gradually fills up in front of you. He seems well-prepared, with his laptop and a small notepad and pen neatly arranged on the desk in front of him.

Throughout the class, your eyes inadvertently track his every move. He diligently types up colour-coded notes, occasionally pausing to write things in his notepad before continuing to type or stopping entirely to listen. There’s something melodic about his actions and the way his fingers run over the keyboard.

During a five-minute break, you glance at his screen. What you find is more than just lecture content; it’s a document adorned with Sunghoon’s own musings about Hemingway’s style and carefully analysed quotations that go beyond the class discussion.

“How are your notes so good?”

“I picked up the book over the summer when you mentioned it,” Sunghoon replies with a shrug, a shy smile playing on his lips as he leans back in his seat. “I liked it.”

A slow nod is your response, though your thoughts swirl like autumn leaves in a breeze. The last time Sunghoon read for leisure, you were in primary school, buddy reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But this—this is different. You can’t help but stare at him, awestruck as you take him in. His eyes are wide, shining amber in the sunlight as he pushes some of his hair from his face, frowning when it falls back where it was.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he mumbles.

Sunghoon takes a new line in his document and points at the screen where you watch the cursor move through the words he’s typing: I would’ve read and annotated the Bible if you wanted me to..

There’s no time to digest what he wrote or the funny feeling in your chest as you reread it before he deletes the whole sentence, pressing his lips together and looking out the window. Speechless, you stare at his side profile, willing your heart rate to slip back to normal. Steep-sloping nose, plump lips flattened into a line, two points of the triangular mole constellation on his face. Analysis worsens your condition, breath hitching in your throat before stopping entirely. Warmth and trepidation blend within you, fuzzy enough at the edges to seem like one thing—a single force that makes your palm itch with desire, desperation, to reach out and run a finger over his features, feel the bump of the mole on his nose — the most prominent — against your skin.

You remain this way — silent, watching — even when your lecturer resumes the lesson, and Sunghoon starts typing, writing, and listening again. Polite enough to pretend he doesn’t notice your gaze searing into his face.

After class, and his meeting with Coach, you let Sunghoon lead the conversation and the way to your flat, where you find Chaewon and Yunjin sitting on the couch, whispering to themselves while the two of you study at the coffee table. It’s uncomfortable, an awkward height, too high for the way you’re sitting but you feel calm under the supervision of Chaewon and Yunjin—you won’t do anything to merit teasing in front of them, no matter how badly you want to feel Sunghoon’s face in your hands or stroke his cheekbones with your thumbs.

To the best of your ability, you answer the questions he has for you—he’d written a ton in his tiny notepad during class, his own concerns clear with each neatly-penned iteration of: How to see actions/dialogue for what they are and not what I want them to be? written in the margins and you try not to feel heartbroken for him.

Three hours have passed by when you walk him to the door, the two of you wrapped up in a bubble so secure you’re surprised to find Chaewon and Yunjin still sitting on the couch. They don’t say anything about Sunghoon in his absence, or the fact he’d given you his sweater when he noticed you were cold. You’re not sure why their silence disappoints you.

Instead, Yunjin asks you about trivial things like dinner while Chaewon sits in silence.

“What flavour for ice cream?” Yunjin asks, rolling her eyes when you tug on the blanket but not complaining. “And don’t say something ridiculous like mint chocolate, YN.”

“That happened once! And it was three years ago.. How was I supposed to know you hate fun?”

Chaewon leans into you, letting you curl your limbs around her from behind as you rest your chin on her shoulder, liking the way her clean scent tickles your nose.

“Mint-cho isn’t that bad,” she starts. “It’s a little jarring, sure, but it’s kind of sweet. Like watching people come to terms with their feelings for each other.”

You nod your head, humming in understanding and furrowing your brows when Yunjin scoffs, staring straight at you. Her tone is equal parts cutting and loving, so you know she’s not trying to insult you, but don’t know what she means when she says, “It must be so nice to be as oblivious as you.”

Yunjin never elaborates, and you never ask, actually feeling the statement’s journey in through one of your ears and out the other when dinner arrives. The three of you share pizza, ice cream, and secrets — the three pillars of 20-something-teenage-girlhood — at the kitchen table, with Chaewon sitting in your lap and picking pepperoni from your slices.

It’s only hours after Yunijn’s gone home, that her words circle back to you, the statement and all of its weight perching on your chest with all the debilitation and persistence of a sleep paralysis demon.

“I think I’m getting sick,” you say as soon as she opens her door. “It’s been coming on for a while now, at least a week, maybe more.”

Unimpressed and exhausted, Yunjin looks down at you through half-closed eyes. “Do you..” She pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing. “Do you have any idea what time it is right now?”

“Yes. It’s three a.m.”

“Exactly. See a doctor if you’re sick, I’m going back to sleep.”

“This is an emergen—” Yunjin cuts you off by pinching your lips together. “It’s three in the morning,” she reminds you. “You can’t yell like that in my hallway, come in.”

You nod, crossing the threshold and taking off your shoes next to hers. “Sorry,” you whisper when the door is closed.

Using her hand, Yunjin lifts your chin, squinting as her eyes adjust to the light when she flips the switch to inspect your face. “You don’t look or sound sick,” she mutters, flicking the light back off and going to her room. “What are your symptoms? And why did you come here?”

You don’t have an answer for her last question so you ignore it, following her and tripping over a pair of her shoes in the process. “My cheeks start burning like crazy and my heart races, sometimes it gets hard to breathe.”

“You seem fine to me.”

A shoulder-slumping sigh slips from your lips. “That’s the thing. I’ll be fine and then Sunghoon shows up with his pretty smile and perfect hair and I feel like I’ve run a marathon.” You know how it sounds, choosing your wording meticulously to let Yunjin be the one to say the words out loud instead of you—it’ll be easier to confront that way.

From the doorway, you watch as she arches a brow, her interest piqued. “Oh?”

“I know.” You nod, head bobbing rapidly in furious agreement. “It’s only a matter of time before I cough up a lung and die in his bedroom.”

At your words, Yunjin doesn't reply, only lifting her duvet and getting cosy underneath. You feel like you’re glued to the spot, waiting for her to say something, anything, but nothing comes. All she does is pat the empty spot in her bed.

“What are you smirking for?” you ask, entering the room properly and closing the door.

Her response only comes after you’ve taken your jacket and hoodie off, sitting next to her under the covers. “It’s nothing,” she says, laughing.

“Tell me.”

Yunjin sighs, resting a hand gently on your shoulder. You think it’s meant to be comforting but it’s the opposite. “You’ll be fine, I promise. Lovesickness isn’t deadly.”

Feeling the weight of her reassurance, you settle down properly and sigh when your head hits the pillow. Lovesickness. Hmm.

Closing your eyes, you try to sleep but can’t help tossing and turning as Yunjin snores behind you. You pat blindly around the end table for your phone, grabbing it and wincing at the brightness of your screen. Chewing on your lip, you open Google, looking up ‘lovesickness’ and frowning immediately at the results. Endless negativity fills the screen, terrifying words like ‘unrequited love’ forming a pit in your stomach. There’s nothing negative about what you feel for Sunghoon, nothing unrequited—you think.

It was obvious during the trip, painfully so. In the way he’d tuck your hair behind your ear when his parents weren’t there to see, or how he slipped up and called you ‘baby’ in the bathroom, blushing when you said it back. You can’t fake something like that.. Can you?

Yeonjun did.

Shaking your head, you open Instagram to distract yourself. Jake’s story comes up first; he’s at a party where Jay is losing a game of beer pong, and at the other end of the table is Sunghoon grinning with a bright red lipstick kiss on his cheek. You lock your phone, using your hands to press on your belly to stop the stirring.

Oh, you think. Lovesickness.

When you wake up, the first thing you do is check Jake’s story again. The video is still there and that terrible stir in your stomach churns on, burrowing deeply into a pit of canyon-like proportion—so vast there’s a safety railing lining its edges.

You eat breakfast in silence with Yunjin, zoning out mid-chew to figure out the origin of these feelings and how to handle them. Suddenly, the moment hits you clear as day, vivid like you’re watching it on a screen—it was your third night at his parents’ house, after your walk.

You felt bad about how you acted, and what you said, so went straight up to your room. With nothing but the bedside lamp turned on, it was dimly lit, shadows cast on the walls as you sulked, replaying everything in your head. Guilt wrapped its long arms around your body, making you feel sick as you thought about it all. About the hurt etched over his face with every word you said, and the frown that stuck around for the rest of the walk as his hand clung limply to yours.

There was a knock at the door, so gentle you almost missed it, and Sunghoon was standing there when you pulled it open, chewing on his lip with a mug in his hand. Steam skated over the opening, a rich chocolatey smell hitting your nose but the real kicker was the mug itself. In its place on Jake and Sunghoon’s mug tree, it was unassuming, a regular white mug, but upon meeting hot water, the face of young Sunghoon appeared, grinning with his tiny glasses on. It was a gift from one of his old coaches and though he never used it, it was your absolute favourite cup in the world.

You felt soft around the edges when you looked up at him, his eyes wide and unsure as you met his gaze—he brought that mug three hours across the country so you could use it again. The thought shifted your heart into a comfortable position, settling in your chest with overwhelming warmth and an increased rate.

“Hi,” you said, clearing your throat.

“Hi,” he repeated, holding the mug out for you to take. “It’s still hot so be careful.”

Nodding, you covered your hands with your sleeves, taking the cup from him and asking if he wanted to come in. Sunghoon nodded, shutting the door behind him and standing by the bed, watching you set the hot chocolate on the bedside table as you sat down. The two of you stayed like that for a while, with him only moving when you patted the spot next to you on the duvet. Your train of thought escaped you as soon as he sat down, the warmth of his familiar fresh, citrusy scent taking over and becoming the only thing you could register. The smell of summers with him, long days at the beach and short nights spent on the couch at random parties, cuddled into his side with his arm over your shoulders. The smell you’d come to associate with comfort and home—with Sunghoon.

“It’s not fair for me to treat you like shit just because I’m annoyed, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that earlier. I’m sorry.”

A crease ran over Sunghoon’s thick brows as they tugged together, he shook his head. “You don’t have to apologise. I roped you into this whole thing and didn’t even try to think about how you would feel. I’m sorry.” His eyes carried a mix of regret and sincerity, mirroring the weight of his words.

“Anyway, I only came to bring you that,” he said, pointing at the cup. “And to check up on you, I’ll get out of your hair for tonight.” Sunghoon wiped his palms on his pants before standing up, reaching behind him to pick up the cloth he brought. For a moment, he stood there, staring down at it in his hand while you thought about telling him to stay, telling him that you wanted him in your hair—whatever that meant. But he spoke before you had the chance. “You left this, at mine, after.. well, you know. I’m sure you left it intentionally, I mean it was folded up perfectly on the end of my bed, so I know you did, but it didn’t feel right keeping it, you always wore it more than me.”

Sunghoon extended his hand, holding it out to you and you knew exactly what it was as soon as the fabric touched your skin after so long. It was the shirt Jay bought him for Christmas in first year—they were roommates still trying to get a feel for each other. For a few weeks, Sunghoon had been pestering you about what he should get for Jay, saying it didn’t feel right not to get him anything, and you suggested a targeted t-shirt, one you’d been laughing at all day after seeing an ad for it on your timeline. Sunghoon was sceptical, but bought the red shirt anyway, hoping Jay would find BEING DAD IS AN HONOUR, BEING PAPA IS PRICELESS funny. He did. And Jay bought Sunghoon a targeted shirt too, your favourite. It was black and two sizes too big, with I NEVER DREAMED I’D BE A SEXY FIGURE SKATER BUT HERE I AM KILLING IT written over the chest.

“Goodnight, YN,” Sunghoon said, crossing the room to leave but hesitating before closing the door. He poked his head through the opening and sighed. “I really am sorry.”

That night, you fell asleep in the shirt, the thinning, yet cosy, fabric wrapped around you like a hug as your heart started to beat a new rhythm, one that eerily echoed the five-foot-eleven figure skater who you let break it.

This morning, Yunjin claps her hands in your face, seeming irritated when you look over at her. “You have class in an hour, what are you doing?” Before you have the chance to speak, realisation covers her face. “Oh, the feelings.”

You nod solemnly, too caught up in the butterflies raiding your stomach to come up with something to say.

At lightspeed, you scarf down the rest of your food, apologising for showing up so late as you head out the door. When you get home, you take the fastest shower of your life and feel grateful Chaewon isn’t around to tease you about the smile you can’t wipe from your face thinking about Sunghoon—you’ll text her later.

You run to campus, feeling the brisk autumn wind beating against your face while the rest of your body overheats under your jacket, hoodie and long sleeve. Despite the discomfort and ache in your lungs, you don’t stop until you reach the door of your lecture hall, huffing and puffing into the faces of classmates who don’t take any notice. Of course, in a stroke of pure luck, your lecturer is late, and you realise bitterly, that all of your huffing and puffing was in vain—you would have gotten to class with time to spare even if you walked.

It’s not a total waste though; you use the time to update Chaewon.

you: i have news wonie.. i like sunghoon

wonie: …………….. fork in the kitchen yn what’s the news?

wonie: OHHHH news to YOU.. can i call?

She calls you immediately. You answer without thinking because your lecturer still hasn’t arrived, and there’s no one sitting close enough to hear or notice you taking a call.

“Are you going to tell him?!” Chaewon’s voice is so loud you wince, pulling the phone away from your ear.

“I don’t know.” You shrug even though she can’t see you, still holding the device at a distance just in case. “I don’t have any confirmation that he still.. likes me. It’s been a while, and I was pretty mean that day.

Chaewon groans and you can picture her throwing herself onto her bed, exasperated. The rustling that comes through the receiver only frames the image, hanging it up. “Did you have to tell him to get a grip?”

“You know..” You trail off, chewing on your bottom lip. “In hindsight, probably not.”

A beat passes, she’s thinking. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll help you.”

“I.. have never been so worried in my life.” You sigh, picking at your freshly painted nails. “But I know you’ll do something no matter what I say, so do what you want, Wonie, but please be subtle about it.”

Chaewon squeals down the phone. “I love youuuuu!” And it’s the last thing she says before kissing the mic a few times and hanging up.

Slumping in your seat, you don’t have any time to stress about Chaewon’s plans because your lecturer walks in, with a travel cup in her hand and a paperback tucked under her arm.

She apologises for being late, running a hand through her hair as she announces that you’ll be watching a film, an adaptation of a book you read at the start of term—Ian McEwan’s Atonement. You spend the first hour of the movie falling in and out of sleep until a text comes through from Sunghoon, and sheer excitement keeps you up.

hoonie: Wanna study together after class?

you: of course!!!!!!

hoonie: 🤍

The rest of the movie goes by in a drag, and you come away from it with a mild irritation towards Saoirse Ronan.

you: class just finished, heading to lib rn

hoonie: Shit, still in the locker room, sorry !!! Omw, can you get a table?

you: i’ll try..

It takes a while but you find an empty booth on the second floor, and set your bag on the plush green seat to take pictures of your surroundings to send to Sunghoon. You sit on the side facing the stairs so he can see you when he arrives. The thought of seeing him makes your heart race and you try out a few natural-seeming poses for when he’s here, cycling between resting your palm under your chin and sitting with your arms crossed a few times until the top of his head comes into view.

Seeing him knocks the wind out of you as he approaches the staircase, taking them two at a time with his damp hair clinging to his forehead and neck. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing a tight black vest, and his sweats are hanging low on his hips. A breath you didn’t realise you were holding slips out when he lifts his head, spotting you immediately as a grin spreads over his lips and he raises his arm to wave, the veins in his forearm peeking out to say hi too. You can’t tell if it’s his lack of winter wardrobe or your newfound appreciation for him that’s making his biceps look so huge but it’s hard to look away, even when he reaches the table.

“Are you hot?” you blurt out.

Sunghoon laughs, raising a brow and something about the way he’s looking down at you makes your cheeks burn. “Depends who’s asking.” He takes his backpack off, leaving it on the table as he sits down, dumping his jacket and hoodie in a pile beside him.

“I’m asking,” you mumble.

“Then, yeah, I’d hope so.”

Is he flirting? It sounds like he’s flirting. Flirt back! “Nice arms.”

He looks down at his biceps for a beat before looking at you warily. “Are you flirting with me?” He can’t fight the smile twitching at the corners of his lips but he tries his best, pressing them into a straight line.

“A little. They are nice though,” you admit.

Sunghoon grins. “Thanks, I’ve had them for a while now.”

You can’t come up with anything to say, too distracted by the way his smile reaches his eyes, lighting up his whole face and forcing a flustered heat to spread over your cheeks and neck. It’s only when you look away from him that you remember what you’re here for. It’s a study date, not a study date—there’s a difference.

You hand Sunghoon the material you’d printed for him over the weekend, excerpts from texts you’d studied in class, so he can practise close reading and proper citation. As he makes his way through them, you can’t help stealing glances, smiling at the way his tongue sticks out a little while he focuses, or how he twirls his pen in his fingers while he’s thinking. You aren’t making the best use of your time together, copying out the slides from class yesterday, but you can’t help noticing the way he watches you when he thinks you can’t see. The small smile on his face while he does so only flusters you, an odd weakness settling in your knees as your cheeks heat up.

After a while, Sunghoon sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Could you stop watching me?”

“If you noticed me watching, that means you’re watching me.”

He shrugs, chewing on his lip. “Well, yeah. I’m always watching you,” he says like it’s a given. “But you don’t normally watch back, it’s distracting.”

“You’re distracting.”

A playful smile curves his lips as he arches a brow, smugness painting his face. “Am I?”

Too scared to verbalise your response, you nod slowly, hoping you don’t look as wound up as you feel.

Sunghoon’s eyes flick over your face, flashing with something you don’t recognise. At least not from him. He sits back in his seat, assessing you and eventually shaking his head.

“You know,” he says, eyes glowing with something you do recognise: cockiness. “If my sexy arms are getting to you that much, I can always put my hoodie back on. Wouldn’t want my little tutor getting distracted, would I?”

Oh.

Your stomach turns with want, mind reeling from his tone and the way his gaze lands on your lips. Sighing, you roll your eyes and try to seem unaffected. “Sunghoon, I never said your arms were sexy.”

His phone starts to go off, buzzing against the table and he turns it over immediately, screen down on the surface as he shifts his focus back to his work. He chews on his lip while he does, eyes flicking back and forth between his phone and the words on the page. Curious, you lean over the table, elbows propped up as you rest your chin in your hands. He doesn’t spare you or his phone, which vibrates another four times, a glance.

“Are you going to get that?”

Sunghoon shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

You hum, letting just enough curiosity seep into the sound that he’ll elaborate without being asked to. It doesn’t take long for him to deliver.

“It’s just Chaewon,” he says, running his hand through his hair and lifting his head. Sunghoon smiles. “We’ve been texting a lot these days.”

“Cool.” You nod a few times, aiming for nonchalance but hitting bobblehead as you wait for him to continue. He doesn’t, only humming in response, nodding too.

After a beat, he picks up his phone, angling it just high enough that you can’t see the screen. He reads the messages, an exhaled laugh coming from his nose as the tips of his ears redden—Fuck. This is worse than you thought.

Chaewon’s commitment to girl code runs deep—she’s been rebuffing Jake since first year when she overheard a girl she’d never seen before telling her friends she thought he was cute. So you know without having to read the texts that nothing she’s saying is even remotely flirty, you can smell the auto-caps and use of the word ‘buddy’ from across the table.

What you hadn’t counted on, however, was the potential for Sunghoon’s feelings to shift. If they really have been texting more, can you rule out the possibility that he might like.. her? Chaewon is a catch, beyond a catch, and you’d already turned Sunghoon down. Brutally. Of course, he’d move on, he has moved on.

The rest of the study session is spent manifesting, writing Park Sunghoon over and over in the back of your notebook. You fill three pages while brainstorming ways to snatch a lock of his hair until he suggests that the two of you call it a day. He walks you home, telling you about how Jake’s been bribing him with food to get a ride to the LEGO store across town for the new Marvel set.

“With or without the meals, I would’ve taken him, but his ramen is my favourite, so..” Sunghoon says, climbing the last step of your building and holding the door open for you. “He even brought a slice of tiramisu to the rink for me after practice.”

“You’re terrible,” you say, frowning up at him as you search for your keys. “Do you want to come in?”

Sunghoon chuckles, shaking his head. “I have a meeting with one of my lecturers soon, I’d have to leave in—” He pauses, rolling up the sleeve of his jacket to check the time. “—eight minutes.”

“I’m cool with that if you are,” you mumble, suddenly shy.

A bright smile spreads over his lips and he nods, following you in.

Chilled by the harsh wind, the only thing on your mind is a hot drink as you lead Sunghoon to the kitchen. He shakes his head when you offer him one, sitting on the countertop and exhaling into his palms before rubbing them together. You can’t help but frown at the sight, feeling guilty that you can’t change the weather to suit him. At your thought process, your brows raise. Wow, you think. Is this who you are?

You busy yourself with the selection of hot drinks you and Chaewon have accumulated, eyeing each container from top to bottom. A purple tub of Cadbury’s hot chocolate that you’re sure is on the brink of expiration, coffee—sachets of the instant stuff you’ve grown to like since leaving home, Earl grey from one of many brands, or the fancy silk tea bags Chaewon’s mum brought home from a trip—rooibos or plum-apple-cinnamon.

Craving something sweet, you settle for hot chocolate, pulling the heavy container from the cupboard next to Sunghoon’s head and setting it beside your cup. He’s on his phone, scrolling too fast to take in anything he’s seeing and he shakes his head when you ask if he wants something to drink.

On the dish rack, Chaewon’s mug catches your eye, so you pick it up to dry it off and put it down next to yours. “I’m going to check if Wonie wants any,” you say, wiping imaginary crumbs from the counter onto the floor.

Sunghoon only clears his throat, shaking his head. “She’s not home, one of her acrylics popped off so she’s at the shop waiting for a cancellation.”

The information itself isn’t jarring but hearing it from Sunghoon is. You put on what you hope is a neutral smile and nod, taking milk from the fridge and assembling your drink on autopilot while thinking of ways to redirect the conversation.

“If you knew you’d have to go back to campus so soon, why’d you walk me home?” you ask, watching your cup spin in the microwave. “I could’ve walked on my own.”

Sunghoon is already looking at you when you turn your head, his cheeks puffed out with air as he blinks slowly. Because I love you, is what you hope he’ll say. You think you need him to say it.

“Because you don’t have to do anything on your own when you have me,” he says instead, and it’s infinitely better.

The words seep through your every fibre, his intonation and lucid affection making a home for themselves in your heart, spreading warmth from head to toe. Your smile becomes a radiant grin, only brightening when he shakes his head, smiling down at his feet.

Sunghoon hugs you in the kitchen when it’s time for him to leave, his arms holding you tight to his chest as he rocks you back and forth. You inhale his scent, all warm citrus under freshly washed cotton and something exclusive to him.

Wiping the smile from your face feels impossible. You don’t let go when he does, and a sweet laugh — a giggle, you think — tumbles out of him as he mumbles that he really has to go. Still, you cling onto him, taking clumsy steps backwards, with your arms locked around his waist, to your front door, smiling as you watch him put his shoes on.

“You don’t have to walk me downstairs, honestly,” he says, looking down at you in the doorway.

“I want to.”

His lips quirk up at the corners, a full smile breaking through and causing your stomach to flutter with so much force you’re sure it’s visible through your shirt. His eyes fall to your lips, lingering, before he clears his throat, looking away.

“I’ll text you when I get to the door, promise.”

You lock your pinky with his. “Send a selfie, just so I know it’s you and not someone else using your phone.”

Sunghoon’s head falls back in a laugh. “Should I just call you? That way you can make sure I get back to uni in one piece.”

You nod.

“That wasn’t anything with Chaewon earlier, I just needed advice on some girl stuff..” He trails off, searching your eyes. It’s obvious that he’s telling the truth, that he wants you to believe him. You do. “I wasn’t sure if that was something I could talk about with you.”

Girl stuff. Hmm. You try not to read too much into it and look at the bigger picture instead—your best friend is going through something and doesn’t feel like he can come to you about it.. You squeeze his pinky reassuringly, a flutter in your stomach when he smiles.

“You can talk to me about anything,” you say, meaning it.

Sunghoon presses his lips together, humming and unlinking your fingers. “Next time,” he says after a beat, waving at you.

You shut the door, locking it while watching through the peephole, he leaves as soon as the lock clicks shut. In the kitchen, your hot chocolate is cooling down, and your phone rings in your back pocket. Sunghoon’s calling.

Hanging out with Sunghoon. Making sure he sticks to the time-blocked schedule you made for him. Quizzing him on biology terms until he gets restless. If the last two weeks were an episode of Family Feud, those would be the top three answers to the question: Name something YN is doing right now.

Thankfully tonight, it’s the first one.

You’ve been sitting on the couch for so long, Jake has both left for football practice and arrived from football practice. Conversation ebbs and flows—an hour or so of nonstop talking, followed by another hour or so of comfortable near silence.

It’s during a quiet hour that Sunghoon sits up straight, clearing his throat before saying, “Let me ask you something. He retreats to the other side of the couch, turning to face you with his whole body. “I don’t want things to be weird after I ask, so no matter what your answer is, I won’t bring it up or ask again.”

Arching a curious brow, you nod. “You can ask me anything,” you say, meaning it.

Sunghoon’s face is impressively blank—minus the motion of sharp teeth worrying plush lip, there’s absolutely nothing behind his eyes that seem to stare right through you.

Eventually, he asks, “Can I kiss you?” He says more. Big, scary words like for closure and moving on, but they don’t register. They don’t matter.

Your heart pounds at the base of your throat as you find interest in your hands that sit in your lap. Even without looking at him, you can’t get over the slight crease he had in his brow and the slight tremor in his hands.

“For closure,” you repeat, though your voice doesn’t sound like it’s coming from you, muffled under the thump of your heart.

Sunghoon nods. “For closure.”

A humourless laugh sneaks past your throat as you look at him. You shouldn’t have. In the lamplight, Sunghoon is golden and glorious. Warm light casts one side of his face, diffusing gently over the steep slope of his nose, highlighting his moles and the look in his eyes, gentle and curious all at once. Unwillingly, your gaze falls to his lips, parted, tempting.

One firm nod of your head brings Sunghoon’s hand to your face, his palm cupping your cheek with soft skin as his thumb traces your cheekbone. You grow anxious under his stare, under the drag of his eyes over your features, taking them one at a time like he’s committing them to memory.

Leaning in, your eyes flutter shut as your lips meet his and he freezes, mouth completely still on yours. Delicately, your tongue traces the seam of his lips, soft and plump, until they part for you, moving with yours. Sunghoon’s kiss is unpolished when it reaches you. It’s hesitant but tender, clumsy but sweet, he’s trying and he’s perfect; your favourite.

The kiss is.. it’s everything. It’s the racing of your heart, the thudding, the vibrant buzz you can hear, feel humming against your ears. It’s a rush of blood to the head, a lightness all over that pulls you out of your body. It’s Sunghoon’s soft lips curving into a smile against yours, his gentle hold on your face never letting up as he holds you as close as he can manage, and it’s every bit as lovely as the rest of him.

Palpable is the heartbeat of your friendship, beating to a lull under the surface of the kiss, fizzling out into nothing, a steady silence, flatlining to give way to something more, something bigger.

Every brush of your lips against his is a revelation, a confession. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, you tell him with your kiss. You’re everything I need. His free hand finds yours, locking your fingers and squeezing, the action timed well enough to make you think he hears you, to make you think he’s saying, we’ll be okay, I still love you.

With that, he pulls away, a delicate tension piercing the air. Blown eyes and laboured breathing—he’s beautiful, fuzzy around the edges with warm orange and all of the love in your heart. Breathless, you chew on your lip, cognisant of Sunghoon’s hand in yours and the sparkle in his eyes as he looks at you.

Belatedly, you squeeze his hand back, smiling. “Was it everything you ever dreamed of?” you whisper, part teasing, all curious.

Abruptly, Sunghoon stands up, letting go of you in the process. “I have to go.”

You want to stop him, you think you’re supposed to. To grab him by the arm and kiss him again, to yell in his face that you love him until he understands. But you don’t. Instead, you stay seated, staring at Sunghoon’s back and following him with your eyes out of the room and down the hall until he’s out of sight.

It’s your first time being so upset after a kiss, and you can’t tell if it’s his leaving or the mention of him moving on that’s tripping you up so much. That’s causing melancholy to crawl from the shadows, sinking its jagged nails into your skin to pull you under.

You love him. He’s gone.

Eyes stuck on the doorway, time stretches over the room around you, thick and malleable, wet and cloying—clay stuck under your nails for days as the fire in the kiln rages on.

Sighing, you get up and wait at his door. You ball your hand into a limp fist, knocking weakly. Sunghoon doesn’t reply. You try again, harder. Still nothing.

Barging into the room, you find him sitting on the end of his bed with his face in his hands.

“Don’t move on.” The words come out before you realise and Sunghoon lifts his head, squinting at you.

“Huh?” He tilts his head, watching closely as you approach him, tipping it back enough to meet your eyes when you stand over him.

You take a breath, holding it until your head starts to spin. “I don’t want you to love someone else, Sunghoon. Please don’t move on.”

The stillness that follows is disconcerting, a long quiet you can feel on your skin, amplifying the blank stare on his face as he looks up at you. His eyes flash, a spark of hope behind them so bright it stings to look at.

“Do you..” He trails off, his lips moving to form the next word though stopping short.

“I do,” you whisper, nodding. “I’m sorry for taking so long.”

An exhaled laugh comes from his nose as he grins, shaking his head. “You like me?” he asks, excitement and disbelief fighting for authority over his voice, his hands holding your waist and pulling you down into his lap.

“I love you,” you admit, settling on his thighs.

“You do?” His eyes are wide and gleaming, searching every feature on your face before settling on your own.

You nod. “So much.”

Sunghoon’s chin tips up, his lips pressing against yours, excited pecks that can’t turn into much more for the smiles on your faces. You rest your arms on his shoulders, hands clasping behind his head, nervous fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“So.. will you be my boyfriend? For real?”

Tilting his head, he tries and fails to fight a smile. “I will. I’m a little bummed though.”

“Why?” You raise a brow, and the word tips up at the end with it.

“I wanted to be the one to ask you.” Sunghoon’s honesty warms the room, endearing you completely.

You grin, loving the heat spreading over your cheeks. “Ask me anyway.”

“Please can I be your boyfriend?”

In the weeks that followed, it became immediately clear that boyfriend Sunghoon operated on a pendulum swinging between sexual ferality and terror. He’d get distracted during study sessions at home, finding more interest in biting at your neck than stream-of-consciousness prose, but closed his eyes if a sex scene came on TV. He’d buck his hips against yours while making out but flinch at the sight of condoms in the store.

He wasn’t ready to have sex and didn’t know how to tell you, so you took matters into your own hands, asking if you could wait until after his results for resubmission came in, saying you didn’t want the distraction for either of you. Sunghoon agreed, pecking your cheek and holding you tight to his chest.

The only thing was that your lecturer hadn’t given him an exact date, so every morning, you held your phone in a vice grip waiting for Sunghoon to update you, and every morning, you got the same text: Nothing today, baby ☹️

This morning, you’re brushing your teeth when he texts you, in all caps: NO FUCKING WAY I GOT A 98 !!! LOOK !!!

When the picture comes through, it’s of him in the mirror and you choke on mouthwash at the sight. He’s smiling, bright and beautiful, in a black vest that he’s holding up a little to show his stomach, though his palm is in the way of his toned abs, and it cuts off right at the top of his grey sweatpants.

Your mouth goes dry as you click on it, fixating on every little detail you can find: the thickness of his fingers against his phone, the dip in his collarbones, the breadth of his shoulders and the cinch of his waist. In a fit of desperation, you try swiping at the bottom of your screen, willing the picture to magically extend. It doesn’t.

hoonie: Finger slipped.. You like?

you: mm..

you: 98??? HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT YOU!!!

hoonie: All you.. do you like the picture?

you: i love it………….

hoonie: My girl 🤍

Another picture comes in, and sure enough, through the glare of his laptop screen, you see: Course name: The Modernist Movement: Joyce, Woolf, and Hemingway. Marks Awarded: 98.0.

you: well done baby !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hoonie: Thx 😁

hoonie: Can I have my prize now ha ha .. haha 😈

you: just for that emoji, no you absolutely cannot.

Your resolve isn’t strong enough when it comes to Sunghoon, because purple devil emoji and all, you show up at his door with condoms in your bag and a bouquet of lilies behind your back.

The door creaks open and Sunghoon greets you with a grin. “Hey, gorgeous. You proud of me?”

You beam at him, holding out the flowers. “I’m very proud, Hoon, well done.”

“I don’t want to ruin the moment,” he starts, taking the bouquet from your hands and sniffing the flowers with an approving smile. “But hearing you say you’re proud of me is awakening something I didn’t know existed.”

“A good something?”

“Mm,” he hums, arms finding your waist before he pecks your lips. “A very good something.”

Sunghoon’s words hit your lips and your core, a desperate heat flooding your stomach as he kisses you deeply, his body pressed tightly against yours while he pulls you into his apartment. He kicks the door shut with his foot, slipping his hand under your jacket to settle in your back pocket, not quite squeezing but holding your ass as gently as he can manage.

He breaks away from you, love in his eyes as he stares down into yours, catching his breath. “I don’t think we own a vase.”

In his kitchen, you rifle through cupboards to find something to hold the flowers, eventually finding a whiskey decanter in the cupboard under the sink, and holding it up for Sunghoon to see.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “It’s Jay’s. It’ll work right?”

You nod, taking it to the sink to rinse it. Sunghoon wraps his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder watching you fill the decanter with water and flower food before grabbing the bouquet. He presses open-mouthed kisses to your neck and you struggle to stay focused as you cut down the stems on the flowers, arranging them neatly.

“Can I take a photo?” he asks when you’re done.

He’s smiling when you turn around to look at him, a soft curve of his lips that makes your heart race, a deep tenderness in his eyes when you meet them. You smile too.

“They’re yours, baby, do whatever you want.”

“A photo of you with the flowers,” he clarifies.

Warmth settles in your chest, a grin spreading over your lips from ear to ear. You nod, taking the decanter in your hands when he lets go of you, holding the flowers up beside your face and smiling for his camera. As his phone shutter clicks away, you steal glances at his face behind it. He’s watching the screen with a smile, telling you how beautiful you are.

“I want pictures of you too,” you say, handing the flowers over.

“I’m yours, baby, do whatever you want.”

Sunghoon poses for your photos, smiling sweetly in some and sniffing the bouquet appreciatively with closed eyes for others. He’s glowing and he’s beautiful and your heart triples in size while taking picture after picture until your phone tells you it has ten percent.

“Thank you, YN,” he says. “I’ve never gotten flowers before, I love them.” His arms settle around your waist, lips pressing against yours before you have the chance to respond.

You try anyway, mumbling against his lips that you love him. In response, Sunghoon grins, but the feeling of his cock growing hard against you is distracting, a lust-coated thorn in the side of the butterflies fluttering in your stomach. With locked lips and uncertain steps, the two of you bump into corners and trip over your own feet, stumbling to his room and parting only to tear his hoodie over his head.

Breathless, you pull away, eyes trailing over him and picking up on everything, from the tremble in his hands to the lust-addled worry in his eyes. He’s nervous, you think—though it escapes you, the last word coming out like a question.

Sunghoon scoffs, his hands resting on your waist under your shirt, skin clammy against yours. “Of course, I’m nervous.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I just want to be good for you.”

“Don’t worry about that, let me take care of you, Hoon.” Your palms drag up his torso — firm abs through soft cotton, defined chest over racing heart — to rest on his shoulders. “Sit,” you say when he nods.

He gulps, taking a seat on the end of his bed under your gentle push, eyes widening when you sink to your knees between his legs and reach for his drawstring, pulling the ends to untie the knot.

“Wait,” Sunghoon says, breathless, scrunching up his face and dropping his head. “Let me calm down, baby. At this rate, I’ll come just seeing your hand on it.”

You giggle, resting your head on his thigh and wrapping the drawstring around your finger.

“I’m serious, YN,” he mumbles, laughing as he takes his vest off. “I need a minute.”

Sunghoon’s eyes are pressed shut as he tries to collect himself, lips pouty and kiss-bitten, slightly parted with ragged breaths slipping out. You wait patiently for him. He’s so pretty like this, with the crease in his brow and the pretty pink flush dusting his cheeks as his chest rises and falls. You can’t help but smile, leaning into his touch when his hand rests on top of your head, his blunt nails grazing your scalp. After a while, he seems more at ease, his eyes finding yours and he smiles shyly, telling you he’s ready now and lifting his hips from the bed to let you pull his sweats and underwear down.

Free from the constraints of fabric, his cock slaps his stomach with a wet sound as the tip meets his skin, leaving a pearlescent streak over his abs. The sight makes your mouth water and you can’t look away. “Pretty,” you whisper.

Wrapping a hand under his tip, you swipe it with your thumb, taking time to memorise the flutter of his eyelids, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, and the soft sigh he lets out. You stroke him slowly, liking the way his breath picks up as his brows knit together before you take him in your mouth. It’s a tight fit but you do your best, spurred on by the way he tugs at your hair and stutters through a holy fuck as you take as much of him as you can.

Sunghoon goes silent, only squirming when you use your hand to stroke him near his base. Self-conscious about his lack of vocal affirmation, you look up at him through your lashes, and the pure bliss on his face is unbearably attractive. His eyes are rolled back under furrowed brows, his mouth hanging open as he throws his head back.

“Am I doing okay?” you ask, using the moment to catch your breath.

He nods, inhaling shakily and screwing his eyes shut while his hips buck up into your fist. “I’m.. You’re doing such a good job, baby, so good.”

Satisfaction courses through you from the praise, a high that dulls the ache in your jaw. Still watching him, you massage his balls in your palm, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his tip when he whines. You tongue at his slit until he thrusts back into your mouth, tip hitting your throat, and he gasps when you gag, his arm coming up to cover his eyes. A belated apology slips from his lips, mumbled as he strokes your hair with a shaking hand and goes quiet again. When you speed up, his breath stutters, the muscles in his thighs contracting around your head as you suck and lick and drool on his cock.

A moan of your name, and his hand holding your hand down, are the only warnings you get before Sunghoon comes, spilling his load right down your throat. Whining, his hips buck up against your face, pushing further and further until he falls back onto the mattress.

Your throat is hoarse and aches while you use the back of your hand to wipe at your lips, enjoying what’s left of his taste on your tongue. Deep red tints his neck and chest, a pretty flush gleaming under the sheen of sweat on his skin. He’s mesmerising, as he tries for air through swollen lips and looks up at you through squinted eyes. He reaches for you, cute grabby hands tugging your shirt and pulling you down so you’re lying next to him with your head on his chest.

“You’re amazing, baby, so good for me,” Sunghoon whispers, eyes fluttering shut as you drag your nails over his torso, feeling the subtle heave of the slick, sculpted muscle over his stomach and chest.

Pride heats your chest, satisfaction rolling over you like a wave. “Really?”

He hums in affirmation, nodding his head.

“You were so quiet, I couldn’t really tell,” you add, hungry for more praise.

“The walls are so thin in here, I just got used to being quiet,” Sunghoon says, frowning. Hand meeting your chin, he tips your head up towards him, pressing a soft kiss to your lips and mumbling, “I’m sorry. You were perfect, I swear.”

It’s a sweet kiss. Until lips move harder and hands get lower, desperate as he thumbs the top of your leggings, palm unmoving but a dangerous heat blooms in your stomach anyway.

“Can I..” Sunghoon pinches you softly through the material, unsure eyes boring deep into yours.

You nod. “You can.”

Slipping under your waistband, his fingers skate across your skin dipping between your thighs. He grazes your slit, satisfaction clear in the groan he lets out as he feels the wetness there, pulling it over the length of your slit to cover your clit. Your breath hitches, a strangled gasp, pleasure and surprise meeting in your throat under the pressure of his thumb on your clit, the gentle sting of his finger pushing into you.

What Sunghoon lacks in experience, he makes up for with the sheer length and thickness of his fingers. It’s almost jarring, it’s enough to force your eyes closed and bring a sigh rumbling out of you, ache and relief settling between your legs, where he curls a finger against your walls and drags slow circles over your clit.

“Can you take these off, baby?” he asks, hand away to touch your leggings.

You don’t waste a second, sitting up to pull them off, throwing them and your underwear across the room. Sunghoon licks his lips, tugging at the hem of your shirt.

“And this? If you want..”

You nod, pulling it off immediately to let it join the rest of your clothes in a heap on the floor. The way he gulps is a confidence boost, his dilated pupils taking in every inch of your body, though his gaze always pulls back to your bra—white and lacy, thin enough for your nipples to push through the fabric and Sunghoon can’t seem to get enough, though he waits until you’re lying down again to touch you.

Sunghoon props himself up on his elbow, leaning over you. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers, dragging a finger over the lace at the top of your bra, toying with the material and the little bow sitting between your breasts. His eyes flick up to meet yours. “So beautiful,” he repeats.

Hiding your face in his chest, you mumble, “Thank you,” into his skin while trying to ignore the heat spreading over your body wherever he touches you. His hand trails from your arm to your waist, resting on your hips to slip over your ass for a beat, where he grabs and squeezes the flesh there before coming back around to slot between your legs—you lift one of them, resting it over his body, and he’s smiling sweetly when you look up at him.

Sunghoon’s movements are unchanging, though the sensation is heightened by the unbridled desire in his lidded eyes that urges white heat to lick over every inch of your skin—this time he pushes two fingers into you.

It doesn’t get better than this, you think. But it does, quickly.

Leaning over you, his eyes flick across your face, one feature at a time as he chews on his lip. Reaching up, you push some of his hair from his face, holding it back and saying, “Relax, baby.”

“Don’t want to hurt you.”

Moving your hand, you blink when his hair flops back over his forehead, tickling your eyelashes. His eyes are focused now, staring straight down into yours, want and worry flashing behind them.

“You won’t, I promise,” you say, locking your pinky with his, feeling relieved when he smiles.

Sunghoon pushes in slowly, his name slipping from your lips when he exhales shakily, head falling forward. The sting, the pleasure, make it hard to breathe, molten desire taking hold of your lungs as he carves out a place for himself as far as you’ll take him, all the way to the hilt as slow as he can manage.

A moan tears out of him, lewd and whiny as his hair tickles your collarbone, head falling into the crook of your neck. His skin is hot and damp against yours, his breath burning your shoulder as he tries to calm down. It’s difficult to register much else, tethered only by the sound of his voice when he asks, “Am I hurting you?”

“Hoon,” you whisper.

“Can you look at me, baby?” He lifts his head, resting a hand on your cheek. You blink your eyes open, gaze locking with his, where concern pushes through his desire. “Am I hurting you?” he asks again. “Are you okay?”

You nod. “I’m okay, just..” You sigh. “Full. Need a minute.”

Sunghoon kisses you, lips moving gently with yours, passing breathy whines between your mouths until you feel yourself relaxing. Pulling his plush bottom lip between yours, you suck on it, nodding. “Want you to move, baby,” you mumble.

He scans your face, eyes meeting yours as he pulls his hips back. He’s slow, so slow with his thrusts that your belly turns with want, your fingernails sink into the taut skin of his back, and jagged sobs fall out of you with each drag of his cock along your walls.

Everywhere his skin touches yours is set ablaze with scorching heat, goosebumps pushing past the surface as his breath fans your neck and his sharp teeth graze your skin. He bites hard enough to sting, and you wince as his tongue flicks over your bitten flesh to soothe you.

You were so worked up earlier, writhing against the sheets and coming undone in his palm, so bliss quickly pushes through the ache between your legs. “Good, Hoon, feels so good,” you manage, struggling to convey how perfect it is.

“Just want to make you feel good.” His words melt into each other, vowels soft and elongated as they curl around each other. He’s working up a steady rhythm, his tip consistently nudging you where you need it—the spot that makes the room blur around you. “That’s all I want.”

Before long, the knot in your stomach pulls you up from the mattress, arching your back towards the ceiling. Mouth to mouth, chest to chest—it’s the closest you’ve ever felt to someone else, the closest you’ve ever been. The thought alone knocks the wind out of you, and his persistent whining does nothing to help.

Your want and adoration for Sunghoon run bone-deep, inching up your spine and creeping over your shoulders, intertwined with an all-consuming pleasure that turns the heat in your stomach molten as a shudder zips through you. Even though you can’t find the words to let him know, he lifts your hips from the bed to fuck you deeper, harder, into the mattress until shaky orgasms pull both of you under.

You let him fall into you, fingers curling around his hair, whispering I love you into the skin of his neck as he comes, most of his weight on top of you while you catch your breath, relishing in the fullness you feel as the last waves of your high pull back. You stay like this for as long as he needs, his head coming up from the crook of your neck to smile at you before pressing his lips to yours. A sleepy haze fills the room around you, tongue swiping tongue as you giggle happily into his mouth.

After a while, he gets up, tying the condom to throw it away and comes back with his shirt. He uses it to clean up—gentle between your legs, pressing kisses to your calves while he does. Sunghoon’s tenderness wraps around your heart, and love clouds your vision, forming a blurry trail that follows all of his movements, glowing like something from a dream, ethereal, an apparition.

The bed dips beside you, his arms around you, pulling you in so his chin rests on your head. You push your cheek into his chest, hoping the two of you will meld into one—the thought makes you warm all over, a fuzziness that reaches every part of your body while he presses kisses into your hair, rubbing your back.

“I love you,” he says, voice as soft as the rest of him. “I’m glad I exist.”

mama park: Hi lovely 😍 missing you lots, wondering when you’ll be home for Xmas………..love ma

Sunghoon stirs, nose scrunching as he snores softly into the quiet of a winter morning. His chest rises and falls steadily under your head and he doesn’t move when you sit up. The lamp on his desk is still on — neither of you could be bothered getting up to turn it off last night — and under its dim glow, you admire him. Perfect lips gently curved—long lashes kissing the skin under his eyes.

Love hits you from all angles, warmth all over from head to toe despite the chill in Sunghoon’s room. You can’t help but grin, leaning up to nose along the underside of his chin, his natural scent so soft yet dizzying as you nuzzle into him. He stirs again, turning his head this way and that before resting, you feel a bit bad, deciding to leave him be and text his mum back.

you: hi mum !!! missing you sooooooo much :((( will be home asap

mama park: BTW Sunghoon told me everything. I raised such good actors LOL make sure he looks after you and keeps you happy!

you: i’m so sorry we lied to you..

you: but i’m really happy with him and he loves me a lot

you: i love him so much .. never been so sure of anyone in my life

permanent taglist: @asahicore

#sunghoon smut #enhypen smut #enha smut #enhypen scenarios #sunghoon scenarios #sunghoon x reader #park sunghoon smut #park sunghoon x reader #enhypen imagines #enhypen oneshots #sunghoon oneshots #sunghoon imagines #enhypen hard hours #fic.sunghoon

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reiderwriter · 5 months ago

Text

💫 Starry-Eyed 💫

Pairing: Porn Star! Spencer Reid x fem! Reader

For the CM Kink Bingo Challenge

Summary: For work experience, you take a job working the cameras on a porn shoot, but after becoming suddenly attracted to a new coworker, you shortly find yourself as a fluffer, the person whose job it is to keep the "talent" aroused between takes.

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI, Porn AU, College AU kinda, exhibitionism, oral sex (f receiving), consensual voyeurism, masturbation (male), blow job, deep throating, messy orgasm.

A/N: Well, look at where we are. I think this actually counts as my first Alternate Universe fic, which is crazy all things considered. I'm really enjoying the Kink Bingo Challenge as it's leading me to so many new ideas for fics!! I hope you all enjoy this one 🥰

Masterlist || Bingo Board

Being a college student still at age 25 meant many things, but mostly, it meant you had friends at many different stages of their lives. Some were fresh out of high school halls, enjoying their first taste of freedom, some were enjoying their first drops of alcohol. Some were giving up alcohol for good and starting families.

Some of them were successful porn stars who'd funded their own start-up porn production company. It certainly was one way to use a film degree. You knew a professor or two who would enjoy her work more than half your syllabus as well.

Candi Rapper had become famous doing cam shows in her first year of college and had gone all-in after graduation. You'd shared a few classes in the early days, before you took a break from college for financial reasons, of course. By the time you'd gone back, she was a big time and now in the position to offer you a job.

“One of my crews is down a cameraman this weekend. If you're open to it, I pay a fair wage?” she'd offed at your weekly brunch.

“Will you be the star?” You joked back with her.

“You wish.”

You took the job, of course, along with a ride from Candi (her name was Kate, but you'd let her pretend) and pulled up on site bright and alert at 7am.

The set was a large mansion - typical, Candi said - and you'd be mostly shooting in the living room - typical, Candi said. You'd had to tell her after her second typical that you were, in fact, an adult and had seen at least one porno before until she cut out pornsplaining everything to you. She introduced you to the key staff and the director, and they got you set up at your camera.

“The shoot today is going to be around 5 hours. You'll be on camera three. The papers in front have your cues and directions. You can have some free time until we start. There's a breakfast spread in the kitchen, help yourself.”

Not one to turn down free food, you bee-lined there and stood awkwardly in line for the coffee with the dozen or so other crew members, eyeing up the take-out pancakes organised across the granite surface.

“Your first time?” An older man asked from behind you, smiling in a friendly manner.

“You can tell?”

“You're thinking about eating the pancakes, and the rest of us are remembering the scene filmed there last weekend," as if on queue, a shiver ran down his spine. "Yeah, we can tell.” You laughed along with the man's joke and finally grabbed your coffee.

Luck just wasn't on your side, though, as you turned and immediately ran into someone immediately sloshing the coffee onto your shirt.

“Oh my god, I am so - I'm so sorry, I need to watch where I'm going.”

You'd run into 6’3” of lanky, awkward male perfection. He looked young, your age or younger most likely, and was fidgeting as he stood, the most obviously uncomfortable person in the building.

Your first thought was “Is he lost?” closely followed by “Can I beg him to get lost in a linen closet somewhere with me?”

He grabbed a handful of tissues from the counter nearby and began attempting to wipe away the coffee you'd spilt down yourself, completely unaware that he was fondling your breasts in his haste to do so.

“Slow down there, tiger, shoot doesn't start for another half hour,” you said, winking at him as you took the tissues from his panicked hands and dried yourself as best you could.

“I know, I memorised the call sheet. Who are you?” His question was blunt, but you weren't taken aback at all, your smile even deepening as you enjoyed his subtle attention.

“I'm Y/N. It's my first time.”

He spluttered, coming up with an answer to that, and you immediately cursed yourself for the slip.

“My first time on set, not my- I'm 25. Not that age determines experience per say but-”

“I'm 22. And my name is Spencer,” he said, grasping your hand and shaking it.

“So, it's your first time on set?” He asked, relaxing more into the conversation as he stepped closer to you, letting the other staff members come and go from the kitchen.

“Yeah. My friend offered me the job, you know Candi?”

He nodded but didn't speak, so you continued.

“She thought the experience would be good for me. And the cash. Gotta put myself through college somehow, and it was this or stripping.”

He laughed, and you felt a flash of warmth in your stomach, a familiar hunger spreading across your lower body. Maybe it was just the atmosphere of the set, but the air was charged with arousal.

“Well, you're certainly attractive enough to do both jobs. I'm sure the camera is going to love you,” he said, sounding so genuine and enthusiastic that you almost felt bad you had to correct him.

“Oh! Oh, no, Spencer, I'm not - I'm, uh, I'm going to be behind the camera. Behind camera number two.”

His face instantly flushed, and you thought you saw a pang of disappointment there for a second, too. The thought of him being disappointed made your skin heat, that he'd been looking forward somehow to watching you get fucked? Your cunt throbbed and suddenly, you found you did wish to display yourself, to let everyone see if it meant that he got to.

“I am so sorry. I didn't - I thought… No, I didn't think, I… I'll shut up now, please excuse me-”

“No, Spencer, wait-”

You tried to call after him, but he sent you an embarrassed smile and walked off in haste, leaving you behind as the director called people to their places.

You were still flushed with arousal as you moved to your station, getting your camera ready for filming. You were distracted even as the scene started, and the female actress came on set, already stripped down to her underwear and touching herself, teasing the camera.

Surprisingly, you found the work easy enough, too busy focusing on the settings and the gaze of the camera to even care about what was going on down the lens. She was moaning and writhing and gasping sure, to the benefit of the cameras, and although strangely intimate, nobody in the room seemed bothered, so neither did you.

Or neither did you until the actual scenario started, and your actress got ‘caught’ doing the dirty by the needy boy next door. You hadn't looked at the call sheet closely enough as Spencer peeped through the door to the bedroom, entering the scene not by accident but as a scripted part of the show.

Your eyes bulged out of your head as you immediately looked down to your prompt sheet to find his name there.

LEAD ACTOR: SPENCER REID

His stage name was scribbled next to that, but you paid it no attention as you steadied your camera again and got to filming seriously again.

The actress had pulled his glasses off and led him to the bed, letting him keep on his sweater vest and tie as she pulled his head between her legs, and he started doing his job.

Even from your view to the side of him, you could tell this wasn't his first time doing that. His tongue spread across the expanse of her heat, first, letting her grind into his face, getting comfortable before he snaked a hand up to her stomach and held her in place for as long as he so desired.

Then, he rolled her clit into his mouth and sucked. The fake moans and whimpers suddenly became real as you saw the sheer skill of his tongue ripple through the woman's body.

You couldn't even be jealous at this point, despite how much you sorely wished that were you on the bed. Surely no girl had resorted to porn out of pure horny desire before, right?

After a while of letting her gasp and moan under his tongue, Spencer's fingers curled inside the other woman as well. The director called cut, and he kept his fingers there, even as they walked him through the next few shots, and instructed him to unzip his pants in the next few clips.

“Shit,” you muttered to yourself as the cameras started rolling again, and he did finally free himself from his tight khakis.

You knew you'd probably sign up for whatever was on offer at this company next to see that gift again. Spencer wasn't an impressive size or girth, nothing so alien or out of the ordinary that it only belonged in porn. It was just that his cock looked so… pretty.

He was an inch or two longer than any man you'd ever been with, you were sure, but his cock seemed to have an air of dignity about it.

You had to stop yourself at that thought. Dignity? Really? You were working part-time on a porn set, and there was suddenly dignity involved?

You rolled your shoulders back and tried to find your earlier unbothered attitude. But with his cock in his hands and his face slick with female arousal, you really couldn't bring yourself to think about anything less than his fingers roughly finger-fucking you.

You tried to close your eyes to it, to be blind, but the wet, sticky sounds only distracted you and you found yourself soon swaying, swaying, swaying until you had to catch yourself before the camera dropped.

With a shout of “yes, baby, yes,” the female star came on his face, sending up a furret of fluids as he just kept diligently stroking his cock, only stopping at the director's final yell of “CUT.”

“Perfect guys, let's get her up and drinking water again. You need to stay hydrated after all that,” he joked, a PA walking over to pass the actress a robe and a bottle of water as she walked off set.

You relaxed for a second, trying to find your quickest route out of the room so you wouldn't have to drool over the man's cock so obviously any more.

“FLUFFER? Where's the fluffer?” The director yelled, looking around for someone who obviously wasn't there yet.

“Well?”

Still, no one arrived to do whatever job they needed doing, and you felt desperate for escape.

“New girl, would you mind?” Some crew member called out from the sidelines, nodding at you.

“Oh, uh, sure,” you said, hoping that whatever job you agreed to would get you far enough from this room and the heat between your legs as possible. You were not a prude, and you would not bolt from your very first film shoot.

“Great, get on the bed and keep the boy company,” the director said before exiting the room.

You were absolutely on board with becoming a prude and bolting the scene as fast as your legs could carry you. Unfortunately, eight people still sat around, monitoring equipment and chatting on their breaks, and so you were forced to comply with the task.

“We meet again,” you greeted the man stiffly as you found him on the bed, an apprehensive, tight smile on his own face.

“You don't have to do this if you're uncomfortable, I can keep myself… occupied.”

You noticed then that his hand was still wrapped around his cock, giving it slow strokes, not enough to tip him over the edge, but just enough to maintain the erection.

“So the fluffer….?”

“Prepares the actors for the next scene? I need to stay- let say in shape.”

His face flushed crimson as your gaze slipped down to his cock in his hand.

“So you want me to-”

“NO. No, I usually only talk to the Fluffers. Look at them, you know?”

You nodded and found yourself suddenly going still, watching his face contort with pleasure as his eyes raked over your chest and legs.

You couldn't help but let your eyes dart south again, and fuck did you wish you hadn't. His spare hand fisted the sheets as he stroked himself gently, practically taunting himself with the light touch.

“You do this often?” you asked, trying to pretend you were open to having a normal conversation even while your brain begged you to climb into his lap and sink down as fast as you could.

“You mean maaturbate or the porn thing?”

“Porn.”

“No. No, I come in for a shoot every few months. One of these shoots tends to fund another semester of my PhD, so-”

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you were impressed by that admission, but your predominate thought was still “shit, shit, shit, shit.”

“That's impressive,” you said, only catching your words as they tripped out of your mouth. “THE PHD! The PhD, I mean not your… penis? Not that it isn’t appealing, or- or-.”

You tried your hardest to use the most clinical word you could, distancing yourself from the honeyed words you so wanted to drop in his ear to get him to crawl further up the bed and entice him to make his own scene with you.

“Thank you. It's my third,” he said, slightly more relaxed now that you were the flustered one.

“PhD that is. Not cock. I only have one of these.”

“One is enough,” you say, unable to stop the words tumbling out as your eyes again find themselves following each pump of his hand up and down his cock. Inwardly, you curse your friend for starting up her stupid business and paying you to simply exist in the same hemisphere as this man without being able to ride him.

“Do you want to touch it?” He asked, blurting the words out suddenly. As if God had answered your prayers, your heart leapt up into your throat, your pussy clenching around nothing as you shifted your hips closer to him.

You'd thought then that you'd quite enjoy bouncing on that thing yourself, but a handshake would have to do.

“So you have to stay hard, but-”

“But it's best I don't cum, yeah.”

“Okay. Noted.”

Slowly, you reached out a hand and gently wrapped each finger around the tip of his cock. He released himself and wrapped his now free hand around yours, setting the pace for you quickly as he engaged you in conversation again.

“So, where are you from?” He asked, as inept at small talk as you felt in that second.

You answered him without a fuss and returned the question. Las Vegas. That seemed to check out with how easily he'd broken into porn. There was always something happening in that city.

"How'd you get into the business?"

"Well, Vegas, you know. A producer saw a group of... street ladies offer me a freebie and gave me his card."

You went back and forth on questions like that for a few minutes before you noticed he was coughing every few seconds to mask moans and groans, evidently too into this to request you stop.

“Is it okay to…Can I touch you?” He asked, sounding very afraid of rejection at that second.

“Oh, um, yes. That'd only be fair, right?”

He ran a hand up your waist to the curve of your breast and pressed his fingers into one, digging into the skin as though it were a pillow, and he was testing it before he fell head first into it.

Maybe that was just wishful thinking, though.

Temporarily, you let go of him, popping the front buttons of your blouse until he could freely see all of your black and red bra, and feast on the tops of your dusty nipples, peaking out just above each cup.

You heard him inhale sharply, even as he tried to hide it, but you didn't care, too transfixed on the precum decorating his tip.

“Would you mind-” You started, but cut yourself off quickly, biting your lower lip.

“Mind?”

“Can I suck it?”

You didn't know where it came from because there were probably half a dozen other people still in the room, and mostly men. But dear god, he looked delicious, and you wanted just a little sample.

“Fuck yes,” he said, finally giving in and letting out a whole gust of breath as he slumped down a bit further, no longer holding himself rigid. “No, no, actually, please do. I'm begging, I'll beg-”

You cut him off by pushing yourself to your knees and crawling in between his, and seconds later, you were licking the length of his cock from the base of his balls all the way to that precious drop of precum.

Hard, but no cumming. You could do that. You'd never done it before, preferring to fully pleasure sexual partners any chance you got, but there was no time like the present to start learning.

Slowly, you wrapped your lips around his tip and sank down, taking one inch, then another, and then another. When you reached the base of his cock, you pushed that little bit further down, calming yourself and going slowly so you didn't gag, nose pushing into his neat public hair before pulling away just as slowly and doing it again.

You took him as deep down your throat as you could manage, and suddenly, it was like everything that kept your conversation casual and civil earlier had flown out the door. He threw his head back, fisted his hand in your hair, and moaned deep.

The sound shook you so much you almost pushed a hand into your own underwear and started fucking yourself, needing to prepare yourself for him like a good girl.

Around you, you could hear signs of the shoot starting back up again, people finding their places, still all but ignoring you deep-throating a porn star.

Spencer's breaths grew more rapid as you sucked him, hips becoming restless as he tried to lift up into your mouth, hand in your hair tightening as you realised your mistake.

You pulled off his cock and grasped it again, stroking it slowly, but it was too late. With a sharp moan and a twitch of his hips, Spencer so prettily decorated your chin and chest. His cum dripped down your face, hitting your cleavage and pushing further down to stain your nice black laced underwear white.

“Fuck! Sorry, I wasn't meant to do that, let me get some - Can I get a towel please? A baby wipe? Some tissue, anything?” His voice was panicked, but his hand on your head relaxed, and he brushed your hair gently behind your ear, as if comforting you.

He was panicked, for sure, but the crew calmly handed him everything he needed, as if they'd been in anticipation of just this thing happening. You supposed they probably were, this being a porn set. You were sure you were supposed to clean yourself up, but instead, he grabbed a wet tissue, leaving the pack just out of your reach.

He managed to clean your face off a bit before the director returned to the room with a laugh. Running a hand through his hair and messing it up slightly, the director turned back to you.

“We're five minutes out from shoot time,” he said, shaking his head. You started to apologise, but he stopped you with a hand.

“New girl, work whatever magic you just did and get him hard again. Five minutes.”

“W-What?” You spluttered, trying your best to rise from your knees, but ultimately failing. You were either stiff from the position or just weak with arousal.

“He just came, I don't think I can-”

“10 pictures I've done with that kid, and I haven't seen him cum that quickly ever before in my life. And certainly not just for some kitten licks. Do it.”

You turned back to Spencer, his cum still trickling down your chest, creating an almost uncomfortable stiffness as it dried up.

“Pleasure working with you?” You said, not-so-secretly ecstatic that you got to sample him once more.

“I'll be in your care,” he replied, as you begin softly kissing the head of his cock again, tipping his head back again and losing himself in the pleasure or your tongue.

#spencer reid #criminal minds #spencer reid x reader #reiderslibrary #spencer reid fanfic #mgg #spencer reid smut #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fandom #spencer reid criminal minds #spencer reid fanfiction #dr spencer reid #spencer reid x reader smut #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #cmkinkbingo2024

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clonecaptains · 2 months ago

Text

No Vacancy

a tyler owens x shy reader fic

warnings: none! she/her pronouns mentioned; no use of y/n; this is all cozy fluff

word count: 3k

summary: you're part of the wrangler crew and have a crush on tyler. and you're debating on acting on these feelings. you might just get your chance when he shows up at your motel room.

a/n: this is my first tyler fic! this is the ol 'there's only one bed' trope - and im already planning a part two! hope yall enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All these motel rooms look the same. Warm earth tones all over the place and strange prints on the bedspread. But after a long day like today, it’s a welcome sight. That bed’s calling your name. You shrug your bag off your shoulder and hit the light switch. The lamp in the corner illuminates the room in a warm glow. It’s cozy.

The door clicks behind you; and you stand in the room for a moment deciding what you want to do next. Your job was done for the day. You are the official tornado wrangler social media accounts manager. Now that the wrangler team has gained a substantial following, it’s your job to post updates about new videos or the latest t-shirt design up for charity purposes. You’ve posted what you needed to post for the day, and now is your chance to rest.

You decide on a shower to think about the events of the day while you clean off.

Today was a first for you. It was your first time being in tornado while sitting in the passenger seat of Tyler’s truck. You’ve been on the team now for a while, but it was part of your initiation they’d said. Tyler was sweet. He pulled you aside telling you that you didn’t have to if you didn’t want to. And you really didn’t want to, but you wanted to prove to yourself that you could. More than that, you trusted Tyler would keep you safe.

You loved watching him, and his excitement was contagious despite your fears of this major storm. He’d been blasting his storm playlist, but when it got close to the moment, he made sure you were ok.

When the storm hit and passed you over, you couldn’t help but scream – in fear or excitement you don’t know. You grabbed Tyler’s arm in the heat of the moment, and feeling his warm skin under your fingertips was more of a thrill than the storm was.

You’re not sure how well you’re keeping the secret that you’re completely in love with him. You fell the first day you met him several months ago. And while you did prove to yourself that you could handle a tornado – you don’t know if you can handle the ache you feel when you’re around him. Riding shotgun in his truck today and touching his arm will keep you on cloud nine for the next week.

A creak in the pipes of this old motel tears you from your thoughts. You get out of the shower and dry off to put on your pjs. That’s when your mind drifts back to Tyler. How sweet he was with you all day leading up to your first tornado, and how he let you hold his arm. How he checked on you a dozen times after to make sure you weren’t too shaken.

You were shaken, but not but the storm. No matter how often you’re around him – he has the same effect on you. He makes you feel dizzy. His presence is so hard to ignore. It’s not just his handsome face or broad muscular frame – though that certainly is a factor – it’s his charm and relaxed demeanor. He’s a perfect balance of rowdy and sweet. And you are smitten.

You wince thinking about how it’s probably painfully obvious to the rest of the team. And what’s worse, it’s obvious to him too. If he’s seen it – and hasn’t said anything then you can only assume he doesn’t feel the same way.

All of this goes through your mind during your nightly routine. It’s early in the night, you left the wranglers down in the parking lot – most of them were still having a beer chatting over the day’s storm. You can faintly hear people talking outside while the night is winding down.

You settle into bed turning on the TV when you hear keys turning in the lock on your door. Much to your surprise – the door opens and who but Tyler himself is standing in the doorway. He’s just as confused as you. He steps backwards out of the doorway to check the key in his hand and the number on the door. He smiles with a soft huff – shaking his head at something you didn’t know what until later.

“This is the right room according to this,” he holds up the key and closes the door behind him. Suddenly the room feels a hundred times smaller. You feel yourself start to panic.

“They set this up,” Tyler continues. “I know it was Boone,” he laughs setting his bag down on the table near the door. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he tells you right away to try and ease the fear he can probably see in your eyes.

You don’t have a reply because you’re still shocked he’s standing in your room.

“You did great today by the way,” Tyler was still talking, and you were glad for it.

But you do find your voice, “Thank you.” That actually means a lot to you.

“Wasn’t too bad, was it?” he asks, looking over his shoulder. He’s rifling through his bag.

“No, no,” you feign being nonchalant and he cracks a smile. “Tyler, do you want to check if there’s another room available?” you ask him in the same breath. “I don’t want you to sleep on the floor, that won’t be comfortable at all.”

“Tryin’ to kick me out?” he gives a little wink as he reaches for the phone to call the front desk.

The phone call was quick – not long enough for you to decide which outcome you’d prefer.

Do you want him to stay? if he stayed then you’d have to deal with your crush being in your room all night. Having to play it cool as best you could. Or do you want him to leave? And regret later that you didn’t say anything about how you felt when you had a good chance to in this moment

The choice is made for you in the span of a few seconds.

“No more rooms,” he clicked his tongue. “The floor’ll be fine!”

That’s one of the things you admire most about him. He’s considerate and polite – and he’s happy to be. You know the floor is not comfortable. But he offered like it was the most common thing in the world.

“I am gonna shower first,” he says. “You showered right?” he asks pointing at you, and you nod “yeah! Go for it!”

Now that he knew he was staying, he takes off his boots. Something about them resting on the floor by the doorway makes your heart ache. It’s so close to what it could be like if you were together. A taste of domestic life with Tyler.

He disappears into the bathroom, and you resume flipping through the TV channels. You hope that will distract you from thinking about your crush being very naked and wet on the other side of that door. It’s not like you intentionally linger on it, but when you hear the shower curtain rings slide along the curtain rod and the water kick on - your face warms heavily.

When you hear him quietly hum in the shower, you feel yourself begin to relax. Something about it warms your heart, you think maybe he feels comfortable and doesn’t mind being heard while he hums.

You know the tune, one of the songs he’d been blasting in the truck recently. That makes you think back to being in the tornado again. You can’t believe you did that. Maybe that is your sign to do something else brave. If you could weather that storm surely you could admit your feelings to Tyler.

What if he didn’t feel the same? Then you’d have to awkwardly share a room, and the rest of the time spent working at this job with him knowing you have a crush on him.

How many times have you heard him say “if you feel it, chase it.” If he felt it, would he not have chased it by now? You feel it and you want to chase him, but he makes your knees weak.

What if he does feel the same? How do you maneuver this? There are too many questions, and you don’t know any of the answers. All that you know was you have it bad for him and it hurts. It’s such an ache. Being around him all the time for work, but never having him. You’re embarrassed to admit how much touching his arm earlier was a thrill, it’s all you’d been able to think about.

The more you think about all of this, the harder your heart beats. You’ve barely had time to process anything since he’s been in your room. It gets even worse when the shower stops. You hear when the curtain opens, and when his feet touch the floor.

Then you hear your name.

“There aren’t any towels.”

Oh no. You forgotten you’d used them both. You weren’t expecting to have to share.

“I’ll go get you one! I’m sorry I used them both!” You grab the key and dart out the room, you dn’t even care that someone might see you in your pajamas. You’d rather go grab one for him than wait awkwardly for a towel to be brought up. The less you have to think about him naked in the next room the better for your sanity.

You grab the towels and an extra pillow from the front desk and head back.

“I’m coming in!” You laugh opening the door, and you hear him laugh from the bathroom. “Ok I have them,” you tell him near the bathroom door. He opens it just a smidge and sticks his hand out. You both laugh when you hand him the towels. The awkward moment acknowledged and laughed at instead of worrying about it.

“Thank you,” he replies as he closes the door.

You sit on the bed again, but this time instead of sitting in the middle – you sit more on one side. It’s big enough for you to share so you don’t see why not. It’s not fair for him to sleep on the floor.

As hard as you try to prepare yourself for sharing a bed with him, it lands like a brick in the pit of your stomach when he steps out of the bathroom. The scent of his bodywash hits you first, you always loved how he smells. But just looking at him, he’s a dream.

He’s wearing a soft worn t-shirt and some gym shorts. His hair’s a mess, and it makes you giggle to see it so unruly. He smiles at your quiet laugh.

“Something funny?” he prods running the towel over his head again before hooking it on the back of the door.

“Your hair is always so perfect!”

“You’re getting an exclusive behind the scenes look,” he smiles moving towards the table where he’d put his stuff. He digs through his bag to pull out his phone and charger - plugging it into the nearest outlet.

“Tyler?” your voice comes out timid. He looks up from his phone and sets it down to give you his attention. “You can stay up here,” you point to the empty half of the bed. “I got an extra pillow too.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” his eyes are soft, his brows furrow.

“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable on the floor!”

He’s quiet for a moment. He looks at his hat sitting on the table amongst his things, and he strokes along the brim of the hat. Usually, you’re able to read him but this leaves you a little miffed. It makes your heart start to beat a little faster from the anticipation.

“Alright,” he decides standing up.

Ok, ok. Don’t panic. This is what you asked for.

He checks the lock on the door making sure it’s locked, and he turns off the floor lamp in the corner.

“On or off?” he asks near the bathroom. When you tell him ‘Off’, he taps that light switch and the loud hum from that light stops. The only light now is from the TV across from the bed.

Your heart is fluttering in your chest when he pulls the covers back. When he sits down and you feel his weight on the mattress - that really gets your heart pounding. He pulls the blankets back over himself and lays down with a heavy sigh. You know he’s tired, he’d been driving like a maniac into storms all day.

Though he’s more than just a rowdy storm chaser, he works long hours helping families and doing charity work. You love him for all these things. And you’re glad it’s dark because you feel like you might cry. He’s so close, and you have no idea what to say or do to tell him what you feel.

“Can I turn this off?” you ask trying to hide the quiver in your voice.

“Yes ma’am,” he replies and sinks further into the blankets. Both of you shift to get comfortable now in the dark, and his leg touches yours - causing you to jump. You don’t mean to gasp, but it slips out.

“Sorry!” he laughs and it relieves some tension. Some. You can’t calm down and you don’t know how to. He’s just a few inches away!! You were both lying on your backs, and his shoulder’s almost touching yours. You can still smell his body wash from earlier.

Just say it. Tell him you love him. You survived a tornado today!

You try to hype yourself up, but it isn’t working.

Before you plan out anything to say, you blurt out his name. That’s all you can muster. But this time, it’s worse than before, and your voice quivers audibly. More than that, you’re starting to tremble.

“Hey, hey- it’s ok,” he rolls over on his side to face you. “Me too,” he says and you have no idea what he’s talking about. Until he reachs for you in the dark. “Give me your hand,” he whispers and you roll on your side to face him. You reach towards him, and he gently wraps his hand around your wrist – guiding it to his chest. He puts your hand over his heart, and you feel it pounding under the warmth of his skin and soft shirt. “You see, I have a crush on this girl-“

Your eyes have adjusted in the dark and it’s enough to see the soft, almost shy look he gives you.

“Really?” you whisper. “Me?”

He lets go of your wrist and puts his hand on top of yours and presses down, emphasizing his point.

“Why haven’t you said anything til now? What happened to ‘if you feel it chase it’?”

He clears his throat comically and shifts a little, “Well, I-, ok you got me. Maybe I was a little nervous.” He shrugs. Your hand hasn’t moved from his chest, neither has his hand. He slowly starts to curl his fingers around your hand.

“You? Nervous for me? Do you know what I’ve been thinking about all day today?” you pause. “I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this.” He scoots a little closer to you, ready to listen. “It wasn’t the tornado I’ve been thinking about. It’s been how it felt to touch your arm today.” Your face is on fire. But it gives you a thrill to feel his heart jump and see the smile on his face widen.

He lets go of your hand and hooks his arm so his forearm is close to your face. “Would you like to again?” he teases, and you shove his chest playfully. He laughs, a good deep laugh. He’s relieved and happy. It makes your face hurt from your own smile, and you shyly move your hand from his chest to touch his forearm.

The air shifts. You both feel it when you stroke up and down his arm. You aren’t going to tell him how much you love feeling his arm hair under your fingertips. But he could probably figure it out. Maybe you didn’t mind if he knew.

He reaches for you then, your hand curls around his wrist this time. His hand cradles the back of your head, and he pulls you closer.

“I’m sorry I waited so long for this, I didn’t want to scare you. But truth is I was scared,” he admits.

“I was too, I was scared you didn’t feel the same way,” you whisper back. Your faces are so close to each other, and your bodies almost touching. You can feel the warmth from him.

He lets out a soft grunt like he’s been hit, shocked at what you just said to him.

“Can I?” he asks. You know what he’s asking. His expression is so sweet, so gentle. Another reason you love him. You feel safe in his presence, in his grasp.

“Yes,” you whisper, and then you start to laugh at yourself.

“What?” he smiles laughing.

“I was just gonna say you should ‘chase it’,” you smile. You barely finish the sentence before he closes the gap between you. Warm lips on yours, his nose pressing into your cheek. The stubble on his chin brushes your skin as you whimper into his mouth.

It’s a brief kiss before it breaks. There’s a slight pause where you look at each other smiling, enjoying the moment. Then he dives in for a deeper kiss. His arms pulling you closer, holding you tight to him. Though you wouldn’t dream of pulling away.

At some point you do break apart, both a little breathless. You feel dizzy and lovesick from the way he’s looking at you; something tells you he feels the same.

He starts to laugh again, shaking his head. “We won’t hear the end of this one.”

“Nope,” you smile knowing already what Lily and Dani will have to say.

“I know Boone had a hand in this.”

“Lily and Dani too, they’ve been pushing me to talk to you for weeks,” you giggle burying your face in his neck. He hugs you to him and squeezes. He adds a little reassuring rub on your back. “I’m still scared,” you admit, a secret murmured into his skin.

“I know,” he squeezes again. “Me too. Don’t want to lose you. But you’re worth chasing.”

You hum happily into his neck when a big yawn takes over you.

“Sorry,” you giggle, his laugh joining yours.

“You had a big day. Riding in your first tornado! That and the kissin’ outta wear anybody out,” he winks. Then tilts his head down to kiss your forehead. “Get some sleep.”

“Don’t let go,” you yawn, cuddling into his chest.

He whispers quietly against the top of your head, “never.”

#tyler owens #tyler owens x reader #tyler owens x shy reader #twisters fic #my writing

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formulawolff · 5 months ago

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"just one dance" - t.w.

pairing: horner's daughter!reader x toto wolff

word count: 1.9k

warnings: toto lusting after a woman thirty years younger than him (what's new on this blog lmfao), sexual references, maybe some cursing (idrk), mentions of drug use, alcohol use, flirting, banter, yadayadayada

a/n: i played "here" by alessia cara like 20x on repeat while writing this fic. so we could say that this fic is veryyyyy loosely inspired by that song. also! this was a request by an anon! i hope y'all enjoy! <3

"come on," the words as slurred as he rolls his eyes, "come dance with us!"

bringing your hand to your mouth, you stifle a giggle, "max, for the last time, i am not joining the horny middle school grind circle you guys have going on over there."

"it's not a grind circle," he puts his hands on his hips, "i would say it's more like a mosh pit."

which, given the occasion, was not quite appropriate either.

at the moment, you were perched at one of the many elegant banquet tables, the rigid surfaced draped with a thick, cream-colored tablecloth. adorning the table were numerous vases, filled to the brim with floral arrangements, their fragrance oh so sickeningly sweet.

the plates, utensils, and other various dining ware were now cleared, only leaving numerous wine glasses, their crystalline stems glimmering in the dim light, swathed by the golden hue of the chandeliers as they sparkle above.

this was the annual fia prize gala, one of the most coveted events of the season. it was the showcasing and peacocking of sheer and utter wealth, as the drivers got to pull up to in their luxury vehicles, their keys handed off to the valets. every individual was dressed head to toe in designer clothing from nearly every brand possible, from christian dior to saint laurent.

you lost track of the amount of rolex watches, cartier jewelry, and hermès bags you noticed throughout the course of the evening.

the main event wrapped up hours ago, leaving the rest of the night for the drivers, crew members, mechanics, engineers, executives, and team principals to mingle and dance. and well, consume copious amounts of alcohol.

and well, perhaps do a few lines in the restroom. or light a joint outside. maybe even pop a few pills.

with the exuberant amounts of cash involved with events like this, there were surely some illicit affairs. ones that the fia ignored, simply turning their heads.

if they didn't see it, it didn't happen.

after all, you were in monaco. it was like las vegas in a way.

what happened in monaco, stayed in monaco.

and here max verstappen was, three-time world champion, standing before you, so drunk he could barely walk, begging for you to come join him on the dance floor.

too bad your phone was almost dead.

this would have been a prime opportunity to record what was unfolding before you. it would have fed the max girlies all over instagram and tik tok for months.

glancing over max's shoulder, you pick out lando, oscar, charles, and carlos. they were apart of the large formation, jumping up and down, barreling into one another. alexandra, rebecca, and lily linger around the group, their gowns swishing as they laugh, their cheeks dusted with a bubblegum pink glow.

a drunken mosh pit with a bunch of sweaty men? no thank you.

but gossiping with the girls? that was more your speed.

"my dad would have a stroke if he caught me with you guys," you simply shrug, sipping on your wine, "and what if something happened to my dress? we have to return this, you know."

"ugh," the dutch driver groans, "you're no fun."

"hallo, max," a new voice cuts in, thick with an accent you can't quite place your finger on, "congratulations on your accomplishment this year!"

shifting in your chair is none other than torger christian wolff, better known as toto wolff, team prinicipal of mercedes.

your heart skips a beat as your eyes drink in the sight of him, the way his crisp tuxedo fit him effortlessly. his dark brunette hair was messy, more than likely from the events of the evening. his bowtie was untied, hanging loosely around his neck. the first few buttons of the snowy white dress shirt were undone, exposing his skin.

fuck, was he a gorgeous man.

with sharp cheekbones, a chiseled jawline, and wide, beautiful coffee brown eyes, he knew that he was attractive, his aura brimmed with nothing but sexiness and dominance.

his hands land on the chair beside you, pulling it out as max rambles, the words drowning out in your ears.

you were more focused on his stature as he sits to your right, his thighs spread in the chair, a hand running through his hair.

"is there a reason why i haven't seen you on the dance floor?"

due to the excessive volume of the music, his mouth hovers by your ear. a shiver runs down your spine as his eyes lock with yours, lips forming a radiant smile, flashing his perfect pearlescent teeth.

"cat got your tongue? or are you just as intoxicated as maxie boy over there?"

"neither," you counter, straightening in your chair, "just not really interested, that's all."

"did daddy not give his precious diamond any dance lessons growing up?"

your father was none other than christian horner, team principal of red bull racing, sworn enemy of toto wolff.

quickly, your eyes scan your surroundings, in an attempt to pick out your father among the throng of people. to your dismay, you cannot find him.

which, in this case, could be a good thing.

if he saw toto speaking to you? oh fuck. it would be game over. you'd probably be grounded at your big age of twenty-four years old. could parents even do that when you were an adult?

you didn't really want to find out.

yet, you couldn't turn down a few moments with the team principal.

after all, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

why not seize it?

for most of your life, you obeyed every single one of your father's wishes. you maintained your distance from the red bull drivers, careful not to get too close. you stayed out of the spotlight, ensuring that no negative publicity ever came his way. as much as you yearned to get to know members of the mercedes team or crew, you shied away, maintaining the promise that you would never befriend a rival.

so, for this one night, you could be a little selfish.

just this once.

even if it involved your father's biggest foe. the bane of his existence. the man he spoked about so bitterly for years on end.

"i was offered dance lessons, actually," your voice is melodic, like an angel's from the heavens above, "i turned them down. opted for horseback riding instead."

"so you know how to ride?" the team principal runs a tongue along his lower lip, his brow slightly raised, "well, i have an offer for you. one dance with me, and then later you can show me how well you can ride."

"and what am i going to be riding?" you inquire, folding your arms across your chest.

the corners of his lips curl into a devious smirk, an emotion glinting within the mocha depths as he leans in, "my cock."

heat flourishes into your cheeks, seeping all throughout your body. as your mind scrambles, struggling to formulate some sort of witty response, the team principal nods, "not expecting that, were you? i like seeing you like this, all flustered. it's cute."

"y-you're ridiculous," you manage to sputter out, hands instinctively shielding your face.

"not as ridiculous as any of those fools," his head motions towards the group of rambunctious drivers, "tell me, why aren't you with any of them? i'm sure maxie boy would love to take you on a date. lando too."

"just not interested," you shrug, regaining your confidence a tad, "don't get me wrong, they've asked. but i've always just turned them down."

toto cocks his head, his voice laced with a tease, "why? scared daddy is going to ground you for dating a driver?"

"i just rather wouldn't be involved with anyone of them romantically," you wave a hand, "it'd be too awkward if things didn't end up working out. could you imagine having to spend so much time at the paddock with someone who your dad could fire at any given moment? it'd be like walking on eggshells. i'd feel bad for any poor soul who wants to court me. they'd constantly be seeking my father's approval, on and off the track."

"well it's a good thing that i already know where i stand," toto shoots you a wink, your heart thudding against your rib-cage as he offers you his hand, "come on, just one dance. that's all i ask of you, gorgeous girl. one dance and then you can come right back over here, spending the rest of your night sulking in the corner."

"i haven't been sulking," you snort, accepting the gesture, "i've just been bored."

"how about you accept the other half of my offer then?" his accent is prominent, lingering in every word, "i've just been flirting, you don't really have to ride me. unless you know, you want to-"

"are you forgetting that we're in a very public space?" you hiss, elbow interlocked with his as you make your way to the dance floor, "people can probably hear you."

"good thing we're all drunk," he responds, the casual delivery sending you spiraling, "here, place your hand on my shoulder. i'll take this hand. the other will go on your waist."

as you follow his lead, you can't help but feel the pairs of eyes fixate on the two of you, murmurs rising above the music. yet, toto's focus is honed in on you, and only you.

"don't worry about them," he takes a step forward, your feet following in suit, "they're probably just envious that i'm with the most coveted woman in all of formula one."

"you don't mean that."

"oh schatzi," a chuckle rumbles in his chest, flowing from his lips, "do you not hear the things they say about you among the paddocks?"

"enlighten me then," your heart swells as his thumb tenderly kneads into your waist, fingers interlocking with yours.

his mouth is merely centimeters away from yours now, dimples apparent as his eyes glitter like the chandeliers above, "there's whispers that you are the most breathtaking woman in the world. the drivers talk about you all of the time, debating who would look the best by your side. you're a hot commodity. a prize to be won."

"people say those things about me?"

"would i ever lie to you?" toto arched a brow, "i have no reason to."

"that is true."

there's a twinge of resentment that bubbles up in your stomach as the song ends. oh how this moment ended too soon.

way too soon.

"still no sign of your father," toto's voice is hushed, barely audible over the music, "you think i could have you for just one more song? after that, i promise i'll leave you be."

"i think so," you feel a smile form the moment he pulls you in closer, the space between you crumbling away, "careful, mr. wolff. you need to maintain some sort of distance between us, remember?"

he shakes his head, fingers squeezing your waist, "right now, i could give any fucks what your father would think. he's lucky that i have some sort of self-control."

"and why is that?" you press, blood roaring in your ears as his head lowers, situated by your ear.

"because it is taking everything within me to keep myself from getting on my knees right this instant and lifting up that gown of yours."

#toto wolff #toto wolff x reader #formula one #formula 1 #toto wolff x you #toto wolff x y/n #f1 #formula 1 x reader #toto wolff fanfiction #formula one x reader #formula one x female reader #formula one fanfic #f1 fanfic

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doumadono · 10 months ago

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Warnings: smut w/o plot, cunningulus, f!reader, squirting, fingering, alcohol use, voyeurism Synopsis: after the war, you and Shigaraki spend time together while the rest of the League prepares for the final mission. Excessive drinking leads to a moment of intimacy between you and Shigaraki, with him tasting your cunt for the first time. Unbeknownst to you, your boyfriend Touya unexpectedly returns early and witnesses the scene A/N: this piece was commissioned on my Ko-fi page by my beloved @shonen-brainrot - I'm sharing this fic with her consent. Thank you for commissioning me, baby! I hope you enjoy it! Friendly reminder to everyone else: my writing commissions are open :)

MASTERLIST KO-FI COMISSIONS: OPEN

You spent a mere three months as a member of the League of Villains, yet during that brief period, you actively contributed to planning the Paranormal Liberation War. Despite the apparent "loss," you understood that, among other things, you achieved a strategic victory. After exiting the stage with Tomura and his other allies, you needed to keep a low profile, and so you did. Leveraging your quirk, Speed Recovery, you became a highly valuable asset to Shigaraki, aiding in the recovery of his injured allies.

Amid this intense three months period, you cultivated an unexpected understanding with the most enigmatic figure in the organization — Dabi. Astonishingly, he turned out to be the long-lost son of the Number One hero, Endeavor. Before you fully grasped it, you found yourself low-key "dating" - an understated term for the intensity of the connection. It encompassed spending endless hours together, engaging in profound conversations, and gradually closing the physical distance between you two.

Yet, an undercurrent of unease lingered as you sensed Tomura's discontent. Was he possibly envious of someone as seemingly ordinary as yourself? The uncertainty hung in the air, casting a shadow over the dynamics within the group.

You devoted considerable time meticulously plotting the retribution, even as you witnessed Tomura's growing anger and frustration. Reassuring him, you affirmed the intricacy of his plans, confidently asserting that soon you would unveil a lesson for the heroes, showing them their rightful place.

After the devastating War, Tomura visibly bore the weight of stress, engrossed in devising his next set of plans.

One evening, while the others were away preparing for the final mission, you and Tomura remained at the hideout, sipping from a shared bottle of vodka. The conversation delved into the details of the plan and the sacrifices it would inevitably demand.

Tomura took a sip, his crimson eyes fixed on you. "This mission will change everything. Sacrifices are inevitable."

You nodded, the weight of the responsibility settling in. "Yeah, but it's necessary. For a better future."

He smirked, a hint of amusement in his eyes. "A better future, huh? How optimistic."

You chuckled, recognizing his penchant for cynicism. "Well, not everyone can be as optimistic as you, Tomura."

He leaned back, fingers tapping against the bottle. "Optimism won't save us. Practicality will."

You smirked, appreciating the contrast in your perspectives. "Practicality and a bit of optimism won't hurt."

Tomura scoffed, taking another sip. "You're incorrigible."

You raised an eyebrow. "Coming from you, that's a compliment."

He chuckled, the corners of his lips curling into a rare smile. "Maybe. But let's not get too sentimental. We have work to do."

As the night wore on, the shared bottle of vodka dwindled, leaving both you and Tomura with a growing sense of intoxication.

"Thanks for the refill," you slurred appreciatively, the alcohol already making its presence felt.

Tomura, seemingly affected by the spirits as well, mused, "Can't believe Dabi didn't teach you how to drink."

You chuckled, the room swaying slightly. "Guess he missed that lesson."

With a nonchalant shrug, Tomura rose, tossing the empty bottle effortlessly into the trash bin. He went to a nearby cabinet, retrieving another bottle of alcohol and two fresh glasses.

You protested, waving your hands, but he poured you another drink, raising an eyebrow. "How are things between you and our lovely Todoroki, by the way?"

The question struck a chord, and you frowned, feeling a bit uncomfortable at the sudden turn into personal territory. "Well, you know, complicated," you replied evasively, taking a sip to buy some time.

Tomura leaned back, swirling his drink, his gaze fixed on you. "Complicated, huh? Must be quite a story."

You sighed, the alcohol loosening your tongue. "Yeah, it is. But we manage."

He nodded, taking a thoughtful sip. "Managing is something, I guess."

You attempted to shift the conversation away from your relationship with Dabi, bringing up other topics, but Tomura proved relentless. With a cocky grin, he circled back to Dabi, probing for more details.

"Come on, spill it. I want to hear the juicy bits," he taunted, swirling his drink with an unsettling confidence.

Sighing, you relented a little. "It's not that interesting, Tomura. Just the usual ups and downs. Nothing to discuss."

He leaned in, a dark glint in his eyes. "Ups and downs, huh? Sounds like there's more to it."

You rolled your eyes, realizing that steering the conversation away from Dabi was an uphill battle. "Can we talk about something else, Tomura? There's a whole world out there."

He chuckled, his laughter carrying a sinister undertone. "The world can wait."

As the night wore on, Tomura's questions became more probing, his tone growing darker and more insistent. He seemed to revel in the discomfort he caused, savoring every tidbit you reluctantly shared about your tumultuous relationship. Tomura got up, the creaking floorboards announcing his movement as he paced around the room. He cast a sly glance in your direction, the dim light highlighting the eerie grin on his face. "You know," he began, still walking, "I always suspected there was more to Dabi. But Endeavor's son? Now, that's interesting."

You shifted uncomfortably, eyeing him as he continued to circle the room. "Yeah, surprising, right?"

He chuckled, a sinister edge to his voice. "Perfect, actually. Vengeance is a powerful motivator. It'll make him even more useful for our cause."

Tomura took a place beside you on a worn-out couch, his arm casually wrapping around your shoulders. He poured another drink, his dark eyes never leaving yours.

You gave a weak smile, feeling a little uncomfortable under his scrutinizing gaze. The tension heightened as his arm tightened around your shoulders, and he handed you the freshly poured drink.

"To unexpected alliances," he proposed, raising his glass.

You clinked yours against his, the liquid burning down your throat, the room spinning with a mix of alcohol and Tomura's ominous presence.

As Tomura poured another round, he seemed undeterred by the growing level of intoxication. The air was thick with the scent of alcohol.

In the midst of another casual conversation, Tomura, with an unsettling nonchalance, steered the dialogue back to Dabi. "Did he fuck you already?" he inquired abruptly, his tone cutting through the drunken haze that surrounded you.

Your cheeks flushed, and you visibly squirmed in discomfort at the unexpected and personal nature of the question. "It's none… None of your… Bussiness, Tomura," you hiccuped.

"Come on now, spill it. Did he or didn't he?" he pressed, a mocking grin playing on his lips.

You sighed, feeling the weight of the question. "Tomura, that's really none of your business…"

Tomura's grin widened, and he leaned back, seemingly pleased with your discomfort. "Sounds like a yes to me. Dabi's got taste, I'll give him that. Was he a gentleman, delicately tending to your needs, or more like a dog in heat, just claiming what's his?"

Your face burned hotter as you bit your lower lip, desperately downing the glass of vodka, and quickly covering your mouth after. "Something in between," you mumbled, your words slightly slurred.

Shigaraki chuckled darkly, throwing his head back. "Mmmm, I see. What a pity then. You deserve to be taken care of, baby. Such a little, pretty villain," he reached his gloved hand out and touched your cheek. The gloved touch sent shivers down your spine. "Did he eat your pussy?"

The nausea welled up inside you, and all you wanted was to escape to your tiny room and lie down. You nodded, managing a weak, "Yes," hoping it would satisfy Shigaraki and put an end to the uncomfortably intimate interrogation.

Tomura grinned, placing his glass on a tiny coffee table. He simply leaned in, crushing his lips onto yours without seeking your consent.

In your intoxicated state, attempts to push him away were feeble. His lips bore the flavor of vodka, but strangely, you found yourself not entirely opposed to the unexpected kiss. A part of you didn't mind what was happening at all, so you casually moved your lips against his in a dance influenced by the haze of alcohol.

Before you could fully comprehend the situation, his gloved hand, adorned with only two fingers covered by a black leather, slipped between your thighs and beneath the plain skirt you wore. His touch started at your thigh, skillfully massaging the soft flesh, while slowly ascending.

A gasp escaped your lips as a strange warmth began to build within your abdomen. You cursed yourself for reacting this way to your boss. You shouldn't be feeling like this; after all, you had a boyfriend. What would he think if he knew how Shigaraki's touch was affecting you? You blamed the intoxication for clouding your mind, and even if you desired to push Shigaraki away, you felt powerless; your hands seemed to weigh a ton.

Gloved fingers teased you through your panties, eliciting a gasp that escaped past your parted lips. You bit down on your lower lip, the sensations proving intoxicating, clouding the last remaining rationally-thinking parts of your brain.

As your head lolled back, resting against the back of the couch, Shigaraki licked the column of your neck. "Shhh, shhhh, it's okay. Ain't gonna hurt ya, sweetie. I just wanna make you feel good, like Dabi never did, I bet."

Shigaraki pushed the fabric of your panties aside, his touch careful as he rubbed against your folds, discovering they were already slick with your excitement. He grinned, licking his lips. "Look at you," he chuckled, hiccuping a little. "Mmm, already so wet for your boss. That's the attitude I like."

Shigaraki rose from the couch, a hiss escaping him as his pants grew uncomfortable, his dick tenting the fabric. He knelt down, parting your thighs, and took hold of the sides of your panties, skillfully tugging them down your legs until they were off completely. Bringing the garment to his nose, he sniffed it like a wild animal, licking the damp spot on the material and growling in anticipation. "Fuck," he muttered, his other hand palming himself through the fabric of his pants.

As the man licked a stripe along your slick folds, a loud whine escaped your lips, and you leaned back fully against the couch. Slowly, you brought your hand to your mouth, covering it as if to prevent all the moans from escaping. It felt so wrong, yet oh so right at the same time.

Shigaraki closed his lips around your clitoris, fervently sucking the swollen bud into his mouth. This left you writhing beneath him, moaning like a cheap whore you apparently were at that moment. His bare fingers, devoid of glove, expertly rubbed your entrance as Shigaraki continued to lap at your slick folds. The obscene noises he made filled the air, his head shaking left to right to increase the friction you sought with every roll of your hips, each movement trying to push your cunny further into his face.

"O-Oh, God…" you whimpered.

Shigaraki chuckled slightly before slipping his tongue into your entrance. It was the moment you arched your back, sliding one of your hands into his white hair, tugging it to bring his face and mouth closer to your heated core.

He skillfully fucked you with his tongue, his gloved fingers simultaneously massaging your clitoris, causing your wetness to spill all over his eager tongue. "Mhmmm," he grunted, still palming himself through his pants.

Lost in the throes of passion, neither of you heard the door opening. Little did you know that the rest of the League had returned to the hideout.

Dabi stood in the doorway leading to Shigaraki's office, his turquoise eyes wide open as he witnessed the scene unfolding before him — his boss, someone he had once considered a friend at some point, and his girl, getting laid.

Meanwhile, Shigaraki resumed lapping at your entrance, growling like an animal at your scent and taste. In contrast, you were already a moaning mess.

"I fucking love your little cunt," Shigaraki declared, kissing your swollen clitoris before returning to licking your dripping hole.

Dabi felt anger and jealousy building up within him, but he also sensed some primal desire. Casually closing the door, he walked over to the two of you, nonchalantly dipping down next to you on the couch. "Well, well, I see you two are having some fun, huh?" he growled.

It was then that you snapped your eyes open, instantly attempting to push Shigaraki off your pussy.

However, your boss simply looked at Dabi lazily, and after kissing your cunt, he straightened up, wiping his lips from your juices glistening there with the top of his palm. "Todoroki, you're back already."

Dabi scoffed. "What do you fucking think you're doing, Tomura?" Dabi growled, igniting a little blue flame on his left palm while his right one rested possessively on your knee.

"And what does it look like? I'm eating her cunny out," Shigaraki replied, a wry grin on his lips.

"She's fucking mine, and you're fucking aware of that," Dabi reminded.

Shigaraki chuckled darkly, waving his hand. "Oh, don't be such a dog in the manger. I didn't fuck her, yeah? Just licked her tiny cunt. That's not a fucking crime, is it?"

Dabi breathed angrily through his nose. "I can see you got fucking turned on just by her taste," he scoffed, glancing at the tent in Tomura's pants.

Shigaraki unselfconsciously palmed his dick, tilting his head to the side. "Can you blame me? Look at her, such a little naughty villainess we have here. And her taste is intoxicating."

Dabi scoffed again. "Imagine that I know, as I've fucked her many times already."

Tomura ran his bare fingers up and down your cunt. "Don't be angry at her, it's my fault. We got a little too wasted, and I kind of couldn't stop myself when I smelled her wetness," Shigaraki explained, pointing his chin at the coffee table and the empty bottle of alcohol and glasses.

Dabi shook his head in disapproval and reached his hand out, catching your chin between his index finger and thumb, tilting it so you faced him. "You're such a naughty whore, getting wet for him? Pathetic."

Your cheeks were still flushed. "S-sorry, Touya…" you whined pathetically.

Dabi looked into your half-opened eyes. He couldn't deny the twitch in his pants as he saw you so vulnerable and exposed. The idea of letting some other guy fuck you while he watched had always lingered in the dark corners of his twisted mind. Now, the opportunity presented itself. "You liked him licking your cunt, hmm?"

You bit at your knuckle, slowly nodding your head for yes.

Dabi sighed. "Fine. Make my girl cum," the scarred man ordered, looking at Shigaraki. "But don't you fucking dare to put your fucking, pathetic cock into her. That's exclusively mine privilege."

Shigaraki cocked his eyebrows, "Who do you think you are to boss me around, Dabi?"

Touya grinned nastily. "Seriously? Your cock already makes a damp spot in your pants, man. I know you want her. So give her what she wants. Make her fucking cum. Let her decide which one of us eats her pussy better. I'm sure she's gonna choose me."

"T-Touya, I.." you started, but your boyfriend placed his fingers on your lips, sealing them.

"Shut up and spread your legs wider like the good whore you are," he instructed.

You nodded hesitantly, following his words.

Shigaraki grunted, seeing your pussy spreading open just for him. He instantly dived between your legs, lapping at your folds again, making slurping noises and eating your cunt so intensely that the base of his nose nudged your swollen clitoris, making you whine.

Dabi watched the scene with a stoic expression attached to his scarred face. He reached one of his hands around your shoulders, bringing you closer to him so you rested your side against his chest. His other hand grabbed the hem of your skirt, hoisting it up your hips to provide himself with a better view of your drenched cunt and Shigaraki diving between your legs.

"You're such a needy whore," Dabi whispered into your ear, moving the arm he had wrapped around your shoulders to unbutton your shirt and fish out one of your breasts from the cup of your bra, fondling it gently. "So fucking wet. Look at the mess you made on this bastard's face."

You were whining, resting one elbow on Dabi's lap, moaning even louder as you felt his hardened cock making a bulge in his jeans.

Shigaraki slipped his gloved fingers into your cunt, massaging your inner walls.

Dabi grasped your chin and tilted your head, sloppily kissing your lips. Your tongues danced together.

Shigaraki spat down on your pussy, spreading his saliva all over your folds with his thumb. After that, he returned to sucking your clitoris while finger-fucking you.

You moaned in Dabi's mouth, breaking the kiss to bite your knuckle again as your thighs trembled after Tomura hit that super-sensitive, spongy spot deep within you. "Fuck…" you whispered, your eyes watering. "Holy shit."

Dabi chuckled darkly. "That's it, doll, let it go. Cum. I know you want to cum."

"Yes, d-daddy," you moaned and reached both hands to slip them in Tomura's messy hair, bringing his face closer to your dripping cunt to ride your orgasm all over his tongue and lips.

"Don't you fucking dare to stop licking her cunt. Stick your ugly tonuge out," Dabi instructed, and to his surprise, Shigaraki obeyed.

You grinded your pussy against you boss' flexed tongue, moaning louder and louder until your pussy clenched around his fingers, leaving you trembling all over your body, moaning and panting.

Of course, Dabi decided it was not enough, so he reached his hand down your body to gently rub your clitoris, only to spank it with his heated up fingers a few times.

You bucked your hips more until you squirted all over Shigaraki's face, moaning both their names as if it was the last prayer of your life; your runny juices covered your boss' chin, nose and lips, dripping down his cheek to his chest.

Shigaraki also panted and groaned, the damp stain on his crotch expanding, signaling he just came, too.

Dabi kissed your cheek, glancing down at Shigaraki. "Look at you, boss, getting so turned on by a mere woman. That's surprising," he rose from the couch, adjusting his hardened dick in his pants. "Now excuse me, I'm taking my girlfriend to my room so I can fuck her the way she likes the most," Todoroki easily scooped you up in his arms. "Oh, and thanks for preparing her for me. I appreciate that a lot."

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katiemccabeswife · 7 months ago

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Awkward Conversations Outfits

Alexia Putellas x Teen!Reader || Alexia overhears a conversation and assumes the worst, leading to a confusing and awkward conversation.

she wrote something! i apologise for the lack of fics but i don't want to give you guys some half-assed writing that i'm not proud of, and i haven't written anything anywhere near my own standards lately (not that i've been able to finish anything) so i hope you enjoy this and that i can get back into the grove of writing and give yous some more fics x

"And then once I think I've figured it out, I second guess myself and think it's too ugly and that I'm going to be judged and then when I look around, there's just clothes everywhere and all I wanna do is out on my frumpiest sweats and cry into my pillow! I don't understand how you guys do it!" Alexia was stunned to hear you rant so freely about a subject she had never heard you utter a word about.

She walked through the door halting your conversation, "Hola, chicas!" She announced herself and watched you slump back into your chair while Ingrid and Frido shared a glance.

"Hola, Ale," You grumbled out, disheartened.

Ingrid struck up a new conversation between the four of you as the rest of the team began to trickle into the changing room. Alexia remained silent though, trying to come up with a reason as to why you wouldn't come to her about this sort of thing, why it had to be Ingrid and Frido you chose to confide in. While it would definitely be an awkward conversation, Alexia would be more than happy to have that sort of talk with you. After taking you in at a young age, you had both bonded so well your relationship resembled that of mother and daughter.

You noticed Alexia seemed to be a little distanced and quiet so you made a move to check in on her when the team started to head out to the pitch, "Hola, Ale," You greeted, wrapping your arms around her and pressing your cheek to hers.

Her arms came to hold yours but she moved her cheek away from yours to lay a quick peck to it, "Hola, bebé, everything ok?" She rested her cheek on yours once again, relishing in the closeness and comfort it provided.

Your brows furrowed slightly, "Of course, I actually came to check on you," You giggled.

Alexia sighed as she saw this as you deflecting. She pulled away from you wholey before holding your face between her palms, "Well thank you for thinking of me, I'm fine, thank you," She pecked her lips against your forehead, filling your soul with warmth, "You know you can always talk to me, right? About anything. No judgement, sí?" She was looking deep into your eyes for any sign of sadness or lies.

All she could find was confusion, "Sí, you sure you're feeling alright?" You jokingly placed the back of your hand on her forehead.

Alexia responded by shoving your head in the opposite way, "Enough now," The lightness in her tone assured you that she was only joking.

Training went on, as usual, you were paired with Keira for drills meaning that you never got the chance to speak directly to Alexia until you were heading out to her car. You spent the drive home with a furrow in your brow uncanny to the one that rested on Alexia’s face as the older woman remained quiet and seemed lost in thought.

Once you arrived home Alexia haphazardly threw the keys onto the kitchen counter before turning to you who stood awkwardly between her and your bedroom, “You can go shower, Cari, dinner should be ready in an hour,” The small, tight smile she wore forced you to reciprocate but filled your mind with anxiety and guilt that came from an unknown source.

After showering, unpacking and repacking your training bag you shuffled out to the living room stiffly to find Alexia resting on the couch, watching some trashy reality tv. Her head raised from its slumped position, “Hola, Princesa,” She tapped the seat next to her, signalling you to join her which you did instantly.

She wrapped her arms around you and ran her hands through your freshly washed hair, “Are you sure you are feeling alright?” She spoke softly but her tone was heavy with concern.

You shrugged your shoulders, admitting defeat, “I feel like you’re upset with me,” You mumbled into her chest, limbs tense and eyes trained on the tv.

You lowered your head as Alexia manoeuvred the two of you so you were facing one another, “Why would you think that?” She lifted your chin with her fingers.

“You just seem…off, and I can’t help but think that I had something to do with it because you seemed fine in training laughing with ‘Tana and stuff.” You unknowingly jutted out your bottom lip, reminding Alexia of your youth.

She shuffled apprehensively in her seat, “It’s just that I accidentally heard your conversation with Ingrid and Frido and felt a little upset you didn’t come to me about it,” She was shy to admit she had basically eavesdropped on your very private conversation.

“Oh,” Alexia was too busy looking everywhere but your eyes to notice the relief in your tone.

“So,” She shrugged now feeling awkward and uncomfortable, “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

“I guess just how you manage to feel sure of yourself and confident with whatever you’re wearing?” Alexia’s eyes bulged out of their sockets and her mind began to run 100 miles per minute.

She turned pink at the question, her reaction throwing you off significantly, “Wearing!? I didn’t think you- I thought-” She was stumbling over her words and by now you were in a state of total confusion. She managed to get herself together and forced out a string of advice, “Well, everyone looks different but everyone is beautiful and there is no one way to look and if you are truly scared your partner is going to judge you, you shouldn’t be with them, let alone trust them with your body,” She had you in the first half but your brain completely melted by the second.

You cut her off instantly, “Ale, what are you talking about? That whole conversation was about how I never know what to wear before games and going out to dinners, stuff like that. I was frustrated with how you, Ingrid, Frido and the whole team to be fair, always look so cool and confident. What are you thinking it was about?”

“¡Oh, gracias a Dios!” She looked to the ceiling as she fell against the back of the couch, “I thought it was a whole other conversation about something way more uncomfortable,” She laughed to herself.

“Oh, Ale! Gross!” You whacked her while joining in on her laughter.

She took a deep breath before continuing, “You just have to own what you’re wearing, you are gorgeous and will look good in anything! Trust me,” She emphasised when she saw you roll your eyes, “How about after dinner, we go look in your closet and pick out some outfits so this weekend you have options for before the game? Sí?”

You nodded with a smile on your face, “Gracias, Ale,” You moved over to her and she wrapped you in her arms, laying a kiss on your temple. You stilled for a moment before taking a deep breath, “I think dinner is burning,” You said calmly.

Alexia hummed before taking in what you said, “¿Qué?” She yelled and pulled away, running to the kitchen as you doubled over with laughter.

#woso community #woso #woso x reader #espwnt #woso imagine #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas #sefutbol fem #ingrid engen #fridolina rolfö #woso fanfics #barca femeni #barca femini x reader

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wildrangers · 4 months ago

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Hello i see you're accepting fic requests, i have a matt smith fic idea, can u do a behind the scenes w matt and fem!reader where they are both married in real life but they're rivals on cam, and when the scene cuts they're like all lovey dovey and their castmates are always teasing them 💟 tysmmm!!!

Thank you so much for this request anon, I loved this idea! I created an OC HOTD character for the reader to play and kind of worked her into different key moments from the show. I hope you enjoy 🙂

Tropes & Topics: total fluff

Word Count: 900

“What would you call the husband of the Queen?”

“Well, the king-”

“There it is, then.”

“...consort”

Your eyes met Daemon’s, fury coursing through your veins. His head tilted, eyes assessing you. “That seems redundant, no?”

“I speak for the Queen when I say it is not.”

There was a long pause as you two stared each other down before “CUT! Good work you two.”

“Darling! You were stupendous” Matt praised, walking towards you with his arms raised. Mostly joking groans sounded from the crew around you. “Oh, stop it you lot.”

“I always forget how angry you make me when you have that fucking wig on” you tease, wrapping your arms around his middle tightly.

“I could say the same to you, my love” he chuckled, pressing a chaste kiss to the top of your silver wig.

Your role on House of the Dragon was Anora, a close confidant and cousin of Rhaenyra. Given your character’s fierce loyalty to Rhaenyra, she shared a tense, often hostile, relationship with Daemon which you two delighted in playing as it was so opposed to your real-life dynamics as newlyweds.

“Are you love birds ready for lunch now that you’ve terrorized the crew?” Emma’s voice called from behind Matt and you threw a grin their way.

“Are they up to it again?” Harry seconded from behind them.

“I don’t know what you’re referring to” you argued and Matt chuckled beside you, his arm resting along your shoulders as you followed the pair off the studio lot.

“Oh, so you don’t remember the post-wedding incident?” Emma posed and you felt your face warm as the memory flooded your mind.

“Wed?! Laenor has just died!” you shouted, whipping around to face your best friend and her apparent new husband.

“No, cousin, he’s not dead. We arranged it so he could be free and we could marry” Rhaenyra explained and your eyes widened.

“You let our monstrous uncle convince you of this?!”

“Watch your tongue” Daemon replied, eyes blazing.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll take it.”

You took out the dagger you kept hidden on your side, “Well come on then, Daemon. You don’t frighten me.”

“Enough!” Rhaenyra screamed, stepping between you both. “Cousin, this was my decision he forced me to do nothing. He wants to better support my claim to the throne when the time inevitably comes.”

“He will be your ruin, Rhaenyra. Mark my words.”

“CUT! I think we got it guys, take five.”

“My fierce wife!” Matt cheered, picking you up and swinging you around as you laughed.

“Must you do this every take?” the director questioned, earning laughs from the cast and crew on set.

“Am I wrong? She was incredible” he praised, placing you down and lovingly straightening the wig he’d disheveled in his excitement.

“Yes, yes, your wife is brilliant and we’re all lucky to be graced with her presence” Emma teased and you stuck your tongue out at them.

“The most brilliant one of us is you, my love” you tell him and are met with another chorus of groans as you giggle and squeeze his hand in yours.

“Oh! And you can’t forget the birthing scene from last season’s finale, that one was iconic.” Harry added and Emma eagerly nodded their agreement.

Rhaenyra wailed from the bedchamber behind you as you charged after Daemon. “What are you doing Daemon? She needs you!”

“She needs someone to prepare for war, I can do nothing for her in that room.”

“She’s calling for you Daemon, not me! She doesn’t want you to act on her behalf, just to be her husband.”

“I am your king now!” he roared, turning around so quickly you slammed into his chest, his hands gripping your shoulders painfully to keep you upright.

“You overstep Daemon. You are no more than her king consort” you replied, adjusting your stance and fighting the wince of pain wracking your system.

Matt’s face completely broke, false anger draining from it, “Love, are you alright? I’m sorry everyone but she’s injured, we have to cut.”

“Matt, it’s fine I could have finished the scene” you insisted but your argument fell flat as your ankle rolled out from beneath you.

He didn’t hesitate, one arm gripping under your knees, the other under your arms to lift you off your feet. “Where’s the medic?!”

“Matthew, it’s a twisted ankle, not a mortal wound” you assured but his face was panicked. “Hey, look at me” you said firmly, hand cupping his cheek. His hazel eyes met yours and you could see him fighting to control his fear that you were seriously injured.

“I’m not putting you down until someone’s looked at your ankle” he insisted and you nodded your agreement. “I’m so, so sorry darling.”

“It was an accident, I’m fine, I promise” you replied, pulling his face down to yours for a brief kiss.

“We have to release this as a blooper, the fans will eat it up!” you heard Emma call as Matt carried you off set towards the medic tent with the cameras still rolling.

“How could we forget? It went absolutely viral” Matt groaned and you laughed, pinching his side.

“You’re lucky you didn’t get charged with spousal abuse” you tease and he rolls his eyes as the others laugh.

“Keep it going, I’ll just save up my annoyance with you for when we’re back on set.”

matt smith taglist: @slayraxes-blogs @littlehorrorlover

I'm always happy to hear any feedback, message me if you want to get added to the taglist! I have a few more asks waiting that will be out soon 🫶🏻

#matt smith #matt smith imagine #matt smith x reader #matt smith fanfiction #matt smith fic #house of the dragon #emma d'arcy #harry collett #asked and answered!

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educatedsimps · 5 months ago

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— they're in love with your laugh

i just KNOW hq characters would be so in love with your laugh like you could literally have ANY type of laugh and they'd fall even more in love with you. this is just how i think they'd react when they hear your laugh or i guess when they realise they really love your laugh? yeah, it's just fluff. enjoy :)

≪ back to fics masterlist

he would say "i love that" out of nowhere. "what?" "your laugh" "weirdo" (but he's a cute weirdo). SHAMELESSLY stares at you with a giddy smile on his stupid lovesick face and literal hearts in his eyes. also if you're like sitting at a table or something, he'd put his elbows on the tables and tuck his hand under his chin while he stares at you. bro is Down Bad Pro Max, trust me.

↳ nishinoya, tanaka, HINATA, oikawa, hanamaki, KUROO, konoha, tendō, ATSUMU, terushima, hoshiumi

he's kinda awkward so he'd just start blushing and smiling secretly to himself. your laugh is like a melody to him and he swears he could listen to it on repeat forever. makes him realise that he's so in love with you and your laugh that he would do anything just to make you laugh like that for the rest of your lives.

↳ KAGEYAMA, yamaguchi, yachi, KINDAICHI, ushijima, kita, sakusa

he's the quiet type who would just look at you with a soft smile when he hears your laugh and he just feels a sudden surge of happiness in his chest. his heart is so full when you laugh and he feels so damn lucky to have you. he know he wants to spend the rest of his life listening to your laugh, which is exactly what he plans to do. also the amount of love in his eyes is UNMATCHED.

↳ asahi, ennoshita, kiyoko, IWAIZUMI, mattsun, kunimi, kenma, AKAASHI, kawanishi, suna, osamu, i can also kinda see sakusa here

he would laugh softly to himself and fail MISERABLY at hiding his smile. so he's just looking at you with the widest, happiest smile on his face and now you're both laughing together, though you don't know why he's smiling so much. neither of you even remember what you were laughing about in the first place and now he can't resist kissing you and showering you with so much affection because he can't believe this ANGEL is actually his. he never thought he could love someone - let alone someone's laugh - this much.

↳ daichi, SUGAAAAA, semi, aran, komori, HIRUGAMI

bokuto's heart feels like it might explode at any moment and he's about to cry with how much love he has for you. you'd probably be standing next to him (also a lil confused) as he's going through an emotional roller coaster just he heard your laugh. "Y/N I LOVE YOUR LAUGH" "my what-" "YOU'RE MY ANGEL, I SWEAR" and cue a fountain of happy tears!

and for you tsukki simps, he'd tease you when you ask him why he's suddenly blushing. "admit it, kei, you like my laugh." "no, i don't. it's annoying." "you loooove my laugh-" "i don't know what you're talking about, y/n." "then why're you blushing, big guy?" "shut up, shortie." would also ruffle your hair before walking away with his face, ears and neck the same shade as a tomato. cute.

a/n: i don't even wanna count how many times i wrote "laugh" in this one like the word's starting to make absolutely no sense to me but i hope you enjoyed it???

#educated.simps #haikyuu x reader #lyssa.writes #simps.write #haikyuu!!#haikyuu fluff #hq fluff #hq #haikyuu #haikyu

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uhohbestie · 4 months ago

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hi so I found your fanfic (fanfic feels wrong here you’ve gone way past the source material and you’ve made genuinely one of the hardest to put down reads I’ve had in a while and I just finished game of thrones)

And um i just wanted to say thank you I didn’t think I’d get over obsession with traffic so fast but now all I can think about is TAMN.

I skipped a Grian upload just to finish the last few chapters I mean seriously you’ve got something special here.

So what I guess I’m trying to say is thank you 💕

Putting our fic before watching Grian is definitely the highest honour we could ever hope to receive, oh my god???? We're thrilled AND flattered <3 <3

So glad you're enjoying TAMN!! We're spending this month writing the very last arc and every day I fall in love with this fic even more, and truly genuinely we're both so thrilled to have such an awesome readership to share it with!

Thank YOU, and here's to whatever happens next! 🥂🧟💔

#we love hearing about what people think of TAMN #makes our day every time <3 #TAMN asks #anonymous #AAAA whenever people say they've binged our fic because it was hard to put down #I'm genuinely SO floored #thank you so SO much you're too kind ;w;#Lock and I are like. several chapters from the ending rn and we're SO excited to share the rest of what we have in store with y'all #we hope you'll continue to enjoy what we've got in store 💜#-Key 🔑

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imloyaltoscoups · 6 months ago

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it's fiction | jeon wonwoo

Wonwoo leans on the door frame, his arms crossed, looking at you focused on your laptop. Your fingers keep typing nonstop, the clatter of keys the only sound in the room.

"You've been engrossed with your laptop for days," he says, breaking the silence.

You stop typing and close your laptop immediately, turning your head to look at him. "It's just some research stuff," you reply, trying to sound casual. But the truth is, he has no idea you're writing a fanfic about him—not just any fic, but a R18+ one.

You stand up and walk over to him, wrapping your arms around his waist in a hug. "Soo how's the progress on the album with Hans?" you ask, hoping to divert his attention.

He rests his chin on top of your head, his arms encircling you in return. "It's going well," he says softly. "Just preparing for the MV maybe this coming week or so... But I'm more curious about what you've been working on."

You feel your cheeks heat up, your heart racing as you hold him tighter, "I'm just searching for a new game that's all," you reply, trying to sound convincing.

Wonwoo raises an eyebrow, a playful smirk tugging at his lips. "Your chrome isn't even open."

You look up at him, caught off guard. He points to his glasses. "My vision is clear," he says, smiling.

You let out a nervous laugh, your mind racing to come up with another excuse. But the way he’s looking at you, with that teasing glint in his eyes, makes it hard to think straight. So instead, you tighten your grip around his waist, hiding your face in his chest.

"Okay four eyes, you caught me," you mumble into his shirt. "But it's really nothing."

He chuckles, his hand coming up to gently stroke your hair. "Alright, I'll let it slide for now. But next time, maybe you can show me what you've been working on?"

Your heart skips a beat, and you can only hope he never finds out the real reason behind your late-night typing sessions.

He then gently removes your arms from around his waist and he directly head straight to your workstation. Panic sets in as you rush to stop him, wrapping your arms around his torso from behind.

"Yaaaa, wait!" you plead, trying to hold him back. "You said you will let it slideee."

He laughs, a deep, genuine sound, and continues to move forward, dragging you along with him. "What are you hiding, hmm?" he teases, enjoying your struggle.

"Seriously, it's nothing!" you insist, your grip tightens.

He pauses, turning his head slightly to look at you over his shoulder, still smiling. "You know, you're making me even more curious."

You groan, knowing he won’t give up easily. "It's just… embarrassing, okay?"

He turns around fully, facing you, his expression softening a bit. "I won't judge, you know that," he says gently.

You hesitate, then sigh, loosening your hold on him. "Fine. Again don't judge me and don't even laugh." as you point your finger on him.

He grins, reaching out to lift your chin. "I promise."

With a reluctant nod, you step aside, watching nervously as he approaches the table.

Wonwoo sits on your chair and opens the laptop, starting to read. You panic and cover his eyes as he begins to speak, "Really, babe?"

"Stop, stop," you nervously plead.

He removes your hands from his glasses and looks up at you. "I thought you didn't like being rough, but here? You even describe my dick well, props to that," he says, a teasing glint in his eyes.

You cover your face with your hands, feeling the heat of embarrassment spreading across your cheeks. He grabs your waist and settles you on his lap, and you nudge your face into his neck, mumbling, "It's just fiction."

He chuckles, "But the details… wait, am I a mafia boss here?"

You blush even more deeply. "And how do you know this kind of position? We haven't even tried this one yet," he continues.

"Stop reading." You plead, but he ignores you and keeps reading.

"Have you been watching porn while I'm away?" he asks.

"It's just for reference, Won," you reply weakly. "You know I have more experience than you, right?" he counters.

"Well, then it wouldn't be fiction, it would be like your diary or something," you retort, looking at him. "And my readers like this kind of stuff."

He laughs and scrolls down, continuing to read. "And you even make me a cold, possessive jerk? Really, babe?"

You bury your face in his shoulder, mortified yet unable to suppress a giggle at his reaction.

"Well, this is already a fanfic since you made me a mafia boss," Wonwoo remarks, pausing in his reading. "You make Mingyu my rival... wait, will he... uh, fuck around with the female lead too?"

He's now fully invested, and you try to cover the screen, but he removes your hand, his expression turning serious. "Behave," he instructs firmly.

"Why is the female named as Y/N?" he asks, his tone softer now as he realizes you're writing a reader-insert fanfic.

You hesitate to answer, but he catches on, teasing you, "So you're imagining yourself being fucked by a mafia boss, huh?"

"It's not like that," you deny it quickly,

He chuckles, shaking his head. "You know, you're missing some details in this sex part," he points out, gesturing to the screen.

"What's wrong with that?" you ask, feeling defensive.

"Since you haven't tried this position, you need to experience it firsthand to be able to describe it accurately," he explains matter-of-factly.

He then stops reading, setting your laptop aside. You think it's over, so you stand up. He does too, but to your surprise, he grabs your hand and drags you to a nearby couch in the room.

As Wonwoo positions you on the couch, he bends you at the waist, your upper body resting on the cushions while the arm of the couch supports your hips. Before you can fully comprehend what's happening, he swiftly removes your shorts along with your underwear, making you gasp in surprise and arousal.

He leans in close, his breath warm against your ear. "You know, I read something in your story about fingering and sucking first," he murmurs, his voice low and husky. "Before... before fucking her hard."

You shiver at his words, feeling a rush of heat pooling between your legs. "Y-yes," you manage to reply, your voice barely above a whisper.

Without further preamble, he descends upon you, his lips trailing hot kisses along the curve of your neck. But his touch is not gentle; it's rough, demanding, leaving marks of his passion in its wake. He bites down on your skin, his teeth grazing against your flesh, leaving you gasping for more.

As his lips find their way to your shoulder, With a wicked grin, he murmurs against your skin, "Let's see if I got your story right." he grips your thighs tightly, parting them with a force that sends a jolt of pleasure through you. His touch is possessive, his fingers digging into your skin as he explores every inch of your body with a hunger that leaves you trembling.

Your breath catches in your throat as his words send a shiver of anticipation down your spine. You nod, unable to form coherent words, your heart pounding in your chest.

And then, without warning, he lowers his head between your thighs, his mouth claiming you with a primal urgency. He doesn't hold back: his tongue is rough and insistent, lapping at your core with a fierce intensity that threatens to drive you over the edge.

But it's not just his tongue that drives you wild; it's his teeth, sinking into your flesh with a delicious sting that sends waves of pleasure coursing through you. He bites and sucks with abandon, his mouth a whirlwind of sensation that leaves you teetering on the brink of ecstasy.

You then gasp as Wonwoo inserts his fingers roughly, the sensation sending shockwaves of pleasure through your body. His roughness only intensifies as he continues to suck and lick you, driving you to the edge with each relentless stroke.

When you finally reach your climax, the pleasure is so intense that you can't help but squirt, your juices spilling over his face in a hot, sticky mess. He doesn't flinch; instead, he stands up, slapping your ass roughly as you continue to leak your essence, the sensation sending shivers of pleasure coursing through you.

With a primal growl, he positions himself between your legs, straddling you as he forcefully slaps his cock into you like an animal. In this position, there's no room for romance—no eye contact, no kissing, no caressing. It's pure, raw, animalistic fucking, and you revel in it.

As he takes you from behind, you can feel his gaze burning into you, consuming you with lust as he uses you for his pleasure. You lowkey love it—the feeling of being dominated, of being nothing more than an object for his satisfaction. It awakens something primal within you, igniting your submissive side like never before.

As Wonwoo continues to pound into you with primal intensity, his breath ragged and his movements rough, he begins to utter possessive lines, echoing the ones you wrote in your fanfic.

"You like it when I degrade you, don't you?" he growls, his voice thick with lust. "You love being used like this, don't you, you filthy little slut?"

His words send a shiver of excitement down your spine. You find yourself nodding eagerly, unable to form coherent words as pleasure clouds your mind.

He continues, his voice dripping with possessiveness. "You're mine, Y/N," he declares, his grip tightening on your hips as he drives himself deeper into you. "No one else can have you like this. You belong to me, body and soul. Say it."

You moan in response, unable to resist his command. "I'm yours," you gasp, the words coming out in a breathless whisper.

"That's right," he murmurs, he then delivers a sharp slap to your ass. "And don't you forget it. You're mine to use, to pleasure, to fuck however I want."

Wonwoo's thrusts grow deeper and rougher, each movement driving you closer to the edge of ecstasy. Your bodies collide with a primal rhythm, the sound of skin against skin echoing through the room.

He hisses in pleasure, his voice strained with the effort of holding back. "You're so tight," he gasps, the words slipping out between clenched teeth. "Even after all this time, you still feel so fucking good."

With a final, powerful thrust, he releases his hot, sticky essence deep inside you, filling you completely with his fluid. The sensation sends you over the edge, your climax crashing over you like a tidal wave.

Wonwoo pulls his cock out, releasing the last of his cum onto your back. You breathe heavily, reveling in the fact that this is the first time he's been so rough with you during sex. He then gently picks you up and settles you both onto the couch.

As he plays with your hair, he smirks and asks, "So, who’s the better fuck—the mafia version of me or the real thing?"

You squint your eyes at his absurd question, trying to suppress a laugh. "It's just fiction, Babe, Mere fiction," you reply, shaking your head.

He chuckles, leaning in to press a soft kiss to your lips. "I know, I know," he says, his voice gentle. "I was just curious... At least you got to experience the sex position you wrote about," he added as he resumes on toying with your hair. "And if you need to try more for the sake of realism in your stories, I'd be open to it. No need for extra research when you have me."

You roll your eyes playfully, leaning against him. "Whatever." But he's not done yet, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Are there other stories you've written that I haven't read? Are they rated 18? And do you write about other members too?" he fires off questions.

Before he can ask more, you hush his mouth with a kiss, which he eagerly reciprocates, pulling you closer. You sense there might be another round, but this time, he'll be gentle like he used to be.

....... ≿━━━༺WONWOO༻━━━≾ .......

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to-thelakes · 8 months ago

Note

I think Luke is low-key a little possessive. Not in like a jealous you can't talk to anyone way but like marking you up and wanting you to tell him you're his during sex. He also enjoys seeing you in his clothes

yours

pairing; luke alvez x fem!reader

summary; luke wants to give you all the pleasure he can but maybe he gives a little too much

warnings; MINORS DO NOT INTERACT 18+, smut, pure smut, breeding kink (if you squint), overstimulation (so much overstimulation), a lot of talk of fluids, reader squirts once, luke marks reader up, hurt/comfort but not really hurt (reader is just overstimulated and pleasure drunk), little bit of crying because of said overstimulation, just really horny, dom!luke, sub!reader

notes; i feel like the actual fic may have veered away from the ask a bit but i kind of took luke being possessive and fucking ran with it, like RAN with it, uhm, yeah, a 3k one-shot of just luke and reader being horny, i've shared like horny one-shots before but this feels like a new level so uhm, i hope you enjoy and any feedback is helpful since i literally never share my smutty writings!

masterlist

Luke’s arms were caging you in as he slowly thrusted into you. He had already pulled two or three orgasms from just slowly fucking into you and your mind was drunk on pleasure. He was kissing you as you moaned and whined into his mouth. His tongue licking into your mouth as your nails dug into his chest, scratching at his tanned skin. Every sensation was maddening.

And then his lips slipped from yours and down to your neck. He nipped at your skin and you threw your head back, giving him access to every inch of skin on your throat. He had already left hickeys that you knew weren’t gonna fade for days but you really didn’t care. You loved when he marked you up. You also knew that he loved doing it.

“My pretty carina,” He mumbled against your throat and you whined. His thrusts were still slow, dragging everything out as you squeezed your eyes shut. You felt like you were being slowly torn apart and it was like nothing you’d ever experienced, even with him. He had come back from a case desperate and needy and he hadn’t even cum yet. Instead, he was trying to draw as many orgasms from you as he could.

“Luke,” You whined, feeling the familiar pressure in your gut. Your walls contracted around him and he groaned against your neck. His head fell forward, his forehead resting against your throat as he squeezed his eyes shut. You were whining and kneening, digging your fingers into any part of him that you could, “Oh God,” You moaned as your back arched. He was desperately trying to hold back blowing his load as his teeth sunk into your neck. The way you felt around him only made it harder to control and everything shunted forward as you gushed around him. It was dripping down your ass and thighs, coating every part of you in sticky slick. But Luke didn’t let up.

“Luke,” You whined, throwing your head back as he continued his slow, even thrusts. Your walls were so sensitive and your legs were shaking, “Please,” You continued, not even entirely sure what you were begging for. Luke smirked against your skin before he lifted his head up so he could look at you. He rested his hand against your cheek as he continued his measured thrusts.

“What is it, baby?” He asked, somehow still put together despite everything. Your cunt was wet, warm and he was slipping in and out so easily. You didn’t understand how he was able to hold on for this long. You felt your sanity beginning to slip as he continued to thrust into you, your mind so drunk on pleasure that you couldn’t think straight. You couldn’t even respond to his question which made him smirk, “Am I making you feel good?” He asked, a teasing lilt to his tone. You tried desperately to nod, moaning as he adjusted his hips to get a better angle. His cock hit your cervix with every thrust and you could barely think straight, “Who’s making you feel good?” He continued as he rested his forehead against yours. Your breaths were mingling as you whined and keened, chest pressed against his as your fingers moved to drag down his chest.

“You, you are,” You moaned out as he shoved into you particularly harshly. Your eyes fell closed as you dug your nails into his back, “Just you, only you, oh God, Luke,” You devolved into mindlessly whining and panting as you felt another orgasm already begin to make itself known. Your walls were contracting around him and he squeezed his eyes shut again. It was getting harder and harder to hold himself back.

“Am I gonna make you cum again? Cum for me, baby.” His voice was in your ear and it sent you over the edge. Your nails dug into his back, leaving crescent shaped marks on his shoulders as you gushed around him. Your legs were shaking, wrapped around his waist as you convulsed, desperately trying to work through the orgasm but it was getting harder. Especially when he was still slowly thrusting into you, your walls were so oversensitive, you felt like you were losing your mind. Eyes squeezed shut, panting, whining and your back arched while your nails dug into his back. It was probably painful but he made no indication that it bothered him as your head was thrown back. It was impossible to even think.

And he was still thrusting into you. Every single one sent pleasure tickling up your spine and it was toeing the fine line between pleasure and pain and you could feel yourself slipping away. You weren’t even sure how long he had been thrusting into you and you knew that you were whining and moaning his name but you weren’t sure what you were saying. You were babbling as he continued to suck hickeys into your neck and mumble about how you were his and only his. It was maddening.

“Fuck,” Luke whined, goddamn whined against your throat as he felt your tightening around him again. You were panting, breathless and dazed as you felt yourself cumming again. Tears were dripping down your face, your pleasure-addled mind completely lost in itself as he thrusted again and again. But it was getting too much and he abruptly pulled out just as you came.

You squirted, goddamn squirted but without his cock to squeeze around, you had nothing to latch onto. You damn near sobbed as you clawed at his back, trying to work through your orgasm without anything. Luke was panting against your throat, hands digging into the mattress as he tried to calm himself down.

“Luke,” You whined, your orgasm finally having passed and your hand lazily moved to tug at his hair. Every movement was sluggish and slow and your grip was weak but he lifted his head up anyway. Your eyes were barely able to focus on him, tears of pleasure still streaming down your face as you tried to tug him to you, “Please, cum in me, please,” You begged. You rested your forehead against his, pressing soft kisses to his lips between whimpers of ‘please’. Luke’s eyes fell closed as his hand moved to cup your jaw.

“You want me to fill you up?” He asked. You nodded your head as you tugged at his hair with a weak grip. “Please, I’m yours. Want you to show me how much you love me. Want you. Just you, please. Please, I need to feel it,” You were begging breathlessly, not even entirely sure what you were saying. It was just endless babble as you told him that you belonged to him and that you needed him. Luke groaned against your lips before he looked down to line himself back up before he slipped in. You let out a high-pitched whine. Your walls were so sensitive but you didn’t care. You just wanted him to cum, you needed him to.

“Tell me who you belong to,” He whispered against your lips as he began to fuck into you again. His thrusts started off slow and he watched your mouth fall open. Your body gave in to him again as your legs fell from around his waist.

“You, just you. Always belonged to you, Luke,” You rambled. It was almost like a mantra, a chant and you couldn’t think of saying anything else. His name was the only thing your pleasure-addled mind could come out with and his thrusts began to speed up. It wasn’t slow anymore, it was rough and you were being fucked back into the headboard as you whined. Your head was thrown back and his lips attached to your collarbones, biting and sucking at the skin between his groans and pants. Your walls were squeezing around him involuntarily as he thrusted harder and faster, chasing his orgasm. They became less rhythmic and you knew he was going to cum.

“Please, wanna feel you,” You begged as he moved, “I belong to you. Wanna feel you dripping inside me all day.” Luke moaned against your chest, your words making his hips stutter before he buried into you and painted your walls white with his cum. He panted against your collarbone as he thrusted once or twice more before he settled against you. His dick was still buried in you as he collapsed against your body.

His head rested above your heart and he could hear how fast it was beating as he panted, desperately trying to get his breath back.

“Fuck, Luke,” You mumbled softly. He chuckled, his chest rumbling and you whined softly, feeling his dick change positions inside of you, “I can’t- I can’t take anymore,” You muttered after a moment. Your voice was so quiet and fragile. Luke understood what you meant and though he felt boneless from his own orgasm, he lifted up enough to support himself.

“Just breathe, I’m gonna pull out,” He warned you. One hand rested against your face as he slowly pulled his softening dick from you. You whined at the loss, your eyes squeezing shut to prevent tears from falling before you pressed your thighs together. The sticky wetness of your cunt and thighs was something that you were both incredibly familiar with and it made Luke pout when you closed your legs.

“Give me a- give me a minute,” You mumbled, voice cracking. Luke nodded and he moved up so that he was cupping your face.

“It’s okay,” He whispered softly against your lips. You hummed out in response before you let out a ragged breath, “You did so well. You were perfect,” He added. Your shoulders sagged at the praise, the feelings of euphoria somehow becoming even better with his soft praise. His lips moved to kiss your forehead, “You need to get cleaned up though,” He reminded. You whined and shook your head side-to-side, thinking about how overstimulating it would be on your poor abused cunt. You didn’t even want to think about it.

“No, no, no. Let me just. I wanna stay here, let me stay here,” You begged, hands moving to cover your face as the tears began to blur your vision all over again. The very thought of getting out of bed made you want to start crying. Your emotions were all out of whack after the mind-blowing number of orgasms that he had given you. You could feel the lump forming in your throat at even the thought of anything touching your cunt right now.

“Hey, hey,” Luke’s voice softened as he took a gentle hold of your wrist. He had never seen you so emotionally wrecked from him fucking you. He couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. It twinged at his gut but he did his best to ignore it so he could take care of you, “I’m right here. Baby, look at me.” His voice was so soft yet commanding. It was hard not to listen to him as you forced your eyes open and let him take your wrists away. Tears were blurring your vision and a few of them began to fall as he admired you with such love, “What’s wrong?” He asked. You let out a choked sob at his question and your hands moved to tug at his neck, wanting to hold him.

“Too sensitive, don’t, can’t touch it,” You rambled. Luke let you drag him into a hug, letting you hold his hand as he did his best to keep any pressure off your lower half.

“Okay, what about a bath? Nobody has to touch it,” He suggested from where you had forced him onto your chest. You nodded and he smiled softly. He took a hold of your hand, pressing a kiss to your palm before he moved to sit up on his knees, “I’ll run a bath. Just stay here,” He said. You nodded but your lip was quivering. It was clear that you didn’t want him to leave but he knew that he needed to get you both cleaned up in whatever way he could. His own thighs and dick were covered in your slick and as much as he loved the feeling, he also knew that he needed to clean it up at some point.

Once Luke had disappeared into the bathroom, you curled up on your side. Your cunt was still so sensitive and the only way you could stop feeling the twinge was by relaxing your thighs. It took everything in you to concentrate on that so your emotions were going haywire.

You wanted Luke back with you in bed, you needed his touch and even though he was only the room over, you began to cry. It was soft at first, little hiccuping sobs before they got louder. You needed to be with Luke and so, you pushed yourself off the bed.

Your legs were shaky, like jelly, from the way he’d fucked you and you were barely able to keep yourself upright but you used the dresser and the walls of your bedroom to get to the ensuite. You were still sobbing, they were soft but ugly noises as you pushed the door open. Luke’s head snapped up and his face broke into a frown when he saw your disheveled state.

“What, what happened? Are you okay?” He asked quickly. You stumbled over to him before wrapping your arms around him.

“Just needed you,” You managed between soft hiccuping sobs. He was still frowning as he wrapped you up in a hug. He had never seen you like this after sex. It honestly terrified him and the guilt was wrapping him up. You were sobbing, covered in marks and he knew that you liked it. He knew that it didn’t bother you and you would have used the safe word if something went too far that you didn’t like but you hadn’t. He didn’t know what to think.

“Did I hurt you?” Luke asked as he wrapped you up in his arms. You shook your head.

“Felt so good,” You mumbled between hiccups. His hand ran soothing circles across your back and it was calming the tears down, “Felt so good but wanted to be with you. I didn’t want to be without you. Just needed your arms around me.” You were rambling, your emotions really were haywire. Luke didn’t know what to think and so he just caressed your hair and rubbed your back until your sobs had subsided.

The bath was also drawn and so he switched the taps off before he let you towards it. He insisted that you get in first and so, you slipped into the water. It was warm and you instantly felt so much better. It soothed your frayed nerves but when you looked at Luke, he seemed hesitant to join you. His mouth was set into a frown.

“What’s wrong?” You asked softly. Your eyes were still red and puffy and your cheeks were tear-streaked but Luke made you feel better. He had made everything so much better. You reached out for his hand but he seemed hesitant to touch it, “Please, get in the bath,” You mumbled, feeling your eyes get teary again. You were beginning to think that you had done something wrong and the terror gripped you, “Please,” Your voice cracked. Luke was quick to kneel down on the bathroom floor so he was on the same level as you. His hand held you.

“Did I cross a line?” He asked, voice serious. You shook your head. Your mind was so scrambled but that was one thing you were sure of, “I need words.” Your head fell forward and you swallowed the lump in your throat.

“I would have said something. You didn’t, you didn’t cross a line. Please, I want you here. Please,” You were practically begging for him and even if you were still an emotional wreck, he noted that it was the most put together you had sounded since he had cum.

With a reluctant nod of his head, he got up to his feet and slipped into the bath behind you. Within seconds, you had curled up on his chest and you rested your head against his pec. You were just glad that he was here.

The two of you stayed in the bath until the water was cold, sitting in comfortable silence apart from when you mumbled to each other about cleaning up. Luke had done his best to be gentle as he washed your thighs and your cunt was less sensitive which meant he was able to gently wipe across it. Your clit twitched but otherwise, you felt fine.

You were then able to turn your attention to him and as you came back from the emotional wreck that Luke’s fucking had made you, you cleaned him up. You started with his thighs before you spread water across his chest and arms. You kissed his face, showing him all that love that he wanted and as the bath went on, the rigidness of his shoulders began to relax.

Once you had both gotten out, he seemed to have fully relaxed again. You were also feeling more sober and sane than you had all night. Luke helped you dry off and then he gave you his shirt to wear to bed. You didn’t argue, you never would. You loved his shirts and when you slipped it on, you felt at ease. Luke also loved to see you in his shirts. It made him grin and when you looked at him with those adoring features, he couldn’t help the smile that overtook him.

The two of you slipped into bed after Luke changed the sheets and when you were safely snuggled up to him, he broached the question again. It was clear that Luke was a little surprised by just how fucked out you had been and when he asked if what he did was okay, you once again reassured him that you loved it.

You also confessed that you had never felt so turned on and he had pulled more orgasms from you than any man ever had. That did boost Luke’s ego a little but he was still concerned. You had been so emotional and you told him that you were only crying because you missed him and wanted to hug him. You reassured him over and over again that you had never been in pain and even let it slip that you wouldn’t mind him doing that again.

That was probably what surprised Luke the most. Considering how sensitive and upset you had been and how desperate you were for nobody to touch your cunt, you wanted to feel it again. That’s what finally soothed Luke’s guilty conscience. It was the way that you smirked over it, giggling to yourself at the thought of him fucking you like that again.

“I hope it wasn’t a one time thing,” You muttered as you traced shapes across his abdomen. You were tracing stars and squares and triangles and swirly patterns, trying not to think too much about how good it felt. If you thought too much, you’d be wet again and you’d wanna beg Luke to fuck you until you couldn’t think straight again. But considering how freaked out it made Luke, you didn’t want to put him through that again. Not until he was ready, “You can do that again whenever you want,” You added, “But if you never want to do it again, I understand.” Luke’s hand moved to your chin and he lifted up your jaw. “If you want me to do it again, I’m more than happy but not tonight,” He responded before he pressed a soft, slow, long kiss to your lips. He pulled back and you whined softly, wishing that maybe it could have lasted longer.

“Maybe not tonight,” You muttered. He hummed out in response before pressing a kiss to your temple and settling back into bed. You were exhausted, it was beginning to seep back in and the conversation continued until you fell asleep curled against his side.

#queued post #luke alvez #luke alvez x reader #luke alvez x you #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x you #luke alvez fluff #luke alvez smut #luke alvez x reader smut

770 notes · View notes

bananayuyu · 1 month ago

Text

Cleaning Up

Pairing: Mingi x f reader

Genre: angst, eventual fluff and smut

Word count: 7.7k

Summary: Months after being convinced to join Mingi on tour, you can't help but ruminate on the events of the last year of your life. Despondent, you start making choices and saying things that just aren't like you. In the heat of the moment everything comes out, not in the way you wanted; but maybe, it was just the way things were meant to unfold all along.

Warnings: MDNI, smut, reader is depressed, Mingi and reader argue, unprotected sex

A/n: I don't usually write things this angsty but the idea came to me after finishing Making a Mess and I just couldn't stop writing it. I hope you enjoy! <3

This is a part 2/expansion of Making a Mess, which is linked here so you can read it for some context if you'd like. This can also be read as a stand alone fic just fine! (I think, lmk if this isn't true)

<^><^><^><^><^><^>

You walk down the hallway of the hotel, the florescent lights making you squint to the ground. Another night of tour, another pounding headache. And here you were trudging to your room, sure to find a mountain of texts and emails in need of responses, another random hotel room bed waiting to embrace you. You're sure this one has pillows that will leave your neck a knotted mess in the morning, just like all the others. You're tired of this, tired of your body feeling like it has one use and one use only, tired of feeling like it's falling apart on you. This was supposed to be a break from monotony, an exciting new change. A chance to both rest and do exciting things.

Pulling out your key card you slot it through the lock, the light on the handle lighting up green. You push it open, almost dropping your bag as it slides off your shoulder and catches painfully on your upper arm.

"Ow," you mutter, crumpling to the floor in lieu of setting it down. The room is mostly dark, illuminated only by the city lights outside. You see through the window that next door is another hotel. Another hotel. You'd truly had enough. It was time to switch up the routine, at least a little. You couldn't bare to spend another night struggling to fall asleep in a hotel you didn't deserve to be in.

Leaving your bag behind you make your way back to the elevator, back to the lobby. The front door swings open and a chilly breeze hits you, making you shiver instantly. Your shorts and t-shirt might not be the most comfortably at this hour, but in your mentally exhausted state the shiver feels good. Any sort of feeling, really, was good. Anything new, anything different.

You bust through the doors, greeted by the cool night air, gripping your phone and key card tightly as you snake past a group of obviously tipsy businessmen. One says something to you but you don't even make out the words, trembling as you stalk by them without looking up. Harsh, fierce anxiety lances through you and suddenly you feel scared, like something terrible is about to happen. You know you're in the nicest part of the city, the streets well lit and a team of security always present outside the hotel. It isn't a rational feeling, the impending doom that's hitting you. But it's there and it's crushing, making your breath shaky as you walk down the street towards nothing in particular.

It was nearly five months ago that the two of you met, at a party thrown after the biggest fashion show you'd ever worked. It was supposed to be the highlight of your career as a makeup artist and up-and-coming designer, but truthfully you were so burnt out by the time it happened, so completely exhausted by your boss, that the whole event had passed you in a blur. You couldn't remember a single thing about that day but the dread you felt at the sound of your alarm, the panic staying with you all day even as you sipped a sweet cocktail, mingling in a way you really didn't want to but knew you should. For the betterment of your career, which you thought you so cared about.

And in the middle of the terrible day turned terrible night, there Mingi was. The group of designers he had come with were fretting around him, making their way to the bar to order their drinks. You hadn't moved far from the bar after grabbing yours, unable to actually make yourself go and introduce yourself to people like you said you would. Like you'd promised your boss you would. Your mind was so blank you weren't sure you'd even be able to form a sentence. But then he spoke to you, this striking stranger with the deepest eyes you'd ever seen, eyes that made you want to dive in and explore the entirety of his head.

Sure, the sex that night was amazing. It truly was, you shouldn't undersell it; but really the thing that stuck with you was what he said afterwards, while you both were tangled up in the sheets of your bed. Why are you doing it if you hate it? he'd asked you. And you'd explained that really you didn't hate it, you just hated your boss, your fashion company. You loved fashion and makeup and everything about that world, but you couldn't take another day of watching every one of your coworkers go home crying, your cruel boss tearing everyone down in front of you constantly. Except you, for some reason. I don't deserve her kindness, I don't know why she likes me, you'd said. No, she doesn't deserve your talent, he'd replied.

And then when he was leaving, his final parting words; You deserve so much more than that woman. Oh, it was simple platitudes. An easy thing for him to say to a girl he'd just been fucking, a girl he might want to still be able to fuck in the future. You knew that was probably the case, that he just wanted to play nice. It's no fun when your hookup starts telling you how fucking depressed she is, how beaten down by her job she is. Immediately upon him leaving you spent the night bashing yourself, screaming into the void that you never should have brought it up. Why am I always such a blabbermouth after sex? you thought. You spent days feeling regret, which finally turned to just embarrassment. But then he texted you, and you'd gone and had a late dinner, you both completely exhausted from your inhumanely long work days. In your delirious state you laughed together, grabbing desert on the way to your place, where again he fucked you senseless, his eyes boring into yours afterwards in the complete silence. You'd never had someone look at you so much during sex, or after, and it was exposing. He saw you. He saw in. And finally you had the courage to say fuck it, fuck her, and emailed your boss that you weren't coming back. He celebrated with you that day. Such an intensely intimate moment for two strangers; but really, he didn't feel like a stranger at all.

So the friendship grew. You picked up some freelance makeup work to keep yourself afloat, finally working with a friend on a project he'd begged you to join for months. That was fun until it wasn't, just like every little job was, and you were thankful that you didn't have to stay at any of them for long. You made it work for a little while, your rendezvous with Mingi the true highlight of most of your weeks. Your mind was still elsewhere, still swimming in the clouds as your body went about your life, as you felt like a shell, like someone pretending to be you. Only maybe when you were with him, when he was deep inside you, did you feel present. You could feel like yourself again, if only for a few moments. And god did you need that.

Come with me on tour, he'd said one night, his impending months of travel hanging in the air between you. You laughed, you laughed hard. What a ridiculous notion. But he didn't let it go, not for a second. It was late at night, your post coitus talk drifting off into the darkness as you repeatedly made each other yawn. I'm serious, I need you, he'd said. Again you laughed, how could you not? You weren't dating; this thing between you was very casual, and though you knew you might be dipping into dangerous waters by not defining anything you really couldn't be bothered to care in that moment. It's not possible, though, you'd replied. And then he'd vehemently explained to you how it absolutely, definitely was. It'd taken another week of thinking it over, but then you'd said okay. The opportunity called to you, the chance to get out of the place you'd been grinding in for the last few years and travel the world a bit, with this new friend, or whatever he was. In the end it wasn't that hard of a choice, as the life you were leaving behind wasn't really holding you anymore, wasn't really much of anything. And that did make you sad when you thought about it for too long, so you pushed the feeling down and surrendered instead to the excitement of the new opportunity. You'd lied to your mom, saying you were employed as a makeup artist for the tour; it made you a little sick to lie to her, but you didn't know what else to say. The guy I've been fucking wants me to come? I hate my life so I agreed to? You didn't want to break her heart or make her worry. Even with some of your friends you skirted around the truth, not wanting them to worry either.

And now as you walk down the street, as your legs shake in the night, you really wish someone knew just how awful it all felt. Just what a dumb situation you'd gotten yourself into. Day in and day out he'd fuck you, often in the completely exposed hallways of the arenas, making you come repeatedly while looking into your eyes deeply, making your stomach clench with feelings you really, really didn't want to admit you were having. Though you got along well and could talk for hours, it was clear to you that it really was just sex to him. Since tour started you'd barely spend a day together that didn't involve him inside of you, and you'd begun to resent the time you spent with the actual makeup team for the tour. You'd been grateful for their company at first, especially one woman you'd clicked with immediately, but slowly you couldn't avoid feeling jealous at how well they were all treated by their boss, jealous that they could pursue their dreams and it wasn't crushing them. And then there were the members of staff that had stumbled upon you and Mingi in the act, who looked at you completely differently now, like you were sick or disturbed. It all began to eat at you, especially that you found the humiliation and the intensity of it desirable, that even though it pained you, you couldn't stop craving the public sex, already horny for him before his break in the show was even close. You felt so fucking shameful for doing what you had done. Touring with a band, just so that one of the members could fuck you when he pleased? How had you ended up here? A quick thought of childhood you, of her hopes and her dreams of success in the industry, made tears instantly form in your eyes and begin falling. Stop it, stop crying, you begged yourself. The lights from the corner store blurred between your tears, and suddenly you realized you'd walked further than intended, and you didn't know where you were.

Opening your phone to pull up a map, you saw the text.

Mingi: I'm coming over, be there in like 10

Sent almost ten minutes ago. You held your breath for a moment, waiting for another text. But it didn't come. And then the anger came, boiling up inside you. How fucking presumptuous, you thought. Sure, it wasn't that strange. He'd sent almost identical texts about a dozen times throughout tour. But now it smacked you so plainly, that he just expected you to always be there. Just waiting for him, whenever he wanted you. Like it couldn't be possible you maybe didn't want to see him.

y/n: Don't bother, I'm not even there

It only took a few seconds for his text to appear.

Mingi: Are you okay?

I'm fucking great, actually, you wanted to say. You rolled your eyes, feet stuck to the sidewalk, the line of trees you were under feeling like good protection.

y/n: yes

That was all you had, even though you knew it was betraying everything you felt. It was way too weird of a response, too short. Somehing was obvious wrong. You groaned as you saw his call coming through, your phone lighting up like a beacon in the dark night.

"Hi," you say, not even trying to make your voice sound bright or normal.

"Y/n, where are you?" Mingi asks.

"Why do you care?" you respond, already feeling embarrassed by your behavior.

"You don't need to be nasty with me, I'm just checking on you," he replies, keeping his voice steady.

"I told you I'm okay," you respond, sighing heavily.

"You obviously aren't, you're not acting like yourself," he says, his tone hard to read. All you can think is that he's disappointed, mad that you're not where he expected you to be.

"You say that like you know me well," you respond, huffing.

"I do..." he trails off, voice low. Like he's contemplating how to respond to you, how to continue this conversation.

"Fucking me doesn't really equate to getting to know me," you say, your tone laced with anger. "I just felt like going for a walk tonight, I've spent so many evenings in hotel rooms recently and a midnight walk just sounded nice. Like I said, I'm fine."

"You're walking outside?" he asks.

"Mm-hmm," you respond, your tone unkind.

"By yourself?"

"Mm-hmm."

"You shouldn't be out there, you promised me," he says, sighing deeply.

"Mingi, I really don't get why it matters. I'm a fucking adult, I can go for a walk when I fucking feel like it," you retort, even angrier. How dare he tell you what you should or shouldn't be doing.

"I'm coming with Yubin to get you," he says, and you hear the elevator opening for him through the phone.

"Can you just let me do what I want, for once?" you groan, crouching down to put your head in your hands, unsure what to do with all of the frustration you're feeling.

"You're being a real asshole right now, and I don't know why, but I'm not letting you get lost in a fucking foreign country. Tell me where you are," he spits, finally losing control of the even tone he'd kept so far.

"I. Don't. Know. Mingi," you say slowly, like he's stupid. God it's embarrassing, the way you're being so uncharacteristically nasty, but you just can't help it. You feel so genuinely out of control, your entire body shaking with anger and dread. He had been there with you to help you finally quit your horrible job, been there during the tumultuous time afterwards while you jumped from job to job, trying every day to assure yourself and everyone else that you were doing fine. The money might be less, but you were actually eating and sleeping enough most days, and that had to count for something. You'd been connected to him then, had those little moments of support. And that was why you'd come on tour, or at least part of the reason. Now he'd been much more distant, not a conversation between you that remotely resembled your old talks. After sex he'd be running back to stage, or passing out in your hotel bed instantly, the exhaustion from tour clearly affecting him. You could understand it from an intellectual point of view, but it didn't mean your feelings weren't hurt.

"I could fucking kill you right now," he sighs through the phone, the sound of the elevator arriving on the eighth floor coming through too. "Look for some street signs, find the cross streets," he demands, softly. "Y/n please," he begs, your quiet resolve breaking, the tears threatening to come again.

"Fine," you say, squinting out towards the intersection ahead of you, the street names hard to read from so far. "Um, one is Rolling.. Heels? Or no, Hills, I think. And the other must be, fuck, whatever street our hotel is on. I can't remember."

"Thank you," he says, the words clearly painful coming out of his mouth. "Promise me you won't move," he sighs, his hand knocking on the door of his manager's room.

"I promise," you sigh, your tone sounding sarcastic.

"Y/n, I swear to god..." Mingi groans.

"I promise, I mean it," you respond, your tone more solid. You really do mean it, you really will be here waiting. Because even if you're pissed at him you're thankful someone is coming to your rescue as you shiver, your body feeling so weak you're not even sure you could make it back to the hotel. As you trudged down the street you hadn't noticed how exhausted you were, your head full of every memory of the last year. It wasn't until you were on the phone with him that it hit you.

"Okay, we'll be there in a few minutes, don't move an inch. And call me if anything weird happens," he says before saying goodbye, hanging up as you hear him start to tell his manager Yubin what's happening.

It takes mere minutes for them to reach you, and you climb into the back seat behind Mingi, behind the passenger side. Neither of you say a word as you climb in, the click of your buckle loud in the tense silence of the car. Slowly Yubin presses on the gas again, gliding back down the road towards the hotel. Mingi reaches his left hand back around his seat to grab your angle gently, sighing at the contact proving that you're fine, that you're here with him. Even if you're not saying a word and clearly pissed at him, the dominating emotion he's feeling still is fear, worry that something's terribly wrong. And at least now he knows you're physically okay, that no one's taken you. When you exit the car, having finally parked in the underground garage, Mingi unzips his hoodie and wraps it around you, hating the way your body subtly fights his every movement even though you're clearly so cold.

In the elevator you still didn't speak a word to either of them, your eyes glued to the floor. When the doors open to your floor you step out quickly, relieved that you'd finally be able to be by yourself again, to bury yourself in one of your books or just bury your face in the pillows, to just be. For a few steps the relief washes over you, until you realize that Mingi is following close behind, his whole being looking ragged with exhaustion and anger.

"Why are you following me?" you spit, not bothering to even look back at him. You unlock your door and he slips inside behind you, closing it gently. With a long sigh he turns to you, your arms crossed as you stare at him, petulant.

"I'm staying here with you tonight so you don't run off again," he states, like it's plain as day.

"But I don't want that," you snap, the anger boiling over now. "Do you ever consider what I fucking want?! Does the thought ever cross your mind that maybe I have feelings?!"

"I get that you don't want me here right now, I'm getting that loud and clear, but you just went walking off in a foreign country in the middle of the night without telling me. And I'm the reason you're fucking here, so I kind of feel responsible for your wellbeing. We can book you a flight home tomorrow, or I can give you space for the rest of tour, or whatever it is that you want, but I will not let you go walking off like that again. You don't know this city, you don't know anyone who lives in this city. That was fucking stupid, what you just did," he says, his own arms coming to cross over his chest. Now yours fall, in defeat. It pains you because he's right, but the idea of admitting that makes you feel edgy, like you'll fall to pieces in an instant.

You groan into your hands, sitting down at the breakfast table in the corner of your room, on one of the grossly fancy chairs. The wood armrests feel cold against the side of your thighs, your elbows resting against the table as you run your hands through your hair in frustration, your head coming to rest on the table too. Already your anger is morphing into just exhaustion, just upset. Tears are coming again, and you try to sob silently, try not to make a big scene in front of him. But your sniffles give you away, the way you're wiping your cheeks with the sleeve of his hoodie, burying your head in your arms.

"Y/n, what's wrong?" he asks, standing against the wall as far from you as he can be in this room. His arms are still crossed over his chest but you're not even looking; from the sound of his voice, though, you can tell he's far away. Suddenly you feel like a bomb about to go off, like he's avoiding you for fear of triggering the explosion. It makes you even more ashamed, that you're acting out, that you aren't holding yourself together like you usually do. That you're so obviously falling apart in front of him.

"I'm exhausted," you manage, between sobs.

"Then why don't you lay down and get some sleep?" he asks gently.

"I can't fucking sleep!" you snap, finally looking up at him with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. "I can't sleep, that's the fucking problem, I'm so fucking anxious every night," you spit, your breaths shaky as you let the tears keep falling.

"Y/n..." Mingi replies, sighing hard as he stares into your eyes, your head clearly full of worry and pain and every other bad feeling. He doesn't know what to do or say to make it better, but he feels his body pulled towards yours, like coming closer must be the correct thing to do. You stare him down as he walks closer, as he sits down to the side of the chair you're in, grabbing one of your hands and putting it between his own. He stares at it for a moment, seeing how rough and battered your nail beds look, and the healing cut on your pointer finger that you got two weeks ago when one of his rings slid past it in just the wrong way. When he looks up at you to meet your gaze you see the glint of possible tears forming, his head swimming with worry too. It makes you feel things too deep in your chest, too painful for you to bear it.

"Stop," you say, but it's so soft and lacking in strength that you clearly don't mean it, at least not entirely. You bury your head in your hands again, as Mingi keeps staring up at you, his chest pained at how you just reeled away from him.

"Do you want to go home tomorrow?" he asks, to no response. You're silently dealing with your rapid heart beat, dealing with the way that his look made you teeter on the edge of emotional collapse. Not even a grunt escapes your lips, as you mull over what he had just asked you. Why the hell could he read your mind so easily?

"Y/n, please talk to me. Please tell me what's going on," he pleads, a hand on your ankle like it was in the car, anchoring him again with the knowledge that at least you're here in front of him.

"You don't want to hear it, I promise you," you respond, sharply inhaling and slowly letting it out.

"Why is that?" he asks.

"Cause it's gonna piss you off, probably," you say, a few tears running down your cheeks again.

"I figured this was about me," he says, still looking up. Your head snaps to him again, your face stony.

"Um, yeah," you say, proud of yourself for not also adding a duh.

"So tell me what I did," he says, his grip on your ankle tightening slightly.

"No, stop," you squeak out, the tears turning to sobs in a moment as you crumple in on yourself again. Your shoulders heave and you breathe deeply as you try to not start full-on wailing. You're in no state to talk, no state to answer him, and with your head spinning the way it is you have no idea what nasty, vitriolic language might spill out of you if you do. As embarrassing as it feels you hope your tears will make him at least stop pressing you, maybe even totally step away and leave you be, finally.

"No," he replies sternly, much to your surprise. "I need to know what's going on. I- I told y- you promised me, that we would talk if you weren't feeling well on tour or if you were mad at me. I told you that would have to happen, cause it always does on tour, everyone is so exhausted and the highs are high so the lows are low, and people always fight. It happens every fucking tour, I told you it would. But you promised me you'd talk to me, and, I don't know if you remember, but you also literally promised not to do exactly what you did tonight. You promised not to go out by yourself anywhere at night." Your sobs haven't ceased, but you feel momentarily some clarity about everything, thinking back to the very conversation Mingi just brought up, and how happy you felt when you finally agreed to come with him. How thoughtful he'd seemed then, how mature your conversation was. And now everything felt stilted and passive aggressive, you totally unable to be honest with him in the way you thought you could be.

"I- I didn't realize it would be like this," you sob, pulling your knees into your chest.

"Like what?" he asks.

"I didn't realize I'd start to feel so used," you manage through shaky breaths.

"Why do you feel used?" Mingi asks you, a look of what seems to be genuine confusion on his face. It makes you so angry.

"Mingi, oh my god," you mutter, your sobs giving way now to angry breaths.

"What?" he asks again.

"Oh my god, is it not fucking obvious?! You fuck me night after night in the middle of fucking arenas! And then I have to hobble down to the closest bathroom and clean myself up with shitty one-ply toilet paper, cover up the smell of your fucking cum with perfume that I fucking hate, and walk back to the greenroom like everyone doesn't know what just happened. And then after the concert just, wait around in another fucking hotel room so you can come and have me again before passing out, your five alarms waking me up so that I can't even get a full night of sleep, and then I have to get myself up, get ready for a plane ride, arrive in a new city and do it all fucking over again. How the fuck do you think that makes me feel??" you scream, completely unaware of just how loud you're being. Now that it's finally coming out it's surging, the anger that had been building for weeks (and honestly your whole damn life) finally breaking free.

"I-" Mingi stops himself, feeling like he was just smacked in the face with the force of your words. "I thought you liked doing semi-public stuff," he says, speaking slowly and clearly trying to choose his words carefully.

"Yeah, well, the novelty of that has worn off now," you sob, staring down at him. "It doesn't exactly feel good having everyone look at me like I'm fucking crazy," you continue, wiping the snot and tears form your face with your bare hand.

"I knew it was- god- I knew it was a lot for you. I could tell, the look in your eye..." Mingi trails off, himself curling into a ball. "I- you know I'd never make you do something you didn't want to, right? I thought, I really thought you liked it like that..." he trails off again, failing at trying to find the perfect words for the situation. "I don't know what to say, I'm just so sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry- god, I- never should have asked you to come with me, I should have known it would be hard on you. I- I should have known that I'm not fun to be around while I'm touring. I'm fucking exhausted myself. I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry." His apologies make your chest ache, that feeling deep within you beating on the walls of your heart to finally be let free. But you still suppress it, still you push it down. Just because he's apologizing doesn't mean he feels the same, and you spiral with the knowledge that in your burnt out state you got yourself into a situation that's almost surely about to blow up in your face.

He looks up to meet your eyes, your entire face flush with red and your eyes and nose puffy. Some snot is falling out of one of your nostrils, your bottom lip stuck between your teeth as you try to control your breaths, your body still shaking and your tears still falling fast. Your mind is obviously running a mile a minute still, and behind your eyes he can see just how truly exhausted you are.

"Listen, I'm gonna talk to whoever is giving you weird looks and making you feel crazy, cause that's not fucking cool. I-" A yawn hits him, his whole body shaking momentarily with fatigue. It makes you yawn too, your head feeling so heavy that you might pass out right there in the chair. "We need to talk more about this, but right now you need to get some rest," he says, slowly standing and putting out his hands in an offering of help. "Come on, what would help you sleep?" he asks, leaning down to just pick you up out of the chair when you don't move to grab his hands. Slowly he places you down on the bed, untying your shoes and gently removing them, then removing your socks and placing them on the small pile of dirty clothes already gathered to the side of your suitcase.

"Do you want different shorts to sleep in?" he asks, knowing your activities earlier already ruined this pair. You just whine and take them off yourself, flinging them to the side, your center on full display to him, an obvious line of dried cum snaking down your leg from the small nest of hair. It's so fucking hot, he can't lie, but knowing now how you felt earlier he feels sick inside for liking it. He takes off his own shoes too, removing his shirt and pants before climbing into the bed beside you, turning off the light and lying on his side a good two feet away, gazing intently at your face.

"Hey, get under the covers," he says, tugging on the duvet and forcing you to lift your hips so he can pull it down and then over you.

"Can I hold you, would that help?" he asks, pulling it up over himself as well. You just roll to face him, snuggling your face into his bare chest instead of answering him. He comes to wrap his arms around you, his embrace tight and full of care, and it makes the tears start flowing softly again. He feels them on the skin of his chest, holding you even closer as he kisses the top of your head, wrapping his legs up around yours.

"Have I told you lately how much I appreciate that you came with me?" he asks in to the darkness of the room. You shake your head, sniffling as more tears fall. "I'm- I'm sorry, I should have said it more. I think it every day," he says, his voice shaky. "I think about you every day. I- don't know what my life would look like right now if I hadn't met you. I care about you, so much, seriously. The last thing I want is for you to feel like I'm just using you for your body, or for a release. I just want to- I want you to have fun, with me, to forget about the serious things. You think too much, you exhaust yourself, and I want to distract you from that. So that you can just live. That's why I asked you to come on tour with me, that's why I've been fucking you backstage, not just because I need it but because I thought you did too. But now I see I wasn't thinking about everything else. I didn't think about just how busy I'd be and how distracted I'd get and how you might feel like I'm not even thinking of you..."

He lets the silence envelop you both, as he holds onto you tight, feeling you still shake.

"You being here has made things so much better, I could never thank you enough for it. I-" he pauses, and you feel his body tense up. "I really care about you, I care so much. I want you to feel that, to know that," he says, sighing softly when he's finished.

You can't help but wonder if he really meant to say another four letter word, that it was there on his tongue but he chickened out, and the thought makes your insides melt. Because that's the four letter word that you've continually buried deep within yourself, the word you've associated with him for several months now, if you were honest. You really didn't think it was likely that he felt the same, even if he did seem to care about you as a person. You just couldn't be sure; maybe it was the mental state you were in, the way everything was filtered through your foggy thoughts, the way nothing felt concrete or knowable. You'd been swimming in confusing feelings ever since you quit your old job, the feelings about him feeling unimportant compared to everything else that was so serious. But now, curled up in his arms and finally letting out all the pent up anger and sadness, your feelings towards him felt like maybe the most important. The way you could just break down, the way you had yelled earlier and he hadn't panicked with you, that he'd stayed grounded and helped you come back down to earth, that seemed like the thing you should be paying attention to. The way you were so comfortable with him, that you'd let him have you in public. Because even today in that all too familiar hallway, as you entered the bathroom to finally clean up, he'd made you feel better in an instant, just by simply kissing your nose. And maybe it was brief, the relief you felt in that moment, but it was there. It was real. That, you could be sure of, despite the fogginess of almost everything else.

Finally your tears had ceased, your body no longer shaking. You felt like a total rag doll, your energy so completely spent. You pulled back your face from Mingi's chest, wiping away the tears and snot from your cheeks, looking up at his barely visible face. He leans forward and places a gentle kiss on your lips, tasting the saltiness of your tears that had been falling for the last little while.

"Do you feel any better?" he asks you, stroking a hand across your cheek, wiping the remaining tears away.

"Mm-hmm," you murmur, but the look in your eye is still not completely void of pain.

"You still mad at me?" he asks, smiling.

"Mm-hmm," you pout, staring up at him with your big beautiful eyes, his body reacting involuntarily to just how adorable you look. And you know exactly the affect it has on him, when you look at him that way. You just didn't know that it's elevated now with your nose red from crying, the way you look like you so desperately need his care.

"Y/n..." he murmurs, fixing you with a soft gaze. "Don't look at me like that..."

You giggle, your head swimming with complicated feelings. Because even now, even after all of that, you can't deny how good his strong thigh feels between your legs, or how much you like it when you feel his eyes on you so attentively.

"What can I do to make it up to you?" he asks, and you giggle again, turning your face into the pillow. "Aren't you, um, exhausted?" he asks, chuckling himself. He knows exactly what that giggle means, he's known you long enough to pick up on that.

"Well..." you respond, looking at him again with that expectant look. Even in your haze of exhaustion you want him, especially after all of those sweet things he'd just said.

"Y/n..." he trails off. The room is dark, so he can't make out everything about you, only the way you giggled and the look in your eye. "You really want that right now?"

He could take you at any time, at the drop of a hat, honestly. But if you felt used earlier, how would it feel now? He'd come to your room tonight to fuck you again, you both knew that. He would be getting what he'd wanted all again, and this time he felt unsure if you really wanted it too, or even if it was a good idea.

"Mingi, please," you whispered, his resolve crumbling in an instant. Those two words were all you had to say and he'd do anything for you, anything at all. He kissed you deeply, your bodies still entangled in a tight embrace, the kiss feeling more full of emotion than any previous one you'd shared. You felt his heart beating against you, like it was the first time all over again, like he was nervous and unsure of what he'd do next.

Suddenly he pulled back with a deep sigh. "Before we do that, just, I need to say one more thing. I chickened out earlier, I wanted to say it, and I didn't, I don't know why. I fucking love you, if that wasn't already clear. You need to know that."

Oh how good it felt to be right. Your heart clenched in your chest, your heart rate picking up the moment he began talking. You could feel it coming, but you weren't prepared for how good it would feel to hear those words from him. It was like flowers were blossoming in your body, like the whole world was made of rainbows and butterflies. You felt something release deep inside you, like a kink in your neck had finally relaxed, and the relief was all-consuming.

"I love you too," you say, tears brimming in your eyes again, this time from the pure unadulterated joy you were feeling. Mingi's lips were back on yours, his kiss firm and possessive, slow and deliberate. It took your breath away, the way he was holding you close to him so tightly, the way his mouth roamed over yours like he owned you. You could feel his hips pressing into yours, his obviously hard length putting pressure on your core, and it added to the feeling of possession, like his was the only cock meant for you.

"I want you to be mine," he murmurs, pulling away momentarily to climb on top of you, his lips crashing down on your neck in mere moments. You sigh at the feeling, a quiet moan coming from deep within you.

"I am," you whisper, your hot breath fanning past his ear and making him shiver. His hand comes down to push down his boxers, pulling his cock free desperately, rubbing the tip along your slit and circling your clit gently, loving the breathy noises coming from your lips.

"You're so wet, god, you're always so fucking wet for me," he groans in your ear, making your whole body jitter with pleasure. This time it feels so different, like you're truly about to make love, even if it's in your own freaky way. Sex could never be just sweet and calm between you, you knew that. And you liked that, cause sweet wasn't exactly what you needed when it came to sexual pleasure. The things he whispered in your ear always had you coming so fast, and it had never been like that with any previous partners. As he slowly rubbed himself against you, your clit electric with pleasure, the feeling enveloped you; you were made for each other, lock and key.

"Fuck, I love you," he moans as he enters you, his words fanning over your face, making your heart sing. "I love your pussy, god, it's so fucking perfect," he continues, the words spilling out of him in his exhausted and delirious state. You have nothing in you to respond; you never usually do when he's fucking you, because the way his huge cock stretches you open makes it impossible to think straight.

"No one's ever fucking you again, you're mine forever," he says, his thrusts picking up speed, his arms around you holding you tight. "No one else," he mutters, and you pull his face to yours to kiss him again, your tongues sloppily licking each other's faces as his movements become more erratic, the whole moment feeling alluringly primal. Already you're coming, from the way he's talking to you, your body shuddering in its fatigue and pleasure. "Fuck, baby, god you're so fucking perfect. I love when you come so fast like that," he groans into your ear, his breaths ragged.

"Mingi, mingi...." you whimper, coming down from your peak and already feeling like another is building. Your words barely come out, they're almost incoherent with how warbled they sound, but he can read everything about how you feel from the sounds.

"I know you love it, when I talk you through it," he says, one hand moving to your hip as he thrusts his hips even harder. "You love that I can tell when you're coming, when you're about to come. Fuck, your pussy is made for me baby, it's so fucking perfect. And you love taking it so hard, don't you?"

Another orgasm blooms in your core, your tight walls squeezing down on him again, your legs shaking as you grip onto him desperately. His pace is just perfect, despite how wild it is, and you feel the pleasure through your entire abdomen, intense warmth also emanating from your chest and making you feel entirely complete. Your eyes are completely closed as you take in the feeling, your head drifting farther and farther from the anxiety and anger of earlier and moving towards that palpable warmth. Soft moans leave your lips at every thrust, the sparkly pleasure growing each time, your body taking him in so easily.

"Fuck you're gonna make me come," he groans in your ear, and somehow again, even in your exhausted state, you feel yourself racing towards your own peak yet again. "God I love how you come so much," he whispers, your orgasm hitting you hard. The sounds you make are whiny, pathetic, and it makes his hold body lurch, his movements stuttering as he finally starts hitting his own climax. "No one's ever made you come like this, have they baby?" he says as he comes undone, your head shaking side to side as the last of the tears left in your eyes leak onto your cheeks. He kisses you deeply, as you feel him cum fill you up, your body racked with exhaustion, your energy completely spent. With heavy breaths he falls to the side of you, grabbing you to hold you tight once again, your own breaths uneven as you recover from everything that's just happened. The whole day washes over you; the morning, the way your head pounded and your neck ached when you woke, the way your stomach churned as you sat waiting for him backstage, the way you walked out of the hotel, your head spinning uncontrollably, and the way he came to you, saying everything you'd hoped he one day would. It was all too much to process, and you continued to shake in his arms as you tried to calm down, still feeling your heartbeat in your clit.

"Let me clean you up," he gently says, a hand running down your back in slow stokes.

"Okay," you whisper, your eyes still closed as he gets up, the bed sagging momentarily when he sits on the edge. Quickly he is back with a wet washcloth, his hands working deliberately to wipe down your core and thighs. Suddenly your eyes feel so heavy, your body turned to the side exactly how you always sleep, and then you're out. After cleaning himself up Mingi heads back to the bed, wrapping himself around you, your soft even breaths calming the part of his heart that still felt shattered at everything he found out today. Gently he pulls the covers over you both, his body wracked from the day and from his release, and soon his breaths are steady like yours, the two of you lulled to sleep in the perfect haze that your proximity always brings you.

It was all said in anger or in lust tonight, but you both know that things have changed between you, that the words said tonight were completely true regardless of the circumstances. Finally your feelings were out in the open, and finally you could move forward without any doubt. The gentle dawn of the morning brought both of you out of your deep slumber, the exhaustion hitting hard after the previous day's fight. But the parts of you that had been confused were settled now, and the relief that gave you won out in the competition for your attention. It was a brand new day, a good day with the man you loved by your side, and you couldn't be more excited for the rest of tour, and for whatever the future had in store.

#ateez x reader #ateez smut #mingi x reader #mingi x y/n #mingi smut #song mingi #ateez mingi

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imaginesmai · 11 months ago

Text

Taken - Azriel

This is long and this is messy. I don't know where this came out, but shoutout to @marscardigan because she requested this fic so long ago I almost forgot. Enjoy the ANGST.

This is a fic inside the baker!reader universe from Right around the corner. You don't need to read the fics to understand but it will help you!

Plot: you're taken in the worst possible situation, and Azriel fights against time to find you.

Warnings: pregnant!reader, blood, wounds, death (not main characters).

You should have closed the bakery a while ago, you knew. You should have also taken a few days off and relay on Elain a bit more. As a matter of a fact, there was a long list of things you should have done better, most of them converged in the last month, but you were busy. And stubborn.

A very busy, very stubborn, very pregnant baker who was closing the bakery way too late.

You had been lucky that morning when you had won the first argument. It was Nyx birthday in a few days, and the boy wanted a special cake with the shadows of his uncle. And you had been working on it even if you were supposed to be on house arrest, only because Azriel was with you at all given time.

But that day, your mate had a meeting and he couldn’t stay with you, so originally you weren’t supposed to go. Originally. Since Azriel loved Nyx as much as you, he had agreed to leave you at the bakery on your own and not chain you to bed.

You hoped that agreement was still valid if he discovered how late it was.

“Alright” you muttered, looking down at the cake with your hands resting on your swollen belly. “I think it’s coming just fine, huh? One more floor and it’ll be the event of the year”

The cake had a base covered in black chocolate, small curls that simulated shadows coming from the bottom. You had already finished the worst part, and had the rest of the shadows ready in the oven for tomorrow.

While you admired your work, you rubbed your hands absentmindedly across your stomach. At the beginning on the third trimester, you looked ready to give birth. Maybe it was because of the wings, or maybe the baby already took upon his father’s size.

“I hope your tastes are less expensive than your cousin’s” you said, smiling when your rubs were answered by a strong kick. “That didn’t feel like agreeing”

The shadows that were already yours pushed you once more to the door, like they had been doing for the past hours, since the sun came down. Raising your hands up in defeat, you took the first step back home.

“Alright, I’m going. I’m going” you chuckled as they pressed more urgently now that you started walking. “I’m fine, it’s late but I’m finishing. Promise to put my feet up when I get home”

Talking with the shadows and with your baby was as common as talking to yourself. Just as Azriel, you seemed to understand what they wanted to tell you. You endured their constant tugging and pulling as you closed off the bakery.

Only when the door was locked and you turned to take the few steps to your house, you realized just how late it was.

“Oh” you blinked, looking around you. The babe sent another, softer kick.

The street was empty, the night silent. Not even the few cats that purred in the shadows happened to be there that night. Even though it was a summer night, you wrapped your arms around yourself as you put the key on your pocket and took the already usual wobbly steps.

At any given moment, you liked to think, you would have been more aware. Azriel had trained you for it, his family had too in the last years. But still, that one time you would have used any of that training, you couldn’t.

Your hand only made it to the knock of your door when the faebane arrow went clean through your shoulder. A clothe covered your mouth as the few shadows tried to blind whoever was behind you, not given you any time to scream or call for help. Gripping onto the last thread of consciousness, you tugged on the bond.

The meeting was taking far longer than what he would have liked.

It was supposed to be easy, to talk the problems out and to let Keir go with a warning. That was why Rhysand had asked him to come along, so that his shadows would snoop around while the male was busy. Because, if the high lord had known it would take so long, he wouldn’t have dared to separate Azriel from you.

Since you both solved your last argument, things had gotten better. He was ready to give himself to you, to become a better man for you and to be what you needed. And seven months ago, it had kept going – you were pregnant, with his child.

And if Azriel thought you were beautiful before, watching your body swell with a new life, watching you become a mother, made you perfect. The thought of you and your future child was what kept him put during hours.

He had known you were at the bakery alone; had known he was supposed to be home before dinner. But he waited, because he didn’t have a reason not to. Azriel felt a tug at the bond during the meeting, and sent a reassuring pull back.

He waited, until Keir left and he put a foot out of Hewn City. Cassian was waiting for them with his arms crossed, his back to their brothers.

“Missed us much?” Rhysand teased, letting himself smile for the first time in that day. “Is staying with – what’s wrong?”

Cassian turned around and his face fell. Azriel recognized earlier than Rhysand the fall of his shoulders, the slump on his wings. There was tension and pain written all over his face. His spymaster-mind ran over a few possibilities before his brother locked eyes with him – an attack to Velaris, an update about Beron’s plans, the revolution in the human’s lands. He even had time to worry about Nyx.

Then, he locked eyes and his breath got stuck in his throat.

“What?” he blurted out. The look on Cassian’s face threatened to swallow him down a spiral of panic. “Cassian, what?”

“What happened?” Rhysand asked, although he was already reading the general’s mind.

“Y/N’s been taken. Don’t know where yet or why” the general spoke, without dropping Azriel’s burning gaze. “I’ve got guards up in the sky and through Velaris”

“Taken?” the high lord asked again, frowning.

“Your shadows came into the wind house, somehow… Nyx knows. He told us what they saw. We are looking for her already, don’t panic. We will find her”

Rhysand could see through Cassian’s eyes, the burst of Azriel’s shadows and a crying Nyx in his room, waking him up. His son telling him about the shadows warning him in his sleep, asking the general if it was true and why they said that.

He looked at Azriel, who looked as pale as the bone wall behind them. The Illyrian tried to come up with something to say, just as he had done in so many similar occasions. It was him who remained calm when Rhysand went under the mountain, when Nyx’s life was threatened just after he was born. Azriel made plans, he was a skilled warrior.

Still, he could only tug on the bond and horrify at the emptiness that came back.

“I can’t feel her” he confessed, finally looking away from Cassian to Rhysand. “Why? Why can’t I feel her?”

“She isn’t dead” his brother answered immediately. “You would know. It’s the faebane, you won’t feel her if they have used it. Cassian, what do we know?”

“No smells, no traces. Bakery was empty and her apartment too. They must have taken her in between”

“Who would fucking take a pregnant woman?” Azriel blurted out. “She’s pregnant. She’s – fuck! In between? It’s – it’s two steps! There’s no space in between!”

“What else?” Rhysand ignored him.

“They sent a note”

Azriel’s panic died down for a moment when Cassian handed his high lord the note. He quickly snatched it away. Barely able to keep in place, he turned his back to his brothers and shamelessly used his shadows in his favor.

He heard his name being called, felt Rhysand demanding to be let in. His own power wasn’t a match for the high lord’s, but it would keep them out enough to read the note.

One of the first rules he applied when it came to kidnappings was to keep the family and loved ones out of it. They didn’t think clearly, and without wanting to, could endanger the victim. But it wasn’t just a person, it was you.

So, ignoring his own rules, he opened the note.

If you want Y/N and the baby safe, the spymaster will present himself at the given coordinates before sunrise. Impaled with faebane and with no hidden tricks. Once we deem so, we will deliver the girl in Windhaven.

Each hour past sunrise will be paid. Don’t be late.

We do not appreciate being hunted.

There were words, that made sentences, and that should have made sense. But all Azriel could see was your name, the word baby, and feel his chest tighten. That wasn’t a clue, there was no way they would find them before sunrise and bring you home to him. Right then, he understood why they kept family out of those types of matters.

The note was snatched out of his hands by a very angry looking Rhysand, with a pained Cassian behind his back.

As Rhysand read the note, Azriel let himself have a moment of sorrow. He turned every emotion upside down, explored them instead of refusing to acknowledge. For years, he had feared the possibility of you being taken from his side. There would be time to panic once he had you in his arms, to worry about the baby once he could touch your belly once more and check your pulse and breathing.

Azriel tugged on the bond once more, feeling the crushing emptiness back. There was nothing, and he was threatened to become nothing too. Instead, he tugged on the faint, thin bond that was still developing. It was barely a thread of your own, fragile but promising.

The bond with your child had been the cause of your discovery. One day it was only the two of you, and then Azriel felt something else. He tugged on that and, even if he didn’t receive anything back, he knew.

“They’re in the mountains” he looked at his brothers. “Can’t say where, but far from Windhaven”

“How are you sure?” Cassian asked, but Rhysand smiled knowingly. Sadly.

“The other bond. You shouldn’t pull too hard, Az. It’s – “

“I won’t. But I’m not letting one second go if I can find her” Azriel cut him off with a hard look. “You’re wasting your time in Velaris”

“Don’t you dare, Az”

Cassian words were lost in the wind as he winnowed away, Rhysand barely touching his forearm. He knew he shouldn’t tug on the bond so soon in his child’s life, that it would only put him at risk. Risk an early labor, risk your discomfort. But if it meant it would take him back to you, he would rip the word apart piece by piece.

You didn’t know how, but after all those years, all those good memories built that replaced the bad ones, you just knew. You recognized the painted walls, the stains on the ground, and the smell from the fire.

Nothing had changed over the centuries that had passed by, you realized. The tavern was just as terrible as it had been, just as dirty. They were just as tall and broad as they were, although not that many. And you were that scared girl that they ripped their wings from, tucked into a corner.

While they stared at you, you only hug your belly and tried to keep your tears at bay.

You had woken up a while ago, and they had only whispered between them. From what you had gathered, they didn’t expect the pregnancy, and were worried about it. The one who had clipped your wings so long ago wasn’t around, thanks to Azriel, but you recognized their faces.

You also recognized the blood stains on the ground and walls, courtesy of your mate and probably the reason you were in that position.

“It has closed” one of them broke the silence, frowning. “Why has it closed so soon? We just took it out”

“Must be the babe” the taller one, whom you remembered to be called Sandor, shrugged.

“It’s the third time – “

“All right, girl, you already know to stay put” Sandor sighed, as if it was a simple routine.

You refused to talk, refused to anger them just like you had done in the past and pay for your actions. It wasn’t just your life in the game, and right then, your priority wasn’t it.

With only the moon light through the window, Sandor knelt in front of you and grabbed a clean arrow. Two bloodied ones were discarded on the ground, ripped out of your shoulder and arm. Apparently, they didn’t want to risk you healing around the arrow, in case it would somehow affect the baby.

That didn’t mean they weren’t willing to stick another one once the wound was closed and there was a chance of Azriel feeling you through the bond.

For a moment, Sandor hesitated. It was clear that he wasn’t comfortable about your belly or the situation. Hurting you to get Azriel might had been fine, but hurting pregnant-you was debatable.

“Just do it, man. You might already ring the bells and light a bonfire” the nameless one snapped.

“Do you want to do it?” Sandor turned around on his knees. “Clyde, I’ve got a pregnant woman at home. And she looks ready to burst”

“It’s not your woman, it’s his. Do you want to stare at what used to be Burton?” Clyde pointed to the darkest stain. “Tell him if he wants to consider, take his time”

As they argued, you finally felt it. A tug, a breeze, nothing more than a feeling, but it was there. It was Azriel pulling at the bond like his life depended on it, with so much strength you were sure he was using power that wasn’t only his.

You blinked surprised at the change. It had taken you all your willpower not to panic when you woke up feeling nothing on the other side, and they hadn’t let enough time for your body to recover from the fae bane to feel it again. But as they argued, you silently cherished the discovery. Maybe it was the baby’s strength, maybe it was the cauldron leaning in your favor or any other force, but not only you were healing fast – you were getting the bond back.

Still looking at them, you tugged back. The bond went silent for a second, and you pressed against it again. You were hit with an overwhelming amount of worry, of fear but also love and relief. Azriel’s emotions became yours, and you were so glad it was about to be over that you unfocused your gaze.

It was enough for Clyde to notice your far-away look, and realize what was happening.

“Fuck, she’s warning him!” Clyde rushed forwards, taking the arrow out of Sandor’s grip. “You think you’re so smart?”

You blinked your fogginess away when he walked towards you, coming back to your senses. There wasn’t enough amount of love or assurance Azriel could send you that would stop you from panicking.

“No, wait” you pushed yourself farther into the corner as he moved closer, screaming at Azriel as loud as you could through the watered bond. “I didn’t! I didn’t!”

“You knocked-up, useless, brat” he gripped your ankle and pushed you towards him, your back and head hitting the ground. “Let’s see how you tell him this”

The momentary pain of hitting the ground wasn’t enough to drown the anguish of having a new arrow dug into your leg, just above your knee. The ceiling became blurry and his voices tuned out as you screamed in pain, your bounded hands trying aimlessly to break free.

You couldn’t remember the pain from the first one, seeing you were knocked out, and Sandor had managed to make the other one hurt less. But Clyde pushed his body weight onto your leg, the bottom of the arrow piercing the ground. You looked up and watched horrified as blood started leaking out through your pants and under your leg.

Moving away from him only caused the arrow to shift, but being near him was putting your baby close to the monster. So, in your panic, you tried to ease the pain by lifting your leg while shifting farther into the corner.

“How’s the bond now, uh? Is your pussy boy there?” he chuckled, while Sandor looked away. “Go on, tell him how bad we are”

“We should move” the third one spoke for the first time. “If he has felt her, he knows”

“You heard the boss” rough hands tried to push you up while you cried out.

“No” you repeated, letting Clyde put your whole weight up and almost collapsing after him. “Please, just let me go. Let me go”

Gone was the keep-quiet-don’t-talk. The tears kept rolling down your cheeks as Sandor stepped on your other side, holding you up a bit gentler than Clyde. Your baby started kicking on your side, and between the pain and desperation, you felt like throwing up and passing out.

Their chatter as they discussed what to do next was background noise. Certainly, they weren’t taking the arrow out that time, risk or no risk of being sealed inside and affecting the baby. You could barely stand up between your kidnappers and remember how to breath at the same time.

You wanted Azriel, that was the only thing you were certain. You shouldn’t have closed so late, you shouldn’t have gone to the bakery on your own, and you shouldn’t have gotten out of bed that morning. The baby agreed with you, answering each thought with a powerful kick to your kidneys and bladder.

You tried desperately to think about positive things, to keep yourself sane enough. Closing your eyes, you thought about him. His hazel eyes, that shone with a special light when he saw you between the crowd. His mouth, that curled up so lightly every time you stared at him. The freckles in his cheeks, that one that snuck up to the corner of his eye.

You could almost hear his voice reminding you to breath carefully and gain control of your body when the pregnancy pain hit, and you tried to do the same. Taking a deep breath through your mouth, holding it in. Letting it go through your nose.

“Oh, sure, because winnowing her again is the best solution, right?” Sandor scoffed loudly.

You moved your toes lightly, relieved to notice that despite the burning and overwhelming pain, you could still feel everything. From your feet to your head, you twitched every part of your body, finally able to breathe through the pain.

That didn’t mean you could move without them hauling you up, or that the baby was anymore happy.

“Enough! We’re moving now. Grab the things. We winnow – “ the anonymous man startled you, making you look up.

“I need to go the bathroom” you whispered, although it was heard as if you shouted it.

Three pair of eyes looked at you with raised brows, one pair certainly more annoyed than the other two. You didn’t know how far had it been since they took you, but it was still night time. During the last weeks, you had been paying a visit to your bathroom at least once every two hours.

And that was being generous.

The babe kicked again against your bladder, making your knees wobble. If you didn’t catch a bathroom, in a minute, you would have to let go.

“Sure. Do you want me run a bath too? Clyde, you could massage her feet. Is our lady tired of standing up for so long?”

“Nestor, she’s pregnant” Sandor was the only one looking slightly affected by your request. “My Lorren – “

“Your Lorren is home and we are here. Stop with Lorren!” Clyde let you go to push Sandor’s shoulders, which made you stumble back.

“I’m not carrying her if she’s gonna pee herself”

“She’s gonna be a big girl and hold it, right?” Nestor gave you a tense smile. “And you’re going to winnow her to the cabin”

“I’m not taking her to the cabin, man”

And while you stood up and waited for them to decided where to take you, you felt your bladder giving up. It wouldn’t be the first time you peed yourself, and with the strength your baby was kicking you right then, you were amazed that you managed to hold it for a few seconds.

Clyde and Nestor kept arguing loudly about the cabin, while Sandor just looked at you with a scrunched nose. You would have felt embarrassed, but you were in pain, you were scared and tired. It was hard to stay standing at any given moment with your belly. Whether it was the wings or the baby’s size, you were heavy.

The discomfort of the arrow was starting to become secondary. Even though you had just peed yourself, you still felt the kicks against your bladder – and almost against every part of your soul. You gripped the only thing available when another wave of kicks hit you, that being Sandor’s arm.

The man realized at the same time you did what was happening, although he didn’t have time to voice it out.

“Damn it!” Clyde barely missed the door coming out of its hinges. He didn’t miss the knife that embedded itself on his throat.

“Sandor, shoot him!” Nestor yelled to his friend, who was too busy keeping you off the ground now that the only support was holding his open neck. “Shoot!”

“Pathetic”

His voice was like a cold breeze in the summer, the feeling of his shadows helping you gently to stand up making your breath speed up once more.

Azriel appeared like a dark angel through the open door, his eyes not even leaving you as he stopped an arrow with his bare hand. His wings covered the moon behind him, but they didn’t stop the next figure coming through. Before Clyde hit the ground still chocking on his last breath, Rhysand had winnowed himself and Nestor out of the tavern.

You briefly wondered if death by Azriel’s hands right then would have been better than by the spymaster’s hands later.

Your mate said nothing as Sandor was ripped out of your side. Only by gripping his arm and pulling him away from you, you heard the awful crack of his arm breaking into two.

Sandor cried out, only getting a few seconds to acknowledge his arm before his left wing is ripped out of his back. Azriel’s shadows assessed your body with a sickening speed, coming to the same conclusion you had.

You were lowered softly onto the ground, silently watching what Azriel had always hidden from you. The unleveled part of him, the one that came out when someone he loved was in danger. He feared that part would take you away from him. But as you watched your mate tear Sandor to pieces, you only felt relief at his presence.

The male wasn’t done screaming for his life when he fell dead to the side. His mangled body was blocked from your view by training leathers and tearful hazel eyes. Everything he had felt during the last hours, that he had denied himself from so he would find you, crashed hard.

His scarred hands held your face while he scanned your body, stopping on your untouched belly and bleeding wound. He didn’t even flinch when he touched your soaked pants to pull it out.

The pain you were in in that moment prevented you from feeling anything more than a discomfort at the pull.

“You’re alive” Azriel cried out, not holding his tears back. “I thought – for a moment, I thought… I couldn’t feel you. And then I did, but you were gone. I didn’t know what had happened. I almost died, Y/N. You’re alive. You’re okay”

“Az” you whined, one of your hands gripping his shoulder harder than it was necessary.

“The baby’s bond… I followed it to the mountains. I know I shouldn’t, but I pulled it” he placed one hand on your belly, laughing tearfully when he felt a kick back. “I love you. I love you both so much”

There weren’t words to explain what Azriel had felt in the last few hours. How he had stumbled down into the snow when he had felt your end of the bond alive, how desperate he had been to follow it. Then, it had gone dark and if it wasn’t for Rhysand following him, he would have crashed right there.

He was glad his brother had been there, that he had taken a male away for questioning. Once you were safe and with Madja, he would make sure to take his time.

Azriel pressed a shaky, wet kiss to your forehead, then another one to your nose. He kissed each and every tear that had stained your cheeks in the past hour, finally pressing his lips against yours.

When he moved back, ready to winnow you both back to Velaris and hold you close for a week, he was surprised to see new tears running down your cheeks. What he thought was terror for the kidnapping, the anguish of your captors, hadn’t left your face.

“What’s wrong?” he frowned, leaving his own despair for later and looking back at your body.

“Az” you repeated.

You had realized what was happening before him, had known just before Sandor. His shadows couldn’t possibly understand what was happening, and so, Azriel didn’t. Any pain you had felt during that night paled away from the complete, absolute fear the crippled you as you stared at your mate in that dark tavern, where your worst memories had taken place.

“I’m here” he reminded you, his hand caressing the belly. “Where does it –“

“It’s coming” you finally admitted, watching the realization hitting him. “The baby’s coming”

It had felt like peeing yourself, like normal kicks, you guessed. What had given it away was crippling, motherly realization that your baby wanted out. That bond that had connected you to it was more present than ever, and somehow, you knew.

Azriel paled even more if that was possible. Right there, sitting in the dirty, bloodied and now empty tavern, your water had broken. You wanted to break down crying, because of course, given your history your baby would choose that moment.

When Azriel didn’t say anything, you lip wobbled again. Because, if he didn’t have the answers, who would?

“It’s coming” you said again, feeling like a broken record. “What do we do? What -?”

“I’ll winnow us to Velaris” Azriel interrupted you, knowing the answer before saying it.

“Madja said we can’t” you reminded him, although he already knew. “Oh God. Az, it’s coming. What do we do? I’m having a baby. I’m having a baby!”

Indeed, one of the first things Madja had advised you against was winnowing while pregnant. So close to the date, it would only trigger an early labor – and on the date, it would be dangerous to the baby and you. Rhysand would be back in Velaris by then, probably thinking you two were just fine and happy together once more.

And winnowing away to warn him and bring someone was out of the equation, since he wouldn’t be leaving you for a while now.

So Azriel gathered himself together and gave you a hesitant smile.

“We can do it” Azriel whispered, not sure of the truth behind his words.

“What?”

“I’m not leaving you. We’re here together, and we can do it. Madja told us what it’s like” Azriel tried to sound confident for you, for the both of you, but it came out as a question.

“We’re having a baby”

The first rays of sun entered through the empty space where the door was as you stared into his eyes. You could risk winnowing back and losing the baby and your life, or you could send away Azriel and hope he made it in time back with Madja or any other healer. Neither of those options felt like surviving to you, so you nodded at him and willed that tear to be the last one.

Azriel leaned in and kissed you softly. His lips were salty, from his tears or your own, and kind. While his shadows brushed every available part of your body, you let yourself forget about the closing wound, about the trembling of your knees and the pain in your belly.

Kissing him would always feel like the first time, like fireworks and Starfall. His nosed brushed your own and his tongue deepened the kiss. One of his hands cupped the back of your head, the hair there already covered in sweat. Even it was cold with the morning breeze, you were ready to get out of your body.

The kiss ended way too soon, just as another kick, or contraction, hit you harder than before. You sucked a breath and almost stumbled to the ground.

Azriel was quick to roll his sleeves up, lowering you until you were laying on the ground. Looking up at him, he gave you reassuring smile and hesitant nod.

“We’re having a baby” he squeezed your shoulder.

You tried to smile as another contraction hit and the first scream broke the silent morning.

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