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asahicore · 3 months ago

Text

cold hands - psh (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact

pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader

synopsis. plot plot plot what is a plot when you can just have vibes and a vague narrative direction... if you MUST know you go to your brother's hockey team back-to-uni party accidentally matching one of the members with your cowgirl barbie costume. hopelessly romantic sunghoon sees this as a sign that the two of you are meant to be together, but you're impossible to read and soon the two of you settle on an ambiguous secret friends with benefits relationship. unfortunately, conflict ensues.

genre. strangers to friends to fwb to lovers..?? its not an asahicore fic if it doesnt have fluff angst AND smut, brothers best friend, jock x nerd type vibe, slight miscommunication put your pitchforks away and hear me out pls it works out i promise, reader has ISSUES 💜 loser loverboy sunghoon, its mostly in his pov, i know nothing about ice hockey

word count. 39.5k 😂

a/n. inspired by @moonlighthoon's request for the 1k trope event! sorry it took ages to write but i hope you like it and that i met ur expectations!!!! hope everyone else enjoys it too, this is the longest fic ive ever written and im quite proud of it, pls pls pls let me know what u thought <333 shoutout to @zreamy .. good luck with your studies, thank u for beta reading and making this fic exponentially better as u always do ⭐️ credit to @/plutism for the dividers :)

Some men never think of it. You did. You’d come along And say you’d nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong.

The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers.

It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, look, the flowers you nearly brought Have lasted all this while. - Wendy Cope, Flowers

When Sunghoon falls in love, it usually goes as quickly as it came.

Just to name a few:

There had been Ahn Yujin, whose family had moved next to his when he was twelve, and whose dog got on perfectly with his. His crush on the cute girl next door grew with every walk the four of them took but disappeared the second she ditched him to walk home from school with Na Jaemin.

A few years later, there had been Bae Sumin, who sat in front of him and always had her hair up in a ponytail he found exceedingly pretty. An appointment at the hairdresser was enough for him to stop liking her, as if his interest in her had been laying in the ten centimeters of hair she had cut off.

In his junior year of high school, there had been Kim Yerim, a college student that tutored him in Math and English. She was three years older, but that didn’t deter him—what did was the fact that she was dating a college graduate. She showed him a picture once, and the guy had biceps probably twice the size of Sunghoon’s. He thought it was safer to give up on her than to fight such a bulky guy five years his senior.

The first time it stuck was during his first year of college. She was his coach’s daughter and he liked the way she would smile at him when she came to watch their practice. Sunghoon didn’t like to think about her, mainly because even after she broke his heart, for a while there, he continued to love her.

So, when he first spots you from across the room at the Welcome Back costume party thrown by his hockey team, unintentionally the Cowboy Barbie to his Cowboy Ken, he tries not to read too much into it. Barbie was a hit this summer, it’s an easy and topical costume, of course there’s a pretty girl wearing the same bright pink cowboy hat he is. It doesn’t mean she’s the love of his life.

Right?

He knows you from the pictures that littered the walls of Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon’s apartment last year, from Instagram posts, both yours and your friends’, from your video calls with Jake, who dragged him into the camera’s view. Say hi to my sister, he’d insist, like Sunghoon was a child who didn’t want to greet his great-great-aunt. He’d dip in to say hi as requested, ask how you were, and mumble me too like a fool when you said you heard so much about him and were excited to meet him in real life.

These are the things Sunghoon knows about you: Jake’s older sister by a year, currently on a year abroad in Rome, studies something fancy like Classics, which he hadn’t known people still did in the twenty-first century, deep attachment to Stardew Valley in first year, rarely seen with the same man twice, very pretty. Absurdly so. He’s also weirdly obsessed over the texts you’ve sent to the group chat he was added to at the beginning of last year—scarce, short, elusive. Never more than two sentences, and always long after the conversation was over. But sometimes you’d send photos and videos out of nowhere, of your adventures or of funny things you saw online, and he always hearted them. He even replied to it sometimes (brave hahas or that’s so cool!s), in hopes that it would make you like him, would make you think, he gets me.

The two of you have never formally yet because you left for Italy the year he started university. He’s been nervous about meeting you since the first time the group told him about you.

Now that he is about to, he can hear his heart thumping so loudly in his ears, it drowns out the bass of the music. He’s glad he gets to see you before having to talk to you—he’s not sure he could take in your presence and form coherent words at the same time. He watches you laugh with your friends, the smile lines that form like dimples around your mouth, the strands of hair you keep tucking behind your ear. Then someone joins your group—except it’s not just someone, it’s Minjeong, her denim jacket so often worn he recognises her from the back, and he realizes the people you’re with have been Chaewon and Yunjin this whole time. The three of them have been banging on about you all year, even more so due to the fact that their replacement flatmate was dreadful, a Spanish girl who only hung out with other Spanish exchange students and looked the girls up and down when they tried to invite her out somewhere.

You turn towards Minjeong, and before he knows it, he’s in your line of sight, and your eyes meet. Confusion, then a flash of recognition goes through your eyes. He had been resting his elbow on a countertop, cider bottle in hand and watching you, he realizes, not unlike a creep, but now he stands up straight and looks around him as if you hadn’t just caught him staring. Before he can find a way out, Jake appears by his side and throws an arm around his shoulders, guiding him into the throng of party-goers and, coincidentally, closer to you.

“Dude, you’ll never guess what.”

“What?” Sunghoon says, tone coming out more irritated than he means it to. He’s just had to give up on making a good first impression on you, and he doesn’t even have the time to think of a way to redeem himself. When he dares to look back at you, your eyes are already on him, a small smile on your lips. You probably hate him already.

“My sister is dressed just like you. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you guys came together or something. Hey, guys!” Jake calls out, and all of a sudden, it’s not just your eyes on him, it’s everyone’s. Well, to be fair, they’re also looking at Jake. But you’re only looking at Sunghoon, and he can’t look away from you either, can’t even manage the politeness to hug everyone in greeting like Jake is doing now. He watches as your eyes rake over his figure, taking him in, assessing him, and he suddenly feels awkward in his costume that matches yours, like he’s somehow overstepped a boundary, like you might think he’s asked around about your costume, found out you were going as Barbie and decided to match you so you’d think the two of you were meant together, like he had two minutes ago, and come to the fairly reasonable decision that he was the weirdest man on Earth. But then you meet his eyes, smile a kind, genuine smile, and his whole body relaxes.

“Hey, Hoon!” Chaewon calls, arms open wide. He remembers himself and hugs everyone, even you, and he has to pretend like this is completely fine and normal, like his hands aren’t practically shaking as his arms circle your shoulders in a two-second embrace.

You squeeze one of his shoulders, and keeping his countenance is a Herculean task. He feels like those people centuries ago who passed out at the sight of a lady’s ankle. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” you say, peering at him over the rim of your red cup. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Sunghoon feels the blush growing on his face; he wasn’t expecting so much of your attention so quickly. He takes a swig of his lukewarm cider, hoping if he seems drunk, it might explain his redness. “Good things, I hope,” he says, aware of the unoriginality but unable to come up with anything better.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ve made you out to be a saint.” You’ve not once broken eye contact or stopped smiling—it should intimidate him, but instead, it makes Sunghoon feel like you’ve known each other for ages and that this isn’t your first conversation at all. He finds himself able to relax into a smile, and manages to meet your eyes for more than three seconds at a time.

“You don’t believe them?”

You pause, gaze zeroing in on him even more intensely than previously, smile turning smirk-like. Sunghoon’s heart skips a beat. Okay, maybe he’s not that relaxed. “I don’t know you well enough to make up my mind yet. But we’ll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, won’t we?”

This is exactly what Sunghoon has been warned about. You at parties, the way you look at guys, the way you talk to them. Sunghoon has been the audience of more than one recreation of such a scene, Yunjin pretending to be you, Chaewon pretending to be your “victim,” as the others liked to call them. Because once you had set your eyes on a man, he had little chance of making it out. Jay prides himself as being the only survivor, although he has to admit it’s only because Jake interrupted your conversation, telling him, “I see you’ve met my sister.” And Jay was not the kind of person that got off with their friends’ siblings, especially since his and Jake’s friendship was only a week long at that point, and he didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere in their dorm for the rest of the year just because his dick had gotten the best of him. His words. Whenever they were all hanging out together and they called you, one of the girls would inevitably ask if you had “turned any Italian boys into men” or if you had been “terrorizing the good men of Rome recently.” You would either roll your eyes or say this was not a conversation to be had in front of your brother.

Sunghoon had been sure they were exaggerating—it takes two to tango, as they say, and it wasn’t like you ensnared innocent men into your trap. They had to be willing, to want something from you just as much as you wanted something from them. He’d also gotten them to admit it wasn’t that frequent, that you weren’t looking for a new prey every party, just once in a while when you found someone you liked. (He’d been very quiet when Jay asked why he was trying so hard to defend you.)

But now that he is on the receiving end of your alluring smiles, he starts to understand how one could fall for you without meaning to. He knows he can’t — Jake probably wouldn’t take to it kindly, and he didn’t want to spoil the dynamic of his best group of friends at uni — but he has a feeling that ten minutes of talking to you would be enough to shake his resolve.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure we will. Jake said you studied a lot, but I’m sure we’ll get to hang out. All of us, I mean,” he quickly adds, lest you think he’s already asking you to hang out one-on-one. Sunghoon would not be that forward.

“Of course. I have to see if you did a good enough job replacing me for a year.” Sunghoon’s eyes widen, and before he can blurt out something weirdly laudatory like “I could never replace you, I would never even try, I don’t know you but you’re clearly far superior to me in every aspect and I could never even claim to fill your spot,” you giggle and tell him it’s just a joke. “If anything, I’m happy Jake has managed to make a new friend that he didn’t meet through me, that loser,” you say, and together, you laugh at Jake’s loserness, a topic that will never fail to amuse Sunghoon, although he’s not faring much better in that department.

“Like, look at him right now,” you say, jerking your head in Jake’s general direction, somewhere behind Sunghoon’s shoulder—and that’s when he realizes that it’s just the two of you standing there, the others gone without him even noticing. Sunghoon turns around, finding the girls, Jay, and a bunch of other people he vaguely recognizes huddled around Jake. They all start chanting his name as he gulps down a giant red cup of beer, then raises the empty cup over his head in victory and crumples it, beaming at the people around him.

“What is he doing?” Sunghoon asks, laughing at his friend.

“Jay called him over for a beer-off,” you explain. After a beat, you ask, “You didn’t notice?”

The implications are clear in your tone and in your eyes. In the smile playing on your lips, just shy of being a smirk. You didn’t notice because of me, is what you’re really telling Sunghoon—at least, that’s the impression he’s getting. And you’d be right. He was too busy talking to you and trying his best not to make a fool of himself to notice his friends leaving, too engrossed with you to register the sudden disappearance of four people. Across the room, where people have shifted their attention to yet another hockey player downing a sizable amount of beer, he catches Chaewon’s eyes, and she winks at him. Of course—leave it to Chaewon, to whom Sunghoon once made the mistake of drunkenly rambling about how pretty you looked in your Instagram posts last year, to give you and Sunghoon some time alone, “to get to know each other properly,” she would probably say. Although he isn’t sure that small talk over 2000s music counts as getting to know someone. According to the others, she and Yunjin started dating a month into their second year, so Chaewon has proclaimed herself as the goddess of dating and is now always trying to set people up. Sunghoon thinks she’s just living vicariously through her friends now that she has a Mrs. at home.

Because the filter usually at work between the part of Sunghoon’s brain where sentences are formed and his mouth is apparently on leave today, he says, “I do have a pretty distracting sight in front of me.” He’s immediately both mortified and impressed by this sudden bout of confidence, but then you look down and giggle, actually giggle, the sweetest sound he’s ever heard, and only pride remains.

“So, Ken?” you ask, a cute attempt to change the subject, taking the fabric of the pink bandana around his neck between your fingers. Sunghoon wonders if you’re going to yank him down to your level, and he thinks he wouldn’t have much of a problem with that.

He realizes that even though you should technically know each other’s names, you haven’t actually exchanged them, so in a confused but correcting tone, he says, “Um, Sunghoon.” He only belatedly realizes that you hadn’t gotten his name wrong, you were just making a comment on his costume, which he had completely forgotten he was wearing in the first place. Just as he’s about to backtrack and salvage what he can of the situation, you burst into laughter, hand leaving his bandana to cover your mouth as he hides his face behind his own hands, laughing along with you despite himself.

“I know your name is Sunghoon!” you exclaim. The gratification of hearing you say his name takes away some of his embarrassment. “I’m Y/N, by the way. Not Barbie.”

Sunghoon nods. “Good to know.”

The laughter gradually dies down, but your smile stays the same; wide, bright, a smile that exposes your teeth and turns your eyes into crescents. Sunghoon can’t look away. He’s awash with nerves, your gaze simultaneously planting his feet to the ground like they’re full of lead and making him light-headed. His heart is beating so fast, he can barely feel it anymore.

The two of you stand there, looking and smiling at each other, like in a cliché movie scene where everyone else at the party seems to fade into the background. He has no idea how much time has passed when you break the silence. “It really is nice to finally meet you,” you say, repeating your statement from earlier, as though you mean it more now.

“It is,” Sunghoon simply replies, because he doesn’t know how else to express the relief of seeing you in the flesh after hearing about you and looking at a digital version of you for a year. The relief, but also the anticipation of what is to come now that he knows he likes you even more now that he’s actually seen you. And improbable as it sounds, you might even feel the same.

Sunghoon can already feel it. The beginning of something.

You nod towards his now empty cup. “Want a refill?”

Together, you make your way through the crowd of increasingly drunk students until you reach the kitchen, where the countertops overflow with open bottles of liquor of all sorts and paper plates with half-eaten pizza slices on them. He watches your every move as you find a cold bottle of beer in the fridge, a bottle of strawberry syrup in a random cupboard that you had to know was there, and a half-empty discarded bottle of lemonade on the counter. You ask him to tell you about last year, everything you missed out on, and so he does. He knows you’ve probably heard it all from the others before, but you still laugh and gasp like it’s the first time you’re hearing about any of it, all the hockey games they won, Jay getting food poisoning from the sketchy pizzeria he kept eating at, Yunjin almost getting into a fistfight with a man twice her size who was flirting with Chaewon.

You assemble two drinks and hand him one of them. When he takes a sip, his eyes widen at the refreshing and sweet taste. “Good, right?” you say. “I discovered it on a trip to France last summer.”

“Thank God for France. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed drinking beer,” he says.

“That’s probably because you can’t taste the beer at all.”

Sunghoon smiles. “Probably, yeah.”

You turn around, lower back against the counter, and take in the current kitchen population. “We really weren’t very original with our costumes tonight.” Sunghoon, who had not taken his eyes off of you this entire time, follows your gaze. He counts five partygoers dressed in some version of Barbie or Ken, and that’s just the kitchen. He doesn’t blame them—the fact that so many people came dressed in costumes at all impresses him, especially for a party on the 10th of September and not the 31st of October. The social committee of the hockey team just seems to really love themed and dress-up parties.

He chuckles, then takes a sip of his drink. It’s really nice. “Yeah, but we look the best.”

Your head whips towards him, eyes glinting with something that makes Sunghoon smile, even though he doesn’t know what you’re thinking. “Should we enter the couple’s costume contest?” you ask.

At the mention of couple, his eyes widen, his brain tricking him into thinking you’ve asked him out for a second. But when what you actually meant dawns on him, the first thing to come out of his mouth is, “There’s a couple’s costume contest?!”

“Mh-hm. The sign-up sheet should be around here.”

For what feels like the millionth time since he’s started talking to you, his face heats up. “Are non-couples allowed to enter?”

“We’re Barbie and Ken. I’d say that’s enough of a couple, don’t you think?”

Right. Because he had been thinking of Sunghoon and Y/N, while you obviously meant Barbie and Ken. In the contest, it doesn’t actually matter whether the contestants are dating in real life—it matters that their costumes match. Sunghoon knows that. He just needed a second.

He grins, deep dimples punctuating his cheeks. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Armed with your drinks, you walk around the kitchen in search of the sign-up sheet. You find it on a wall next to the dining table, which has been turned into a beer pong table for tonight’s festivities, and the sheet is almost filled with names already. Sunghoon can only hope that by midnight, when the contest is set to take place, most participants will have had too much to drink to remember it. You write your names on the list, and Sunghoon likes seeing his name in your handwriting so much he almost wants to take a picture.

“There you guys are!”

You both turn around to find Jake stumbling towards you, clearly more intoxicated than when he had left you half-an-hour ago. He rests his arms on your shoulders, forcing Sunghoon down to his height and making you stumble forwards from the sudden added weight. “I’ve been looking all over for you- You’re entering the contest?!”

For a split second, Sunghoon is scared he’s going to get scolded by Jake for trying to hit on his sister, but surprisingly, it’s you he narrows his eyes at. “Y/N, what are you roping my little Hoonie into?”

Sunghoon groans, face perpetually red at this point. Leave it to Jake to make him seem like a total loser.

You frown at your brother. “I’m not roping your little Hoonie into anything.” Sunghoon wants to bury himself alive. “We agreed on doing it together. Right?” you ask, turning towards Sunghoon and batting your eyelashes at him. It makes him feel a bit better.

He turns back to Jake. “Right. We’re just joining forces to crush the competition.”

Jake scoffs. “As if.” He snatches the pen from your hands and underlines his name as well as Kazuha’s, the girl he came with tonight, three thick black lines that almost erases the names underneath them. “You can’t beat the hockey player and cheerleader combo.”

“Those aren’t even costumes, you guys are a hockey player and a cheerleader,” you protest.

“So?” Jake simply retorts, more attitude in his tone than he would have were he sober.

“So, that defeats the whole purpose of a costume contest.”

Jake knocks on your cowboy hat, and you immediately put it back in place, glaring at him. “As if Barbie was the greatest costume ever. Whatever, let’s just play beer pong so I can defeat you guys twice in one night.”

“You’re on, Sim.”

“You’re going down, Sim.”

Sunghoon had just been watching your back-and-forth amusedly when you grab his hand, leading him to the side of the table opposite Jake. His fingers tingle under your touch, but just like that, it’s gone. He’d rather keep on holding your hand than play this stupid game, but he isn’t opposed to taking Jake’s ego down a notch, either. The boy can barely stand straight, anyway, so it probably won’t be a very tough match.

Some guy he doesn’t recognize in a striped black-and-white referee t-shirt fills most cups with beer and a couple on each side with shots of vodka—he’s so earnest, Sunghoon isn’t sure whether he’s just taking his costume-slash-role very seriously or if he has genuinely been hired to look over the beer pong matches of the night. Some order in the brutish world of college parties, Sunghoon guesses.

Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jay appear then, exchanging a quick look at the sight of you and Sunghoon together. The two former join your team, while the two latter join Jake’s, as well as other people that Sunghoon vaguely recognizes from other parties. But by the simple action of getting behind him, they become his most trusted allies for at least this part of the night.

You’re a terrible shot, but Sunghoon makes up for it by scoring almost every round. In his defense, he only misses when you come up close to him and whisper in his ear which cup he should go for. Your breath tickles his (oddly sensitive) ears and the combined scents of the strawberry and lemonade on your tongue and your delicate perfume make his head spin. He can barely think straight, so his aim is naturally thrown off—other than that, he makes Jay drink a healthy amount of beer. He almost feels bad for his friend, but he’d arrived late at the party and needed to quickly catch up with everyone’s level of ebriety anyway.

When the opposite team is down to their last cup, a lightning bolt of luck strikes you, and your ball disappears straight into the vodka-filled cup that Jake now has the honor of downing.

Sunghoon gives you no time to celebrate, to gloatingly pump your fists in the air and point a mocking finger at your brother, because as soon as you make the shot, he wraps his arms around your waist and lifts you off the ground. When you’re on your feet again, you spin around to find a proud-looking Sunghoon beaming down at you. You burst into giggles and high-five him, your palms perfectly clapping against each other, and he threads your fingers together. A current of electricity rushes through him, and for a second, he swears it’s just the two of you in this packed room.

The moment is cut short by the loud cheers of the others on your team as they shake your shoulders and raise their hands for you to high-five them too. Minjeong flips the other team off and Yunjin has to go hug Chaewon and reassure her it’s nothing personal. It’s really quite easy to make college students happy—or devastated.

You raise your eyebrows at Jake, who’s busy glaring at you instead of accepting his defeat and taking his shot. With a begrudging sigh, he tips his head back and drinks the vodka in one gulp, the cheers doubling in volume when his face scrunches at the bitter taste of the liquor.

“Don’t act so proud,” he scolds you. “Sunghoon carried your team.”

“Maybe, but she made us win in the end,” Sunghoon retorts, putting an arm around your shoulder.

Jake scoffs, frowning at Sunghoon’s hand placement before eye-rolling his gaze away. “Whatever.” He slides his phone out of his back pocket and smiles as he shows the two of you his screen. “Would you look at the time? The contest is starting soon.” Then, with an accusatory finger pointed at you, adds, “You may have won this battle, but I’m winning the war.”

He stomps away, presumably to find Kazuha before the contest starts, and it’s your turn to eye-roll at his dramatics. You grab Sunghoon’s hand that hangs off of your shoulders, and together, make your way through the crowd again to the garage, where the contest is taking place. All the alcohol he’s been drinking has definitely started kicking in by now, and he finds himself giggling at nothing with you.

When you reach the threshold, still hand in hand, Sunghoon stops so abruptly behind you that you almost stumble. You look back at him, then follow his gaze towards the garage and the sheer amount of people in there. Worriedly, his eyes take in every single one of the contenders. You let go of his hand and stand in front of him, placing your hands on his shoulders and putting on a determined expression. You’d almost look like a parent reassuring their kid before their first day of kindergarten if you weren’t so much shorter than him. “Don’t even worry about them, Sunghoon. We look better than anyone here.”

His eyebrows crease. “There’s like, three other Barbie-Ken couples here. Some of these costumes are so original. And do you see their makeup? Is that even possible?” he asks, staring at a couple in scarily realistic cosplay of Simon and Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks, fur and all. He can’t look at them for too long without getting chills.

You shake your head. “Almost everyone here is either a hockey player or a… hockey-affiliated person. You’re the beloved and talented defenseman of the team and I’m the star player’s sister. They’ll love us,” you say with a smile, watching the worry dissipate from his features.

“We’re like nepo babies,” he whispers. His lips break into a grin when your eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I don’t know how nepotism works,” he admits, smiling wider when you burst into laughter. “How do you know if I’m talented, anyway? You haven’t seen me play yet.”

Your eyes rake him up and down appreciatively. “I took a wild guess.”

Not unlike a cartoon character, Sunghoon audibly gulps. As a hockey player since his most tender age, and dare he say, a pretty good-looking guy, he is used to girls flirting with him, and he is even hit sometimes by the occasional lightning strike of confidence that allows him to flirt back (he still can’t believe he managed to call you “a distracting sight” without spontaneously combusting). But there’s something in your eyes, in your smile, in the way you talk—something about you that has his breath hitching and his heart racing. He doesn’t know if he wants to run away and hide in a corner or kiss you right then and there.

Heeseung, the captain of the hockey team, announces into a microphone (which Sunghoon wonders where they got the money for) that the contest will start now, so he can neither kiss you nor run away. Instead, he follows you to the side of the room where all the contestants, including Jake and Kazuha, wait for their names to be called out. There are so many participants, it takes way longer than Sunghoon would like for the two of you to step onto the makeshift stage. Judging by the looks on the audience’s faces, everyone is surprised to see you and Sunghoon together—the hockey community at your university may be big, but everyone knows everyone, and gossip travels fast. No one had seen you and Sunghoon together before, for the obvious reason that you hadn’t even met before tonight. But you could be sure that by tomorrow, as silly as it sounds, word will have gone around that you and Sunghoon had participated in a couple costume contest together.

At least, you give them something of substance to talk about—as you and Sunghoon pose on stage, wearing your brightest smiles to please the crowd, you stand on your toes and press a kiss to Sunghoon’s cheek. Sunghoon’s eyes burn a hole in the side of your face but you just watch as the audience of drunken 20-somethings goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. Jake is the only one booing.

Sunghoon is still in shock when the next couple is called forward and you have to step off. His cheeks are redder than before and he can’t quite meet your eyes. Apparently, he also goes wild over something as simple as a peck on the cheek. You nudge his shoulder. “See, I told you they’d like us.”

He feels like a fourteen-year-old for it, but Sunghoon can’t stop thinking about your soft lips against his cheek, so much so that he barely says a word as the three judges deliberate. If you notice the sudden change in his behavior, you don’t comment on it, perhaps chalking it up to nerves. He’s glad for it—he doesn’t know if he could handle being teased about it, especially from you. Although he’s not sure he wants you to think he’s the kind to stress over a last-minute Halloween costume contest.

In the end, you don’t win. He suspects it was a rigged contest all along: the couple in the unimpressive Edward and Bella costume are friends with one of the judges, probably leading to their anticlimactic victory. At least it isn’t Simon and Jeannette who win, or Kazuha and Jake, even less original than the winners. Anyway, Sunghoon couldn’t care any less. With your hand in his as you walk back to the main room in search of your other friends, he feels like the biggest victor of the night. He doesn’t even mind it when his teammates tease him about his costume and how good the two of you look together—the smile you shoot him makes putting up with it worth it. He tries to think straight, but between the alcohol and your proximity, he feels like you’ve cast a spell on him.

Jake stumbles into your group, three drinks drunker than when Sunghoon last saw him, enthusiastically reporting that a game of spin the bottle is about to start in one of the rooms upstairs, because what every college party needs is a middle-school game to shake things up. None of the guys seem particularly interested until Jake reveals that the cheerleaders are playing.

Sunghoon looks down at you, laughing when he sees your mildly disgusted moue. “Don’t feel like playing?”

“Not really, no.” Your eyes linger on his face. “There’s only one person here I want to kiss, anyway.”

All capacity for thought leaves Sunghoon’s brain. He just stares back at you blankly, lips slightly agape, willing himself to say something but also terrified that whatever leaves his mouth might make him seem like the biggest loser ever.

You couldn’t possibly mean him—but did you? Was he the person you wanted to kiss?

As these questions resound through his head, your gaze drops to his lips. There’s his answer.

His heart beating wildly in its cage, Sunghoon decides to do one smart thing tonight and leans in, slowly but surely closing the gap between the two of you. Then a sudden vibration in the back pocket of his jeans zaps through him like lightning and he jumps back, as if startled out of the trance you had put him in. Shame flooding his cheeks, he checks his phone; it’s the stupid alarm he set himself earlier to make sure he doesn’t get home too late. Midnight, Cinderella-style.

You scratch the back of your neck as your eyes dart around the room. For the first time tonight, you look embarrassed—Sunghoon is in disbelief at how pretty you look even then. “I, um,” he starts, clears his throat. “I have this thing tomorrow morning, so I can’t stay too long…” he says guiltily.

He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he swears that what he sees on your face is disappointment. It makes him want to take it all back, to stay here with you for as long as you want and forget about tomorrow morning.

“Oh, right,” you say, nodding. “That’s fine. What thing?”

“Oh.” Sunghoon turns an impossibly deeper shade of red, further resembling the strawberry syrup the more he gets himself in these embarrassing situations with you. “Just… choir. I go to choir on Saturday mornings.” He looks down at his feet like he’s just revealed a secret, shameful part of himself.

You burst into laughter, and Sunghoon is scared for a second that you’re making fun of him, and his feelings are a lot more hurt than they should be by someone he just met. Although, to be fair, you don’t feel like someone he just met.

“That’s so cool! It must be such a nice change from all the dudes on the hockey team,” you say, a sweet, curious smile on your lips. Like you mean what you say. Like you might want to know more.

Sunghoon thinks he just fell in love.

He chuckles. “Yeah. Definitely a nice change. As much as I love hockey, it’s nice to do something calmer, you know. And I like singing. And the cakes the local grandmas bring.”

“So that’s what it’s all about, really.”

“Yep, you caught me.” Sunghoon still feels the almost-kiss lingering, a tension between the two of you that has him on edge. He feels like he’s just missed his bus because it left a minute earlier than planned. The opportunity is gone, and he would definitely mess everything up, trying to kiss you now. So instead, he decides to leave. Whatever must happen, will happen, even if it’s not tonight. You have the same friends—this is definitely not the last time you will see each other. “Well, I should probably head. I have to be up at eight tomorrow.”

“Oh, wow. The choir grandmas don’t play around.”

“They really don’t.”

“Well, see you around then,” you say, a clumsy laugh falling from your lips as you wrap your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, bringing him into a tight but short hug. You also smell good, he notes to himself. Of course you do.

“See you, Y/N.” Just as he’s about to turn away, you wrap your hand around his wrist.

“Wait. Sunghoon?” He’s only half-surprised at the immense relief he feels to hear his name on your lips. Like you, too, didn’t want to part with him just yet.

“Yeah?” he says, wishing the hope and anticipation aren’t too obvious on his face.

“Where’s that choir of yours?”

When Sunghoon arrives at his neighborhood’s community center, ten minutes before nine a.m., you’re already there. Despite the seven hours of sleep under his belt, he feels like he could’ve done with three more, and the singular cup of instant black coffee he had for breakfast was both atrocious and useless. But your smile has the restorative effect of two Red Bulls and a power nap. You look surprisingly bright, like you either managed to get a very good night’s sleep or are just the biggest morning person to ever exist.

He hugs you when he reaches you on the sidewalk, tighter than he probably should, but you return it. You smell like fresh soap and sugar. The two of you exchange quick greetings before he leads you inside the center.

“I made some cookies as well.” You point to your tote bag and Sunghoon’s jaw slackens.

“You had time to bake?”

“Kazuha made me take Jägerbombs, so I felt crazy when I got home. I thought it wouldn’t be fair on the old ladies if they did all the work.”

Sunghoon laughs. “They’re going to love you.”

You follow Sunghoon up two flights of stairs and into a spacious room with a wooden stage. There’s a snacks table on one side of the room that is almost fully decked with plates and tupperwares of all sorts, and although their contents remain covered by tin foil or lids, the coffee and hot water pots are free to use. Most of the chairs are stacked on each side of the room but a few have been put in the middle, the grandmas sitting and chatting there waving at Sunghoon as the two of you walk in. There are about fifteen people in the room so far, most of them older ladies, but not only. There’s a dad that came with his daughter, a couple of teenagers, and a few other adults. It’s quite an eclectic mix, and Sunghoon loves it.

Minjeong is here, too, which Sunghoon realizes he forgot to say until he sees the sheer confusion of finding someone you know in an unexpected place on both of your faces. She walks towards you, suspicious eyes darting between you two.

“Hey,” she says only to Sunghoon before turning to you, arms crossed over her chest. “And what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Minjeong, so nice to see you too!”

“I invited Y/N,” Sunghoon says quickly, although you did technically invite yourself. For some reason, he feels the need to defend you, even though he knows you and Minjeong have been friends for years now, and Minjeong is just always this blunt.

“I didn’t know this was the choir you went to,” you say to Minjeong.

“Oh, this?” She looks around the room. “It’s only the choir I’ve been going to since I was a kid. You’d know that if today wasn’t the first day you showed interest in it, ever.”

“I came to your concerts!”

One of the old ladies calls Sunghoon’s name from the snack table, and he is glad for the diversion. “Right. I’ll let you guys talk this out.” A hand on your shoulder, he smiles down at you. “I’m gonna say hi to the ladies over there. Be back in a minute.” He shoots Minjeong a look as if to say, Be normal.

As he approaches the small group, one of them asks very loudly if you’re his girlfriend. They all burst into giggles, blushing and eager-eyed like they’re sixteen rather than sixty. Sunghoon would be endeared if you didn’t look so alarmed and Minjeong so horrified, both of you looking at him before turning back to each other and getting into a very heated and secretive discussion. He is bombarded with a hundred questions: what your name is, where you’re from, how did the two of you meet, are you together? No? But you’re so pretty! And he’s such a nice boy! He answers all of their queries to the best of his ability while checking that your conversation with Minjeong hasn’t turned physical—your arms are now also crossed over your chest, and you look annoyed while she looks like she’s accusing you of something, but at least, punches aren’t being thrown.

Thankfully, it’s only a couple more minutes until the conductor calls for everyone to gather on stage, and a weight is lifted off of Sunghoon’s shoulders once the ladies’ collective attention is no longer on him. He isn’t sure where they came from, or why they’ve decided to make the choir rehearsal their hang-out spot, but there is always a group of women who sit there and knit while chatting quietly or listening to the songs, and they are sometimes joined by children whose parents are part of the choir but don’t want to sing themselves and apparently have nowhere else to go. Sunghoon had been so excited at the prospect of having you come see him that he hadn’t thought of how boring this might be for you, sitting with sixty-year-olds for two hours, listening to an amateur choir go through scales and sing corny romance ballads—they’re rehearsing for a wedding they’ve been hired to sing at. But as the minutes go by, his worry dissipates when the delighted smile on your face hardly falters. He can’t imagine that his choir is that good, but you genuinely look like you’re having a nice time, and it makes Sunghoon stand a little taller, sing a little louder. Your eyes are on him for most of the time, and he blushes every time your gazes meet, but he still can’t keep himself from looking away from the conductor to check on you every few seconds.

Once rehearsal is over, everyone gathers around the refreshments table. When you tell Sunghoon that he looked good out there, he stuffs his mouth with banana bread to stop himself from blurting out something stupid. Your cookies are a hit, and so is everything else—Sunghoon would be more than happy to watch you eat as many baked goods as you possibly can and chat with the grandmas, but he has something to ask you. Without thinking much, he wraps his fingers around your wrist, gently pulling you away from the table and towards him. The question that was at the tip of his tongue fades as soon as you meet his eyes, looking up at him like a deer caught in headlights, cheeks stuffed with brownie. You’re so cute that words fail him for a second, and when he notices the proximity between the two of you, takes a small, bashful step backwards. You glance at his hand still around your wrist, and he withdraws it like he’s suddenly been burned.

A playful smile grows on your lips. “Everything alright?”

He scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. I just, um, well. There’s a bus that takes us from right across the street directly to the beach, if you’re, um, if you’re interested. In going. With me. If you want.”

Your eyebrows cock in surprise, and Sunghoon thinks he’s messed it all up. You shoot Minjeong a quick, worried glance, then seem to think for a second. But when you look back to him, your smile is soft. “That sounds nice.”

An hour later, you’re running around together on the beach—or rather, Sunghoon is running around, and after five minutes of watching him with a smile on your face, he’s convinced you to run around with him. You’ve both long discarded your shoes and socks, jeans scrunched up to your mid-calves, grins so wide, your cheeks start to hurt. The wet sand is hard under your feet and the water cold against your skin. Sunghoon’s t-shirt sticks everywhere you sprayed water on him, and he knows putting his shoes on later will be a whole ordeal, but it doesn’t bother him. Even the gray September sky feels brighter because you’re standing with him underneath it.

The water-splashing battle quickly has you both out of breath, and Sunghoon is ready to call a truce when you spot something behind him, gasping and running towards it. He turns around to find you picking up a bunch of sandcastle-building toys that must’ve been left behind by some kids. “I haven’t built a sandcastle in such a long time, this is so exciting,” you say, excitement written all over your face.

As much as he loves seeing the glint of childish amusement in your eyes, Sunghoon keeps looking around in case the owners of these toys might appear out of thin air. “I feel like there’s something immoral about this,” he says, and you stop stacking sand into one of the toys to look at him with a confused frown. “Aren’t we technically stealing from some kids?”

“Sunghoon. If those kids really cared about these plastic toys, they wouldn’t have left them here.”

“What if they come back for them?”

“Then we’ll give them back. We’re not monsters.” That’s all it takes for Sunghoon to give in. He helps dig trenches around the towers you build, carving out small windows on them and apologizing profusely when he accidentally pokes too hard into one of them, destroying half of it.

The second he notices you shivering, Sunghoon is on his feet, unwrapping the scarf around his neck and laying it like a blanket over your shoulders. “I’m going to get us something warm to drink. I’ll be back in a minute!” he announces before you can even protest, and practically runs to the nearest café.

He only leaves you and the slightly pathetic-looking sandcastle alone for a minute, quickly coming back with two take-away cups of milky Earl Grey tea and a brownie that he couldn’t help himself from buying. The moan you let out when you bite into it, gooey, sweet chocolate sticking to your teeth, goes straight down Sunghoon’s spine, but he tries not to let his thoughts get too carried away.

“Good, right?” he asks, laughing when you nod fervently. When you laugh too, it’s a sound so sweet, it rivals the decadence of the brownie. “I sometimes make the trip all the way here just for this.”

“I thought I’d be done with sweets after this morning, but this is so good.”

“Better than Berta’s banana bread?”

“Oh, a hundred percent,” you say, covering your mouth with your hand as you speak. “Sorry, Berta. I’ll be thinking about this for the rest of my life.”

Sunghoon hopes you’ll remember him as the boy who’d introduced you to those brownies, if nothing else.

The two of you are silent for a little bit, but it’s a comfortable silence—something Sunghoon didn’t know was possible with someone he’d just met. This was something he loved about the sea: it allowed for some quiet. The crashing of the waves against the shore, the calls of the seagulls, the dogs barking after them—it all meant he didn’t need to fill the space with needless chatter. He could look out at the peaceful water, you by his side, and just enjoy the moment.

“I’m still so amazed whenever I come to the beach, no matter how many times it’s been.” Sunghoon’s voice is quiet when he speaks, lower than usual. It sounds a lot more intimate than he means it to be. You turn your head to look at him, silently asking him to go on. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, a twinkle in his eyes as he watches the water. “The town I grew up in is right in the middle of the country, so the sea is like, a five-hour drive. There was a lake nearby, but it was nothing compared to this. It might sound silly, but being from somewhere where everyone knows each other, I never realized just how big the world was until I came here and saw the sea for the first time.”

“You’d never been to the sea before coming here?” you ask, surprise clear in your voice.

He shakes his head. “My hometown isn’t far from the mountains, so it’s a huge tourist spot both in the winter and in the summer, which meant my mom had to work even when my sister and I were out of school and could actually go on holiday. We’d go visit my grandparents and aunts when we found the time, but that was it.” He meets your gaze, a smile playing on his lips at the thought of his hometown and his family. “This is the furthest I’ve ever been from home.”

The corners of your lips raise into a smile too, matching Sunghoon’s. “And how has that been going?”

He sighs. “It’s okay. I miss my mom and sister like crazy, of course, but they FaceTime me so much that I barely notice it. And anyways, it’s also nice to be on my own. Discover another part of myself, and all that.”

“For sure.”

There’s a slight shift in your expression that Sunghoon catches onto, a falter in your smile and a hint of sadness in your eyes. He doesn’t want to force a topic that you don’t want to talk about, so he just gently eggs you on, in case all you need is a small push.

“What about you? I think Jake mentioned you guys growing up around here, only an hour or so away.”

At the mention of your brother, the smile returns to your eyes. You take a deep breath and think for a bit, but eventually, you start talking. Although Sunghoon’s eyes are on you, you keep yours trained on the sea. “Yeah, we did. We live just up the coast, so we were always hanging out at the beach. In a way, it’s nice having the sea here as well. It’s like-I don’t know.”

“Like having a piece of home even when you’re away?”

Your gazes meet for just a second, the surprise clear in your eyes, but as quickly as it came, it’s gone, and you turn away from Sunghoon once more. “Basically, yeah.” A sardonic smile appears on your lips. “Although the constant reminder isn’t always appreciated.”

He tilts his head. When you don’t say anything further, he flicks some sand onto your hand and asks you what you mean by that. He looks at you with curiosity and kindness only, eager to know more about you, to let you know that you can open up to him, that he won’t judge you, but careful not to overstep any boundaries either. It seems to work.

“It might sound stupid, but back home, the beach was a place I could go to when it all was a bit too much, you know? Like an escape from everyday life. Where I could forget about all of the pressure on my shoulders.” Sunghoon hums, and you take another deep breath. “I don’t know if you and Jake talk about this sort of thing, but… our parents are barely nice when we do well, and pretty awful when we don’t reach their expectations. So we were like, constantly having to outdo ourselves just for them to say, ‘Keep it up’, or something like that. And if we did something wrong, well…”

You trail off, but Sunghoon knows what you mean. “Yeah, Jake said they barely spoke to him anymore because he decided to play hockey instead of becoming, like, a doctor or something.”

You smile, but it’s humorless. “Yep. They send him money, and he comes home for a bit over Christmas and summer break, but that’s it. I’ve gone home by myself sometimes and they won’t even mention him, it’s insane.”

“He also doesn’t talk about it a lot.”

“I know. I’m always the one to bring it up. I know it’s a sensitive topic for him, obviously, but I still find it amazing how well he deals with it. But me… despite everything, I still need their approval, you know?” you ask, and Sunghoon nods.

“That makes sense.”

You sigh. “I guess. And I’m obviously not becoming a doctor like them. Not a medical one, at least. It took a year of convincing them that doing the degree I’m doing was okay. ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s still me filling in my university applications, and they can’t actually force me to go to medical school, but I still wanted them to be proud of me. Even if I study languages.” It’s quiet for a few seconds as you both look out at the waves crashing against the shore. When you start talking again, you look down at the sand, picking it up and letting it filter through your fingers. “So, yeah. Jake got a scholarship here, and I didn’t wanna be too far from home, so here we are. We’re so close to home, the sea I went to when I needed a break in high school and the sea I go to now are one and the same. And now it reminds me of my parents rather than making me forget about them.”

“I’m sorry for bringing you here,” Sunghoon says. “I didn’t think…”

You cut him off with a smile. “It’s okay. Now I’ve created new memories. Nice ones. And you know… wherever I am, it’ll be at the back of my mind. It’s up to me whether I let it affect my life or not.”

“Letting go of these things is never easy,” Sunghoon offers. “You also can’t blame yourself if it does affect you sometimes.”

When you look at Sunghoon, your eyes darting back-and-forth between his like they’re searching for something there, he feels himself tense up slightly. He can’t read you at all, has no idea what you’re thinking even as you smile and say, “You’re right.” Even as you silently link your pinky with his, gazing down at your hands with a small smile. He hadn’t realized how cold his hands were until this small touch, so small yet able to spread warmth throughout his entire body. When he speaks, he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes—he’s still so focused on where your hands touch, too aware of the skin of your finger right against his. Such a small, innocent touch. He can’t even begin to understand why it means so much to him.

“For what it’s worth, I think what you’re doing is super cool,” he says. “I’ve always been so shit at foreign languages, let alone dead languages. And packing your bags and going abroad for a year, not everybody can do that. Becoming a doctor might be hard, but it also takes a specific kind of person to do what you do. And what Jake does. It’s all valuable.”

“Now, if you could say that again while I record you to show my parents, please,” you say, making him laugh.

“It’d be my pleasure.”

“What about you?” you ask him after a small pause. “I can’t be the only one who trauma-dumps on the first date.”

Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat. He hadn’t even dared entertain the thought that this might be more than a platonic hang-out in case he was crossing a line—but you’ve just called it a date. With just a few casual words, you’ve changed the entire meaning of the hours you’ve spent together. He hopes you can’t tell how flustered it’s made him.

“Well, there’s not much trauma to dump, really. Sorry.”

You giggle. “Don’t apologize. That’s a good thing.”

Now that you’ve just opened up about your parents, Sunghoon is scared that telling you about how good of a childhood he had might come off as insensitive—but you smile softly at him, holding his hand face-up in yours, tracing the lines of his palm with the tip of a finger, and he starts talking. “So, it was just me, my older sister and my mom growing up. My dad died when I was 2.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It is a bit sad that I don’t have any memories of him, but everyone who knew him said he was a great guy. And my mom’s had this boyfriend since I was like, 10? He’s the one who got me to start hockey. So it hasn’t been that bad.”

“Your mom must be really strong.”

Sunghoon smiles. “She is. She’s amazing. To raise two kids on your own while grieving and not royally fuck up is… well, amazing. She’s always been so supportive of us, no matter what we wanted to do. My sister did well at school, but I wasn’t so good. I never really enjoyed it, but she’s never made me feel bad about it. She didn’t mind that all I wanted to do was hit a puck around.”

“And you’re pretty good at hitting that puck around, aren’t you?”

“I’m not so bad,” Sunghoon says, chuckling along with you. He’s about to go on, but he is cut off by a raindrop hitting his hand, then another one; before either of you know it, your clothes are soaked through. Sunghoon takes his denim jacket off, using it as a makeshift umbrella for the both of you as you run towards the nearest awning, shaking with giddy laughter until you forget about the chilly rain and the clothes sticking to your skin. When it doesn’t let up for another few minutes, Sunghoon suggests catching the bus back, and you agree.

The heating on the bus is set on low, but it’s enough to warm Sunghoon up as soon as he steps onto it. You sit at the back in a corner of your own, multiple rows away from the other people onboard. The two of you are relatively quiet, lost in your own thoughts until Sunghoon, after much internal deliberating, takes one of your hands in his and interlaces your fingers together. You look up at him, but he doesn’t return your gaze, eyes fixed on the window to hide his shy smile and the blush slowly staining his cheeks. To his surprise, you squeeze his hand and rest your head on his shoulder. He freezes for a second, unsure how to react to your reciprocated affection, but he makes himself relax into your touch, and starts brushing his thumb back-and-forth on the back of your hand. The sudden storm has made day turn to night a little earlier today, and with the quiet hum of the bus, he finds himself on the edge of sleep for the whole ride—the only thing keeping him awake is his booming heart.

The bus is nearing his stop when the buzz of his phone in his back pocket jolts him awake. You lift your head from his shoulder, massaging your neck as you fish your phone out of your own pocket. Sunghoon, more intrigued by you than by whoever has texted him, watches as the brightness of your screen makes you wince. Once you’ve read the text, you turn towards him, sleepy eyes and sleepy voice as you ask him whether he’s seen “this,” referring to a text from Chaewon. dinner at our flat tonight!!! come whenever. bring drinks.

“Oh, I forgot she was doing that tonight,” you say through a yawn.

Sunghoon chuckles. “Do you have enough energy for it?”

“I always have enough energy for Chaewon’s cooking.”

You and Sunghoon make a pit-stop at a grocery store to buy two bottles of white wine and the hummus Chaewon likes, then head to your flat. Naturally, questions are asked when you and Sunghoon arrive at the exact same time, but before Sunghoon can explain that you spent the day together, Minjeong’s head pops out of the kitchen door, and she asks whether you ran into each other downstairs. Chaewon is only looking at the both of you, waiting for an answer, so she doesn’t see the very pointed look Minjeong gives you, as if to say Agree with me or else. You quickly glance at Sunghoon then say, “Yeah, we just arrived at the same time.” When they’ve both turned away, you tell him in a hushed tone that you’ll ask her about it later.

The girls are busy in the small kitchen and Chaewon insists that they don’t need any more help, so you and Sunghoon bring two chairs by the kitchen door and sit as Yunjin catches the four of you up on the most recent drama in her Law cohort. Jay arrives twenty minutes later, but it isn’t another hour before Jake shows up with the excuse that he was taking a nap.

“Someone would think you don’t sleep at night, with the amount of naps you take,” you say.

“Oh my God, I miss when you weren’t here,” Jake replies, flicking your forehead before promptly plopping himself down on the couch. “I was so hungover when I woke up. I had to sleep it off,” he explains as he grabs four cans of beer from his backpack.

Chaewon always makes a point to ask how everyone’s spent their day, but today, she unfortunately starts with Sunghoon, so he doesn’t have any time to come up with anything believable other than the truth, which is exactly what he does—and when Jay asks, What, to the beach by yourself? under Minjeong’s heavy gaze, he has no choice but to say yes. He isn’t sure why it’s such a big deal that you spent the day with him, or why it needs to be kept a secret, but there must be a reason. He’ll find out later. When it’s your turn, you look straight into Sunghoon’s eyes as you say you spent the day at the library but didn’t get much work done. Everyone ignores Jake when he exclaims Boring! and Chaewon swiftly moves onto Jay.

But you don’t.

Your eyes stay on Sunghoon, unflinchingly watching him, expression unreadable, and he finds himself unable to look away, even as he feels his face heat up and his stomach flip. Then you smile, a satisfied smirk like you got what you wanted, and shift your gaze to Jay, who’s going on and on about the first six episodes of Lost he binge-watched earlier and wondering why nobody had told him about this “masterpiece of a show” before. Sunghoon is too busy thinking about the way you’d looked at him and pondering all the reasons for it to listen carefully. He watched Lost when he was fourteen anyway.

All throughout the evening, as the seven of you eat Chaewon’s pasta dish (which she made entirely from scratch, and is probably one of the best things to have ever graced Sunghoon’s taste buds), drink, talk, and afterwards, play card games, every glance between you and Sunghoon feels like a secret conversation that only the two of you are privy to. No one except for Minjeong is aware that you spent the day just the two of you until now—and even she doesn’t know what it is you did. Within a day of knowing each other, you already share memories that are yours and no one else’s. Sunghoon is giddy with the knowledge, heart skipping every time your eyes meet, no matter how fleetingly. When you’re all saying goodbye, it takes everything in him not to hug you for an awkwardly long time and to tear himself away from you.

He can hardly fall asleep that night.

For the entirety of the year you were gone, Sunghoon could only nod and smile while the others bemoaned your absence or commented on how much more fun it’d be if you were here (even Jake, after enough wine spritzers, would admit to missing you). He understood that the group dynamics might feel different to them without you around, but this particular set of people was all he knew, so he never minded it. It reminded him of people telling him how sad it must’ve been growing up without a father, trying to be empathetic, when he didn’t know how he could miss something he never had.

But now that you’re here, he gets it. You add something to the group that he can’t quite put his finger on. It’s in your affectionate gestures towards Chaewon and Yunjin, in your shared sense of humor with Jay (which no one else seems to find funny, save for Sunghoon, sometimes), in your bickering with Minjeong and downright arguing with Jake. It’s a hackneyed expression, but you do light up a room—at least in Sunghoon’s opinion, you do. In your presence, everything feels not only more lively, but also more cohesive, like you were the missing piece of a puzzle. Like a historic work of art that has been returned to its rightful owner.

Sunghoon just finds himself drawn to you, at times unable to keep his eyes off of you, and the only things keeping him from making a move are his inherent shyness and the eyes of your friends. He doesn’t want to mess up the friendship he has with anyone from the group, least of all Jake, just because he can’t keep it in his pants. He thought of Yunjin and Chaewon, how their relationship had gone smoothly from the beginning and posed no problem to the dynamic of the group, but he had no idea if this was replicable between you and him at all.

If he had to be honest, a big part of him was also just afraid you’d reject him.

Getting a read on you is hard, which doesn’t help. It’s been three weeks since the gang reunited, since that party where you met. The first semester of his second and your fourth year started a little bit over a week ago; Sunghoon sometimes worries that you think there is some big age gap between you and that you see him as a kid, even though, admittedly, two years is not such a huge difference. In those three weeks, there have been many encounters which could be seen as cases of flirting between the two of you—Sunghoon has noticed every single one of them and replayed each an embarrassing amount of times in his head. A hand carefully posited on his shoulder; prolonged eye contact; jokes whispered in his ear at a crowded house party; knees lightly touching at first, then pressed together during movie night. None of it ever fails to make Sunghoon’s heart flutter. You could breathe in his general direction and it’d make his heart beat fast enough to worry a cardiologist, so when you smile at him, it’s a small death every time.

And so he dares hope that his interest isn’t one-sided—although most of the time, he is so stuck between thinking none of it means anything and thinking every single thing you do is a sign that you like him, that he rarely knows what to think. And whenever you’ve paid him enough attention to make him believe it’s not all in his head, you do something that proves him wrong. Watching you interact with other people, he realizes that you keep good eye contact with everyone and that you’re just as touchy and playful with all of your friends. At parties, you hit it off with new people and catch up with old friends without so much as a hint of awkwardness. He watches as you talk to other guys, the same smile that has been making him weak for the past three weeks, directed towards them and not him. Sunghoon assumes you’re either really nice to everyone and oblivious to the fact that it could be seen as flirting, or you just flirt with everyone.

In that sense, the two of you are complete opposites. Sunghoon, whose entire friend group hangs on the fact that he befriended Jay, who knew Jake, who knew you, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon. Sunghoon who has spoken to maybe half of his hockey team outside of the locker rooms and the occasional party. Sunghoon who, outside of his usual friend group, has managed to make three other friends on his own in the year he’s been at university, because they had been put in a group project and magically hit it off enough to upgrade from classmates to friends.

Then there’s you, who has to stop every thirty seconds at a party to say hi to someone you know. You, who still keeps in touch with the friends you made in a foreign country, even those who spoke broken English. You, who didn’t make Sunghoon feel like his crippling shyness was a problem when you first met.

He doesn’t understand how everyone who meets you doesn’t instantly fall in love.

Or maybe they do, and he’s just one of many vying for your heart.

Tonight is one of the nights where all he can do is watch from afar as you interact with another man that he desperately wishes was him. With your lower back against the kitchen counter, drink in hand as you laugh with that other guy, eyes never leaving his face, it almost looks like someone has copied your time with Sunghoon at the costume party and pasted it onto this post-hockey game party. All you’re missing is a bright pink cowgirl hat and boots to match.

And yet, it’s his team jacket over your shoulders, his name and number on your back. Sunghoon shouldn’t feel nearly as jealous as he does.

So he does what any good friend would do, and blames Jay for reasons completely unwarranted—even now, days after receiving his advice, and hours after taking it, Sunghoon still can’t help but regret involving him at all.

Initially, Sunghoon hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about his growing feelings for you—he’d thought that if he pushed them away and kept them to himself, they’d go away on their own. But clearly, they didn’t, seeing as how his stomach always twisted in nervous excitement at the prospect of seeing you and how he could never get through a conversation with you without blushing. So, quicker than he’d like to admit, he’d given in and told Jay about the day you’d spent at the beach and how felt about you now, thinking it was some big shameful secret that would render his friend flabbergasted.

That was his first mistake.

Jay wasn’t impressed. “Yeah, it’s been pretty obvious, dude,” he’d said through a mouthful of cheeseburger. It was after hockey practice, and they were sitting in the burger joint near the ice rink that had some of the best student deals in town. Jake was going on a Hinge date, and Sunghoon had lured Jay in with the promise of free food (Jay wanted to go home and game, but all Sunghoon needed to do to convince him was to say “I’ll pay for it”).

“Obvious? How obvious? Does everyone know? Does Jake know?” Sunghoon asked, growing more agitated by the second.

“Jake is possibly the worst room-reader that has ever lived, so no, I don’t think he’s caught on. But the rest of us know. I mean, you look at her like a twelve-year-old with a crush on his English teacher,” Jay said, unceremoniously cramming fries into his mouth.

Sunghoon ignored the slightly humiliating remark, still preoccupied by the fact that he hadn’t been as discreet as he thought he had. He leant in towards Jay and dropped his voice to a whisper, even though the restaurant was practically empty, save for them and a group of rowdy middle school boys who were definitely not paying attention to them. “Do you think… does she know?”

Jay dropped his fist on the table in sudden annoyance, causing Sunghoon to jump back in his seat. “Now you’re acting like a twelve-year-old.” Before Sunghoon could defend himself and argue that he’s being completely rational, Jay launches into a surprisingly moving monologue. “It’s fine if you like her, there’s nothing to be embarrassed of. Everybody feels attraction towards other people, everybody gets crushes, it’s no big deal. Just talk to her. Worst case scenario, she doesn’t feel the same way, and you both move on, because you’re adults.”

There’s nothing worse than a friend being right about something you absolutely don’t want to hear. Sunghoon did feel like he had been carrying a horrible secret around, but Jay was spot-on: crushes are a very common, very human experience. And yet Sunghoon managed to feel like he was the only one who had ever had to go through this torture. “You say that like it’s easy,” he said, sulking.

“It is easy. You’re making it hard.”

“So what, your advice is just to confess to her?”

Jay rolled his eyes. “See? You’re saying confess like it’s some sin you have to repent for. Yeah, just tell her.”

“Just tell her,” Sunghoon repeated, looking at his friend like he was crazy. Jay just took another bite of his burger.

“Yeah, dude. It’s not even like you’ve known each other for a long time, so there’s no risk of ruining a friendship, or anything.”

“But do you even know if she feels the same way at all?”

Jay shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned anything,” he said, and Sunghoon’s heart dropped in disappointment. “But it’s Y/N, she’ll be cool about it. And who knows, she might actually see something in you, for some godforsaken reason.”

Jay laughed at his own joke, and Sunghoon afforded him a chuckle. They moved on to other topics, but later, as they waited for Jay’s bus to come, he couldn’t help himself. “Do you think Jake will mind? If something happens with Y/N and me?”

Jay thought for a second. “I think he’d be more upset with her than with you, what with everything that happened with Heeseung... But knowing him, he probably won’t care as long as you aren’t weird in front of him.” He puts a hand on Sunghoon’s shoulder and shakes it gently. “Don’t let that stop you from making a move, okay? You’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.” His bus came then, so Sunghoon couldn't ask for more details about this Heeseung situation—he knew that there had been something between you and him which hadn’t ended particularly well, but no one ever really talked about it so he didn’t dare bring it up. All he knew was that it had been significant enough for Jay to mention it now, and for Jake to seem bothered every time it was mentioned.

He put all of that out of his head for the time being. In a way, he had just received Jay’s blessing; even if it scared him shitless, he could make a move. Perhaps not something as straightforward as Jay was suggesting, but something, at the very least.

The first major hockey game of the season was that coming Friday. Sunghoon had an idea.

The morning of, he shot you a text. He tried to make it sound as nonchalant as he can, so that you wouldn’t know he spent close to an hour deleting, writing and pouring over a singular sentence. Can you meet me in front of the locker rooms 30 mins before the game?

That was his second mistake.

You replied twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Sunghoon spent questioning everything that had led up to this moment.

yn.sim i’ll be there!!

You even got there five minutes early. He was waiting for you, all decked out in his hockey uniform, save for the gloves and protective headgear. He was anxiously chewing on gum, heart doing somersaults inside his ribcage—a grin found his lips as soon as you appeared around the corner, the sight of you alleviating his nerves for a second, then doubling them when you came close. “Hey,” he said, voice soft and slightly trembling.

“Hey,” you simply replied, a smile on your face to match his as he took you in his arms. It was a hug that lasted a second longer than it should, but that also ended too early for his liking.

“Um, I only have a second, Coach will be wanting to give one of his pep talks,” he said when you separated. One quick glance back at the locker room doors behind him, then back at you. The tips of his ears burnt, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from furtively darting between your face and the floor. But he’d come this far, so he couldn’t back out now. He just had to get it over with. “Here,” he blurted out, holding out the letterman jacket he had been hiding behind his back. You grabbed it, eyeing him with amused suspicion at first, but surprise spreaded over your features as you unfurled the jacket.

“Your team jacket?”

He couldn’t tell whether you were amazed or horrified. You stared wide-eyed at the jacket, at its dark green sleeves, at the four letters of his last name and the huge number 8 embroidered onto the back. Your surprise faded back into what he thought — what he hoped — was excitement as you looked at him. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling his face flush red. “Yeah, I just, you know… It’s the first big game of the year, and I thought it’d bring me good luck if a pretty girl was wearing my name…” he explained, repeating the words he’d practiced over and over, voice turning into more and more of a mumble as he spoke. He had planned on speaking with more confidence, but now, the fact that he could speak at all felt like a miracle.

A light giggle spilled out of your mouth. Sunghoon immediately took it for mockery and regretted every decision that had led him here. “Sorry, it was a silly idea, you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it,” he said, reaching for the jacket. But you were quicker than him, hugging the thick bundle of fabric to your chest as you now beamed at him.

“Are you kidding? I love it,” you said, shrugging off your jacket and replacing it with his.

First, relief flooded his body, then pride and excitement — as you spun around and showed the jacket off — at seeing his name on your back, and his attempt at making a move being successful. At least, he thought it was clear what he meant by giving you his jacket to wear at his game—he could only hope you understood. “Well… I’m glad.” Your eyes met, and you both chuckled softly, gazes holding each other’s for a second too long.

Two weeks ago, Sunghoon still would’ve been able to convince himself this was a fluke; that this was just another one of his crushes that a gentle breeze could blow away. Because after all, when Sunghoon fell in love, it usually went as quickly as it came. But at that moment, in front of the locker rooms, his mind solely on you and not the opening game of the season, he realized this was something else entirely. And whatever it was, he hadn’t felt it in a good long while.

He was terrified—but infinitely excited, too.

“Okay, I should probably head back in now,” he forced himself to say, but made no move to go.

“Okay.”

He paused. “Will you be cheering me on?”

Your smile widened. “Of course.”

He nodded slowly, upper body starting to turn away but feet still firmly planted on the ground. “Okay.”

Another second passed, and just as he was about to actually walk away, you grabbed his hand. Before he could compute what was happening, you lifted your head and pressed a small kiss to his cheek. His hand was still in yours when you took a step back, and for once, it was you who looked sheepishly at the floor. “For good luck,” you explained. He had no time to reply—you were already walking away, only looking back once to wave and shoo him in the direction of the locker room. He chuckled and nodded, but waited until you were out of sight to head back into the locker room.

Inside the locker room, everyone was too focused on getting their head in the game to notice his giddy smile. Your lips had been warm and soft against his cheeks, a welcome repeat of that time at the costume party, but the quickness of it all had only made him want more. From that very first night he’d met you, the question of how your lips would feel on his had scarcely left his mind. This brought him a step closer to getting an answer, but also made his curiosity grow tenfold.

Thankfully, by the time his coach gathered them around for a last minute pep talk, he’d managed to put the distracting thoughts of you out of his head, at least temporarily—he’d need to play well, for himself and his team mostly, but impressing you was also a priority.

As the captain, Heeseung said a few words. He reminded the team of how important this match was and went over the main strategy points. For the time being, Sunghoon was able to forget about his arguably unfounded resentment against the older boy and whatever it was he had to do with you. This was not the time for jealousy over someone he had no right to feel jealous over.

A few minutes later, his members and those of the opposing team poured out onto the rink for warm-up. Sunghoon searched the crowd for your face—when he found it, you were already smiling wide and waving at him. His heart did something funny, but Jay punched his shoulder pad and he remembered what he was there for. He could get lost in the eyes of a pretty girl later, specifically when he’d destroyed the other team and shown her how good of a hockey player he was.

Every now and then as he skirted around the rink and did his stretches, he stole glances at you. They didn't last long, because every single time, you’d already be looking, as if your eyes never strayed from him. Knowing you were watching made him nervous at first, but by the end of warm-up, mainly because he didn’t have much of a choice, he’d turned those nerves into an ever stronger will to do well.

The moment the referee blew the whistle, and for the hour that followed, Sunghoon was locked in on one thing and one thing only: winning. He was only competitive when it came to hockey—he didn’t care about dying in an online battle game or losing to Jake at beer pong, but once he was on the rink, he had to win. Pride surged through him and filled every crevice of his aching limbs whenever he or one of his team members scored, and the feeling that came with a victory, with hugging his teammates in celebration or hearing the crowd cheer for them, was like nothing else he’d ever known. The other side of that coin meant that any loss was a tremendous disappointment. Getting beat at an important game could put him in a week-long funk. His sister had once carefully hinted at his self-esteem relying too much on his hockey performance, and although his first reaction had been to dismiss her, he knew she had poked at some truth there. But what could he do—on particularly lonely nights, he truly thought hockey was all he had going for him.

To his overthinking nature, becoming so single-minded the second the whistle blows was a relief, a break from the stress of daily life. He didn’t have to worry about his next deadline or about what the guys on the team thought of him or about the inevitable phone call to his mom asking for more money for groceries. It was respite from the thoughts surrounding you that plagued him: how you felt about him, how you might react knowing what he felt for you, how Jake might react. Why Minjeong hadn’t wanted you to say anything that evening, but why Jay had told him to just go for it. Heeseung, whom he had to respect as the captain and an undeniably talented player, but also as someone who had had something to do with you, whether good or bad. All of it had been wildly bustling around Sunghoon’s mind, but once on the rink, all he had to concern himself with was the puck and getting it in the opposing team’s goal.

And Sunghoon did just that—he scored the first goal of the game, another one in the second period, then a third during the eleventh hour, breaking the tie between the two teams. He smiled right at you after each one, just to make sure you had seen everything. He couldn’t quite describe how it felt to see you clap and cheer for him, jumping up-and-down, forming a megaphone with your hands around your mouth and yelling, “Go Sunghoon!” all while you wore his jacket. It was a separate kind of pride and satisfaction from the sort he’d get seeing anyone else cheer him on, for sure.

The other team put up a good fight, getting in a few goals of their own and protecting their side well, but in the end, thanks to Sunghoon’s goal, it was his team that won. He took his helmet off and got his hair ruffled by half of his team, then shook hands with the other team, trying to contain his boastful smile—some ice hockey players flew off the handle very quickly, and starting a fight was the last thing he wanted.

Kids and local fans huddled by the barriers on each side of the player’s tunnel to get an autograph or a picture. People around here were weirdly attached to their university sport teams, and the athletes on teams that did particularly well — namely football and rugby — were sort of local celebrities. Their ice hockey team wasn’t quite at that stage yet, but they were placing better nationally with every year, and so the local interest had grown. More kids had started signing up for lessons, and their parents often brought them to home games. As Sunghoon chatted with men twice his age and took selfies with ten-year-olds, he tried to find you in the crowd, to no avail. He’d been hoping for a thumbs-up from you for a game well played, or even a hug, but you were nowhere in sight.

It wasn’t until half-an-hour later, after saying bye to all the fans that had waited after the game for them, listening to Heeseung and their coach congratulate them (but also remind them to not take anything for granted), showering and changing, that he got to check his phone.

chaewon we going k-bbq! u guys played well see u later at da party!!!!

Disappointment only had a second to sink to the bottom of his stomach. He’d barely finished reading the text when he was hoisted up by the shoulders. Two of his senior teammates, Soobin and Beomgyu, marched him towards the exit. “We are getting you wasted tonight, Park,” Beomgyu announced, a wide grin on his lips.

“I have a good feeling about this season,” Soobin added. Sunghoon looked back to find Jay and Jake simply shrugging and laughing at him.

Indeed, the second they got to the dorm where tonight’s party would be taking place, a beer was thrusted in his hand. It was only 7 p.m., still light outside, but that didn’t stop the team nor their friends that had come to the game. They sipped beer like it was water, so much so that two hours later, when the party started to grow, Sunghoon was already quite inebriated. It didn’t help that his cup was never empty for too long, and that he had the reassurance of being in his own dorm—it was the closest student building to the ice rink, and so was one of the prime spots for hockey parties. He could get as drunk as he wanted — or as Beomgyu wanted — and still get home in less than a minute.

He somehow ended up in the corridor, part of a nonsensical conversation about candle-making with two guys he had recognized from one of his Phys Ed classes but could not for the life of him remember the names of. One had shared that candle-making was a big hobby of his, and it had made Sunghoon and the other unknown man lose their minds��Sunghoon had never realized how curious about candle-making he was, but he couldn’t stop asking questions. It sounded great. Maybe he’d have to pick up candle-making, too.

Eventually, he headed back to the kitchen for a new drink. For the nth time this evening, he thought of texting you, then immediately thought against it. He wanted to know when you’d get here, but he didn’t want you to know that he wanted to know—although as the night deepened and his intoxication rose, he could remember less and less why that would be such a bad thing. He stepped into the kitchen, and going from the brightly-lit corridor to the dark kitchen with flashing neon lights made him so dizzy that he made a beeline for the couch, needing to sit down for a second.

And that was when he saw you.

Lower back against the counter, talking with a guy he’s never seen in his life. You look like you’re having fun—smiling, laughing, keeping eye contact with that guy. You’re still wearing his jacket. It should probably reassure him—his name is literally on you, what does it matter that you’re speaking to someone else? But instead, all he can think is that wearing his jacket must mean nothing to you. What was basically a confession from him seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

His friends’ words over the past year come back to him—how much you flirt with people, how it wasn’t a rare occurrence for you to go home with a guy after a party and never speak of him ever again. Was this what was happening here?

He knows it’s unreasonable, but in his drunken state, he takes it as a betrayal. Like he can’t believe you haven’t read his mind, figured out how he felt about you, and decided to give special attention to him and him only. He’s only able to take it for so long—two minutes later, he trudges out of the room, walking right past you but not looking your way.

His new mission is to find his friends, but before he’s done much searching, he hears his name being called out. Of course, he recognizes your voice immediately, but he doesn’t quite believe it until he looks over his shoulder, and there you are, face glowing and smiling wide. You’ve clearly had a few drinks, but he likes to think you’d be just as happy to see him if you were sober. He turns around to face you, watching as you narrow the distance between the two of you. He’s not in a much better state—the simple thought that you had come after him makes him forget any sort of resentment he held against you a second ago. When you reach him, he holds on to one of your arms, as much an effort to stabilize his swaying body as an excuse to touch you.

“Hey,” he simply says. He’s always at a loss for words around you, so scared he’ll say the wrong thing that he ends up barely speaking at all. He’s only sober enough to know that with all the cheap beer and vodka running through his blood, his odds of making a fool of himself are even bigger.

“Hey. I was wondering where you were.”

“You’re the one who came late.”

“I know!” you exclaim. “I wanted to come right away, but Chaewon was hell-bent on getting her Korean barbecue.”

“She does get cranky when she hasn’t had pork belly in a while.” Sunghoon feels like he’s just won the Nobel Prize when you let out a laugh. “Was the food good at least?”

“It was amazing. So worth getting here late,” you joke.

He rolls his eyes playfully. “I see how it is.” Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, “Then we should go there together next time.”

Your smile changes, turning from cheerful to surprised, but amused—almost mischievous. You take a step forward. Sunghoon gulps; the gap between the two of you was narrow to begin with. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

Usually, this type of straight-forwardness would have him stuttering, but drunk Sunghoon is a man sober Sunghoon barely recognizes in the morning. “Yeah. I am. Is that okay?”

You nod. “Mh-hm.”

“Nice. Okay.” For a second, you just look at each other. Another thing about drunk Sunghoon: he doesn’t feel like prolonged eye contact will make him spontaneously combust. He actually quite enjoys it. He also stumbles, even when all he’s doing is trying to stand straight. “You’re still wearing my jacket,” he eventually says, reaching out to take the end of your sleeve between his fingers.

You stretch out your arms and appraise the team jacket as if you only remembered you had it on. “Yeah. It’s comfy.”

“It looks good. You look good.”

“You’re not quite sober, are you?” you ask suddenly.

“Is it that obvious?” When you nod, he giggles, lowering his head in defeat. “The guys made me drink so much.”

“You did score three goals after all. And you looked good doing it.”

At the praise, he stands up to his full height and places his palms behind his head in a victorious pose. “I did, didn’t I?” he says, looking off in the distance with a self-assured look that makes you burst into laughter. He drops the confident facade and laughs along with you, until somebody bumps into him and sends him stumbling forwards. If you weren’t standing there to catch him, he’d probably have fallen flat on his face. But even though he doesn’t fall, he feels all the alcohol catching up to him and threatening to come right back out where it came from. You hold him for a second, and just as you ask him if he’s okay, he says, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

You sigh. “Okay. Where’s your room?”

Arm under his shoulders, you let Sunghoon lean most of his weight on you as you guide him towards the elevator. It’s just one floor, but you said you didn’t want to risk the stairs with him. “Hey, who was that guy with you in the kitchen? That guy in the striped shirt? You guys seemed real chummy back there…” he mumbles as you help him out of the elevator. Even on the verge of sickness, Sunghoon is preoccupied by more important things.

“Oh, that was Jaemin.”

“Jaemin,” he echoes, more venom in his voice than needed.

You look at him, taking in his disgruntled expression, and chuckle. “Yeah, he’s having some problems with his boyfriend. He asked me for advice.”

Sunghoon almost freezes in his tracks, but you’re there to keep him walking towards his room. “Oh. He has a boyfriend.”

“Yeah…” He can tell you want to tease him about it, but thankfully, you say nothing. He’s made it clear he had gotten jealous of your gay friend—no need to spell it out in so many words. Once you reach his studio (which he’d stupidly left unlocked), he heads straight for the bathroom, locking himself in, half out of embarrassment, half because he really doesn’t want you to see him throw up. Talk about a turn-off. He leans over the toilet bowl, waiting for the vomit to rise, but nothing comes. He waits, and waits, mind completely empty, head spinning even though he’s sitting very still, when suddenly a knock on the door pulls him out of his stupor.

“Sunghoon? It’s been ten minutes. Everything okay?”

He doesn’t say anything, just unlocks the door for you. Without realizing, he fell asleep like a bored teenager in math class. “All right,” he hears you say.

He’s surprised you’re able to carry him out of the bathroom—if he was a deadweight before, by now, rigor mortis has practically set in. Despite his small student room, crossing it takes you an entire minute, and when you reach his bed, you all but let him flop on the mattress. He doesn’t mind. As soon as his body hits the bed, he feels quite snug, curling against his blanket. You start to unbutton his shirt, probably just thinking he’s already fallen asleep and wanting to make him more comfortable, but your fingers freeze when he starts giggling. Shoulders shaking with unbridled laughter, he feels as delighted as a five-year-old who just said a naughty word and made all his drunk relatives laugh at the family dinner.

“I know I looked really hot tonight, but can we wait until I’m sober?” he asks, slurring his words slightly and keeping his eyes shut, despite the shit-eating smirk on his lips. You hit him on the chest but it just makes him laugh more.

“Bold of you to assume I’d still hit when I’ve just had to peel you off your toilet seat.” He lets you finish helping him out of his button-down.

“Wouldn’t you?” he asks. He tries to look at you, but his eyes don’t quite open all the way, and they don’t focus properly, due to a strong mix of alcohol and inappropriate thoughts. Of you, specifically. His body feels suddenly very heavy, his want for you weighing him down into the mattress. The room is dark, your face illuminated only by the light in the bathroom and the glow of the street lights outside. You always look pretty, but your beauty is especially breath-taking right now, Sunghoon thinks. He wants to reach out and touch your face, wants to trace your jawline and know what your skin would feel like against his fingers. He doesn’t realize he’s actually doing it until he hears you inhale shakily.

The expression in your eyes is unreadable, and quickly gone, replaced by an annoyed squint. You grab his wrist gently, setting it back down next to him. “I’m gonna make you some ramen. You need to sober up, and you haven’t had dinner, have you?”

Sunghoon shakes his head. He feels rejected, and it makes him inordinately sad.

For five minutes, he watches as you rummage around his cupboards for a pack of ramen, fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil. His thoughts float back to your day at the beach, memories that he’s preciously held onto for the past few weeks. You running around on the sand, opening yourself up to him and letting him open himself up to you, holding his hand on the bus. That day, he’d really thought it would be the beginning of something new; but as time passed, he became less and less sure of himself. He’s scared it might’ve just been a fluke, and that he’d have to destroy the castle he’d built in his head. He’s seen you almost every day since, but it’s never been the same. And even if your eyes met unexpectedly sometimes, or if you went out of your way to sit next to him during movie nights, he can’t let himself go on with so few signs. Jay was right—he had to be clear about his feelings, otherwise this would go on forever. Even if it didn’t feel like it, the Earth would continue spinning on its axis if you didn’t reciprocate.

“I’ve missed you.”

You pause in your movements. “Missed me? But we’ve seen each other every day,” you say after a few seconds, still facing away from him. Your voice is softer than he’s heard it before, almost unsure of itself.

“No,” Sunghoon whines, frowning. He can barely keep his eyes open—he wishes you could read his mind so he wouldn’t have to explain, but alas. “I miss you—the you from the beach. When it was just me and you. It’s not the same with the others around.”

Silence falls over the room again. Sunghoon wonders if you’re just going to ignore what he said, until you take a deep breath, and walk back to his bed. You crouch in front of him and take both of his hands in yours. Electricity flows from where your hands touch to the rest of his body. He suddenly feels a lot more awake.

“It’s just the two of us now,” you whisper.

Sunghoon nods. “I know. It’s nice.”

You smile. It might be the alcohol playing tricks on him, but Sunghoon swears there’s a hint of sadness in your eyes. One of your hands comes up to his hair. You thread your fingers gently through it, pushing it away from his forehead, then bring your hand down to the side of his face, your palm cupping it tenderly. Sunghoon lets himself lean into your warm touch. With his eyes closed, the darkness surrounding him makes this feel like a dream—he basks in the moment so as not to let a second of it go to waste.

“Do you wanna do something just us two this week?” you ask softly. His eyes shoot open—he needs to be sure this is really happening. He nods again, fervently this time, and it makes you chuckle. “Okay.”

“Just us two?”

“Just us two.”

He relaxes once more. He guides your hand towards his mouth and presses his lips against your palm. Something shifts in your eyes—Sunghoon thinks the opportunity to finally kiss you has arisen, but as soon as his gaze drops to your lips, you’re back on your feet. “Let’s eat some ramen, shall we?” you ask as you head back towards the kitchen. Sunghoon tries his best (and probably fails) to not let his disappointment show.

There’s no dining table to speak of, only a low table near Sunghoon’s bed, on which you set down a wooden board and the steaming pot of spicy noodles. You hand him a pair of chopsticks and a spoon, and tell him to eat. Neither of you say much for a while, and Sunghoon grows redder and redder under your watchful gaze. He asks if you want any a few times, but you always turn him down. The silence quickly gets a little too unbearable for him, and he’s got a question burning the tip of his tongue anyway. Now’s as good a time as ever to ask it.

“Something’s been bugging me recently, actually…” You wait for him to go on. “So, at the costume party, right?” You nod. “You said there was only one person you wanted to kiss… Did you mean me?”

You tilt your head, looking at him like you’re trying to figure out whether he’s joking or not. “Yeah, Sunghoon… I meant you. Who else?”

He’s only half-relieved. “So why won’t you kiss me now?”

To his surprise, you smile. “Because you’re drunk.”

Confusion fogs Sunghoon’s brain. Is that all you’re worried about? Is his blood alcohol level the only thing stopping you from kissing him? “But I-I’m fine. I give you consent to kiss me, Y/N.” He’s dead serious, so when you laugh, it only frustrates him further.

“Finish your food, Sunghoon. We’ll see about kissing later.”

He sighs. Later he could deal with. “Fine. But I’ll hold you to it, okay?” he says, pointing a menacing chopstick at you.

“Okay.”

But Sunghoon can’t keep quiet for long—ten seconds later, he’s remembered another question he’s been dying to ask. He continues drinking his soup in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “So what happened between you and Heeseung?”

The question takes you so off-guard, you look like you would’ve done a spit-take had you been drinking water. “That’s-you know about that?”

“Well, not much, that’s why I’m asking.”

You scoff. “Why do you want to know? It’s boring.”

At those words, Sunghoon whips his head up to look at you. “It’s not boring!” he exclaims, perhaps a tad too vigorously. “Anything that has to do with you is interesting to me.”

Finally, the corners of your lips rise. Sunghoon hated the ten seconds in which you weren’t smiling. “Well, there isn’t much to say, anyway. We had a thing when we were in second year, I caught feelings and wanted more, and he didn’t. The end.”

Sunghoon freezes, staring at you with his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth agape. He then sets his cutlery down neatly next to the pot of ramen and clasps his hands together like he’s in a business meeting. “So you’re telling me that he had the opportunity to make you his girlfriend and he just… didn’t?”

You shrug. “Basically, yeah.”

He hits the bedsheets next to him, huffing out in annoyance. “What an idiot.”

“He sure is,” you say. You smile to yourself as you grab Sunghoon’s spoon and try some of the broth. He wonders whether anything lies behind that smile. “But it happened a while ago. Don’t be weird with him on my account. He’s still your captain.”

Sunghoon thinks for a second. “Can I side-eye him once in a while? Or not pass him the puck during practice?”

“Sure,” you reply, laughing. You swiftly move on to other topics as Sunghoon slurps the last of his noodles, asking him about the beginning of the party and just how much his teammates made him drink. He’s recounting the shot contest they held, which Mark won with an impressive seven shots of tequila in a row — Sunghoon hopes the boy is okay now — when your phones buzz at the same time. Minjeong’s name appears on your screen, Jay’s on his, both asking where you are.

“Should we head back now?” you offer, although Sunghoon, wishfully perhaps, detects a trace of reluctance in your voice. “You look like you’ve sobered up a bit, seeing as you’re able to string more than two sentences together.”

“I wasn’t that bad!”

“I should’ve filmed you.”

It’s one a.m. when you head back down, and the party is in full swing. Pop music blasts through someone’s JBL speaker in the shared kitchen, the hallways are more crowded than the subway at rush hour, just as full of hockey fans celebrating their team’s win as students who just wanted an excuse to party, and every window is open to alleviate some of the stuffiness. They probably have another hour left before the dorm residents who decided not to join in the festivities call campus police on them.

Sunghoon is relieved to find that Jake is off with other team members, reaching levels of drunkenness that will most definitely be regretted in the morning. Technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong—he simply let you nurse him back to sobriety after he almost regurgitated his pre-game protein bar and three beers all over your nice shirt. Chaewon and Yunjin are busy making out in a corner, their lack of decorum only increasing when they’ve been drinking, but Jay and Minjeong eye you suspiciously upon seeing the two of you arrive together. You explain what happened so casually that they don’t question it any further.

Chaewon and Yunjin only tear themselves off of each other when a Beyoncé song starts playing, and they drag all four of you to the makeshift dancefloor, which is really just three meters away in the middle of the kitchen. Sunghoon is practically all sobered up by now, but he’s loosened up enough not to feel self-conscious with every step he takes; the fact that you look so happy, dancing with him and laughing at his silly moves, is a considerable bonus. He won’t drink any more, not wanting to risk embarrassing himself further in front of you, and Jay, as the group’s self-proclaimed health guru, probably had his last beer around nine p.m., but the girls, each of them with a cup of suspicious transparent liquid in hand, are getting drunker by the minute—and so is Jake, who has now joined you all on the dancefloor, if his inability to stand straight is anything to go by. Sunghoon assumes you’re also done with alcohol for the night, until you turn to him in the middle of a song no one has heard since 2015 and tell him you’re going to get a drink.

“Okay!” he simply answers, and for a good thirty seconds, basks in the blissful satisfaction of knowing he was the one you informed of your whereabouts. That is, until he realizes a minute later that it was probably a covert invitation for him to come along, which he totally missed. But when he looks over at the counter where all the drinks are, his heart drops—Heeseung is standing in front of you, pouring gin and lemonade into your cup. A flurry of emotions course through Sunghoon, emotions he has no idea what to do with, because he’s not sure they’re entirely warranted. He’s angry that Heeseung is talking to you, after what he did, confused that you’d let him; but mostly, he’s jealous. But he knows it’s only because he has no guarantee that you like him, and that you won’t go off with Heeseung, despite having just talked about how you were over him.

Wait—is that really what you said? You told Sunghoon that what happened with Heeseung didn’t bother you anymore, which doesn’t necessarily mean you wouldn’t go back to him, given the chance.

Before he can think it over a second time, Sunghoon heads over to where you and Heeseung stand. He places himself right behind you, reaching for a bottle of Coke on your side and pouring himself a drink.

“Oh, hey, Hoon,” his team captain says, clearly surprised to see him there and looking so discontented. Sunghoon can’t remember whether they’ve ever been close enough for Heeseung to call him by his nickname. “Having fun?”

“Yep,” he curtly replies, avoiding eye contact with either of you and looking out at the crowd of party-goers instead. He can feel your gaze, heavy on his face, can see the knowing smirk slowly rising on your lips. How was it that you could see right through him so easily?

“Too much dancing made you thirsty?” you ask, taking a drink from your cup and hiding your smile behind it.

He glares at you, more annoyed that his attempt at subtly sussing out what you and Heeseung were doing together was shut down so quickly than anything else. “Yep,” he repeats.

“You guys know each other?” the older boy asks, eyes darting between the two of you.

“Jake introduced us,” Sunghoon quickly answers. To his surprise, this makes Heeseung chuckle.

“Jay, Sunghoon, me… Wow, do you meet all your friends through your brother, Y/N?” he asks jokingly. Immediately, so many alarm bells ring in Sunghoon’s head—the implication that you and Heeseung are friends, the fact that he put himself and Sunghoon in the same bag, and above all, that teasing, almost flirtatious tone of his.

He’s horrified to find you rolling your eyes playfully and saying, “I have other friends, thanks,” in a tone far too similar. At that moment, Minjeong starts yelling about how much she loves everyone in this room but particularly “you guys,” pointing to Jake, Jay, Minjeong and Chaewon, and “you guys, too!” screaming over the music as she points to you and Sunghoon.

“There’s one of them,” you say, half-amused, half-exasperated. “We should probably go check on her. See you around, Heeseung.”

“Right. See you, Y/N. Sunghoon.”

Back to no-nickname basis, apparently.

Your group’s indicator of when it’s time to go home is when Minjeong starts one of her “I-love-my-friends-so-much” rants—if she’s that drunk, everyone else must be wasted. Indeed, Chaewon and Yunjin are holding onto each other to keep themselves from falling down, and Jake is unable to keep his head up. You, Sunghoon and Jay herd your friends outside and wait for Jake’s Uber, making sure to get him safely inside and to tip the driver generously for his pains. Jay lives nearby yours and the girls’ flat, and Sunghoon, ever the gentleman, walks you all home.

“Just ‘cause you and Jay might need a hand getting these three home,” he tells you. Yunjin, Chaewon and Minjeong are currently running around on the road, pointing and laughing at random shop names, and Jay is yelling at them to get back on the sidewalk.

“Mh-hm.”

“And it’ll be good to completely sober up before going to bed.”

“Right.”

There’s no use putting up a front with you—he’s an open book and you’re an avid reader. You don’t need to say anything to make it clear that you know it’s just an excuse to spend more time with you.

“You know, I told you not to be weird with Heeseung,” you say, gently punching him in the arm.

“Was I weird?” he asks, knowing fully well he hadn’t acted at all like he usually did around his captain.

“You basically only spoke to let Heeseung know we’re friends. You were making yourself all tall and looking mysteriously out into the distance instead of at us.”

“But I am tall and mysterious,” he says, pride coursing through him as it always does when you laugh at one of his jokes.

“You’re probably the least mysterious person I know, Hoon.”

Hoon. How much sweeter that name sounds coming from you over anyone else.

“So you agree that I’m tall?”

You roll your eyes, but there’s a grin on your face. A win is a win. “That’s just a fact.”

Sunghoon smiles victoriously. “I’ll take a fact. But I’m sorry if I was acting weird… I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t bothering you.”

“Heeseung is always bothering me,” you say with a sigh. “He comes up to me like this at every party. He’s just asking how I’ve been, but it’s like he’s sussing out whether or not he’s still got a chance.”

“Do you need me to beat him up? Threaten him? Dox him?”

Even though Sunghoon was only half-joking, you burst out laughing, hard enough for Minjeong to whip around and shout, “What are you laughing about?” as if you had offended her personally. At least Jay is there to make her turn around and focus on walking straight.

“I appreciate the offer, but that won’t be needed. I just don’t like talking about it, ‘cause it’s really not that big a deal anymore. It feels like digging up old bones, you know?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “I’d commit grave robbery with you.”

“You-what?”

“Nevermind. We obviously don’t have to talk about it, but I’m curious.”

You sigh. “I guess it’d make sense for you to know about this.” Sunghoon thinks he sees something like panic flash across your features, but it’s so quick and such a rare expression on you that he’s not sure whether he just imagined it. “You know-just ‘cause everyone else is aware of it, and everything,” you quickly explain.

“Sure.”

“I just… I’m sure Heeseung is a nice guy when it comes to other things, but what the girls and I have concluded is that he’s a bit of an attention whore, you know. When it comes to girls. We fooled around for a while, and he never made it official, even when I made it pretty clear that that was what I wanted. But every time we saw each other after that, he’d flirt with me like nothing had happened. I fell for it at first and flirted back, thinking he had changed his mind… but he really just wanted to make sure I was still into him.”

“Looking for validation,” Sunghoon says.

“Exactly. And when I realized that, I stopped giving it to him. I was getting tired of him anyway, saying the same thing every time. But now, I entertain him for a couple of minutes before I walk away. I shut him down before he gets a chance to do it to me.”

“That’s smart.”

“I know,” you say, smiling. “I understand the need for validation, but he won’t be getting any from me.”

Jay bravely handles the three drunkards the whole way home, letting you and Sunghoon hang behind and carry on talking. You reach the boy’s apartment first, and yours five minutes later. But when you reach your front door, Minjeong announces she needs to talk to Sunghoon. “Privately,” she emphasizes.

You give Sunghoon an amused look and shrug as if to say “She’s your problem now.” He doesn’t have time to protest before you’ve bid him goodnight and disappeared behind the door, Yunjin and Chaewon in tow, yelling good night at Sunghoon like they’re not going to see him for months.

Minjeong places her palms flat onto Sunghoon’s torso and looks right at him—to the best of her ability, at least, considering she’s having a hard time focusing her eyes. “Sunghoon,” she says gravely.

“Minjeong?”

“Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” she says, slurring her words. “You know I love Y/N, she’s amazing…”

“Yeah, she is,” Sunghoon says firmly—already, he can tell where this is going, and he doesn’t like it.

“But she’s not the best with relationships.”

“What do you mean?”

Minjeong’s hands drop by her sides and she exhales deeply. “I’ve just never seen her in a committed relationship in the-in the almost four years I’ve known her. She never lets things get serious. She’s just so afraid of being hurt, Hoon, and I-”

A hiccup escapes Minjeong’s lips as tears start pooling in her eyes. Sunghoon has only ever seen Minjeong cry when drunk—even movies that had him sobbing barely made her eyes water. Even if she isn’t in her right state of mind, he knows it means this must be important to her. He holds her arms and tries to put on the most reassuring tone he can. “But I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“No, I know that. I’m scared you’d get hurt. I don’t want things to become weird between all of us.”

Sunghoon shakes his head. “Minjeong, what-that wouldn’t happen.”

“But it will!” she exclaimed. “If something happens with you and her, and it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, it’ll make things awkward-”

“If that happens,” he interrupts, “I’ll deal with it. I won’t make it your guys’ problem. Y/N and I are adults, okay?”

“You’re like, nineteen…”

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t worry about it, okay? It’ll be fine.” He takes a step back and opens the door for her to get in.

She’s only on the first stair when she turns back around. “But, Hoon-” she tries, though he cuts her off.

“Minjeong, I promise-”

“Just don’t rush into anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Go inside.”

She complies, giving him one last look before climbing the stairs to her apartment. Sunghoon closes the door behind her, a heavy sigh leaving his lips.

Sunghoon is on his way home from hockey practice when his phone buzzes with a text from you.

yn are you still up for doing something this week?

He almost throws his phone in the air in celebration, as if it was a graduation cap. His Sunday was spent going back-and-forth between lapidating himself for his drunken stupidity, memories, rough as stones, hitting him in the face every time he thought of what he said and how he acted, and congratulating himself for having finally made his feelings for you somewhat clearer. Hopefully, you now know he isn’t just awkward and silent around new people—well, he is, but it’s worse with you.

She never lets things get serious.

Minjeong’s warnings echo in his head as he types a positive — although not over-enthusiastic, ‘cause that’d be uncool — answer, but he dismisses them easily. Perhaps he shouldn’t; Sunghoon is, after all, incredibly serious about any and all romantic encounters. The girl at the grocery store who reached for the same red bell pepper as him was the most serious thing to him in the world for a good ten minutes; all of his school crushes were of utmost importance to him, however long they had lasted.

So this? This is capital-s Serious. But therein lies the problem; he’s so serious about you that he’d let you not make it serious. If Minjeong is right, and you’re not planning on taking this nearly as far as he wishes for it to go, he can already tell he’ll just let you. He’ll probably be happy you wanted anything to do with him at all.

He has ways of reassuring himself, of convincing himself he isn’t a totally lost cause. Because when Sunghoon falls in love — and he had an inkling this was what this was — it usually goes as quickly as it came. Who’s to say this time next week he won’t have completely moved on? Maybe this date that he’s agreed to will go horribly wrong, you’ll be rude to the waiter, you’ll spill tomato sauce all over your shirt, and the flame in his heart will be put out. Easy as that.

You decide to meet on Wednesday evening, two days from now. Sunghoon suggests a Japanese restaurant he likes, a place he had gone to with his mom and sister when they had dropped him off at university before his first year, and that he knows is nice enough for a date but won’t burn a hole through his wallet.

Seeing you at the library the day before is a real thrill. Nobody but you knows of your plans—at least not until he caves in and tells Jay about it, who congratulates him with a roll of his eyes and a pat on the head. All of your eye contact feels loaded with the kind of complicity that comes with sharing a secret. As much as he would love boasting about it to every soul who’d listen, this secrecy electrifies him—it binds the two of you with something much more real than before. At least, more real than Sunghoon’s imagination and one-sided feelings. He knows that your text wasn’t in any way a confession of your own feelings for him, but it’s a step in the right direction.

In the few hours before your reservation at seven p.m., Sunghoon spends so much time thinking about the date that he’s almost late for it. He thinks about his expectations, then tries to get rid of them; he comes up with ideas of what your expectations might be, remembers Minjeong’s words, dismisses them, remembers them again; he goes through scenarios upon scenarios of everything that might go wrong and everything that might go spectacularly well. He ends up with less than twenty minutes to get ready, but manages to arrive at the restaurant a minute before you.

When he sees you approaching, Sunghoon feels like one of those boys in Disney movies as they watch their girlfriend coming down the stairs in her prom dress. You’re not wearing an over-the-top poofy purple dress, but the effect is the same—his eyes are glued on you with every step you take towards him.

You grab him by the arm and lead him into the restaurant as soon as you reach him. He’s too busy taking in your appearance to be bothered by it. “Don’t look at me like that,” you chide as you wait for waiting staff to seat you. He’d actually think you were mad at him if it wasn’t for the small smile playing on your lips.

“Like what?”

“Like what you’re doing right now! You’re staring.”

Realization slowly dawns on him; your gazes have made him lose his composure too many times for him not to know what being flustered looks like. He’d be lying if the fact that it was you in this tight spot and not him didn’t heavily stroke his ego.

“Why wouldn’t I? You look beautiful,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper so that the approaching waitress can’t hear. Her presence saves you from responding verbally, but as she brings you to your table, you pinch his arm lightly as if to say Be on your best behavior—although Sunghoon would argue this was his best behavior.

You have trouble making up your mind about the food—you want to try everything on the menu. Sunghoon tentatively offers to order a bunch of dishes and share them. “It’s what my family always does at the restaurant, just try as much as you want and take the leftovers to go. We never ate out very often because my mom would spend so much money every time,” he recollects, smiling fondly.

“That actually sounds like a dream. My parents would never do that. It was always just eat what you got, but I’m unable to look at someone else’s food and not want to try it. It honestly should just be common practice to share dishes at the restaurant.”

Sunghoon thinks he could get down on one knee right then and there. Whenever they went out to eat, the boys would roll his eyes at him when he stole bites of their food. But you—you’re like him. He knows he’s prone to over-exaggeration, but he can’t help but feel like if you understand each other on this, you must understand each other at a molecular level.

He had expected a level of awkwardness to your date, at least at the beginning — God knows the moments in which he doesn’t feel like a mumbling fool in front of you are few and far between — but to his surprise, everything goes smoothly. There is no uncomfortable silence, all his jokes miraculously land, even the lousy ones, and you both laugh and talk and share sushi and pork cutlets like it’s the most natural thing in the world, which perhaps it is. His attempts at flirting are well-received and he only turns violently red twice when you compliment him and smile at him in a particularly pretty way.

It’s that day at the beach all over again. Always on the same page, you dip in and out of topics with a synergy he has rarely felt before. Sunghoon realizes it must be the presence of others, rather than you yourself, that makes him feel like he can’t act the way he wants to around you, makes him so nervous. Save for the moments where you make his heart flutter like a thousand butterflies’ wings, he actually feels quite at ease with you, all things considered. Of course, he still tries — and fails — to look cool for you, but he knows it comes from a place within himself rather than because you make him feel as though he has to meet a certain standard. Surprisingly, he can be totally himself, and it seems to be enough for you.

He loves his friends. He wouldn’t trade them for the world. But he’s not sure he won’t have moments where he’ll wish nothing more than for them all to go away and leave the two of you be.

You eat until you can’t anymore and are still left with enough food for another full meal. You only let him get the bill once he’s promised that next time will be on you. If it means there’ll be a next time, he’s more than happy with making that promise. The sun has set when you exit the restaurant. Sunghoon shivers as he steps outside, the temperature having gone down by at least four degrees in the last two hours.

You grab his hand; it warms him right up.

Your apartment is a thirty-minute bus ride away, but Sunghoon offers to walk you home. Anything to spend more time with you.

He spends the first few minutes of the walk worrying about his hand, whether it’s too clammy, whether it’s holding yours right, but he eventually relaxes into the touch. When a particularly chilly gust of wind blows, you drop his hand and hold onto his arm instead, inching closer to him for more warmth. He only drank lemonade with his meal, but he feels blissfully light-headed.

Silence only arrives when you reach your doorstep. You stand in front of each other, Sunghoon looking down at his feet, you gazing out at the empty street. He knows this is the moment where he is supposed to kiss you. If there was a step-by-step guide on how to date — there probably is, but Sunghoon hasn’t resorted to such loser-like measures yet — this would probably be the moment where it would be written to just kiss her, you idiot. But nerves get the best of him.

At least, you’re there to save the day. You direct your gaze towards him, a bashful smile playing on your lips. “So… are you gonna kiss me now?” you ask, essentially reading his mind.

He reacts immediately. “Y-yep. Yes. I am.” Heart racing, he takes a step towards you as he rests his hands on your waist. Then he changes his mind, and brings one hand up to your cheek. There’s an eyelash that has fallen below your eye; he brushes it out of the way with his thumb before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours.

In all of his late-night scenarios and daydreams of kissing you, he had never imagined something as good as this. You find your rhythm within seconds. It’s slow, almost hesitant, yet so tender, it makes Sunghoon’s heart ache. As your lips move against each other in perfect sync, as your hands find their way around Sunghoon’s neck, he realizes he should have known — this will not go away as quickly as it came.

Only when you grab a fistful of his hair, making him react viscerally and wrap his arm around your waist to bring you closer to him, does he remember where the two of you are. He leans back, then almost passes out when you chase his lips and press a shorter but just as sweet kiss there. He commits this view to memory—the smile on your lips, the glow on your face, the haziness in your eyes.

“Do you wanna come up?”

“Yes,” he replies immediately, and it makes you laugh. You grab his hand and lead him up the stairs and into your apartment.

“Are the girls in?” he asks as you lock the front door.

“Minjeong is at karaoke with her school friends, and Yunjin and Chaewon are at a dinner party somewhere.”

“Minjeong karaokes?”

“Get enough G&Ts in her and she’ll do anything.”

You turn on a small lamp in your room and take off your jacket. Sunghoon has been in your apartment before, but never in your room—at some point, he’ll spend an hour observing every photograph and trinket in detail, asking you about every backstory, but right now, he’s got more important things to tend to. His heart beats uncontrollably as you shut the door to your room and walk towards him, eyes gazing deeply into his. The corners of your lips rise when you tug at the bottom of his sweatshirt, a clear indicator that you want it off. He wastes no time in obliging.

The air is buzzing with electricity when your lips find each other again. You’re both more confident this time around, and so the kiss is deeper, your touches bolder. Everything happens quickly—one second, you’re standing in the middle of your room; the next, you’re laying on your bed, Sunghoon underneath you.

“You know,” he says between kisses, “I’d really planned on being a gentleman and not going up to your room after the first date…”

Your lips move from his lips to his jawline, warm and soft against his skin. Sunghoon closes his eyes and lets out a low hum of approval. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” you whisper, lips brushing against his neck as you speak. “And since we’re onto confessions, I can finally say I’ve been wanting to do this since we met.”

This information sends his mind reeling. Not once had he been sure of how you felt about him — he even remembers you saying no to a kiss — and here you are, saying you’ve been wanting to kiss him since the beginning, just like he had.

“You’re me,” he replies breathlessly.

“Hm?”

“I mean, me too.”

You pause your kisses to giggle, a sound so soft and intimate it has Sunghoon melting impossibly more. “You’re me?”

Unfortunately, he is too preoccupied by you to put a filter between the weird, half-formed thoughts in his brain and the words that leave his mouth. “Don’t question it,” he says, a smile audible in his voice, before moving his head and catching your lips. If he couldn’t stop himself from saying odd things, he could at least distract you from them.

Sunghoon thinks he’s doing a good job keeping himself together, until you roll your hips against his. It’s barely anything, but it sends waves of pleasure and anticipation through his body. His grip on your waist tightens, and when you repeat the motion, his hands sneakily find their way down your back and under your dress. Palms splayed against your ass, he brings you down closer to him. The second you moan into the kiss, he’s a goner.

After that, it doesn’t take long for clothes to be discarded or for curious fingers to find the other’s waistbands. Your movements are hasty, messy—the tension that had built up over weeks of pining for you, after getting close to kissing you twice and thinking about it a hundred times more, it all comes crashing down in this moment, as his teeth sink into the flesh of your neck, as your hands pull at strands of his hair, as your bodies gently bump into each other. If someone asked Sunghoon right now how long he’d known you, he’d say years, not mere weeks. It couldn’t possibly be real that this much desire had accumulated inside of him — and inside of you, if your broken moans and rapid breathing are anything to go by — in just over a month.

He only slows down when he has you naked and heaving underneath him, reminding himself to savor the moment instead of rushing it. His fingertips graze down your sides until they reach between your thighs, and he marvels at the way his touch makes you shiver. His eyes are so wide with amazement at the sight of you that he probably looks like he’s never seen a woman before, but he can’t help himself—he always thought you were beautiful, but this is something else entirely.

His first touch is hesitant, a slow upward motion of his thumb between your folds as if quite literally testing the waters. But it has you arching your back and gripping his bicep, meeting his eyes to silently plead for more. Sunghoon takes that as his green light, thumb circling your clit as his lips continue their work on your neck, on your face, everywhere they can reach. He slips a finger inside of you, then a second one, and when he is satisfied with the state he’s gotten you in, all disheveled and gasping for air, he replaces his fingers with his dick, rock-hard just from seeing and hearing you.

He slowly inches forward until he’s bottomed out, letting you adjust around him. “All good?” he whispers, lips moving against the shell of your ear.

“Never better,” you whisper back, smiling. You kiss him, and the tenderness of your lips on his, mixed with the feeling of being inside you, has Sunghoon’s heart constricting inside his chest. He starts rocking his hips back-and-forth into you, the side of his face is pressed up against yours, head light from the little oxygen the two of you share. It all feels oddly intimate for a first time, feels more like the kind of sex two people would have after years of knowing each other’s bodies. He moves like it’s second nature, thrusts deep and slow, trying to reach those spots that have your hands clawing at his back. He wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you closer to him, using his free hand to push the hair that sticks to your face with sweat.

You wrap your legs higher around his hips, the shift in angle letting him go deeper. “Fuck, right there,” you say, voice strangled. Sunghoon doesn’t need to be told twice—he picks up his pace, and already within a minute, starts to feel himself reaching his limit. He tries to muffle his groans against your skin, but with the way your hold on him tightens and your moans go higher in pitch, you seem to be just as close as he is. When you do come undone around him, breath hitching in your throat before you release a heavy sigh, he has mere seconds left in him. A few thrusts later, his orgasm finally releases him from the tension that had been twisting his stomach into a knot for the past half-hour. You’re both spent, but he continues lazily rocking his hips against yours chasing the last remnants of pleasure, wanting to bask in it just a bit longer. He rolls onto his back after sliding out, wrapping his arms around you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck.

His chest rises and falls as his breathing takes its time returning to normal. In a way, he’s almost relieved it’s over, like any longer would’ve actually taken too much of a toll on him. He likes the comfort he gets from having you in his arms as much as the sex itself. “I didn’t know it could feel this good,” he says, the words spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them. He needs more than a few minutes to get his head back on straight and start thinking before he speaks again. You chuckle airily, he chuckles too, and within seconds, you’re both laughing for seemingly no reason. The bliss of such an intense orgasm and the lack of oxygen must have gone to your brain, too.

“Me either,” you say once the laughter dies down. When your lips find his once more, Sunghoon forgets entirely about his exhaustion and feels like he could go for a second round. “Shower?” you ask right when he realizes how sticky and smelly he is.

“Yes, please.”

He can’t keep his hands off of you in the shower, rubbing soap on every square inch of your skin when you could do it perfectly fine yourself, kissing you even when you’ve both got foaming cleanser on your faces. The taste of soap in his mouth is worth the giggles he gets out of you.

Sunghoon reaches heaven when you drop to your knees in front of him, water rushing down his back as you take him in your mouth. He’s eager to return the favor, of course, thumb flicking your clit with a speed and dexterity even he didn’t know he was capable of. If you weren’t already in the shower, you’d have needed another one.

As soon as your bodies hit the mattress, you both drift off to sleep, limbs wrapping around each other as though they had been separated for too long and finally found each other again—not to let go again.

When Sunghoon wakes up, it takes him a few seconds to realize that he hadn’t dreamt up last night’s events. He reaches a hand out hesitantly, still half-asleep and scared that you’ll disappear into thin air at the touch of his fingertips. But no—he feels your skin, warm and soft, and he knows this is real.

You’re laying on your side, facing away from him, so he has to strain his neck to peek at your face. You look so peaceful as you sleep—he doesn’t want to wake you up, but he can’t stop himself from wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing his torso against your back, humming contentedly to himself. He presses a soft, quiet kiss to the top of your head, just because he can.

Outside, clouds part, and a bright ray of sun shines through the window, landing right on your face. Sunghoon watches as you grumble and turn around, burying your face in his chest to avoid the blinding light, but the damage is done—you’re awake. He can tell from the drawled-out whine you let out and the way you grab tightly onto his waist, as if it was his fault the sun had decided to shine right on you.

He lets you settle in a comfortable position. Stays still as you hike your leg over his legs, then slip it between them instead; as you press your cheek against his chest, then bury your nose in his neck; as you wrap your arm around his waist, then move it to thread your fingers through his hair, until you give up on falling back asleep altogether. “It’s so bright in here,” you mumble in lieu of a good-morning greeting.

You can’t see him, so Sunghoon smiles and tightens his grip around you—one arm circling your shoulders, the other, your waist. Skin to skin. “We forgot to close the blinds yesterday.”

“It’s okay,” you say, sighing. You press a kiss to the base of his neck, right between his collarbones, then lift your face to look at him. “How are you feeling?”

This is what it feels like to wake up next to her, Sunghoon thinks. He’d thought about it so many times: what you would look like first thing in the morning, what you’d say to him, what it’d feel like when your eyes met. If you’d be a slow sort of morning person, cuddling in bed with him until the very last possible second, or if you’d be up and about as soon as you woke up. If you’d be grumpy. If you’d want coffee. If you liked morning sex.

It seems to be a recurring theme that Sunghoon’s imagination never quite lives up to reality. Your sleepy eyes boring into his, struggling to stay open, your fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck; your skin, so warm and so soft, your scent, so intoxicating he can barely think straight.

You’re better than a dream.

“I feel great. Do you feel great?”

“I feel amazing, thank you so much for asking,” you say, burrowing yourself impossibly closer to him.

The two of you stay like this for a while, talking about your plans for the day and begrudging how little you want to go about them. Sunghoon wishes this could go on forever, but then his stomach growls so loudly, his face turns red from embarrassment. He hadn’t even noticed how hungry he was.

“You’re me,” you say, laughing, and Sunghoon can’t help but join in. “Is it crazy to have last night’s leftovers for breakfast?”

What Sunghoon hears is that you want him to stay; that you don’t want to part ways just yet.

“If by crazy you mean the best idea ever, then yes.”

“Amazing, because I’ve been thinking about that curry all night.”

“Really? I was thinking about something else,” he says, burrowing his face in your neck and leaving warm kisses there.

You hum and lean into his touches, leaning into his touches. Chills run down his spine as your nails graze his sides. “There might’ve been other things occupying my mind, too.”

And just like that, breakfast is postponed to thirty minutes later.

After that night, Sunghoon forgets how to act right.

His mind has never been so singularly taken up by sex in all of his life. It was already preoccupied with you most of the time, but now that it has more material to gnaw on, it’s practically started to eat away at him. It doesn’t help that you’ve seen each other every day since, or that at every chance you get, you smile knowingly at him or try to get him to play footsies with you. Of course, he loves every bit of attention that he gets from you, but whenever he feels his heart get carried away, Minjeong’s words come back to him in a panic, and he remembers that he has no idea what it is that’s happening between you and him. You could be stringing him along, for all he knows, or you could be as into him as he is into you and just letting things happen. Unfortunately, just letting things happen was not something Sunghoon was good at—if things weren’t written black and white, he’d find a way to overthink even the littlest of details. Like how you’d kissed him for a good five minutes before letting him leave your apartment, otherwise known as the least platonic parting to exist, or conversely, like how you’d sometimes take hours to reply to texts.

If he was already a mumbling fool in front of you before, his condition has only worsened now. He tries his best to be normal and not make you or anyone in the group feel weird, but the fact is that you rocked his world and now he can’t look you in the eyes and not remember how it felt when you touched him or the sounds you made or the way you looked. It’s all playing in a loop in his mind and the only way he knows how to control it is by limiting his interactions with you, which doesn’t even work that well.

The first couple days, you seem amused by his shyer-than-usual demeanor, but you quickly grow confused more than anything. Sunghoon won’t sit next to you, only speaks to you when necessary, doesn’t seek you out outside of a group setting. He tells himself he just needs some more time to be able to be around you casually again, but before that happens, one day at the library, you make a point to ask him if he’ll come help you get drinks for everyone from the dispenser machine. He knows it’d be too odd to say no, so he follows you.

He presses the buttons for everyone’s order (a Sprite for him, Diet Cokes for the girls, a Red Bull for Jake who has a midterm tomorrow and nothing for Jay who only swears by his disgusting herbal infusion) as you lean against the machine, arms crossed over your chest as you stare at him.

He has never felt so awkward in his life.

“So…” he starts although he has no idea what to say—he hopes something will just appear in his mind and that it’ll alleviate the tension. However, you seem to have other plans.

“What the hell, Sunghoon?” you say, taking him aback. When he glances at you, you don’t seem angry—just genuinely confused. “You’ve been avoiding me like the plague.”

“I haven’t!”

“Sunghoon,” you say sternly. He gives in right away.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I just-I didn’t know what to do. After we, you know…”

“After we had sex?” you say, then burst into laughter when he looks around the room to make sure no one’s heard. His cheeks heat up.

“Yes, after we had sex,” he whispers.

He pays for the drinks and picks them up. When he looks at you again, your smile has completely died down, and worry has settled into your features. “Do you regret it?” you ask, voice now as low as his. As if it hurts to say the words too loud.

Panic overcomes him, and he almost drops half of the drinks as he shakes his head. “No, of course not! I’m really sorry, Y/N, I never meant to be weird about it, I was just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I just… Well, I just didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”

You nod, taking his words in. “That’s fine. I get it. I just wanted to say, you know, it doesn’t have to change anything. We can still be friends and all. Like you said, it shouldn’t make things weird.”

Sunghoon’s stomach drops. He knows you’re trying to make him feel better, but you’ve inadvertently said the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear. He doesn’t want things to stay the same, or for you to stay friends. For him, things can’t go back to normal after that night — whatever normal means for the two of you — and he was foolishly hoping that you felt the same.

But clearly, you want to let the whole thing die and pretend like it never happened. And whether it’s a good thing or not, his feelings for you have grown so much, he’ll just let you lead him anywhere. Even if that turns out to be nowhere.

So he conjures up the most convincing smile he can, hands you half of the drinks to carry, and says, “Yeah, sounds good.”

After that conversation, Sunghoon doesn’t think anything else will happen between the two of you. You had sex, you talked it out, and that’s the end of it. But then, it turns out that both of your last midterms are at the same time, in the same building, so you invite him to celebrate with pork belly and some drinks. Sunghoon is finishing his second beer when he starts to feel like he’s on that date again, laughing for no reason, butterflies in his stomach every time his gaze catches yours. You lean on your hand as you listen to him talk about a stupid memory from his childhood and he thinks he’s never seen anyone as pretty as you.

The sun has long set when you say, “You know, it’s Wednesday today.”

He’s not sure what you’re trying to get at. “Yeah?”

“Minjeong’s out at karaoke tonight.”

With these simple words, all the images of you that Sunghoon had finally managed to banish from his mind come flooding back, and he is not even surprised to find himself half-naked in your bed thirty minutes later. So much for staying friends—one time is one thing, but Sunghoon knows he’ll never be normal again after a second time with you.

It’s not a long time before he finds himself in your room again. Every item of clothing between the two of you is gradually discarded while you kiss, lips growing more impatient with every inch of bare skin uncovered. He reluctantly lets you go when you suddenly giggle and say that you really need to pee, watching as you grab his t-shirt off the floor and put it on, just in case Minjeong comes home. You wear it like it’s yours, like it’s the most natural thing in the world that you’d be wearing his clothes. An indescribable feeling washes over Sunghoon at the sight, so intense he feels tears welling behind his eyes. Like something he’s been yearning for is finally at the grasp of his fingers; like it might slip away at any moment.

His feelings must’ve transpired in the way he was looking at you—when you meet his eyes, your expression shifts slightly, and you quickly slip out of your room. He tells himself to reel it in. Get it together, he thinks. Or you’ll drive her away.

A wave of tiredness hits him in the minute that you’re gone, probably due to all that soju and beer. “I’m back,” you whisper, but he doesn’t move, only opens his arms wide for you to get back into bed with him. It’s like a weight is lifted off his heart when he feels you against him again. You’re back. Your face is fresh, as if you’d splashed it with cold water, but when he slips one of his hands underneath your (his) t-shirt, your skin is still just as warm as before. Far from the fuzzy, tingly feeling he had gotten when you’d woken up together the other morning, now, he feels his desire for you deep in the pit of his stomach. The kind of hunger food couldn’t satisfy. “I missed you,” he whispers, voice low and gravelly. He reacts immediately when you squirm against him, tightening his grip around your waist and pulling you to him.

“I was gone two minutes.”

“I mean these past few days. I was starting to think I’d dreamt you up.” His hand on your lower back sneaks its way up between your bodies until it finds your breasts, cupping one of them with his palm before taking your nipple between his thumb and index, gently twisting. It pulls a half-gasp, half-moan from your throat, and the sound goes straight to his dick. “But you’re real, aren’t you?”

“Very real,” you reply, a tremor in your voice. He’s barely touching you, and you’re already having trouble breathing. Sunghoon smiles at the idea of him having as much of a hold on you as you do on him.

“Good,” he says, voice so low it’s almost a growl. In one quick sweep, he pushes you down so your back is against the mattress, resting his palms on each side of your head.

He’s inside you within mere minutes. He’d wanted to hold back a bit, but you whispering Just put it in after thirty seconds of his fingers loosening you up was enough to convince him. His mind is already fuzzy with remnants of alcohol, and his overwhelming desire for you only makes matters worse. He barely has any control over his movements, rushed and sloppy, but as he drives himself deeper into you, your moans increase in volume. He only later realizes how tight his grip on your hips is when he sees two small bruises forming on the skin there.

He comes quickly, probably embarrassingly so, but he can’t bring himself to care—he’s got other things on his mind. He’s not even bothered to discard the condom as he makes his way down your body, lips around your clit before you’ve even had the time to register what was happening. You cry out, a sound that Sunghoon works to pry out of you over and over again. Even when your thighs start shaking and you squirm away from him, he doesn’t relent. He’s just as desperate to make you feel good as he was desperate chasing his own pleasure earlier. He hooks his arms around your thighs, bringing you down to him and ensuring that you can’t get away. One hand still in his hair, the other clutching the bed sheets, you’ve turned your face sideways into the pillow so that your moans come out muffled. He is only satisfied when you’ve reached your second orgasm.

As your breath slowly returns to normal, Sunghoon makes his way back up your body, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake. You clear your throat of its dryness and burst into soft, quiet laughter. “What’s funny?” Sunghoon murmurs, lips against your neck.

“Nothing,” you say, still laughing. “That was just really, really nice.”

Sunghoon smiles. “I’m glad,” he says before kissing you, lips moving slowly against yours.

As he lays against you, the top of his head under your chin and your fingernails grazing along his back, a weird feeling overcomes him. Sunghoon is usually a pine-from-afar sort of guy, with at least five instances of hanging out that could or could not be a date before making things any sort of official. The pining has been a constant with all of his crushes. He’s gotten to the hanging out stage a couple of times, but the officialising has only happened once. Despite its low success rate, it’s a cycle Sunghoon feels comfortable with, and he’d imagined the rest of his romantic encounters would follow that pattern.

But this is completely different. Of the three times you guys have met separately from your friend group, already two times have included sex. This isn’t a stage Sunghoon usually reaches before at least a few months and it disorientates him. What does it mean? That you like him so much, you decided to skip all of the steps and jump straight into the thick of it? He is reasonable enough not to delude himself into such a thought. He likes you a lot—that much he can be sure of. He’s liked you since the moment he laid eyes on you, even if the reason eludes him. Something in the way you smiled at him, the way you took him in stride as if you’d known him forever. When he thinks back to that party, he can’t believe it started out as the two of you being strangers. Even now, feeling your warm skin against his, it feels like a lie that just two months ago he hadn’t even met you.

What he can’t say with total certainty is that you like him the same amount. Or that you like him any amount, really, although in his naivety he doesn’t understand how anyone could be this intimate with another person without liking them at least a little bit. And he doesn’t just mean the sex. He means this. The silently laying in each other’s arms, the soft kisses, the caresses wherever hands can reach. Eating post-sex snacks together, laughing as you watch the first episode of each other’s favorite sitcoms (Brooklyn Nine-Nine for him, Pen15, oddly enough, for you). Falling asleep together, cuddling the entire night then waking up and diving right back into each other’s embrace.

After an entire day spent in rumination, Sunghoon’s still not sure what to make of it all.

All he knows is that when he DMs you that night, asking you how your day went, he goes through every emotion between anxiety, self-hatred and indifference in the five minutes that separate his text from your reply. He’s never been so happy to hear that someone couldn’t concentrate in class because of him.

Sunghoon has always been obsessed with the way couples stand together in public.

Every time, it takes everything in him not to stare, because he wants to take in every little thing they do. He has that practically everywhere he goes, wanting to stare at people just to see what their deal is, but he is never quite as simultaneously fascinated and envious as when he spots a couple. But he knows staring isn’t the socially appropriate thing to do, so he either steals glances or watches for a little bit then pretends they aren’t there. He can’t help himself—even if they aren’t holding hands or obnoxiously making out in public, it’s still visible to anyone with eyes that there is something tying these people together. It’s in the way they stand near each other, their bodies turned inwardly, as though enveloped by a bubble containing just the two of them and no one else; in the way they look at each other, their eyes never straying from the other’s face as they talk, intimacy showing itself even in a loud, crowded room. Sunghoon craves to find that proximity, to be able to touch and be touched so softly, every graze of a hand purposeful and unconscious at the same time.

It’s the first of November already. The Weather app, as it tends to do, has deceived you; so instead of a walk on what was supposed to be a sunny day, you find yourselves in a busy café near the University, the air outside too chilly even with your scarves and gloves. You’re waiting for your order at the end of the counter — a mocha for him, an oat flat white for you — when he notices it. Your body is fully facing him, you’re distractedly playing with the hem of his sweatshirt, and you’re not looking at anything but him as you rant about that annoying classmate of yours that goes by a self-made nickname and always talks over the tutor. In this light, the two of you are like the couples he’s always longed to be—the simple thought makes him want to cry. As more and more often is the case these days, you have no idea what you’re doing to him.

It’s been around two months since you first met and in that time, although Sunghoon is lucky not to have enough fingers to count the number of times you have seen each other one-on-one, not much has happened. Minjeong, who had understood what was going on the first time she saw the two of you eating leftovers from the Japanese restaurant on the couch at 10 a.m., has grown accustomed to his presence in the apartment and even sometimes sits down to watch a movie with the two of you—a movie that Chaewon would usually have forced you to watch in the living room instead of the privacy of your bedroom, so that everyone could join. Sunghoon is just glad Minjeong has stopped silently scolding him with her eyes every time he comes out of your room. She never mentions that night when she essentially warned him against you after the party.

Jake seems to be the only oblivious one in your group. Yunjin and Chaewon have eyes like hawks and horrifyingly vivid imaginations when they put their heads together, so they were probably already making plans for your wedding and fighting for the title of godmother when you and Sunghoon met at the beginning-of-semester party. They cornered him once at a party and forced him to spill the beans and spare no detail, because you apparently were “denying everything, but we know there’s something going on.” Jay is still Sunghoon’s go-to person when he needs advice concerning you, although the older boy doesn’t understand why it has to be so complicated and always tells him to “just tell her how you feel,” which Sunghoon will not do unless there is a gun to his head. But Jake just seems happy to see his friend and his sister get along this well—no matter how many times you wear his jacket at their games or disappear at the same time at the end of parties, he doesn’t grow suspicious. If he does, he doesn’t mention it to Sunghoon, at least.

Between the two of you, not a word is spoken about the nature of your relationship, which remains unbearingly undefined. For a while, he weakly convinces himself that he doesn’t need to have that conversation with you. He’s young, he’s free, he should be able to enjoy casual sex without putting a label on it. The main problem, though, was that the sex could not be further from casual, at the very least not to Sunghoon.

He has never known anything quite like it. In mere weeks, you’ve both mastered the art of pleasuring each other. He understands your body like it’s his, knows what each of the sounds and expressions you make means. He knows where to touch you to have a kiss go from light-hearted to dizzyingly intense, how to move his mouth to have you arching your back and holding onto him for dear life. And you—he thinks your skin must be laced with cocaine, the way he can never get enough of it.

But it’s always the moments afterwards that get him in his head. To him, casual sex means getting dressed the minute it’s over and going off to do other things, which is the absolute opposite of what you do. Whether it’s falling asleep together or spending Sundays in bed, you always stay together afterwards, curled up in each other’s arms as you talk away the hours, conversations interspersed with slow, lazy kisses. He’ll say things like, “You’re so pretty,” or “Why do you smell so good?” because he’s so smitten with you that he can never stop himself from uttering every compliment that flashes through his brain, but the things he really wants to say are harder to speak out loud. Even just a What are we?—three simple words that he can’t bring himself to ask, too scared it’ll ruin everything.

Arguably worse is that sex isn’t even a requirement for when you and Sunghoon see each other. He goes on walks with you whenever you’ve spent too much time in the library and need some fresh air. You go shopping with him when his department throws a fundraiser and he needs a formal outfit. He cooks you your favorite meal when your period is particularly nasty. You sneak into the ice rink after his practice and let him ‘teach’ you how to skate, even though you already learned how with Jake when you were kids. Even mundane moments become fun when spent with you, and you share so many hobbies and interests that you never run out of things to do or talk about.

And yet, it feels like one step forward, two steps back with you—if you let him close one night, you’ll run away the next. A week will pass without you seeing each other outside of the library or group hang-outs, and if Sunghoon asks you out, you’ll say no, usually blaming the amount of work you have. He gets it—due to the nature of your degree and your being a fourth-year student, your workload is much heavier than his, with essays, translations and oral presentations due every other week. And that’s not even including midterms and finals. But still, he doesn’t see why you would need to stay at the library for ten hours straight for days on end. He’d start worrying about your health if you didn’t at least relax on weekends.

So while Sunghoon wants nothing more than to go all in with you, he senses you holding back. He notices you avoiding eye contact during particularly intimate moments, and when you look at him perhaps too fondly for your liking, you quickly catch yourself and resume your neutral, sometimes almost cold expression. When he tries to broach more personal, sensitive topics, you always find a way to change the subject or turn the conversation towards him before you get too deep.

As time passes, and especially as exam season nears, he can tell there’s something that you’re not telling him about. His suspicions are confirmed when you come back from a weekend at your parents’ house. He’s also been away for an out-of-town hockey game, and because he hasn’t had much time to text you (and because their team won, so he wants to show off a little), he’s particularly looking forward to seeing you again that Monday. It’s only been three days since you’ve last seen each other, but he misses you like crazy.

But the minute you’re back, you bury yourself in work like never before, often waking up at ungodly hours and staying at the library until midnight. More than once, he stays behind with you, long after the others have gone, reminding you gently every hour that it might be time to go home and get some rest. The moments you actually agree are few and far between, and although he sticks it out at first, sleeping with his head on the table until you tell him you’re ready to go, your stubbornness soon starts frustrating him, and he ends up leaving when he gets too tired. He knows this is important to you, but he doesn’t understand why you have to go to these lengths—you’d still easily be one of the best students in your class without all this exertion. And despite his many attempts, you won’t tell him what’s wrong, won’t even admit that something is wrong—you keep repeating that “it’s just what exam season is like.”

When he asks your friends about it, they seem just as confused as he is. One evening when you have plans to order some food and watch a movie at your apartment, he shows up at the agreed time, but you’re nowhere to be found. Thankfully, the girls are there to let him up and not leave him standing outside in the rain. You don’t pick up when he calls you and call him back a minute later, apologizing profusely but still saying that there’s something you really need to finish first. If it was only a one-time thing, it wouldn’t make him as angry as it does—but this has been going on for almost two weeks now, and Sunghoon is close to boiling point.

The fact that it’s been months since your date at the Japanese restaurant, and the only thing that you’ve said about what was happening between you and Sunghoon “didn’t have to change anything.” The fact that you’re essentially each other’s boyfriend and girlfriend without the label or the reassurance that comes with it. The fact that there’s something clearly bothering you but that you won’t tell him about it. The fact that this something is effectively coming between the two of you. Sunghoon was originally more worried about you than anything—now that studying has taken obvious precedence over him in your list of priorities, he’d be lying if he said his ego wasn’t wounded. He isn’t asking to be the number one most important thing in your life, and he knew before even meeting you that high academic performance meant a lot to you, but he likes to think he deserves at least a little bit of your time and attention.

Except, does he really? It’s not like you’re actually dating.

There’s a pang in his heart as he remembers this fact that he should never have forgotten in the first place. It hurts—and so perhaps, he’s less patient than he ought to be.

“Whatever, Y/N. Don’t worry about it, just let me know when you have time for something other than getting As.”

He hangs up and meets your flatmates’ worried eyes.

“She still at the library?” Chaewon asks, tone delicate as if trying not to scare off a wounded animal. Sunghoon nods, a deep sigh escaping his mouth.

“She always studies a lot,” Minjeong starts, “but this is something else.”

“Have you guys tried saying something?”

The girls nod. “Even Jake has talked to her, but she won’t listen. And he usually always gets to her,” Minjeong says.

He goes home soon afterwards and spends the rest of his evening in rumination, torn between his worry and his anger towards you—emotions which only increase as more days pass, and he sees less and less of you. Your behavior was already concerning while preparing for your exams and final assignments, it gets even worse when exams actually do start. He doesn’t hear from you for an entire week, and the one time you miraculously agree to a short group hang-out in the form of getting coffee, you’re only half there, physically present but mind far, far away. You barely react when the guys tell you about their victory at the latest hockey game—which you didn’t attend, as well as any other game recently.

No matter how much he tries to put it out of his mind, to focus on his own exams and hockey games, you stay at the forefront of his thoughts. The hockey team is away for another out-of-town game when he decides to broach the subject with Jake, with whom he’s sharing a room. The entire semester, he’s been careful not to raise Jake’s suspicions about the two of you, both out of consideration for you, who’d mentioned you didn’t want your brother to know what was going on, and for himself, who would also rather Jake not know, at least not until your relationship became official. Which it never did. But now that all he gets from you is radio silence at a time when you’d usually be an hour into a FaceTime call, he can’t help himself.

Jake is just coming out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel, when Sunghoon takes his shot in the dark. “Have you heard from Y/N recently?” he asks as nonchalantly as he can, pretending to not be avidly waiting for his friend’s reaction by keeping his eyes on his phone.

“Y/N?” Jake echoes. “No, not really. Why?”

“Just ‘cause I haven’t seen her around much. I’m wondering if everything’s okay.”

“You mean her staying at the library all day?” Sunghoon nods; Jake sighs. “Yeah, she’ll snap out of it soon enough. She gets somewhat like this every time exams come around, but even I have to admit it’s pretty tough this time around. The last time I saw her like this was way back in high school, and that’s because our parents were watching right over her shoulder. It’s been better in university thanks to the distance.”

“So this has to do with your parents?”

“Oh, one hundred percent. She’s always wanted to do well at school, but she only gets this obsessive when our parents are involved.”

“I guess this did start after that weekend when she went home…” Sunghoon muses absent-mindedly. It could’ve passed off as an off-hand remark, but Jake pauses in his movements and looks at him warily.

“Yeah, she did… You noticed that, huh?”

Sunghoon pauses. This whole time, he was sure Jake was oblivious to anything happening between you and him—but he might have underestimated his friend. Like brother, like sister; he can hardly read either of you when he really needs to. Jake might genuinely be surprised that Sunghoon remembered your whereabouts that weekend, or he’s onto him. “I guess I did,” he finally says, going for as noncommittal an answer as he can.

Jake says nothing for a bit, and Sunghoon thinks he’s managed to get through the conversation without raising too much suspicion—until a minute later, when Jake speaks again. “Do you… like Y/N?”

Sunghoon freezes, snapping his head towards Jake, who’s lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His first instinct is to deny, but there’s no point pretending anymore. It’s one thing keeping it from Jake—lying to him about it is something else entirely. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it must be had. “Yeah, I do,” Sunghoon replies, guilt clear in his voice, more because he’s only now admitting it to Jake than because of his feelings themselves.

A shaky breath comes out of Jake’s mouth, as if this was the exact answer he had dreaded. “Right, okay. Since when?”

“Since I met her, basically.”

Jake’s head whips towards Sunghoon, and their gazes meet awkwardly. “Since that party in September?” he asks, shock written all over his face. Sunghoon nods, and to his surprise, Jake bursts out laughing. “Don’t tell me it’s because you accidentally matched costumes?”

Sunghoon looks away, frowning. “That might’ve helped things along,” he mumbles, embarrassment washing over him as Jake’s laughter intensifies. At least he was taking it well—a bit too well, perhaps.

“You’re so predictable, man,” Jake says when he’s calmed down, wiping a tear from his eye.

“How did you know, anyway?”

“You’ve been pretty obvious with it recently,” Jake replies after a few seconds. “I could tell you were a bit shy around her at first, and when it got better I just thought you’d become friends or something. But when she showed up with your jacket at every game and you never left her side at parties, I assumed something else was going on. You’ve always been staying behind at the library these days, and I know you don’t have that much work.”

Sunghoon chuckles. “I guess I haven’t been trying hard to hide it lately.”

“Yeah, why would you hide it in the first place? You could’ve just told me.”

“I didn’t want to make things weird.”

Jake frowns. “It wouldn’t have been weird. If anything, hiding it makes it weirder.”

“I just thought, if one of my friends had a crush on my sister, I’d probably rather they hid it. Like, I don’t need to know about that,” Sunghoon says, and it makes Jake laugh.

“Dude, Y/N and I are only a year apart. Do you know how many guys have come up to me asking me for her number or advice on how to ask her out? It’s been, like, one every few months since middle school. Guys here especially have no shame telling me how hot they find her.”

Sunghoon makes a face. He doesn’t disagree, but he’d never go out of his way to tell your brother how exquisite you looked in certain outfits. “That’s gross.”

“Yeah, it is. But you’re my friend, not some greasy rando, so I trust you. If anything, I’d probably have to tell her to be nice to you, and not the other way around.”

“Yeah, you could say that again,” Sunghoon grumbles, then realizes his mistake immediately, eyes widening.

“What do you mean?” Jake asks, sounding genuine at first, but when Sunghoon stays quiet for a couple seconds, debating whether he should just lay the truth bare, Jake sits up on the bed and repeats his question, his tone much warier this time around. Sunghoon glances at him then looks away guiltily.

“Well, to be completely honest… We’ve sort of been seeing each other, kind of. But it’s complicated.”

Jake flops back down on his mattress with a grunt. “Who else knows?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes with his hands as if suddenly very exhausted.

“Everyone…”

“Everyone?!”

“Well, Jay, Minjeong, Yunjin and Chaewon.”

“So everyone.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Great.” Jake sighs. “Since when?”

“Since October,” Sunghoon mumbles, feeling guiltier than ever. He’s belatedly realizing that it would’ve been much easier to have everything out in the open from the get-go, both with you and with Jake; now he’s both stuck in situationship limbo and has to face the consequences of keeping something this important from one of his closest friends. “Are you upset?” Sunghoon asks, feeling a bit like a ten-year-old.

“Kinda, yeah, but more at her than at you. I’ve told her not to go after anyone from the hockey team.”

“‘Cause of Heeseung?”

“Yeah. God, that was messy. He gave her mixed signals for so long, I could barely talk to him without thinking of her crying for so long. And now he’s the one who can’t quite look me in the eye,” Jake says, shaking his head at the mere thought of his captain.

“Was it that bad? She made it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

Jake raises his eyebrows. “Really? It upset her for a while though,” he says, then turns his head to look at the ceiling again. “I guess that’s not so surprising of her. She sometimes likes pretending she doesn’t have any emotions, even though I’m pretty sure she has more than most people.”

“Huh.” That would explain some things, Sunghoon muses. Emotions are not a topic that comes up very often with you, and every time he’s gotten an inkling of them, you seem to shut it all down immediately.

“But you know, I’m more surprised than anything. About… about it all, really. Not just that you’re only telling me now, but that it’s lasted this long. She must really like you.”

“You think?” Sunghoon says, his face brightening with hope, the words slipping from him before he can stop them once again. He shrinks when Jake laughs at him.

“Look at you. Down bad, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“But yeah, dude. I’ve told you about this. I’ve never seen her in a relationship, ever. Says she doesn’t have the time,” Jake says, air-quoting you. “I’ve only had the displeasure of seeing her go home with one-night-stands. You know that since she started college, she’s had a rule that she’d only see someone three times and that was it?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, so she wouldn’t catch feelings. I’m telling you, she’s crazy. So you must be special.”

Sunghoon can’t stop the smile from spreading on his lips—special. But it doesn’t make him feel that much better, either. “It’s not like we’re actually dating, so I’m not sure how special I can be…”

Jake’s head turns to look at Sunghoon again, but the younger boy keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling fan above him. “What’s happening between you guys?”

A blush creeps on Sunghoon’s cheeks. “Is this something you really want to talk about?”

“Well, spare me the gruesome details, please,” Jake says, chuckling, “but yeah, I would like to know what’s going on with my best friend and my sister.”

“I’m your best friend?” Sunghoon says, grinning as he meets Jake’s gaze, who rolls his eyes.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Fine.” He sighs. “Well, I didn’t think it would happen more than once-”

“What would happen more than once?”

Sunghoon pauses. “Well, you know…” Jake gives him a look as if to say, Well, no, I don’t know, so Sunghoon is forced to go on: “Sleeping together.”

“You guys slept together?!” Jake exclaims, sitting up on his bed once again.

“Yeah, what did you think?”

“I don’t know, just that you were going on dates, hanging out one-on-one, or whatever…”

“Well, we were.”

“Ugh, whatever,” Jake says, waving his hand in front of his face like swatting a fly away. “So, not just once, then?”

“No. And I thought it’d be a one-time thing, ‘cause a few days afterwards she said something about it not having to change our friendship…”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. But then it did. Happen again, I mean. And it’s been happening frequently since. But we’re not… dating dating. We haven’t had that conversation.”

Jake frowns. “Why not?”

Sunghoon releases a shaky breath. Why not, indeed. “‘Cause she hasn’t mentioned it. And I’m too scared to do it.”

“What are you scared of?”

“The typical stuff. What we have now… it’s not what I want, but it’s managed to not disrupt the group, you know. I’m scared that if I tell her how I feel, it’ll make things awkward between the two of us, and between all of us by extension.”

“Well, it might,” Jake says after thinking for a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you with certainty that she’ll like you back, but I honestly can’t. As obvious as you were towards her, she was not giving anything away.” Sunghoon chuckles, more out of self-deprecation than anything. This was not the pep talk he had hoped for. “But, I can tell you that she won’t be the type to make things awkward. You have nothing to risk by telling her, because in the long run, you’ll be better off that way. I know you, Sunghoon. You’ll be miserable if you can’t be fully yourself with someone.”

Decidedly, Sunghoon’s friends had a way of telling him the exact opposite of the things he wanted to hear while being completely right. He wishes things with you could stay the same — minus the overworking yourself and ignoring him in the process — and that he wouldn’t have to do anything that might make them change. But just as Jake said, he’d also reach a point where he couldn’t take it anymore—a point he was already inching closer and closer to with every passing day. He likes you enough to let you not define the relationship, but he likes you too much to let it go on. He likes you too much to not be able to tell you, and show you, and remind you of it every day. He hated having to hold back, and he hated feeling you holding back. He wanted to give you his all and he wanted all of you, too, not just bite-sized portions of you.

“You’re right,” he finally says. “I haven’t been able to talk to her lately, but I’ll have to tell her soon enough. When her exams are over, I guess.”

Jake sighs. “Yeah. I don’t know if there’s any getting through to her right now.”

“She’s blown me off so many times! I don’t know what she’s doing, spending so many hours in that library. I’d go insane.”

“She’s a perfectionist,” Jake says, shaking his head. “I’ve talked to her about it. When it comes to school, she needs everything to be as flawless as can be. She spends hours re-reading and editing her work. It’s not good.”

“Not really, no.”

“But she’s only got a week left. I’ll try to convince her not to go home for too long, and it’ll be better after the holidays. Then we’ll make sure there’s not a repeat of this next exam season.”

He thinks of Christmas break and of not seeing you for two weeks; of next semester and going through all of this with you a second time. The uncertainty, the fooling around behind your friends’ backs — although that might not be needed now that Jake is in on it too — Sunghoon’s not sure if he can go through it all again. “Yeah, we will.”

They lose their game the following day. They had an amazing run, either winning or tying every game so far; this loss is not enough to make them drop significantly in the rankings, but it’s enough to demoralize Sunghoon. It couldn’t have come at a worse time—between you and this failed game, his self-esteem is taking a real hit.

He dared hope for some comfort from you once he was back, but in vain. He doesn’t know why he imagined your attitude might’ve changed overnight, and when he texts you asking to hang out, the same old sorry I can’t atm fills his phone screen. And just like that, as strong as his feelings for you have been all this time, so is his resentment—unwarranted, perhaps, but he thinks he deserves better than this, and he’s both angry at you for not giving him anything and at himself for letting it happen.

Now, he’s the one who spends hours working himself to the bone in the ice rink, who’s clearly preoccupied with other things when everyone gets together, and who doesn’t even show up to the party the whole group goes to when you’re all done with exams. The last game before winter break is in two days, and he doesn’t want to waste a day nursing a hangover when he could be practicing.

That night, he thinks everyone is out at some random club downtown, so he does a double-take when it’s past eleven p.m. and you show up at the rink. He’s skating laps, practicing his speed and his goal-shooting, only noticing you when you’re standing in the middle of the rink. He almost skates right into you.

“Y/N?” he asks, not completely sure you’re not just a figment of his imagination. He’s so exhausted, he wouldn’t be surprised if he were dreaming you up.

“Jay texted me.”

“Oh. Why?” He’s out of breath, and the words come out blunter than he intends them to.

“Because it’s almost midnight and you’re still here,” you reply, crossing your arms over your chest. There’s a hint of a smile on your lips, but your eyebrows are furrowed in what looks like worry. It’s the first time Sunghoon’s seeing you concerned over something other than an assignment.

He shrugs and resumes his laps, slower this time, forcing you to keep turning on your feet. “I’m practicing. There’s a big game coming up.”

“Which is exactly why you should be resting, like everyone else on your team right now.”

He resists rolling his eyes. “Why would I rest when I could be getting better?”

“Because you need rest as much as you need practice. You won’t be any use on the rink if you’re too tired to play properly.”

“And I won’t be any use if I can’t shoot properly, either.”

“Sunghoon, you need a break. You’re clearly exhausted-Will you stop it?” you suddenly snap. “I’m trying to talk to you, and I’m getting dizzy.”

Your small outburst only has him growing more agitated, and even though he does stop, it’s more so you can see the annoyance on his face than anything. “You know, this is a bit rich coming from you, Y/N.” He knows this is not the right time to bring this up—if he has grievances against you, he shouldn’t be bringing them up when he’s already frustrated. He’s well aware of this, but he can’t help himself.

You scoff. “Excuse me?”

“You’re the one who spends twelve hours a day in the library during exams and does not budge even if I tell you you should go home.”

“That’s different-”

“How is it any different?” he interrupts, voice rising. “You don’t listen to me when you overwork yourself. I don’t see why I should.”

“So you realize that you’re overworking yourself?”

“Of course I do! But I have to.”

“No, you don’t-”

“Y/N, please. I have to win as much as you have to get the top grades. Is it actually necessary? No, but you know how shit it feels not to.”

“And it’s exactly because I know that feeling that I’m telling you to stop. You’re just feeding into it.”

“So are you, staying until 2 a.m. in the library. You’ve never once gone home when I asked you to.”

“Again, that’s different-”

“How?! How is it different? Please enlighten me, ‘cause they’re the exact same thing to me.”

You sigh. A sudden sadness appears on your face. Sunghoon is torn between wanting to see this to its end and taking everything he’s said back. But he keeps quiet, and your eyes, when they meet his again, harden. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”

“Yes.”

As if you couldn’t say your next words while looking at him, you tear your gaze away from his face. “Because I’m actually concerned about you, here. The only reason you want me to stop and go home is so we can fuck.”

Sunghoon is so astounded that all words fail him—he stares at you, mouth wide open like you just shot him. After a few seconds, all he’s able to come up with is an incredulous, “What?” His voice is a mere whisper.

“You heard me,” you say coldly.

He closes his mouth and swallows. “So… you’re the one who’s worried, and I’m only after sex?”

You glance at him. “Yeah.”

A chuckle escapes Sunghoon’s throat, then another, until laughter spills out of him uncontrollably. He feels like the world is upside down. How could you have lived the same thing and come out of it with such different perspectives? Your account of his intentions with you is so ridiculous and unfathomable to him that he can’t do anything but laugh.

You seem taken aback at first, but your surprise quickly turns into annoyance. “Something funny?”

“Hilarious, actually,” he says, holding his stomach. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. All he finds at the end of his amusement is anger, bright red and hot. It’s not an emotion he feels often, its rarity only serving as an intensifier—he starts making his way out of the rink before it can explode and hit you in its wake. “Well, that’s convinced me to call it a day. So you got what you came for, I guess.”

His fingers tremble as he undoes the laces on his skates and puts his sneakers on again. You stand by the door of the rink, holding onto the frame as you look at him, that same sad look still on your face. “Hoon,” you say, voice weak. What would usually have him melting only has his anger flare harder.

“Don’t. For the first time ever, I actually really don’t want to talk to you right now.” He stands up, gives you one last harsh look, and turns away. He only halts right before exiting the bleacher area, and after a couple seconds of thinking, turns back around. “Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll let you know when I want to fuck again. Since that’s all this is, clearly.”

It seemed to you no one thought you were good enough for Sunghoon.

Only Yunjin and Chaewon seemed excited at the prospect of the two of you getting together, or at least getting to know each other, but they were also the type to coo at dogs in the street and tear up at the sight of old people holding hands; Minjeong was apprehensive from the start, and made it clear; Jay was indifferent; Jake was oblivious for a while. Sunghoon was…

What was Sunghoon?

Someone who had come out of nowhere, shaken up your routine and messed with your head. That’s what Sunghoon was. He didn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.

Maybe it was your fault for not opening up to the people closest to you and letting them think you were some kind of no-strings-attached one-night-stands-only emotionless maneater who had been single for as long as they had known her, who would be seen with someone new every few months, and never for long, who, as far as the eye could tell, only used men for sex. Maybe it was their fault for never trying to dig deeper.

No, okay, it was definitely your fault.

Based on your conversations with your friends, they thought Heeseung had broken your heart, and you had never bounced back properly. He’d hurt you so much, you couldn’t fathom a real relationship anymore—you could only be with someone casually. Which wasn’t so far from the truth, but what Heeseung had done was much worse than just breaking your heart. He’d confirmed what you already knew of yourself: you want too much. You want what you can’t have, what you don’t deserve.

From the moment you met Park Sunghoon, you knew you didn’t deserve someone like him. Minjeong seemed to agree, and when she saw you and him together at choir that Saturday in September, three months ago already, she made sure you knew her thoughts on the matter.

“This is so… unlike you,” was the first thing she’d said after she pulled you aside.

“What is?”

“This,” she repeated, waving her arms around. “Being here. Coming with him.” She pointed at Sunghoon, whose hair was being ruffled by one grandma and his cheek pulled by another. He kept glancing back worriedly at you—you liked him so much already. “See? You’re smiling at him,” she said, making you realize a sappy smile had started growing on your lips at the sight of him. Your face dropped and you scoffed at the disgust in her voice.

“Yeah, some of us like to smile. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Y/N, you know what I’m trying to say.”

“I don’t think I do, actually.”

She sighed. “You don’t do this. You don’t meet a guy and show up to his choir practice the next morning. What’s happening?”

You crossed your arms over your chest. Had you known your presence would be questioned like that, you might’ve thought twice about coming. “Can’t a girl enjoy a choir without getting interrogated these days?”

“You’re avoiding my question! Listen, Y/N. Sunghoon is not the kind of guy you usually go for. He’s-Stop. Don’t smile at me like that.”

“If you like Sunghoon, you can just tell me. You know I wouldn’t stoop so low as to go after a guy my best friend likes.”

“So you are going after him?”

“So you do like him?”

Minjeong shook her head violently and put her hands on your shoulders, staring into your brain as if trying to make you see some sense. Calmly, she said, “No, I don’t. Sunghoon’s nice, but he is so far from my type. He’s too… nice.”

“You mean he doesn’t wear leather jackets or ride a motorcycle?”

“That was once. But no, he doesn’t do that. And what I’m trying to tell you is that he’s not your type either.”

“And how have you gathered that?”

“Because so far, you’ve only wisely chosen guys who are as detached and emotionally stunted as you.”

“I’m not-”

“But he’s not like that, Y/N. He’s the bring-home-to-your-parents-for-Christmas type. Not the hump-and-dump type.”

“I’m starting to get offended by this conversation.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t go breaking his heart. Or yours, for that matter. It pains me to say but I care about both of you very much and I don’t see this going anywhere good.”

You shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Was her opinion of your romantic tendencies — or lack thereof — that bad that she couldn’t even recommend you to her friend? You felt like a chastised child whose mom told you you couldn’t get the toy you wanted. Despite being well aware that you weren’t the most committed when it came to relationships, you still felt like she was going overboard. Just because nothing had stuck so far didn’t mean it wouldn’t now—she was acting like you went around playing with people’s feelings for fun.

“Jesus, this is my second time seeing him. I just wanna see what his deal is. I’m not breaking anyone’s heart, okay?”

The choir conductor had called out for everyone to gather on stage then, and that was the end of that conversation. You still remember how funny of a thing it was, seeing Sunghoon in his nice shirt and trousers, his hair falling into his eyes, singing diligently with the choir, when just the night before he had been playing beer pong dressed as Cowboy Ken. In this new light, you understood why Minjeong was so adamant about him not being your usual type, and why the grandmas were fussing over him. You hadn’t known what had pushed you to invite yourself to this rehearsal, and even then as you sat there, you weren’t sure what you were doing or why you couldn’t stop smiling as you watched Sunghoon sing.

Time made things clearer, starting with that afternoon at the beach. The salt in the air that day had clouded your thoughts, covered them with a thin layer so that your usual reluctance to share anything remotely personal had dimmed. Or maybe it had had nothing to do with the air and everything to do with the boy sitting next to you on the sand, the way words came tumbling out of your mouth before you could think about them and were only met with understanding and empathy on his part. For once, you didn’t feel the need to guard yourself, to adapt your words and actions to the person in front of you. It was something you didn’t know was possible with a near stranger—perhaps because Sunghoon felt nothing like one.

He made you feel things you hadn’t felt in a long time; things you had been craving to feel, needed almost as much as oxygen. Being with him felt like breathing again. But you had been underwater so long, being on land again felt foreign, scary, and you couldn’t help but dive back into safe waters, coming up for air once in a while.

Whether he had intended to or not, Sunghoon had started to scratch at your surface, until he’d burrowed a small hole—shallow, but enough for cracks to appear, cracks you were quick to put back together as best as you could.

So when his gaze was too tender, his touches too gentle, you bristled. You went away, because you were afraid of what might happen if you stayed. The more you wanted to give him, the less you gave him anything at all. Your own desire overwhelmed you. His letterman jacket was warm around your shoulders, you proudly walked around with the four letters of his last name on your back, but you couldn’t get out of your mind how cold it would be if it was one day ripped away from you.

You thought of Heeseung, how disillusioned you had been when you thought you had finally met someone who would love you the way you had always yearned to be, only for him to toss you away when you started asking for too much. You thought of your friends in middle school, how it seemed that no friendship could be more wonderful until you overheard them talking about you at a sleepover, about how clingy you were. You thought of your parents, how they had only bestowed kind words upon you when you performed well in your role of perfect daughter, of academically gifted child. How they hadn’t even glanced at any of the drawings you’d done of the four of you, mother, father, son and daughter holding hands with a bright yellow sun in the corner of the sky. How they had pushed you away from their bed when you seeked some comfort after a terrible nightmare. How they had never bothered to hide their disappointment when you came home from school with anything less than an A. How they had shunned your brother for not going down the path they had envisioned for him, how hard you had to fight to make them accept yours was not a worthless one.

Even your best friend seemed to think you were unable to receive affection of the likes of Sunghoon’s—but what you were afraid of was that he wouldn’t handle the amount of affection you knew you were able to give. In a way, that was what had drawn you to Sunghoon in the first place—from the moment you’d met him, you had been able to tell there was something of you in him. It seemed to you he had a heart that was overflowing with love, love to give, love to spare on whoever would have it. In his words, you were him. Nevertheless, your fear of getting hurt overrode your desire to feel Sunghoon’s love, and you didn’t know whether you would be able to revert to your nature after having spent so much time perfecting your new facade.

You knew what it was like to be cold. And so you prematurely braced yourself for it by pushing away Sunghoon’s warmth. If it was going to happen at some point, like Minjeong had hinted it would, might as well get used to it, right?

Except the cold never came. Sunghoon kept on burning relentlessly, no matter how much wood you fed his fire with—you could cling to him for nights on end or ignore his texts for days, without fail, he’d welcome you with his usual, unwavering warmth. He allowed you to bask in it, to momentarily let down your defenses. But something always happened to make you raise them back up—Minjeong would eye the two of you suspiciously, Heeseung would post on Instagram (Is one of the girls on slide five his new fling? Are they serious and it wasn’t that he wasn’t ready for a relationship, it’s that he didn’t want one with me?), or your mom would text you to ask you whether everything was okay.

Yet increasingly, you suspected there was something behind Sunghoon’s warmth, something you had missed, something that was tricking you. He looked at you like you had hung the stars in the night sky, yes; in public, a knowing look from you was enough to have his face turn bright red, and in private, one simple touch had his chest heaving, yes; he expressed disappointment every time you turned him down for a hang-out. Your attachment to him grew, and it became harder to put what the two of you had into words.

It wasn’t just sex—it couldn’t be. It ran deeper than that. You knew what relationships that consisted of just sex were like, and this wasn’t that, it was too good, too intimate to be just that. But you weren’t a couple, that much was clear. Only four other people were aware something was even going on, your brother not included, and you acted as regular friends in front of everyone. Jake had insisted you didn’t fool around with another member of his hockey team because his relationship with Heeseung had already deteriorated enough, he didn’t need to be on weird terms with anyone else on your behalf, so you were not keen on letting him know about what you got up to with Sunghoon. Anyway, even if everyone on earth was in on your shenanigans, you and Sunghoon hadn’t convened on what it all meant. Who knew what was going on in his head? You were no stranger to how deceitful men could be when they were after certain bodily pleasures. Unless Sunghoon said it in so many words, multiple times, you would not be a hundred percent sure he wasn’t only looking to get laid, or wanted someone to act like his girlfriend without the label and the obligations that came with it.

Because you basically were acting like his girlfriend, and he like your boyfriend. You always went to each other. Always, only each other. Whether he needed a second opinion on an outfit, you needed a rant session about your dissertation, either of you a really good orgasm, it was each other you went to.

You waited for him to initiate a conversation about the status of your relationship like one waits for church bells to ring at the turn of the hour—you knew it was coming, but the sound might be too much to bear. And the longer you had to wait, the more you dreaded it. Because how would you react when the time came? You didn’t trust yourself not to run away; neither did Minjeong.

The cold hadn’t come yet. You couldn’t let yourself feel the warmth unreservedly. It was all unpleasantly lukewarm.

Then you went home for a weekend.

It was a good friend from school’s birthday, and despite having spent a lot of time with Sunghoon at the expense of studying, you had done well this semester and thought you deserved a break. After having been away for so long, you had started to underestimate the power of your need for your parents’ approval over you. One small instance that your brother and many other people would’ve brushed off easily was enough to set you off—that same cold look of disappointment when you decided to be honest and told them one of your courses was deadly boring all while being unnecessarily complicated and you had received a low B-grade in it. They barely spoke to you for the rest of the evening.

Exams were a mere few weeks away when you got back. You buried yourself in work, forgot everything and everyone else, even Sunghoon, even yourself.

The cold hadn’t come yet, so you sought it out for yourself.

At the same time, you hadn’t indulged in enough introspection to realize how frustrated you had been at Sunghoon for not trying to create defined boundaries around your relationship. You were unable to do it yourself, you unrealistically wanted him to do the work for the both of you, you got upset when he didn’t. What you were able to do was make up reasons why he wasn’t giving you the what are we talk—he doesn’t like you that much, he just wants sex, he’s settling for you until he finds the next best thing, the real thing. This wasn’t leading anywhere, so you cut it off before he could.

You set foot in the library at seven thirty a.m. on a Monday and every following day of that week, then the next, then the next. He managed to pull you out every now and then—you weren’t that strong against his big pleading eyes, his soft messy hair, his warm hands that entirely covered yours.

Oftentimes, you were too tired at the end of a long library day to have sex. Sunghoon never held it against you—he seemed more than happy to cook you dinner, let you fall asleep halfway during a movie you had chosen, and cuddle all night long. But your body burned with resentment at his mere presence in your bed, in your home, in your text messages. Who was he to stop you from studying, from achieving your goals, to distract you from that top grade just so he could get off? Even your friends and brother weren’t trying so hard to make you take breaks. The worry that furrowed his eyebrows, which you used to want to see fade away with a caress of your thumb, now infuriated you to no end, it seemed — to you — put-on. He kissed your neck and you wanted to push him away instead of melt into him like you had before.

It was his turn to leave for a weekend for an out-of-town hockey game, and you convinced yourself his absence came as a relief. But on the Sunday evening they got back, as you came out of the library, you spotted your brother waiting right outside of the building.

“Why is it so hard to reach you?” he said when he saw you in lieu of a greeting. “What’s the point of having a phone if you don’t even use it? I called you, like, five times.” “It was on airplane mode.” He rolled his eyes so hard, you could almost hear them moving beneath their lids. “What have you done to Sunghoon?” You stopped dead in your tracks. “Sunghoon? What about him?” you asked, chest constricting at the mere thought of him and at the implication that something had happened to him, even if you were the cause. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was clear the truth had been revealed to Jake, and for some reason, it didn’t surprise you. You knew they roomed together and assumed Sunghoon must’ve told him. You tried your best to take it in stride. “I thought we said the hockey team was off-limits after Heeseung,” he said sternly. “Also, Sunghoon, of all people?” he adds before you can say anything. “That’s like, my bro. And he’s the nicest guy ever. Not the perfect pick for one of your victims, I must say-” “Oh, please, he’s not a victim. He’s a consenting adult.” “Then why is he so upset over you spending more time studying than with him?” “That’s the male ego for you, Jakey.” Your brother sighed deeply. “He’s really hurt, Y/N. If you were going to reject him, you could’ve done it nicely.”

You frowned. “Who said anything about rejecting him?”

“You’ve shut him out. You’ve shut all of us out.” Jake was staring at you, trying to get you to look at him, but you kept your gaze on the ground and kicked non-existent pebbles around, hands hiding in your coat pockets. “You might not have meant it as one, but he took it as a rejection.”

You scoff. “There was nothing to reject. It’s not like we’re actually together.”

“Yeah, thanks for telling me anything was going on, by the way.”

“It wasn’t any of your business.”

“It is, ‘cause it concerns my sister and my best friend.”

“He’s your best friend?” you echo, a teasing smile on your lips. He rolls his eyes again.

“God, maybe you guys aren’t so bad together after all. But Y/N—I’m serious. You need to do something.”

“Why can’t he?”

“Because you’re the one who’s been fucking around.”

Ouch. “You’ve known about this whole thing for what, two days, and you’re already blaming me for the fact that it’s not going perfectly? How little do you think of me?”

“I don’t think little of you, Y/N, I just know you have a track record of not being serious about relationships.”

Your body tensed up. Maybe it had been a particularly long day. Maybe it had been a long time coming. Tears well up in your eyes—a sight you’ve not let your brother see in many, many years.

“You know what, fuck this, Jake. I’m stressed enough as it is. I’ve done my best with what I have, and you don’t get to pin this on me. As if I was the only person in that relationship. If Sunghoon has a problem, he can take it up with me directly.”

You walked away. Jake called after you once, and when you didn’t come back, caught up with you. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I don’t wanna upset you. I just-I hate seeing him hurt, you know? And you too.”

“I’m glad my feelings are of some importance to you.”

“Of course they are,” Jake said, too concerned to detect the sarcasm in your words. “And you’re right, I’ve only heard Sunghoon’s side of the story. But it really sounded like-”

“Listen, Jakey, I really don’t wanna do this right now. Let’s talk about it when exams are over. I can’t have anything else taking up mental space. I mixed up my Greek third declension endings earlier.”

“God forbid.”

After some arguing, Jake let you off the hook—“Just for now,” he said. You’d get him to recount his and Sunghoon’s conversation in excruciating detail later.

You come out of an evening of contemplation resenting Sunghoon for bitching about you to your brother, of all people. As if he had been begging on his hands and knees for your devotion, as if you had been cool-headed and detached and not thinking he’ll ask me to be his girlfriend any second now every time you spent time together. You told yourself you were well and truly done with him for the time being. If there was anything to salvage, that was future you’s problem.

But late on Thursday evening, Jay sent you a voice message, something he only did when he was gravely drunk, shouting over loud chatter and rap music that Sunghoon hadn’t shown up to a party and was apparently still practicing. You’d caught wind of their loss at the game, and even though your heart had swollen with concern for Sunghoon, very well aware of how important winning was to him, you’d managed to squash it down. You had bigger fish to fry, namely, an Italian written exam that made up 75% of your overall grade for that course. But after ten minutes of re-reading the same three lines of an article from Republicca, you couldn’t get the image of Sunghoon skirting endlessly around the ice rink and potentially hurting himself out of your head. You told yourself you only had this one exam left and plenty of time to revise for it, packed up your things and headed for the rink.

It was past eleven p.m. when you got there. The rest is history.

Your grievances came out in an ugly way, but Sunghoon’s refusal to listen to you got the best of your nerves, and although you really did feel that your worry was more genuine than his, you didn’t truly believe that all he wanted from you was sex—at least, you hoped it wasn’t. It was the first time you ever saw any sort of negative emotion on Sunghoon’s handsome features, be it anger, sadness or pain. It tugged at your heartstrings, made you want to wrap him in your arms and get him away from whatever it was that tugged his eyebrows into a frown—even if that was you.

Now, as if the water has inched up your ankles and frozen over, your feet stay planted on the ice for a while after he’s stormed off. You don’t even realize you’re crying until a hot, salty teardrop falls on your lips.

Your feet regain control of themselves, and they seem to move of their own accord as they guide you right in front of Sunghoon’s dorm room. You’re barely conscious as your knuckles rasp against the door, and the tears that had fallen back behind your eyes spill out once more as soon as your eyes meet his. He’s just come out of the shower, a white towel wrapped around his hips, another one that he uses to dry his hair. His movements stop when he realizes who’s standing at his door, mouth falling slightly agape, chest visibly rising and falling. He’s so beautiful, you feel your heart breaking all over again.

Sobs pour uncharacteristically out of you, so much so that you have to hide your face behind your eyes. He ushers you in, holds you tight as everything flows out, the stress, the resentment, the loneliness, the longing. How could he be so close yet so far away this whole time? Did he want those miles of distance between you, or had you forced them upon him?

Sunghoon smoothes your hair down and shushes you, telling you it’s okay and that he’s here, voice strangled as if he’s on the verge of crying, too. A part of you still feels angry towards him, but the bigger part of you knows only he can give you the comfort you need.

“I missed you,” you say when you’ve calmed down partly. You only realize how true those words are once you’ve spoken them. You’ve missed waking up next to him, watching trashy reality TV together, taking coffee breaks that lasted too long in-between study sessions. You’ve missed the scent of his hair, the scent of his skin, you’ve missed watching the way his back muscles shift at the slightest of movements, feeling the weight of his head as he lay on your chest. All for a bunch of As you would’ve gotten without exerting yourself so much anyway.

“I missed you too, baby. Where did you go?” Just like that, you break down again, and he dissolves into apologies. “You’re here now, it’s all that matters,” he whispers against your hair.

“You didn’t see them, Hoon. You didn’t see the way they looked at me,” you say, struggling to speak, unsure you’re even making any sense but unable to stop. “I got As in everything, I worked so hard. Just one B, one week where I had four things due at the same time. Their faces, Hoon, like they were thinking, what was the point of letting me do this degree if I wasn’t even going to excel in it?”

“But you do excel in it, Y/N. You’re amazing at what you do. And even if you weren’t, you love it, and that’s what matters the most.”

“Not to them, it doesn’t.”

“Then forget them.”

“I can’t, Hoon,” you say, voice trembling. “I just can’t. I need them to be proud of me.”

“Isn’t it enough to be proud of yourself?”

“I wish it was.”

“Does it help if I tell you how proud I am of you and of how hard you’ve worked?”

He doesn’t see it, your face is still hidden in the crook of his shoulder, but a small smile makes its way to your lips. “A bit.”

“Then I’ll tell you everyday until you don’t need their approval anymore. They don’t deserve you, Y/N. They don’t even see what an amazing, beautiful, smart daughter they have. Or her sort-of-okay brother.” You laugh, and so does he. Sunghoon’s words and soothing touch against your back already alleviate the weight on your heart. “But I see it.”

You lift your head to look at Sunghoon. His eyes are glassy. “You see how amazing, beautiful and smart Jake is?”

He laughs again as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “Yeah, exactly.” The way he looks at you makes you wish you could go back to the day you met him and right all of your wrongs. No more hiding or running away. You only want to stay under that gaze of his. But sadness soon replaces the joy in his eyes. “You mean so much more to me than you give yourself credit for, Y/N. This has never been just about sex for me. Not even for a second.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what has it been about?”

He frowns like a student in an advanced math class who’s just been asked what three plus three is—isn’t it obvious?

“I love you.”

Your eyes dart between his as if searching for any trace of deceit there. Of course, you don’t find any—because there hasn’t been any since the start. You’d let your own fears invent things that weren’t there. Your lips tremble and you find yourself bawling on his shoulder once more, your tears like a well that digs deeper and deeper so as to never run out of water.

“I hope these are good tears,” Sunghoon says light-heartedly, but you can detect the nervousness behind his words. You nod your head vigorously, willing yourself to say something back, but your tears overflow, make your breath hitch.

“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” you manage in between sobs.

“I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you wanted to hear,” he explains.

“I was waiting for you to say something.”

“I didn’t know. I thought I was being obvious enough.”

“You probably were. I was the one who couldn’t see it,” you admit.

“I thought you didn’t want me like that.”

Sunghoon chuckles, a sound of relief. “I’ve wanted you like that since the start.”

“I think I have too.”

“You think?”

You lift your head again and when your eyes meet Sunghoon’s, it feels like coming out of your hiding place hours after the round of hide-and-seek was over. He hadn’t forgotten to come and find you. He was waiting for you to reveal yourself.

Which goes against the rules of hide-and-seek, but you don’t blame him.

You smile; he smiles, deep dimples carving crescents into his cheeks. “I love you, too.”

You hadn’t realized how cold your hands were until Sunghoon found them.

Everything after that was a blurry mess of tangled limbs, warm kisses, happy tears and relieved laughter.

Your touch had always been intoxicating, but Sunghoon was particularly sensitive to it that night. The mix of not having felt you close in weeks and the heightened emotions driven by your confessions made his skin tingle everywhere it came in contact with yours. He’d never slept so little without regretting it in the morning.

It goes without saying that most of the night was not spent talking, but you still had things you needed to discuss. The two of you laid out all of your fears, and Sunghoon was immensely relieved to finally get a glimpse into that mind of yours. He made you promise to always tell him what was going on, and he promised you you’d never be too much for him. Always just right.

Now, he gets to wait outside of your exam hall with your favorite flowers in hand, to put his arm around your shoulders during movie nights instead of holding your hand beneath the blanket, to kiss you over the barrier at the end of a hockey game he won. Heeseung’s narrowed eyes at the sight of the two of you is an added bonus.

You text him that you’ll hang around the locker rooms after the game so that you can head to the party together. The end of December is nearing and you can’t wait for the new year, for twelve whole months of not hiding your feelings for Sunghoon from anyone, not even from yourself, least of all from him. At least, that’s what you told him in a sappy, drunken voice message at two a.m. the previous night when the girls made you drink a bottle of prosecco to yourself—their way of congratulating you for an arduous but successful exam period.

He steps out of the locker rooms with Jake and Jay. You’ve never looked quite as pretty, face lighting up as you spot the three of them, his jersey on your shoulders. You’d worn it during your last exam—“I thought it might bring me luck to wear a pretty boy’s name on my back,” you’d told him, to which he’d replied that it was good practice for when you actually took his last name. You’d looked away, fighting a smile.

Now your smile is full-blown as you look at him, but the downside of being an official couple is that Jake has now more material to tease the both of you with.

“Oh my God, you waited for me, what a sweet sister I have been blessed with!” he exclaims, arms outstretched as he barrels towards you.

“Fuck off, Sim,” you say but accept his hug nonetheless. “Nice game.”

“I know.” He pulls away and ruffles your hair. Jay nods at you like you’re someone he shared a class with back in second year and not his friend of almost three years.

As if on cue, just as Sunghoon reaches you and envelops you in a hug, Jake turns around and yells loud enough for all the players spilling out of the locker rooms, “And don’t forget to wear protection! I’m not ready to be an uncle yet.”

“That’s disgusting, Jakey,” you yell back, and he smiles proudly. Sunghoon had never thought the day would come where you’d initiate a kiss in a room full of people—he’s on cloud nine when you take his head in your hands and press your lips to his, murmuring praises about how well he played.

“It was all for you, baby,” he says, trying to appear cool even though a blush is creeping up his ears.

“Not for the recruiter of the national team?” you asked with a smirk.

He smiles, shrugging. “Maybe a bit for him too. You’re the one I want to impress.”

“Consider me impressed.” You stand on your tiptoes to kiss him a second time.

You head towards your friends, hands warm against each other.

In classic mysterious Jay fashion, he organizes a New Year’s Eve party that he can’t attend himself.

He’s on holiday in some exotic country halfway across the world with his family, but he’s offered up their house for a celebration and tasked Jake with making sure no one trashes anything.

The party started three hours ago, and you’re sure it’s in full swing by now—you’re sure everyone is having a jolly old time, getting drunk enough to welcome the new year with a hangover, searching the crowds of people for the person they’ll want to kiss at midnight. You’re sure that people are having so much fun that whoever notices your and Sunghoon’s absence might think you’re missing out.

And maybe you are—but there’s nowhere you’d rather be than where you are now, straddling your boyfriend’s lap in the backseat of his car. He’s a little bit tipsy, you’re a little bit tipsy, it’s obvious in the way you kiss each other, messy, impatient, interspersed with giggles and with perhaps too much tongue. Your hands are not much more polite, harshly grabbing at his hair just the way you know he likes it, and neither are his, having snuck their way underneath your black satin dress long ago already.

When Sunghoon pulled you away from the party, you’d appropriately exclaimed, “But the party?”, to which he replied, “Fuck the party.” It wasn’t like him to curse, or to have anything but a bashful smile on his lips, like a guilty dog who’d been caught doing something it knew it shouldn’t, even though he was just standing there, so when you see his stoney expression, you think something serious must’ve happened.

The something serious turned out to be “that guy who was touching your shoulder.”

Clearly, it’d take Sunghoon a little bit more time to be entirely secure in your relationship. In the meantime, you didn’t mind letting him fuck his jealousy away.

Although he’d been the one to whisk you away, you’re the one who finds yourself begging for him to speed things up. Your flimsy thong does absolutely nothing, so you’re basically grinding yourself bare against his clothed erection—and it’s not like the fabric of his suit trousers is very thick, either. A girl can only put up with so much dry humping before having her boyfriend’s dick inside of her goes from being a want to a need.

“Need you, Hoon,” you coo against the shell of his ear. A few words usually do the trick, but Sunghoon has other plans tonight.

“What do you need, baby?”

“You.”

“I’m right here,” he says, punctuating his words with a squeeze of your ass.

“You know what I mean,” you say, practically whining.

“I’m not sure I do, actually.”

You pull away and, looking at him directly, say, “God, Sunghoon. I want you to fuck me.” His shit-eating grin simultaneously makes you roll your eyes and goes straight to your core.

“That I can do.”

He keeps one hand on your ass as he loosens his tie first, then undoes his belt and trouser buttons. His slacks and underwear pool around his ankles, and all he needs to do is hike your dress up around your hips and push your thong to the side. You wrap a hand around his dick, but your mind is too hazy to do much with it—he’s started rubbing circles on your clit with his thumb, the pressure and speed as perfect as it always is. You let your forehead fall against his shoulders and moan unabashedly, thankful he decided to park the car far enough away from the house.

“You like it when I touch you like this, baby?”

“I love it, Hoon.”

He hums his approval. “You’re so perfect. So perfect and so wet for me, isn’t that right?”

You start to say “yes,” but you interrupt yourself with a gasp. You hold onto Sunghoon’s arm, feel his muscles move under your palm as he slips two fingers inside of you without warning. “Please,” you choke out, a tight knot already forming in your stomach.

“Please what?”

“Need you. Need your dick, baby.”

He smiles as if endeared, but his words couldn’t be more different. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before going off with some random guy the one minute I was somewhere else.”

“He’s just-fuck, Hoon, he’s just a mutual friend of Jay and I. Fuck, right there, baby.” Forming coherent sentences when Sunghoon’s fingers flick against that perfect spot deep inside you again and again is no easy task, but you need to defend yourself.

“Right there?” he echoes, voice a whisper against your ear. When you nod, eyes shut tight, he slips his fingers out. You look at him, betrayed. “That’s too bad. Why don’t you ask him to touch you right there, hm?”

You don’t know how much of his jealousy is put-on to get you to beg and how much of it is real. You make a mental note to have a conversation with him about this later—right now, you don’t mind playing along if it means your boyfriend will deign to fuck you. You know he wants to, he’s just making you work harder.

You move your hand up and down along his dick, brush his reddening tip with your palm every now and then. “He couldn’t touch me like you, Hoon.” You lean in and trail kisses along his neck, his jawline, his ears. “Can’t fuck me like you, either.”

With exams, hockey matches and any other responsibilities out of the way for winter break, the two of you had had an obscene amount of sex in the past couple of weeks. You’d done other things, of course, namely having much-needed conversations with each other, your friends, your families. Sunghoon’s mother was overjoyed at the news, glad her “duckling had finally met someone” — her words — and his sister kept stealing his phone from him to talk to you when you were on FaceTime. You and Jake had gone home for two days for Christmas, and although Jake had needed to pep talk you into it for over an hour, you managed to tell them that you wouldn’t stand for being belittled for your life choices anymore.

But in-between these conversations, you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. You’ve grown more comfortable with each passing day, both of you bolder in vocalizing what you want and how you feel. And so, you quickly found out that your Sunghoon, your shy, sweet Sunghoon, got off like nothing else on salacious words. In line with his possessiveness, he loved hearing about how he and only he could do these things to you; in line with your need for validation, you could practically come from hearing his praises alone.

“That’s right, baby.” Like the gentleman he is, he fishes out the condom wrapper he had gotten ready from his trouser pocket, tears it open with his mouth and rolls the condom on with one hand, his other one still preoccupied with you. “Come here, my love,” he whispers, his sweet tone worlds away from his previous teasing, almost cocky one. He grabs your hips, guides you closer to him and lines your entrance with the tip of his dick. He lets you go at your own pace, rubs your thighs soothingly as you sink down onto him slowly and adjust to his size. You throw your head back, mind hazy with pleasure as you move your hips back-and-forth against him.

“You feel so good, baby. You’re doing so well for me.” His words make you pick up your pace, and you wrap your arms around his neck, fingers grabbing at his hair and sides of your faces pressed against each other as you start lifting your hips and sinking back down. Sunghoon’s hands hold your ass tightly, guiding you up and down. It’s hot in the car; sweat runs down your hairline and your back, air is running low, the windows are fogging up, but it only adds to the dizzying bliss growing in you. Even the seatbelt receiver digging into your knee doesn’t bother you.

“Feels so good, Hoon,” you moan.

“I know, baby.”

Your hours of studying everyday means your thighs aren’t the strongest—good thing for you that your boyfriend has enough stamina and strength for the both of you. As soon as he feels you tiring, your rhythm becoming slower and more irregular, he picks up your slack. One hand on your back, one arm around your waist, he presses you close to him, his hold on you so tight you can barely move. He bucks his hips harshly into yours, faster and faster, making you cry out with every brush of his tip against that spot deep inside of you. Your whole body shakes with pleasure as your moans grow higher and louder, until the tension in your stomach hits its apex and unravels. A gasp leaves your throat as you come around him, but he’s unrelenting, the overstimulation quickly making tears form in your eyes. Strings of curses and praises of how perfect you are spill out of Sunghoon’s mouth disorderly as he reaches his own end.

Together, you take your time catching your breath, his fingers roaming your back while you trail soft kisses all over his face and neck. “My pretty baby,” he whispers, and it makes your heart swell with so much affection for him that you press your lips to his, shutting him up in case he says something that actually has you exploding.

You wish you could spend some more time just the two of you before returning to the party, but when you check your phone, it’s already five minutes to midnight—he puts his clothes back on as you fix your hair in a rush, Sunghoon helping you wipe away traces of mascara under your eyes, and together, run back to the living room where everyone has gathered. You find Minjeong, Yunjin, Chaewon and Jake, who has Jay on FaceTime. It’s only five p.m. where he is.

Everyone counts down from ten together. The first thing you do in the new year is kiss Park Sunghoon—and you’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do, too.

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

#sunghoon x reader #enhypen x reader #sunghoon smut #enhypen smut #sunghoon fanfiction #enhypen fanfiction #enhypen au #sunghoon au #enhypen scenarios #sunghoon scenarios #enhypen imagines #sunghoon imagines

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spideyjimin · 3 months ago

Text

UNTIL I FOUND HER | kth

⤷ part of the dads universe

⏤ pairing: football/soccer player!taehyung x female reader

⏤ genre: best friends to lovers, idiots to lovers, angst, fluff, and smut

⏤ rating: 18+

⏤ warnings: dom!taehyung, swearing, alcohol consumption, jealousy, a lot of making out, sexual tension, mention of sex, some teasing, praising, fingering, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, rough sex, multiple orgasms, mention of oral sex, some crying, mention of pregnancy, mention of unprotected sex, mention of abortion, and pregnancy

⏤ words: 17,145

⏤ summary: taehyung is your best friend, he’s been part of your life for as long as you can remember. his love life is a complete chaos. there is only one girl he has truly ever loved. that girl is you. but how would things turn out when he finds out that you love him back?

⏤ author’s note: the fic is finally here 🤗 i loved writing this fic & writing this Tae, he’s so soft 🥹 honestly, i was super excited to post it, i truly hope you enjoy this fic 💜 let me know what you think of it & thanks for reading, angels ✨

DECEMBER 31, 2021

As every year, you celebrate the new year with your best friend, Taehyung. You’re not really fond of this celebration but you get to be with your best friend so you deeply cherish this day. This day is also a continuation of his birthday which takes place the day before.

Since he became a professional footballer/soccer player, you barely get to see him. His life changed completely. He trains a lot on a daily basis, he has games during the weekend, he constantly travels, and most importantly, he became famous. He’s one of the best players of his generation so he gets a fair amount of attention. It’s been hard for you to find your place in this new life, but Taehyung has always made sure to keep in contact with you. Most importantly, he has been keeping you out of the public eye.

Everything that he does instantly makes headlines, he doesn’t get much of a private life. However, he protects the people he dearly loves. Seeing him become that famous broke your heart because you’ve been loving him for a couple of years now. With his fame, you get to see him kissing girls and flirting with them. For a while, he also had a girlfriend and he was going everywhere with her. It was hard to see even though he had introduced her to you.

There are quite a lot of people at this party. But nothing new. You don’t know most of the people, they are friends of friends of friends. In summary, they were invited by someone. Taehyung also invited known people like Jungkook, a famous singer, and Hoseok, a famous actor. They’ve met through acquaintances and since then, they’ve been invited to this new year party. You like them a lot, they are very nice people despite being famous. Hoseok is actually the one with whom you’ve got closer. He’s now like a super friend.

You’re sitting at a table with Jungkook and you’re animatedly speaking. Honestly, you’re surprised by the life this man lives. He’s been a singer for more than 10 years but it feels like he has been living that life for 30 years. So many things have happened in his life and he has done so much. He’s also young so it’s almost impossible to believe him.

For a brief moment, your eyes scan the room and your body freezes for a split second when your eyes meet Taehyung’s. He’s so fucking gorgeous. The type of gorgeous that takes your breath away. Well, he’s always handsome but tonight, he’s even more than usual.

His hair is fully pushed back, except for a strand of hair falling on his face. It kind of makes him look like a bad boy. However, he’s a nice bad boy which is ironic. He’s wearing a flannel blue shirt with a large black pair of jeans. It’s simple but anything simple looks great on him.

You both glance at each other for a moment, it feels like there’s nobody else but you. Since yesterday, things have been different between you. The way you look at each other is different, the way you act around each other has changed. Nothing is awkward. It’s simply different but it’s a different that feels good. However, it leaves you wondering why your encounter changed this time around. What caused this change?

After what felt like an eternity, Taehyung joins you.

“How’s the night going?” He asks you.

Your eyes glance at him. “So far, it’s going well,” you answer with a smile.

Taehyung smiles back at you. “I’m glad we’re here together tonight,” he says. “I was actually looking forward to seeing you because it’s been a while.”

Your best friend is sometimes sad to not be able to see as much as he’d like to. For sure, he’s content with being a footballer/soccer player but this life has drifted you apart. By some miracle, you managed to keep the friendship which he’s very happy with. However, he barely sees you in a year. He tries to always make it to your birthday and make sure you get to celebrate his birthday and new year together.

However, he wishes he could be with you forever.

This separation sometimes breaks his heart because he spent all his childhood and teenage years with you, and now, you barely see each other. Of course, you text and call each other daily but it isn’t the same.

As he says those words, you can feel the heat taking over your face. Hearing those words makes you feel something in your stomach, you can’t quite explain it but it definitely makes you feel good and loved.

“Me too,” you simply reply.

Taehyung offers you a genuine smile before taking a sip of the drink he’s holding. Probably a cocktail that he prepared. For a little while, you talk about random things that happened in your life for the past months. The two of you enjoy this moment, it warms both of your hearts to hear what has been going on.

Taehyung can’t help but love the way you smile as you explain an event that occurred at work. The way your face lights up when you talk about work makes it obvious to him that you adore what you do for a living. He can’t help but find you absolutely stunning tonight. You’re wearing a blue pair of jeans with a floral top. It fits you perfectly. Well, he believes that everything fits you perfectly.

After a while, you split as you start talking with other friends around you. Throughout the night, you keep drinking some cocktails prepared specifically for the party. Well, some bartenders were hired for the event so you can ask whatever you want and they’ll make it.

You head to the little bar, joining Jungkook who’s already ordering something.

“Hi again,” you say as you reach him.

His head turns to the left, a smile growing on his face when he sees you.

“Hi again,” he replies.

Jungkook is a very good-looking man. He emanates a strong confidence which causes everyone to constantly look at him. For sure, you believe that this comes with being a singer. A singer constantly performs in front of people, gives interviews, signs autographs, takes pictures with fans, and many other things. For you, a singer needs to be comfortable in their shoes otherwise things can be hard, especially for the attention they get. It’s hard to imagine how Jungkook can handle all that. Well, you wonder the same with Tae because, at the end of the day, all of that applies to him as well.

“Has someone ever told you how pretty you are?” he asks with evident seriousness. “I constantly wonder how Tae hasn’t already fallen for you.”

Your cheeks instantly turn red. This is clearly and certainly unexpected. You never imagined that he considered you as pretty. Usually, famous people only find super thin and fit women as pretty, and to be honest, you’re none of both. But it actually flatters you that such a handsome man finds you pretty.

Since he caught you off guard, you don’t even know what to reply. “Tae is my best friend.”

As soon as those words leave your lips, you actually feel ridiculous. Tae is your best friend but that doesn’t change the fact that you developed feelings for him. However, you’re convinced that he doesn’t feel the same about you.

“Honestly, if you were my best friend, I would have already tried to seduce you,” he tells you. “Being best friends doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t fall for each other.”

He’s totally right, and you absolutely know it.

“You’re not wrong,” you reply.

A smile appears on his face. He’s stunning when he smiles. As you glance at him for a little while, you realize that you clearly understand why he has many girls at his feet. He’s very talented and attractive. No wonder that most of the girls scream like crazy when they see him.

“And to answer your first question, not many people have said that to me,” you say.

“Well, they clearly are blind,” he teasingly says.

A little laugh escapes your lips. Honestly, if this fantastic singer is going to flirt with you tonight, you’ll do the same. It’s not every day that someone like Jungkook flirts with you.

From afar, Taehyung watches the two of you discuss. It’s more than obvious that his friend, Jungkook is flirting with you. What he hates watching is you flirting back with him. From the way you laugh at his silly jokes to the way you touch him makes him want to throw up. Never in his life did he think he’d have to watch you flirt.

But he can’t do anything. You’re not his. He’s just your best friend. More than anyone else, you deserve happiness. He can’t stop what is starting to happen between you and Jungkook. If you like each other, what can he concretely do? He takes a sip of his drink. For a moment, he simply looks at the two of you openly flirting together. He wishes that this would have not happened in front of him. It makes him jealous, and he doesn’t like that feeling. It makes him feel vulnerable.

Right at that moment, Jungkook looks at him with a devious smile. Tae knows right there and then that he’s doing this on purpose. But why? For sure, he does that because he has an idea in his mind. Tae talks again with the guy next to him about football/soccer. It occupies his mind and it also doesn’t tempt him to glance at you.

After a while, Jungkook takes a seat next to him. He smiles like an idiot, Tae only wants to slap him when he smiles like that.

“You should tell her you like her,” he says with still that silly smile.

“I don’t see what you’re talking about,” Tae replies with his cheeks turning red.

“Yes, you know,” he instantly answers. “It’s written all over your face that you fell for her.”

Tae takes a sip to try to cool down his body’s temperature.

“I noticed it a while ago,” he starts saying. “You’re quite subtle. Being her best friend is the excuse you use to hide your true feelings. But slowly, I realized the way your face lit up when you talked about her. It was obvious you liked her more than a friend,” Jungkook explains. “I used this party to test the waters by flirting with her and your face confirmed it all.”

The footballer looks at his friend in disbelief. It’s unbelievable that his friend did that to simply confirm a theory. But he’s also surprised that he noticed he has feelings for you. For years, he thought he was discreet but it looks like he wasn’t after all. If Jungkook noticed it, surely other people would too.

“By the way, I totally get why you fell in love with her. Beyond being petty, she has a wonderful soul,” Jungkook adds. “But don’t waste more time. Go talk to her.”

Tae shakes his head. “I don’t want to ruin our friendship. I care too much about her and I don’t want to lose her.”

“Maybe you won’t lose her,” his friend says. “Maybe the feelings are mutual, maybe she loves you too.”

Taehyung doesn’t believe that. He’s truly convinced that you only see him as a very good friend and nothing more. Plus, he isn’t going to say anything because he’s scared to be heartbroken. He wouldn’t be able to handle that and still be your friend. And he’s sure that you would refuse to remain friends.

“I’m sorry, JK but I’m not going to do that,” he replies before leaving his friend alone.

Tae would rather see you falling in love with someone else than lose you forever. That’s the naked truth. He would prefer to be jealous than heartbroken.

As the night goes on, Taehyung avoids you. The discussion he had with Jungkook ⏤ and seeing you flirting with him ⏤ disturbed him. He knows that if he’s around you, he won’t be able to act like nothing happened. That he won’t be able to contain his jealousy.

The entire night you’re confused about why your best friend isn’t with you. It actually breaks your heart. You keep wondering if you did something wrong. The only thing that crosses your mind is the little flirting session with Jungkook. You wonder if he’s angry that his friend dared to get close to you. That’s the only reason you can think of. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

Taehyung keeps eyeing you from afar. It’s hard to be far from you when you’re in the same room. All he wants is to be next to you but he can’t. So he keeps on drinking and you do the same. By the time it’s 23:59, you’re both just completely drunk.

“10, 9, 8,” everybody shouts as you watch the countdown on tv.

You slowly get closer to Taehyung.

“7, 6, 5,” he looks for you in the room.

“4, 3, 2,” your eyes meet.

“1, 0,” your hearts beat fast.

“Happy new year!” everybody screams with joy.

You hug the person next to you and wish her a very happy new year. She does the same with a bright smile on her face. You keep doing that with friends while exchanging cheek kisses. It makes you happy to be starting the new year with them and their best wishes. You can feel that this year will be fantastic. You can’t explain how but you feel it deep inside you. It’s an intuition.

Slowly but surely, you get closer to Taehyung. There is no other person in this room with whom you’d like to hug, kiss, and wish a very happy new year. He’s the only person that has ever mattered in your life.

Once you’re face to face, you simply stare at each other. Your heart is racing inside your chest, your body is completely frozen, and your mind can’t think straight. Being in front of him after what felt like a crazy night is strange.

You take a step forward, your faces are quite close, and a smile appears on both your faces.

“Happy new year, Tae,” you finally say.

His smile grows bigger and even gets brighter. It almost looks like he’s shining. He gets closer to you in order to hug you but as he takes a step closer, his face gets closer to yours. For a split second, you can see his eyes going down on your lips which causes your heart to hammer even more in your chest.

Your eyes are lost in his, your breathing getting heavier, and the room’s temperature increasing insanely. You can feel his hot breath on your face, his strong scent invades all your senses. Right now, the crowd in the room disappears completely. There’s only you and him.

All you want to do right now is to kiss him desperately. You want to feel his lips on yours. You want to taste his lips. You want to get lost in his lips. For years, you wondered what it’d feel like to kiss him, and at this exact moment, you sense like you’re about to find it out.

Taehyung sees your eyes looking down at his lips which makes him feel like he’s won. Jungkook’s words echo in his head. ‘Maybe she loves you too.’ Maybe Jungkook was right. By the way you’re looking at him, he’d say that his friend was indeed right. You wouldn’t be looking at him with an evident desire to kiss him written all over your face if you were considering him as a friend. This wouldn’t be happening if he was only your friend.

A strong warmth invades his heart as he knows that he can do what he’s been dying to do for years. He’s still hesitant though. He’s not sure if he can do it.

“Happy new year to you too, yn,” he whispers while his face gets even closer to yours. “I wish you all the best for this new year.”

Shivers run down your spine. His eyes stare deep into yours and it makes you feel like he senses what you deeply crave right now.

Once he says those words, his mouth meets yours. Even though you want this, it catches you by surprise so it takes you a hot second to kiss him back. The kiss is shy at first, as if you’re both scared but it slowly turns into a desperate and fervent one. One of his hands goes to the back of your neck while the other one goes to your hips. He pushes your body closer to his. Your hands cup his face while you intensely kiss each other.

This feels like heaven for you two. This kiss has been wanted for years, but none of you dared to do it, too scared to ruin the friendship. Now that this is happening you’re not even afraid to lose each other. However, you wonder if this is only occurring because you’re both completely wasted.

You open your mouth, giving him free access to your mouth. His tongue doesn’t hesitate one second to find yours. Gently, your tongues meet and it feels wonderful. Inside of your lower belly, thousands of butterflies are freed. Never have you thought that this would’ve happened one day.

When you’re both out of breath, you break the kiss and rest your foreheads against the other. For a moment, you simply look at each other while you catch your breath. Taehyung’s fingers softly caress your face and you close your eyes to savour this moment.

“This is a great way to start the year,” your best friend murmurs.

You open your eyes to look at him. He’s so beautiful, he looks like a dream. This all sounds like a dream but it’s really taking place. You really kissed him. This isn’t something coming out of your imagination. This is real.

This time you’re the one who kisses him. You don’t want this to ever stop, you want to keep kissing him until your body can’t handle it anymore. A soft moan leaves his mouth when your lips meet. He also wants to keep doing this forever. He doesn’t know if you’ll both remember this tomorrow because you’re drunk so he wants to enjoy every second of it.

Taehyung teasingly bites your lower lip which causes a moan to escape your mouth. A devious smirk appears on his face but he gets back to kissing you fervently. This kiss seems to slowly evolve into something more. It’s evident that you want more. You can feel it in the way his tongue plays with yours, in the way your hands move in his body, and in the way his hands hold you tight against his body. You obviously want to have sex together. This could stop you but it doesn’t. You desperately crave this.

He breaks the kiss, it wouldn’t be appropriate to keep doing this in the middle of this crowded room.

“Do you want to go to my place?” he nervously asks.

Right there, when he dares to ask this, you realize the extent of the situation. You kissed your best friend, and there’s no doubt that you’re not going to his place to play cards. If you accept his proposal, you’ll get laid. Would your friendship resist this? Would you even remain friends? Would this mean that you’re together now?

Those questions are quickly erased from your mind. You’ve already ruined the friendship by kissing each other. Going a bit further won’t change that. And honestly, right now, you don’t want to think about what will happen tomorrow.

“Yes,” you nod.

Your best friend smiles before grabbing your hand and taking you out of this place. He guides you to the parking lot where his car is. It’s an underground parking lot and there’s absolutely nobody except you and Taehyung. You quickly reach his car, a brand new BMW X1. It’s such a wonderful car. You don’t know much about cars, you just look at them from the outside and judge them. You heard many good things about the brand BMW so you’re convinced it’s a good car.

He opens the car door for you before making your way inside the car. The smell of leather invades your senses. Weirdly, it’s a smell that you’ve always liked. The smell of a brand-new car always brings you back to a childhood memory, a very good one. So, you always like this smell. Taehyung looks at you with marvel. He’s aware of this liking of yours and he knows what it is related to. He finds you adorable.

Quickly, he starts the car and drives like a crazy to reach his place as soon as possible. He definitely doesn’t want to waste time. All he wants right now is to have his lips on yours and fuck you until there’s no tomorrow.

As soon as you arrive at his place, the two of you leave the car in a hurry. In less than a minute, you enter your place, take your shoes and coats off, and run to his massive bedroom. You know his place by heart as you’ve come a hundred times. It’s quite a wonderful and impressive house but right now, you don’t really have the time to take a proper look at his place.

Taehyung doesn’t waste a second before kissing you passionately. Damn, he is desperate to feel your lips against his. It’s all he wanted to do during the car ride. Actually, he is simply completely desperate for you. After all, he’s been having a crush on you for years.

“I desperately want you, yn,” he whispers against your lips with his deep voice.

You clench your tights together, his raspy voice sending shivers down your spine, but his voice is so low that you barely hear his words. However, you don’t need to hear him say it to know it, it’s clearly written all over his face.

“And I’m desperate for you, Tae,” you reply.

The football/soccer player presses his lips against yours once again but this time, he’s kissing you with a fervent passion. Having his lips on yours feels like a dream, it almost feels like this isn’t happening. But damn, this is even better than anything you dreamed.

Slowly, the two of you walk closer to the bed before sliding onto it, now finding yourself lying on the bed with his toned figure hovering over you. His toned body is still something you’re trying to adjust. Taehyung used to have a frail body but since he became a professional player, his body has completely changed. He got even hotter with time.

Never once do you break the kiss, loving the feeling of your tongues sensually battling in your mouth. A small whimper escapes your throat as his hands move down to your waist. He softly caresses you before his hands pull up your floral top to finally touch your skin. His long fingers brush on your stomach, the cold feeling of them making you moan.

“Your skin is so soft,” he whispers on your lips while his eyes lock with yours.

He doesn’t let you answer and his teeth grab your lower lip, snatching a moan out of you. Haltingly, his right hand descends on your body, goosebumps rising on your body as his fingers get closer to your core. His long fingers push your pants and underwear down your legs before throwing them onto the floor.

As slowly and carefully as possible, they swipe along your slit, making you gasp at the contact. A moan escapes your mouth, and Taehyung has to admit this is a sound that he adores. For sure, this is something that he’ll get to hear often tonight, and fuck, he can’t wait to make you moan even more.

At first, your crush abuses your clit with his thumb in order to get you wet before he inserts his fingers inside you to stretch you open. The feeling of his cold thumb circling on your clit feels marvelous, Taehyung is doing wonders to your body.

“I’m gonna add a finger,” he warns you.

The man wastes no time before dipping one finger into your heat, preparing you for what is coming. His eyes watch as your face contorts with delight while his finger slowly pumps in and out of you. It feels divine to have his finger inside you. It brushes against all the right spots inside you, this already feels like heaven on earth.

“Fuck, you’re already so wet, butterfly,” he says to you.

Hearing the nickname sends shivers down your spine. From time to time, Tae gives you cute nicknames and you actually love that. It sometimes makes you feel like your romantic feelings are reciprocated.

For a little while, he just stretches you open with one finger. The man has no rush in giving you pleasure but he knows that in the end, all this preparation will give you the best orgasm of your life.

“I’m going to add a second finger,” he informs you.

The fact that he lets you know what he’s about to do melts your heart. Taehyung is such a gentleman even when he gets all dirty. At least you can prepare yourself for whatever size his cock is. Hopefully, it’s not a monster. Based on what you can see thanks to his pants, he’s not small but at the same time, he doesn’t look too big.

Once his second finger slips inside you, you spread your legs a bit more. Small gasps of delight leave your lips as he pleases you with only two fingers. The room around you starts to get extremely hot, your heart starts to pound faster and harder in your chest, and the pleasure starts to build within you. Taehyung smiles as he feels his fingers getting covered with your wetness.

“Fuck, butterfly,” he mumbles, “you’re getting so wet.”

His fingers slowly move completely out of your pussy before sliding them in again with ease. Another moan leaves your mouth, closing your eyes to enjoy the feeling of his fingers filling you up. He repeats the action of moving his fingers out but this time, he brings his fingers to his mouth to taste your sweet and sticky juices. As he does so, you take a moment to admire his strong arms. Something that always turns you on when looking at his arms is how veiny they are.

Your eyes never leave him, a moan leaving your mouth as he twirls his tongue around his fingers. The sight is so damn erotic, and it makes you grow wetter. Taehyung places himself in between your legs, spreading them even more to get a proper view of your cunt. You’re prettier than in his wildest dreams. He can’t wait to be fully inside you and to feel your velvety walls around him. That thought alone almost makes him groan.

The two of you are already completely consumed by pleasure. As this is something you both desired for a long time, it makes everything feel more intense. You’re simply so needy for each other.

He licks his lips, taking in the amazing view he has before him. This sight alone turns him on even more.

“You’re so wonderful, butterfly,” he runs his thumb over his lower lip.

Your friend takes his shirt off, exposing his upper body to your very hungry eyes. Without an ounce of shame, your eyes wander on his toned chest and arms. He’s so fucking hot. It’s not the first time you’ve seen him shirtless. You’ve already seen him a couple of times shirtless. However, it’s different this time. He’s shirtless because you’re about to be fucked by this god.

Taehyung leans closer to you before pressing a chaste kiss on your lips. When he stands again, he pushes again two fingers inside your core, making you moan at the feeling of his wet fingers inside your velvety walls. For a little moment, he just enjoys torturing you at a slow pace with his two fingers covered in your wetness. Nothing can compare to the excitement he feels when he sees you contorting with delight. A delight that he is causing with his fingers. That swells his heart in a way he can’t even explain.

He’s pleasuring the woman he always loved.

“Ready for a third finger?” he asks.

You nod, knowing perfectly that you need that third finger to stretch your core even more. Your body and mind can even picture how it will feel. However, slowly but surely, you’re getting desperate to have his dick buried deep inside you. After your contentment, he curls a third finger into you, and damn, you love it so much. Your head rolls back, loving every second of Taehyung’s torture on you but as you do so, you expose your neck to his burning eyes. Without any hesitation, his mouth finds your neck.

Having his fingers thrusting faster, and his tongue and teeth abusing your neck makes you moan more and more. Without any warning, the wave of pleasure fiercely washes over you, Taehyung’s name rolling out of your tongue while he keeps abusing your neck and core. You close your eyes to enjoy the feeling that this orgasm generates.

“Wow,” you barely manage to say.

This is the first orgasm Taehyung offered you. It tastes tremendously wonderful, and you only want more. Your friend only stops torturing you when you’ve come down for your high. His fingers are fully covered with your arousal by now, and he carefully pushes them out of you to take a proper look at them. You gasp at the feeling of emptiness.

“Wow, it was so intense,” you finally say as you open your eyes.

You’re greeted with your friend licking his fingers to taste you. He’s standing tall between your legs with his long fingers in his mouth. That’s a very hot and intense vision, and you never thought you needed it before. This man is turning you on like crazy! You could keep looking at this forever.

“And it’s only the beginning, butterfly,” Taehyung replies with a little smirk appearing on his face.

“You’re such a tease,” you reply before giving him a gentle slap on his chest.

A little laugh escapes his lips.

“It’s nothing new,” he mumbles as he gets closer to you. “I’ve always teased you,” he whispers in your ear.

Fuck, you’re not sure you’ll be able to survive this night. It’s only the beginning and you’re already dead. Before you can comprehend what is going on, the man on top of you fully removes your top and wastes no time in removing your bra. Feeling his fingers brushing against your skin sends shivers all over your body. Your eyes only stare deep in his lusty gaze.

Your heart is rapidly hammering in your chest, ready to burst at any second. Sharing such an intimate moment with him is something you’ve been dreaming of for years, and you’ve been desiring it more than you can even express. However, having it actually happen is quite something. As your eyes keep watching him, you take in every single detail of his sweet face.

He has a pronounced jaw which is part of his charm. He has a little mole on his nose which makes him cute. His dark hair is falling on his face which makes him even more handsome. His deep dark eyes are looking at you with evident desire which turns you on. He has heart-shaped lips which you’ve desired to kiss for years.

This all feels unreal.

Quickly, the lust written all over his face turns into worry. His brows furrow, and you can’t resist the urge to touch the spot right in between his brows. Taehyung shivers when he senses your fingers before closing his eyes for a brief moment. This moment right here is the most intimate you both ever experienced in your lives. You’ve had partners in the past and you loved them, but nothing compares to this feeling.

The love you share has grown over the years and it only got stronger over time. This inevitable moment is the simple proof of your deep and shared love. Yes, it’s dirty, but it’s filled with true love. It’s evident that you’re soulmates. True soulmates.

Taehyung opens his eyes to be greeted by the prettiest woman he has ever seen. He could do this eternally. Seeing you every day would be his greatest pleasure. Being able to touch you every single day would be his biggest dream. Being around you is and will forever be his home. You’re the person that has ever been able to make him feel at home. It has never been about a place. It has always been about a person.

Without hesitation, you both kiss each other with tenderness and passion. You’re kissing each other like it’s the last time you’ll do it. And god, you indescribably love it. Your hands instantly find their way to his fluffy hair, softly playing with it as you kiss him like there’s no tomorrow. His tongue slowly finds yours to share an erotic dance. Little moans leave both your lips. Deep down in your body, you can feel the pleasure growing inside you. This kiss wakes up every single fiber of your body.

“Yn,” Taehyung whispers against your lips.

Slowly, your eyes look up at him. His eyes are closed so you can’t see them but you smile because you can’t help but find him adorable while he kisses you. You close your eyes to savor this moment. You break the kiss to catch your breath. Taehyung’s eyes quickly scan you before his lips get close to your ear.

“You’re a fucking dream, butterfly,” he whispers with a deep voice before he nibbles your ear which makes you moan.

It’s so disconcerting how he can switch from sweet to filthy in a second.

“And you’re my fucking dream, Taetae,” you reply before pressing a gentle kiss on his cheek.

A smile spreads across his face while he buries it in the hollow of your neck. You can feel his smile against your lips and you can’t help but hold him tight against you. After a little while, he presses kisses on your neck. Little moans escape your lips as he keeps leaving a trail of kisses from your neck to your jaw. Rapidly, he reaches your lips and presses a kiss on them.

Taehyung stands back again to take his pants and underwear off. But before he can unzip his pants, he’s taken aback by your question.

“So we’re going to make babies?” you softly ask while looking at him.

Taehyung is no stranger to your shyness when it comes to sexuality. He has always spoken very openly about his sexual activities. Not with you of course because he’s a crush on you and it feels weird to be talking about having sex with someone to the girl he loves. However, he isn’t embarrassed to sometimes bring up the topic. He has already said that he adores blowjobs, especially if they are done very well. Or that he loves giving pleasure to his partner. Whenever he talks about it, you instantly turn red. He has always found you incredibly adorable.

On top of turning red, you also don’t use harsh words. For example, you don’t say “cock” or “dick” out loud. Instead, you’ll say ‘pipi’, standing for penis. You’ll say “naughty time” instead of “having sex”. Sometimes, he even likes to tease you because you’re the cutest person ever when you get shy. He’s aware that you’ve had sex and the simple thought of you doing it with someone else makes him angry. But even though you’ve had sex, you still get very shy when the topic is brought up. Which honestly is very ironic.

“Well, if by making babies, you mean having sex,” he starts saying. “I’ll say yes, butterfly.”

Butterfly is a nickname that comes from when you were kids. Most of the time, you’d be the kind of girl running after butterflies in the park. Taehyung would run with you of course but you’d be the first to do it. Jokingly, he started calling you ‘butterfly’ but it stayed. But after he started dating his first girlfriend, he stopped giving you that nickname. You always thought she was the one who asked him to stop calling you like that, but it wasn’t.

He stopped doing it because, with time, that nickname meant that he loved you. He was never able to give a simple cute nickname to any of his girlfriends. It was impossible for him. Giving you a nickname was the proof that he loved you more than a friend should. He had to hide his feelings so that meant stopping calling you ‘butterfly’. However, sometimes, he still does it, especially when he gets tipsy.

But tonight, he has said the nickname more than he has done over the last few years. And it gives you butterflies.

Taehyung slowly undresses himself in front of you, and you enjoy the view. He’s incredibly handsome. You don’t even understand how you got here with your best friend. You bite your lower lip as you admire him undressing himself. That’s hot.

When he’s fully naked, your eyes inevitably look down at his manhood. It’s quite something. It’s a bit long but not too long as well. It’s a reasonable length. On top of that, it’s thick. You’d say it’s a reasonable thickness but that wouldn’t be quite right. Honestly, his dick isn’t a monster, but it’s not a baby too. Most of your previous partners had smaller dicks. Nonetheless, he’s impressive, and you can’t wait to have him deep inside you.

“Are you ready, yn?” you nod, ready to be completely mind-blown by this man you desperately love.

Taehyung holds his hard member before stroking it a few times, your hands snail down to his abs before slowly moving up. He bends down to press a kiss on your lips before he slowly buries his cock inside your soaked core, stretching your velvety walls. Both of you moan as he slowly pushes his thick cock inside you. Fuck, it feels wonderful.

Since the beginning of the night, you’ve been craving this and you’re both enjoying this.

Once he’s deep inside you, his hips stay still to give you the time to adjust. His lips press a gentle kiss since he adores doing it. For a little moment, your mind only focuses on him and his lips. Nothing else. When he breaks the kiss, your walls clench around his thick member, making him groan.

“Don’t torture me, butterly,” he begs, his eyes locked on yours.

“Sorry,” you apologize. “It wasn’t made on purpose, Tae,” you reply.

His lips press another sweet kiss on your lips, but very quickly, it turns into a fervent kiss. As you’re kissing, he slowly moves inside you. It’s very subtle but you definitely feel it. When you break the kiss, you give him a small slap on his ass.

“Whenever you want, you can move,” you whisper against his lips.

A giggle leaves his mouth after the small slap on his ass. He’s actually very amazed, he never imagined you’d ever slap his ass one day. In all honesty, he’s surprised in a good way.

Taehyung slowly pushes back, leaving only the tip of his cock inside you. His large hands find their way to your waist, caressing your soft skin while his eyes filled with lust glance into yours. He moves again his dick inside you, filling you up to the brim. It’s euphoric to have him completely inside you again.

“So fucking good,” you mumble as your eyes roll back.

A smile arises on his face, happy to be able to give you pleasure with just that but well, he’s enjoying it just as much. Once he’s completely inside you, he doesn't move for a little while, hovering over you and watching you with enchantment. His eyes glance down at your body. It’s the first time he’s seen you fully naked, and you’re just mesmerizing. He wants to keep looking at you to engrave in his mind how wonderful you are.

He starts to thrust into you at a slow pace at first. The movements of his hips are very sensual and slow, the room getting filled with the sound of his hips hitting softly yours. There isn’t any urge in Taehyung’s hips movements, all he focuses on is to provide you pleasure. His eyes keep going down on your body, and he groans when he watches himself buried deep inside you.

“Your cunt takes me so fucking well, butterfly,” he mumbles.

You close your eyes, completely enjoying the feeling of having him fully inside you. Never once do the thrusts become brutal and rough, they are deep and slow, making you moan a lot. It’s extremely sensual, and it definitely matches how you envisioned Taehyung in bed. The way he’s fucking you is euphoric. You only crave more and more.

The bed under you squeaks, the headboard hits the wall just behind you while your friend simply makes love to you, or as you’d say, he simply makes babies with you. He leans down to press a sloppy kiss on your lips, your hands finding their way to his neck and hair. Your nails scratch the skin of his neck and shoulders, making him groan against your lips.

The man over you decides to stop moving, torturing you just a bit. “Don’t stop, Tae,” you beg.

His lips press another kiss on your lips. “Your wishes are my command, yn,” he says before biting your lower lip.

Taehyung pushes his cock back before thrusting into you very slowly and deeply with both hands on your hips, pulling you back to meet his thrusts. The slick sound of your pussy soaking his cock as well as your moans fill the room.

“Damn,” you gasp while he keeps torturing you at a slow pace, “you feel so good.”

You’re completely drunk in the feeling of his cock filling you up, his hips hitting against yours with every thrust he makes. This all causes sparks of pleasure to shoot throughout your body, your arousal dripping from your core and creaming his cock. Taehyung smirks as he notices the sticky mess you’re causing.

His cock is buried deep inside you, making wonders inside you, and causing you to moan even louder with each thrust. Every time he pushes his hips back, he watches with delight the way his cock is completely covered with your arousal. Nothing drives him crazier than seeing this, you can see it in his eyes.

“You’re so fucking wet, butterfly,” he hisses before biting his lower lip. His hands press harder into your skin when he feels your walls tighten around him, “and making such a mess on my cock.”

“I’m only wet because of you,” you first say, “you’ve been torturing me since the beginning.”

Taehyung smiles before bending down to press a sloppy kiss on your lips while his thrusts slow down. You didn’t think it was possible to go any slower than the pace he’s going but apparently, he can do it. A desperate whine gushes from you, a sound that he instantly swallows.

His hands go up on your body, grabbing your breasts and squeezing them to make you moan with desire before his fingers start playing with your nipples. Moans flood out of your mouth as your friend keeps torturing your body.

“Damn, Tae,” you whine, “this feels so good.”

His thrusts return to get a little faster. His fingers never stop abusing your way too sensitive nipples. Gradually, his thrusts are faster and deeper, causing moans to fall out of your mouth. Your walls suck his cock as he slams his hips into you with more force. His fingers keep playing with your very sensitive nipples, pushing you closer and closer to the edge.

His eyes look at you, contorting with pleasure as it slowly builds within you. Your moans are getting louder, you don’t even try to hold them back or to stifle them. Luckily, he isn’t living in an apartment because you’re sure all the neighbors would hear you. However, you’re also convinced that you aren’t the only one being fucked tonight. It’s the New Year, everybody is celebrating it, and some in a very nasty way. Just like you.

His hands that are on your hips can feel the way your body quivers with each thrust. The way he’s torturing your body is only making you lose yourself further. You’re already so close to your orgasm that you already know for sure that you’ll come soon.

“Fuck,” he groans when he feels the warmth of your walls wrapping tighter around him. “Your cunt is clenching so hard.”

The sweat is dampening his body, sticking some rebellious strands of hair to his face. Taehyung covered in sweat is a vision that can easily make you come undone. He’s so hot when he starts sweating. No wonder your mind easily gets lost when you see him playing football/soccer.

“You’re so damn hot,” you say as your hands wander on his neck and hair.

A smile spreads across his face as you compliment him, but he decides not to stop torturing you simply because you’re flattering him. His fingers pinch your nipples harder, making the wave of pleasure grow bigger inside you and making you cream his dick even more.

“Gonna come, Tae,” you tell him when you feel that all your emotions are overwhelming you.

Taehyung feels his cock twitching inside of you at your words, a low groan rumbling in his throat. One of his hands slowly moves down on your body, passing your stomach, and landing on your throbbing clit. His fingers rub your sensitive spot as his cock keeps thrusting into you at a slow pace.

“Beg for it, butterfly,” he says.

His fingers show no mercy on your clit, and you’re not even sure if you’ll be able to beg for anything before coming.

“Please, Tae,” you can’t even form a proper sentence with the way he’s torturing you.

You’re not even sure that you’ll be able to recover from this moment. This is just hot with the slow and sensual pace of his thrusts, and the way his fingers torture your body. This is for sure a wonderful way to start the new year.

“Tell me, butterfly,” he teases you with a smirk on his face.

“Let me come,” his smirk grows bigger on his face, delighted to have you begging him to come.

The wave of pleasure inside you is growing exponentially, almost becoming too overwhelming. You’re moaning like a mess, but at this stage, you couldn’t care less.

“Do it, butterfly,” he whispers, “come for me.”

Those words are what you need to hear for your orgasm to hit you fiercely. You come hard around him, your arousal covering completely his cock and your walls squeezing him over and over again. While you’re completely euphoric from your orgasm, he speeds up the pace of his hips slamming into you, chasing his own high. Breathy whines escape his pretty lips as he looks down at the mess you made on his cock. His eyes are completely hypnotized where your bodies meet.

Desperate moans leave his mouth when his orgasm hits him hard. He fully explodes inside you, painting your walls white with his semen. His eyes roll back with pleasure as his body tenses up and releases his load. Loud cries of euphoria escape his lips as he’s high from his orgasm.

He collapses next to you, both of your bodies covered in sweat after this intense sex session. After a little while, he pushes you against his body to hold you tight. He covers your bodies with a blanket. This warmth together with the alcohol and the steamy sex session makes you fall asleep in no time. Taehyung presses a gentle kiss on your head.

“I love you, butterfly,” are the last words you hear before falling into Morpheus’ arms.

JANUARY 7, 2022

The past seven days have been filled with memories of the new year’s night. You can’t stop thinking about the way he passionately kissed you, the way his hands were on you, the way he touched you, and most importantly, the way he fucked you. Honestly, it was the best sex you ever had, and gosh, you’d like to do it again. But let’s be honest, he’s been your best friend for years. Yes, you’ve had a crush on him but you don’t wish to lose him and his friendship that is so important to you.

So for you, this was a simple one-night stand.

For you, it’s preferable to keep living in your delulu world and go back to having a crush on him instead of actually trying to build a romantic relationship. You’re too scared of what could happen. You’re afraid of the unknown. You’re simply fearful of losing him. You can’t picture a world without him by your side. He’s your best friend.

Yesterday, he texted you, asking if you could meet today to discuss. No need to be a genius to understand that he wants to talk about that famous night. Especially since you haven’t talked at all since that night, not even by text messages. Weeks ago, it would have crushed you to not talk to him for a week but since that incident, you need some space.

Without any surprise, he asked if you could meet at his place. The same place where you fucked. But it’s understandable. He has done everything to protect you from the public eye so it wouldn’t make sense now to have a serious discussion where anyone can see and recognize him.

So now, you’re standing in front of his house. Just being here brings you back once more to that night. For a brief moment, you close your eyes to savor those memories. They taste good, and deep down, you know that you’d like to go back to that moment. You’d like to have Taehyung in between your legs, fucking you like there’s no tomorrow.

You knock at the door with shaky hands. You don’t know what to expect from this conversation. The only thing you truly care about is to keep him and his friendship in your life. The door is opened by your friend who invites you in. Your heart starts beating at an insane pace. The image of him licking his fingers instantly crosses your mind, and god, that’s hot.

Taehyung nicely asks if you desire to drink or eat something but you politely decline. You don’t know what to do or say so for a brief moment, you awkwardly stand there at the main entrance.

“Let’s move to the living room,” he first says. “If you want, of course.”

Your best friend notices how awkward you feel. It kind of breaks his heart because things have never been like this before. Nevertheless, he understands. After all, you had sex together. Friends don’t do that, otherwise, they aren’t friends. It leaves him wondering now what you are. Are you still friends? Are you more than friends?

“Fine,” you reply.

Taehyung lets you walk in front of him as the gentleman that he is. Obviously, his eyes wander a tiny bit on your ass. An ass that he finds wonderful. He definitely wants to smash it, but he can’t. That would be completely inappropriate. He gathers himself as this is not the right moment to drool over you. You need to talk about the new year’s night.

You both take seats on two different armchairs, sitting face to face. Even though you always loved to be next to each other, this time around is different. A little space is needed, especially if you want to talk. The two of you acknowledge that the new year’s night is the only thing you can probably think of. So being next to each other will only make that night happen all over again.

Taehyung takes a deep breath before talking. “Thanks for coming, yn,” he offers you a little smile.

“You don’t have to thank me, Tae,” you answer. “We need to talk about what happened so it’s normal.”

He nods. Quite frankly, he’s very nervous. Things are different between you and he feels that this conversation can forever alter your relationship. Or you remain friends, or you take it to the next level. There’s also the possibility that it becomes too hard for him to simply remain friends with you and that he takes some distance from you. He wouldn’t want to reach that point, and he believes it will never happen. But we never know what tomorrow is made of.

“Well, I fully want to be honest with you,” he starts saying, and you nod. “I’ve been loving you for years now, but loving in a romantic way.”

His hands are shaking. Saying it out loud makes it real, and most importantly, now, you’re aware of how he’s been feeling for years. It’s honestly quite a big deal for him. However, after what happens, he feels like he has to be honest with you. Keeping his feelings inside won’t help.

On the other hand, your body is completely frozen and your heart has stopped beating. Now, this is real. Your feelings have been reciprocated all those years. But now that he said those words, you don’t know how to process them. Honestly, it doesn’t really change anything because you’ve already crossed all the limits. But hearing those words warms your heart indescribably.

“Since I found out that I had feelings for you, I decided to keep it to myself. Your friendship has more value than anything else in the world. Losing you has never been part of the equation so I kept everything for myself,” he explains.

Now, your heart starts beating again, but this time around, it crazily hammers in your chest. It’s also making you nervous to hear those words, and you know you’ll also have to confess your feelings. Even though, you know now that they are reciprocated, it still makes you nervous.

“Jungkook understood it by himself, and he decided to provoke me by flirting with you,” he admits. It all makes sense now for you. “I was terribly jealous so I avoided you most of the night. I didn’t want you to notice the jealousy and I believed it was better like that,” he runs his hands on his face. “But it had the opposite effect. It only drew me to you.”

Taehyung hides his face in his hands, he doesn’t want to see your face while he confesses out loud his feelings for you. You stand up to get closer to him. You kneel in front of him before resting your hands on his legs. You place your hands on his to push them so you can see his face.

As he’s speaking about his feelings, you realize that he’s putting himself in a vulnerable position and that you need to gather all your courage in your hands to be just as brave as he is right now. For once in your life, you have to be strong and let him know that his feelings are reciprocated.

Since you started having feelings for him, you always pictured that you’d be the one confessing your feelings and that he’d be the one reassuring you. However, the reality is literally the opposite. The reality is that Taehyung is the boldest one.

Nevertheless, reassuring him is also scary.

Your best friend lets you move his hands from his face. Slowly, he opens his eyes to look at you. He’s greeted by your face trying to look at him. A face that he finds adorable.

“So you were jealous of Jungkook?” you ask with evident tease in your voice.

Taehyung instantly rolls his eyes.

“It’s not funny,” he says.

You nod before taking a serious face.

“I was heartbroken during the new year’s eve party,” you start saying. “I was there with my best friend but he avoided me half of the night and I couldn’t understand why.”

A part of Taehyung regrets how he acted when he was jealous, but the other doesn’t because, without that, he wouldn’t have shared such an intimate moment with you.

“I’m sorry about that, yn,” he mumbles.

He lets his face down but you instantly place your fingers under his chin to lift his face up. You want to look at him. You want to see his reaction when he realizes you love him back.

“Don’t be sorry, silly,” you smile at him. “Yes, I was heartbroken but you mended my heart when you kissed me later on.”

Taehyung stares at you in disbelief. Even though you had sex and it’s kind of the proof that you share feelings, it’s a relieve to hear you say, in a subtle way, that you love him back.

“I also have romantic feelings for you, Tae,” you admit out loud. “It’s been the case for years. Like you, I never said anything because our friendship means the world to me. I can’t imagine a life where you’re not here. I’d rather shut my feelings down than lose you.”

Your heart is beating faster, you can feel it on the edge of exploding. You’ve finally said what your heart has been desiring to say for years. It feels liberating.

“And if I’m being honest, for the past few days, I’ve been preferring to think that what we had was only a one-night-stand.” Those words obviously break Taehyung’s heart. “I’m so scared to lose you, Tae,” you mumble as your voice breaks. “So so scared.”

Now, you’re the one looking down. However, in your case, a tear starts running down your face. It’s hard to admit that for the past few days, you’ve been deeply scared to lose him because of your sex session. You wanted to pretend that nothing happened that night, but you simply can’t, especially not after Taehyung’s heartfelt confession.

“Hey, butterfly,” he says while lifting your face with his fingers under your chin.

Your best friend grabs you into his embrace. This is a very much-needed hug, but it’s also a very comforting one. Right in his arms, you start crying. For the past seven days, you’ve been bottling up your worries to build a wall around you, but now that he has confessed his feelings and is holding you in his arms, all the pressure goes down.

“I was so scared to lose you,” you repeat in between the tears.

Taehyung is completely heartbroken, but he inevitably understands you. He also believed that he was going to lose you after that night. The fact that you also didn’t text or call didn’t help. Of course, you both needed space, but it also made it feel like it destroyed everything. It accentuated the fear of losing each other.

“You’re never going to lose me, butterfly,” he whispers while holding you firmly in his arms. “I’m not going anywhere.”

For a little while, you simply stay like that, Taehyung holding you in his arms while you cry. You remain in his arms until you calm down. He invites you to sit on his lap so you can be even closer now. He presses his forehead against yours and cleans your face with his hand. It devastates him to see you like that. He hates to see you cry.

“I missed so much when you call me butterfly,” you admit while you’re looking into each other’s eyes.

“I missed it too,” he says.

Taehyung explains to you why he stopped calling you by that nickname. You can understand his reason, you would have probably done the same. You never really gave him a nickname. You always call him Tae or Taetae. Nothing really too exotic.

“You’re the prettiest butterfly I’ve ever seen, yn,” he says.

His face gets even closer to yours, his eyes staring deep into yours. They are searching for unsaid approval to get even closer. You know that he’s about to kiss you but he won’t do it if he sees anything in your gaze that would push him away. You simply nod, and he instantly presses his heart-shaped lips on yours. You kiss him back with the same energy. It’s a gentle and soft kiss filled with a lot of passion. Even though you kissed a million times during the new year’s night, this kiss definitely makes things real. He loves you. Your little hands move to his hair to play with it while his hand is placed on your neck to hold you close.

It also hits him as you’re kissing that you love him back.

Fireworks explode inside him as he realizes it. He’s never going to let you go now.

FEBRUARY 25, 2022

Being in a relationship with Taehyung is completely different than being his best friend. A lot of things are still the same, but a lot has changed too. He kisses you every time he sees you, he teases you a lot, and most of the time, it’s sexual, he calls you butterfly all the time, and he makes love to you.

Being honest, Taehyung is quite a master in bed. He fucks you so well, you almost beg him to never stop. Being fucked by him is like constantly being in heaven. He gives you pleasure like no one else ever did before. But it’s also not easy to be dating a football/soccer player since he’s most of the time away. As before, you asked to keep your existence a secret because you don’t want to deal with the hysterical fans and also to allow you to keep living a normal life.

Right now, you’re in Rome with your super best friend, Mia. You’ve met her later in life, she was a colleague from your first job. You instantly clicked and she’s been one of your closest friends since then. She was extremely happy when you told her you were with Taehyung. She even said that it was about time since it was more than obvious you liked each other.

This trip to Rome was planned months ago, and you were looking forward to it. It’s a one-week trip, but it should be enough to calmly visit this incredible and history-filled city. However, it hasn’t been going as you wished. You’ve been in the city for 2 days, and you’ve been sick to your stomach since the beginning. You’ve been throwing up constantly, and most of the time, you don’t feel well. The only reason you can think of is the chicken sandwich you ate at the airport. It was probably not well-cooked or it was already out of date.

This morning, it’s been a nightmare. You’re in the Vatican to visit the museums but you’ve already gone like 2 times to the toilets to throw up. It’s not easy for you, but on top of that, you feel sorry for Mia. You’ve been holding her back.

“Are you better?” she asks while you’re drinking a glass of apple juice.

You noticed that apple juice helps to calm down the nausea. Since it’s lunchtime, you’re sitting at a table in the restaurant located in the Vatican’s museums. Your friend ordered a salad while you’re simply drinking juice. You’re not hungry at all, and if you eat, you’re sure you’ll throw up again.

“Yeah, a bit,” you answer. You take a sip of the drink. “I’m sorry for this, Mia.”

“Eeh, don’t worry. It’s not really your fault if you’re sick,” she answers.

For a split second, she seems hesitant to add something else, but she finishes by saying what she’s been thinking since you arrived at Rome.

“Could you be pregnant?”

You almost choked with your apple juice. This is very unexpected. You’re obviously not pregnant. With Taehyung, you’ve been very careful since the beginning of the relationship. Having children right now it’s far from being a great idea. Plus, you want to enjoy being together before planning to start a family.

However, you can understand why Mia is raising this question. Nausea is one of the first visible symptoms of pregnancy. If the roles were reversed, you’d raise the same question.

“No, it can’t be,” you answer. “We’ve been using protection, and I’m also going to start taking the pill.”

Even if he uses condoms, you’ve decided to start the pill. This way, the chances of getting pregnant are very low. On top of that, it’s also a safety net in case you go crazy and don’t use protection.

“But have you had your periods lately?”

Honestly, you noticed you didn’t have them for the past 2 months but it doesn’t worry you at all. Your periods are irregular so there are moments where you can go 2-3 months without having them. For sure, lately, they’ve been quite regular but as soon as you get stressed, they come later.

“No, but I’m not worried,” you start saying. “For the past two months, my emotions have been all over the place,” you reply without hesitation.

There is evident concern written all over Mia’s face, and honestly, it’s worrying you. It’s making you nervous. You’re biting the inside of your cheek as you’re mentally browsing all the times you had sex with your boyfriend. It’s still so weird to call Taehyung ‘your boyfriend’.

“You’re sure you’ve always used protection?” she asks.

You’re still trying to remember every single time you were intimate with Taehyung. You can’t think of a time when he didn’t use a condom. Usually, you both make silly comments or jokes when he grabs a condom.

“Yeah,” you say with some hesitation.

“Well, maybe, a condom got broke or something,” she suggests.

“I’m sure it’s not the case,” you reply.

It’s impossible that you’re pregnant. In the event that you had unprotected intercourse with Tae, you would have taken the morning-after pill.

“Maybe you should take a test to be sure, yn,” she adds. “I’m concerned, and if it’s not that, maybe we could also go to a pharmacy or something to get something to help you out with the nausea.”

“Okay,” you reply before continuing to drink the apple juice.

The rest of the day, your mind keeps thinking about the conversation you had with Mia. Honestly, you’re convinced you’re not pregnant, but she managed to make you doubt it. If you’re expecting a baby, you don’t know how you’ll react and what you’ll do.

After the visit to the museums, you head to a pharmacy to get a pregnancy test. This entire situation makes you extremely nervous even though you’re sure the result will be negative. As soon as you reach your hotel room, you lock yourself in the bathroom to take the pregnancy test. You follow the instructions, you pee on the stick’s little strip. Then you wait five minutes for the result.

You place the test on the edge of the sink while you wash your hands. For a moment, you look at yourself in the mirror. Suddenly, the memories of your first night with Taehyung cross your mind. That famous new year’s night when you had sex for the first time with him. You were completely wasted but you still perfectly remembered that you had unprotected sex. He even ejaculated inside you. You don’t understand why you didn't think of that night when you were talking with Mia.

“Fuck,” you whisper while you close your eyes.

You have a period tracking app on your phone, and you remember seeing that the week of the New Year was your ovulation week. As your periods are irregular, sometimes the cycles are a bit messed up, and it happens that you ovulate at a different time. But you have the app to follow your periods since sometimes, you go months without them and it doesn’t even concern you. At least, that way, you can see how long your cycles are and when was the last time you had your periods. The ovulation week on the app is always an assumption.

Well, now you’re a hundred percent sure that the test is positive. You had unprotected sex during your ovulation week so it’s positive without any doubt. It also explains why your emotions have been all over the place lately. It wasn’t due to the fear of losing Tae or the fact that you’re now with him. It was due to the fact that you’re creating a human.

Your eyes look down at the test. Two clear lines appear on the stick.

“Fuck,” you repeat as you see the result.

You’re indeed pregnant. Pregnant with Tae’s child.

As you’re sitting on the toilet bowl, you run your hands on your face. What are you going to do now? Are you going to keep this baby? Are you going to get an abortion?

Having a baby is not part of your life plans for now. You just bought an apartment so you’re paying a mortgage and you’re spending money on furniture. On top of that, you just got promoted. You’re also now in a relationship with a famous football/soccer player. You’re trying to adjust yourself to all of those changes. A lot happened in a short period. And now there’s a baby on the way. That’s just too much.

Having a baby now isn’t a good idea.

MARCH 5, 2022

The game is almost over.

Taehyung and his teammates have been playing for over 90 minutes. For the first time in a while, you’re present at one of your boyfriend’s games. You can’t remember the last time you came, but today, you decide to join him since you have a big announcement for him.

It’s been a week since you found out about your pregnancy. For the past eight days, you’ve been thinking about what to do. It wasn’t easy, you spent nights crying like a baby because you’re simply lost. As you were confused, you didn’t say anything to your boyfriend. You pretended like nothing happened, but since he knows you well, he noticed something was off.

Mia was the first person to know about your pregnancy. You cried a lot in her arms, and she’s been there for you. She can’t do much because it’s your decision but she promised to be there for you no matter what you decide. For now, she’s the only person aware of your state.

However, eight days later, you’re still confused and you don’t know what to do. The only thing you’re sure of is that Taehyung needs to know. He’s the only one who can guide you with this pregnancy. Also, you’ve booked an appointment with your gynecologist to check everything up. It’s in two days, and you don’t want to go alone. You want to have Tae by your side, and you also want him to see his child.

Discreetly, you make your way to the changing room of Tae’s team as you desire to surprise him. He isn’t aware of your presence, he didn’t even notice you during the game. As you’re walking, you suddenly feel two arms wrapping around your waist and pushing you back. The sweet scent of Taehyun’s perfume mixed with sweat surrounds you. A smile appears on your face, and you turn around to meet the prettiest man ever.

“What a wonderful surprise,” Tae says with the brightest smile on his face before kissing you.

For a split second, you kiss him back but you quickly push him back. As you do so, you take a quick look at the man you love. His black hair is dampened in sweat, making it look wet. The top of his jersey’s shirt is stuck to his chest due to the sweat. His face is fully red. Even though he stinks a bit, he looks hot as hell. You’ll gladly open your legs for him right now.

“You’re stinky and covered in sweat,” you playfully say.

Taehyung holds you even closer and cleans his face on your chest. You giggle as he does so. He’s unbelievable, but that’s also why you love him. You try to push him back as much as you can but he’s a lot stronger than you so your efforts are in vain. He presses a soft kiss on your neck before taking a step back to look at the woman he dearly loves.

You’re wearing a jersey of his team, more precisely, the jersey he gifted you a couple of weeks ago. It’s a black one with his name and his number engraved in the back of the shirt. With that, you’re wearing a blue pair of jeans. You look hot as hell with his jersey. He could fuck you right here.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I want to see you,” you answer with a smile on your face. “And also talk to you.”

Concern suddenly appears on his face.

“Something bad happened?”

“You should go change first,” you say without answering his question.

Your answer only worries him even more.

“Tell me, yn,” his tone is a bit harsh, and it catches you by surprise so you jump of scare.

None of you is smiling now. You don’t want to tell him in the middle of a stadium’s hallway that you’re pregnant while he’s wearing his team’s jersey and covered in sweat. Even if he looks incredibly hot, this is not how and where you want to announce to him your pregnancy.

“Please,” you first say. “Change yourself first.”

Taehyung takes a step closer to you. His face is tense, his heart is beating fast, and his mind is imagining a hundred different horrible scenarios. He's worried and the fact that you don’t say anything makes him worry even more.

“I’m not going anywhere before you tell me what’s going on,” his tone is still firm.

You look down for a moment before looking up at him. Although you know this man very well, it actually surprises you that he insists on knowing now what you have to say.

“We should be in a more intimate place, Tae,” you tell him. “I’m not comfortable talking with you in here.”

He takes a deep breath before nodding. If something is going on, talking here isn’t the appropriate place, and he can only agree with you.

“Okay, I’ll be back in two minutes,” he says.

You nod, and he kisses you before disappearing. He’s deeply concerned, worried, and scared of what you have to tell him. He’s imagining the worst. You’ve recently been back from Rome and he noticed that something changed during that trip. He noticed your puffy eyes, the dark circles under your eyes, the sadness written all over your face, and the way your mind is always somewhere else.

At first, during your video phone calls, he’d ask if you’re okay, but since you wouldn’t say anything besides ‘yes, i’m good’, he understood that he couldn’t force you to speak. It has to come from you. He’s convinced something really bad happened in Rome. He’d even say a man acted disrespectfully towards you.

In no time, he quickly dries himself with a towel before putting his clothes on. He says goodbye to his teammates and leaves in a rush with his bag in his hand. He finds you in the same spot. You’re looking down at your phone, probably looking at some reels on insta. You always do that when you have to wait.

Taehyung presses a soft kiss on your head when he’s next to you.

“Let’s go?” he asks.

You simply nod, and you both leave the stadium. Your boyfriend grabs your hand to guide you to his splendid car. The same car where Taehyung almost fucked you some days ago. You can’t get enough of each other when you’re together.

“Where do you want to go?” he asks once inside the car.

“My apartment?” you suggest.

“Okay, fine,” he nods before starting the engine.

The drive to your place is quite calm, you barely speak, but honestly, you don’t know what to say. Your mind is thinking of all the ways you can announce your pregnancy to Taehyung. Your boyfriend gets worrier as you get closer to your place. He’s scared to hear what you’ll say to him. Easily, he finds a parking spot near your place, and you quickly leave the car.

Once you're inside your apartment, the first thing you do is jump into his arm, holding him very tightly in your embrace. He’s caught off guard which destabilizes him but he quickly wraps his arms around you. It’s something bad, he can feel it.

“I’m pregnant,” you whisper against his chest.

His entire body freezes as he hears your words. Out of all the horrible scenarios he imagined, pregnancy wasn’t one of them. Well, being honest, pregnancy isn’t a terrible scenario at all. It’s actually the opposite. It’s probably not the right moment but it’s not a bad thing. All this time, he was convinced that you got rapes in Rome.

It takes him a couple of seconds to process what you said. He wasn’t thinking of getting the news of being a father this early in life. This is a shocking news. Taehyung pushes you a bit so he can take a proper look at you, his girlfriend.

“And you found it out in Rome, right?” he asks.

For him, that’s the only reason that would explain the shift in you during your trip with Mia.

“Yes,” you answer.

“Hmm,” he says while he turns his back to you.

He runs his left hand on his hair while he starts to really process what has been going on for more than a week. Yes, it all makes perfect sense.

His reaction worries you. Now, you’re not sure you should have said it. Maybe, he’s going to ask you to abort because he doesn’t want this baby. Oooh, this is all messing up in your head.

“Why didn’t you tell me when you found out?” he asks.

Taehyung isn’t still looking at you. Not having his glance on you while you’re giving him this huge news makes you feel so small. It makes you feel like a baby who needs to be reassured by a loved one.

“I didn’t want to announce that through a phone call,” you explain first, “and I also didn’t want to give you this news when I didn’t know if I’d keep the baby.”

As he hears your last words, he turns around to finally look at you. It devastates him to hear that you even considered aborting, and it breaks his heart that he wasn’t by your side at that moment.

“Are you going to abort?” he instantly asks.

You shake your head. “I don’t know, Tae.”

A tear runs down your face. Your boyfriend instantly holds you in his arms and presses a comforting kiss on your head.

His entire life, he imagined that it’d be a moment of joy when he’d be given this news. Of course, he always pictured that you’d be the mother of his children, but this wasn’t the way he saw things. He imagined you getting together, then getting married, and then having children. All those steps in life would be filled with joy and love because they would have been so awaited.

You take a step back. “I wanted to think by myself before announcing anything, but I don’t know what to do. All I know is that I need you by my side.”

“And you have me, butterfly,” he firmly says.

“It’s also your child so I can’t take this decision by myself.”

“Before being my child, it’s your body, yn,” he cups your face in his hands. “If you can’t or don’t want to carry it, you don’t have to and I will never force you to do whatever suits me.”

Taehyung has always been the biggest gentleman you’ve ever known. This right here is proof that he is a wonderful human being. Even if this situation is all messed up, you’re just thankful that Taehyung is your boyfriend. You’re not sure any other man would have said that. Maybe that you would be blaming you for not telling them sooner.

“All I can do is support you no matter what,” he adds. “I’m never going to force you to carry my child when you don’t want to.”

“But would you want to keep it?” you ask with the biggest doe eyes.

For a moment, Taehyung gets lost in his thoughts. He imagines your bump getting bigger, what it’d be like to see you pregnant with your child, what the baby would look like, and how it would feel to be a father.

“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “If you’re the mother of my child, no matter what is going on in our lives, I’ll want it.”

His answer unimaginably comforts you. Knowing that makes you love him even more.

“Even if we’re poor and living under a bridge?” you ask.

A smile appears on his face. “Even if we’re poor and living under a bridge, I’d love to be the father of your child.”

A little smile appears on your face. It definitely comforts you to know that he wants to be the father of your child.

“And you’re the only person with whom I’d want to have a child,” you tell him.

You press a gentle kiss on his lips, causing his smile to grow bigger. This situation is a bit tricky for you, but your boyfriend’s reaction brings so much comfort to you.

“Do you know how far along you are?” he asks.

“Well, you probably knocked me up at New Year’s Eve party so I’d be nine weeks pregnant,” you answer.

Taehyung remembers that night very fondly. It was the night that changed his life for the better, and it was a wonderful night. The best night ever. Your first night together was wonderful, but now that you’ve got to learn about each other, sex is a hundred times better.

“Have you already made an appointment with your gynecologist?”

“Yes,” you nod. “That’s also one of the reasons why I’m announcing it to you now. It’s in two days, and I really want you to come.”

“I’ll be there with you, butterfly.”

He passionately kisses you. Now that he knows, it makes this news more bearable. It almost makes it feel like it’s not a big deal because he wants that child. But he only wants it if you want it too. So in the end, it’s really up to you to decide what you will do. Nonetheless, it reassures you so much to know that he will be by your side. If you decide to keep the baby, he’ll gladly be a present father. And if you decide to get an abortion, he will stay with you throughout the entire process.

MARCH 7, 2022

Taehyung is sitting next to you while you’re lying on a medical examination table. Your legs are wide open and the gynecologist is in between them. It’s honestly a bit weird to be in that position with your boyfriend sitting next to you.

“I’m going to insert the probe,” the woman informs you.

Doctor Park has been your gynecologist for years, and it was more than natural you’d be coming to her for this first checkup as a pregnant woman. Once you saw the positive test, you instantly booked an appointment. Luckily for you, she was available rather quickly.

When you exposed to her the situation, she informed you that she would need to do an endovaginal ultrasound. Since it’s only the beginning of the pregnancy, if she performs a ‘normal’ ultrasound, nobody will see anything as the baby is very small.

Taehyung is holding your hand as the probe is slowly and carefully pushed inside you. The doctor moves the probe from right to left until she finally sees something on her screen. A bright smile appears on her face when she sees what she’s been looking for and seconds later, the room is filled with the sound of heartbeats. Instantly, your head turns to your boyfriend who’s smiling as he’s hearing the sound. His eyes look down at you. They are filled with love.

Hearing the fast heartbeat makes it real. There’s no doubt that you’re pregnant. But hearing this sound warms your heart indescribably. A tiny human is growing inside you, and you’re literally creating life. It’s so unreal what a woman’s body can do.

Then, you both look at the screen and you’re trying to see something but you clearly don’t understand what’s appearing.

“This right here is your baby,” the doctor points out to a tiny black dot on the screen. “And this right here is your second baby,” she points out to another dot.

The world stops turning when she announces the second baby. There are two babies. You’re expecting twins.

“And you can hear the heartbeats of the two babies,” she says.

You look at the screen with disbelief. Two lives are growing inside you. You’re creating two little humans. You squeeze Tae’s hand as you can’t conceive that you’re expecting twins.

“Based on what we can see, they are identical twins.”

As from there, you can’t hear anything else. All you see is the two little dots on the screen. All you see and hear is your babies. They are real. They are here inside you. If you decide to keep them, two little humans will join you. You’d become a mother and Tae a father. This is a very big deal. From now on, you’ll be responsible for those two little lives. Whatever decision you make, it will inevitably impact them.

Your eyes move to Taehyung to watch him with admiration. There is no doubt that he will be a fantastic father and those two babies will always be lucky to have him as their father. Since you’re quite young, your boyfriend always said that he wanted a big family. He wants at least five children. It’s a bit too much, but from a very young age, he has that desire to become a father. You know that he wants those two babies. And as you’re looking at him right now, it’s evident to you that he truly wants to have the twins in his life.

Being here changes everything. Seeing the babies on the screen and hearing their heartbeats helps you to make a decision.

For sure, it won’t be easy to become a mother and jungle with all the challenges you’re facing right now. But never on earth will you get an abortion. You had doubts up until now, but you don’t have any more. You’re a hundred percent certain that you will keep them.

APRIL 7, 2022

Let’s be real, being pregnant with twins is far from being easy. You’re still pretty much nauseous, you’re belly is slowly but surely growing, and your emotions are definitely all over the place. Thankfully enough, Taehyung has been very supportive.

A month ago, when you told him that you wanted to keep the babies, he was the happiest man on earth. That night was very very spicy. He now speaks to the babies every single day, and that’s the cutest thing on earth. You’re now living together to make it easier and you chose his place. It’s a bit far from your workplace but before going to his daily trainings, he drops you off at work. When he’s present of course. When he’s in another city or country, you stay at your apartment to make it easier.

So far, you’ve been enjoying living with him. You get to be goofy together, to spend more time together, to watch random movies together, and to have more often sex. Surprisingly, your libido has been quite high. Whenever you lay eyes on your boyfriend, you simply want to make babies with him.

However, it’s not easy to be dating him. Every single day, there are rumors that he’s dating this or this girl, and they all come from because they liked a picture of him. It’s really incredible what can be read online. It’s such silly things. You try to avoid checking anything about him on social medias because when you read those things, all you want to do is to say that he’s with you which isn’t a great idea. It’s been four months that you’ve been together but since the beginning, it’s been hard on that aspect.

Since yesterday, Taehyung has been in another city because he played earlier against the team from that city. He’s coming back tomorrow morning, and you’re excited to see him again. You deeply miss him when he’s not hear. You miss your little bear.

After months of trying to find a little cute nickname for Taehyung, you finally found it. It came out of nowhere, he was speaking with the babies, you ended up calling him a papa bear, and it stayed. He’s your cute little bear.

You’re going through your phone, and you come across a video on insta of Taehyung. It’s apparently reported that he’s dating a random girl you never saw before. Nothing new so far. However, almost at the end of the video, there’s a picture of your boyfriend with her. They look very close, almost as if they are about to kiss. The picture isn’t very clear but obviously something is going on.

That breaks your heart in an unimaginable way.

Many questions cross your mind but you push them away because it’s definitely not a good idea to start imagining the worst. He’s clearly madly in love with you so he’s not going to cheat on you right now. But seeing this picture creates a big doubt in your mind.

You put your phone away before turning on the TV. Maybe you need to watch something else to distract you. You trust Taehyung, you know he’s never going to cheat on you. You’ve known him for years, he’s a respectful man. He would never cheat on his partner.

Nonetheless, watching TV isn’t helpful at all as this ‘new relationship’ of Taehyung is being displayed everywhere. Based on reliable sources, they have been together for months. They have been trying to keep it lay low, but they were seen yesterday in front of her house having a very intimate moment. This is heartbreaking. You want to cry.

Maybe it’s best you simply go to bed and sleep. Taehyung is coming in a couple of hours and you will speak about all of this. You don't want to jump to conclusions just yet. You want to hear what your boyfriend has to say about this incident. But it’s hard to fall asleep with that picture of him with another woman in your mind.

Your phone buzzes and the screen lights up, indicating that you received a message. It’s a message from Taehyung. “I’m here, open the door please.” You frown. What is he doing here? Shouldn’t he be in another city?

Slowly, you leave the bed to open the door. The main entrance is a bit far from the bedroom so it takes you a bit of time to reach the door. As you open it, you notice it’s raining outside. Your boyfriend is standing in front of you, fully swamped by the rain. It warms your heart to see him because you really need him right now.

“What are you doing here?” you ask.

“I saw the picture of me with that girl,” he starts saying. “I knew you’d see it too and I didn’t want to leave you thinking about it all night long.”

This scene seems coming straight out of a movie. Your lover is standing in front of you while it’s raining, swamping him more and more. Although you’re worried about his health, you find this is a heartfelt moment. It’s also very romantic.

“Come inside,” you tell him. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

He does as you say, and you close the door behind him. The two of you head to the bathroom. As you’re walking, you take a look behind you, noticing how wet the floor is getting. You mentally note to yourself that you’ll need to clean otherwise somebody slip and get hurt. Once inside the impressive bathroom, you stop in front of the toilet bowl while Taehyung remains close to the door.

“Why did you ask me to open the door?” you ask as he’s getting undressed. “Don’t you have the keys?”

“I left in a rush and forgot the keys,” he answers.

Your eyes wander on his toned body as he removes every single piece of clothes. Taehyung is so damn handsome.

“You didn’t need to come for that,” you tell him. “We could have waited for tomorrow.”

Taehyung looks up at you with wet strands of hair falling in front of his eyes. He looks incredibly hot. He’s pushing his black pants down but they feel quite heavy. He notices that you’re a bit sleepy, and he can’t help but find you extremely pretty. Taehyung hides the little smile appearing on his face.

“I couldn’t,” he says.

Once he’s fully naked, he wraps himself in a towel before sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Your eyes follow him before you sit next to him. Your eyes stare at him for a hot minute, but you quickly turn your face to look right in front of you.

“That’s an old picture,” he suddenly says. “It’s from like a year ago. It’s one of the many one-night stands I had.”

You nod. “I believe you,” you simply say. “It’s hard to be looking at this kind of pictures, it was even before we started dating, and seeing them makes me doubt.”

Taehyung puts his hand on your leg to softly soothe it. The warmth of his touch conforms you a lot.

“I love you, butterfly,” he says. “I’ve always loved you. You’re actually the only woman I’ve ever loved, and I would never do anything to hurt or lose you.”

You rest your head on his shoulder.

“I guess you know but my love life was a complete mess before the new year’s night. I was sleeping with lots of girls but I was never able to commit to any of them. It was mostly one-night stands,” he explains. “I was in love with you but thought you didn’t love me back the same way so I was trying to find that love somewhere else. But I couldn’t because you’ve always been the only one on my mind.”

Obviously, you knew about his many one-night stands but never said anything. You always considered those girls to be lucky to have at least had the experience of having sex with him. You weren’t exactly looking for sex with him, but when you’re in love, physical attraction is inevitable. So yeah, from time to time, you’d think about that.

“So I decided to only sleep with them. It’s easy, you just sleep and then, you never see them again,” he adds. “It got worse when you started dating Noah. I couldn’t bear seeing you in love and the only thing that could distract me from that was literally having sex with someone else. For a brief moment, my mind is simply lost in pleasure.”

It breaks your heart to hear that. You never thought it would be that hard for him to see you with Noah. Back then, you knew you weren’t in love with him because the only person you ever truly loved was Taehyung. But since you couldn’t have him, you tried to find love in someone else. Even if it meant to never truly be happy.

“So you did that for 3 years?” you ask.

“Yep,” he says while nodding. “Honestly, at some point, I even thought you’d get married.”

As he says those words, you bite your lower lip.

“Have I ever told you how it truly ended up with Noah?” you ask while turning your head to look at him.

Taehyung glances at you with confusion. Why are you suddenly raising this question?

“I guess you never told me at all how you broke up.”

“Well, he proposed but I said no,” you tell him.

“Really?” he asks with evident surprise.

“I never understood why he proposed. Back then, we were falling out of love. It was obvious that it was going to end sooner or later,” you explain. “I was never going to marry him. I wasn’t happy anymore.”

Quite frankly, he’s very surprised. In his mind, you would have agreed to get married with him. He always thought you were madly in love with Noah but now, he knows that he was wrong.

“So if he had proposed earlier, would you have accepted?” he asks with hesitation.

“Probably,” you shrug. “In my head, it was better to be with someone else than losing your friendship.”

His hand slowly moves higher on your thigh while his face gets closer to your ear. “Then, I’m lucky he didn’t,” he whispers, causing goosebumps all over your body.

Before his hand reaches your pussy, you push it back. “You should take a hot bath before you get sick.”

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “I didn’t come to take a bath.”

“Well, if you didn’t walk under the rain, you wouldn’t be taking a bath,” you say. “Maybe, we’d be making more babies.”

It frustrates him when you tease him like that, but he finds it extremely adorable that even if you’re together, you’re still kind of prude.

“I can still fuck you in the bathtub,” he replies.

“You’re always so crude,” you tell him.

“And you’re still so prude, butterfly,” he says. “No need to hold back with me.”

Your boyfriend gets closer to you before crashing his lips against yours. Kissing you is without any doubt his favorite part of being with you. This isn’t at all a shy kiss, on the contrary, it’s a very fervent kiss. No doubt you crave to do unholy things together.

“Let’s get in that damn bathtub,” Taehyung says on your lips.

He grabs your lower lip with his teeth, causing you to moan. Right after that, you stand up to get undressed while Taehyung turns on the water. Once you’re naked in front of him, a bright smile appears on his face when he looks at your little bump. It’s getting bigger as it should. Inevitably, he gets closer to you and softly caresses your belly. You watch him with tenderness. This is so cute.

“Hi babies,” he whispers against your belly before pressing a kiss. “It’s daddy.”

Your heart is melting at his words. Taehyung also takes a weird voice when he speaks with them. It’s the tone everybody takes when speaking to a baby, but it’s adorable to hear him speak like that.

“I love you both already very very much,” he adds. “And I can’t wait to meet you in October. Please be gentle with your mommy until there.”

Your hand caresses his soft hair as he presses another soft kiss on your stomach. It’s adorable to watch him interact with the babies. The gynecologist advised to do so in order for the twins to recognize his voice but she didn’t need to say it. Taehyung adores to talk to them.

“Now, I will ask you to close your eyes because your mommy and daddy will do nasty things,” you laugh at his words.

“You’re crazy,” you tell him.

“Hey, I’m just warning them,” his eyes look up at you. “It’ll be a little shaky shaky for them.”

He gets up to press a smack on your lips before turning off the water. He doesn’t waste any second before jumping into the bathtub. You don’t follow him directly as you’re watching him. Once he’s taken place inside the bathtub, his eyes look at you.

“You’re not coming?” he asks.

OCTOBER 01, 2022

Charlie & Freddie.

Those are the two names you and Taehyung chose for your little twins. They were born very early today, it was 2 am when they joined you. It wasn’t easy to give birth to two healthy boys, but honestly, this day is the best day of your life. After all, it’s the day you became a mother, but it’s most and foremost, the day you met the little boys you created with your boyfriend.

Taehyung is sitting on a chair, shirtless with Freddie in his arms. Seeing him with the babies is without any doubt the best thing in the world. He has spent the last hour holding them, one after the other to make the skin-to-skin contact.

On the other hand, you’re sitting on the bed with Charlie in your arms. After a little struggle, you’ve managed to breastfeed him. Between him and Freddie, he was the one having the most difficulties to latch. But now, all is good.

The twins really are identical, you can’t tell them apart. So with Taehyung, you’ve decided that for now, you’ll always put something red on Charlie and something yellow on Freddie. However, you wonder how long you’ll be able to keep up with that. Many sleepless nights are waiting for you. For sure, once you’ll get tired, you’ll get all mixed up.

Being in this room with Taehyung and your twins seems unreal. Last year, you were still having a crush on your best friend, not able to reveal your true feelings. You were so scared to lose him if you’d reveal your feelings. It was hard to see him with other women. But today, things are completely different. You’re madly in love with your best friend and you started your own little family.

Taehyung looks down at his son. His life has drastically changed in less than a year. He finally found peace because he was bold enough to reveal his feelings for you. He isn’t any more sleeping with strangers in order to stop thinking about you constantly. He’s now allowing himself to think about you night and day. All that because you love him back.

It’s crazy how a simple kiss on a new year’s eve party can flip someone’s world upside down.

#bts #bts imagine #bts imagines #kim taehyung #taehyung #bts v #v #bts fluff #taehyung fluff #bts angst #taehyung angst #bts smut #taehyung smut #bts x reader #taehyung x reader #v x reader #until i found her #uifh #spideyjimin

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woolysium · 29 days ago

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Anatomy Lesson

﹒♡﹒Pairing: Yunho + Mingi (college AU) x reader

﹒♡﹒Summary: As med students, you, Yunho, and Mingi have spent countless hours studying anatomy together—but in this study session, anatomical diagrams turn into hands-on lessons.

﹒♡﹒Word count: 4k

﹒♡﹒Genre: smut (MDNI)

﹒♡﹒Warning: pure filth, very nsfw, threesome, restraint, hand kink, choking, unprotected sex (a no no irl), double penetration, rough sex, very dom!Yunho, whiny mess!Mingi, Mingi is very desperate, teasing, overstimulation (let me know if i miss anything ig its too long)

﹒♡﹒Request: @mingi-s-dimples "Hey pooks 🙂‍↕️💖 it's me, Bia! I'd love to read something written by your for me sooo here is my request 😋😋 Yungi x reader, college au studying anatomy (I have the biggest yungi brainrot rn I'm so sorry + I'm studying anatomy as we speak). They've been study buddies since they started uni 2 yrs ago and they always met to study tgt. SO I'd love to read how reader is like into them but is too shy to tell them and the boys are like.. also kinda into her but they thought it's be weird to like.. tell her cause it'd be a 3some. NOT ANYMORE !! They study anatomy and reader starts touching them intimately explaining some of the structures (for ex thigh/abs and so on) and Mingi for ex gets turned on from it and gets a boner duh. They have some small talk and then they yk.. have a 3some 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ sigh. Anyways, I'd love to see: restraining with their bodies/hand kink/slight choking/double penetration (is not a kink ik), praise, teasing 😌 Gave you all the details I'd love to see and THANK YOU SO MUCHHHH LOVE YOUU 😋💖💖💖"

﹒♡﹒Author's note: This took longer than I expected, and filthier.... I never knew i could do this good until now lmao. Anyways this is a long ass fic, and cheers to my babe Bia for requesting it, even though i kinda died at the end so it looks rushed but, hope you like it, I love your idea so so much. It was a ride writing this, I had to research a shit ton on anatomy, but it was fun tho. This is not proofread thoroughly since it's too long and i was getting sleepy, so please ignore any errors. Enjoy the meal. I love you Bia 💜

You’ve known Yunho and Mingi since the first day of med school. Being more of an introvert, you usually keep to yourself, avoiding any unnecessary attention. But that day, the only open seat was right in the middle of the lecture hall. Yunho and Mingi showed up late, looking a bit lost, and ended up grabbing the two seats on either side of you.

At first, you figured they were just two extroverted guys who’d probably drift off to make other friends once they settled in—exactly the type you usually avoid. But as the lecture went on, they kept leaning over to ask for help, clearly struggling with the material. Yunho, with his easy smile and laid-back vibe, nudged you and whispered, “Think you could explain this? We’re kinda lost.” Mingi, with a shy grin that made him seem more approachable than his confident appearance suggested, nodded along.

You explained the basics, and they were grateful enough to ask if you’d study together outside of class. Despite your initial hesitation, you said yes, you couldn’t even believe yourself. From there, study sessions became a regular thing—quiet corners of the library or your living room, where you’d help them with the tough stuff, and they’d bring snacks and keep the mood light. They made everything feel a bit more bearable at least, even the late-night cram sessions.

Two years later, the three of you are still a team, but things have changed. Somewhere along the way, simple glances and casual touches started to linger. And there were moments—small, fleeting ones—where you could swear they were feeling it too. Like when Yunho would shift closer to you on the couch, his arm draped casually behind your shoulders, his fingers brushing the back of your neck just enough to make your skin tingle. Or when Mingi’s hand would find your lower back during those late-night coffee runs, the touch lingering a little too long to be just friendly. But no one ever said anything about it, all of you dancing around the unspoken tension that had begun to define your time together.

Tonight is just another study session at your place, and you don’t really think much about anything else other than the lessons. You're all spread out across your bed—Yunho sitting up against the headboard, his long legs stretched out, Mingi lying on his side next to him, propped up on one elbow. You sit cross-legged facing them, surrounded by notes and anatomy diagrams.

You're pointing out different muscle groups and explaining their connections, but you notice the looks of confusion on their faces. With a little laugh, you suggest, “Guys, I think it would be better to show you directly. How about I demonstrate them on your body?” Totally innocent request, or so you thought.

Yunho glances at Mingi, who shrugs with a faint smirk. “Yeah sure. Might be easier to understand that way,” Yunho says, scooching to the side a bit to make space for you. Mingi stretches out beside him, nodding along.

You start with Yunho, tracing the lines of his arm, outlining the biceps and triceps as you explain each muscle group. “So, here’s the biceps brachii,” you murmur, fingers gently pressing along the length of his upper arm, feeling the firmness beneath. Yunho listens intently, his usual playful smile tempered by a newfound focus as he watches your hand. “And just behind here, the triceps—helps with arm extension,” you continue, trailing your hand down the back of his arm. His body is relaxed under your touch, but there’s a slight shift in his breathing when your fingers glide over his chest and down to his abs, the smooth firmness beneath your fingertips making you a little more aware of the warmth radiating between you.

When you move over to Mingi, the atmosphere tenses up even more, you are oblivious, somehow. You run your fingers along his chest, explaining the pectorals. “This is the pectoralis major—it’s responsible for moving the arm across the body,” you say softly, your hand tracing the broad curve of his chest. He listens closely, his breathing grows a bit deeper as you outline each muscle. You continue downward, fingertips gliding over his defined abs. “And here’s the rectus abdominis… your core muscles.” Mingi’s body tenses beneath your touch, brows furrowing as he bites his lips, trying to control his reaction.

“This part—your obliques, they help with twisting movements,” you add, tracing the defined muscles, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. Your touch follows the natural curve of his hip, then skims lower. It’s meant to be purely academic, but then your fingers slide over the curve of his hip and graze against the waistband of his jeans.

You’re about to pull away when your hand slips, just slightly, brushing over his crotch. You freeze, the realization hitting you like a jolt, the feeling of Mingi’s arousal under your fingertips sending a rush of warmth to your own cheeks. Mingi’s breath catches audibly, his body tensing beneath your touch. You glance up at him, heart racing, but his expression is caught somewhere between surprise and something more intense, his face flushed.

Before you can say anything, you catch the way Yunho's expression has changed too. There’s a heat in his eyes as he looks between you and Mingi, cheeks a little flushed and his breath coming out uneven, though he’s still trying to keep up his usual playful front. "You know, you might be a little too good at this," he says, his voice dropping, teasing but rougher than usual.

The air in the room feels thicker, making your heart beat faster. Yunho moves in closer, his gaze darker, watching you in a way that makes you swallow hard. There’s this electric charge between the three of you now, impossible to ignore. For a second, it’s like time stops—none of you quite sure how to navigate this shift, but aware that something's definitely changed.

Yunho’s usual teasing grin fades when he catches your gaze, something more serious in his eyes. His breath hitches, and you notice how he glances from your eyes to your lips, then back again, like he’s debating what to do. The room goes quiet, and the tension is thick enough to make you feel like you’re holding your breath.

You swallow hard, nerves making your voice waver as you finally break the silence. “I... I’ve liked both of you for a while now,” you admit, your cheeks heating with embarrassment. “But I was too scared to say anything. I thought... I thought you’d find it weird, or that it would ruin everything.”

Mingi lets out a breath he’s been holding, his expression softening even as his lips curl into a smirk, a mixture of relief and disbelief paints his face. “You serious?” He glances over at Yunho, who gives a slow, almost doubtful nod, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing either. Mingi’s hand moves to rest on your thigh, his grip firm, sending a jolt through you. “Look, Y/N. We’ve been into you for so long, but we thought you’d be freaked out by the idea... of being with both of us like this, you know.”

Yunho’s hand tilts your chin so you’re looking right at him. His thumb brushes over your bottom lip, and his voice drops lower. “Yeah, we didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. But if you’re saying you’re into this too...” His other hand slides to your waist, tugging you a bit closer. “Maybe we’ve been holding back for no reason.”

You shiver under their touch, heat pooling low in your stomach as the reality of the situation sinks in. Mingi’s thumb strokes slow circles on your thigh, his other hand trailing up your back. Yunho leans in closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear as he murmurs, “So... what do you want, really?”

You catch your breath, feeling their warmth pressed against you from both sides. You look at them, and it’s like all the unspoken feelings are right there on their faces. A nervous smile tugs at your lips as you admit, “I want... both of you.”

Mingi’s grip tightens, and Yunho’s breath comes out in a low, almost relieved sigh, his fingers slipping beneath the hem of your shirt. It’s like a dam breaking—no more restraint, just the three of you finally letting go of the tension that’s been building for so long.

The bed dips under their weight as Yunho settles behind you, Mingi in front. The heat radiating from their bodies is intoxicating, and you shiver as Yunho’s rough hand grips your jaw, tilting your head back. “Look at you. Already so needy,” he growls, the pad of his thumb grazing your lower lip, sending a thrill straight to your core.

His lips crash into yours, rough and eager, as if he can’t hold back a second longer. His hands are everywhere—one cupping your face, his thumb brushing over your cheek, the other slipping beneath your shirt, his touch leaving a trail of heat in its wake. His grip is firm, possessive, his fingers digging into your skin as he pulls you closer.

Mingi’s hands tug at the hem of your shirt, impatience lacing his movements. He pulls the fabric up and over your head, his fingers fumbling slightly as he tosses it aside. “He’s always in such a hurry,” Yunho teases, his voice a low rumble against your lips, but there’s a smirk in his tone that says he’s just as eager.

Your bra is the next to go, Mingi’s hands quickly unhook it and slide it down your arms. His eyes darken as he takes in the sight of you, his tongue wetting his lips. “You look so good like this,” he murmurs, his breath coming in shallow pants. He palms your chest, thumbs brushing over your nipples, drawing a gasp from you as he rolls them between his fingers, his touch alternating between gentle and rough.

Yunho’s hand trails down your side, fingers hooking into the waistband of your pants. He yanks them down in one swift motion, along with your panties, leaving you completely bare between them. He pulls back just enough to admire the sight, his lips curving into a satisfied smirk. “You’re beautiful, I’ve dreamed of this for so long,” he says, but there’s a rough edge to his voice that sends a shiver through you.

His breath is warm against your ear, his hands trailing down your sides, tracing the curves of your body with a possessive touch. He pulls you closer against him, his large hands sliding over your thighs before gently urging them apart. He holds you open, one arm wrapped around your waist to keep you steady while the other spreads you wider, his fingers brushing against your slickness as he exposes you to Mingi.

Meanwhile, Mingi’s hands roam over your thighs, pushing them apart as he leans in, his breath hot against your skin. His fingers tease along the edge of your crotch, just barely brushing over your wetness.

“Already soaked, huh?” Mingi’s voice is husky, tinged with a whine as his fingers press harder, rubbing slow circles over the soaked heat. He’s watching you, eyes blown wide with lust, lips parted as he takes in every little reaction. He lets out a shaky breath, his impatience bleeding through. “You’re so fucking desperate for it, aren’t you?”

Yunho’s hand wraps around your throat, fingers tighten slightly, cutting off your reply. “Mingi, quit messing around,” he commands, his tone leaving no room for argument. His fingers slowly twisting your nipples, hard enough to make you gasp. “She wants it rough, so let’s not make her wait.”

Mingi, positioned between your legs, drinks in the sight of you with darkened eyes, a low groan escaping him. “Yunho, she’s so wet for us,” he mutters, his voice husky with desire. He presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh, his lips trailing a path closer to where you need him most, his breath teasing your skin and making you squirm in Yunho’s hold.

Yunho tightens his grip, keeping you steady, a smirk playing on his lips as he feels you try to press closer to Mingi. “Easy, baby. Let him take his time with you,” Yunho murmurs, his tone low and commanding, his fingers brushing along your inner thigh as he keeps you spread wide for Mingi.

Mingi glances up at you through half-lidded eyes, his mouth hovering just inches away from your core, and you can feel the heat of his breath ghosting over your most sensitive spot. “You ready for this?” he asks, his usual confidence cracking just enough to reveal the desperation underneath. He doesn’t wait for your answer before leaning in, his tongue dragging slowly over your folds, tasting you with a groan that vibrates against your skin.

You gasp, your head falling back against Yunho’s shoulder as the sensation crashes through you. Mingi’s mouth is relentless, his tongue working you over with a rhythm that has your thighs shaking, but Yunho’s grip keeps you from closing your legs, keeps you open and exposed to every lick, every gentle suck. He spreads you wider with his fingers, giving Mingi the perfect angle, and Mingi takes full advantage, his tongue dipping inside you before dragging back up to circle your clit, teasing you mercilessly.

Yunho’s lips find your neck again, pressing rough kisses along your skin, his teeth grazing over your pulse point. “Look at you, falling apart already,” he whispers, his voice filled with amusement as he watches the way your chest heaves with every breath. “Mingi, I think she likes that,” he teases, his hand sliding down to cup your breast, his thumb brushing over your nipple in slow, deliberate circles.

Mingi pulls back just enough to speak, his voice low and rough. “She tastes so good, Yunho... I don’t think I can stop,” he admits, his usual confidence slipping into a more desperate edge. He dives back in with a hunger, his tongue working faster now, alternating between soft licks and harsher, more focused attention on your clit, sucking it into his mouth and flicking it with his tongue until you’re crying out, your hands clutching at Yunho’s arm for support.

Yunho groans softly at the sound of your moans, his own arousal pressing hard against your lower back. He lets one hand drift down, his fingers grazing over Mingi’s jaw as he works, a silent encouragement as he keeps you pinned in place, making sure you can’t escape the overwhelming pleasure. “Yeah, that’s it, Mingi... make her fall apart,” Yunho breathes, his own voice thick with desire as he watches the scene unfold.

Mingi’s pace grows more frantic, his lips and tongue driving you to the edge, his hands gripping your thighs to keep you steady as he devours you like he’s starving. The combination of Yunho’s firm, steady grip and Mingi’s relentless mouth leaves you helpless between them, your body arching as the tension builds, heat pooling low in your belly until you can’t hold back anymore.

“Yunho, please... I—” Your words dissolve into a choked moan as Mingi’s tongue circles your clit faster, pushing you right to the brink. Yunho’s hand slides back to your throat, not applying pressure but just resting there, a reminder that he’s the one in control, a reminder of how completely you’re at their mercy.

“That’s it, baby. Come for us,” Yunho whispers against your ear, his thumb stroking over your pulse as if feeling the way it races beneath his touch. His other hand tightens on your thigh, holding you wide open for Mingi’s tongue, making sure you can’t escape the intense sensations that roll through you in waves.

And when your release finally crashes over you, it’s like everything shatters—your body shaking between them as Mingi holds you steady, his tongue slowing but never stopping, drawing out every last aftershock until you’re a trembling mess in their hands. Yunho’s grip softens, turning soothing as he brushes his lips against your temple, “Good girl,” his voice soft in a low register.

Mingi pulls away from you, lips slick and pupils blown wide, catching his breath as he watches the way your body trembles. He flashes you a wild grin, his lips curling into a satisfied smirk as he takes in the sight of you coming undone. “You’ve got no idea how good you look like this,” he murmurs, voice rough and low, sending a shiver down your spine.

Yunho’s large hand cups your jaw, his fingers pressing gently but firmly as he tilts your head back, stealing your breath with a demanding kiss. His tongue slides against yours, leaving you dizzy with the heat of his mouth, while his free hand drifts between your legs. His long fingers find the slickness Mingi left behind, sliding inside you with ease, spreading your pussy open, curling to press against that sensitive spot that makes you gasp into his mouth. He groans at how ready you are, his own control slipping as he pumps his fingers slowly, making you arch against him.

“Think she’s ready for us, Yunho?” Mingi teases, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses along your thighs, his voice tinged with a playful edge even as his own breath comes out shaky. His hands press your legs open wider, his grip rough and eager, holding you in place beneath him.

Yunho pulls back, letting his lips ghost over the shell of your ear as he speaks. “More than ready,” he murmurs, his tone low and dark. He withdraws his fingers, leaving you clenching around nothing, and Mingi’s lips twitch into a smirk as he watches the way your hips move, seeking more. He pulls his own shirt over his head, revealing the toned muscles beneath, and shoves his jeans down in a hurry, his cock heavy in his hand as he strokes himself, his eyes glued to the way you tremble beneath them.

They both shed the last of their clothes, and the sight of them—Mingi with a desperation in his eyes, his cock hard and leaking, and Yunho’s self-assured composure as he strokes himself slowly—has heat pooling in your belly all over again.

Yunho catches Mingi’s eye, and there’s a shared look between them—a look that you can’t quite make out of. Mingi huffs out a breath, a smirk curling his lips even as his hands tighten on your thighs. “Ready to make her feel good, aren’t we?” Yunho taunts, his tone edged with a dangerous kind of promise.

Mingi’s response is a low hum as he settles between your legs again, his breath ghosting over your sensitive skin. He presses a final kiss to your thigh, his lips soft before he lines himself up with your entrance. “You’re gonna take us both, sweetheart. You up for that?”

Yunho’s grip tightens on your jaw, guiding your head back so you’re looking at him, his expression dark and intense. “She can take it. Can’t you?” he challenges, his thumb brushing over your lips, the pressure making your breath hitch. You nod, can’t even form words, and a satisfied smirk tugs at Yunho’s mouth.

Mingi eases himself inside you, inch by inch, his moan vibrating through you as he stretches you open. The way his big dick fills you is almost overwhelming, his rough grip grounding you as he bottoms out, shuddering against you. “Fuck, she’s so tight... I’m not gonna last if you keep squeezing me like that,” he’s breathless, barely keeping himself together as your body tightens around him.

Yunho smirks, his fingers flexing against your throat. “She likes it, Mingi,” he murmurs, the dominance in his tone sending a thrill through you both. He moves his hand to your clit, his touch unrelenting, and the added sensation sends you spiraling, your body arching back into him as he drives you higher.

Yunho’s smirk widens, his gaze tracking every twitch of your expression as he positions himself behind you, the thick head of his cock pressing against your entrance alongside Mingi’s. He moves slowly, letting the stretch settle in, and you gasp at the sensation, the stretch is intense, burning in the most delicious way as your body struggles to adjust. They both push forward, filling you to the brim, and you can’t hold back the sharp cry that escapes you, the sensation leaving you breathless.

Yunho’s breath ghosts over your skin, his voice a low growl in your ear. “Look at how desperate he is for you,” he taunts, his fingers pressing down on your clit, rubbing rough circles. “But you love it, don’t you? Being filled like this, over and over until you can’t even think straight.”

Mingi’s head snaps up at that, his lips curling into a defiant smirk even as his movements falter, every thrust turning sloppy and wild. “She loves it... I can feel how tight she gets every time you touch her,” he gasps out, his voice cracking into a moan as Yunho’s fingers tighten their grip, applying just enough pressure to make you gasp, and he holds you there, his grip firm as he watches the way your lips part, vision going hazy. Mingi loses himself in the rhythm, his cock twitching inside you as he chases the edge of release, his desperation palpable in every shuddering breath.

You can feel Mingi’s pace falters, his head dropping to your shoulder as his breath stutters against your skin. “Fuck, I can’t hold back... she’s driving me crazy,” he groans, his voice breaking on a whimper as he feels the way you clench around him.

From behind you, Yunho chuckles, his own control slipping as his hips snap forward, burying himself deeper inside you. “Don’t hold back,” he growls. “Make her come again.” The dual sensations of their thrusts, the weight of their bodies, and the intimacy of the moment push you closer to the edge, and you feel the tension building again. “I can’t—oh, God, I’m so close!” you cry, your nails digging into Mingi’s arms as you cling to him.

The room fills with the sounds of your combined breaths, the wet slap of skin against skin, and the low, breathless curses spilling from Mingi’s lips. His hand slips, reaching back to grip Yunho’s wrist, grounding himself as he rocks into you with wild abandon, his moans turning needy and high-pitched as he finally loses himself in the pleasure.

Yunho increases his pace, and Mingi’s fingers dig into your skin as he matches the intensity. “That’s it, just let go,” he encourages, his voice a desperate plea.

The heat spirals through you, the sensation of being double filled amplifying everything. Your body arches back against Yunho, and with a final thrust from both sides—it pushes you over, and you come with a broken cry, clenching down around them.

Mingi loses it then, his hips stuttering as he spills inside you with a choked moan, his whole body shuddering against yours. Yunho isn’t far behind, his grip on you steady as he pushes deep one last time, burying himself as he loses control. He keeps moving through the aftershocks, drawing out every last drop of pleasure until you’re a trembling, spent mess in their arms.

They hold you there, their bodies pressed against yours, the heat of the moment fading into a heavy, sated silence. Mingi’s head rests on your shoulder, his breath ragged against your skin, while Yunho’s hand gently loosens around your throat, his lips pressing a softer kiss to the side of your neck.

You’re all left panting, tangled together in a messy heap, the air thick with the scent of sex and satisfaction. Mingi pulls out first, dropping back onto the bed with a breathless laugh. “Fuck, that was... intense.”

Yunho wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you against him as he presses a kiss to your shoulder. “Yeah, it was an intense anatomy lesson, but she took it like a champ,” he murmurs, voice full of pride. “Didn’t you, babe?”

You nod weakly, a small smile tugging at your lips as you relax into their warmth. “Yeah... I did.”

by @woolysium

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lilfriezatyrant · 8 months ago

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OKAY I FINALLY READ IT TRASH. TOOK ME ONLY CENTURIES I APOLOGIZE 😭😭😭😭 I give all my love and compliments in the tags because I guess you know my...tag attacks xD

BUT I WANNA SEND MORE KUDOS OKAY?! NOT ONLY ONE :)

It's been a year and a half. But hey @lilfriezatyrant I finally found the gumption to write fbgbg

#I swear this WHOLE fic is a masterpiece #I also laughed so much times at this chapter jaklfjl #reader with Frieza in an apocalyptic shopping mall and I NEED THIS #WHY YOUR FRIEZA IS SO FLATTERING AND DEGRADING AT THE SAME TIME IT IS SO GOOD AJLKFDJ #I swear that writing IT IS SO DAMN GOOD AND GIVES ME ALSO INSPIRATION FOR DADDY F #also the hiss when reader detached her hand #he likes being hold 🥺💜#Trash I swear that scene in Victoria's Secret strore jslkfaj #AND HE EVEN TOOK IT AND TUCK IT #he your curious lil amnesia gremlin #while mine would be “Well let us see if it really gives you those attributes.”#his delightful confusion all the time and disgust xD <3 #guys. read it. it is more than worth it #dragonblobz's writing #writer on tumblr #writer on ao3 #CAN I GIVE YOU MORE THAN THOUSAND KUDOS PLS?!#YOU DESERVE MORE OF THEM #amnesia Frieza still best idea of him #thank you for doing this qwq I also hope you enjoy your writing 🥺💜#frieza x reader

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dinogoofymutated · 5 months ago

Note

Hey! I wanted to make a request but I wanna state right away that if you're simply not comfy with it or don't vibe with it - I completely understand!

I'm on my period rn and wanna request some SFW or NSFW head-canons with Kurt comforting F!Reader while on their period. (Totally understand if NSFW wouldn't be your thing for this. Just any comfort HCs at all would thrill me. <3)

I just can't stop thinking about him applying gentle pressure with his hand to my lower abdomen like a heating pad. I feel like he'd be so sweet. Furball cuddles for the win.

Extra note: Your writing is lovely and thank you so much for your posts. They bring me joy and I even reread some of them a few times. I hope you're having a good day/night and I'm sorry for the long ramble. Remember to take care of yourself and drink plenty of water 💜🫂

SFW! Nightcrawler/ AFAB! reader - Period HCs It's finally here!! I'm sorry it too me so long to get to this ask lol. Hope you enjoy! TWS!: depictions/descriptions of Menstrual Cycle, Blood, staining the sheets on accident. Cramps. Please do not read if you're not comfortable.

Kurt 1000000% is one of the best marvel characters when it comes to making sure his S/O is taken care of.

He's thoughtful and cuddly, and he definitely runs hot, so he's quite literally a heating pad/blanket. He hates the fact that you are in pain, even though it's a regular biological thing that happens to so many. He provides for you in any way that he can when you're on your period, making you food, running to the store, making sure you're hydrated and taking your meds.

You tell him to jump, he'll always ask how high.

And he's comfortable buying pads/tampons for you too! He memorised the brand and size you get after the first time you had your period while dating him, and he does his best to remember when you change that too!

He will also buy you the snacks you crave while on your period and will never let you pay him back.

Don't be embarrassed about your period around him. He's seen blood before, and just because it's coming from a vagina instead of a wound doesn't make it disgusting. He respects your boundaries during your period, and has a lot of patience with you if you're the type to get mood swings. He just loves you a lot, and if that includes uncomfortable menstrual cycles from time to time, he's more than willing to accommodate you however you need.

You felt extra groggy waking up this morning. You can’t go back to sleep, but opening your eyes felt like an absolute chore. You didn’t feel well- and you can’t place why at first. You groggily sigh, uncomfortable even in bed, and are immediately comforted by a three-fingered hand soothingly petting your hair.

“Good morning, Schatz.” His voice is soft and sweet. Even in your pain, you smile at him, trying to keep your eyes open just so that you can see him.

“Mornin’ “ You sigh, leaning into his touch.

“Are you feeling well?” Kurt asks, ever the attentive sweetheart. You shake your head at him, moving closer to him so that you can snuggle into his chest. He’s warm and comforting. His tail wraps around you snugly, and he presses a kiss to your forehead. After cuddling for a while, your stomach growls, and Kurt chuckles. He mentions something about breakfast you’re a little too sleepy to remember and gives you a chaste peck before he pulls back the covers and gets out of bed.

You only feel his weight on the bed shift a little before he seems to freeze abruptly.

“Is everything okay?” You ask, slowly blinking your eyes open to see what was the matter. Kurt has this soft, concerned look on his face as he looks at the bed, and then at you, turning to sit sideways where he can face you.

“Love, you're bleeding.” He tells you. You look at him in confusion for a second, before you suddenly recognise that awful sticky wetness between your legs, and bolt straight up. You rip the blankets off, horrified at the sight of blood staining the sheets.

“I'm so, so sorry, Kurt!” You say, frantically trying to sit up and get moving. “- I promise I'll clean up and-”

“Why would I make you do that?” Kurt immediately cuts you off, setting his hands on your shoulders to settle you. “You didn't do it on purpose.” He states. You don’t actually know how to respond, both embarrassed at the circumstances and thankful he’s not mad at you.

“I’ll start the shower for you. Just wash up and let me take care of everything else, okay?” Kurt says, taking your hands in his own before he stands. He kisses you again before he’s gone in a cloud of smoke.

The water is the perfect temperature when you step inside, warm and cozy. You debate on turning the water scalding hot, still trying to shake off the embarrassment, but you don’t. Your cramps become more and more noticeable while you’re in the shower, causing you to ache once you finally shut off the stream. There's a fresh, fluffy towel and a new set of pajamas waiting for you when you step out- ones that Kurt must have teleported in without you noticing. The thought makes you smile.

Kurt had replaced the bedsheets and re-made the bed while you were in the shower, also laying your weighted blanket across the bed. He’s not in the room right now, but that doesn't stop you from curling up under the fluffy cover immediately. You’re so thankful you swear to yourself that you were gonna repay Kurt ten times over with whatever he could possibly want, already knowing that he’d tell you to not worry about it.

You’re lightly dozing, curled up in the fetal position under the covers to fight your cramps when Kurt teleports to your bedside. He’s got a tray of food in one hand with a glass of water in the other. You sit up when he sets it down on the bedside table, and he sits next to you had he hands you the glass, holding out pain meds in his other hand.

“You know how much medicine I take?” You ask, smiling sweetly at him. He’s grinning, his tail swaying back and forth on the bed.

“Why wouldn't I? It's the same amount every time.” Kurt says, tilting his head at you. You quickly take the medicine before you get too sidetracked, and the moment the glass of water is set to the side you pull him in for a kiss that he eagerly returns.

“You’re the best, You know that?” You tell him, and all Kurt does is chuckle. He crawls under the covers with you, sitting by your side as the two of you eat breakfast together. When you’re done, He lays back down with you, setting his warm hand on your lower stomach as he spoons you from behind, pressing gentle kisses to the back of your neck. You’re already feeling better when you drift back to sleep again in his secure, comforting embrace.

#x men #x men 97 #x men comics #x men headcannons #x men 97 x reader #kurt wagner #nightcrawler #nightcrawler x men #nightcrawler x reader #kurt wagner x reader #kurt wagner headcannons #nightcrawler head cannons #marvel x men #marvel #marvel headcannons #marvel x reader #marvel fanfiction #marvel reader insert

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legendary-pink-dot · 5 months ago

Text

Please, Mr Postman

Pairing: Joel Miller x female reader

Rating: 18+ Explicit

Warnings: Unprotected PiV sex, butt play, creampie, oral (f receiving), and lots of sex toys. No ages mentioned or alluded to. Reader is married. There are themes of infidelity, blackmail and stalking, but Reader is fully consenting and willing. Mailman Joel is a sleaze, consider youself duly warned.

Word Count: 4.3K (by far the longest thing I've ever written, whew)

Summary: Every morning at 9am sharp, you take your coffee to the front room and listen for his mail truck.

Notes: Poking my nose out of my hiatus hidey-hole to write this as a gift for my very very dear friend @magpiepills for the prompt "Stole your mail and uses it to sexually blackmail you mailman Joel". I love you, my sweet Bat. 💜 Giant thanks to @for-a-longlongtime for the last-minute rapid beta read. Much love to my sluts for cheerleading: @youandmeand5bucks @exquisiteserotonin @arcanefox207 @sparklefarts38 @redhotkitchen I have never written Joel before, so please be kind. Thank you and enjoy.

Please, Mr Postman - Joel Miller x f!reader

Every morning at 9am sharp, you take your coffee to the front room and listen for his mail truck. The squeak of the rusted brake pads as he parks at the end of the block is a melody, as distinctive to you now as the chimes of the classic ice cream trucks from your childhood, eliciting a Pavlovian response of salivating over the treats it held within.

Life was easy and carefree at that age. You didn't have responsibilities, grown-up worries, or this present burden of being a Stepford wife to a rich man who occasionally did some illegal activities. He was kind to you and you loved him, desired him even, but despite being a criminal he was boring. He was not the adventurous, filthy man in bed you secretly hoped for. But you knew things about his work that made it dangerous to leave, and financially he made sure you were kept comfortable enough to not want to tell. So you stayed. And here you were, marooned in a leafy suburb, stuck at home all day and fantasizing about the hot new mailman. What a cliche you've become.

The mailman's name was Joel. And he really did command attention.

Salt and pepper hair that curled around the edge of his blue cap. Dark brown eyes that showed a few flecks of amber the rare times you've seen them up close. A strong nose with a neatly trimmed mustache and gorgeous facial scruff. Large hands that could football-hold an entire package in each.

And speaking of packages: his looked prodigious. It looked obscene what he was carrying around in those standard issue United States Postal Service shorts. You dreamed about it at night -- how thick his cock must be and how you'd lick it like those sweet summer popsicle treats -- as your husband snored beside you after giving you one pitiful orgasm and then immediately coming himself and falling asleep.

You never thought anyone could be attractive in such a dumpy grey uniform, but somehow Joel found a way.

In the summer heat he always rolled up the edges of his pleated shorts, a thick pocket chain clacking along his meaty thigh. Light hair dusted his tanned legs. His black leather belt was cinched tight, further emphasizing his delicious bulge. The sleeves of his polo shirt were similarly rolled and showed off well-toned forearms from all the lifting and carrying. In short: he was a dream.

But you'd never go further than look. You loved your husband, for all his faults. You'd even placed a big order of sex toys last week in the hopes he'd be willing to spice things up in the bedroom. The tracking app says it's out for delivery, and right on cue, Joel comes walking up your driveway cradling a large cardboard box in his hands. Damn, he looks good today.

"Mornin', ma'am," he drawls politely. You think he winks at you, or maybe it's just the sun hitting his eyes. "Got a big one for you today."

You move to take it, but he shakes his head. "It's heavy. Let me put it inside for ya."

The thought of him being inside your home makes you tingle. You don't even think to consider that postal workers aren't supposed to go past a customer's front step.

You hold the door open and Joel stomps through, leaving bootprints of dirt on your "Home Sweet Home" welcome mat.

"Ma'am? Where d'ya want it?" He sounds amused, and you realize with a start that he's been standing in your entranceway for an awkward length of time. You'd been too busy ogling his legs, and more, in those rolled-up shorts. Was it your imagination, or was he not wearing underwear?

"On the coffee table, please." You lead him to the sitting room beside the entranceway. It's your happy place, your sanctuary, the spot you have your morning coffee in as you listen for the siren song of his mail truck.

Joel gently places the box on the coffee table and turns to you.

"I'll just wait here while you check that everythin's in order."

"What… what do you mean?" You feel your cheeks heat. Fortunately the box was nondescript, but it did give off a brown paper wrapping porn vibe.

"It's insured for $700. Must be some expensive stuff. 'S my job to write a report if anything's broken."

Nervous sweat starts beading down your back. "It… it's okay… I can report online if there's a problem…"

"'S no trouble. Let's just take a quick peek." Joel's already pulled his keychain ceramic boxknife out of his shorts, slitting the box open before you can say a word.

You stand there mortified and unable to speak as Joel opens the flaps, pushes aside the cushioning packets, and stares at the huge assortment of boxed sex toys.

"Well, well, darlin'. What do we have here?" His voice is a mixture of amusement and something deep and growling. Predatory.

Your face burns in embarrassment. "You… you can go now," you manage to squeak. "Please."

"Don't think so, sweetheart. Gotta check that everythin's in good working order." His boxknife shicks open the first product, a G-spot vibe from the looks of the box. Just before he can unwrap it, you find your voice. You hope you sound self-assured and assertive.

"That's enough. Please leave. My husband will be home any minute."

Joel smirks as he continues to rifle through the box. "Naw. He won't. Just did my route on Pine Street and saw him gettin' busy with that blonde divorcee in the cul-de-sac. Miz Perkins, wasn't it? Big tits."

It's a gut punch, and it makes you forget that this suddenly skeezy mailman is in your home and looking at your new collection of sex toys. An affair? He wouldn't. Not YOUR husband. Not your husband who rarely wants to do anything interesting in bed…

"Sorry, darlin." Joel pulls you out of your thoughts. "Fuck that guy. Wanna have some fun?" He pulls the vibe out of the box and waves it in front of you with a lopsided smirk.

This is too much to deal with. Your head is spinning, a mixture of emotions running through you. Including lust, incredibly enough. This mailman appears to be the take-charge dominant you wish your husband was.

"No. Like I said, you can leave now." You manage to say it firmer this time despite the gushing between your thighs. "Just go."

"Think I'll stay," he says, crossing the space between you in one step and pushing you backwards onto the sofa. "Don't want me reporting your ol' man to the authorities, now do ya?"

"Wha… what?"

He chuckles at your comically large-eyed look of shock. "Yeah, know all about it. Been readin' yer mail," he says matter-of-factly. "He's shit at covering his tracks. Who sends fake invoices through the mail? With his real address too. Amazin' he hasn't been caught yet."

"You've been reading our mail?! I should report you!" Who is this guy?

Joel looms menacingly over your prone figure. You didn't dare move. "Sure, darlin. Postal employees got a responsibility to report crime. I'll be fine," he smiles, leaning back a little, but not enough for you to escape. "But the Postmaster General don't take too kindly to mail fraud, or those aidin' and abettin'. That's a felony."

"But it's not a felony for a mailman to read people's mail?"

"Tell you what," he drawls, still in that matter-of-fact tone that should be so very wrong in this situation. He rifles through the box and pulls out a hot pink butt plug, wiggling it at you. "You're gonna let me try out some of these toys on ya, and I won't report him."

Blackmail shouldn't turn you on, shouldn't turn anyone on, but it does. You're only human, and besides, you definitely don't want to go to prison. You can't control your reaction as your upper half shrinks back into the sofa while your lower half stretches out towards Joel, the hem of your sundress hiking up like it has a mind of its own. He gives you a wolfish grin and rests a broad, heavy hand on your knee.

"Jus' what I thought, sweetheart. Seen you watchin' me out the window every mornin'. You been wantin' me to stuff your pretty little mailslot, haven't ya?"

A whimper escapes your throat. "Yes. Please," you whisper, thighs sticky between your panties and suddenly aching.

"Okay, honey. Gonna start easy with this lil' thing." He holds up a clit sucker, shaped like a penguin with a little pink bow around its neck, and switches it on to test it. It springs into life immediately. "Ah, great. Love how companies pre-charge things now-a-days."

How can he be so conversational about this? Does he blackmail all the married women in the neighbourhood? Well, maybe just the ones who have something to hide. Like you. You silently thank the heavens for sending you an attractive skeeze, at least. And Joel is so very, very attractive.

You spread your legs for him.

He ruches your sundress up your thighs and whistles appreciatively, the sound going straight to your core. "No panties? And gushin' out of that tight little snatch already? Didn't take ya for such a filthy girl."

"It's… it's hot out," you stammer, unable to think straight.

"About to get hotter," he smirks again, and damn that attitude is doing things for you. "You ready, sweetheart?"

You nod, and he keeps eye contact as he nestles your clit into the little penguin's mouth and switches it on.

Your back arches and you nearly scream out loud.

The sensation is warm, and there's no direct contact but it's like your clit is being gently suckled. You've never felt anything like it. It's only been three seconds and your hips are already squirming to chase more.

His hand presses lightly on your hip to give you something to brace against as he clicks the intensity button up a couple notches, and it's like waves upon waves of the absolute perfect pressure on your clit. The buildup in your core is so fast that you don't even realize you're coming until it's almost over. You also hadn't noticed that you'd grabbed his muscled forearm and sunk your nails into it, leaving little half-moon indentations in his tanned skin.

"That was… wow." Your gasps echo around the quiet sitting room. Joel doesn't say a word, just reverently watches your pussy pulse and gush out a few drops of slick. "Thanks." You wish it had lasted longer and were sad it was over. Oh well, a nice memory for the next time you think about Joel, or try out some of these toys with your husband.

You start to push your sundress down, assuming he'll leave now and half-grateful for it, but he grabs your shoulder and forces you back down into the pillows.

"Where you off to? I'm just gettin' started with you, darlin'."

"But…."

"But nothin'. Ain't done till I say so."

All you can do is stare at him, unsure if you should be angry, turned on, or plotting an escape.

He undoes his leather belt and slowly, threateningly, slides it out through the loops on his uniform shorts. "Don't make me use this, sweetheart. Gonna be a good girl for me now, ain't ya?" The depth and tone of his voice say he isn't joking.

You gulp, still tingly from your rapid orgasm. And ready for another one, you think as you make eye contact with Joel, feeling a bit bolder now. We're here, I let him do that much already, might as well go for it.…

The penguin gets discarded as Joel carelessly tosses it to the carpet and takes the hot pink butt plug out of the box again, running a finger along the curve of its long but slim length. "Hmmm. Pretty. This for you, or your husband?"

"Uh… me…"

"Ah, ah" he tuts. "You really are a nasty girl. You take one of these before?"

You shake your head, suddenly shy. You hadn't even wanted your husband to know about the butt plug, thinking he was so sexless that he'd be disgusted. Apparently not, if he's railing Ms Perkins with the big tits over on Pine Street.

"S'okay. Gonna slide it in real good for ya." While you shove a little sofa pillow under your hips, Joel combs through the box on the coffee table and pulls out a bottle of lube. He pops the cap and drizzles some over the plug, and you gulp again imagining it inside your ass. A faint scent of synthetic vanilla fills the air and for some reason it calms you, allowing you to relax your muscles as Joel slides the plug along your crack, rubbing and smearing the lube around your asshole.

"You like that?"

You do. You really do.

Your little moan spurs him on and he gently presses the generously lubed tip of the plug against your hole, just the teensiest bit. You look up at his face, that stupidly attractive face of a skeezy mailman who is sexually blackmailing you, and find yourself desperately wanting to feel his scruff on your inner thighs.

Apparently he's a mind reader, too. He smiles and lowers his head to your crotch, and licks your clit with his wide tongue at the same moment he presses a bit more of the plug into your ass. You nearly scream for the second time in minutes.

"That's it, honey," he breathes against your core, wiggling the tip of the plug in and out and hitting nerves you didn't even know existed back there, making your hips jump involuntarily. "Openin' up so nice for me."

A few more mind-numbing, distracting licks of your clit and the plug slides all the way in with a little pop. You're equal parts turned on and proud.

"Well, ain't that a pretty sight," Joel whistles appreciatively. He pulls up to sit back and just stares at you all spread out on the sofa with one leg hiked over the back, your sundress balled up over your stomach. He taps the pink flared base of the plug a few times like he's idly flicking away a cigarette. It wiggles inside you and you squirm and squeal. Actually squeal. You're still mad and weirded out and other things, but you're feeling too good to give up now and you're starting to not care how easily you're caving to this man.

"Lessee what other treats we got in here." He rifles through the box again. His face falls into a comical droop of sadness and he sighs loudly, holding up a little box marked 'Girth Extender Sleeve'.

"Oh, sweetheart. I'm so sorry." The condescension in his voice shouldn't turn you on this much. "Yer old man got a tiny dick? Not fuckin' you proper? No wonder you been starin' at me every day, desperate for a real man."

Before you can protest -- he's not tiny, I just wanted to spice things up, well okay maybe he could use a bit of help -- he unzips his uniform shorts and pulls out his hard cock, holding it at the base so you can take a good look. "Got a special delivery for ya, baby."

Yeah, Joel definitely doesn't need any artificial enhancement.

His cock is thick. Not super long, but probably one of the thickest you've seen, outside the few porn films you watched when you were younger and more uninhibited. There's foreskin covering what looks like a large mushroom head, and a prominent pulsing vein running up one side. It all looks delicious, and you unconsciously lick your lips as he smirks at how you take it all in.

"You want it real bad, dontcha?" He fists himself a few times, his foreskin sliding on the downstroke to give you a peek at the thick head. "Yeah, you sure do. Never knew I had such a little slut livin' on my route."

Shuffling forward, he grabs your thighs and spreads them wider. The head of his cock feels impossibly heavy as he slaps it on your clit, making you gush a little with every hit.

"Joel, will you… can you lick me again for a bit?" Your squeaky voice is impossibly needy and pathetic.

"Naw," he says, flicking the base of the butt plug again and making your hips jump. The plug was so comfortable that you'd already forgotten it was in there. "Gotta finish my route. Can't talk to customers with my face smellin' of pussy, ya know. I'm representin' the United States Postal Service out there."

"Oh, does the USPS regularly fuck its customers too?"

"Sure does, darlin'. Bends 'em over and gives it to 'em hard with the price hikes every year."

He roughly pulls you up and bends you over the sofa arm, positioning you like the personal little fuckdoll you are for him.

"Got the next best thing though." He slips on a tiny purple fingertip vibe, your free gift from the toy company for such a large order. With such thick fingers, it looks like he's wearing an upside-down Ring Pop. It gives a loud rumble when he switches it on, and he laughs as he tugs his shorts down over his thighs. "Cheap ass shit. Hope the battery lasts. But it don't take you long anyway, right sweetheart?" He reaches around your hips, lifts your sundress and presses the vibe straight on your bare clit without any preamble, and your hips slam backwards into his crotch as you scream again, his cock jostling the base of the butt plug and sending shockwaves both up and down your core at the same time.

"Yeah. Thought so."

Amid the mixed sensations suddenly comes a new one: the thick head of his cock slipping into your cunt as he swirls the vibe around your clit, not letting it rest in any one spot long enough for your liking.

"… Wait! No condom?"

"Naw. You're on the pill, right?" He doesn't wait for your answer, as if he already knows.

Normally you don't enjoy this position but you're too far gone now, pushing your hips back and encouraging him deeper in, more than wet enough from all the playing to take him in.

"Greedy little slut, ain't ya?" He feeds you another inch, pauses, then another, torturously slow as you stretch around his thickness. "Tight little snatch feels so good. Miz Perkins with the big tits probably don't feel this sweet." Joel demeaning your husband like this and throwing the adultery in your face should make you mad -- at both of them -- but it only turns you on more, beads of sweat dripping down your spine as he slides all the way in to the hilt, giving you a few moments of grace to adjust to the size of him.

One strap falls down your shoulder, letting your tit pop out of your sundress and he palms it roughly, giving it an exploratory squeeze. The finger vibe is still buzzing and he swipes it across your nipple, the nubby texture chafing just before the point of pain. "Nice. You like that? Let's add somethin'."

Mentholated 'arousal balm' was another of your free gifts, and not something you'd ever thought to try. Joel twists open the little tin and dips the finger vibe in it.

"That smells strong, do we have to?" Wooziness hits you as the peppermint smell goes straight up your nostrils.

"Like I said, baby, gotta make sure everythin' works. Else I gotta do a return," chides Joel, tossing the tiny tin on the floor. You watch it roll under the baseboard heater as he grabs your hips roughly and repositions you. "Real fucking pain, returns. Lotsa paperwork."

He brings the now-mentholated finger vibe back to your clit, and two seconds later it feels like your entire pussy is on fire.

Thank goodness he didn't put any on my a--

Joel moves the base of the butt plug aside and presses the finger vibe against your asshole.

The menthol soaks into your tender membranes and it's so, so cold and hot at the same time. Your brain melts along with it.

Everything is lit up now and you squirm as he slides his hardness back into your pussy and gives a few experimental thrusts. "Tight fuckin' snatch," he mutters, your walls clenching around him in time with his finger flicking at the plug, your entire lower half burning but not in a terrible way. "But could be tighter." He suddenly pulls his cock out and you whine, loudly and needily.

"Please, Joel."

"Please what, darlin'?"

"Put… put it back in? Please."

"All in good time. Gotta give those walls an extra little stamp."

You look over your shoulder to see him drizzling lube into the girth sleeve and slipping it onto his cock. He's already so thick that it's a tight fit, the soft tube slipping off a couple times before he finally stretches it enough so it can slide all the way on, pulling it down so his large head pokes out of the top. You clench involuntarily.

"Umm. That's not gonna fit."

"Sure it will, honey," he drawls. "Didn't think you could take that pretty little pink plug, right? And look at ya now."

He's got a point.

"Gonna stuff that little slot full to the brim and turn ya into a size queen. Open wide, baby."

He's merciless as he slides back inside, at a curved angle since you're turned slightly to brace both your hands against the back of the sofa. The extender is smooth and feels just like his skin, and you're powerless to resist the incredible feeling of the extra width. He was exactly right: you felt full. With the thick pressure in your cunt pushing against the plug in your ass, you felt more stuffed than you ever had in your life, and what's more your pussy is still burning from the menthol balm. It was overwhelming but also glorious. In that second you knew it would be impossible not to think of Joel next time your husband fucked you, even if he wore this toy. Stupid sexy blackmailing mailman.

Baby animals had more stability in their legs than you do right now, your thighs spasming uncontrollably as Joel palms the vibe around your clit while holding almost half your waist in the span of his other large paw. He fucks into you hard from behind until you're so close to coming you can taste it. With the extender, his cock is hitting spots inside you that you didn't even know you had. A heavy chain pops out of the neck of his polo shirt and hits your nape with a loud clank as he slams into you from behind, the cheap poly-rayon blend of his polo shirt chafing your shoulders in a delicious burn as his chest presses close against your back and his hips smack against your ass, jostling the butt plug with every thrust.

whirrrrrr goes the finger vibe as the tiny cheap battery dies, and he slaps your clit hard with the vibe one, two, three times and you come, yelling for the nth time since he left his bootprints on your welcome mat that morning. His grunts are loud and lewd as he fucks you through it, easing up only to make his thrusts shallower so he can reach a hand between you and gently pull out the butt plug with a little 'pop'. He tosses it and the finger vibe onto your pristine off-white carpet, not even bothering to aim for the opened box on the coffee table.

"So fuckin' tight," he wheezes hoarsely, "I gotta extra big load for ya," and he presses his hips so hard against your ass that you almost fall over the sofa arm, his voice faltering as he groans and you feel hot spurts of his come coating the inside of your pussy, as deep as he can put it.

You slump forward onto the sofa and he pulls out, both of you heaving. The fiery balm has mellowed to a gentle tingle and your core is pleasantly warm. Stretched out. Fucked out.

"Welp, gotta get back to my route." It's been only a minute and his matter-of-fact conversational tone has already returned. You peer over your shoulder and watch him pull his shorts back on, rolling up the hems and slicking his belt back into the loops, tucking his polo shirt back in with practiced efficiency.

"Will I see you again?" You hate how pathetic you sound, and you must be a real sight too, half naked with a sweaty rolled-up sundress stuck to your back, your ass still up in the air like you're waiting for him to stick it right back in and rail you again immediately.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll be seein' each other again real soon," he says smoothly.

As you stand up, knees a little weak, a drop of cum drips down your thighs. "Glad I'm on the pill," you mutter to yourself as you pat down your wrinkled sundress and pause at the mess of packaging and boxes littering your sitting room.

"About that, darlin'." Joel smiles, pausing by your front door. "Miz Perkins over on Pine Street orders sugar pills and well, you know, packages get mixed up sometimes on the route. Might wanna check you got the right pills."

Joel slams the door and the mail slot squeaks rhythmically as you stand there, horrified, listening to him whistle a jaunty tune as he walks down your driveway and back to his mail route.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #sleazy mailman Joel #pedro pascal character smut #joel miller fic

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btsforlif · 8 months ago

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Missed You

Paring: jungkook x reader/chubby reader

Rating: 18+

Genre: smut, fluff

Warnings‼️: nipple play, unprotected sex ( please don't do this guys), fingering, possesive jungkook, jealous jungkook, creampie, sad tae(?), drinking(that's all?).

Synopsis: In which you break up with jungkook due to some personal reasons but after a year you meet him again in a club and jungkook wants to know why you broke up with him, not letting you go this time. (Read to know what happens further).

Note: hi guys, posting after a year or two? I am so sorry for not posting before. I had so many things going on in my life that I got no time to write anything. Hope you enjoy this! Love you all💜 (SORRY FOR ANY GRAMMATICAL OR SPELLING MISTAKE).

You were sitting at the bar drinking water because you aren’t into drinking alcohol and your friends forced you to join them for a random hangout and you couldn't say no because you really loved them. You really loved them but half of them are gone, wait you might be thinking where? So, with those men with whom they had the urge to spend a night with and you were left out with your only friend Taehyung who never liked anyone other than you.

"They all really ditched us", he said. You laughed and said that, "yeah they did" Tae laughs too. "You really wanna drink only water". He asked pointing at his beer and than pointing at you, you nod and said yes "I do not consume alcohol and you know it, right?" You said while drinking water. You know you can drink for today right?" He sips his beer "actually I think you somewhat right but I don't want to" You say while smiling to him and he nods as he understood not pushing you too much.

You both were talking to each other when suddenly tae says "I will be back within no time as I need to go to restroom". He didn't even wait for your answer, before he marched off to the restroom. You sat there waiting for your friend, in the mean time your eyes were scrolling through everyone; seeing some with their partners or with their friends but when you were watching others your eyes stopped at one man whom you didn't wanted to meet ever again but now it's seems impossible. You see him smiling and talking like nothing ever happened between you and him one year ago.

After your break up with him he was gone, completely gone from your life just like a warm breeze. And now he was here laughing, smiling and talking with others like nothing really happened. How did he move on so fast, you thought. As you were still fighting with those beautiful memories he gave you, with those charming moments spent him where you both were having your best time with each other and now he is here without even informing you about his arrival.

You didn't wanted to see him because you knew your feelings would come back in second when you meet him and that's what is now happening, all your feelings, memories are coming back. Just when you were thinking about him Taehyung comes running back saying, "sorry there was a que". He says before sitting beside you. "Why are you so upset suddenly?" He asks you out of nowhere seeing your face which was glowing few minutes ago and now it's like you are in deep pain.

"Lo-look behind you" You whispered to him and he turns around seeing your Ex Jungkook sitting with his friends in booth. "If you want we can leave from here", he hurriedly said as he did not want you to be more upset. "No I came here to enjoy and that's what I am going to do, he is my past" You order a beer and when it comes you drink it quickly without taking pauses.

Taehyung was worried for you, he knew how you were when you two broke up and it was really hard for you to come out of it. "Let's go to the dance floor". You took his hand not waiting for his approval and he didn't say anything he just let you take him. You started dancing with him on the beat almost forgetting about jungkook.

On the other hand Jungkook was laughing with his friends when he saw you on the dance floor dancing with some boy who he didn't recognise. He froze on the spot seeing you, smile gone seconds ago "hey what happened?" One of his friends asks him "nothing" Jungkook replies while still watching you. Is this the reason you broke up with him? Jungkook thought, was this so easy for you? Easy for you to forget all those memories that you both shared. He was furious, he wanted to know the reason for a whole year now because "it's not working between us" is definitely not the reason and he knew it.

He already knew he did wrong by not telling you that he was going abroad but he was heart broken, how was he even supposed to talk to you without crying and telling you that he was going. He wanted to talk to you for months now but he doesn't have much courage to talk to you so he let it slip his mind trying to forget everything. But he wasn't able to because he loved you deeply and still loves you.

How dare that boy was dancing with you when it should have been him. Why were you letting him dance with you? All he wanted to know about why you broke up with him, he wanted you back. Just seeing you on the dance floor, his heart wast beat fast. He will forget everything just for you and will restart everything if you want to.

Just for you.

He see you talking to him and you walk away from him somewhere probably restroom. He wanted to meet you and talk to you so he stood up and excused himself before following you. You enter female restroom and go into the stall not knowing Jungkook was following you. While you were in the stall Jungkook came in and locked the door not wanting you go anywhere before talking to him.

After coming out of the stall you go near sink to wash your hands but when you look up in mirror to look at yourself, you see Jungkook standing behind making you gasp loudly. You turn around and look at him standing leaning against the nearby wall "w-what are you doing here Jungkook?" You look at him with glassy eyes. "Just want to talk to you y/n please" He pleases with his pretty eyes making you melt in them. They always made you melt in them.

"What?" You ask him softly "why? Why did you broke up with me y/n?" You glup at his question and look down on the floor before speaking "I already told you Jungkook, it was not working for me!" You say loudly not willing to repeat yourself "liar! You know it's lie baby. Why can't you tell the truth love? Was it that boy you were dancing with?" He is much closer to you now, you didn't even realise it but now you actually have to look a little up just to look into his eyes "Jungkook that is the truth and it's none of your business if I was dancing with that boy or not" You were done here, you wanted to get out.

You were leaving when jungkook suddenly holds your wrist "you can't go now, not before you answer my question" His hold gets a little tighter after finishing his sentence "jungkook this is getting too much, let me go right now! I have answered your question before and i am not going to answer it again" You try to get your hand back but he suddenly pulls you towards him putting his hands on your waist and turns you around to face him caging you between him and the sink making you gasp loudly.

"W-what are you doing J-jungkook" You whisper "you can't go till you tell the truth y/n" He whispers back. His breath hitting your neck making you shiver lightly "there is only one truth and i have already said it" You push him a little making him face you and you look up into his eyes. "You have already got over me that easily?" He asks you making you look down onto his moving lips. "Yes" You answer shortly not trusting your voice.

"So this don’t affect you?" He moves near your face his breath hitting your lips. In reality it was affecting you, it has always affected you, anything related to him has always affected you. "No", you reply. Eyes staring into his to insert dominance. He suddenly kisses your neck just below your right ear "not even this?" You gasp lightly making him smirk against your neck.

"N-no not even this" You were trying hard not to feel anything but you knew you were lying to yourself more than to him. He looks up at your face again and see you breathing heavily, he knew you were getting butterflies with everything he was doing to you then why were you resisting? He wants to know the reason but he gets up from you and looks at your beautiful face "you want me to go don't you?" He whispers loudly enough you to hear "say it while looking into my eyes and I will go". He says it while looking at you with hope, he wanted to stay just with you. You let his words sink in and look at his face for a few seconds before looking at the wall behind him "yes I want you to go" You whisper. "Look into my eyes and tell me love." He takes your face into his hands and moves it up till it was face to face with his.

You look into his eyes and feel your eyes getting watered "n-no I don't want you to go!" You whisper, breaking your wall because you can't hurt yourself more just for some weird reason. You suddenly kiss him making him pull you closer by your hips. "I missed this, I missed your lips, fuck I missed you" He whispers before kissing you passionately again.

You break the kiss to breathe but he didn't waste any time before he was on your neck kissing and licking on your sensitive skin. "You want this?" He asks stopping everything, you nod and he starts to remove your straps from your shoulder making your boobs bounce out making him groan "I missed these two so much" He squeezes both of your breasts in his hands and bends down to take your right nipple in his mouth sucking and biting on it. You moan feeling yourself getting more wet in your panties. You stop yourself from moaning too loud by sucking on your finger and the other hand goes into his hair pulling it slightly.

He gives the same treatment to your other boob before coming back up and kissing you again, fighting with your tongue and exploring your mouth. His right hand goes under your dress and slide the panties to the side before gently rubbing your clit, you moan then again stop yourself from moaning too loud but he had other plans and took out your finger from your mouth and pinned your hands behind you "don't stop yourself please, I wanna hear it so bad" He literally begged you, you just nod not trusting your voice.

He goes back to rubbing your clit and teasing your entrance with his fingers "you want them in, don't you?" You nod in response but he pinches your clit "words" He was still teasing your entrance while looking at your eyes "y-yes I want your fingers in me please" You say whimpering a little when he inserted his middle finger in your pussy "like this yeah?" He asks before thrusting it in and out of you "More" You say closing your eyes "you want more? Always so greedy" He inserts his ring finger too and folds it making you moan loudly in response.

It was feeling so good, Jungkook coming back and making you cum on his fingers that you thought it was all a dream but then you feel your high cumming and feeling Jungkook's fingers just right in you making your insides twist "fuck jungkook don't stop please I am cumming" You say loudly while moaning. But jungkook stops and pulls his fingers out licking them clean. "I want you to cum on my dick" He says and turns you around and folds your dress till it was exposing your ass to him and he bends you down .

You wait for him when you hear him open his pants "I can't wait anymore, I want to feel you around my dick" He says before using your arousal as his lube and slowly sinking in slowly. You both moan feeling each other. You whimper feeling the stretch after long. You shudder when you feel him bottom out, he slaps your right butt "fuck you are squeezing me so good y/n, nobody fucked you after me?" He asks before taking his dick out and slamming it back in making you moan louder.

"No" You say loudly to his question. He thrust in and out of you finding his pace "I knew it, because this pussy belongs to me and me only, you belong to me only". He starts to go fast hitting your spongy thing again and again making you cry out "say you are mine" He pulls on your hair till your back meets his chest. You whimper "I am all yours" You cry out while slapping and moaning noises fills the entire room.

Jungkook lets you go making you fall onto the counter moaning. He changes position by lifting your leg and keeping it on the counter and thrusting more deep into you "so deep" You groan "yes as it should be, me being deep in you always". He bends down kissing your back while thrusting hard into you. He was hitting your insides so good that you felt yourself on cloud nine.

You were feeling close, the knot in your stomach was getting more and more intense "fuck jungkook I am close, don't stop please". You had tears in your eyes feeling yourself so close. He hums and sneaks his hand around you and start to rub your clit. You close your eyes whimpering squeezing his cock hard "yes j-just like that, squeeze me even harder". He groans out "cum". He commands and you cum on his cock moaning loudly and chanting his name again and again.

He gets you through your climax and put your leg down before thrusting again and moaning. You whimper feeling your overstimulation kick in "I am cumming, I am cumming in you fuck" He groans loudly making you whine "please please cum in me" You moan before he groans loudly chanting "mine mine" and cums deep in you, throwing ropes of cum in you before taking his dick out and helping you in standing up and in rearranging your clothes and then you help him back before you were standing in front of him still in haze.

He kisses your lips before kissing your forehead "I know you don't want me to know the reason about our break up and I won't ask it but please don't leave me this time, I love you, always have and always will please come back to me again" He says almost tears in his eyes looking into your eyes. You caress his face before smiling and giving him a quick kiss and noding "I love you too jungkook, I won't go this time" You say to which jungkook hugs you "missed you so much". He says and kisses your neck before taking your hand in his "let's go home, I want to tell you so many things". He smirks and looks at you. You giggle at his smirk and nod knowing what he means. But you stop "jungkook your cum is still dripping down my leg" You whine "that's good let others see who you belong to". He proudly says before you hear knocks on the bathroom door "y/n are you okay? it's been more than 20 minutes" You hear Taehyung’s voice and your eyes go wide "y-yes I am okay I am coming out" You start to painc and look at jungkook "what should we do now, if we both go out he will know that we had sex right now" You say panicking "so? He should know" Jungkook says and pulls you out against your say and you see taehyung looking at you and then at jungkook "hm hi taehyung, I am so sorry for leaving you" You nervously say "i-its okay" He says while blushing he understood what you two did and you look at jungkook glaring at him "hi taehyung, I am jungkook, I am sorry but I have to take y/n home right now we have some work to do". He doesn't wait for his reply and pulls you with him. You turn around while walking and mouth sorry to taehyung to which he gives you thumbs up and smile.

Taehyung stands there for few minutes before going to bar and sitting down on chair. He knew he should have told you about his feelings sooner. Now he doesn't have a chance. He asks the waiter to serve him a drink before he is thinking about you again.

THE END....

Hope you enjoyed this! Please leave a comment and don't forget to reblog💜

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ghouljams · 1 month ago

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Popping in to say your sandwich mafia au has got me really into sandwiches and I'm proud to report that for the first time in nearly a decade I'm not as scared or anxious to eat bread (in a homemade sandwich situation). The ED don't like bread, but I want to experience Simon’s sandwiches, so thank you dearly for your writing and the homemade reuban I'm gonna enjoy while reading your series 💜

As someone who has also struggled with an ED, WAY TO GO!!! We take every victory that comes to us even if that victory is a sandwich(good choice with the reuban btw those are my favorite). Here's some fic for you, as a little treat. Ghost being nice.

"I don't mean to be asking questions-" You start.

"But you're gonna push past the discomfort," "Simon" raises a brow, there's no danger in his eyes, just a sudden wariness that makes you feel a bit off balance. You expected his guard to raise immediately. You must not register as much of a problem, or he figures you're smart enough to know what not to ask.

"What are you doing running a sandwich shop?" You wave your hand to indicate his... everything. Not exactly what you think of when you think of a restaurant owner. A hit man maybe, but not a restaurant owner.

"I like food." Simon answers plainly. It's so simple it takes you by surprise.

"Oh."

"Sorry ta disappoint, no sob story here." He shrugs, "Why d'you come in here?"

Question for a question you suppose. "Food's good," You shrug, "and cheap. It's hard out there." You mean it to come off as a joke but you feel sort of pathetic telling a mobster that you're underpaid and counting coupons at the local shops.

"You know, uh," Simon clears his throat a little and you give him a look of horror.

"I don't need a job from you." You tell him. Simon makes a face, you can see his nose pinch under his mask, the exaggerated grimace made all the more unappealing by the zig-zag of scars pulling at his skin.

"Shut the fuck up and lemme be a fuckin' nice guy, alright? Shit." He shakes his head like you're being unreasonable about not wanting to join the mafia. "My girl-" You make a face, "-She ain't in the family, so quit complainin'." He points a finger at you and you shrink back. "My girl-" he looks to you for complaint, you give him a thumbs up, "-needs some 'elp with 'er-" he waves a hand, "-whatever she does, and she pays good." He stares at you. You're not sure if you're allowed to talk.

"You have a girl?" You don't think you can tackle the rest of it just yet, so you start with the part you find hardest to believe. Simon gives you a withering look and pulls his phone from his pocket. He swipes a few notifications from the screen and turns it your way.

Honestly the spiderweb cracks on his phone don't help, but that's definitely a woman on his lock screen. She's grinning ear to ear and holding up what appear to be divorce papers. You give Simon his look right back over the top of the phone. It's the same girl he threw out of the shop two months ago.

"Happy?" Simon grumps, locking his phone and shoving it back in his pocket.

"Don't people usually have a wedding photo as their lock screen?"

"You want the job of not?" Simon side-steps your question.

"I do not." You give him your best impression of someone completely disinterested, because you are.

"You're takin' the job," Simon tells you, he turns to go back to the kitchen grumbling under his breath about having money for food and raising the prices of his sandwich. God you hope not.

You get an email from a name you don't recognize inviting you to interview for a job you didn't apply for not even an hour later.

#simon ghost riley #mafia au #sandwich shop au #the au where Ghost forces us to live better #instead of the other way around #as is my usual fare

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levandright · 11 days ago

Text

𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄

their favorite way to show their love for you is through — quality timeꜝꜝ

if you enjoyed reading this consider leaving a like or reblog ᐢ..ᐢ

pairing ⋆ ot7 enhypen x gn reader! ʬʬ content / warning(s) ⋆ tooth-rotting fluff, established relationship, so so much comfort, idol au but not mentioned much—only in heesung's & jungwon's ꕀ word count : 1605 ʬʬ go back to the start?

ᐢ..ᐢ lev notes : this is my favorite work atm 💜 it's fluff galore! (my specialty) thank you again to my dearest friend who has to look through my messy draft to turn this to super high quality! jungwon's part perfectly connects with the first work for this drabble series which i am so proud of. while writing i had to look up what the members liked to do so i could make it more special for each of them (thank you p.duck wiki i couldn't have done this without u🫶🏻)

𝗟𝗘𝗘 𝗛𝗘𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗨𝗡𝗚

heesung loves playing games with you. it’s one of the many hobbies you both share, and it’s part of what brought you so close in the first place.

you're in the living room, surrounded by snacks and drinks scattered across the coffee table in front of the couch, playing animal crossing. the apartment door swings open, and heesung steps in, visibly tired as he makes his way over to you.

you slide over to make space for him, patting the cushion beside you. “how was practice?” you ask, reaching up to gently brush a few stray hairs from his face.

“mmm, it was alright,” he murmurs, the weariness clear in his voice.

you nod, understanding the unspoken exhaustion in his tone. standing up, you head to his room and grab his nintendo switch, then return to hand it to him with a smile.

“here you go. come join my island—i've got a whole new layout to show you.”

heesung’s gaze softened, his eyes brimming with a quiet adoration. the corners of his lips lifted into a serene smile, contentment woven into every delicate line of his face.

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗝𝗢𝗡𝗚𝗦𝗘𝗢𝗡𝗚

jay loves spending time cooking with you. there’s something about it that makes him feel so at home.

you and jay decided to cook a homemade coconut chicken curry together for dinner. you put on your favorite playlist, roll up your sleeves, and begin cooking.

as you chop the garlic and onions, jay leans over with a grin and steals a piece of bell pepper, only for you to swat his hand away playfully.

"patience! you’ll get to eat soon enough,” you laugh. jay winks, then moves on to roast the cumin, coriander, and turmeric, filling the kitchen with a delicious aroma.

when the time to add the spices came, jay gestures dramatically, sprinkling them like a “chef,” which makes you laugh so hard you almost drop the spoon on your hand.

he jokes, “you’re looking at a future culinary star.” you roll your eyes, smudging a dab of coconut milk on his cheek in response. you both burst out laughing, realizing the mess you just made.

as the curry simmers, you sneak tastes from the pot, adjusting the seasonings together.

"a little more salt?" you suggest, and jay nods, adding a pinch.

when the curry is finally ready, jay serves it up with fluffy rice. as he places your serving in front of you, you take a moment to appreciate the effort you both put into making the dish. you glance at each other and share a smile.

then, you dig in, savoring not just the delicious meal but the laughter, teamwork, and little moments that made it all so special.

𝗦𝗜𝗠 𝗝𝗔𝗘𝗬𝗨𝗡

jake loves going shopping with you. it’s a chance for you both to bond over your love of fashion, and a way for him to spoil you with new clothes.

jake finally has time to spend with you after so long apart. you both decide to make the most of it by shopping for new outfits together.

you're on the hunt for a fresh hoodie and some sneakers, while jake’s hoping to find a cool jacket. you head to your favorite store, filled with oversized tees, cargo pants, and graphic hoodies.

you spots an oversized hoodie with a bold graphic print and hold it up, asking, “what do you think? too much?”

jake grins, “it’s perfect—definitely your style. try it on!” you head to the fitting room, while he waits outside, he chuckles when you come out and do a little spin to show off the fit.

in another aisle, jake picks up a black bomber jacket with a bright orange lining. you nudge him, “you have to try that one on!” he rolls his eyes but puts it on, then strikes a dramatic pose in the mirror. you snap a quick photo and laugh, “yep, this one’s a keeper.”

you end up finding matching bucket hats and take a few selfies, laughing as you try out different poses. afterwards, you go grab some bubble tea and chat about all the new outfits you'll put together.

your day of shopping leaves you feeling stylish and closer than ever.

𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗞 𝗦𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗛𝗢𝗢𝗡

sunghoon loves working out with you. exercising together and encouraging each other to do your best at the gym makes it all the more rewarding.

you’d told sunghoon a couple of months ago about your new goal to take better care of your body, and he’d immediately suggested working out together. “we’ll keep each other motivated,” he’d said, with that reassuring smile.

now, two months later, your efforts are paying off, and you can feel it. as you and sunghoon finish another round of weights, you catch your reflection in the gym mirror, noticing a subtle definition in your arms and a healthy glow on your face. sunghoon notices too, giving you a proud grin.

“look at you!” he says, playfully nudging your shoulder. “you’ve been working hard— told you it’d make a difference.”

you laugh, catching your breath. “i couldn’t have done it without you,” you admit. “there were so many days I wanted to skip, but you kept me going.”

sunghoon gives a thoughtful nod. “same for me. having you here pushes me to keep at it too.” he grabs his water bottle, holding it out in a toast-like gesture. “to us the ultimate workout team.”

you clink bottles with a laugh, feeling a surge of pride and energy for how far you’ve come together.

𝗞𝗜𝗠 𝗦𝗨𝗡𝗢𝗢

sunoo loves doing skincare with you, taking the time to admire your beauty and simply enjoy your company.

“i’m telling you—this face mask is amazing!” sunoo reassures, noticing your hesitation as he holds up a minty green jar.

knowing your boyfriend’s obsession with skincare, you decide to trust his words. “it better make these acne spots disappear,” you mutter, eyeing yourself in the mirror. sunoo’s face lights up, nodding eagerly.

“of course it will, darling! what else would you expect from one of my recommendations?” he dips a soft brush into the mask and motions for you to sit down. “i'll do it for you. just hold still.”

you sit down, and he leans in close, brushing the cool mask onto your cheeks, nose, and forehead, his focus so intense you can’t help but smile. the tingling sensation feels refreshing, and sunoo nods approvingly.

“perfect! now we let it sit for fifteen minutes, and then I’ll show you my face massage technique.”

you raise an eyebrow. “face massage?”

“trust me, you’ll glow.” he applies the mask to himself too, and as you wait, he makes you laugh with funny stories from his day. when the timer goes off, he gently washes off the mask for you, then hands you a towel.

you examine your face in the mirror, noticing the brightness. sunoo grins, smug. “stick with me, and we’ll have you glowing in no time.”

you smile, nudging him. “alright, skincare guru. I’m convinced.”

𝗬𝗔𝗡𝗚 𝗝𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗪𝗢𝗡

jungwon loves taking spontaneous walks with you, savoring your presence as you stroll together through the streets at night.

the cool night air wraps around you as you and jungwon wander through the quiet streets. the city lights cast a soft glow, illuminating the path as you stroll side by side, soaking in the stillness of the evening. he needed this—a break from the demands of his idol life—with his number one supporter and love: you.

jungwon’s hand finds yours, his fingers lacing with yours in a way that feels both familiar and comforting.

“isn’t it peaceful?” he murmurs, looking up at the stars peeking through the city lights. you nod, glancing over at him, noticing the small smile tugging at his lips as he takes in the night.

he suddenly stops, pulling you gently to a halt. “wait here for a second,” he says, darting into a nearby convenience store. when he returns, he’s holding two cups of hot cocoa, steam curling from the tops. he hands you one, his eyes twinkling as he watches your reaction.

you sip, feeling the warmth spread through you, and jungwon gives your hand a light squeeze. “i just love these walks with you,” he says softly. “no rush, no plans—just us.”

you smile, leaning your head on his shoulder as you continue down the quiet streets, savoring the simple, beautiful moment together.

𝗡𝗜𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗠𝗨𝗥𝗔 𝗥𝗜𝗞𝗜

riki loves playing soccer with you. whether you’re skilled or not, just running around the field and laughing together helps him forget all his worries.

the sun is setting, casting a warm glow over the soccer field as you and riki race around, laughing as you chase after the ball. he’s quick, weaving past you with ease, but every so often, he’ll slow down just enough for you to catch up, grinning as you make a playful attempt to steal the ball.

“think you’re gonna get past me?” he teases, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

you laugh, lunging forward and managing to tap the ball away. riki’s mock gasp of surprise makes you laugh harder, and soon you’re both stumbling around, barely able to stay on your feet from the giggles.

when he finally catches up to you, he taps the ball back and watches as it rolls across the field. for a moment, he just stands there, catching his breath, a relaxed smile on his face. “you know,” he says, looking over at you, “i really needed this.”

you raise an eyebrow. “needed what? me beating you at soccer?”

riki chuckles, shaking his head. “just... having fun and forgetting about everything for a while. thanks for playing with me.”

you smile, nudging his shoulder. “anytime, riki.”

perm taglist. @honeychocos @kozumesphone @lilly-cherry7 @manaah02 (perm taglist open!)

©levandright

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reverieblondie · 8 months ago

Note

I really like the shy s/o headcanons you did. If I can, I’d like to request hcs of Haarlep, Gale, Halsin, & Astarion (& anyone else you might feel like adding) w/ a s/o that’s almost always cool and collected (sort of like a kuudere).

Thanks! 💜

So I am unsure If I didn't go cool enough or if I went to Kuudere for this request, but I really enjoyed writing it so I hope you enjoy reading it! Last Bullet point is NSFW!

Gale

Gale isn't exactly sure how to explain why his heart stirs when he sees you, it just does. You could be reading quietly by the campfire or cutting down enemies, but he always has the same thought when he sees you: Elegance. Your stoic demeanor and how you carry yourself with such grace have been swirling in his brain since your first meeting. You could be covered in any amount of filth but you will still have that keen look in your eye and speak in such an articulated fashion that to him it sounds like poetry, though you know it's not. Posed and a cool tone always the same, Gale finds a certain comfort from being around you. It's kinda nice he's always close by. Sure, he can be a dork, but Gale feels things so deeply, a thing you wish you could relate more to. Though with Gale you find that a part of you is becoming softer, it's mainly directed towards him but it's an improvement. Gale admires you and you think he deserves to be as equally admired and you don’t mind being that person for him. It only will lead to him falling for you more.

You and Gale were enjoying a moment together in his tent. It had become something like a ritual that at the end of the day as everyone settled into their tents Gale would read aloud a book to you or anyone else who wanted to join. Tonight, however, his tent only had one guest, you. As Gale read his eyes flicked up toward where you were sitting beside him listening intently. You two had found yourselves in the position before on other nights, but tonight was different. You were quiet and so close, in fact from how close he could smell the subtle sweetness that laces itself to your skin. Always so elegant, even now with your hair slightly disheveled from the day. Sitting so patiently for him to continue reading. Gently, Gale brushes the hair back, his fingers grazing you so delicately. Looking at the text you see his smile as he slightly leans in, you follow his lead without a second thought. Forgetting all about the story and relishing in the passionate kiss. You were both happy nobody joined you two for the story that night.

Gale is always showing you his appreciation in any way he can. Making dinner for you and the rest of the camp. Reading to you and recommending books. Teaching you what he knows about magic, turns out he's a great teacher. You just want to be able to show your appreciation to him, you can just kiss him or go to his tent later and show him what he means to you ,but you want to work on expressing yourself. You were helping him prepare dinner for everyone, as he cooked and would look over at you he would have that same sweet smile on his face. It’s time to express yourself and dig deep. “Do you know how much you mean to me? You are wonderful, and…I’m happy to be yours.” Hours later Gale was still giddy from the sudden phrase.

Though you try to express your love for Gale through words like he so often does, sometimes words just lack the way you truly feel for him. That's how you two often end up in this situation. Gale with a fist full of your hair bites his lip as he watches you through lidded eyes. He's cummed twice now but you're still down there sucking and licking on him, overstimulating him for more. Though he's completely flushed, you're still looking up at him with those keen eyes as cool as always. On the inside your body is a flame of want, but you know how much he loves your elegant lips wrapped around him. Don’t worry it's your turn after he gives you one more…

Haarlep

You drive them crazy…You're so calm and collected at all times, despite their teasing and taunting you never give anything away. Harrlep wants you to break, they are desperate to be the cause and are very open about telling you this. But you always keep your cool demeanor. It's become a game for them, to be the one to have your resolve tremble down to lust. You on the other hand find their want oddly amusing. Typically games like this don’t interest you but the amount of time Haarlep devotes to you, the way their hungry eyes rake over you does make something in you stir…Maybe one day you will let their game progress, but it will be on your terms, for now, they will have to be pleased with your smiles as you leave them hanging. The chase makes it all the better.

They had grown tired of the game as they watched you ramage around the House of Hope looking for whatever artifact you needed this time on your adventure. Haarleps fiery eyes watched as you were browsing around not even turning to share a glance with them. Haarlep had tried it all, whispering filth in your ear, running their tail up and down your back, hells they even tried ignoring you back but nothing worked in making you want them. Now here you are alone with them and still nothing. Their irritation grew till they finally cracked. Grabbing your arm Haarlep spun you around to grab your chin “I don’t take kindly to be ignored.” they growled right before they brought their lips to yours and kissed you. The kiss was raw and passionate, their heated lips made you feel like you caught an instant fever. Haarlep had to hold your weight as your limbs turned to jelly. A sudden rush in your lower stomach was tempting you with depraved thoughts of more. They tasted like the finest wine you could indulge in forever if you wanted to. As they broke the kiss and looked at you expectantly for any kind of reaction; hate, want, anything to tell them you felt anything at all. Haarleps eyes widened at what they saw and their lips spread to a delighted smile. Your eyes doe like in a breathless expression with the tinting of red to your cheeks. You were blushing because of them.

After defending Raphael Haarlep was free to do whatever they wanted and what did they decide to do? Join you on your adventures, though the relationship between you two was never defined exactly you knew that deep down you were theirs, your soul be damned. Haarlep was always waiting for you and though they would play it off as just for fun you saw the way their eyes would soften when you emerged to your room. Though, sometimes you felt like Haarlep was putting on a show for you at times. You want them to be comfortable and not have to perform for you. “No games Haarlep…Can I please just hold you?” When you first asked this Haarlep seemed confused by the idea of cuddling, but as they laid their head against your chest to have you then softly you wrapped your arms around them. Haarlep lays there in your arms silent, the only noises are the soft sounds of your breathing and the thrumming of your heart. This intimacy…stirs something within them…

Haarlep is always the one to take the lead in your relationship, you figured they liked the feeling of control. But after they made a teasing comment about you needing to be more aggressive with what you want, you took it to heart, and they were so happy you did. They were getting drunk off it, your moans leaving your swollen lips as they held your wrist in their warm hands. You bounce up and down on them, taking them in so deeply. You're delicious as you tighten around their cock so close to coming undone but holding back. Your eyes are watching Haarlep so intently, it's strange they rarely ever get raddled during sex but with how you are looking right now they might be the ones to come undone first this time…

Halsin

You're different compared to others he has encountered. Halsin is so used to people becoming nervous or giddy when he is around, some disdain him, many are eager to befriend him, and then there are others wanting to bed him. But you? You never give anything away to how you might feel…well that was the case till he figured you out. It was a simple praise, he thought nothing much of it as he told you how good you were. The way your cheeks glowed red as your eyes stayed to his…it was a slight crack to your shield and he wanted more, he wanted to watch you blush and be the reason for it, he wanted you to feel better and have all the praise you deserved. Halsin would praise you every day just so he could witness your flustered features. Halsin figured out how to get past your shields and despite this usually being something to mortify you, it was instead a welcomed change. It's odd feeling vulnerable to another person but Halsin is a gentle soul, he will treat you tenderly.

Halsin had invited you out on one of his typical hikes through nature as the others visited the nearby town. Halsin being a druid preferred nature to make him more relaxed and you preferred being around Halsin so it was a win-win situation. Halsins soothing voice and calm dementor always put you at ease, though today as you walk closely to his towering figure something deep within you stirs. You come to an abrupt stop and he follows looking down at you curiously. His hazel eyes took you in then smiled softly, it made your heart skip and you finally knew what was happening to you. “I think I want to kiss you.” You say bluntly. Halsin looks at you surprised then smirks, “You think, or you know?” You stare at him, not breaking your gaze, “I know I do.” Halsin opens his arms out to embrace you, “Then come here.” His voice purrs. You place your hands on his wide chest and let him take the lead. The kiss was slow and intimate and tasted like honey.

Halisn is a giver, he is always bringing you gifts like flowers, fresh ingredients, rare stones, and his favorite showering you in praise till your cool dementor falters and you blush like an idiot. You want to do something for him, give him something that you know he would enjoy. After much consideration and time, you had the perfect gift. You approached him very casually with it hidden behind your back. Halsin, not being a fool, knew something was up when you were already blushing and he hadn’t praised you yet. When you finally revealed it he felt his heart squeeze. A poorly made wooden duck, “You make it look so easy…” you say simply and he can’t help but laugh, the rest of the day he told you how to properly make a wood carving. It's now become your favorite bonding time.

Lovers in the past have always been so ravenous when it came to intimacy with him. Scratching, Biting, just being rough in general. You, however, treat him as if he were made of glass, blushing softly, cooing, and caressing him tenderly. Halsin has seen you in a fight, you are forced to be reckoned with, but in the intimacy in his arms, you are blushing and sweet. You speak every honeyed praise that comes to your mind as he goes down on your drinking in your release. Your voice in pleasure is becoming his favorite song these days.

Rolan

When he first laid eyes on you he immediately thought you were one the coolest people he’s ever seen. It was right after a fight, your teammates were cheering and hollering as you all came into the grove, and you walked in the background watching your ragtag group. Then your eyes met his. You didn’t wave, or smile, you just simply gave a nod towards him. Cal and Lia swear they have never seen Rolan blush so much, of course, he denied it, but on the inside his heart was racing. After that day he found himself wanting to have you think he was as impressive. Lucky for him you did find him impressive, not only because he was a talented wizard but because he was an ambitious dreamer. You admired all he did for his family and found yourself lightening up every time you got to talk to him. His rich voice always made your head fill with stars despite your cool outside. As a couple you and Rolan are almost inseparable, you're always there to be his calming present and he brings an extra spark to your life. He might think you're the cool one, but in your eyes it's him.

Rolan had done what Cal and Lia deemed impossible, he managed to ask you out on a date finally and was successful. A sunset stroll through the city was the plan and it was going well. Rolan was putting on his best confident demeanor as you listened to him intently, your bright eyes watching him carefully. Gods, how he loved your eyes, hair, body, and lips. Rolan felt his palms getting sweaty as he kept glancing at you. Each time his eyes landed on your perfectly kissable lips. He wanted so badly to just grab you and kiss your lips, stealing a taste for him to hold onto forever. Though his stuttering and nerves were getting in the way of that, he wanted you to think he was cool and collected, a perfect match for you. He can’t just grab you and kiss you! Tail swishing around irritatedly, he is chastising himself to get a grip on his emotions and to stop staring at you so desperately. Then feels his collar being pulled and suddenly your lips are on his. All of Rolans resolve leaves as he grabs your hips and deepens the kiss to one of desperate hunger. Backing you up to the closeted ally he wraps his tail around your leg as his tongue pushes into your mouth finally tasting you. Breaking from the kiss to catch your breath Rolan accidentally lets a whimper slip from his throat. “You…kissed me, why?” You shrug, “I figured you wanted to considering how you kept staring at my lips.” Rolan groans, “You must find me pathetic…” you touch your hand to his cheek and kiss his lips again, “No, I think you're just passionate. Makes me want to be more like you.” Rolan felt the blush creeping to his ears, it was the best date.

Rolan worked so hard it was something you both admired about him but it also made you worried for him. He just worked so hard to provide for his family. You wish you could do something for him to help, but pulling him away from his desk is often an impossible task. He was in his study for what might have been hours now. Entering his study you saw him scribbling away, it wasn’t until you cleared your throat that he looked up. In your hands a tray of his favorite meal he had mentioned his adoptive mother making for him Cal and Lia as kids. He was a bit shocked you remembered him talking about the dish. Placing the tray down you cooed at him to take a break. And as he smelt the food he found that he was incredibly hungry. As he ate you undid his hair and scratched your nails on his scalp. Lending down you told him to join you for a bath and he of course couldn’t deny you.

He just couldn’t help himself anymore, watching you handle everything effortlessly, always acting so cool…he needed you, now… His buckle was gently knocking against the shelf, your head leaning back against him as his breathy whines rang in your ear. Hard thrust drives his cock deeper and deeper, the tip nudging against your sweet spot. Then he brings his tail in and your cool demeanor melts away and you're a moaning crying mess. Rolan brings his hand to cover your cries…His hot breath pants in the shell of your ear, “Keep it down…The customers will hear you…” Nothing makes him feel more confident than feeling you come undone…

Wyll

If Wyll had to pick anyone to follow blindly into a fight it would be you. You're smart and tactful, you keep a level head despite anything. Wyll sees you as the perfect definition of a leader and he would follow you to the hells if you needed it. Though if anyone asked you the same question you would answer that Wyll makes the better leader with his kind-hearted nature and determination. Despite you being quiet you find that with Wyll it doesn't matter, he can carry the conversion easily for the two of you and it wouldn’t even get awkward. You two just enjoy being around each other, you bring out the best in each other. With Wyll you are more gentle and he helps you see the world in a less harsh perspective. with him by your side you find yourself understanding and experiencing more emotions you didn't think you ever would. With you around Wyll finds fulfillment, if someone like you sees him as someone you want to be with maybe he is not as worthless as he once thought. You two are each other's perfect complement.

After a time of getting to know one another and being each other's closest confidants, Wyll knew it was time to take the relationship in a more serious direction. Wyll Imagined your first kiss would be underneath a canopy of stars. Alone so he could share all his feelings for you that he hoped you would reciprocate. Everything changed though when you took that arrow to your shoulder, mere inches away from your heart. Shadowheart had patched you up and now Wyll was here devotedly at your side listening to you chastise yourself for being careless and already planning a counterattack on the enemy camp. Reaching out carefully Wyll grabbed your hand to bring your attention to his gentle face. “Today I thought I would have lost you. In our adventures, I know there will be times when one of us will get hurt, maybe even killed. Please let me show you the depths of my affection before I am ever able to.” “How will-” “May I kiss you?” surprised you and gave a nod, with your permission Wyll gently dipped down to your still body and kissed your lips softly. His lips were as soft as you imagined they would be.

Wyll from the moment you meet him you always think of him as the most self-sacrificing and selfless person you have ever met. He would give the shirt off his back for a stranger if need be. But after watching him long enough you noticed how he carried heavy loads and pushed himself so thin, and when he thought no one was looking he would wince and rub his neck. He needs to be shown how to treat himself better. In his tent he was resting his sore muscles when you walked in, a bottle of fine-smelling oil in your hand. “What-” but you are quick to cut him off “You have been neglecting yourself, let me rub this into your skin. Halsin says it's good for healing, now shirt off.” his cheeks warm, that same matter-of-fact nature he adores. The rest of the night was spent gently massaging all the knots and aching pain from his muscles…and talks of your futures after this adventure. the plan? You two staying together…

Your skin was so hot against his lips, every sweet whisper from his lips made your once stone-like body shake. The party's leader, always so composed, until underneath him… “You look perfect, here…and here…” As Wyll mumbles his praises he kisses every one of your scars tenderly, worshiping you in a way you didn't know you needed. Words die in your throat as he goes lower and lower till his lips are wrapping around your sex and you feel his tongue licking against you sloppy…Is this what it's like being worshiped by another?

Astarion

When first meeting Astarion he was not so impressed by your cool and collected demeanor. Everyone at the camp had their quirks and then there was you, like a perfect impenetrable wall. Of course, He thought you had something to hide and was determined to get to the bottom of it. First getting through your walls was a challenge, he tried flirting and intimidation tactics but found that they didn’t make you stir in the slightest. (when in fact you know you would go to your tent after those conversions holding your hand to your chest like your heart was going to explode, but he didn’t need to know that.) It wasn’t until he stopped his facade and was more honest that you started to open up as well. Over time as he found out who you were and you found out more about him the two of you became fiercely protective of one another. Definitely a stranger to friends to lovers situation. In fact, on your first date you didn’t even realize it was a date till he told you. You were odd and not always easy to understand but for the first time in a long time he wanted to have real intimacy with someone and you wanted to let down your protective walls.

You had gotten to him today with your bluntness, of course, he played the whole thing off like he didn’t care but inside he did and it was eating away at him not knowing why. It's late, the time of night that no creatures stir, well only one kind of creature does…his kind. You're asleep on your bedroll by the fire as per usual. You always sleep next to its warmth, Astarion figures that's what you crave like most creatures, warmth; something his cold body could never provide to you. Astarion shakes the thought, why would he even think of holding you? He doesn't even like you. Your damned aloofness pisses him off to no end. But as he is about to leave your slumbering side, you reach out and touch him. Your heated skin warms his icicle-like fingers, he half expected you to wake and recoil, but you didn’t you seemed to be eased by it. Your plump lips parted slightly as you dream. Slowly leaning down he keeps his crimson eyes on your face, completely unaware of the danger you are in. This is where he bites your neck and drains you of your blood like the monster he is. But instead, he brings his cold lips to your warm ones and kisses you. After a moment he comes back to his senses and pulls away. As he looks down at you now there is just the slightest curl of a smile to your lips. Sweet dreams he supposes.

Astarion, usually so charismatic and open to say anything he wanted, had seemed to be rather reserved lately. Now you are usually one to never notice these changes in people but when it comes to Astarion you couldn’t help but notice those subtle shifts. It was late, but you knew he would be up, you went into the tent he had been reading and immediately started to put on his cocky dementor when he saw you but you just ignored it and sat next to him. “So why do I get the pleasure of such a late night visit darling?” looking through his short stack of books you pick one that seems the most interesting to you, open it then speak, “You have seemed off, so this is me being here for you. I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, and I will leave if you would like.” you turn to look into his eyes “but spending time with you always makes me feel better so I am trying to do that for you.” Astarion seemed shocked but the confession for a moment before he gave you that rare soft smile. The night was spent in silence with you reading and he laid his head in your lap. Your warmth was exactly what he needed, but he wasn't ready to confess that yet.

“Bite me…” Astarion looks down at you, your neck exposed and flushed, the slightest sheen of sweat causing you to glisten in the candlelight. He feels his gums itch above his fangs…he wants to feed from you…but would you think him a monster after? Insecurities and anxieties swirl in his mind. You two had just started getting intimate with one another…would this turn out to be too much for you, for him…Then a soft touch to his pale skin brings him back, “Star…Only if you're comfortable, but know I trust you. I just…I want to give you everything I can.” Your words are so calm, so confident in him, he loves it, feeling so safe with you. Leaning down slowly he Kisses your neck before sinking his teeth in. Your body tenses for a moment before you're lulling into the saccharine of pleasure. Breaking away he licks your running blood from your neck as he looks down at you. Please know…that he loves you, endlessly.

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kingofbodyrolls · 2 months ago

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Friendcation (m) | myg | baby special

Yoongi spends time with your daughter 💜

→ Pairing: mechanic!Yoongi x reader (female) → AUs: roadtrip!au, non idol!au, established relationship, mechanic!Yoongi, dad!Yoongi, married!au → Genres: slice of life, humor/crack and so much fucking fluff → Rating: mature/explicit/R18 (this is mature/explicit content, so minors, please do not interact.) → Word count: 3.5k → Warnings (explicit): this is just pure fluff, so nothing smutty in this one! But there’s mention of pussy, if that is a warning? I swear, it’s just funny, sweet and lovely 🥹 it's written completely in Yoongi's pov, just because... you'll see 💜 → Author’s note(1): the last extra for friendcation that I’ve planned 🥳 I don’t think I’ll write more for this series/couple so please consider this officially completed (but you never know, lol). But I really don’t know what more I could add to this. I hope you enjoy this one too! 💜 And thank you all so fucking much; thank you for reading, commenting, reviewing, reblogging—everything means so much to me, you truly don’t know. Knowing what you think, and that you like reading my stories matters a lot to me, and essentially that is what keeps me going (especially when I’m struggling). So thank you 🫂 → Read on AO3? [link] ✨

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The gentle patter of tiny feet echoes through his dreams, a soft cadence pulling him from the depths of sleep. Not fully awake, yet not entirely asleep, he hovers on the fragile edge of consciousness. The sound of those footsteps—familiar, beloved—grows louder, closer, until a tender warmth touches his cheek.

“Daddy! Daddy! Wakey, wakey!” Mee-Yon’s voice bursts with joy, her excitement bubbling over as she bounces on the balls of her feet, her laughter a melody that could rouse the sun itself.

He groans, stretching the stiffness from his body as the couch protests beneath him. Slowly, he opens his eyes, and there she is—his daughter, beaming down at him with a grin so pure it melts away any lingering weariness. How could he be upset when faced with such a sight? That tiny, radiant face is too full of life, too full of love.

“Hm?” he groans again, as Mee-Yon’s tiny fingers press against his cheeks, her eyes wide and insistent, sparkling with the boundless energy only a three-year-old could possess. She bounces still, a little ball of endless enthusiasm, and he marvels at how so much vigor can be contained in such a small body.

“Uncle Minnie is here,” she announces, her voice dropping just slightly, though no less vibrant, as if she’s sharing a grand secret. Her eyes shine with excitement, practically glittering—no, bursting with rainbows, if only this were a cartoon. And in this moment, he thinks, maybe he’s been watching too many cartoons lately, breathing in too much of that magic.

“He is?” he murmurs, running a hand through his dark hair, now cropped shorter than usual—a change he knows you’ll notice. He remembers how you prefer it longer, but for now, this is how it is.

“Mhm,” Mee-Yon confirms with a dramatic little stance, hands on her hips. That flair for the dramatic—definitely not something she got from him. Him, dramatic? Never.

He chuckles, gently patting her head, his fingers tracing through her soft hair that hasn’t yet been tamed into the neat bun she usually wears. Should he tie it up? He hesitates, knowing she’ll just pull it out moments after he’s finished.

Looking up, he sees Jimin standing in the doorway, a soft smile on his face as he watches Mee-Yon with an adoration so profound it almost makes the room glow. Jimin, the ever-dedicated godfather, has taken his role to heart, showering her with a love so abundant it spills over, warming the whole house. He spoils her endlessly, and though he’d never admit it, he’s grateful for it. It’s nice. It’s more than nice. It’s love, in its purest form.

“MINNIE!” Mee-Yon cries out, spinning on her heel to race toward Jimin, arms flung wide. He scoops her up effortlessly, lifting her high into the air, the room filling with the sound of her gleeful giggles and his playful airplane noises. As his arms tire, he lowers her gently to the ground, and she wraps herself around his legs, claiming him with a possessive “Mine.”

Jimin grins, glancing over at him. “I see she’s as possessive as you,” he teases, and Yoongi responds with a playful scoff, rolling his eyes in mock exasperation. But deep down, his heart swells, knowing these moments—these precious, fleeting moments—are what make everything worthwhile.

He rises from the couch, stretching the remnants of sleep from his limbs, and finally, the sweet, intoxicating aroma of dinner weaves its way to him, causing his stomach to rumble in anticipation. The scent is warm, rich, filled with love, and it beckons him forward like a siren’s call.

As he moves past Mee-Yon and Jimin, their laughter like a soft melody in the background, he follows the trail of that delicious fragrance into the kitchen. There you are, immersed in the ritual of cooking, your focus entirely on the simmering pans before you. You’re making dinner—far more than necessary, as always, though tonight it’s just you, Yoongi, Jimin, and little Mee-Yon. But since becoming a mother, you’ve taken to preparing meals that last for days, an act of foresight that saves time and allows for more precious moments together. He loves this about you, this quiet efficiency that carves out more space for family, more time to bask in the warmth of togetherness.

You haven’t noticed him yet, lost in the rhythm of your work, the soft sizzle of the stove and the gentle clatter of utensils. He knows better than to startle you, aware of the way you lose yourself in the dance of cooking. So he deliberately makes his steps audible, the floor creaking underfoot as he approaches. “Smells nice,” he murmurs, his voice a low rumble as he slides his arms around your waist from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder.

“Yoon,” you sigh, your voice dripping with affection as you lean into him, and he presses a tender kiss to the curve of your ear. He can feel you melt under his touch, the way your body instinctively relaxes into his, a soft giggle escaping your lips—music to his ears. He lives for these sounds, the small, intimate noises you make, even the ones in your sleep that pull him from his dreams but awaken something else within him, something that fills him with love and desire.

His fingers trace gentle patterns on your skin, lifting the edge of your blouse to feel the warmth of you beneath his hands. His calloused fingers draw circles, savoring the softness of your flesh. You moan softly, your body swaying slightly as if moved by an invisible melody, a song only the two of you can hear. His hands drift lower, brushing your hip, pausing as if savoring the moment.

“Dinner! Dinner!” Mee-Yon’s excited shout rings out behind you, shattering the tender moment with her boundless energy. He can’t help but chuckle as he turns to see her cradled in Jimin’s arms, her little face glowing with joy.

“You know she can walk, right?” he teases, grinning at the pair of them.

“Yeah, but this is more fun,” Jimin replies, bouncing her gently, drawing out another round of her infectious laughter.

“You’re spoiling her too much,” you chide playfully, turning off the stove and casting Jimin a mock death stare, your eyes twinkling with mischief.

“I have to stay her favorite uncle,” Jimin retorts with a carefree shrug, his smile widening as he carries Mee-Yon over to the table, already set and waiting. Mee-Yon giggles, sticking her tongue out at you, and in that moment, the room is filled with warmth—a perfect snapshot of love, laughter, and family.

Yoongi can’t help but smile, knowing that none of your other friends stand a chance at becoming Mee-Yon’s favorite—not with the way Jimin spoils her, showering her with endless affection. There’s something special between them, an unspoken bond that binds them closer than the rest. Mee-Yon seems to naturally gravitate toward Jimin, drawn to his playful spirit and gentle heart.

Of course, she enjoys the company of the others too. She adores playing with Seokjin’s kids and his wife, their home a haven of laughter and warmth. Jungkook, with his eternal boyishness, is always ready to dive into whatever adventure Mee-Yon dreams up, his energy a perfect match for her wild imagination. She lights up when Namjoon reads her stories, his deep voice weaving tales that captivate her young mind. Once, when Namjoon’s girlfriend was over, her belly round with the promise of new life, Mee-Yon innocently asked how babies were made. Yoongi was relieved not to be on the receiving end of that question, watching with a mix of amusement and sympathy as Namjoon fumbled for the right words—balancing truth with tact.

Then there’s Taehyung, who spoils her with gifts from his travels as a photographer, bringing the world to her in the form of exotic trinkets and stories that transport her to far-off lands. Each friend brings something unique into Mee-Yon’s life, and while they all have their place in her heart, it’s Jimin who holds the brightest spot.

“Dinner’s ready,” you call out, wiping the sheen of sweat from your brow, a testament to the steam rising from the pots on the stove. The meal is a labor of love, and as you all gather around the table, it’s no surprise that Mee-Yon instinctively takes her place next to Jimin.

The first bite is met with murmurs of approval. “It’s so good,” Jimin exclaims, and Yoongi nods in agreement, his eyes catching the soft blush that spreads across your cheeks. He knows how you are with compliments, especially about cooking—something you usually leave to him. But tonight, you’ve outdone yourself, and it’s clear that your efforts have not gone unnoticed.

Then, out of nowhere, Mee-Yon’s small voice cuts through the comfortable silence like a bolt of lightning. “Vagina!” she shouts, slamming her tiny hands on the table for emphasis. “Vagina!”

All eyes snap to her in stunned disbelief, the room frozen in a moment that feels suspended in time. Yoongi isn’t sure if he heard his daughter correctly, but as she repeats the word with gleeful abandon, there’s no mistaking it. Your gaze darts frantically between Jimin and Yoongi, as if deciding who to unleash your wrath upon. Fortunately, Jimin ends up as the target.

“What the fuck did you teach my daughter?” you demand, your voice trembling with incredulity and a hint of anger. Yoongi, relieved not to be in the line of fire, watches as Jimin blinks back at you, utterly bewildered.

“What?” Jimin stammers, shaking his head in denial. “I didn’t teach her that! She must have picked it up at daycare,” he says, his tone calm but defensive, trying to deflect the blame.

Yoongi, ever the realist, can’t help but let a remark slip, one that’s more truth than tact. “Just be glad she didn’t say pussy.”

You sigh, a mix of exasperation and reluctant acceptance, realizing that he has a point. Better to let it go, not to give Mee-Yon’s newfound vocabulary too much attention. After all, the more focus you put on it, the more she’ll repeat it, and there’s no need to make a spectacle out of a word that, to her, is just another part of the world she’s discovering.

“Pussy! Pussy! Pussy!” Mee-Yon’s voice rings out with glee, her innocent delight filling the room as she proudly chants the forbidden word. Your stern gaze snaps to Yoongi, and in that instant, he knows he’s made fucked up. The realization hits him like a wave, and the weight of it is evident in his sheepish expression. “You taught her to say pussy. Why would you do that, Yoon?” you groan, frustration lacing your voice, a trace of self-doubt creeping in as you wonder if this makes you a bad mother. But Yoongi knows better—shit happens, and he reckons this isn’t the worst thing she could have picked up. After all, with the amount of time she spends with Jimin and Jungkook, he’s surprised this is the first explicit word to slip out.

“Peeing from my pussy!” she sing-songs with abandon, and you all groan in unison, only for the tension to break as laughter bubbles up, impossible to hold back. It’s bad, he knows it, but it’s also undeniably funny and, in a way, just a little bit cute.

Mee-Yon soon loses interest in the word, her attention drifting as she begins to babble a stream of playful nonsense, her laughter joining yours in a chorus that fills the house with warmth. As the evening settles into a comfortable rhythm, Yoongi helps clean up while Jimin entertains Mee-Yon in the living room, the sound of their laughter echoing through the walls. He silently hopes Jimin isn’t teaching her any new vocabulary, knowing full well that the daycare likely isn’t to blame for this latest outburst.

Later, Jimin takes on the task of putting Mee-Yon to bed—a routine she seems to prefer whenever he’s around. Neither you nor Yoongi mind, as it offers you a rare moment of peace, a chance to sit together in quiet companionship while Jimin’s gentle voice carries through the door, reading her a bedtime story. When he emerges, his face softened by a tender smile, he bids you both goodnight and slips away into the night. It’s late, and Yoongi can’t help but curse the fatigue that overtook him earlier, leaving him to doze off on the couch.

He’s been working more than usual lately, picking up the slack as you scale back your hours, determined to keep your finances steady. He doesn’t mind, knowing this is just a season of life, a phase that will pass. There may come a time when you’ll work more hours again, and he can step back. What he truly appreciates is the flexibility you both have in your work—his garage at home, a sanctuary where he can manage his own time, and your ability to work from home, offering you a reprieve from the relentless stress of your marketing job and the demands of your boss.

Tonight, though, you’re both too exhausted to stay up, even though the allure of a new K-drama tugs at your thoughts. Yoongi knows better—you’ll both likely fall asleep on the couch, and while it’s sleep, it’s not the restful kind. Better to retreat to the comfort of your bed, where real rest awaits.

So that’s what you do, slipping into a simple nighttime routine, brushing teeth, and taking care of your skin before crawling under the covers. Yoongi loves these moments, spooning you for the warmth and comfort it brings, not just for the obvious reasons but for the pure joy of being close to you. He nestles into your neck, breathing in your natural, sweet, and earthy scent—a fragrance that grounds him, that makes everything else fade away.

He doesn’t know how much time passes before he’s jolted awake by Mee-Yon’s piercing scream. His heart races, the familiar surge of fear gripping him—always worried that something terrible has happened. But as he listens, he realizes it’s likely another night terror. With swift, practiced movements, he’s out of bed and crossing the short distance to her room, just opposite yours.

The room is bathed in the soft glow of a unicorn night lamp, casting gentle shadows on the walls. The rest is cloaked in darkness, except for the faint hum of white noise playing in the background, a melody that usually soothes her into sleep and keeps her there through the night. But not tonight. Her screams persist, shrill and heart-wrenching, as he approaches her bed. She’s calling for you, her mother, her small body trembling in the dim light.

“Mom! Mom! Mommy!” Mee-Yon’s cries pierce the quiet night, her voice tinged with distress as her tiny body thrashes beneath the sheets. Her eyes remain tightly shut, yet it’s as if she’s caught in a battle with unseen phantoms, lost in the throes of a bad dream. Yoongi’s heart aches at the sight, a deep, primal need to protect his daughter surging within him.

“Mee-Yon,” he whispers, his voice soft as a lullaby, “it’s okay, sweetheart.” But his words are like echoes in a canyon, powerless against the storm of her nightmare. She continues to scream, panic tightening her small frame, and Yoongi feels a pang of helplessness. He hates seeing her like this, hates that there’s nothing he can do but wait it out, knowing it’s just a part of her growth, an inevitable phase that will pass. Yet that knowledge doesn’t ease the knot in his chest.

He places a gentle hand on her stomach, feeling the rapid rise and fall of her frantic breaths. “Mee-Yon,” he calls out again, a bit more urgently, but she’s still far away, lost in the dark corners of her dream. Then, suddenly, she stirs, her tiny body moving in fits and starts until she sits up, her eyes still closed, arms reaching skyward as if begging to be held.

“Mommy,” she whimpers, her voice a broken cry, and Yoongi’s heart twists in response. “It’s Dad,” he says softly, reaching for her, lifting her delicate frame into his arms. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

“Daddy,” she murmurs, still caught between sleep and waking, her small arms wrapping tightly around his neck. For a moment, Yoongi just stands there, holding her close, unsure of what to do but knowing he can’t leave her alone. He knows the experts say it’s not ideal for her to sleep in their bed, but sometimes, practicality takes a back seat to love and the desperate need for rest. Nothing has ever gone wrong before, but there’s always a flicker of fear that lingers in the back of his mind, the thought that one of them might roll over her in their sleep. Thankfully, that has never happened, and they are super careful.

With gentle care, he carries her into your bedroom, placing her tenderly between the two of you. He tucks the duvet around her, ensuring she’s warm and secure, then arranges her favorite bunny plushie—Jungkook’s sweet gift—beside her. The tension in her small body slowly ebbs away, replaced by the soft, rhythmic sounds of her breathing as she finally begins to relax. Mee-Yon snuggles closer to him, her little form instinctively seeking his warmth, and Yoongi wraps an arm around her, holding her protectively, careful not to press too hard. Her heartbeat, still quick but steadying, pulses against his chest, and with that comforting rhythm, he drifts into sleep.

His dreams are light and whimsical—cotton candy clouds, pink skies, and the sensation of soaring on the back of a white and blue pegasus. But his slumber is interrupted by the sharp prod of a tiny foot to his face. With a groan, he tries to nudge the offending limb away, slowly opening his eyes to find Mee-Yon sprawled across the bed, her feet in his face and her small hands clutching your waist. Despite the rude awakening, Yoongi can’t be mad—how could he be, when his daughter is so undeniably adorable?

You catch his gaze, your hand gently caressing Mee-Yon’s back, and without a word, you communicate a world of emotion. Words aren’t needed between the two of you anymore; the years have woven a deep understanding, a silent language spoken through glances and touches. He reads you like a well-loved book, its spine softened by countless readings, and in your eyes, he sees the depth of your love for him and your daughter, the way you cherish these fleeting moments of family life.

As Mee-Yon stirs awake, she wraps her arms around both of you, pressing soft kisses to your cheeks. Yoongi’s heart swells with joy, savoring this precious moment he wishes could last forever. Life with a three-year-old is a rollercoaster, equal parts delightful and exhausting. Yoongi’s patience, his temper, and his love are tested daily, but he wouldn’t trade this for anything. Mee-Yon has a knack for pushing his limits, as all children do, keeping him on his toes with her boundless energy and curiosity.

But it’s these moments he treasures the most—the time spent together as a family, whether on picnics, trips to the zoo, or simple walks in nature. Teaching Mee-Yon to ride a bike, watching her little legs pedal with determination, fills him with pride. He loves witnessing her growth, her wit, and her ever-present cuteness. There’s never enough time to soak it all in.

On a crisp autumn day, Yoongi finds himself in the garage, working on a customer’s car, with Mee-Yon by his side. She loves being there with him, her curiosity as vast as the sky, her eyes wide with wonder at the sight of tools and car parts. He explains everything to her, pointing out the coils, tubes, and wheels that make the car run. His hands are stained with oil, but Mee-Yon doesn’t mind; she grabs his hand, her own tiny fingers getting smudged as she points at something.

“What’s this, Dad?” she asks, her voice full of earnest curiosity.

He grins, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “That’s the battery,” he explains, “the heart that keeps the car alive.”

She hums thoughtfully, turning her hand over to inspect the oily smudges. “Dirty,” she declares, but there’s no disgust, only fascination.

“Yeah, that’s oil,” he says, reaching for an old rag to wipe her hands, though it doesn’t do much to clean them. Maybe it’s time for some new rags in the garage.

“Like paint,” she giggles, her fingers now exploring every surface under the hood, leaving tiny handprints on every rube and rusty surface.

Yoongi chuckles, unable to resist her infectious joy. “Daddy?” she calls, looking up at him with a bright, mischievous smile.

He kneels down to her level, ruffling her hair with a fond laugh. She giggles and cups his cheeks with her small, oily hands. “Love you, Daddy. You my best friend.”

He doesn’t care that his face is now smudged with oil; he just pulls her into a warm embrace, holding her close. “I love you too, Mee-Yon,” he murmurs, his heart full to bursting.

Author’s note(2): Thank you so much for joining me on this wild ride that friendcation has been! And can you believe it’s been over a year since I first published this??? It’s so crazy. I’m so happy that so many people love it, and still read it. Truly, it means the world to me 🫂✨

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lo1k-diamonds · 9 months ago

Text

How to Choose a Valentine 💜

PAIRING: idol!Jungkook x You (You can also read it on AO3)

SUMMARY: Who knew the best company for Valentine's Day would be a lovely Doberman? And who knew he'd get you a Valentine? Well, sort of.

WORD COUNT: 4.3k

GENRE: fluff and light angst

RATING: Teen (for cussing and drinking)

WARNINGS: drinking, kissing and making out while drunk (consensual), hangover, lapses of memory, misunderstandings, JK handles everything well, Bam is the center of this story, the cutest baby, and maybe a cupid, should fill your 💜 with fluff but wdik

A.N. I wasn't even supposed to write this. This is what happens when I wake up at 4 AM and can't sleep. Then I think, Hmm, I read lots of lovely fics yesterday about Valentine's Day. What would I do if I wrote one? X hours later, here we are. I just roll with it at this point, it's almost a way to deal with writer's block 😅 Enjoy 💜

Masterlist | Scroll my stories on Tumblr | Schedule and WIPs

You snorted at the reel playing on your phone while your hand petted gently between the black Doberman’s ears. One girl smashed the phone camera while repeating ‘Girls don’t want flowers for Valentine’s Day’, while another immediately shyly said that yes, she’d like flowers. You scrolled; another of a guy guiding his significant other over a trail of petals; you scrolled, another of a guy explaining how he asked a girl to become his Valentine. Another, with the type of girls on Valentine’s Day and you smirked. Which one were you? Definitely not the spoiled girlfriend, you were single. Not heartbroken, you hadn’t dated for a while, or a heartbreaker. You chuckled; the only guy in your life at the moment was that sweet Doberman sleeping on your lap and you weren’t about to break his darling heart.

The next options were single and fine with it, anti-Valentine’s Day, and Galentine’s Girl. You supposed you were fine with it but had hoped not to spend it alone, hence why you were at your best friend’s apartment. What you thought could be a day of eating and having fun together turned into dog-sitting because she needed that favor. Something along the lines of the usual sitter being ill and her needing to find someone to do it, and you were available.

You could think of more depressing ways of spending your day. You put your phone down and petted the short fur between the dog’s closed eyes, knowing he was utterly relaxed under your touch. He was the cutest thing and you had a blast walking and playing with him all day. You checked his training and he was responsive, though testy of the limits, and you made sure he understood that he had to listen to you. During your second walk, he behaved so well and was rewarded so much that you thought he wouldn’t have an appetite for dinner, but he surprised you. And now he was sleeping soundly and you didn’t want to get up, but it was time for your own dinner. Maybe you could cook something up for you and—

Your phone buzzed and you checked it; speaking of the devil.

[It’s taking longer than expected so I’ll eat here. Treat yourself sorry see you soon! 💜]

You sighed. In the end, you were going to spend it with that cutie as your Valentine. You stretched your arms and shoulders, pressing your fingers to your neck before gaining the courage to slide under the Doberman. He wasn’t pleased and adjusted his head to get back on your thigh.

“No, Bamie. I gotta eat something, come on.”

You slid again and turned on the TV as background noise before getting to the kitchen and checking your best friend’s fridge. You decided to eat a bit of everything that you could find and got set to eat on the sofa in front of the TV. Not even five minutes in, you became sort of annoyed — stupid Valentine’s Day ads. You told Bam firmly not to even think about snatching your food before you focused on streaming something instead. A corny and sweet romcom should be fun.

And you had dinner as you laughed and cried with it until a scene came up where the main character cried her sorrows over a bottle of soju and you thought, Why not? You had nothing planned the next day, at least you could have a drink.

You started with a single soju bottle, but as the episodes played and the night passed, you didn’t stop. Eventually, there were empty bottles of beer and soju and you were feeling dizzy, despite being sat down on the couch. Your last reasonable thought was to turn off the TV, the only source of light in the room, before holding on to Bam as if he were a pillow and falling asleep.

It was the sound of bottles clicking that disturbed your sleep, and your instinct was to wrap your arms closer around the fluffy dog, “Bam.”

He was wiggling his tail like crazy, and in your haze, you connected that to the bottles falling over. Not to the extra dip on the other side of the chaise longue.

Perhaps it was the fact that you heard your best friend’s voice in the distance that relaxed you, not quite registering that it disappeared after the front door closed. It was only when a different scent hit your nose that you started connecting the pieces: Bam was squeezed between you and someone else, their hand touched your arm ever so slightly while they petted him, and that musky scent was from a man.

You opened your eyes, confused by your conclusions, but not at the top of your game — a quick nap was not enough to make you sober.

“Who are you?”

Bam’s tail kept wiggling as he seemed busy facing opposite from you, looking at the person who answered you, “Who are you?”

He sounded sleepy and you couldn’t see him properly. The city lights from the window were enough but you were still too hazy.

“I asked first,” you voiced, rubbing your eyes. He didn’t seem willing to respond quickly enough, but you could feel him still petting Bam, so you sulked. You wrapped your arms around the pet harder, “Bamie is mine!”

Instantly, a new set of arms did the same and tried to steal him away, “No, he’s not! I’m his dad!”

“And I’m his mom!” The man scoffed and you raised your chin proudly. “Don’t believe me? Look.”

You let go of Bam and scanned around, seeing where you could put your feet safely in between the bottles. Then you got up and walked a bit unsteadily across the living room, standing next to the window. You could see the shape of the man all in black, including his hair, looking at you from his comfortable position with the sweet Bam happily smelling around.

He could see your expression, your baggy tee shirt falling over you and covered with cartoons, but he only cared about Bam staying in his arms. Because of course, he would.

“Bam!”

He gasped when Bam jumped from his embrace to get to you, frantically wiggling his whole body before lying on his back over your feet. He gaped as his Doberman showed his belly, happily licking your face and squirming under your belly rubs.

“Such a good boy,” you cooed, grinning from ear to ear.

Then you straightened up and snapped your fingers and Bam got up too, easily following you back on the couch and splaying himself belly up in between you and the man.

“There you go,” you murmured, scratching his belly and up his chest much to Bam’s delight.

It was when Bam squirmed that his snout ended up under the man’s chin and you saw him clearly for the first time. Then he spoke and you smiled.

You woke up with a groan, drool all over the pillow, and a headache to make you want to run for the hills. But then you sat up, confusion still scrambling your brain as you eyed the bedroom.

“Bam?”

You waited but the sound of paws scratching the floor didn't grace your ears, so you got up from bed and searched for him. You looked everywhere, calling for him every few seconds, but he didn’t come out and you couldn’t seem to find him. In fact, there was no one else at home but you, which made you befuddled — where was your best friend?

Your hangover was deadly, it was trying to pull you down with a headache the size of the world. And so you beelined to the bathroom and stripped hastily to get your head under the water and try to wake up gently.

But there was no gentleness to be found when suddenly you remember something — there was a man. Yes, but— You— kissed?

Suddenly, you were flooded with the memories of you kissing, his gentle hand cupping your jaw, your trembling breath when your tongues touched. The foreign thing that ended up being a lip ring that you felt with your tongue. The way the kiss deepened, and your legs got tangled even beyond sweet Bam lying in between you.

You were hyperventilating, “What?!”

You did what?!

Did you kiss a random man? On your best friend’s couch in the middle of the night? Or did you hallucinate him because of the alcohol?

Suddenly, it came to you — he tasted of beer, and you told him as much.

You felt him smile against your lips, “And you taste of strawberry soju.”

You remembered chuckling before kissing him again, burying your fingers into slightly overgrown strands of hair that curled around your hand.

You rubbed your face under the water; you kissed him. You were both drunk, and you couldn’t remember everything, but you pressed your lips to—

You stopped breathing.

You were feeling his shoulders and pulling him close when Bam started licking both your faces, which made you both break away and laugh.

“I have to pee,” you had said, getting up.

Before you could be mortified about having said that to a random guy, you recognized that after you went to the bathroom, you forgot about getting back to the couch. Instead, you went to bed on autopilot and fell asleep. Because you were that drunk.

Well, thankfully. Otherwise, what could have ended up happening? You were not in your right mind, you could barely remember his face aside from his eyes and lip ring. You were crazy, nuts, and shouldn’t drink that much again.

You got out of the shower and got dressed quickly with more lenient thoughts. Since only kissing happened, it was okay. No harm no foul.

Your stomach was adding to the problem, but you still decided to take headache medicine before your phone buzzed and you grabbed it.

[Meet me at work and have breakfast with me?]

You agreed and got your stuff to go to her. The subway trip was twenty minutes but it was alright at that hour. The HYBE building was in a very busy area, so to already have a direct line there was a blessing.

You gave your name at the reception to get a visitor pass and went to the floor she indicated, smiling when you saw it was a cafeteria with breakfast all around.

She met you at the door and walked you through it before sitting down and watching you eat your broth carefully.

“Lots of people need caring for this morning. Funny what Valentine’s Day does to some people,” she was amused, though her expression screamed exhaustion. “If they’re in couple they drink together, if they’re single they drink alone. There’s no escape, is there?”

You were looking down apologetically until you could talk, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I… raided your fridge.”

She sighed, “I know, I saw the bottles on the floor. Hence why you’re here, to have a power breakfast.”

“What happened yesterday? Why didn’t you come home?”

Your best friend heaved a deep breath, her spirit hanging on by a thread, “My artist went to a friend's dinner last night and got drunk. I got his driver to get him home but they had an accident,” she sighed. Your eyes widened in alarm, but she raised her hand swiftly, “They’re both alright. This all to say that after my meeting got lost into late hours, instead of going home, I had to go and manage that situation.”

“That sucks…” You thought back to the previous night, unsure of how to introduce the topic.

“By the way, thank you for taking care of Bam. My artist and I really appreciated it—”

She was interrupted when a spot of black dashed for you, barking the instant you took a second to acknowledge his presence. You instantly smiled despite the horrid headache the noise was making and reached to pet him.

“No, Bam! No eating!”

“It’s not the food,” your best friend pointed out jokingly, dismissing the manager nearby who tried to admonish the pet.

You were happy to give him all the cuddles that were making him go crazy and whiny; you were happy to see him again too. It instantly pulled memories from the previous night into your mind and you wondered again how to bring it up with your best friend when a voice interrupted your thoughts.

“Bam.”

Bam was licking your hand happily, yet instantly darted away at the call, and you knew before you looked up. It was him. You recognized the longer hair you had gripped, the lip ring, and the eyes. The sweet yet searing eyes.

He got near your table and bowed to you both before starting a light talk with your best friend about the schedule for the day.

And you blinked, wondering why his eyes set on your best friend’s face, or rather why the whole situation felt like a gut punch. He must have been the artist your best friend was referring to, the one she managed. You wouldn’t know, she was secretive about who it was. But the way he was ignoring you couldn’t be mistaken. He didn’t acknowledge you more than that bow, but why would he? You knew who he was.

The moment your lips grazed in a slow kiss while his hand gently supported your jaw came to mind and you blinked in astonishment. You couldn't believe it happened. Even as you remembered opening your eyes the moment he pulled away a few inches to breathe and looked straight into your eyes. It was impossible. Even if you were both drunk, how—

“Excuse me.” The three of you turned to the lady in uniform. “No pets are allowed in the cafeteria,” she bowed respectfully.

It was easy for you to get up, “I’ll take Bam to the rooftop garden.”

You grabbed his leash from the man’s hand without touching him and he let it go, a bit startled. Not that you noticed; you stepped away and called for Bam, who followed you swiftly.

Jungkook stayed behind, eyes still on you leaving with his dog until you were out of sight.

“She’ll take good care of him.”

He turned back to his manager and nodded, “I know.”

His manager was ready to use every argument she had to convince him, so she chuckled, “Funny how yesterday you were borderline going nuts over a stranger taking care of him and now you’re so relaxed.”

He nodded and looked back at where you disappeared with his Bam. You were not a stranger.

“What’s that look?” She asked, eyebrows furrowing ever so lightly.

He pressed his lips and nibbled a bit on his lip ring, but then looked back at her, “When you left me at your place… something happened.”

A mix of fear and ‘oh no’ crossed his manager's face and he sat across from her where you had sat before, ignoring your tray and half-eaten food.

“We were both drunk,” he started, expecting her not to believe him, but she just nodded. “And Bam loves her. We just—” He filled his lungs with air, pushing it back out anxiously as his tattooed hand ran across his hair, “We joked around that I was Bam’s dad and she was his mom. Then, that we were both alone, nowhere close to having a Valentine, and that maybe Bam was our cupid. Instead of meeting and making a baby, the baby— made us—” He became crimson and hid his eyes for a second, then he faced her again, “We were drunk!”

“You said that,” she deadpanned firmly. She was his manager, she needed to know things in black and white. He knew that.

“So we joked. Maybe we should get together, and we kissed.”

Her eyes doubled in size, “Oh no, you didn’t!”

“We just kissed!”

Her features hardened, “Tell me right now. Tell me the truth.”

“It’s the truth! I swear, we kissed— for a while—” His ears were becoming red, “And then she went to the bathroom and I fell asleep.” His manager’s expression had not changed a millimeter, and his eyes became pleading. “You have to believe me. You woke me up and I was alone with Bam.”

“That’s true,” she acknowledged, finally heaving a breath. “Shit, this is my fault. Leave two drunk people alone, and see what happens.”

He frowned, “I don’t just go around kissing people, even when I’m drunk.”

She faced him, “That is also true.” It seemed clear to her, so he relaxed. “So what happened? Why did you kiss her?”

He blinked with wide eyes, startled by the question. “I… I don’t know.”

He looked down, containing the urge to look back at where you had left with his pet. He didn’t even know your name, he knew nothing except that Bam loved you and you tasted sweet.

His manager waited for a proper response, for any additional information. But when none came, she knew what she had to do. She sighed, “Well. I’ll have to contact our lawyers and draft an NDA. She’s my best friend”, she confessed, rubbing her eyes for a second. “Shit,” was all she expressed before getting up and rushing out.

Jungkook pressed his lips and let her leave. He was confused about the situation, about his actions. He knew so little… Why did he think it was enough?

He put away the trays you and his manager had used while he pondered this. In a way, Bam’s heart meant everything to him. The way Jungkook loved him was unexplainable, he was the only soul in the world he could ever love in such a way. His innocence and instinct were enough, and he listened to you like he only ever listened to Jungkook himself. That shouldn’t have been enough, but it was.

And he was drunk, he sighed, leaving the room. It was his fault, he knew that. He shouldn’t kiss people irresponsibly like that, and now his manager was in a tough spot.

He decided to head for the rooftop and sort this out with you. He didn’t know what to say, but he thought maybe it didn’t have to be a big deal. You two just did it and it was… freeing. There were no inhibitions or second thoughts. It was playful and innocent, and then your lips touched. He didn’t know it would feel like that, he hadn’t thought it through. But it felt so good. It created shivers, made him hot, curious, awake, alive. He had no questions, no doubts, it was like jumping out of an airplane and freefalling. It was like the wind was guiding him to fit together with you, there was nothing in him telling him to fight it.

He got to the rooftop and immediately saw you across the garden sitting on a bench with his manager, and your best friend, next to you. Bam saw him too and raised his head and ears, but he was busy grabbing a stick that had just fallen on the floor and bringing it back to you. Jungkook could have expected him to drop everything to greet him, but Bam didn’t.

His manager was explaining something to you and your eyes were glued to the floor, expression closed except for the line between your eyebrows. Only when Bam brought you back the stick and you threw it again, did you look up. Jungkook was walking closer yet slowly, not meaning to intrude, and you had thrown the stick almost right into his path. That was why Bam happily gave it to him instead, and he crouched to pet his baby while his eyes stayed on you.

Your eyes turned away when you said something. He couldn’t hear it from there, but he knew the words out of your mouth were cold. He recognized his manager trying to have you reconsider or change your mind, but your eyebrows drew closer as you bit something back and just got up and away.

You didn’t look at him as you walked in his direction towards the exit. You planned to pass by him without a word, a mix of emotions inside you that you preferred not to address. And yet Bam was what forced you to change your mind when he lit up at your presence. He looked for a pet from your hand and you immediately halted, unable to punish that sweet pup because of his dad.

Still, the words slipped the seam of your lips somewhat bitterly, “Are you a baby?”

“What?” He blinked, eyes wide as he straightened up.

“You kiss someone and your first instinct is to threaten them with NDAs?” You were frowning with a hint of contempt, but your eyes were glistening. You continued before he could say anything, “I won’t sign it. I don’t care what any of you think, this isn’t normal. You regret it? Fine, but then act like a fucking adult.”

He was at a loss for words and movement behind you had him glancing, and so you turned. Your best friend had a serious expression on her, something you imagined was her work persona. Well, too bad you had no sympathy for it.

“No,” you raised a hand before she could say something. “You’re doing your job, and I’m standing up for my principles. I’ll go to your place and get my stuff.”

You passed by him at a hastened pace and the second he turned to say, “Wait!”, the heavy glass door was already closing behind you, muffling every trace of a sound.

He turned to his manager then, seeing the tiredness, sadness, and frustration all over her face as she heaved a deep sigh and hid the tears in her eyes.

His lips twitched with a question, but she spoke instead, “She thinks I’m choosing my job over her.”

“But you’re not,” he instantly said, confused. “This isn’t necessary.”

She sighed, “I’ll deal with this, ok? Get to your shoot.”

She also passed by him quickly inside and Jungkook looked at Bam, who was lying on the floor chewing on the stick with a hard focus. Why were they so eager to get anything done without a proper conversation?

He took Bam with him across HYBE and got inside the car with other managers and assistants. They were waiting for him to continue his schedule, chatting about Bam. It would be difficult to have him on the set, but they’d contact a sitter on the way—

“Take me to Manager Kim’s place.”

“What?” His manager frowned, “Now?”

“Yes, now. To drop off Bam,” he offered, though he knew it was a lie. His manager agreed though because he knew Bam had stayed there the previous day, and being late to the shoot was fixed with a simple call giving them a warning and an apology.

Jungkook left the car first, saying that he’d go and come back quickly, and the team agreed, to his relief. He was upstairs in a beat in front of the right door, yet before he could ring the doorbell, the door opened in front of him and something crashed into his chest. His heart jumped and his hands darted to support your arms as you recoiled back, and then you looked up at him. Such beautiful big and expressive eyes, and he knew then he would have wanted to kiss you anyway.

You broke away from his arms and moved to go around him. He didn’t miss your frown, but he didn’t hesitate, “Can we talk?”

“I’m not going to sign it,” you insisted as you turned to him, adjusting your backpack over your shoulder. “But you don’t need to worry, that doesn’t mean I’ll talk about it. I’m not like that.”

He nodded once, “Okay. But that’s not what I want to talk about.”

You paused, “Oh.”

Your features smoothed in confusion and he was happy he caught your attention, “Can we go inside?”

You shrugged but walked back inside. You petted Bam gently between his ears then put your backpack down on the floor. By then, Jungkook had released Bam’s leash and closed the door. The sweet baby darted to the water bowl and your lips curved before his dad drew your attention away.

“I don’t regret it,” he said, and your eyebrows jumped. “You keep saying that, but I don’t. And I didn’t ask Manager Kim to do this either, I suppose it’s standard procedure or something. I wouldn’t know. But she’s just doing her best because she feels responsible.”

You were skeptical, “You wouldn’t know?”

“No.”

You found that hard to believe, but you didn’t insist. It had nothing to do with you. “Why would she feel responsible?”

“Because she’s in charge of me, I guess. Managers tend to feel like that even when we are, in fact, not babies.”

Your lips twitched at his choice of words.

“So don’t get mad at her. After this, I’m going to tell her to stop it. I don’t want this NDA thing, and neither do you. It’s not necessary,” he sighed. He had told his manager that before, but maybe if he insisted, she’d get it.

You nodded.

“And thank you for looking after Bam,” he finished with a smile. The Doberman had jumped on the couch a bit carelessly, but he was calm. “He’s usually nervous around strangers, but he loves you. You might really be his Mom for all he cares,” he smirked, watching as you stepped to the side to pet Bam. “And I wouldn’t… separate him from a person he loves. If you’d like to see him again.”

Your cheeks instantly caught fire as you looked at him. He held your gaze calmly, the only hint of nervousness in his fingers fidgeting. You didn’t think you were misunderstanding him, then.

“I can make time.”

He smiled, “Good.”

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loveandleases · 1 month ago

Note

Hiya Hun hope you're doing well. I'm glad things have picked up and people love your IF (me included) I know your a busy bee. But if you have time for scenario I saw on another Tumblr when you wish to.

How would the RO's act after the first morning with MC? Thought it would be a sweet one for some especially for Cam and maybe Ex-G but would love for everyone if you have the time.

Can't wait to see more 💕

I'm doing well, and I hope you are as well! I love seeing when you send asks in so I'll make the time! These will be a bit vague due to encroaching into spoiler territory. Below the cut! (they ended up much longer than intended!)

❤️ Cam - He wakes up first, but in fear that this is just something he dreamt up, he refuses to move. He will be afraid that whatever led to this moment will dissipate as soon as you wake. Cam will be so anxious, unknowingly fidgeting, which is what would cause you to wake.

Depending on certain things, he will even go so far as to tell you that it's okay if it was a momentary lapse. It's not like they would be the first two friends in bed together. (Cam is in fact, not okay if that's the case.)

Once he realizes that this wasn't just a one-off, that MC truly wants him of all people, ugh he's going to be insufferable (affectionate). The idea alone will have him raring to go all over again, but he will be happy to just hold MC in his arms. If you thought you carved a spot in his heart already, once he sees his affection is accepted and returned, talk about putty in your hands.

💙 G - There will be some variation depending on if G is an ex or not, if so it then varies depending on if you spent the night with G before. (take that Chris' bed!)

They would be the complete opposite of Cam, they won't wake easily. This will be the best they've slept in a long time, and when they wake that harshness you found in their gaze is gone completely. They're easy to read again, their walls are all but thrown down around you. G won't want to talk about it, not yet.

They want to soak in your presence, and let the warmth of your body cement them to this moment. One that isn't a memory, because they've tortured themselves with those memories for so long. (They might cry...possibly...very likely.)

💚 Kara - She is going to feel a myriad of emotions. Happiness and guilt. She cares for Chris, no matter how much she knows and what she has seen them do. But, she also cares for MC. This only causes her to realize it even more. To see the way her lipstick has smeared across MC's skin, the marks from her nails. There's no denying she enjoyed their time together. But knowing one of the few people she is close to, will hate her for what she has done. That's crushing, it causes a bad taste in her mouth. What she does after is for her to decide, she won't want to stop seeing MC. But, she has to decide what the next step is.

💛 M - You won't find a red deeper than their cheeks. M will burrow their face into MC's neck. They need a minute, more like twenty. They basked in the afterglow once everything was said and done. But now, they're basking in the presence of another person in their bed. The person they gave themselves to, body and soul. They tried to get up throughout the night to write notes. Yes, notes. Because it was different than they imagined. Not in a bad way, but given they had no experience they didn't know what to expect.

All their smooth talking from the night is gone. They're flustered, and happy....and horny..but mainly happy. For all their embarrassment, it won't stop them from gliding their fingers along MC's bare skin. Like they're committing it to memory. The sights, the smells, the sounds. All of it.

💜 Isaac - They can handle it if it was a one-night stand, they can't handle how they feel after. Because they allowed themselves to get close, they wanted to. That simple fact is enough to cause their heart to skip a beat.

They don't know when it got to this point when their eyes would glance at you, and that momentary glance turned into more. Their eyes began to linger, they began to want your company. They were saddened when they couldn't have it.

They're scared by that, and yet feel content as they watch your sleeping face. They want to run out the door and pretend it was a fleeting moment. But the idea of you waking up to their side of the bed empty, causes them to stay.

There comes a point when Isaac drifts off to sleep, the first time they've drifted off to sleep beside someone in a long time. They felt comfortable with you, safe. They want to feel it again, but they don't know if you would allow it. Isaac's conflicted, but they want you.

They want to forget about their doubts and their self-hatred for just a minute. Just a minute as they listen to your soft breath and remember how you smiled at them. That singular moment might have been the nail in their coffin.

🖤 Ardent - The furrowed brow you've come to associate with him, it's nowhere in sight. Neither is he because he woke up over an hour ago, intent on letting you rest, and intent on making a hearty breakfast.

Something to help build up your energy but something to also satisfy that sweet tooth he noticed you have.

His face is the very epitome of pleased. How could he not be? All the back and forth, neither of you could have imagined it would come to this. That might be the best part, it was unexpected. But not unwanted. He savored you like he savored his favorite wine, all your energy spent. The few bits of Greek you've learned came in handy with all the words he spoke to you in the moment.

Ardent is romantic, and caring. Which could be hard to believe. He cleaned you up with so much care you had to question if it was truly him doing it.

He's vetted calls for you for two hours, intent on you not being woken up. He's very much giving househusband material, especially with the apron tied around his waist as he brings you breakfast in bed. Talk about a gentleman. (Cupid is even surprised.)

#love and leases #loveandleases #cam #ardent #g #m #isaac #kara

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violetsiren90 · 9 months ago

Text

Make Me

Pairing: dom!Hoseok/sub/brat!f!Reader

Genre: Oneshot; hard smut; platonic(?) fluff; BDSM lifestyle; friends to fwb to?; canon-compliant (idolAU)

Summary: You've been friends with Hobi for years, and he's your comfort zone - but when he gets wind of a dark secret you drunkenly let slip, things between you take a sudden extreme change.

Warnings: 18+ (minors, dni); hardcore BDSM themes/relationships; full consent and safe-words ❤; Hobi is a hard dom (and such a good one); MC is a brat (mostly); dominance and submission; elements of primal play if you squint; mentions of wet dreams and sexual fantasies; sexual degradation (deg-play use of the word "b*tch"); mentions of MC's hair and hair pulling in a domination context; rough physical contact in a sexual context (manhandling); mentions of drinking; kink-outing; Jimin is a menace but also the absolute best; Hobi in the studio 👀; wrestling (sexual context); spanking (sexual context); p*ssy-stepping; p*ssy slapping; sexual frustration; some initial shame and embarrassment (reader needs to work some things out); reader tries to run away from herself a bit; temporary ghosting; working through new desires and feelings; dirty dancing; ALL the communication; establishment of sexual roles/partnership; talk about birth control and protection; Hobi curses a LOT during domination scenes; leash/collar play; oral sex (male receiving); throat fucking; Hobi slaps Reader's tongue with his c*ck; cum swallowing; aftercare; restraint play (sex swing, heehee 😈); manual clitoral stimulation; teasing; unprotected vaginal sex (reader is on birth control & previously consents); female orgasm from vaginal penetration; very brief implication of a possible brush with subspace.

Word Count: ~16,000 (Double its originally intended length, oops 🙈)

Author's note: HOLY HECK IT'S FINALLY HERE. When I say I had the time of my life writing this...like, wow. I was already under Hobi's spell, but now I am OFFICIALLY down in the worst way. This fic and its premise were completely out of my comfort zone, but I couldn't be happier that I ventured into this world, because the research alone has given me so much respect for the BDSM community, and specifically the dom/sub relationship. I hope I did as much justice to that very special dynamic as possible between these two characters (with whom I have deeply fallen in love). If you read this, I hope so very much that you enjoy it!

If no one has told you yet today, you are loved and worthy of love! 🧜‍♀️💜

Acknowledgements: The biggest of thanks to @orchidyoonkook who not only beta-read this fic multiple times, and is practically the voice of this Jimin, but also gave me so much wonderful insight into the BDSM community from that big sexy brain of hers (which contains an incredible amount of knowledge about so many things, let me tell you!). But most of all, she gave me the encouragement I needed to get this out of my imagination and onto the page, even when I was doubting myself the most. Yoons, I love you! Couldn't have done it without you. 💕

"What?" Hoseok's wide grin stretches further as he regards your flustered face with giddy anticipation.

You groan into your hands, willing the cushions of your friend's leather couch to swallow you like quicksand.

"Fucking Jimin - I'll kill him!" you whine, pressing your fingers to your temples, and keeping your eyes glued to the hardwood of the studio floor.

The rapper laughs as he swivels his baseball cap to sit backwards on his fluffy brown mop of hair.

"Come on! Tell me!" he insists, sprawling back in his rolling chair, the tips of his fingers touching deviously together as he regards you with twinkling eyes.

You sneak a glance at him before sighing defeatedly, which only earns another chortle of laughter from across the room.

Park fucking Jimin. You really were going to kill him. Too many bottles of soju the week prior saw you blacking out at the BTS member's pad, the one he shared with your mutual friend, Jung Hoseok. You woke up the next day, memories of the night before obscure concepts of debauchery merely alluded to by the taste of bile and the dull cranial throb of dehydration. When Jimin rather gleefully handed you, along with an iced americano, one of the booze-fueled revelations you had let slip, you begged and pleaded with him to erase the memory from his brain...or at the very least to take it to his grave. He made no such promises. And now, you are facing the man of the hour - the subject of your divulgement - who had apparently been informed that you harbored certain strong opinions in his regard. Humiliating.

You flick mildly irritated eyes back up to your friend who waggles his brows in a way that makes you want to crack a smile and sock him at the same time.

"Before I say anything, I want to know exactly what he told you," you demand, crossing your arms defensively, no cracked smile to be found.

He rolls his eyes up to the corner of the ceiling in recollection.

"He just said that you had gotten wasted and admitted something kinky...about me."

At the last two words he drops his voice dramatically low and pins you with a grin that is sickeningly predatory. Your pulse begins to hammer and you have to remind yourself that you are, in fact, capable of speech.

Fuck, you think to yourself, it's happening.

You can feel sweat starting to bead at your hairline. Maybe if you get it out there, just say it aloud, it will lose its power. Maybe the spell will be broken. Maybe he will laugh and you will laugh and you'll order lunch and keep irritating him while he's supposed to be working on a track. You're both adults, right? You whoosh out a breath.

Hobi is still looking at you, his bottom lip pushing up and the corners of his mouth tugging down in one of his little inverted smirks while his right leg bounces a little up and down.

It is just Hobi, after all, you tell yourself. Just Hobi. You are roundly aware that it may be a lie, but it seems to allow you just enough courage to jump.

"Okay, okay!" you practically shout, and he giggles and stomps his feet, which admittedly makes revealing this particular chestnut a bit easier.

"I told him…

“What?”

“I said..."

"What?"

"Oh, Christ! Fine!" And the rest comes out like water from a fire hose. "One time I came to drop off Jimin's charger and you were in dance practice and you were watching the guys and you had this look on your face - like you were pissed or something - and it was so unlike you and I got turned on and ended up having a fucking wet dream that you were stepping on my mother-fucking pussy, okay?! Are you satisfied now?!"

You heave a sigh and throw yourself back against the cushions, hands over your face. How you just mustered the courage to form those actual words you haven't even the faintest notion - but it was going to be you or Jimin, and it might as well be you. After your heart has begun to return to its resting rate and you've heaved a few deep breaths you steel yourself against the certain impending onslaught of Hobi's laughter and general mockery...which doesn't come.

You peek through your fingers to see that your friend has shifted in his chair, facing a bit away from you toward the inside of the room, leaning forward, his hands gripping the ends of the chair's armrests. His face looks a little troubled, or pensive, you can't tell which. You sit up and really look at him, suddenly worried.

Did you just fuck things irrevocably up?

That was an incredibly bizarre and intimate thing to admit.

Shit.

"Hobi?" you squeak, barely over a whisper, as you regard him.

He tilts his head suddenly to look at you, quick like a bird, and when those dark eagle-eyes regard you in return, you feel like a small, helpless creature scurrying across the tundra. Nowhere to hide. A bead of sweat escapes its perch and slips down from your temple. As he utters his question of response, the air suddenly becomes as thick as the tropics.

"Is that something that you'd want, Y/n? To be treated like that? To be...put in your place? Put down?"

You don't answer him. You can't.

Your words, your breath, your coherent thoughts are stuck, inert, useless as your chest begins to rapidly rise and fall in heavy swells. Your eyes are locked on his face as if by magnetic force. He stands, his baggy Louis Vuitton tee falling over his gray sweats. He shoves his hands in the pockets and takes a step toward where you sit. His posture is relaxed. His gaze is anything but.

"Is it?"

You want to say you don't know. That you'd never considered it again. Never once recalled the image of it - of him - standing over you as the sole of his shoe punished your throbbing sex.

"Fuck..." you breathe, and when he doesn't take his eyes from your squirming form, you relent. "...y-yeah."

He takes another step toward you, slowly. He's crowding you now, as he looks down, and the proximity is almost more than you can bear.

"You see," he remarks musingly, "I thought you were gonna say something funny - something ridiculous," he tilts his head to one side, the faintest hint of a smirk on his lips, "But that's not funny, Y/n. No, that's not funny at all. Because, as it turns out..."

He leans down, his breath fanning over your face as he speaks. Mint and espresso. You shiver and close your eyes.

"...that's something I can do."

...what? He can...h-he can....

"Hoseok..." you whisper shakily, because it's all you can manage.

You hear him laugh darkly and you don't look at him.

"Hoseok?" he mimics, "Not, Hobi, huh? Hoseok when you're like this, is it?"

"When I'm like...what?" You practically whimper in complaint, eyes still pressed shut as your last line of defense.

But any manner of defense is in vain as he answers your query, the words dripping from his lips slowly like honey, sickly like venom -

"When you're a filthy, pathetic little slut."

A whine escapes you at the complete and utter shock of his words. Suddenly you clamp your thighs together – whether to provide friction or obscurity to your quickly dampening cunt you are unsure. When he takes your jaw between his fingers and roughly jerks your chin upwards, your eyes flutter frantically open.

"Is this what you want?" he hisses, "For me to have my way with you like a needy whore?"

Fuck, is this happening? This is really happening. Your mind reels, but that's alright - it stopped doing the thinking when he got up out of that chair. Something primal in you had taken over, something that's been starving for so long – something that yearns to feed.

You do your best to nod with your chin in his grip. He swallows thickly, his eyes darting to your lips, and then back up to yours. His pupils are blown, his eyes almost wholly black as they trace over your face. Suddenly his hand slips from your chin to the nape of your neck where his hand tangles in your hair and his head drops to the side, his gaze softening.

"I need you to say it, Y/n, are you sure you want to do this?" he asks, his voice so, so low but without the edge that sends ice through your veins.

His voice. He's asking you as someone who cares about you, cares what you want – your friend.

Do you want this? No...you don't want it. You need it.

"Y-yes! Yes, Hobi - I want this," you find yourself stumbling over the words to get them out.

So quickly and so assured. Have you ever been this certain of anything in your life? His fingers dance against the nape of your neck and you sigh as his eyes travel all over your body.

You want to hide. You want to strip down. You want to run and you want him to chase you. You want him to punish you when he catches you. You are sick with want.

"A safe word, baby, we need a safe word," he nudges your racing mind back into the current moment with his saccharine words.

You blink, your mind running up against the sudden pet name – one that he has never uttered in a tone like this before – as it scrambles for something obvious and yet not ridiculous. Something simple maybe...a flower...?

"Foxglove," you say, and he raises his brows with a grin.

"Foxglove it is," he acquiesces. "So if you ever want me to stop, ever – okay? You say that. Foxglove."

You nod.

"Say it for me," he whispers, and you shiver again. Fuck.

"Foxglove." It's slow and thick leaving your mouth.

"Good girl," he purrs. Butterflies erupt in your rib-cage and your eyelids flutter. "How hard do you want it?" He asks, "How rough?"

You scramble to find your voice.

"Pretty rough, I think," you posit, a bit unsure of what that means.

He hums in response, his brows knitting in thought. You were going to have to give him something to go on, you could see that.

"I..." you stammer, "I want you to...to punish me. I want you to...to hurt me a little."

He raises a brow - looks at you, just stares as if considering. Then suddenly you know what to say.

"See...I'm not a good girl," you insist tilting your head back a bit haughtily, a bit defiantly. Being a good girl had gotten you butterflies, but that's not what you wanted right now. That's not what every cell of your body was screaming for.

He's grinning wickedly again - his other hand is slipping out of his pocket and the one in your hair is gripping at the roots.

"Hm. You're not are you?" he asks, his voice as dark and cold as the Pacific once again.

"No, Hobi," you whisper.

And suddenly your world is tilted on its axis as he tightens his fingers against your scalp and yanks your head back, sending a searing pain shooting through your skin as he stoops to hiss in your ear.

"That's Hoseok, you pretty little bitch."

You let out a whimper so needy it's nearly a sob. Your heartbeat is pounding between your legs. He lets go of your hair as roughly as he grabbed it and goes to lock the door and your stomach flips - you are totally and completely at his mercy. It's a little bit terrifying and absolutely exhilarating.

When he comes to loom over you again, you decide just exactly where you stand in all this. You know exactly what you want.

You glare up at him. He narrows his eyes.

"You gonna listen, hm?"

It's not a question, you know it's not - it's a command. But you have one, just one, of your own...

"Make me."

His eyes go wide and wild.

"So that's how it's gonna be?"

The words are heavy and dark, but you think his mouth twitches up at the corner when you arch a recalcitrant brow in response.

He hums and licks his lips, and you're on the verge of saying something about getting on with it when his hand darts out and fists a chunk of your hair, yanking it back with a force that makes your head spin. He's glaring down at you with eyes so hard and menacing that your rebuttal dies on your tongue. The hand at your nape squeezes and the pressure that seers your scalp is exquisite, spilling a moan from your lips as your arousal becomes more than you are capable of repressing.

"Don't you challenge me, brat," he rumbles from low in his chest as his hand twists against your head and lowers your back to press against the black leather.

You whine in protest, and your palms fly up to shove at him, but his reflexes are like lightning as he snatches your wrists away to pin them above you. Your head spins, eyes losing focus as your whole body flushes with warmth in the wake of his domineering aggression.

You wriggle in his hold, relishing in how his grip tightens and the cold steel in his eyes glints as you resist him.

A knee slides between your legs as he leans over you menacingly, close enough for the padlock charm around his neck to lightly tap your raised chin. Good girl, it seems to whisper in Hoseok's voice, stay put.

Yeah, fuck that.

You snatch the necklace up between your teeth and yank it to the side where it bites sharply into the corner of your mouth.

The sudden motion catches him off guard and he falters, crashing down on top of you with a noise of surprise and losing control of your hands.

You scramble against him, rolling both of you to the floor with a thud.

Your heart is hammering in your chest.

You hear him grunt, his strong hands grappling with your thrashing form, and you catch just a glimpse of his shining eyes and white clenched teeth as he flips you over onto your stomach, hands in a vice grip at the small of your back and your cheek pressing into the cold, hard laminate.

You start to move again but he pushes his weight into the slender fingers splayed over your spine with a low rumble in the back of his throat and you still with a groan.

You're pressed so deliciously firmly to the floor. You can feel arousal soaking your panties as your nerves alight everywhere he has wrested control of you. You can hear him pant, proof of his efforts, and the image of his provoked expression from seconds previous flashes through your mind.

He seemed so cool and collected before. So unbothered. To think that his blood is up and because of you? You let out a trembling breath.

"Fuck," he hisses lowly, then bends to bring his lips to the shell of your ear.

They're soft as they drag over your skin there, feather light. Your whole body shakes, and you feel his mouth pause.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are," he whispers cruelly, "But you were right about one thing...you're not a good girl. You're a disobedient little harlot who needs to be taught the rules of this house."

You whimper pathetically as he presses into you even more intensely, restricting the expansion of your lungs.

"Now," he says nosing at your exposed neck as he begins to pull away, "how about we teach you a lesson or two, hm?"

You feel his weight leave your back, and see his figure rock back on his heels out of the corner of your eye. You are just on the verge of retaliating again when you let out a yelp at the sudden shock of your hips being yanked upward by the back belt loop of your denim shorts. Hoseok lets go of your hands and they fly forward to brace yourself as your ass raises into the air and your knees move toward your chest.

And all at once you know what's coming and you feel your pussy clench in the mere anticipation of -

Smack!

You let out a wanton wail as the sharp crack of his hand against your right glute jolts through your body like a lightning strike and ends with a slam at your swollen clit.

Again - harder! Your mind screams. So you press out a whinging moan of complaint.

SMACK!

It has the desired effect.

CRACK!

Your jaw is slack, but no sound escapes as he punishes you. It hurts. Fuck, it hurts. As if he's attempting to brand your ass with the shape of his hand. But holy hell is it making you drip. Every slap jolts your body and brings the tiniest friction to where you're neediest. Where you've never been needier in your life.

Please punish my pussy....

You try to mumble the words but all you can do is drool onto the floor as he deals out pleasure and pain from above.

And then he stops. You feel hands deftly and swiftly rolling you to lie on your back.

You blink up through bleary eyes, drawing a hand across your mouth to wipe the spit away. Your shoulders are sore.

He's leaning over you, a hand still on your hip, eyes scanning your face.

"What? Did you say something? You need to speak up."

His tone is still biting but his eyes seem to hold a genuine question. Concern.

Warmth floods your chest as it registers that he wants to be able to hear you if you need him to. If you want to stop. But the light has never been so goddamned green.

"Want..." you murmur, "...more, Hoseok."

He curses, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he leans forward to take your jaw in his hand again. He rakes his gaze over your soft, swollen features, unfocused eyes, and heaving chest.

"Look at you so fucked out and all I did was smack that gorgeous ass."

He licks his lips, shaking his head in seeming disbelief as he releases your chin with a little shove. He leans back, dragging his hands over your bare thighs.

"More, hm?" he hums.

You nod eagerly.

He purses his lips and considers you through narrowed eyes, and you sense that if you want him to give you what you so desperately desire, you're going to have to show him you can take it - and take orders. You lay still, hands twitching at your sides as you look up at him through wide eyes.

He continues to run his fingertips up and down your legs as he breathes out a long relenting sigh.

"Alright," he relents, "You took your punishment well, so you should be rewarded, I suppose."

You clamp your bottom lip between your teeth, your heart rate rising again at the prospect.

He tilts forward, looming over you again as he asks the question you've been dying to answer since you woke up breathless all those weeks ago.

"What does my little brat want me to do to her? Let's see if she can use her words."

You blink up at him, unsure if you have permission to speak...or how to put your request into words that won't make you want to immediately melt through the floorboards.

"Cat got your tongue?" Hoseok sneers, pretty, heart-shaped lips curling up at one side.

His hat discarded in your tussle, wavy brown tresses hang down over his brow and his eyes sparkle darkly through them. His features are so beautiful - their loveliness thrown into sharp relief by the flinty pitilessness of their expression.

You're tempted to continue simply soaking him in, if not for the pounding ache in your core demanding that you find your voice.

"I...I want..." your lips tremble as you will yourself to tell him what you need.

Perhaps he senses that you require a little encouragement, because his eyes harden and he digs the edges of his nails into the flesh of your knees, causing you to yelp and moan and then...

"I want you to step on my pussy! Please..." You press out your request with the last of the breath in your lungs.

Hoseok's eyes flutter shut at the last word of your plea.

"Say that again," he commands in a husky whisper, and even without further specification, somehow, you know.

"Please..." You groan, letting your legs drop open demurely.

His eyes are still closed, but he can feel the action with his hands, which have now slipped just inside your knees to your inner thighs. He inhales deeply through his nose, before exhaling with a shuddering breath. When his lids languidly raise again the piercing onyx of what they have unveiled is pinning you to the floor with more deadly force than even his hands ever could. Your pulse pounds in your cunt, your head still swimming from your previous position as he pushes himself up to stand.

As you blink up at Hoseok towering over you, standing between your splayed thighs with his midnight gaze boring into the damp denim covering your heat, something inside you long ajar quietly but firmly clicks into place.

"Tell me, brat" he seethes, eyes roving your trembling form stretched out beneath him, "Who makes the rules in this house?"

"Hoseok-ssi," you whimper, so needy the ache is beginning to hurt.

Every cell of your body is awake with a desperate anticipation that only he can satisfy...or deny.

You have never felt more alive.

And then something happens and your brain shuts off entirely.

Everything vanishes: the studio, the traffic outside the western window, the city of Seoul and South Korea and the whole goddamned planet rolling around in the Milky Way. Nothing exists except the tip of Hoseok's Air Jordan ghosting over the swell of your crotch.

Your mouth waters as his foot slowly slides forward, then goes completely dry as you feel it settle with the sole aligned directly with your slit. His eyes flick up to your face, but you can't hold his gaze for more than a millisecond as he begins to apply pressure to your mound.

Your eyes roll back in your skull, head lolling as your neck goes slack, lips parted in a silent scream as the man above you presses down with a low hum over your sex. The seam of your shorts is biting deliciously into the tender flesh of your clit, sending shockwaves through your core like a live wire, and when he rolls his foot in a circular motion you think you see god.

You do scream then, but it's nothing more than a strangled sound in your throat as your fantasies materialize and he leans his weight into his stance, punishing the soft fat of your cunt with the sole of his shoe.

You're going to cum. He's barely touched you and you're going to cum. He seems to see it in the twisted ecstasy of your features as his lids hood his eyes and filth begins to spill from his lips.

"Do you like that, brat?" he taunts, "That's what you get when you're a good little girl for Hoseok - you get your pretty wet cun-"

Click jangle clack - boom boom boom!

Hobi springs away from you, hopping back on one foot with wide eyes as a succession of rapid knocks follow the stilted motions of the locked door handle. You scramble up from the floor, heart pounding and breath coming fast as you toss yourself into the corner of the couch.

Boom, boom, boom!

"Hyung, are you naked or something?" comes a familiar if muffled voice from the other side of the wall.

You fumble for your phone and Hoseok runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath before pulling open the door.

The man belonging to the impatient knocks and muffled accusations stumbles headlong into the studio, the locked entrance against which he had pressed his ear and most of his weight having been pulled out from under him.

"Jimi...nie...?" Hobi greets his bandmate and his eyes track the other's toppling form with surprise and a hint of agitation.

Yoongi ambles in casually behind him, sipping a dewy americano through a straw, a beanie sitting atop his ashy locks gnomishly.

Jimin nimbly pushes himself to a stand from where he had crashed against Hobi's desk, not a strand of his coiffed platinum blond hair askew as he spins around face to the dance captain. But before he can get out a greeting or an excuse for his manner of entrance he freezes as he spots you in the corner.

His eyes flick to Hobi's hat on the floor, then to the pink flush on the apples of his friend's cheeks. When Jimin's eyes slide back over to where you are curled into your nook, eyeing him warily over the tiny shield of your phone, his plush lips slowly spread into a sickeningly devious smile.

Hobi scoops his hat up off the floor and tugs in back on before taking a seat, carefully, you notice - thighs pressed together and leaning forward - in his rolling chair. The implication of his posture has you sweating into your shirt.

You need to get it the fuck together.

"If I would have known you were here I'd have brought you a kimbap," Jimin says, wicked grin still plastered on his face as he holds up a plastic convenience store bag.

You blink.

"Oh, uh, that's okay..." you bluster, waving your hand. "I'm not hungry anyway."

It's true. You just lost your appetite for the foreseeable future, stomach a raging sea of nerves as Jimin places the bag on the desk.

Yoongi shuffles over to sit at the other end of the couch, raising his free hand and drawing his mouth into a straight line in greeting. You manage your own tight-lipped grin and flash him a peace sign, hoping you did it quickly enough that the tremor in your hand went unnoticed.

"To what do I owe this visit from my bros?" Hobi asks from where he's turned toward his computer screen to save the neglected file.

His voice is cheerful, but you can hear the strain - how it's pitched just half a tone too high - and Jimin's eyes are still on you.

"I dragged Yoongi hyung out for some fresh air. I took him to lunch and grabbed you a snack on the way back."

"Yah, you took me to lunch? Then why did I pay?" Yoongi grumbles from beside you, his bare features pinched into a grumpy pout that makes him look particularly feline.

"Because you love me," Jimin coos at him and the older musician's mouth quirks up into a smile he can't seem to repress.

"What are you working on, Hoba? Which track?" Yoongi murmurs around the straw between his lips, blinking patiently as Hobi seems to shake himself, pulling his hat off to run a hand through his hair before readjusting it on his head and swiveling back toward his computer screen.

He hits play on the track and Yoongi leaves the couch to join the other two.

This is all so normal, so typical of the guys - the affectionate repartee and chat about ongoing projects. And on an average day, you'd have joined right in.

But today is not an average day.

No.

Five minutes ago, you were spread-eagle on the floor six inches from where Jimin stands, with Hoseok's shoe on your bits.

You have to get out of here.

"I'm, uh, I'm gonna head out, boys," you muster, making a beeline for the door as soon as the inertia of your decision gives you the courage to peel yourself from the corner of the couch.

"You're leaving?" Jimin's voice quips in a saccharine whine, with the slightest edge that makes you avoid his eyes as you slip out with a parting wave.

You do catch Hoseok's expression, whose head snaps up at your parting movements. His brows furrow and his lips part, looking as if he wants to say something, but he doesn't.

And then you're gone.

Your smart watch trills as your heart rate enters cardio territory. Your chest is heaving, breath coming heavy as the pliant cushion of your couch gives way to the crown of your head pressing back into it, eyes pinched shut and hand shoved down your pants.

The bullet vibrator you have pressed to your clit is doing everything it should, and you feel it coming - your orgasm. 6:12pm on a Tuesday and it's already your third self-love session of the day.

You tense your thighs, urging the building pressure in your core to boil over, and quickly. You groan and grit your teeth as your administering hand starts to shake. You writhe and whimper for a moment. And then it's over.

You stare up at the ceiling of your apartment, breathlessly huffing out a despondent sigh as the empty ache in your chest returns. It has become your loathsomely devoted companion in every waking moment over the last ten days, filling you with an unshakable restlessness and sickly discontent.

Nothing can slake it. Not reality TV. Not Cabernet Sauvignon. Not overtime hours. Not ASMR wood-soup videos. Not yoga. Not Ben and Jerry's. Not midnight runs on your NordicTrack. Not fucking yourself to climax on every single goddamned toy you own.

The little monster you roused the weekend before last in Hope World hasn't returned to sleep. No. She is wide awake. And she seems to grow more ravenous with each passing day.

At first you tried to ignore her, but she kept you up into the long, bleak hours of the night. And so, in a fuzzy, staticky haze some time after midnight a number of days ago you typed some words into a search engine that would probably have your assigned FBI agent doing a spit-take.

The thing is, you'd never seen "50 Shades of Grey", you'd never been interested. It wasn't as if you were a prude - hardly! You have always enjoyed sex, both intimate and recreational. In fact, it has always been one of your favored methods of blowing off steam, and you knew quite well how to please yourself and how to guide partners in doing the same.

You have never had problems in taking what you wanted in life, in taking charge and ensuring that things play out your way – it's what makes you so good at your job, and valued by your peers who know that they can rely on you to take the reins and rise to the occasion.

So when you suddenly stumbled unprepared into the world of BDSM, your visceral reaction to the concept of submission left you wondering...why?

Why, why, why?

Why does this do it for you? Why did your very linear, stable existence have to be completely disrupted by this discovery? And most urgently of all, why, for the love of everything sacred, did all the porn in the whole wide world fail to accomplish even a fraction of the effect of Jung Hoseok's size 9 sneaker? It's all too overwhelming to process.

You let out a frustrated whine as you pull your sticky, cramped hand, still clutching the little purple bullet, from the confines of your pants. Your phone buzzes on the coffee table and you can see the notification is from Jimin. You've been ignoring his calls and pleading texts to meet up, or just pick up. You can't face him. Not after ghosting Hobi.

You feel a pang twist in your stomach as you haul yourself toward the shower, hoping the hot water will wash away the guilt you feel for ignoring Hoseok outright. He texted you almost immediately after you left the studio, asking if you were alright. You let him know that you were, with just one word: yeah.

You had typed and retyped that response. "Yeah, thanks" seemed too weird. Like, thanks for what? Almost making you cum with the tip of his shoe? No. "Yeah, sorry" felt pathetic. What were you apologizing for? It seemed to imply...regret? Or fault. Neither of which would have come from a genuine place. And beyond a simple affirmation, you certainly didn't have words. So, "yeah" it was. He tried to call you later that evening, but you didn't pick up. You were already way up in your head by then. It had been radio silence since.

You toss a coconut steamer onto the wet shower tiles and sigh, catching a glimpse of your face in the bathroom mirror as you slide the glass door shut.

"Coward," you mutter as you close your eyes and slip under the cleansing stream.

You're wrapped up in a blanket cocoon and sipping a cup of sleepy-time tea, trying to distract yourself from the messy tangle of emotions waging war across your various chakras with season two of Single's Inferno, when a knock on the door startles you out of your simmering reverie. You heave yourself off the carpeted floor of your living room and scoot toward the door like a fleecy Jabba the Hutt to peek through the peephole.

Your vision is obscured as another eye looks back at you from the other side of the concave glass. You jump back, dropping your blanket shroud in a pile around your feet and let out a yelp of alarm. You slam a hand over the peep hole as giggles erupt on the other side.

"Yah! I know you're in there - so let me in!"

Your entire body sags against the door in relief as you recognize the voice of the would-be intruder. You swing the door open to grant him exasperated entrance.

"Park Jimin, you just took ten years off my life! Creep," you bluster, gathering the blanket up around your body as you retreat back into your apartment.

You plop down again in front of the TV, knowing that Jimin came to either talk you into going out or to just talk, and either way, you are truly not in the mood. Your friend snickers behind you, sauntering into your kitchen. He returns with a beer, bringing the frosty green bottle to his lips before sinking into an armchair and regarding you with an expression that waivers between amusement, pity, and disgust.

"You look awful," he remarks, taking another swig as his gaze roves your unkempt appearance.

Your features twist into a frown, eyes never leaving the television.

"You don't get to barge into my apartment, steal my booze, then insult me, Park," you snip, burrowing further down into the fluffy mass encasing your body.

Jimin raises a brow, a small smile still playing on his lips as he follows your eyes to the television where YouTuber Dex and professional model Lim Minsu flirtatiously splash about in a ridiculously opulent indoor swimming pool.

"Fuck, Dex is hot," Jimin mutters.

"For some reason he reminds me of Jungkook," you smirk, glancing over at him for the first time since he arrived.

He grimaces theatrically.

"I don't see it."

The contestant on the screen flashes his Paradise companion a blinding smile and raises a tattooed arm to cut through the water, content to show off his stroke precision as his date watches on. The resolve on Jimin's face falters .

"Yeah, well...Dex is hotter."

You scoff.

"Yeah, no. Kook-ah is definitely hotter."

"For the love of god, just don't tell him that, okay?" Jimin pleads, "That kid is insufferable enough these days."

"You love him."

He hides a smile behind another sip of Hite.

"Why did you ghost Hobi hyung?"

Jimin blinks innocent eyes at you, as if he hasn't just dumped the last week and a half of silent agony over your head like a bucket of ice water. But the chill is momentary, because the next second your body feels like an oven. You stammer.

"I-I...ghost him? I didn't ghost anyone...I'm busy...I..." you trail off weakly as your friend's unimpressed and knowing gaze bores into your soul.

You sigh and scrub your hands over your face.

"Because I'm a big chicken, okay?" You murmur into your palms.

You don't know why, but you feel like crying. When you pull your hands away from your face, Jimin must see it because suddenly he's on the couch wrapping you in the kind of hug that reminds you why he's your ride-or-die, and in the safety of his embrace the tears begin to fall. Days of being alone with yourself and your conflicted feelings pour from your ducts and onto the front of Jimin's bright yellow flannel. He coos words of reassurance, admonishing your tears, as he strokes your hair.

"Talk to me, you silly goose," he hums with an endeared chuckle.

You sniff and hiccup as you pull away, wiping your puffy eyes.

"I don't even know what to say, Minnie...I don't know what's wrong with me..."

Jimin smiles and grabs a few tissues from the box on the coffee table, dabbing them against your nose.

"Well, first of all, nothing is wrong with you. But second of all, tell me what is bothering you."

You heave a dramatic sigh.

"If I tell you, you have to swear - and I mean swear - that you will not make fun of me or tell anyone else. And I mean not Taehyung, not Yoongi, not anyone, you hear me?"

He smirks, but nods in assent. You narrow your eyes at him.

"Say it. Out loud." You demand warily.

Jimin rolls his eyes and throws up his hands.

"Yah! Okay! I won't tell anyone," he quips mockingly.

You sigh again and draw your knees up to your chest, wrapping your arms around them. If this gets too hard to talk about with eye-contact at least you'll have a place to hide your bashful face.

"I..." you start softly, not sure where to begin except the beginning, "Re-remember that thing I told you when we got plastered a little while back...about...Hobi?"

Jimin's lips quirk at the corners as he nods.

"Well...the thing is...wait!" You cut yourself off, suddenly gripped by a notion that has you prematurely flustered and indignant. "What did he tell you?"

Jimin shakes his head, a small smile still playing on his full lips.

"Nothing," he responds, looking you dead in the eye in a way that has you almost believing he's telling the truth.

"No, really," you press.

Jimin leans back against the arm of the couch from where he faces you, running a hand through his hair and drawing his legs up to criss-cross in front of him.

"Jagi, this is Hobi hyung we're talking about. You think he would do that? He has too much respect for you. He would never. Not to anyone. Not even me."

Your chest floods with relief, affection, and regret. Fuck. Of course he wouldn't. He was too mature of a person for that. Too considerate. Too lovely. And you hadn't even had the gumption to speak to him for the last ten days beyond a mono-syllabic SMS. Jimin watches your expression do emotional acrobatics.

"So..." he offers encouragingly, "something...happened....between you guys, right? That day Yoongi hyung and I showed up? We...uh...interrupted something, didn't we?" He can't help a devilish smile, eyes twinkling as he carefully phrases his query.

You bury your face into your knees and squeak out an affirmation. Jimin lets out a bright laugh and you immediately raise your burning face in a scowl.

"Hey! You said you wouldn't-"

He waves his hands in apology as he attempts to gain his composure.

"Mianhae, mianhae! I'm not laughing at you!" He insists, leaning forward to grab your swatting hands by the wrists.

"Sounds kind of like you are!" You huff, yanking your arms from his grasp.

"So..." Jimin hums, tilting his head to track your gaze as you try again to hide your face, "If he's down, and you're down...what's the problem? Why did you run and hide? Did your feelings change?"

You slowly raise your eyes to his, searching them as you decide just how much you're willing to tell him right now. You chew on your bottom lip as you realize you need to get it out. All of it. You drop your legs to mirror Jimin's posture, lowering your defenses with your millionth-and-first sigh of the evening.

"Okay...well..." you muse, fiddling with the blanket still draped over your lap. "You know how I told you that stuff that I...dreamt...about Hobi?"

Jimin nods.

"Well...something did kind of happen...and well..." you trail off as Jimin raises his brows expectantly.

"Oh, fuck it!" you bluster, exhausted by your own attempts at delicacy. "He dominated me and I liked it. I really really liked it, okay? And it freaked. me. the fuck. out. Like...I've neeeeever felt that way before about fooling around. It wasn't just fun, or, like, pleasurable...it was...almost..." you search for the words as Jimin stares at you raptly. "...Freeing? Like, a relief. Like, a 'where has this shit been all my life' moment."

Jimin hums and nods, interlacing his fingers and leaning his chin against his knuckles.

"Like...I don't know...I'm a very independent person. And capable. And, yeah, things have been crazy stressful at work, and I have a lot on my plate...but I handle it, you know? In fact, I don't just handle it, I kind of...enjoy the pressure of leadership and responsibility? It drives me. I've always been like that, in every area of my life..."

Jimin smiles and lets out a sound of recognition.

"So the one who wears the crown is wondering why it feels so good to be...subjected?" He waggles his brows. You roll your eyes.

"Grow up, dude."

"Am I right, though? I'm right."

You find yourself chewing your bottom lip again.

"Essentially. I like power. I like control. What is this sudden obsession with losing it? It's...scary. And confusing."

Jimin smiles.

"You know, it's actually not that uncommon, from what I understand," he states, reaching for his abandoned beer on the coffee table.

You quirk an eyebrow.

"I mean, everyone is different, and this is a journey you're going to have to take for yourself to get the answers, but from what I know about the BDSM community, it's not unusual for people who are in positions of power to crave a bit of a...reprieve."

"Really?"

"Yeah," he nods, reclining back again against the arm of the couch, "The bedroom is a good place to let your walls down. Maybe the only place, for some people. And with a trusted partner it can even be healing to play a different role than you do in other parts of your life."

It's your turn to smirk.

"You talk as if you know," you prod playfully, shoving your toes into his shin. He smiles that wicked smile of his and you laugh.

"What I'm trying to say is, maybe it's not just about the...dynamics. Maybe it's also that it's Hobi hyung. He knows you. You know him, too. You trust each other. Maybe you could get to know each other in a new way. Be something for each other that you both need." He takes the last sip of his beer and twirls the bottle in his hands, gazing at you with a gentle thoughtfulness.

You nod slowly, digesting his newly offered perspective.

"So," you muse, raising your eyes to him again, "You think he needs it too?"

Jimin shrugs.

"Only he could tell you that for sure. But I do know this, he's awfully good at being bossy, and doesn't get a lot of opportunity to run the show - outside of dance practice, that is."

Chuckling nervously at the thought, you try your best to conceal the spark that has crackled to life from the burning coals inside you at the mention of his natural command of authority.

"Hey," Jimin posits with a grin, "Maybe if he's spanking you he'll go a little easier on us when we screw up the choreo..."

"EXCUSE ME THE FU-WHAT?!" You shriek, snatching up a throw pillow to beat him mercilessly as he falls in raucous laughter to the floor.

Turning to glance over your shoulder at your reflection in the mirror, you smooth your hands over the back of the svelte black bodycon number you've donned for the evening. You're a vision in monochrome, having paired your LBD with sleek stilettos and dark smokey eyes with heavy lashes.

Your phone buzzes, indicating that your ride share is close by. Butterflies flutter in your belly as you reach for the finishing touch to your outfit: a velvety black choker with a sliver o-ring studded in colorless topaz. It's just fashionable enough to still look like a necklace, but it gives you a bit of a thrill to know that it's not. To know what's tucked inside your purse to accompany it. To wonder if, going unnoticed by most, it will catch a certain pair of dark eyes.

The drive across town to reach the Jihope residence never felt so long. You try your best to calm your nerves over the last few blocks of distance - it’s just a party, after all, and kind of a silly one at that.

During Jimin's last visit, he mentioned that he and Hobi would be throwing a Black Day party for all of their single friends the following weekend, and after dodging his attempts at socialization so religiously of late, you felt you owed it to him to attend.

Black Day had never been something your group of friends had ever observed before, but it was incredibly chic to do so this year, for whatever reason. And of course, all the organizing duo of the soiree needed was the slightest excuse for Jimin to party and Hobi to host.

Upon arriving at the building, you can already hear the music pumping from the top floor, and the chatter of guests spilling out onto the terrace. You present your ID to the security guard at the front gate, and are escorted to a private elevator that whisks you up to the penthouse. Being quite successful and comfortable yourself, you still find yourself surprised when reminded of the sheer net worth of your humble, down-to-earth Bangtan pals. Hobi is worth the most, and while he is an excellent investor and a generous philanthropist, he also likes to show out, and in style.

You take a deep breath as you buzz the bell.

The door swings open to reveal a handsome young man in a black t-shirt tucked into baggy dark-wash jeans, his fluffy brown hair parted in the middle and his ears glinting with rows of silver hoops. His round eyes scrunch into little moons and he flashes an adorable toothy grin, endearingly lopsided where it stretches deeper against the little orbital piercing at the right side of his bottom lip.

“Noona!" he growls, pulling you into a bear hug. "Where have you been? The last two times we went to noraebang there was no one to sing Through the Night with me!"

"Ah...hah...", you nervously chuckle, pulling away from his embrace as you search your brain for an excuse other than business.

"I'll sing with you, Googie!"

You turn to see your salvation from further explanation in the form of a giggling young woman bouncing up to clutch Jungkook's arm and steady herself as she sways on her platform heels. She smells like soju and fruity perfume.

You smirk and thank her, patting her hand where it clutches your friend's tattooed forearm before she's dragging him away down the hall.

"Make sure she stays hydrated!" You call after him with a shake of your head, making your way through the throng of guests to the bar area.

The furnishings of the residence are a study in classy postmodern minimalism, punctuated with abstract urban art – though you notice that some of the Kaws pieces are missing, likely stored away for safekeeping from rowdy party-goers.

The sleek chrome and granite full-service bar is stocked with liquor and beer, and a commissioned mixologist is crafting darkly colored cocktails. A buffet-style spread offers the traditional jjajangmyeon and an assortment of other delicious eats.

The spacious dining area is littered with small tables draped in black linens, each bearing centerpieces of hellebore, leather leaf, black carnations, and eucalyptus. The living room has been converted to a dance floor, complete with a glittering disco ball. House music booms through the built-in speaker system as guests in groups and pairs move to the beat.

You glance over a drink menu of themed cocktails as a voice sounds from over your shoulder.

"I recommend the Down With Love."

Turning, you flash the speaker a grin.

"Alright, but is it giving Judy or Barbara?"

Taehyung raises a disparaging brow.

"It's a gimlet. Judy, obviously."

You chuckle, putting in your order for the suggested beverage.

"You look good," he remarks, gesturing at you with the unlit cigarette tucked between his first two fingers, his other hand slipped into his pocket as he leans against the wall.

He doesn't look bad himself, you think, in his black satin top and flared Merlot trousers.

"Thanks," you smile as the bartender hands over an inky concoction garnished with a grapefruit slice twisted into the shape of a heart and run through with a toothpick.

You eye it skeptically.

"How do they make it black?"

"Activated charcoal. C'mon."

Tae links your arm through his and weaves through the bustle to a table of familiar faces. Yoongi raises a whiskey tumbler in greeting and you clink your glass with his, sliding into a chair next to Taehyung and reaching over to give Namjoon's arm an affectionate squeeze. It seems that all the members have turned up, save Seokjin, who's been a taken man three years strong.

You fall into easy conversation with the boys, and just when your difference of opinion with Namjoon over Lee Bul's latest installation piece is developing into a full-blown debate, Jimin slides up to the table and spills onto Taehyung's lap.

"None of you are dancing!" He whines breathlessly, poking Tae's cheek as the other man smiles shyly.

"Jungkook is," Yoongi rebuts, taking another bite of jjajangmyeon.

He's not wrong, though to your amusement, the maknae appears to be getting danced on more than anything else.

"Where's Hobi hyung?" Tae queries, prodding gently at Jimin's full cheek in return.

Jimin's eyes dart to you, a smirk spreading slowly across his lips as his gaze rakes up from your heels to the choker around your neck.

"Good question," he hums, rising to take your hand and pull you up from your seat. "Let's go find him."

Jimin heads for the French doors at the far end of space that lead onto the terrace. They're propped open, and cool evening air floods the apartment, keeping the atmosphere from suffocating under the warmth of body heat and the scent of rich food.

"Jimin!" You hiss, as you approach the rooftop patio, "What are you doing? This is the opposite of subtle!"

He laughs merrily.

"You're so cute when you're flustered!"

You don't have any more time to grumble as you emerge under the darkening sky, just beginning to speckle with stars barely visible against the glow of string lights wrapped around the cozy outdoor enclosure. There's a small electric fire pit surrounded by plush patio furniture, and live greenery all around.

The energy is much more relaxed than within, but even so, you feel your pulse quicken as Jimin guides you toward a small group at the corner of the terrace. You recognize a few of the men and women gathered as industry producers, but none of that really matters because all your brain can register is him.

And holy shit does he look good.

He's arresting sophistication and effortless elegance. A silk charcoal dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, ripples along the lines of his torso - save where the top three buttons have been neglected to expose the smooth planes of his toned chest. His lean, athletic legs seem even longer than usual in fitted black slacks, his pretty wrists and fingers sparkling with jewelry where his thumbs are slipped into his pockets. His hair has been slicked back from his face, and his eyes are just barely obscured by a pair of lightly tinted wire-rimmed aviators. That brilliant, warm heart-shaped smile cuts through all the sharp darkness of his garb, and your breath catches in your chest when Jimin calls out to him.

"Hyung!"

As Hoseok's eyes meet yours the grin stretched across his face falters, but he quickly regains composure.

"Eyyy," he greets you, striding forward and wrapping his arm around your shoulders to pull you into a side hug. Of course he smells as incredible as he looks.

"Hi, Hobi," you murmur a bit shyly, returning his embrace.

"Hyung," Jimin pouts cutely, "Save us! She was putting our guests to sleep talking to Namjoon-ah about art theory."

"Hey," Hobi chides in a warning tone, cocking his head to the side to glance down at you. "Don't enable the poor guy – he needs to get laid."

"Well nobody is going to approach him if she's hanging around looking like that." Jimin gestures casually, a mischievous twinkle glinting for a moment his eye.

Hobi's arm slips off your shoulders to grasp your hand as he steps back. He's never been good at keeping his feelings from his face, and the look trained on his features as he appraises you has you thinking you made the right decision when you put on that dress.

"How about we keep you out of trouble and on the dance floor, hm?" Hobi says with a sly smile, raising your hand and tilting forward in a posture of invitation.

You roll your eyes playfully, unable to bite back a smile of your own as you motion for Hobi to lead the way, careful to avoid Jimin's eyes as you let the rapper guide you back into the thrumming pulse of the festivities.

He gently pulls you onto the dance floor and tugs you into him, keeping a hold on your right hand as he slips the other just below the curve of your waist. You settle into an easy step to the lively beat. Hobi's eyes search your face as you tilt it up to him, running a hand up his chest to adjust the collar of his shirt with a sigh. You fiddle with the soft fabric between your fingers.

"I'm sorry, Hobi," you murmur, just loudly enough for him to hear.

When he just smiles a bit sadly you feel your heart squeeze and you drop your head to his chest. You will yourself not to cry as he slows his movements, slipping a knuckle beneath your chin to raise your gaze to his own.

"Hajima," he protests, "Let's talk later. Right now, how about we just have some fun? I missed you."

His expression is sweet and earnest and you feel like your chest might not have room for anything more than your complete and utter affection for this man.

"I missed you too," you admit with a little grin, pressing yourself against him just a bit more firmly and gazing up at him through widened eyes. He blinks for a moment, and then suddenly, there it is again, blooming across his lips - that blinding gorgeous smile, and that heady, infectious laugh.

In one quick motion, he spins you around to face away from him as the music drops to a deep, throbbing EDM number, his fingertips grazing your hips and his lips ghosting the shell of your ear.

"You did, huh?" he purrs. "Alright, then...show me how much."

You suck in a breath because you don't ever think you'll be ready for how quickly he can turn that dark, deep voice in his chest into something that makes you feel like you're astral-projecting. Your first instinct is to push him away, make him take it from you...but this moment isn't for that. After your exit last time around, you’re determined to make him so incredibly certain that you want him. That you need him.

You lean back into him and, whispering a silent prayer of gratitude to the goddess of stilettos, press your ass firmly into his groin. You feel the air leave his lips in a hiss against your neck, and his hands slide to squeeze your hips and tug your body even deeper into his. You grind back against him as your body undulates with the hypnotic rhythm of the beat, but it's not long before he's taken over guiding the motion of your hips to match the rolls of his own.

Your eyelids flutter. You've never been this close to him. Sure, in the studio, things had gotten hot and heavy - but you had only been in his hands. He had only touched you to move you, still you, punish you. Now you are flush against his body, and everywhere you touch as he rocks you in tortuous waves against him tastes like the first sumptuous bite of a forbidden fruit.

You can feel him beginning to swell against the plush of your ass, but even that isn't what has a familiar ache throbbing at the apex of your thighs – it's the effortlessness with which he wrests control of your body, your mind...your very being down to its most primal core.

Hoseok's hand skids up your side and slips over your collarbones.

"I like this necklace," he mumbles into your hair.

You turn in his arms, slipping your fingers around the back of his neck as you raise your lips to his ear.

"I'm disappointed in you, Hoseok," you tut, "It's not a necklace, you know."

He doesn't respond, but focuses on bringing his leg to slot between yours, hiking your dress up enough to tease your mound with brushes over the front of his thigh. You swallow a moan.

He's toying with you, but you won't give in. Not so easily. Not yet.

"I guess you could call it a choker..." you rasp, trying to keep the tremor from your voice as your face presses into the side of his jaw, "That is more descriptive of its actual purpose, I suppose."

For one millisecond in the fabric of time and space you feel his pace falter as the words spill from your lips - then he runs his hand up your back, slipping two fingers under the tight strip of velvet surrounding your throat.

For the first time since you started dancing, you look at him. Crystalline beads of sweat have broken out on his brow, and his mouth is set in a stern line, his eyes hooded and dark as tugs his fingers back to command a view of your gaze.

"Are you telling me," he grits out lowly, digging his fingers into the flesh of your hip so bruisingly you gasp, "...that you showed up to my party wearing a fucking collar?"

You don't answer him - instead you let a wicked smile slip over your lips, refusing defiantly to drop his piercing stare. He has stopped moving you against him, stopped moving entirely. His hands are firm but still where they hold you as his eyes bore down.

"Are you out here trying to finish what we started?"

You tilt your head back, narrowing your eyes seductively.

"What do you think?"

You watch a thousand and one thoughts race through Hoseok's mind as his eyes drop to your neck again and he swallows thickly.

"Oh, fuck it," he hisses, turning and catching your hand to pull you impatiently through the crowd.

You barely have time to wonder what he's thinking or where you're headed when, at the opening to the hall, he spins to grasp your waist and tuck you into a small alcove. He does it so quickly and with such force that you nearly topple the potted plant on the stand beside you.

He pushes himself against you, the tip of his nose brushing yours, and his firm body pressing you to the wall. He holds your wrists in his hands, pinning them to either side of your body. You let out a tiny whimper.

His peppermint breath fans over your cheeks.

"I was going to wait," he whispers loud enough for you to hear him clearly over the music from the room behind you. "I was going to ask you...to stay. After..." he traces his nose along the ridge of your cheekbone as he squeezes your wrists tightly, his nails nipping into your skin. "But you come here with the audacity to tease me like that? Out there, in front of everyone like a desperate little slut?"

His mouth is hovering over your ear as he speaks, sending shivers cascading down your spine.

"I'm not a patient man," he mutters darkly, and you feel your pussy throb.

You struggle slightly against his grasp, and he growls lowly. Turning into him, you press your mouth against his throat, letting your teeth graze his skin as you respond.

"Then don't be."

It's all the permission he needs. He snatches you away from the wall, dragging you down the hall toward the master bedroom at the far end. Your heartbeat hammers in your chest as you gaze at the dark mahogany door growing closer and closer with every stumbled step you take to match his hurried pace.

He turns to glance over his shoulder, and you follow the action as he grips the handle, turns it, and...

"What the..." Hoseok mutters, rattling the handle forcefully before raising his fist to pound against the door. "YAH! UNLOCK THIS DOOR!" He booms.

You hear muted voices and sounds of scurried movement from within. He bangs again and again until the door swishes open to reveal a flushed and flustered Jungkook, still fumbling with the button of his jeans.

"Hyung! S-sorry, hyung, I was just...we were..."

"OUT." Hoseok demands icily, pushing the door inward on its hinges to reveal the peppy, strawberry-scented young woman from before hurrying forward to tuck herself behind Jungkook as she draws a hand across her smeared lipstick.

You bite back a grin as you watch them scuttle down the hall before Hoseok shuts and locks the door behind you.

"That kid...seriously," he grumbles. "He knows my room is off limits."

You chuckle, despite his lack of amusement, and he takes your hand again, drawing you toward a small couch at the far side of the large room. You take in your surroundings as you cross the space - similarly furnished to the rest of the apartment. The furniture is sleek and modern, Kaws sculptures and collectible figurines occupy tables and shelves. There are a few live plants, including one hanging from a large hook in the ceiling near a massive, raised canopy bed.

He draws you to sit beside him, a crease still pinched between his brows, likely from having to evict the irksome intruders. You laugh softly and run a thumb over his forehead.

"They're gone!" you chuckle, "Don't let it bother you so much. You'll get wrinkles." You tease, and his face softens.

He catches your hand in both of his as it lowers. He sighs.

"I needed a bit of water thrown in my face anyway," he smirks, and you glance down bashfully. "Before anything really happens, I think we should have…a conversation."

You nod in agreement.

"Can I start?" you interject and he nods in return.

You huff out a long breath.

"I want to apologize for how I reacted...last time."

He smiles wryly.

"It was all very new and sudden to me, and...I don't know...I freaked out."

Hobi squeezes your hand.

"You have no reason to be sorry about that. I should have never initiated like that somewhere that wasn't really private. I just got caught up..." he shakes his head.

"No! Me too! I'm glad it happened. I..." you trail off, feeling your face heat. "Oh, fuck, I don't know how to say this..."

He claims he's not a patient man, but he waits, watching with tender eyes as you choose your words.

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about it...like..." you take a deep breath as you gather the courage for vulnerable transparency.

You remember what Jimin said. It's Hobi. You are safe with Hobi.

"It was like nothing I've ever felt before. Like a release...more than sexual, you know? Like, freedom. Like, I felt so alive."

He smiles, nodding his head in understanding.

"I..." you continue, still nervous but with mounting confidence as he makes you feel heard, "I would like to...explore this part of myself, this new world," you gesture, "And...well, I would love for you to be the one to guide me."

You raise your gaze to his. His eyes are shimmering. He slowly raises a hand and brushes his fingers over your cheek.

"It would be my honor," he murmurs earnestly.

A smile blooms across your face and your chest fills with warmth. You raise your hand, curling your fingers into his where they rest against your jaw. He drops your hands, still holding on, to his knee.

"Can I ask how much you know about the community?" he queries, tracing his thumb softly over your knuckles.

"A lot more now than I did a couple of weeks ago!" you respond with a laugh. "I know that I'm a sub, but one that likes to...fight back a little bit?"

Hobi smirks, pocketing his tongue in his cheek. His eyes glint.

"A brat," he answers.

"...Yeah."

"Want me to work for it."

Your mouth quirks up in a grin.

"The harder the challenge the bigger the payoff," he hums, glancing thoughtfully down at your joined hands.

"I think," he says after a pause, "Since you're new to all this, we should start slow. I already know some things you enjoy, and vice versa. But part of this kind of thing is about testing your limits. You're going to come across things you don't like, too. I need you to be able to tell me. Without a second thought. Seriously."

He looks at you intently.

You smile.

"I trust you enough to know that you’d stop if that’s what I wanted. I may enjoy being dominated but I do still know what I want. And with you...I..." You tug at his hand, "I know I could say what I...need.”

He huffs out a little breath, his brows drawing together as he regards you in reverence.

"You know you can be that way with me too, right? Needy?" You ask softly. "I want...to take care of you, that way. Maybe we can...take care of each other."

You're not looking at him. You can't. It's all incredibly intimate and strange. When he doesn't respond, you begin to wonder if you said something you shouldn't have. And then your doubts vanish as quickly as they had appeared when you feel his arm slip around your shoulders as he pulls you into his chest, tucking your head beneath his chin.

Your heart sings.

After a long, quiet moment, Hobi pulls back to look at you.

"Should we set some rules for ourselves?" he asks.

You purse your lips and nod. Admittedly, you had come with a few in mind.

"I think...we shouldn't kiss. Well, not on the mouth. It's...I don't know. I think it might make things confusing."

Hobi looks thoughtful, nodding slowly.

"Which brings me to my other thought," you chew your lip. "I think this should just be about sex. We're friends, and I want to keep that aspect of our relationship strong and uncompromised."

He smiles.

"Makes sense to me. But..." he says with a raise of his brows, "If we do start seeing other people, I think we should tell each other. Especially if they're going to be people we're fooling around with."

You give an enthusiastic hum of assent.

“I don’t have a partner at the moment,” you shake your head, glancing up at him.

“Me neither.”

He clears his throat and shifts his stance.

“When we’re…together,” he gestures in the space between you. “What about protection?”

You blink thoughtfully.

“I’m on birth control.”

He nods.

“Okay…would you want me to wear a condom?”

You feel heat creep up your neck as you meet his gaze with a shake of your head.

“Not unless you wanted you.”

He stares at you for a long moment before chuckling and shaking his own head.

“Ay, you’re gonna be the death of me, you know that?”

You smile and pull your bottom lip between your teeth.

"Oh! And we already have a safeword!” you remind him with a grin.

"We do," he acknowledges, his eyes dropping to the glinting metallic ring adorning your throat.

Your smile falters and your heartbeat quickens…and when he looks back up at you it's like whiplash as he sets you reeling again with a dark, hungry gaze.

"If that thing isn't a necklace," he rasps, reaching his fingers up to touch the cold silver, "How about we put it to its proper use, hm?"

You shiver, pressing your thighs together as your heartbeat drops to your clit.

"Yeah..." you whisper, your breath already starting to come quicker as you reach for your bag and fumble with trembling fingers with the clasp.

Hoseok's brow knits as he watches you open the purse, reaching in to produce a length of light chain about three feet long with a velvet strap on one and a claw clasp on the other. You double it up and dangle it from your hand, your heart thrumming in your chest as you raise your eyes to his.

"You can put it on me," you purr, "...But you'll have to take it from me first."

Click.

That ineffable thing, that invisible force he wields that arrests you has slipped back into place. You can feel it, pouring off him in devastating waves...and you're already starting to drown.

It didn't take him long to wrestle the leash from your grasp. Now you're on your knees before him, hands at your sides as he leans forward to affix the chain to the o-ring at your neck. You're breathing hard from your struggle. He stands to his full height, wrapping the links around his hand until the line is taught. He clicks his tongue condescendingly.

"What am I going to do with you now, hm?" he murmurs, tugging at the chain briefly so that you lurch slightly forward. You whine complaintively.

"Quiet," he hisses in warning.

You bite your lip. You need to obey now. Your panties are soaked and you can feel the turgid swell of your clit with every slight motion of your body. If you are good for him, then maybe you will be rewarded. Being a good girl should earn something. Right now, you will take anything.

Hoseok glowers down at you, tilting his head to the side as his eyes trail over your features, coming to rest on your pouted lips. He wets his own.

"You like to run that mouth of yours...how about we see what else it can do?"

Holy fucking shit. You feel saliva begin to pool under your tongue, your eyes flicking down to the bulge at the front of his slacks. You start to raise your hands toward his belt but he yanks sharply upward on the chain, the metal ring biting into the underside of your jaw, ripping a mewl of discomfort and impatience from your lips.

He lets out a long sigh, shaking his head as his lips curve into a cruel smile.

"So eager that she can't even wait for permission?"

You whimper again, biting your lip as he laughs darkly above you.

"My little whore wants something, doesn't she?"

You give a silent nod, letting your tongue slip out to wet your lips and watch his eyes darken as his pupils swallow his deep brown irises.

"Mmm..." He hums in consideration, bringing his free hand to cradle your chin. "I've told you before, sweet thing, if you want something, you have to ask for it."

Your eyes blink languidly as you look up at him. Your head is swimming as you sway on your knees, the dizzy helplessness of being spun between degradation and endearment hanging over you like a heavy trance. His fingers tighten around your jaw.

"Come on..." he coaxes in a chilly whisper, "Use that pretty mouth to ask Hoseok."

You swallow thickly.

"Wan..." you start softly, but his grip on your jaw sharpens.

"Speak up, I can't hear you," he commands reproachfully.

Heat swells up from your neck and sweat begins to tickle your hairline. You know what you want, you've been thinking about little else since he was pressed against you on the dance floor...but the thought of giving your filthy, aching desires shape has every inch of your body trembling.

"Wan...want..." you struggle over his fingers pressing harshly into your cheeks.

He tuts, and the look on his stony features suddenly warns you that if you don't overcome your nerves...

"Wan' your cock!" you choke out desperately.

Hoseok's lids dip slowly and his lips part, as if your words have been injected into his veins, and you think you could fucking cum at the sight. His eyes flutter open again and he gazes down. You fight for patience and composure with each maddening second of silence that passes. You can feel your pussy clench and your hands follow suit. Hoseok catches the motion. A sickening grin spreads over his lips.

"Want this cock, hm?" he hums, releasing your chin from his grasp to palm over the clothed swell inches from your lips.

You whimper pathetically, letting your eyes slip shut. Fuck you want him. You want your mouth around him. You want to choke on him. You want the thick, sticky milk of his release on your tongue.

"So tell me, brat," he hisses, wrapping another loop of chain around his palm so that he holds you on a mere few inches of leash. "How do you want my cock?"

Any shame has been dispelled from your being in the presence of your burning desire, and you raise heavy, lustful eyes to his dark ones.

"Wanna suck it off."

You can see his chest beginning to rise and fall with more effort as he pulls you by the leash, in tortuously slow deliberation, until your lips are ghosting over the zipper of his slacks. He glares down at you, the corner of his mouth curling up in a sneer as he holds you in place.

"BEG."

A violent tremor of arousal jolts through your abdomen and you gasp.

"P-please..." you stammer dumbly against the soft, dark cotton.

"Again."

"Please..."

"Please, what?"

"Please..." you breath shakily, "Will you fuck my mouth?"

You feel him twitch under the vibration of your supplicating words.

"Alright," he relents in a rasp, "But keep those hands at your sides, understand?”

You nod.

“Unless,” he tugs at the chain again,”You need to stop. Then you grab my leg and squeeze.”

“Okay.”

“What are you going to do, baby? If you need me to stop?”

“Squeeze your leg.”

“That’s right,” he hums and the repeated instruction.

You chew on your lip as he pulls off his belt and slips open the button, giving a tug at your collar. As you look up at his hooded eyes, you know exactly what to do.

You nose at the seam, trying for one moment to ignore the throbbing bulge against your cheek as you find the zipper with your teeth and drag it slowly downward, your eyes never breaking his burning gaze.

"Good girl," he hisses, pushing his pants down his hips to reveal a pair of tight, black boxer briefs, a sizable strain pulling at the flexible fabric where he's hard beneath them.

He hooks two thumbs into the elastic and tugs down, his fully erect cock springing free to bob against the side of your face. A sticky streak of precum smears across your cheek as you seek his head with your lips, barely having time to register the smooth tip, or the pretty, pulsating veins as you rush to swallow him whole.

Hoseok lets out a long, deep groan as you suckle greedily around him. Allowing your spit to slick his shaft you pull back, keeping just the crown between your lips as you worry your tongue along his dripping slit.

He's rock hard and heavy on your tongue as you lean in to take him farther down your throat, bunching your hands into your dress at the aching urge to cup and stroke the velvet skin of his scrotum.

"Fuck," he grits out from between clenched teeth, "That's right..."

You bob lower and lower on his shaft, seeking to take as much of him as you are able. When you feel his tip brush the back of your throat, you moan around him. His free hand flies into your hair, and suddenly he's yanking you off of him. You cough and splutter at the sudden motion and he tugs the chain so that you raise watery eyes to him. He releases your hair to absently stroke himself as he lightly pants over you.

"Asked me to fuck that throat. Think you can take it?"

You nod as you attempt to wipe drool pooling on your chin into your shoulder.

"Words," he pushes, snapping the chain around his wrist.

"Yeah," you mock, matching his tone, a spark of defiance reigniting inside you.

Hoseok lets out a hollow laugh.

"So confident. We'll see about that."

He slips two fingers of his free hand into the strap of your collar and tugs you back toward his cock. You open wide, extending your tongue to catch the head and pull him between your lips.

You move to swallow him again, but he halts you.

"Keep still," he mutters coldly, and the fingers at your collar hold you tightly in place as he slowly slides his hips forward in a thrust that has him inching toward your soft palate.

Your eyes water, but you have never been more determined to fight your gag reflex as he pulls back and pushes in again, deeper, his cock tapping again at the back of your throat.

"Goddamn, you really can take it," he groans in a shaky voice. "Such a good little slut for Hoseok. Such a pretty, filthy little mouth."

Your nostrils flare as you draw air through your nose, and you swallow, the muscle of your throat contracting tightly around him. At this he seems to break, suddenly pulling back his hips to snap them forward as he sets a rough, self-indulgent pace.

Your eyes water, spilling over from the brutal stretch and sting, but you dig your fingers into your thighs, determined to take him as long as you possibly can.

You start to feel light-headed, and just when you think you're going to have to tap out for air, Hoseok's pulling you off of him and wrenching your face upwards to run his wild eyes over it.

You gasp for breath a moment, and then you're opening your mouth to him again, blinking up through bleary eyes in a silent, hungry plea. He shakes his head slowly as he gazes down at you, chest heaving.

"Shit, look at you..."

You're a site. Tears and mascara streak your cheeks, saliva and precum slick your chin and neck, your parted lips swollen. Hoseok's fingers twist where they're still hooked into the collar.

"You still want it, don't you? My god..." he smears the tip of his cock along your bottom lip.

Your eager tongue wriggles forward to brush over him again. He swallows, and with a growl he slaps his cock down harshly over it. You let out a little sob as your soaking, aching cunt clenches around nothing.

"Alright," he mutters in a husky whisper, "Gonna fucking ruin that tight little throat. Gonna fill it the fuck up. Blow my load all over that nasty little tongue. And you want that, don't you? Wanna be Hoseok's pretty little cumslut, hm?"

You nod, and then remember the rules.

"Yes," you croak, and open wide for him again.

He grits his teeth and tugs at the collar to pull you slowly over him again with a shudder. You've proven more than capable and it's not long before he's chasing release at a punishing pace. It's sloppy and desperate - the hollow, wet sounds as he fucks your face a pornographic symphony.

Suddenly you think you can feel his cock twitch and jerk as it hammers into your mouth, and when he grows so incredibly hard, you know he's about to reach his peak.

You lock eyes with him through your tears, watching his features strain to maintain their composure. Without warning he grabs the back of your head and slams into you, arching over as he cries out.

And he cums.

Thick ropes spurt down your throat as he quivers and throbs.

The moment he's spent his last drop of release he fists into your hair and roughly pulls you back, letting his softening cock fall free. You gasp for breath, coughing as you choke down the last remnants of his seed. Lips trembling, your eyes search his face for what you so desperately need...and you find it.

His lids are heavy over his eyes, mere glistening slips of midnight visible as they gleam down at you; his beautiful lips are parted as he pants, the honey planes of chest glistening with sweat where his shirt fails to obscure it.

He's breathless and sated and glorious, and you bask under the intensity of his gaze. He releases his hold on your collar and lets the leash clatter to the ground, bringing his hands to your face. He cups your cheeks, brushing his thumbs over the streaks of tears.

"So, fucking good for me," he mutters shakily, his brow drawn, "Such a pretty, perfect little brat."

Your eyes slip shut under his words of praise. You could move mountains if he asked you to, you were certain. In this moment, in this space, anything for this man. Everything.

You feel his hands leave your face as he moves to help you stand, before tugging his briefs back into place.

The heat of the moment past, you become acutely aware of the stinging soreness in your knees as you struggle to your feet – and the sticky ache of persistent hunger throbbing between your thighs. You teeter on your heels as blood rushes to your lower legs.

Smiling, he reaches out and pulls you to him gently by the waist, swiping a thumb over your chin.

"You were a good girl, baby. So, so good," He coos in a husky whisper. "You remember what good girls get, hm?" He's still calling the shots and demanding answers, but his eyes are soft as they regard you.

"A reward?" you answer hopefully.

He hums in assent.

"That's right, baby. That's right," He brushes at the smeared makeup under your eye. "But let's get that messy little face cleaned up first."

After unfastening your collar he sits you down on the bed, bringing makeup wipes to gently dab away the proof of your efforts, and offers you a bottle of cool water. He comes to sit beside you, eyes tracking you attentively as you drink.

"Want Hoseok to take care of that needy little pussy?" he asks, with a smirk.

"Fuck yes," you breath as you lower the bottle from your mouth.

He arches a brow, and you purse your lips in an attempt not to grin.

"Please," you add in correction.

"Mmm," he acknowledges thoughtfully, turning to gaze over his shoulder at the spider plant hanging from the ceiling a few feet past the other side of the bed.

"Does my little girl want to try something new?" he asks, his eyes still on the suspended planter.

You feel your pulse quicken and stomach twist in anticipation.

"Yes, Hoseok, I trust you," you respond without reserve.

He flicks his eyes to your face, brows drawing together. He wets his lips and huffs out a breathy laugh.

"You have no goddamned idea what you do to me when you say shit like that."

You look away, smiling brightly as you preen under the heat and affection of his gaze.

He reaches for your hand and guides you to rise to your feet.

"Alright, ditch the dress," he orders, gesturing with a flick of his chin as he leans back on his hands and spreads his thighs in a posture of recline.

You step back to give yourself space, already weak in the knees at the prospect of stripping for him. You steel your composure, a spark of boldness lighting in your belly. Taking a few steps away and turning from him, you look back over your shoulder to watch his face as you reach behind to slowly drag the zipper down your back. You make a slow, sensual show of peeling the garment from your body to reveal a lacy black balconette bra and matching thong. Stepping out of the dress and tossing it away, in nothing but your lingerie and stilettos, you stride back to stand patiently before him.

He leans forward and runs his hands up the sides of your thighs until they reach your hips where they slide back to squeeze the meat of your ass.

You bring your hands gingerly to his shoulders.

Tugging your body toward him, he draws himself to the edge of the mattress, pulling you between his thighs as he uses his sharp, white teeth to nip along the soft flesh of your belly. He sucks harshly at some places, leaving flushed little souvenirs of claim in his wake. You don't hold back the proof of your pleasure - repaying his ministrations with gasps and low moans as his hands and mouth explore you.

Hoseok raises his face from your skin, his pupils wide as his gaze settles at your breasts.

"Bra off," he commands, squeezing your ass again as you reach back to unfasten the clasp and pull the straps from your arms.

He hisses and grits his teeth, raising greedy hands to knead at your supple flesh, before pulling them away to twist and slap at your nipples.

You groan and throw your head back, relishing in the shocks of sensation – gushing, as if you could ruin your soaked panties any further. As you press your trembling thighs together he glances down at the last remaining vestige of your modesty, lips spreading into a wicked grin.

"You know I can fucking smell it - how wet you are? My god, want you to wear it like a perfume, fuck..." He runs his right hand to rub against the dampness that has the lace clinging to your slit.

The moan you let out is so needy it's practically a sob. Hoseok laughs low in his chest.

Suddenly he’s standing and spinning you around, leading you to the end of the bed. He places your hands on the footboard and instructs you to bend over, sliding your hips back until your ass is on full display. He runs his hands over the bare flesh of your cheeks.

"Now," he growls, "Can't fuck this ass until it's properly marked, can we?"

You swallow and let out a whine. The blood is already rushing to your head in a familiar surge and in the split second of silence before impact, you know what's coming - the anticipation somehow even more intoxicating when you remember how it feels when he...

Smack!

You whimper, your fingers gripping the bed frame as he delivers blow after searing blow. When he has satisfied himself with the flushed tone streaking the globes of your ass, he gives it a final squeeze, commanding you to wait where you are.

You hear him as he moves to the side of the bed to pull an object from beneath it. He seems to be grappling with something - the clink of metal and soft rustle of leather interrupting the sudden heavy hush. He returns to your side, taking your hands from the bed and bringing you to stand. As he leads you to the far side of the bed, you see it: hanging from the large hook in the ceiling that once bore the spider plant there is a large leather contraption. You've never seen one in real life, but you know what it is.

"You have a sex swing?" you murmur in awe, momentarily forgetting yourself as you reach out to brush your fingers over the soft leather. There are buckle straps at different places and a metal bar running across the top. He lightly grips your waist, turning you to face him again. He dips his head forward and you inhale the cool mint of his breath.

"Gonna put you in it," he murmurs, "You remember our word, right?"

"Yes," you breathe.

“Say it.”

“Foxglove.”

He smirks.

"Good girl. Panties off," he instructs.

You couldn't be more eager to pull the sopping fabric down your legs and toss it aside, but when you reach to remove your shoes, he catches your wrist.

"I didn't say you could take those off, did I?" he reprimands, and your pulse begins to hammer in your throat.

He’s gonna fucking strap you to this thing in your goddamned heels.

You comply with him as he helps you into the seat, fastening your wrists together to a strap that has them raised above your head. After securing your hands, he raises your legs, carefully stretching them so that your feet are on the outside of the wide set cables, hooking your heels to catch on the bar across the top to hold your legs, spread wide, in place. With each restriction he checks in, making sure you’re completely comfortable with his choices.

When he finishes he comes to stand before you, heaving out a sigh through his nose as he trails a hand down the back of your thigh.

"Look at you," he groans as his eyes rake over your body.

You can feel your pussy leaking. Your heart pounds. The muscles in your legs strain a bit from the stretch and the bindings nip into your wrists and feet. You are completely exposed to him...and it is utter perfection. Like you were made to be at his mercy. You blink up at him through the fuzzy haze that keeps intensifying as you relinquish yourself deeper and deeper into his control.

His eyes slip shut for a moment and he gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head before bringing his lips to graze against the back of your calf.

"Hoseok..." you whisper, trembling.

His eyes open and lock with yours. You hold each other's gaze in silence.

Nothing needs to be said - you both know. You both understand.

He unbuttons his shirt and slips it off, and after discarding his briefs he is as naked as you are. With one hand he grips your leg, slipping two fingers of the other to slide through the swollen, sticky folds of your cunt. You cry out, your pelvis shuddering - so ripe to be touched that the contact sends a shock like an electric pulse through your being.

"What a pretty fucking pussy...so desperate for me," he mutters.

You watch his beautiful fingers as they slip through your glistening lips and over your throbbing clit before he pulls his hand up. He lets it hover in the air for a moment before bringing it down with a harsh smack against your mound.

A scream strangles in your throat as he repeats the motion again. Your whole body shakes with arousal.

He clenches his jaw as he trails his fingers down to your aching hole, dipping in shallowly to gather your bountiful slick. He raises his fingers to his lips, tasting you as he watches you tremble beneath him. He withdraws them with a pop.

"You know how much you like that? Getting this little cunt slapped?" His eyes trail down. "You're dripping down your fucking ass."

Shuddering violently, you whimper, tugging impatiently at your restraints.

"Yah," he warns, and you still. "Guess you're ready for me, huh? Just like that day..." He smirks condescendingly. "You're always ready, aren't you?" He hisses. "Need me so fucking badly...all of the time."

You sob as your walls contract again and again. He takes his cock into his hand and slides it through your folds, teasing the tip over your clit.

It's euphoric, but it's not enough. You sink your teeth into your bottom lip as you fight your own desperate need until the copper taste of blood seeps across your tongue. Somehow, it doesn't even hurt – you can't feel anything past the need for him to fill you. You feel his tip prod your entrance and you gasp.

“Look at me," he rasps.

Your eyes snap open. Your legs are shaking, vibrating the entire apparatus as he finally, slowly, sinks into your wet heat. The stretch of him is exquisite, and your eyes roll back in your head as he groans, steadily pulling back to push into you again.

“Shiiiiiitttt…” he hisses through his teeth, “Fucking made for me. Does my little brat like that? Hoseok’s cock stuffing that tight little cunt?”

“M-more…p-please…” you mewl, nearly unable to even form the words as his ridges drag deliciously along your taught walls.

You're so incredibly worked up that already you can feel a climax building in your belly, and he's only just started to fuck you. Unable to touch him any other way, you squeeze around him tightly.

He lets out a grunt, picking up his pace as he uses the mobility of the swing to pound you onto his cock.

You cry out, your head rattling against the leather as stroke after stroke sends you hurtling toward your high. Your mouth hangs open, and your vision begins to blur at the edges, the position of your arms making it harder to breathe. It’s going put you over the edge. He catches your glazed stare.

"Don't you fucking cum until I say," he grits out breathlessly, and you let out a wail, head falling back.

You can feel yourself barely holding on as he slams into you, teetering on the edge as you hear his voice.

"Whose little whore are you?"

You try to speak but the words won't rattle out of your chest.

"Whose?" he booms.

"Yours!" you press out in a sob.

"Who do you kneel for?"

"You!"

"Who owns this pussy?"

"Y-you!"

"And who the fuck am I?"

"HOSEOK!"

"Cum, slut." he growls.

...And you free-fall through time and space.

The summer evening air is warm against your skin as you step out under the rose gold twilight. Behind you the chic dining venue is still abustle, and you wave coworkers a fond farewell as they head off to continue the evening with karaoke. It's been a big day for you, and there's someone you've been waiting to talk to.

You press the green call button and wait as the line rings.

"Yeoboseyo?"

The warm voice on the other end has a smile blooming on your lips.

"Hey, Hobi-ssi!" you hum.

"Hey hey!" he chrips, "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing," you respond casually, "Just got done with a company dinner. Someone got a promotion, so we all went out."

There's a pause on the other end.

"Oh," answers slowly, "That one you put in for?"

"Mhm."

You hear him scoff in amusement

"Well, at least you seem to be taking it well."

"I'd say I'm taking it extremely well, which is only natural, considering I got the job."

"Yes, well...wait, YOU WHAT?!"

You pull the phone momentarily away from your ear as his joyful, raucous laughter blasts through the speaker.

"You're gonna make me go deaf!" You chide. Your smile is brighter than the setting sun.

"I'm so proud of you."

"Thanks, Hobi."

"You should celebrate!"

"I did go out with my work friends...but..."

"You should come over," he interjects.

The register of his voice has changed. You recognize the new one.

"Yeah?" you swallow, as your heart rate quickens. "Well...what if I do want to go to karaoke?"

You wait for his response, watching your ride share pull up to the curb.

"Yah - you gonna be a good girl…”

You hold your breath.

“...Or do I have to make you?"

-FIN-

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