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kedsandtubesocks · 15 days ago

Text

Prisonic Fairytale

Pyramid Head!Joel Miller x F!Reader

summary: You’re looking for someone… what you find here in the fog instead has you staring into the abyss - and you discover it stares back (& wears the face of someone terrifyingly handsome)

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY MDNI. dark themes. Silent Hill AU blended with TLOU canon (major spoilers for TLOU2), monsterfucking, distorted reality, limbo world & dreamlike states, sex pollen, dubcon, fingering, unprotected p in v, creampie, feelings & themes of dread/terror/hopelessness, angst, monstrous!Joel, moments of violence, death mentions, blood imagery, protective!Joel, possessive!Joel, Joel lifts reader multiple times with scary monster strength, scary guard dog Joel vibes, ambiguous happy ending (?)

word count: 5.7k

a/n: please be aware of the warnings - this fic I know won’t be everyone’s cup of tea & I kindly ask if it isn’t please just scroll away… if you haven’t played Silent Hill or don’t even know what it is know this was written for anyone to jump in & read! Big thank you @pedgito for beta reading ily forever, and to you, if you’re reading this know i truly appreciate it & thank you too ♡ divider credit to the ever talented @saradika-graphics

This town, this possible pocket of a morbid nightmare, holds a plethora of ghastly creatures that stalk your very soul. Contorted bodies on the floor, lying fiends crawling as if straight from a hellish pit, all chase after you. Twitching infected, now distorted demons, also plague the streets.

But the monster enclosed in the large metal pyramid shaped device, who drags a sword the size of a small tree, terrifies you most of all.

You’ve seen the pyramid headed creature lurking through the thicket of the town, unwavering in his journey, almost even patrolling at times.

The body appears like that of a man. Broad shoulders sturdy, aged with thick veiny arms effortlessly pulling along the terrifying blade.

You think of the woman you met in the cemetery and what she said: “There’s something… wrong with that town.”

You fully understand now.

In a world surviving after its destruction, you never thought you’d see another form of hell. Yet an even more sinister darkness festers within every inch of this town waiting to strike. There is no peace.

Because when you open your eyes after dozing off on the crusty couch in the home you've been taking refuge in…

You discover the pyramid headed beast now looms above you.

His form towers imposing and striking, a monster conjured from a child’s nightmare now casting his shadow over you.

You didn’t even hear this hulking behemoth walk into the house.

The time spent here continues making your mind melt.

The only refuge you’ve found came in this abandoned home along the outskirts of town.

Which is now not so safe anymore.

Communication with Maria, your late mother’s oldest friend, has gone dead silent. You feel foolish not leaving with her, but now…

The searching, the endless days, the long walks, all have brought you here. Though you can’t even fully describe where here is.

You’ve seen doomed abandoned cities, but nothing like this. The buildings stand vacant, paint chipping away like decayed remnants of a world gone. Crusted crimson coats every inch of this place as if no one but angels tread here. Or possibly ghosts, or demons.

Thick fog blankets the town like the personified angel of death, blurring your sense of direction and casting you into an abyss of dread.

The town becomes an endless maze stretching on and on. You haven’t found another person for what feels like weeks. Only whispers and chills of dread like eyes watch from the shadows. The creatures and infected prey on you, maws open wide.

Now you stare up at their god, the most terrifying beast in this macabre world.

Stunned, petrified, barely even able to breathe, you stare at the pyramid monster so frightened you can't cry in terror, numb to the horrors.

But that’s when you see it. Black ink spilling against the creature’s side.

He’s injured.

Even injured you don’t doubt he can swing his sword and attack you within seconds.

Demonic screeches suddenly howl into the air breaking this tense moment. Your eyes, panicked, dart to the kitchen. The open back door gives you a clear shot to the backyard.

Monsters, macabre and bloody, claw towards your distorted sanctuary through the decayed wooden fence of the porch.

Adrenaline, instinctive primal fear, possesses you and you bolt off the couch.

You move, grabbing your weapon, a discarded pipe and start swinging. You ward off as many of the creatures as you can.

That’s when you realize the pyramid head beast hasn’t chased after you. So you continue swatting away the monsters long enough until you can barricade the opening shut with discarded lawn chairs.

Heading back inside, there, the pyramid monster waits.

In this barbaric wasteland, it unnerves you seeing this creature simply standing in the middle of the dimly lit living room. You’re grateful this home had matches and candles that brought some illumination.

It’s just you and the metal monster now.

Dark liquid, rusted ink like blood, spills down his arms and across his body.

The monstrosity does bleed.

It feels like a standoff, you staring at this tremendous wounded beast.

Through the rusted metal you hear it - heaved breathes, heavy wheezing.

This creature is wounded and hurting.

Too many thoughts buzz rapid and angry in your brain. You’re worried this monster man at any minute will chase and attack you. He already blocks your exit out the front door, possibly dooming you.

But some sort of scabbing human pity wells in you. If you were this injured and alone, you pray someone would spare you, help and save you with a grace filled hand of salvation.

So viewing this beast like a cornered animal, you slowly walk back into the kitchen. You grab a pack of kitchen towels, old and covered in cobwebs, but still the most you could manage as wrappings.

Back in the living room, you cautiously place the items on the couch near the pyramid head man.

He doesn’t move.

Keeping your focus on him and tiptoeing within the edges of terror, you head back to the kitchen. If he does decide to attack you can at least try running out the back door. It might be swifter than trying to dodge his great sword.

Patiently, you sit waiting, too stunned to sleep.

It’s simply you and the pyramid headed monster. He never once enters your space.

You don’t even know how much time has passed or if any time has passed at all.

Daybreak soon leaks into the kitchen. The sunlight hitting your face wakes you, electrifying your heart.

You fell asleep.

Rapidly you rush into the living room.

He’s gone. The creature is gone.

That’s when you notice the wide open porch door, the source of the light that woke you. Hesitantly you peer outside.

The bulking monster towers on the porch, faintly statuesque. His back is back to you. His rusting metal sword stands at the ready.

The pyramid headed creature turns to face you.

You feel cornered, a small prey within the eyes of a demonic god waiting to feel its wrath. The rusted pyramid head simply stands still.

The wound isn’t bleeding anymore, but his dark ink like blood stains his clothing.

The creature picks up the great dreaded sword. Instantly your body coils like a rabid ready to spring and run for the door…

Until the pyramid head moves and walks away.

The sight stuns you. You even wait expecting him to return.

He doesn’t.

The rush of emotions barrels into your body, causing you to hold onto the banister of the porch.

Three things bounce rabidly in your mind.

First, the pyramid head creature didn’t kill you, didn’t even once attack you even while you slept.

Second, it might possibly be the lack of human contact or the absence of cohesive reality in this town, but if you didn’t know better…it looked like the beast stood on the porch keeping watch.

And third -

The pyramid head man wore a broken watch.

Strangely enough, that thought sticks with you most of all.

—

Fear shakes your hands while you shake open door after door trying to find sanctuary. Night approaches. You’ve learned night unleashes the worst of this town, a catalytic shift. Now an unforgiving storm with thick wailing winds threatens to blow you away. You knew you wandered too far again to head back to your makeshift home.

You have to find shelter.

The mist thickens, a sinister soup. The scratching of claws, the clicking of infected, seem to come from all around. You’re on the verge of tears trying another door.

Eventually you find sanctuary in the bar.

With the storm raging outside this will be your rest stop for the night. You begin scavenging around.

Various notes, journal scraps, even receipts, scatter across the town like fallen leaves among the debris. You’ve been gathering them curious to what they entail.

The crunched up book entries become vital fast when you discover many hold information about the creatures residing in this molding disaster.

Here you find one with a simple pyramid drawing on it etched out in dried blood.

Below the drawing is a note. The scribble handwriting paints the pyramid head monster as a hunter, unstoppable in his rampage and the hand of destruction itself.

“Born from the most human yet selfish desires that ravages a soul. It brings him to the edge of losing his humanity. Or maybe it is because he cares too much that this darkness consumed him…whatever it is, that is what created this creature. This once man, who stole the candidate is”

Blood stains the rest of the journal scrap, like the town refuses to let you know the name of this creature.

You pray you don’t run into the pyramid head again.

Tired and not wanting to sleep on the disgusting floor, you pull up a seat at the bar top folding your arms to rest upon them.

The wind howls. Muffled creaks of the creatures still wandering around are unsettling. But your eyes finally close all the same.

You swear you now hear the soft tunes of an old country song, and someone whispering your name.

Delicate fingers, warm and callous, brush against your forehead. Wearily you open your eyes.

The bar has been transformed. Instead of the boarded up abandoned shell of a building, it’s incredibly cozy. Lights are strung up. Gentle music floats all around.

“Y’wanna drink, sweetheart?”

The voice is smooth, accented and twanged beautifully. It feels like it’s been so long since you even spoke to another person much less heard one.

Scrambling up, you discover the voice comes from a man behind the bar.

There stands the most gorgeous man you’ve ever seen. And yet what sadness clouds around him. An aged rugged grace paints him like some country romance love interest. Brown eyes as dark as earthen caverns beg you to get lost in.

The bar is beautiful, and he’s beautiful.

“You’ve been fightin hard.” He says, pouring out a drink for you.

You’re stunned, can’t process what’s even happening.

“Where are we?” You ask stunned.

“A museum,” he dully replies, but you can tell he’s joking.

The sip of the drink tastes heavenly, warms you up and settles you down.

“Ya seem tired.” He adds, and you exhale feeling the weight of this world seep into your bones.

“Wanna talk about it?” He asks gently.

So you spill your heart to him. How Maria, the closest person you’ve had left to family, vanished into the wind. How you don’t know what’s even going on anymore.

“And now I’m here.” You sigh.

“Maybe you’re here for a reason.” The bartender suggests. “This town…it knows more than we realize.”

You don’t know how to reply. So all you can do is take a quiet sip.

A quiet thump comes, and you glance up. The man behind the bar with darts in his hand now tries throwing them at the target across the wall.

The second dart he throws barely lands on the bullseye.

“Wow, you kinda suck.” You snort.

He scoffs looking at you. “Think you’d be any better?”

So that’s how you end up behind the bar now, trying to throw darts in competition with this beautiful older man. He smirks at how pissed you get seeing one of your darts just miss the target.

A vague familiarity swirls around this man, as if something at the back of your mind claws to get out.

You dream of him and this bar often, like your mind slips into this space to escape the horrors clamoring for your flesh.

Your favorite handsome bartender refuses to give you his name, no matter how many times you’ve tried weaseling it out of him.

“My name’s not important.” He tells you, and it only draws a cold ache in your chest.

Then, the nightmares of this town squash your peaceful dreams.

The decayed buildings wither away more and more into desolation the further you travel into the town.

Butterflied fungal growths sprout over certain buildings, crawling over the cracks and branching over the surface of anything they touch. You were worried they too carried the infection.

“Don’t touch fungus shit.” A note written on an old receipt had warned you about the vines and flora of this town.

But it’s getting hard heeding that warning. The monsters rage more bloodthirsty, ruthless and violent in their attacks.

The apartments you’re running through are hard to navigate. Walls crumble and the dark corridors make it difficult to see which way is which. You’re reminded of a twisted diabolical version of wonderland.

Turning a corner, one of the creatures emerges from the darkness screeching and swinging at you. Scrambling away you collide hard against the wall and a puff of dust clogs your senses.

You try not inhaling and swing your metal pipe until it makes contact, stopping the attack.

But what had you run into?

Your heart drops seeing one of the vines cracked open and the faint dust like spores dancing in the air.

Panic rages in your chest.

You flee, fast as you can, running through familiar spaces until you’re out of the apartment hallway. You need to get back to the safe house you’ve been hiding in.

But the wind outside whips feral, screaming with a blustering force that you can barely step outside.

Then your hands start shaking and suddenly heat floods over your body.

The spores, you realize, unleashed a sudden sickness because it feels like you got hit with a sudden fever. Dread spreads in you. You know these aren’t the typical symptoms of the cordyceps infection, but you can’t risk it.

So you wait inside the apartment complex’s entrance office.

No sensation of twitching.

Instead, your mouth dries out and a slickness pools between your legs.

Shit.

What kind of reaction did these vines cause?

Your body drifts between a sensation of being weighed down by an anchor to almost floating through the air until you stumble down onto the floor.

The clothes you wear now scratch your skin, and your mind slowly fogs up more. So you slip out of your pants.

You’re aware that you’re on the floor of the abandoned receptionist office and hope this will provide you enough cover as your fingers dip into your soaking core.

The orgasmic release clumsily comes, but it’s like unleashing a dam.

Your body twitches wishing for more. Unsatisfied, hungry, everything feels empty.

Please, your mind whispers out, please someone… help.

Slipping your fingers inside, the loud wet squelch of your arousal makes your cheeks burn. It’s almost sacrilegious hearing this debauched erotic sound among such a decayed morbid wasteland.

You’re lost in the sensation, trying to fight through this heat. Your eyes even haze over as the pleasure bubbles more.

Aloud clang collides against the door, snapping your attention forward. Towering above you again is the pyramid head man.

You don’t even scream. It gets logged in your throat instead transforming into a twisted moan.

In this small space, the metal covered demon looms larger than ever. The pyramid prisoned monster stays focused solely on you.

Slowly, he lumbers closer. You can’t even find the strength to move, scramble with some dignity and leave. If anything your legs move like jello shifting as you take in the sight of his strong thick arms, his broad shoulders.

You wonder what he looks like under the helm.

A low rumble vibrates through the room. Wearily your eyes drift down and spot the obvious bulge straining against his pants.

“Please.” The word croaks out of you before you can stop it. You don’t know if this will even help, or if this is even real.

Quickly he crouches down and large firm hands grasp your legs, dragging you across the floor. The movement makes your body twitch, and your eyes shut bracing for pain.

Instead you're gingerly placed on the edge of a table in the receptionist room.

Hesitantly your eyes open. All you see is rusted archaic metal. A sound rips into the air, the tearing of clothes, your underwear specifically. Your core feels colder, yet the cool breeze melts into unbearable flames as the air hits your bare skin.

Gentle fingers twitch moving across your thighs and you moan, almost want to sob. How long has it been since someone’s last touched you? And so reverently?

The low rumbling sound rattles all around you, mixing with your own moans. Everything heightens when his fingers slip inside you.

Thick, his fingers are so damn thick making your hips fidget to feel more of him.

This creature, this monster that’s ripped apart bodies and bathed itself in blood, now fully devotes itself to your pleasure. You feel drunk on that knowledge.

But your release runs away further from you now, hiding just out of reach making you whine frustrated and almost feral.

More, more, you need more.

“Inside.” You manage to croak to the beast. “Need more…inside.”

It’s as if this nightmare world has slipped under your skin, becoming a part of your bloodstream allowing you to transmute the terror into terrible pleasure.

The twitch of the monster’s large cock drags across your bare thighs. The sensation jolts you awake, aware and hyper focused. His grimey blood crusted hands rapidly grab onto your soft hips. You don’t even care if they were inside you, touching you.

Especially when your mind melts as the creature slips inside.

He’s thick, knocking your breathless. It’s delicious feeling so full that you swear you almost feel him in your ribs. It makes the skin melt off your bones.

The monster relentlessly pounds into you, shaking the table unabashedly loud mixing with your delirious moans.

Your legs twist around his strong waist, locking him into you tighter. The pyramid headed beast rumbles louder in this closer position. More distorted groans mix with yours as his hands run up your body, tracing every inch of you.

You should be frightened. This creature sent from hell has you at its mercy. But instead the sensations flooding your body make you’re hungrier for him.

“More, more.” You whine loud and unrelenting.

And he gives.

Your climax is beautifully fierce. Your screams blend into the white void swallowing you whole. Your legs thrash. Your eyes roll back as your fingers dig into the creature’s cold arms. This, you believe, might be the last taste of heaven you’ll ever find in this hell pit.

Exhaustion crashed in immediately. You feel like a ragdoll on the table while this monster continues thrusting into you sloppy and messy, broken growls distorting your mind.

Teetering between bliss and dreams, your hands move up, slowly trade up to the rusting metal.

Tenderly, you wonder what would be like if you could free this creature -

Your hands tracing across the rusting metal containing this pyramid headed monster does something to him. He roars, distorted and hellish, and suddenly spills into you.

You don’t even care he came inside. You thought you had been stated before, now it’s like floating into a new realm of pleasure. You moan now in tandem with him.

Full, you’ve never felt this full. A thick hand affectionate and soft rest against your lower belly. You think it almost aches of a revenant tenderness.

But you’re barely awake now, barely process what’s going on. All you sense are arms cradling you while you fade in and out.

Then you wake up wondering if it was all a dream.

Because instead of the corroded apartment complex you were in, you’re resting back in bed of the home you’ve been staying at.

Did that monster carry you back all the way here?

You don’t know. For a moment you don’t even know if that fuck in the apartments was real, until you stand up and the ache that rips across your body says otherwise.

So you stay resting in this hollow soul of a home. After gaining some rest you start snooping around.

There’s so many photos of a bright young girl with warm sparkling intelligent eyes. Her playing soccer, her roofing showing off her school achievements. She's with two other men.

One is a handsome younger man, a relative from how easy you can see the similarities in their warm smiles.

The other man in any photo… his face is missing.

Either scratched out or simply ripped from the photo.

You heartaches thinking of this family preserved here in the grief of it all, frozen after the world ended and now in this pocket of macabre.

You fall back asleep in the large main bedroom you first woke up in. The faintest hints of pine and sandalwood strangely still cling in the sheets.

It pulls you into the softest dream.

This time you dream of this home you're in now full alive, warm and inviting.

A man stands at the kitchen, his sturdy beautifully broad back to you, dressed in that familiar green plaid. He catches your presence, hears your footsteps and turns.

In the soft morning light, he’s painted ethereal. A rugged whisper of a man out of reach yet so close. Then as a gentle grin tugs his lips, you feel like you already do know him.

You and him settle into a soft morning, simply preparing breakfast. Then thick strong arms slide around you from behind, and the smell of pine and sandalwood washes over you.

Your bartender hums a deep sigh while burying his face against your shoulder.

“Wanna taste ya. Can I taste y’honey?” He mutters letting his words roll out a soft seductive purr.

Something firm already pokes against you and when he grinds into you, everything in you molds into him.

Kissing this man, finally tasting his lips clashing into you, is akin to unleashing a great beast, a creature laying dormant that now consumes unrelenting.

His teeth nip and dig at your skin, trying to devour you whole. But it’s with a fierce devotion that almost brings tears to your eyes when he kisses you again.

Then he says your name…

His voice is like a beautiful country twang wrapped in the delicacy of a moth’s wing. The tenderness of his fingers running across your face, holding you in his grasp - it’s drenched in the deepest affection you’ve ever experienced.

He tastes of something sweet, a promise of home.

And then he fucks you wild from behind pressed up against the counter.

His mouth is again all over your neck, biting licking any inch of you he can.

“God damn baby,” he moans with a slurp as he sucks on your skin. “Wanted this, wanted to taste ya for so long. Was losin’ my mind before.”

Before?

Even among the delicious haze that catches you off guard slightly.

But then all worry drifts away when his fingers slide down to your clit.

“You’re m’fucking baby, yeah? All fucking mine?” He growls and the rumble sounds familiar, like a creature you’ve heard prowling in the dark.

“Yes.” You sob, nodding best as you can.

The way he pounds into you, carves a new universe into you. You feel like you’re completely tied to him. Something inside you whispers maybe you always have been.

His hand curls around your throat, possessive but tender.

It’s wonderful for a dream.

But dreams here don’t last long. You realize that now.

After you finish, and after he spills into you, he pulls himself away from leaving you empty and stunned.

There’s a composed wilderness clouding his eyes. He moves to clean you up and it’s quiet, thick with choking tension.

“This town…” his voice cuts clipped as he shakes his head. He sounds worried, strained and panicked. After you and him compose yourselves, he quickly moves to a drawer to pull out a simple pistol.

Determined and unwavering, he loads it then places it in your hand.

You even tear up.

“Next time I see ya I don’t know what’ll happen. Don’t know if I’ll be able to get to ya in time.” He mutters.

Next time?

“Stay safe…” this man whispers, then leans forward to place a sweet kiss against your forehead.

A chittering growl, the static hiss of one of the monsters, echoes outside the window. Fear clutches at your heart overshadowing the warmth.

You scramble to glance outside trying to spot the demon in the mist.

Thankfully the creature doesn’t spot you, only shuffles further down the street, clicking and twisting its body.

Sighing you turn back to the man -

And no one is there.

Now the warm kitchen stands with the corroded wood, matted cobwebs and an empty space. The kitchen stares back desolate and mocking.

Yet a real gun still sits in your hand.

Was this even a dream? Were you awake this entire time?

A hand comes over your mouth to silence the sob and stop the bleeding panic of realizing this distorted reality is possibly infecting you whole.

—

The next dream you have, another man greets you. This man also seems familiar. You’ve seen in the photos, warm eyes and a handsome youthful charming smile.

Brother to your lover, you can’t explain how but those two you just know are brothers.

He’s working the bar now.

“Where’s…” you feel foolish not being able to say the name of the man you long for.

“Out.” The current bartender say with a familiar twang. “He’s… on patrol.”

Those words hang ominous.

“Y’know…a town like this used to be our paradise.” He explains.

You can see remnants of that wherever you go, whispers of peace corrupted and overrun by the darkness.

“But this town… it knows.” He adds.

You’re reminded of a journal scrap you came across in the main part of town.

“The town will read your heart, manifest the darkness into willpower… but it will come with a tax.”

You even read that outloud to this man. His face darkens.

“Yeah, shit that’s exactly it.” He coughs.

Then his eyes search yours.

“You’re… you know you can move on.” There’s an ache wavering in his voice that rips your heart open.

You shake your head.

You almost feel guilty. You came here looking for Maria and now chase after a ghost. But, it feels as if you’re looking for a multitude of them now. Like this one ghost will unlock them all.

“Tell me about him, about your brother.” You ask.

The handsome younger man barks a laugh.

“Stubborn as a god damn mule. Prideful at times. But… maybe the best damn man I’ve ever known.” The fondness gleams ever true in his words, brotherly love unending.

“Y’know, his birthday…it was on-”

“Outbreak day.” You finish before you even process the words.

You inhale sharp.

His birthday…

Yes. You remember. That’s right, he told you his birthday was the day the world ended.

“Love and grief are funny fuckin’ things. Might even be brothers at times.” The younger brother comments, and your throat feels dry.

You need to leave. Your skin crawls unbearable now.

Forcing yourself awake, you cough among the stale air of the hospital. The dust stings your lungs.

Tucking this dream into the corner of your heart, you wake up back to your journey.

So many bodies litter the hospital. So many bullets and abandoned guns are scatter among the floors. The place is crawling with more monsters running amuck here.

Rushing down a hallway, you stumble down the stairs. Exhaustion outweighs your adrenaline. Eventually you end up back down at the lower level parking garage of the hospital.

At least you can try to heading back home.

Then something scrapes against the concrete.

“You.” A distorted voice growls demonic. Behind you is another monster, this one sounds like a woman and you can see distinct features, echoes of this woman, among the monstrous.

“This is what he did to us.” The creature screeches at you with angered venom.

“It’s all his fault, he brought the end of the world with him, was born to bring destruction. He takes…All he does is take! We had salvation in our hands and he took it from us! He took Ellie!”

Ellie…

The name flashes to your mind bringing a warm familiar laugh of a young girl telling you a bad dad joke, the image of her so close yet still out of reach has you blinking back tears.

Then the monster’s screech rattles the walls, singing of ancient pain that makes your legs weak.

She fights with so much power. There’s only so much hiding and your pistol can do.

Trying to flee from her attacks, you stumble and fall onto the floor.

It’s over. This has to be the end.

“He can’t save you now.” The creature cackles gleeful.

A sob escapes you.

“Joel.”

You whisper the name, feeling it scramble and scratch at your throat. Why it suddenly came to you now, you don’t know. But it feels as if it’s been hiding this entire time, simply waiting for you to call upon it.

Suddenly distorted violent scratching comes, and your body freezes. Something loud collides hard and fast against the metal.

The swing of the terrible executioner’s sword comes first. Then, the rust of metal follows.

The pyramid head creature emerges from the darkness.

He is every bit the destroyer you once feared. Yet now he stands solely between you and the other monster, protecting you.

She screeches loud seeing her new opponent.

The two battle, ferocious beast unchained, and you stare petrified.

That’s when you catch the glimpse of the pyramid head’s arm again.

The watch. The broken watch.

The same watch you’re realizing your bartender wore, the one you know so fondly.

And now that you fully stare at the great sword, you’re reminded of a pocket knife a man you loved once used.

“Joel.” You say again.

The pyramid head turns to you, like a guard dog being called back and waiting for your command.

It’s him underneath it. It really is him…

Everything clicks into place.

The realization unfolds soft, steady and quiet.

This town, the grief but ultimately the love he held turned him into this.

The town knighted him as both executioner and protector.

Within the eternal welded metal, he’s punished to stay locked up from ever tasting true blissful peace. The grief of losing his daughter, of trying to save another, feeling like he’s never been able to protect or bring any goodness into this world only for him to lose it - all layered and sealed itself around him.

Now he’s here…

Here to protect you like he has been this entire time.

Joel with every might swings his sword, powerful and true. He lands hit after hit to the creature roaring unholy, powerful and fierce.

This baptism in his wrath, the comfort in knowing the bloodshed comes because he’s protecting you brings a laugh from your chest.

It’s a laugh freeing and loud. It bounces off the walls, mixes with the gurgles of blood and the ripping of flesh.

Your Joel won’t lose.

The demonic screeches of the woman come to a crescendo and then she falls deadly silent. Before you realize it, a soft hand is against your face. The shadow of the pyramid rusted metal falls over you like the shade of angel wings.

“Joel.” You whisper his name reverent.

Gingerly, like you’re something precious, you’re gathered into his arms. Soft pur rumbles are the last thing you hear before the darkness pulls you under.

You wake up in a med clinic. You can’t tell if this is a dream or not.

“Finally made it… took ya a while.” The voice, gentle and comforting, makes you bolt up from bed.

Maria sits beside you with soft eyes and a kind smile.

“You’re here.” You sob relieved.

“Knew you’d find us.” She nods.

A knock arrives cutting Maria off. Inside steps the familiar younger brother who beams comfortingly.

“Tommy.” You effortlessly greet him, like the name has been with you all along.

“Knew you’d figure it out.” He grins, familiar and sweet.

“Come on.” Maria says with a knowing look. “We should let her rest some more.”

“But wait…” you say and they both pause, turning to you. “What…”

What had happened? What’s really going on? You can even gather your thoughts, put them into words.

Then all that worry dies out when another drawl of a voice pierces the room.

“Alright, leave her alone.”

Joel.

Maria sighs, playfully exhausted. While Tommy turns to you with a wink. They both slide out of the door while Joel instead rushes in. Tommy makes playfully kissing noises. Joel shots him a look before he then quickly moves to the side of your bed.

Your hand finds his immediately.

“You’re here.” You croak and he nods.

“Ain’t leaving you, honey.” It sounds like a promise, ever true. You don’t ever want to leave him now, or here…

“Let’s go home.” You nod.

Without another word Joel gathers you into his arms, kisses the top of your head and steps out of the door.

The fog greets you soft and wispy. A chill runs up your spine from the cold air, but Joel curls you tighter in his arms. All of the monsters and creatures in the streets now scurry away in fear.

This man… the memories flutter in hazy now.

There was a time where you left looking for Maria and ran into a man with that special headstrong girl. A love grew for the two of them and you ending up in the safety of a town… a heaven on earth. You made a home with that man. Watched that girl grow up.

But then that man you loved died, and so did your world.

Then you woke up here at the edge of this town in the graveyard… Did the grief send you here?

You don’t even know anymore. Especially because all of that seems like another world now.

You’re here now. That’s what matters.

“Joel, you deserve love,” you whisper into his chest. “You did what your heart told you…that’s why I’m here. I’ll remind you everyday that you’re a good man. I’m your baby, remember?”

Your hand reaches up to softly stroke the metal pyramid encasing. He rumbles soft, familiar, the most comforting sound.

You think of how lucky you are to find love in the devil’s arms and discover peace within his hell.

In the arms of your man, your monster, you happily enter the fog embracing it all around.

#I know this one is a strange (& extra spooky dark) but I’m proud of how this turned out #and I seriously can’t thank you enough if you read this!!!#pyramid head!joel #Joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #Joel miller fanfic #dark content tw #Joel 🤎

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miraclewoozi · 11 months ago

Text

HIGH FIDELITY, PT 2. -c.hs

getting back on the horse is hard, and failing to hit it off with the cute gamer guy you went for a drink with last night has the potential to be your love life’s last straw. but when up and coming rockstar VERNON unexpectedly canters into your life, you find yourself asking one very important question: do you have it in you to saddle up, one more time?

( PART ONE )

pair ; vernon x fem!reader. content ; strangers to lovers. up-and-coming musician!vernon x record store owner!reader. fluff, angst, smut. (MINORS DNI). warnings ; drinking + alcohol is a big theme pretty much throughout. mentions of past relationship breakdowns. reader experiences a lot of stress, anxiety and feelings of doubt, reflected in self sabotage. mentions of sickness (acute). wc ; 12.2k ( ~38k total. ) disclaimer ; this fic was inspired by rob + liam in the series high fidelity and is therefore pretty influenced by the show. if you’ve watched it, you’ll probably see a lot of similarities! i just felt so drawn to vernon in this kind of role that i really wanted to try and put a spin on it. i do not claim that every idea behind this is original. notes ; been working on this one for a while. hope you enjoy it.<3

smut tags : making out. some groping. some 'first time together' shenanigans. oral (m rec) & ball sucking hehe. he has a big cock because i have an agenda to push. implied f rec oral. implied multiple rounds. PLEASE let me know if i’ve forgotten anything.

The clock on your bedside table reads somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning when you resign from trying to fall asleep and force yourself to sit upright, fed up of tossing and turning between your now too-creased sheets, brain stuck in a foggy, hellish limbo. Your mind won’t shut down. Your body won’t rest. Birds are starting to chirp outside and you can hear them clear as whistles through the cheap window that doesn’t quite seal shut to your left. Your eyes squint in preparation as you reach for your lamp and flood the room in yellowish light, drawing your knees up to your chest.

You’ve spent so much time in your own thoughts that you’ve begun to feel systemically unwell. Your stomach twists and aches, your eyes are so dry it hurts to even blink and there’s an ache behind them that started as an annoying throb, but has grown over the hours into a roaring flame. From the hairs on your head all the way down to your toes, you feel like you could burst.

You wish you had it in you to cry. To let it out. Keeping this pent up is no doubt making you feel a hundred times worse, and you think it would be nice to feel something other than the endless swooping of the spiral you’re well and truly making your way down. Your alarms are going to go off in a few hours. I can’t let anyone see me like this, you think. I can’t work in this state.

You throw ideas around in your head for a little while, thumbs tweaking over your phone as messages get typed, edited, deleted, and repeat. Part of you thinks maybe you could manage. Just tough it out and put on a brave face, because actually, what right do you have to be hiding away when you’re the one who ran out one of the nicest guys you’ve ever met? But you just know something will go wrong, even if you tell the boys that you need to camp out in the office for the day. When you need peace and quiet, you can never find it behind that creaky old door. When was the last time you got a full admin day without being called through to help with a problem or deal with a drama? And truly, the idea of facing the world right now makes you feel like you could be sick.

Sick…

Could you—?

You’ve never enjoyed taking sick days, even on occasions where you’ve really needed them, when you’ve woken up feeling like you’re knocking at death’s door. Sometimes, you swear the guilt that it brings ends up making you feel ten times worse than whatever your ailment is doing to you in the first place. But your exhaustion lets impulse take hold and you’re already sending a message into your group chat with the boys before you can talk yourself out of it, biting the inside of your cheek as the little indicator pops up on your screen. Delivered.

Well. You’re committed now, whether you like it or not.

Not feeling so hot. I won’t be in today. Take it easy, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Sorry.

You pick your comforter up off the bed and wrap it around your shoulders like an extravagant, well-padded cape, trudging your way through the apartment until you’re stood, barefoot and cold, staring into the bright light of your refrigerator. Somehow in the seconds between pulling the handle and now, you’ve managed to forget what is what that you were hoping to find. More out of spite for how the bulbs are currently bleaching your retinas than because you want it, you pull the milk from its home in the cradle of the door and fix yourself a glass to take with you and put it on the coffee table back in your living room.

Without an ounce of grace, you throw yourself onto your couch: your head rests against the arm of the seat like you’re in the apartment of a sketchy therapist, and you’re wrapped up in your duvet as if it’s a sleeping bag, treating yourself to the luxury of a slightly different ceiling pattern to stare up at. And it could be the change of the room that finally manages to drag you under, or it could be the total fatigue of the emotional rollercoaster that has been your last twenty four hours…

But your glass of milk goes completely untouched as you eventually drift off, either way.

Of course, it’s not for nearly long enough. Barely an hour after finally managing to fall asleep, your phone starts to vibrate harshly against your chest. You tap at the screen blindly, hoping to shut off what you assume is your alarm; when it’s still buzzing a few seconds later, you reluctantly open your eyes, fighting back a sob. It’s not your alarm – it’s an incoming call. Why would it be anything else?

“Hello?” You grumble, putting the phone on speaker and resting it on the couch cushion next to your head. The energy expenditure of holding the device up to your ear feels mammoth.

“Ohh, you sound terrible.” Seungkwan’s voice sounds more taunting than it does concerned, but you pin that down to a symptom of his over-familiarity. “You’re sick?”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“I heard there was something going around,” Seungkwan tells you. Great, you think. Good to know. Now go away. “Yeah – one of my cousins… ah, what did she say…”

“Hey, man, I really-...”

“That’s it. She said she was love sick.”

You sigh so hard you think it’s a miracle you don’t pass out.

“Don’t–”

“You better make sure Vernon gives you plenty of Vitamin D, today,” he harps on. “It’s quite the disease. I heard it can really–”

“Seungkwan!” You snap, finally, grabbing your phone and barking straight into the microphone. He doesn’t need to know that you’re stretching the truth to its absolute limit, but you certainly won’t let him keep believing that you’re calling out just to get laid. “Knock it off, okay? I’ve been awake all night.”

(You suppose you should be glad that that much really is true.)

He falls silent, and you don’t know if he totally believes you, but a few breaths later, you hear his voice through the speaker again. He’s softer, this time. Quieter.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, hesitating a moment before he goes on. “Try to get some rest, all right? I’ll swing by after work and check in with some food, and… if you need anything, just text me?”

You’re immediately overcome with guilt at the sharp change in his demeanour, and it does nothing to settle the way your insides are writhing inside you. You clear your throat and pull your duvet up to cover your face, squeezing your eyes tightly shut.

“I will,” you mumble. “I’m sorry – thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. You can hear the front door to his own apartment slam shut and his breaths pick up as he starts to rush down the stairwell of his building. “I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.”

“Hey–” he rushes, before you can hang up the call. “Rest up. Run a bath, drink plenty. Love you.”

You cringe a little, but not enough to stop you from saying it back. Sort of.

“Yeah. You too.”

Nobody could ever accuse Seungkwan of not being a man of his word. As irritating as he can sometimes be, as determined as he is to get on your every last nerve, you’ve never known him fail to come through on a promise.

Not long after 6:30pm, you hear a series of knocks at the front door of your apartment. You’ve managed to squeeze in odd shifts of sleep throughout the day and though your head is still in a mess, you feel significantly less irritable than you were this morning. Cleaner, as well. One of your (several) naps took place in the bath, where you laid there and let the hot water draw some of the anxieties clean out of you to float towards the ceiling amongst the lavender-scented steam.

In the knowledge that Seungkwan’s expectations of you are quite literally zero, you don’t bother to fix the one leg of your sweatpants that’s rolled up before you heave yourself off the couch and go to let him inside. He stands in the doorway with a bag of takeout food in each hand, all wind-flushed cheeks and that brilliant smile, and you feel like your stomach settles almost straight away when you see him.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, toeing off his shoes as he comes inside and lets the door close behind him. He sets the bags down on top of the small table by your front door and cups your face in both of his hands, squeezing your cheeks and frowning down at you. “You look awful.”

“Wow, thanks,” you huff, squirming to get out of his grip. “I was going to say I feel a little better, but…”

“You look exhausted,” Seungkwan clarifies, picking up the bags once more and following you through to your living room as you start to walk away from him. “I’m sorry about earlier, I didn’t realise you were actually… this bad…”

“This is doing wonders for my ego,” you grumble. “Keep it coming. Really.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“No, no. By all means, continue to kick a girl while she’s down. Super classy.”

Your best friend flops down onto your couch with an exaggerated huff at your petulance. You curl up in the armchair instead, bringing your knees up beneath you.

“Do you think it was something you ate?” He asks, refusing to give into your bickering and changing the subject matter instead.

You shrug your shoulders at him. “I don’t-... I mean, it was more of a head… thing?”

He sucks his front teeth. “What, like a migraine?”

“Sort of?”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” He asks. “You’ve had a migraine before. Was it that or not?”

“Well, it’s difficult to-... It wasn’t exactly…”

“Okay.”

Seungkwan interrupts you as you hesitate again, swinging his legs off the couch and resting his elbows on his thighs, leaning as far towards you as he can while still remaining seated. He wrings his hands, plays with his fingers, lips drawn forward in a stern-looking pout.

“I thought something was up this morning on the phone, but I didn’t wanna push it because you sounded mad. Now I know something’s wrong with you. What’s going on?”

You swallow hard and cross your arms over your chest, dropping your gaze away from Seungkwan’s very intense one.

“Nothing,” you lie.

“Bullshit.”

“Seungkwan!”

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, tipping his head forward and running his hands through his hair. He’s never been a coddler, always one to prefer the tough-love approach: it’s no surprise that he doesn’t appear any softer when he looks back at you. “But we both know that’s crap.”

You can feel your pulse starting to quicken the longer he stares you down. It’s as if he’s burning two great big holes into your head, laser-beams where his pupils ought to be. He’s the master of the hard stare, and you know he won’t move until he hears the truth.

Maybe I should just tell him. Maybe it’ll help…

“Look, I don’t care how famous he thinks he’s gonna be, if Vernon upset you last night, I’ll kick his ass myself.”

And there are the alarm bells. In hindsight, maybe you should’ve seen this coming; it’s not that far of a reach, and given the few facts that he actually knows, you can’t blame Seungkwan for jumping to this conclusion. It’s quite effective in triggering you to speak up, too. (You think that maybe, this was on purpose. Attack where you’re likely to defend. He knows you like the back of his hand.) In an instant you’re sitting upright with your feet firmly on the floor and you’re shaking your head at him like a dog trying to get itself dry.

“No, no, no, back it up,” you rush. “It’s nothing like that. He hasn’t done anyth-... God, it’s not him.”

“It better not be,” Seungkwan tells you. His voice still has that dark edge to it, and you’re not sure how exactly to stamp it out. “I’m serious. If he’s done anything-...”

“He hasn’t,” you say more firmly. After a couple slow breaths, you clasp your hands together, swallowing your pride. “The food’s gonna go cold. Go grab a couple glasses and-... whatever else from the kitchen—”

“Only if you tell me what’s happening,” he says, slowly pushing himself up to stand.

You don’t assent with words, but you don’t have to. You look up at him and nod a couple of times and that’s all he needs. Seungkwan strides off through the doorway, leaving you to shakily exhale away the stress that is once again squeezing at your lungs.

Once the containers are laid out on the table, food is divided up, utensils are handed over and he’s poured you each out a glass of soda, Seungkwan sits back on the couch. He doesn’t prod you, or ask you again – he doesn’t need to. You know what he’s waiting for. Even so, he allows you a few mouthfuls of your dinner first: seeing as this is the first substantial thing you’ve eaten all day, you silently thank him for the generosity.

“All right,” you say, gulping down a few mouthfuls of your drink to re-lubricate your throat. “Okay. Fuck – you’re gonna wanna make yourself comfy for this.”

The only way he moves is to pick up one of the food cartons and settle it on his thigh. Oh, how you wish you were joking. But if he really doesn’t want to heed your warning…

“You know I went on that date the other week?” You ask, biting the inside of your cheek. Seungkwan nods at you, lifting a helping of noodles out of the carton.

“With the hitter and quitter,” he confirms. “I remember.”

“Right,” you say. “Well – okay, wait, no. That’s a bad start. He didn’t do anything either.”

“I mean…”

“Not the time.”

He lifts his free hand up in surrender and gestures for you to continue as he slurps his food into his mouth. You clear your throat, bouncing one leg so rapidly that the decorative candle holder on your mantelpiece starts to rattle.

“So… it was before the date. I was on my way to the bar, walking down past-... that convenient store. You know the one Chan keeps going into ‘cause he’s got the hots for the person who works there on a Friday night? Yeah, I was walking down that way. Actually running on time for once, and-...”

You falter, sucking a breath deep into your lungs. It causes your next words to come out more strained than they ought to.

“I ran into Jaehyun...”

Seungkwan swallows just in time to prevent himself from choking on his mouthful of food, but his eyes still shoot wide and you think his chest convulses a little bit anyway. His is a name you haven’t mentioned in a while, but he clearly hasn’t forgotten who it belongs to.

Because, well… how could he ever forget?

Your ex-partner. Jaehyun.

The ex-love-of-your-life, Jaehyun.

The man who asked you to marry him after three and a half years of dating only to leave you, heartbroken and alone, six months later because he wanted to travel the world and there was too much that you couldn’t bring yourself to leave behind, Jaehyun.

How could Seungkwan forget when he had been one of the people who helped drag you through what was not only the worst break-up, but one of the worst times of your entire life?

Aside from the other week, it’s been… nearly eighteen months since you saw him last. Almost a year since you let yourself talk about him. Even sitting in your own apartment with a box full of your favourite food in your hands, a sense of dread chills you from head to toe just going so far as to say his name. But you’ve started, now, so you might as well finish.

“…right outside that stupid fucking store.”

Your voice cracks when you say it and you hurry to set your dinner down on the floor to free up your shaking hands. You cup them over your mouth, closing your eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths. It helps enough for you to be able to continue, even if you still feel a bit like you’re drowning.

“I thought he…” Seungkwan starts, putting his own food down and slipping off the couch. He comes to sit on the arm of your chair and puts a hand around your shoulders, pulling you into his side. “When did-...?”

“Yeah, uh… apparently he moved back a couple weeks ago,” you swallow, leaning into your friend’s embrace.

Seungkwan looks down at you and you look up at him, all misty-eyed and drained. There’s more. He knows there is, but now he waits for you patiently, giving you all the time in the world to get through this and to let it out and to lean on him. He doesn’t butt in. The quiet feels worse than the talking.

“He’s with someone now. They, uh— they met in Paris. Just over a year ago.”

Seungkwan finally dares to make a noise and breathes out heavily, so loud that it’s almost a groan.

“Y/n,” he sighs, tightening his hold around you. “Shit – I’m so sorry,”

You shrug, staring across the room to where your record player sits on top of a low cabinet, lid open, table collecting dust.

“For months, I sat here feeling… fucking, sorry for myself,” you say, barely above a whisper. You swallow around the lump in your throat and shake your head. “This whole time, refusing to get back on the horse ‘cause I thought maybe-... but he was-…”

The room goes quiet again as you lose the words you want to say and Seungkwan just rubs small circles against your arm. The problem is that you know this doesn’t explain why you called out of work today. It doesn’t explain what happened last night, and you’re not sure where to begin with that either. Especially seeing as the last time your best friends saw you and Vernon, the sparks flying between you were nigh-on visible.

“I thought I was handling it, you know?” You sigh, leaning harder into Seungkwan’s soft sweatshirt. “Like… yeah — it hurt… but I was okay? I guess. And then Vernon fucking… kissed me last night—“

“He— what?”

“Hang on — no, he… I wanted him to.” You fumble with a thread hanging off the sleeve of your t-shirt as you talk. Why is this all so difficult? At the same time, why does it feel so juvenile to say out loud? “I just… I don’t know…”

Your wall clock tick, tick, ticks away in yet another painful fall of silence.

“How bad was he?” Seungkwan asks when you struggle to elaborate.

You assume this is an attempt to shatter the gloomy atmosphere and lighten your mood a tiny bit; it works, you suppose, because despite yourself, you laugh drily. Not without nudging your shoulder into his ribs, though. He deserves it, and you won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that it does make you feel a little better.

“He wasn’t,” you groan. “Don’t—… you’re such an ass.”

He pulls himself away from you at the sound of your laughter and moves to sit on the edge of your coffee table instead, careful not to disrupt any of your food while keeping himself close enough to you that he can hold both of your hands in his and soothe his thumbs over your palms.

“You freaked out on him, didn’t you?”

He sees straight through you and truthfully, no part of you is surprised. No part of you tries to fight it, or reject his assumption, or even question why that’s the first explanation he leapt to. You just nod, looking to where your best friend’s fingers are currently the only things holding you together.

“Ran out his apartment like the building was gonna burn down,” you sigh, still laughing but harshly now. He squeezes your hands gently, urging you to look up at him. You do, slowly. “It’s ruined everything.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Seungkwan tries, narrowing his eyes at you when you scoff your obvious disagreement. “No, seriously. Anyone can see the poor guy’s got it bad for you.”

“Even if that’s right, you didn’t see his face,” you say. “God, he isn’t gonna wanna look at me ever again.”

“Have you spoken to him today?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe if you explain what happened–”

“Oh, sure,” you snort. “‘Hey, Vernon. Sorry for running out on you like a lunatic yesterday. I ran into my ex recently and when you kissed me, it reminded me of being with him and I got freaked out and had to dash. Hope you don’t mind.’ God.”

You try to draw your hands back but Seungkwan just holds onto you tighter. “We’ll workshop it,” he says firmly. “Do you like him, or not?”

“Seungkwan–”

“That wasn’t an option.”

You scowl at him. “It’s not that easy.”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

“Yes,” you stress finally, groaning through it. “Yes – I do.”

Seungkwan’s face lights up for a second, his eyes sparkling, lips lifting. You’re half expecting him to say ‘I knew it’. Half expecting him to try and be all deep and philosophical and a little bit motherly, as he sometimes does, especially when you’re upset. He’s always been a sucker for a happy ending. But this isn’t a happy ending, you remind yourself, squaring your jaw. It’s past that, already. It isn’t going to happen, you just know it.

“Stop being so fucking hard on yourself,” he tells you, squeezing your hands one last time before he lets go and moves back over to the couch so he can finish eating before his food goes cold. “If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”

You’re not sure what’s in the air right now, but this has been one of the busiest weekends that you can remember. Both yesterday and today, almost as soon as the store opened, your first handful of customers came through. Apart from about an hour around lunchtime, you don’t think there have been any periods of time where you’ve not had someone milling around the shelves. It makes a nice change, really, from some of your weekend shifts – hours at a time where the dust starts to settle and hardly anyone disturbs the bell above the front door. But this means you’ve been in full customer-service mode basically all day, and you’re starting to feel exhausted from keeping up the persona.

Still. There’s only an hour or so left — you can push through, and when you get home, there’ll be a nice, hot bubble bath with your name written all over it.

The bell chimes again just as you finish serving a group of teenage girls. You watch them scurry away, excitedly giggling about their new albums and you look towards the door with a smile already plastered on, all ready to greet the new customer until your eyes lock with theirs.

A ‘hey, how’s it going?’ stops somewhere midway up your throat, a pathetic little ‘huh?’ sound escaping you in its place. You’re frozen all of a sudden; you and the man who just came in both stand perfectly still, staring at each other like a pair of bunnies in headlights. It takes you forever to register the strap wrapped around his fist, the purse that hangs just below his grip. My bag, you think to yourself, but the voice that narrates your thoughts is hushed for the first time ever, too. Everything in your head gets sucked away into a little vacuum. The only thing left is him.

“I-… thought you might want this back.” Vernon breaks the quiet first. Your throat runs dry. In a flash, the noise in your brain is as loud as it’s ever been and in amongst all the chaos of thoughts and questions and apologies, you can’t pick out the words you actually want to say.

He slowly unravels the strap from around his hand and takes a few steps closer to you, inching towards the counter.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he hurries to assure you. Your heart aches for how reserved and nervous he looks. It doesn’t suit him. You hate it. “It’s okay. I’m… really sorry, about the other night. I didn’t mean to—” A deep breath. “I’ll see you around.”

Vernon lays your bag so delicately on the wooden surface that you could be forgiven for thinking he was handling an explosive. Then, he takes one, two, three steps back, before turning and heading to the exit.

“Wait—” you call out to him, finding your voice at the most critical time, right as his fingers curl around the door handle. “Wait—, please.”

He spins back around to face you as you slip out from behind the desk. His left brow lifts higher than the right but otherwise, he gives nothing away. He doesn’t even say anything as he stands there, pushing his hands deep into his pockets.

You swallow around the golf ball sized lump taking residence in your throat and clasp your hands together in front of you, wringing and twisting and accidentally popping one of your knuckles in the process. “I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. It wasn’t fair.”

Vernon chews this over in his mind but ultimately just shrugs his shoulders at you. What is there to say? He surely agrees, but he seems so adamant to ensure you don’t feel bad about it happening that he just… says nothing. Again. It’s kind of maddening, even if you fully get why.

“No, I mean it,” you try again. “It wasn’t you. It’s nothing you did.”

“We really don’t have to do the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ thing,” Vernon offers, his cardboard-like posture softening. There’s even a little bit of a smile on his face, you think — but it’s not the kind of smile you’ve grown used to seeing on him. It doesn’t reach his eyes; he looks kind of like someone who has read their cards and accepted their fate. “Seriously. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” you stress, stepping closer to him again. You sigh deeply. There’s something almost relieving about the position you find yourself in. You suppose this really is crunch time; it’s now or never. “Can we… talk? About everything?”

“What? Here?” Vernon asks.

You glance around the store, at the few people doing a very poor job of pretending to be minding their own business, and frown. He’s right. This isn’t the time, or the place. The problem is, you have a feeling that if you send him away, he may not decide to come back and listen to you. In his defence, why should he? He’s already done more than the decent thing and brought you back that which you abandoned in his apartment; several of your previous conquests would have shoved the bag and its contents either in the trash or the back of a closet somewhere. This is more than you could have hoped for.

You hold a finger up to him and ask him to stay where he is, and though he looks a little bewildered at the gesture, he ultimately doesn’t move. You rush off out the back to the storeroom where you banished Chan an hour ago, on account of his raging hangover and your low tolerance for his whining about it; you’re genuinely surprised to find him working, and actually alphabetising the records you got in a few days ago like you asked him to.

“Hey. Can you do me a huge favour?” You ask, not announcing your arrival and subsequently scaring Chan out of his skin. He jolts as he hears your voice and claps a hand to his chest, exhaling hard. You don’t entertain his dramatics, though. There’s no time. “I need you to close today.”

“Huh?” He asks, still acting as if he’s trying to catch his breath. “I thought–”

“Please.” You wave him off, knowing he’s about to ask about the task you gave him. “We can look at this together tomorrow. You did great. It’s just an hour – is that okay?”

He chews the inside of his lip, almost looking disappointed. To be fair to him, he did look like he was in a groove when you appeared, but he doesn’t argue with you as he puts down the record in his hand and picks his phone up off the table to his right, silencing the catchy tune that was playing while he organised.

“Of course it is,” he says, holding his hand out for your keys and starting to walk towards you. “Everything okay?”

“It-...” you start, faltering as you place the store keys in his waiting palm. Your default response was about to be ‘it’s fine’, but you’re trying harder these days to stop pretending, especially around him. So you swallow, nodding your head, flashing him a tight lipped smile. “I’m about to find out.”

“Oh? Is it…?”

A brief pause later, not before cringing at how predictable you’ve apparently become, you say, “yeah.”

Chan claps you on the shoulder as he skirts his way around you, leaning in to give you a sort of side-along hug on his way. You stretch your arm across his waist and pull him closer for a moment, trying to drive home how much you appreciate this. He doesn’t comment on the uncharacteristic display of affection, and you want to find out why, but Vernon isn’t going to wait around for you forever.

“Go get him, tiger,” Chan whispers.

“I owe you, big time,” you promise.

He winks at you before he disappears through the door and you follow him briefly, but as he does a round of checking in with your customers and making sure they don’t need any help, you hurry off to grab your jacket from the office.

Vernon is exactly where you left him when you come back out into the storefront, hands unmoved from where he stuffed them into his pockets earlier, rocking back and forth on his toes and looking around from wall to wall. You think perhaps he took your request slightly too literally and the fact that even his feet are in the same position as before you left is reminiscent of a puppy commanded to stay, but if anyone here is at liberty to start poking fun, you think that it certainly isn’t you. Instead of trying your luck, you lock the office door and walk up to him, returning his polite, yet slightly awkward smile.

“You’re not, like, super busy right now or anything, are you?” You ask him.

His brows crease and his eyes shift side-to-side before they land back at you. He shakes his head.

“Did you maybe wanna… take a walk?”

Vernon nods this time, still not moving or even pulling his hands out of his jeans. His elbows are locked out and the length of his arms means his shoulders are raised quite some way. He could not be more uncomfortable looking if he tried, but he doesn’t say no and nothing on his face gives away that he wants to reject your proposition, either, so you’re the one to take that tentative first step towards the door. When you do, he follows.

You left the store at least ninety seconds ago and still, neither of you have said anything yet. Honestly, it’s taking all you’ve got not to just burst and let it all out; it’s building and building and your stomach feels tight, but it’s less of a knot and more like a tightly-coiled spring. His eyes are dipped to the ground, incredibly aware of every step he takes, in what you realise now are a gorgeous pair of platform boots tucked up beneath his baggy jeans. He’s at least an inch and a half taller than the last time you saw him.

“Your friend,” Vernon starts finally, pausing before he continues. “Is he always so… you know?”

“What did he say?” You ask, peeking over to him. Trust Chan to start getting —

He hurries to shake his head. “Nothing. He just… kept looking at me. In a weird way, like…”

“Like he knows something you don’t, and he’s not gonna tell you, but he wants you to know that he knows it anyway?” You supply.

“Yeah— exactly like that.”

“Mm. That’s just… Chan.”

“Huh.”

“It’s worse when they’re together,” you say. He breathes out a chuckle and you feel his elbow bump into your upper arm. The distance he put between you when you fell into step outside the store has reduced, you realise now; you’re not sure when, or if it was on purpose. Did he move closer once you started speaking? Was it just so he could hear you better? Or…

Either way, despite being side-by-side, he still feels a hundred miles away from you. This isn’t enough.

“You get used to them, though,” you add, trying to stay on track. “I swear.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Jokes aside, he still won’t look at you for longer than a few seconds, which tugs at something deep in your chest. Discomfort clings to you, and even if it does seem like you’re making some progress, you can still feel unease radiating off him. A cheap laugh at the expense of your friends who aren’t here to defend themselves won’t fix that which you took a wrecking ball to a few nights ago. This needs to be heartfelt and genuine, and more importantly it needs to come out right.

But when you open your mouth to speak, still searching your brain for the right way to explain why you acted the way you did, there’s nothing.

How wonderful would it be for the perfect explanation to just tumble from your lips calmly and evenly, and for it to make everything okay? But the reality is that your throat runs dry as petrol fumes make their way through your parted lips. You hold your tongue again just a second later, sighing quietly.

You’re starting to feel like a lost cause when Vernon breaks the silence for you, again. He slows his steps to a halt when he eventually says, “so.”

“So,” you repeat, freezing mid-stride as you go completely tense. It’s like you’re staring into oblivion’s wide open mouth. “I-… don’t really know where to start. I’m sorry.”

“The beginning’s usually pretty good?” He offers.

You nod. “How much did you want to know?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with telling me.”

If anyone on this Earth deserves a medal for their patience, it’s Vernon. You still haven’t turned to face him yet, your eyes fixated on the traffic signal some fifty yards away from you and you’re pretty sure if someone poked you too hard, you’d shatter into a million tiny pieces. But, as impossible as it seems all the while you try to get your thoughts in a reasonable order, you manage to swallow your nerves.

It’s crunch time. It’s now or never.

The explanation you give him is messy. Disjointed. But once you start, it becomes difficult to stop: you end up sparing very little detail and circle back on yourself no less than three times. You tell him about how you were engaged and about the breakup, the run-in, your shitty date, gesturing with your hands to emphasise the most important parts. When you start to move again, Vernon makes his steps bigger until he’s walking alongside you. He never interrupts you. He acknowledges every sentence when you pause for breath. Encourages you to keep going when you fall over your words.

“… and—... I guess I just lost my head. But it wasn’t your fault.” You swallow hard before you continue, “I’m… really sorry.”

He nods slowly, taking his time to digest everything.

“Don’t be,” he says, lightly bumping into your side. It’s a very small reassurance that he’s not going to walk away, but it means much more to you than you’re sure he meant it to. “I get it.”

“I—”

“No, like. I get it.”

“Yeah?” You ask, only understanding when you catch the very pointed look in his eyes.

“For sure.”

Of course, it makes sense. Vernon’s young. Attractive. Nice. Talented. He must have been with people before. Hell, you think he surely leaves a trail of broken hearts everywhere he goes. He gets it.

“We dated for like… five? Years. Her name was Nari,” he tells you.

A few seconds later, you watch him start to shrug off his jacket on one side and expose one of his toned arms to you. You’re about to tell him he doesn’t need to air his dirty laundry out if he doesn’t want to when he twists at his elbow; you catch sight of a tattoo you remember having seen the night he wore that black singlet on stage. Two lily flowers blooming up the inside of his bicep.

It’s so pretty. Intricate. The line work is beautiful, the petals shaded with hundreds of little dots. You wanted to ask about it that night, but you never found the right chance, and now—

Lily?

It takes you longer than you’re willing to admit to join the dots, but when the penny finally drops, so does your jaw. Vernon slides back into his sleeve with a big, entertained smile and a little shrug.

“Mhm.”

“Oh my God?”

“I know.”

It’s not that you’re laughing, per se. This isn’t your baggage to laugh at, no matter how unbothered Vernon seems to be by what he’s just revealed. But you do rub your hand over your face and cover your lips, shaking your head in disbelief as a breath that contains the edges of a bemused chuckle escapes you. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind; if anything, it appears to give him a boost to keep talking.

“I got that on our third anniversary,” he goes on to explain. “A couple years later… She called it quits. Turns out there was another guy. I thought about lasering it, but… apparently that hurts worse than getting the tattoo in the first place, so…”

“That’s…”

“It’s whatever,” Vernon says, shaking his head. “They’re my mom’s favourite flowers too. That’s what almost everyone else thinks it’s for.”

You haven’t looked back up at his face since the unveiling, not until now. When your eyes meet again, Vernon tilts his head in the direction you’re walking and continues down the street, spinning now so he’s walking backwards but still facing you. “I just mean... It’s okay. I get it.”

The moment you’ve caught up to him and you’re back by his side, he turns to face front, just in time to avoid a collision with a streetlamp. The lingering awkwardness starts to fade to nothing; you can see it in the way he holds himself, and you can feel it in the way you do, too. Everything relaxes. Your neck, your shoulders, your fists. It all ebbs away.

“It really wasn’t anything you did,” you clarify once more.

“So you keep telling me,” Vernon quips, tips of his ears turning pinker by the moment. “It’s okay, I swear. Do you want me to walk you home?”

You accept his offer and lead him down a side-street, picking up a completely unrelated conversation now to purify the air. Before you really know it (what was that everyone always said about time flying?), you come to a stop outside your building. Vernon’s sentence fades away when you stop moving; instead he stills, glancing sideways, and you nod confirmation at him with a lopsided smile.

“This is me,” you say, reaching into your back pocket for your keys. “So…”

“So,” Vernon echoes, glancing around again. “Can I like, lay my cards out, real quick?”

You nod.

“I like you.” He shrugs, now toying with the leather bracelet around his wrist. “Like, a lot. But…”

But. You feel like you should have seen this coming. But. But. Of course there’s a—

“I’ve got some shows coming up out of town and I need to see some family, I’m not gonna be here from tomorrow for like, three weeks...”

Oh.

Well. On one hand, it’s not what you thought. It’s not a flat-out rejection. It’s not a shut down. On the other? You bite the inside of your cheek and look at your hands, playing with your keys to keep them busy. Under any other lens, three weeks isn’t really a very long time at all. You’re pretty sure that the milk you bought yesterday is going to last longer than that. But three weeks… this early into things?

That’s longer than you’ve even known him.

“… and I thought, if you wanted — I could… take you out. When I get back. For real. Maybe.”

Oh.

“Like…?”

“Like… on a date,” he confirms, rubbing the back of his neck. “One where I’m not like… fresh off stage and all gross and shit.”

Relief replaces anxiety on both his face and yours when you let out a quiet laugh.

“I’d really like that,” you say, twitching fingers suddenly still. “Yeah.”

“I’m not asking you to like, wait around, or anything,” he says as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, fumbles with it, and just barely manages to soften the fall with the toe of his boot before it lands screen-up on the concrete. “We’ll just see how it goes. And it gives you some time to… deal with things. Whatever you’ve gotta do.”

You nod, crossing your arms over your chest as he bends low to pick his phone back up, smoothing his thumb over the small scuff on the protective case. It seems remarkably undamaged otherwise.

“And if you’re still interested, then…”

“Interested?” You ask with a small grin.

“Aren’t you?” Vernon asks.

“I—...” You think about playing coy, but when he’s been so open with you about where his head’s at, it feels so silly and childish to bother pretending. That playful ‘I might be’ gets swallowed back. Instead – “Yeah. I am.”

“Cool. Then we’ll figure it out. At your pace, okay?”

“Okay.”

He grabs his earphones out of his other pocket, slides one in, and is about to step back away from you when you do something you don’t really expect yourself to. Something you’ve never done to a man you can barely even say you’re ‘seeing’. You close the space between you and, as if to lock in your words, push forward onto your toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you,” you say when you fall back down to your heels. If he wasn’t so dumbstruck, you feel like he’d be about to ask what you were thanking him for; as it stands though, he’s frozen, blushing, and the only reason you can tell he’s still alive is because he can’t stop blinking at you. “For… giving me another chance.”

He still can’t quite find his voice, so Vernon just shakes his head, clearing his throat. (No need, he wants to say.) Alas, his lips just open and close soundlessly.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” you supply for him. He takes in a deep, mind-clearing breath and nods his head.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

You see the apples of his cheeks lift as he presses his thumb against his phone screen and restarts whatever song he was listening to when he walked into your store. A brilliant smile consumes his face. It only grows as he turns away from you and walks off down the street.

For a second, you think it’s all very smooth. Movie-like, even.

Then, he stumbles over a crack in the pavement. When he glances back to pray you didn’t watch it happen, he catches you snickering into your fist. He shakes his head and continues on, leaving you to fumble with your key in the lock before you finally let yourself inside.

You overslept.

Sort of. You heard your alarm go off straight away but you might have snoozed it, and when you heard it sound for a second time, you turned it off completely, telling yourself that you just needed one more minute. You just wanted to rest your eyes for a few more seconds. There wasn’t any danger of you going back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, you practically fell off your mattress in a panic when you realised that there had, in fact, been a big fucking danger.

You were still able to wash up well and make it to work on time, but you had to sacrifice your morning coffee stop after seeing that the queue at the register was going to take too long. For years, you’ve refused to consider yourself to be the kind of person who relies heavily on a caffeine kick first thing in the morning, but today? It’s barely ten thirty and you’re seriously flagging: like you’ve never known what energy is, like you’ll never feel it again.

(You blame the fact that when you first looked at your phone today before rolling back over, there was no ‘good morning :)’ text to entice you out of bed. But you’re trying really hard not to think about why that is, nor why it was such a deciding factor.)

So, when the bell above your shop door jingles and you’re forced to stand upright (a change your back doesn’t thank you for when it has to readjust from the previous hunched position you had adopted over the countertop), you groan quietly. Nonetheless, your tired eyes crease at the corners as you smile at whoever it is that’s come across the threshold.

After a second, your eyes refocus; when you can finally make out their features, it’s as if someone gives you a shot of adrenaline.

“Oh my God,” You say breathlessly, brushing your hair back and moving to stand up fully unsupported. “I thought you weren’t back until Friday?”

“Change of plans,” Vernon grins, scratching the back of his neck. “We drove through the night. I got home like… an hour ago.”

This is the first time you’ve ever seen him dressed down, and hell, does he look incredible. Gone are the ripped jeans, scuffed boots, the leather jackets and chunky rings. Grey sweatpants and an oversized white hoodie (alternatively: the brightest outfit you’ve witnessed him in thus far) drown him, blurring out his usually so distinct frame. You pin both of these things as the reasons you hardly recognised him when your eyes were refusing to cooperate. Paired with what Seungkwan would call ‘dad-sneakers’ and completed by messy hair and tired, soft eyes?

If you could jump his bones right here, right now… God, you would.

“But hey, it’s nice to see you, too,” he adds facetiously.

“Quiet down,” you groan, fighting the urge to run over and envelop him in a hug. You’re not sure that he’d mind if you did, but you also don’t quite know if you’re ‘there’, yet. “Obviously it’s good to-...”

His arms, both of which have been stuck behind his back since he arrived, now move around to the front, revealing to you a takeout cup and a little brown box from the coffee shop down the street.

“Oh, shit. It is so good to see you.”

Vernon laughs, coming closer until he can set them both down on the counter. “If it’s wrong, Seungkwan gave me your order, so.”

You start to wonder how on Earth your employee and your… Vernon managed to have this conversation without you knowing. Does Seungkwan have his number? Did they happen across each other on one of their socials? Did Vernon call into the store while you were out in the bathroom a little while ago and ask? But whatever happened, you quickly stop caring to find out: popping the lid off your cup, the aroma of your favourite coffee immediately fills your senses. It’s so overwhelming that you think you might start to cry.

“Oh my God. You’re the best,” you sigh, wrapping your fingers around the cup and taking a long sip, eyes rolling back into your head. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Vernon laughs, rolling up his sleeves before folding his toned forearms over his chest. “I got you a-... okay, they only had those gluten free brownies in, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know if they taste the same as the normal ones but… like, he said you hadn’t eaten today and I know you said you liked brownies before, — if you don’t like those ones, it’s okay! I can go back, it’s–”

He trails off, cheeks turning pink when you tilt your head to one side and feel your brow go soft. He asks, “why… are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re so cute,” you say, putting the cup down gently so as not to splash your drink all over the counter.

“Huh?”

“You really didn’t have to…”

“I wanted to,” Vernon says, shaking his head.

You almost definitely hear a floorboard creak and quiet shushing sound from just around the corner towards the back room. You don’t call out your eavesdropping friends for trying to listen in on your conversation, though: it barely even crosses your mind. Besides... you can’t take your eyes off Vernon, even if you wanted to. He looks so soft. Like he needs to sleep for a whole twenty four hours, and he must feel like it too, but he came here first.

“So,” he starts, tapping his right thumb against the inside of his left elbow. (The reason why he came so quickly starts to become evident. He just couldn’t wait to ask.) “You don’t have to commit to anything right now…” The silver of one of his rings glints with every tiny movement. “…but, I was just wondering–”

Smiling at him over the top of your coffee cup, it feels like your heart could burst.

“I was just… wondering… if you’d thought any more about letting me take you out?”

You’ve been texting him almost every day since he left. He’s sent you a hundred and one pictures of statues and cool buildings and nice looking food and the sky, and far more animals than you think you’ve ever actually seen in real life. You’ve spoken to him about your strange customers. What’s going on with your friends. Sent him recommendations for songs that you discovered on obscure albums that you pulled out to play over the speakers.

One night after one of his shows, he called you. He was a little bit drunk at the time, chilling in his hotel room with a pizza as he informed you that he’d snuck out of an after-party super early but couldn’t get to sleep. With an audible pout, he went on to confess that he was feeling kind of lonely, that he just wanted to hear your voice: one thing led to another and you stayed up talking to him until he passed out at nearly 4 o’clock in the morning.

To put it simply…

“I’d still really like that,” you say. It’s incredible to you that you can see every one of his features brighten up.

“Okay,” he breathes, unwinding his arms and pushing his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants now instead. “Okay, cool. I’ll… text you later? We’ll figure something out?”

“All right,” you agree. “Now go rest up, okay?”

He laughs as he swears that he’ll go back home and get some sleep, and with that, Vernon takes his leave. You’re once again alone, but this time you have a drink that could only hope to make you feel as energised as he does, and a treat nowhere near as sweet as him.

You aren’t complaining, though, and neither are the two men that miraculously reappear the moment the door closes again.

The smile Vernon leaves on your face doesn’t falter for the rest of your day.

You suppose a big part of the reason you haven’t dated anyone in a while is because you can’t stand the ‘talking stage’. That weird little limbo where you’re never sure if it’s too early to make certain jokes, where you’re checking and second-guessing all your texts, where you can’t figure out if someone’s really into you or if they’re just blowing up your phone to pass the time. The awkward small talk. The ‘getting to know each other’ part. The ‘why haven’t they replied yet — was it something I said?’ anxiety.

Thankfully, with Vernon, that’s not really something you have to worry about.

While he was away, you learned that he’s the kind of guy who just spews random facts at you in the middle of his day and then forgets to check his messages for three hours. Sometimes those facts are interesting things about himself. Other times, you’ve known him to shoot you a text just to announce [ just found out tigers have striped skin as well as fur. wild ].

(On one such occasion, Chan caught you giggling at your phone in the middle of a quiet Thursday afternoon, zooming in on a picture of Vernon’s heart shaped birthmark. This put a swift end to checking your messages while you’re at work.)

[ btw, im allergic to peanuts ], he told you one evening. Completely unprompted, just after dinner time. You spilled half of your glass of juice down your front in panic when you put two and two together and scrambled to ask him if he was okay. [ near miss, dw about it! just felt important haha ], he replied, and your response was just a picture of your newly stained t-shirt and a request for him to never do that to you again.

He can drive — at least, he has his licence — but he doesn’t have a car. He chooses public transport, and he tells you that it’s because he likes not having to worry about fuel prices and it’s ‘healing’ to zone out of reality on the train until he reaches his stop. He tells you that he came up with the melody and two verses of one of his favourite original songs on the bus to his parents house, and one time, he dropped a giant cockroach on a class field trip to the zoo because it tickled when it crawled over his palm and he didn’t like it.

(You later discovered that this piece of information was triggered by the appearance of a large bug in his shower.)

Last night, as you settled into bed after a whole evening of back and forth, he told you that he has all five of the top scores at the piano game in the arcade downtown, and that he has an approximate 75% success rate on claw machines. When you replied saying you hadn’t been to an arcade in about two years, he was horrified. Enough to send 7 broken heart emojis back to back, as individual messages. [ shakespeare himself couldnt write a tragedy that sad ], he said.

But, harrowed as he was by your admission, it did give him an idea.

That idea is exactly how you end up standing side-by-side at a basketball shootout game on Friday night. It’s how he ends up winning one of those cute reversible octopuses — true enough, on a claw machine — which he gives to you immediately. It’s how you watch him hunch over a pinball machine for twenty five minutes before he loses his ball, how you end up tied after four games of air hockey, at which point he calls it quits while citing a ‘cramping hand’.

It’s also how you deliver his ass to him in not one, but two rounds of bowling.

“All right — all right,” Vernon laughs, holding both his hands up in defeat as your final ball takes out all ten pins at the end of the alley. “You made your point. Damn.”

You shrug your shoulders as you walk back in his direction, picking up your glass from the table and sipping your soda through your straw.

(Though the arcade has an entire menu of cocktails, some of which you’ve never even heard of, the thought of navigating an evening alone with him under the influence of alcohol was totally unappealing after last time. Thankfully, Vernon agreed. You quietly think that being stone cold sober has made tonight even more enjoyable.)

“I told you,” you say when you finally sit down. He puts an arm around your shoulders straight away. Naturally, like it’s instinct. Like it’s a position he’s adopted a few hundred times before. “I’m undefeated.”

“We’ll see,” he says, tapping out a rhythm on the ball of your shoulder. “I still think you just got lucky.”

“So,” Vernon says once your leisurely stroll back lands you outside his place, kicking the toe of his left sneaker into the concrete. “What… are the chances that I get a do-over?”

You blink at him a few times, tilting your head. “What do you mean, a do-over?”

Does he not think this went well? Gods, it’s probably the best first date you’ve ever had, but what on Earth else could he mean by that? Did you say something earlier, and not realise? Has he not had fun? What does he m–

“I got these new coffee beans,” he says. “While I was away — and I figured something out with the-… the machine? So— ”

Ah. There he is.

You smirk at him, patting the outside of his bicep and rolling your eyes. When you glance down, Vernon is pulling out his key, thumbing over the ridges down the one side. He reaches for the door, happy to take your teasing as confirmation that yes, you’ll come up. Yes, he gets his ‘do-over’...

…but leave it to you to fall for the world’s dorkiest rockstar.

As he slips the key into his apartment door, there’s a steady pressure against the small of your back: the same one that’s been there ever since he gestured for you to step out of the elevator before him. One of his palms rests over the fabric of your t-shirt and you feel weirdly tingly because of it. He gently guides you inside once the door falls open and doesn’t move away when it’s locked again behind him.

With an anticipatory shiver, you turn around to face him. You make a point to leave just a matter of inches between your chests. To have your eyes soft, patiently waiting.

Vernon’s hands are - for the first time ever - cold when his fingers hesitantly come up to either side of your face, tilting your head up so that he can see you better, unobstructed by any shadows. You gasp at the contrast between them and your flushed, warm cheeks. He swallows thickly at the sound.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, gaze darting between the space separating your eyes from your lips. “We can slow it down, if you want. I just—...”

Your own hands find home against his chest in response, fingers curling into the muscle beneath them. Not harshly, definitely not so much that it could hurt — just enough that it makes him puff himself up a little bigger. Enough to make him square his shoulders as he drags a thumb over the corner of your mouth.

“Vernon,” you say quietly, pressing him backwards. Balling his t-shirt into your fists, you send him stumbling over his own feet before his shoulders find the wood of the front door. A quiet grunt escapes him on impact, but he just holds you closer. “Shut up ‘n’ kiss me. Please.”

Clumsiness aside, the moment he obediently ducks his head and presses his smiling mouth to yours, you feel weightless. Even when you tilt forward onto your toes to meet him halfway, it’s as if you’re not even touching the ground anymore: clouds beneath your feet have you floating. Everything about it is so very different from the last time.

It’s so much easier. Not just for you, either – you can feel it from him as well. Your collective baggage has been left out in the hall, barricading the door, shutting out the hesitation and nervousness and leaving you together, wholly alone, to just… be.

Vernon gets increasingly more brave as the seconds tick by. When you separate for air, his head tilts the other way, lips a little parted, hot breaths fanning over your skin as he meets you again, and again, and again. It’s the perfect give and take. Firm one second, waiting for you to chase him the next. The soft sounds he starts to make are amplified as his tongue presses against your bottom lip: he tests the waters, groaning into the heat of your mouth when you so happily invite him into it. He drinks you up for all you’re worth.

One of your hands uncurls from his chest and moves up to his head instead, threading into his hair at the top of his neck. It feels just as soft as it’s always looked, sliding through your fingers. A gentle pull makes him whine. He draws away from you. His lips are pink and shine with the gloss you touched up in the elevator’s mirror, his lids are heavy, his pupils blown, and looking up at him feels like staring into the sun; you physically can’t keep your eyes open, but it’s so hard to look away.

You tuck yourself into his neck as a compromise, laying gentle pecks everywhere you can reach. His aftershave leaves a bitter taste on your tongue as you touch the tip to a stretch of skin just beneath the harsh cut of his jawline, but the way he shudders and drops his hold down to your waist makes the sting in the back of your mouth all worth it. You only stop when one of his hands sinks lower still and he squeezes at your ass, making your eyes roll back.

He mistakes your surprise for hesitation, though.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, tipping his head back and pressing his crown into the door. Though he doesn’t withdraw his palm from your backside, he also doesn’t pinch at you again. You press your hips backwards, pushing into his touch to encourage him, with this green light he starts to knead at your cheek over the top of your skirt.

“You have no idea how hard it is to keep my hands to myself around you, do you?” You say, slipping one up the hem of his t-shirt as if to prove your point, splaying your fingers out over his stomach.

He takes a shallow breath, hovering with it in his lungs, holding back from saying something. You get there before he can.

“I want you,” you say certainly, pulling back from where you’ve been nestled into his shoulder so that you can look him in the eyes again. He releases that breath and his face flushes when his eyes find yours, moving both of his hands back up to your waist, tightly gripping at you as if his life depends on it as he nods.

“I just… I really don’t wanna mess this up,” he adds quietly. “I—”

When you kiss him again, hoping to further assure that you’re just as into this as he is, he reciprocates, sure. You can tell straight away that there’s a little less bite though — a stiffness to him. He doesn’t relax into you the same way he did a few minutes ago.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, falling back onto your heels. Is this because of the way things went last time, or are you going too fast for him? Selfishly, you hadn’t considered that could be a barrier. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want, you know that right? It’s okay.”

You make to step away from Vernon, unwinding your arms from around him to give him some space but he refuses to let you go too far. His hold on you is just as firm as ever.

“Trust me, I want to,” he says. “It’s just–...”

You stay silent, waiting for him to finish. He chews at his bottom lip, his blush deepening right in front of your eyes. To try and steady him, you lay one of your palms over each of his biceps, saying, “Whatever it is – it’s all right.”

“I just… haven’t been with anyone since…”

And when you laugh, it’s not at him (at least, not for the reason a fly on the wall might initially assume). You drop your forehead down onto the muscle of his chest, feeling his heart’s erratic rhythm underneath his clothes as you loop one arm back up around his neck.

“I thought you were about to tell me something awful,” you chide him through your giggles, lightly swatting at his shoulder. He starts to loosen up beneath you, his own body beginning to shake with laughter too. Those strong arms pull you flush against him, the gentle shift of his weight from one foot to another rocking you both side-to-side. “Like– like you were secretly married or you realised you didn’t actually like me, or something. Jesus.”

He stays quiet for another few seconds, but even without speaking, you can feel how he shakes his head above you. You look back up at his face and brush his hair out of his eyes, fingers lingering on his brow when you’re done.

“It’s okay,” you tell him for the third time. The last wisps of anxiety start to fade from his eyes, replaced with the same look he’s been wearing since he showed up at your apartment door earlier this evening. “I don’t care — I promise, I’ll go easy on you.”

The kiss that follows lands hard and with it, Vernon succeeds in wiping your brain empty. You can barely remember what you were even giggling about a few seconds later.

“Don’t want you to go easy,” he insists against your lips. Then, he’s wallowing up your breathy sighs as he licks into your mouth again, pressing your tongue with his own, reminding you that he’s absolutely not incompetent, just rusty.

When you make it into his bedroom, confessions and various articles of your clothing forgotten out in the hallway, you separate from each other long enough for you to be able to to lay one hand on his bare chest and push him down onto the mattress. He bounces on the foam and pushes up on one elbow, watching as you sink down to your knees and press kisses down his stomach while your hands deftly take care of the button on his jeans.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” You say to him as he lifts his hips up and lets you pull both his jeans and his boxers down in one sharp movement.

“M’not gonna want you to,” he laughs breathlessly, pushing a hand through his hair as he kicks the remainder of his clothes all the way off and nudges them away to the side. “But yeah. Okay.”

He looks so pretty like this and you can’t help but think he’s even prettier when the first time you curl your fingers around his length, his jaw falls slack and his fingers curl into the bedding underneath him. You drink him in and he watches you do it; your mouth is watering, desperate to feel him press down on your tongue, and you feel a pull towards him that you’ve never felt towards anyone before.

“God,” you whisper, shuffling on your knees to get a little closer.

“Okay?” Vernon asks. He tilts his head to the side and you nod up at him.

“Just… had a feeling you’d be…” you trail off, tugging a few times to feel its thickness in your fingers. Why are you mesmerised by it, a little? What the hell has gotten into you? “But it’s actually bigger, and—”

He laughs quietly and falls back onto the bed, crossing an arm over his eyes. “Shut up,” he groans.

“Yes, sir.”

You lean towards him and gather saliva on your tongue, dragging it from base to tip before closing your lips around the head. He gasps softly and holds onto his next breath, angling his head back further; you give a satisfied hum and slide a little further down.

The glide is made smoother by the spit your tongue left behind and that which mixes with his pre-cum in your mouth. As you start to bob up and down, some dribbles out past your lips so you start to move your hand, too, smearing the mess all over his cock. When it bumps the back of your throat — and on assessment, you realise there’s daylight between your lips and your fist — you squeeze your eyes closed and whimper softly, holding him in place while you adjust before you can take him deeper.

“Fuck— just like that,” he gasps out in a shattered groan when you start to move a little more fluidly, no longer too intimidated by your gag reflex preventing him from slipping down your throat. Your hand and your mouth work in tandem to get him riled. Every sound he makes feels like someone injects lust straight into your veins. When you look up at him from between your dewy lashes, you ponder that you’d watch him fall apart from this angle a hundred times a night forever and still not get bored.

Your jaw starts to ache from the thickness of having him in your mouth and the way he’s restraining himself from fucking his hips up to meet you tells you that he’s too polite to ask you for more. You suck harshly one last time before pulling away with a ‘pop’, using only your hand to pump his length as you shift down to gently suck one of his balls into your mouth.

The sound he makes is so fucking melodic. You think he’s made a similar one before when he lifts into a falsetto, and you’ve never felt more powerful than you do right now. Knowing you have someone with such a commanding presence eating out of your palm could really do something dangerous to your ego. It’s a bit of a miracle, therefore, that you recognise his desperate tapping at your shoulder, but the second you feel it you settle back from him, looking up at his impossibly tense abs and his blissed-out face.

You catch on quickly and feel your features split into a grin at the realisation. When it takes him a second, you know it’s because he’s still trying to remember the mechanisms it takes to breathe. Bless his heart.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pushing himself to sit upright and running a hand through his hair. “It-… fuck, that was so…”

“What happened to ‘I don’t want you to go easy’ huh?” you tease, resting your chin on the top of his left thigh, grinning up at him.

“I’m gonna come if you keep going like that,” he chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief at himself. “And trust me — I want to, but…” He swallows hard. “Not yet.”

You nod slowly up at him, starting to get up off the floor. You stop in your tracks when he says, “I’ve gotta taste you first. Please.”

Maybe it speaks too much to the quality of some of your previous lovers, but his desperation takes you a bit by surprise. You blink at him, ignoring how your thighs burn with the position you’ve frozen in.

“If— that’s okay?” He adds. “I’ve… been thinking about it? A lot. Especially since-”

“Shut up,” you breathe, finally standing all the way up. He shuffles back further onto the bed and you quickly move to straddle across his hips, one hand coming up to hold his jaw in place when you’re in place. “Of course it’s okay.”

You lean in for an impossibly needy kiss, only breaking away when you physically can’t breathe anymore. Vernon’s eyes flutter open at the same time as yours do and as you reach behind yourself with one hand to unclasp your bra, he looks at you like you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

(He tells you that you are no fewer than three times before you fall asleep a few hours later.)

thank u so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! as always, likes, reblogs, comments & feedback are so so appreciated. there's approx a scene and a half left for part 3 and then we're all done with this baby! stay tuned for that, coming soon.<3 p.s. no i will not apologise to jaehyun, this is what he gets for making me feel insane. thanks !

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