#I wrote this right after watching the episode

[iguessitsjustme]

When It Rains It Pours Ep 3 & 4 Thoughts

Listen. I am currently at work and not about to watch this show (for at least a few more hours) but I after deciding to wait to watch the next episode and sleeping on it, my little brain wheels started turning and I have some thoughts to get out about the first two episodes before I start the next one. So this time there is more than just a liveblog under the cut:

I wrote that and then immediately had to actually do work. Alas. Anygay

So I was thinking about why the relationship between our boy and his girlfriend felt off to me and I think I puzzled it out. She takes immaculate care of his nails. To the point that other people notice. But his nails are where her care starts and ends. He is initiating all of their conversations basically. She will engage with him but she won't start anything. Except the nail thing. It's why he wants her to be jealous. Because then he will have some sort of proof that she cares. Cause at this point it doesn't feel like she cares about him as a person. She cares about his nails and their appearance because if they look bad that is a poor reflection on her as a girlfriend. But his actual well being and how he feels? She's not present for it. Sure, she'll turn around before she leaves and asks for a hug, but it's so out of character and out of place that our boy doesn't even realize that's what she's asking for at first. He needs to communicate his needs with words, but he has definitely been indirectly communicating his needs and she's not paying attention. Or she is and she doesn't care. And she is not communicating anything either. Their beds have separated to the point there is a table between them. A clear indicator that what they had before is changed. It can easily be moved back to how it was but neither one of them is doing it. No one is even making an attempt. Who put that bedside table there? Because my bet is that it was her. A signal to him that something had changed, but she doesn't have the guts to actually say it. Or even to admit it to herself probably. Anyway I still think she's cheating.

And now I want to talk about Sei and his boyfriend (?). It seems like Sei has made an awful lot of compromises. Does Sei have any say in anything to do with that relationship? How much of himself has he given? Way too much. And I'm not saying his boyfriend (?) needs to compromise on having sex with him if that's not something he wants. But he can compromise on other things. That's what a relationship is. He gets jealous of Sei having someone else to talk to. But Sei can't be in the apartment because of an interviewer coming over. Sei is obviously a homebody but his boyfriend (?) seems to go out a lot. Does he ever make the time to stay home with Sei. Sei has proven he is willing to leave the apartment for his boyfriend (?). So why not invite him to something. Even if it's just the two of them. Why is Sei supposed to give up all of himself and have no control over anything at all?

Okay. That's a lot of words and I haven't even started episode 3. I didn't even mention the plastic umbrellas. Lord jesus.

OKAY. The fact that she TOLD him he has rice on his face instead of removing it for him. Something is not right. She doesn't love him. At least not any more. They don't have any sense of domesticity.

Oh so not boyfriends. Best friends. Okay that tracks. Except the jealousy thing. Also Sei has still given waaaayyyy too much of himself to this dude. He needs to be free to be himself. There's something there about being closeted.

I am watching. I am listening. I am learning. *hyper focuses on arms full of umbrellas*

Man I really wish I had the spoons to talk about the music in this show cause it is phenomenal. Someone remind me this weekend. That is if anyone wants that.

Something something framing. My brain is currently hibernating.

They are about to find out aren't they? God bless.

THEY BOTH EMAILED ABOUT THE STATUE. ARE THEY NOW GONNA LOOK AT EACH OTHER?

God bless.

Episode 4 time? Episode 4 time. (but only if this truck goes away it's shaking my whole apartment.)

Truck is gone. I am free. Episode 4 let me look at ya with my eyeballs

…have I mentioned that I haven't been getting much sleep lately?

Something something going down an escalator. He's going down. Towards hell? Making poor decisions cause he's gonna cheat on his girlfriend? Going to hell because he's going to learn about his attraction to men? And obviously gay people go to hell? I need a shot of those two together going up the escalator or I'm gonna scream.

Oh he's me. This is the literal exact thing I would say to my friend in this situation.

Okay I get it. I get it. I'm gonna be thinking about this scene for a while. The way Sei thought the messages as knew them were over. The way instead he was asked out to dinner. Because both of them need each other. They understand each other in a way no one has understood them before. They see themselves in each other. I'm fine. I'm totally and completely fine. Where are the umbrellas.

Oh the toe.

DID HIS FRIEND DESIGN THE CARD HOLDER? IS THAT WHAT THE SOMETHING IS. Or one of the somethings. Everything is connected.

"When he shows his masculine side it kills the mood" girl WHAT. Are you even attracted to him? Do you even like men? Girl. Be so fucking for real right now.

So I hate both of their partners. The girlfriend and the best friend. They are both keeping these two trapped and I HATE it.

Should I watch episode 5? *looks at the time*

[persepinas]

I first joined the IWTV fandom 3 years after my father has passed away from a cancer that stole him away in 6 months, close to 7 months of fighting. He fought to stay with us. He fought because he didn't want to leave. He fought because he loved us more than he wanted to let go despite suffering so much.

After he passed away, I found myself reading and watching everything having to do with death. I had rewatched the entire series of Six Feet Under, Dead like Me and a few more shows about death. I had rewatched Buffy. I needed to connect to death. I needed to see grief and loss.

Then IWTV magically appeared before my eyes one day when I logged into my barely used Tumblr account. I was intrigued and excited. I had forgotten a new adaption was being made and I managed to get into the show by the time episode 3 of season 1 had aired. I watched and devoured every second and fell (fatally hehe) in love with this adaption and the characters and the way they showed death and grief. I was able to connect. It helped me along with my healing journey.

Once I began to write one of my fanfictions, Suckerpunch, I wrote out grief and loss and what it was like to live life while losing someone you loved. What it was like to miss them but continue to live every single day. How some days were normal and then others the grief would hit so hard you could barely breathe. How grief isn't linear. How the loss of those you love never truly leaves. You simply learn to live without them.

Writing was a large part of my healing. Writing Suckerpunch specifically helped me so much and I have talked about it before but it makes me feel like I did something good when others will read it and tell me they were moved or it helped them or anything similar to that. At least, for one moment in time, I did something, wrote something that could matter even if it was an alternate universe all human fic about the vampires Lestat and Louis.

But being in the IWTV fandom helped more. Meeting people I connected with helped. I was able to really find some beautiful souls and I was even able to meet them in person and go on vacation with some of them. So many beautiful memories. So much laughter. So many minutes lived.

And even on that trip, I took my father with me. I felt him in every step I took. I wished I could show him all the things I saw. I was there in father's day and I wished he were there for me to simply embrace and say I love you.

And it's why right now, six years after losing him, I sit here and I wonder what it would have been like had I not found this fandom and community. I do believe I'd have been so much lonlier. I do know for sure id have never returned to writing after such a long hiatus. I believe I wouldn't be this deep into my journey of understanding death and what it is like to grieve if it wasn't for IWTV and for The Vampire Chronicles as well.

Do you know what it means to be loved by death is a question asked and yes, I do know, and as painful as it is, it is the most beautiful sort of love as well because it goes on forever and never leaves. It is endless. It is eternal.

I love you, Papa.

[ramiroo24]

Okay. So: what if the woman wasn't saying anything to people who talked to her, but just a exuding a general "stay away" energy? Because she embodied Ruby's future self who's spent her whole life thinking about the fairy circle and wishing they hadn't disturbed it, wishing they'd just stayed away. She appears to her younger self as a reminder of the mistake of not staying away and if Ruby sends anyone over to the woman, they feel the strong STAY AWAY vibes linked to Ruby and stay away from HER.

It could also be a part of the curse that Ruby is supposed to face this alone without help, so any help who interacts with future her is sent away. Maybe the curse is to live a life tortured by the mystery of the distant figure, never able to get close enough to recognise your own features, never able to get help from others, never realising who the figure is until you become it. And maybe the point was to learn to respect the fairy circle and embody the "don't step, stay away from it" energy your whole life until you die, then your spirit is sent back to the moment of your mistake to give you one last chance to prevent and correct it. Only you can be your own salvation, because you need to learn from your own mistake instead of anyone else doing it for you. A version of Ruby lived in a pocket timeline to learn all this and help another her avoid the same mistake.

And maybe since the Doctor apologised for accidentally breaking the circle and seemed respectful while Ruby said it looked like something kids made and started opening the notes, she was the only one who needed to learn to respect it and its significance. So even the Doctor was removed from the equation because Ruby needed to do it alone, and maybe the fairy curse sensed that he's seen so many things that he'd solve it quicker than her and make it too easy instead of her learning for herself.

[moonchild-in-blue]

I need everyone to watch Kaos (from Netflix) right now, please and thank you. Quite possibly my favourite modern retelling of the Greek myths / Olympic pantheon.

The story revolves mainly around Orpheus and Eurydice (Riddy), and around Zeus and a certain not-so-great prophecy. Dionysus is one of our main stars and he's great and amazing and hot and absolutely babygirl.

Yes there are a LOT of references and myths and characters beyond the main Olympians (Zeus' famous kids don't even appear). Yes you see Prometheus having his liver pecked. Yes, we do get to see the Minotaur & Co. Hades and Persephone too, obviously. Yes, there is A TON of great poc and queer rep. Yes, there is blood and sex and violence and poignant society AND religious commentary. Yes, you do get old man yaoi. Yes, Jeff Goldblum as Zeus is incredible and no joke my new favourite portrayal of him (Zeus). Yes, they are faithful to the "doomed from the start" narrative of Orpheus and Eurydice. Yes, Hera does have her peacocks.

Please please please go watch it please it's so great and visually beautiful and amazing. Pirate that thang if you must.

My thoughts whilst watching the show - no plot spoilers but be warned for mild thematic/ character/ setting commentary. Generally safe to read if you haven't watched it yet and don't mind a little preview:

SOUNDTRACK IS WOW. Don't Fear The Reaper? On episode one?? The song I've been listening over and over because of a certain beloved band has made a cover of it???

Love how they portray the worship of gods as something that is part of their daily lives and culture without seeming too "gimmicky".

There are clear parallels to Catholicism in the way they conduct themselves (either in favour or against the gods; all the little rituals and traditions), and it's quite interesting to see how would modern society function if Hellenism (or rather the ancient practices. pls correct me if I'm wrong) were the primary (and as far as I got it only) established religion in the world.

The "Vero" declaration with the hand gesture as part of Olympian liturgy? Amazing. Interesting choice in using Latin rather than Ancient Greek, but very cool nonetheless.

A significant amount of casual mentions of horrifying violent acts by the gods, and even some healthy dose of violence/ blood. Thought it was very interesting to see Zeus discussing infanticide and natural catastrophes the way we discuss the weather or grocery prices. They really leaned heavily into the whole grandeur and arrogance of gods in regards to human life which I super appreciate. I'm tired of seeing passive, Cool and Hip and Benevolent Zeus & Co.

Also the amount of criticism by the god-haters (Blasphemes? Non-sympathisers?) feels very refreshing (and on the nose concerning irl organised religions), especially in contrast with the more devout and how they put their life in second place in lieu of worship (yes I'm thinking about the Tacitas AND the Celebration Ritual™ iykwim).

The subversion of the "doomed from the start" narrative surrounding Orpheus and Eurydice is done so beautifully it hurts. Right from the first moment they appear, you know how it'll go. And yet!!

You know what happens, of course. Their story was never meant have a happy ending. But the way they took that and put a modern spin on it it's just!!!! My heart !!!!

I was rooting for Orpheus the entire time, knowing damn well it was a lost cause. I can't blame Riddy, but my God is it painful to watch. LOVED the actor who played him, he just the right amount of earnest love and rockstar flair. Riddy is SO cool - there's not much I can say beyond that that isn't a spoiler but. Yeah. We love complex female characters.

I'm gonna be really petty and pedantic here, but for a show revolving GREEK mythology, set in Olympia / Krete, with sooo many little references to the myths, it is CRIMINAL that they insist on calling Heracles by his roman name (Hercules), and that they refer to Hades as God "Of Death" instead of God "Of The Dead" / King Of The Dead. There's a major difference there - Thanatos would like a word.

Troytown? Where the Trojan refugees (displaced war victims really) are *literally* segregated to (their exact words, segregation), and even use those nose lines/tattoos as way to identify them? Where they face scrutiny and police brutality and prejudice from the Kreteans? As a clear reference to minority poc urban areas and how they are unfairly mistreated and deemed as "others" by the same governments who put them there in the first place??? YES YES YES.

A lot of queer and poc rep. And I mean A LOT. The Fates alone are a whole vibe.

Again, it doesn't feel gimmicky at all, nor does it fall under the "okay they're definitely trying to hit all the quotas so everybody is gay and ethnic and uses neo-pronouns" trend some media are starting to follow, which really just end up falling flat rather than significant (looking at you Sex Ed 4). An actual diversity win.

If you're familiar with the story of Caeneus, you'll love how they portrayed him here.

Dionysus is everything and some more. I love him. Prometheus is incredible. Jeff Goldblum as Zeus goes above and beyond expectations - he brings that Goldblum Flair™ but with an intense violence and paranoia you could only pull off as King of the Gods. Hera is just wow, truly a queen.

Hades and Persephone have an *interesting* dynamic - have never seen him being portrayed like that before. Usually Hades and Persie are the "dom goth Mommy and Daddy" of mythology retellings, and yet here it's completely different. Certainly *A Choice*. I don't mind Hades, but would've liked to see "goddess of spring & dreaded" Persephone.

I understood the vision, but I don't think it worked *quite* as well as the other ones. She's still super cool nonetheless - that sandwich scene was incredible.

Also - VERY COOL how diverse the actors are. With the exception of Dionysus who is objectively Young and Hot, pretty much all the other gods (and adjacent) are middle-aged or up, with visible signs of aging (grey hairs, wrinkles, sagging skin, belly fat, etc), which is cool cus usually the gods are made to be a specific flavour of "hot".

The Furies, who could've been all snatched and sexy and token Femme Fatale characters, are actually older butch women with mean lesbian energy and I think that's very cool and awesome and wonderful.

Even the human cast is so diverse and interesting and REAL, rather than yet another yassified ensemble - it's great to see. Not everyone is conventionally hot and attractive, and THAT is sexy af.

All the little Easter eggs and references to the myths and general ancient Greece culture are SO nice to see. I giggled when Polyphemus first appeared. That first scene on the cereal aisle was very funny. Gagged at Cassandra.

Stylistic choice of the Underworld environment and on-camera portrayal is chef's kiss. That's all I'll say.

LABYRINTH AND DAEDALUS YES. Would smash the Minotaur, 1000%. That Scene™ was. Hmmmmm yeah.

Overall I loved it and high key might re-watch it again. What an amazing show. This was a win for all of us Greek Myth nerds, and I'll be truly devastated if Netflix doesn't renew it for a second season.

[gottagobackintime]

Something something, Ted calling Trent “Sport” after Trent points out that “sport, it’s quite the metaphor”. When they’ve both just heard Roy talk about his feelings about seeing Keeley again being back at Chelsea and agreeing that it’s better to be the one breaking up with someone rather than being broken up with to quit than being fired. (Also the song in the background going “you’re not alone, you’re not alone” as Trent and Ted are the only ones left in the office. After Ted jokingly “flirted” with Roy saying “if you wouldn’t have left Chelsea when you did, we probably never would have met.” And they show Trent’s reaction right after we’ve seen Roy’s. And Trent is smiling and then Roy looks at him and gestures towards Ted and Trent and Ted are left alone in the office where the aforementioned conversation about sport being used as a metaphor and Ted calling Trent “Sport” happens.

(I’m sorry if this doesn’t make any sense. It’s 4.30am.)

[alltheoutsinfreeeee]

is there any magical girl anime still out there that doesn't have any fanservice? Shows like Precure, Cardcaptor Sakura or Madoka?

And if there isn't, are there at least any shows where the fanservice isn't with elementary school girls?

[anonymous12846271]

My thoughts on Alux Rising Ep 1 ✨

CW: A teeny bit of swearing along with major spoilers for the first episode of Alux Rising (ofc), moderate spoilers for the reboot of Sabre’s Assassin’s Creed series and Rainbow Quest and slight spoilers for Sabre’s original Assassin’s Creed series

-Is that a cHILD?  • It’s not a child, just a man in a very large bed.

- Wait, is he wearing a T-shirt and flannel pants? WHAT? Isn’t this supposed to be, like, in the style of medieval time? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an expert on medieval fashion nor am I holding this fantasy minecraft world to be completely accurate to real life historical fashion trends, but flannel pants huh? 

- Also, he’s wearing what looks to be a prized necklace while he’s sleeping. That’s a terrible idea. Don’t wear important jewelry while you sleep, put it somewhere safe and put it back on when you wake up.

- WANNA BET? *Proceeds kick the door so hard that the lock freaking breaks*  

 • Also, is a lock supposed to break that easily? Can you just kick a door and break the lock like that? Something doesn’t feel right there.

- Okay, but I love that this is how they chose to introduce Petro. What an entrance.

- There’s a big ass green powerful looking sword in the background. Wanna bet that that thing is gonna end up being important later on? 

- WaIT, is the little man royalty?

- Omg, this man’s attitude is so wild. I like him. “Sadly I cannot, for you see I am not an uptight snob” Sksksksks kudos to the people who wrote this script I’m having a lot of fun

- I love how this is one of the very few roleplays where Sabre is choosing to not play as a self-insert yet he’s still playing a pale young man with brown hair and green eyes- 

- Ooh the little man IS royalty! Knowing Sabre, this can only mean bad things for Alux lol.

- This animation is in many ways rough but the way they animated Petro’s chuckle at 1:47 is simply perfect thank you.

- Is that a reference to the original Assassin’s Creed roleplay?? He didn’t steal anything from Alux so it’s not a one to one callback, but still, not the first time a FMS roleplay has started with the protagonist getting bumped into by someone passing by. 

- Our boy just face planted into a stone path?? It’s a miracle that he didn’t break his nose, good grief.

- Someone please protect the little man from getting bullied thank you   - Little man’s got daddy issues, we’ve got another sad boy with a sad boy backstory, let’s go.

- How did he not know about Alux’s mom HOW LONG HAVE THESE TWO KNOWN EACH OTHER

- I feel like I’ve heard these women before but I couldn’t possibly tell you where. They might just have one of those voices, bear in mind that they’re both voiced by the same person.

- WOW, throwing a hardback book at someone’s head from another floor? Ik he insulted her, but that’s still practically attempted murder.

- Alux laughing about his potentially concussed friend with the person who would’ve been responsible if he was concussed. I see nothing wrong with this. /sar 

- Random but I love the shiny gold texture on Alux’s suit

- Also random but what’s with the blue glowing stuff on Petro’s belt? Is is magic? Will it end up being plot relevant later? What’s going on Sabre, why did you want that stuff to glow??

- Does the Dark Angel use she/her and they/them pronouns? Assuming that this recollection of the story uses their correct pronouns, I think they use she/her and they/them pronouns. They might be an evil enby queen and I’ll drink to that.   • On another note, them being a demi-girl is only one explanation for the multiple pronouns, although it is definitely an intentional choice. I can think of atleast a couple other reasons for why this would be.

- Also, assuming that she’s gonna stay a villain, the Dark Angel is one of the first non-male villains in a FMS roleplay a long time and if I remember correctly one of the first female-leaning villains since 2017. That’s pretty hype!!

- A ruler, a guardian of light. I wonder who that is. Feels like something that’ll be important later~ :] • Mmm he sacrificed himself? Interesting, still have a feeling he’s gonna be important later tho. 

- So who are the magic users specifically? Are they those under the command of the Guardian of Light, or are they a broader group? I don’t think it’s really explained.

- “Her great army was released from their grasp” *Multiple pronoun sets intensify* 

- The fact that Sabre is choosing to make another series with themes of dark/light based magic and an ancient evil sealed away eons ago when the SCU is still literally just right there is an interesting decision. I get wanting to rehash old ideas but usually people only do that after they’re FINISHED with the old story. I don’t think the SCU is dead?? As far as I know, Sabre hasn’t said anything about it and TR would be a weird end lol.

- Also, can I just say that I am so happy to see Sabre making a series that takes place in a universe of his own creation after all these years? I mean, yes, all of his stories have taken place in worlds that he created, but they were all directly inspired by settings created by other people (Assassin’s Creed, Minecraft, FnaF, The Crafting Dead, etc, etc, etc) and to see something unique to him is just- it makes me really glad, I’ve been wanting Sabre to do something like this for a really really long time. Plus, The Steve Cinematic Universe, although I like it and I’m really hoping Sabre is still gonna make another series for it in the future, was starting to go in a direction with it’s lore that isn’t exactly to my taste and we were getting so much of it that I was starting to get a bit sick of it. It’s nice to have a big project like this between the SCU projects to break things up, and it’s really refreshing to just have some good ol’ fantasy after whatever Twisted Rainbow was.

- Petro is acting like there’s more to this story than it seems and that it’s less black and white than it appears, but the version of it he just read from the book makes it seem like the Dark Angel is clearly evil and that the light folk are the heroes. I want more details. 

- “You can’t pick roses without shedding a little blood. Nothing’s perfect, but the result is beautiful.” Petro are you gonna become a villain later? Tell me the truth now because that’s some sussy dialog. 

- Alux, son, what are you doing??? What are you doing that could get you executed???.?  • Edit: I think that he was exaggerating, e.g. “My Dad’s gonna kill me”.  

- Okay but people just calling their father ‘Father’ like a name instead of ‘Dad’ or ‘Papa’ has so much power thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.  • Father, it’s me, Michael- 

- Hamatria? Is that how that’s spelled?? There are no human-written subtitles, so I can’t tell. But besides that, I’m also intrigued by this other kingdom and their potential history with this kingdom.

- What is the name of this kingdom? Has it been stated yet? I’m not sure..  • Oh good grief in the title of the video it says that it’s called the Cozen kingdom I’m an idiot. Also, interestingly enough, ‘cozen’ is actually a word and it means to trick or deceive. Was that intentional?

- I know that this is most likely just because the people who made the skins are the same, but it’s interesting how the armor on the guards looks almost exactly the same as my beloved Francis’ armor. Good grief I miss MC Trapped. :’[

- Omg, how old is Alux? Is he an adult or a minor?? Because bro, his dad is OLLD. ANCIENT. HOW OLD WAS ALUX’S MOM???

- So Cozen and Hamatria have conflicting views about magic users? What are those views? Why do they hold them? Who are the magic users specifically and why are they controversial? What was the origin of the book that Petro read? Why did Elric not want Alux to know about that story? Where is Petro from?? So many questions so little answers... 

- “How am I supposed to lead this kingdom when I don’t even know anything about it” Implying that Alux has been trapped within the walls of the castle rather than just within the kingdom.

- “To keep all of us safe”??? What does THAT mean?? I gotta ask what the exact motive behind keeping Alux here is. It could simply be a parenting strategy, but I wonder if there’s some other reason? I know how Sabre loves his chosen one prophesies.  - There’s a lot of green around in both the kingdom and the throne room which implies that green is the insignia color of the kingdom yet the king himself isn’t wearing it, only his son? Interesting.  

- Also, it only just occurred to me, but it’s really funny how green seems to be an important color in this series while it’s coming out on Saint Patrick’s Day. 

- BRITISH! THE KING’S ASSISTANT IS /BRITISH/! Asdfghjk- in all seriousness, although it might be unintentional and just a quirk of the casting, him being british implies that he’s from another region which is really interesting.  - Also, according to the credits, I think the assistant’s name is Azrael which is really foreboding because that’s the name OF THE ANGEL OF DEATH-   • He’s wearing all black too XD

- Omg, it’s Jerome! The man who refused to play Rainbow Steve even though he wanted the role because he misunderstood the production process of the series. Good to see him! X’) 

- BiSH, please, this is the heir of the kingdom?? This is the only son of your boss, have some respect???? Actually, who hired this guy? Why is this the guy who’s supposed to train Alux?

- “HoW dArE yOu, YoU LiTtLe BrAt” 

- Oh wow he kicked him in the delicates! Wait a minute, shouldn’t the armor guard agaisnt that?? Am I wrong here?? You’d think that would be a weak spot they’d want to protect when designing armor, but atst I don’t really know anything about armor design- 

- I’m already in love with these characters. They’re all so endearing. I’m having the time of my life, big claps all around.

- “Tired of being treated this way, like I’m something to be ashamed of.” ???

- Just hit me like a freight train, but just like Azrael, Petro has a foreign accent which implies that he’s a foreigner to this land. 

- So, Alux and Petro are the same age? That’s interesting..? How long have they known each other? Why is Petro teaching Alux when they’re the same age?? Who even IS Petro, who are his parents, what does he do in this kingdom???  • Edit: I think that the reason Petro is in a role where he can teach Alux about things is because Alux has been isolated from those outside of the castle. Also, sometimes more advanced students can tutor less experienced students and I think it’s implied that Petro is a scholar.  - “Think of it this way: atleast you don’t have to see him for a week.” AGED LIKE MILK

- When I laid eyes on this art style, y’know, I didn’t like it very much, but now that I’m more immersed into the episode it’s kind of grown on me?? It’s honestly kind of cool-

- Why are all of the people in the guard, like, all of these garbage douche people? Who’s hiring these guys???

- I can see in the pages of the book that they’re using a different writing system. It’s probably an alphabet but honestly, who knows. Either way, it’s an important thing to note down.

- HEY, I JUST REALIZED. ARE THEY USING MODS AGAIN?? I think I recognize the texture for that shield!! Cool bro! I love Minecraft mods and seeing youtubers actually use them makes me really happy.

- It probably helps that the series is so cinematic, but I’m appreciating  how the world feels like it’s actually to scale. Rainbow Quest was a bit wonky in that regard, with what was meant to be massive cities looking more like moderately sized towns, so this is a lot more immersive.  

- Another dead father in a FMS roleplay??  - What do they want exactly? Is it an abstract thing like power, control or pride or rather something real like an object or a person? I’ll guess we’ll see....

- Oh Jerome guard bless your soul, I love him so much. Honestly this is making me really regret the fact that he wasn’t willing to take on Rainbow Steve’s role in Rainbow Quest, like, more so than I already regretted it.

- It isn’t an object but it COULD be a person. If it is a person, the Dark Angel and Alux are both HIGH on the list. 

- NOO JEROME GUARD!! 😫😫 Tbf I kinda knew that he was gonna die but stilll

- Is Elric’s sword made out of gold? Because if it is that’s not a very good material for weapons.

- Yup, another dead father in a FMS roleplay.

- So are these men the worshippers of the Dark Angel? Interesting, interesting. Does that mean that she’s regained enough power to begin taking over the minds of men again??

- Man, I remember that blood texture from Sabre’s old roleplays from 2016. It’s good to see the classic mods making a comeback.

- Hello James, the writers have declared that you’re gonna survive, which makes sense considering your previous appearance.

- I’m honestly intrigued by James’ characterization. It’s kinda interesting how he seems to look down on Alux but is so dedicated to Elric. I wonder if that’ll be elaborated on in the future.

- They!! They didn’t let us hear what the promise was!! What was it!? This is gonna be important later on, I can just feel it in my bones.

- Every time I write a new character or place name in this document I have to tell Pages to learn the word so that it won’t underline it- curse you cool fantasy names.

- Okay, but real talk, they should’ve brought more guards as an escort. Even though they couldn’t have predicted the Dark Angel worshippers or whatever, this was still during a time of conflict, and they literally mentioned that people from Hamatria were coming over and causing issues and that there was talk of war. They were literally bringing their king to a potentially hostile nation and they only brought, like, 10 guards TOPS. Not a great decision.

- Time for the little man to undergo L O S S

- His last conversation with his father was an argument. F in the chat please.

- Y’know, this series is reminding me a lot of the Assassin’s Creed reboot in certain aspects (Which is definitely a good thing), but it’s making me wonder what a meeting between Alux and ACT!Sabre would look like? They have basically polar opposite backstories, what with Sabre being orphaned when he was 11 and living the rest of his childhood and the entirety of his teens on the run whereas Alux looks like he’s been completely isolated and sheltered up to this point, so how would they get along?? 👀

- CREDITS, THERE ARE CREDTIS!!! OMG, I HAD JUST BEEN COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW HARD IT HAD BEEN TO UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS BEHIND SABRE’S ROLEPLAYS WITHOUT KNOWING WHO WAS WORKING ON WHAT ASPECTS OF THEM OVER THE YEARS!! YAY! :D    • Actually, wait, were there credits in The Crafting Dead? I just checked the end of the final episode and there don’t seem to be any so I don’t think there are.

- I had been assuming that Sabre had always served as the producer and director in all of his roleplays over the years, but interestingly, this episode wasn’t directed by him, only produced by him. Has that been the case for most of his roleplays..?

- Phoenix Flare seems to be a really really key person who worked on this episode. They directed which is one of the most important roles in the production of a series and also worked on the skins, the builds, the music and the voice acting. Interesting.

- A really glaring omission here is the writers, which is really important especially when you realize that this was animated rather than acted out in game, so there isn’t really any room for improv. Maybe they just decided to group that in with either production or direction and either Sabre or Phoenix Flare wrote this, but there’s just absolutely no indication of anything regarding the writing really? The writing is always the most important aspect of a story so it concerns me that the writers aren’t being credited.

- Also, the animators. Where is the credit for the animators?? Who  animated this???? Was it just Sabre???

- Now, my thoughts: So far, it’s quite good! This episode was really solid all things considered. I do have some slight concerns with certain aspects of the episode and it does feel a bit rough at times, but this is really promising and so far it feels like an improvement over Sabre’s other recent stories, atleast in regards to the flaws that have been personally bothering me. The pacing actually feels solid which is really really major for me, granted that it’s a bit faster than what I normally enjoy and it took a bit of adjusting before I could really get into it. Now of course, I can’t really judge this story right now since we only have one episode. I had similar feelings about Steve Legends at first and that series ended up really disappointing me, but it’s been a strong start so far. I really enjoyed this episode and once again, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about this series, even more so than before! :]

- Also, for anyone who struggled to enjoy the episode, I just wanna add that this story is very very different from anything that Sabre has worked on before and if you’re in love with that classic roleplaying style that Sabre was more well known for, I can see how you would prefer something like Rainbow Quest over this. Although I love the cinematics, I personally prefer the filmed in Minecraft style more than the animation but I get that this makes it a lot easier for the actors and allows them to do more with the visuals. At the end of the day, this is all down to subjective taste and I’ll gladly watch any of Sabre’s older serialized roleplays (aside from Twisted Rainbow /hj) with you guys any day. ❤️❤️❤️

[gojoed]

eight episodes into trigun and i think i might actually explode

[asahicore]

fast forward - pjs

pairing. jay x fem!reader

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

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

word count. 26.6k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And that’s your business, because…?”

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

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

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

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

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

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

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

“I’m sorry?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t-”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“At least you’re self-aware.”

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

“What are you-”

“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”

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

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

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

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

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

Then you see it.

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

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

Your heart sinks to your stomach.

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

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

“Y/N-” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is so good,” you mumble.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm?”

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

“No. I have… things on my mind.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah.”

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

“...Jong?” you try.

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

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

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

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

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

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

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

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

--

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

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

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

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

“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.

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

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

“Exactly!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Nowhere. Go on.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“None taken.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She had a dream that she m—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And your friends wondered why you hated him?

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

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

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

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

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

“No. Stop.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jong, your textbook.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.

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

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

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

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

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

For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”

--

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

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

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

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

you he’s not just another person!

sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings

you i hate u

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You frown. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh? That’s a recent development.”

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

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

“Back to hating.”

“Let’s start the assignment.”

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

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

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

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

“That’s not—”

“Let’s just focus on this.”

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.

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

“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?” 

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

“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”

“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”

“Love? I know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I never—When?!”

She shrugs. “The other day.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.

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

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

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

“Aren’t you cold?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

--

sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier

kazuha WHAAAAT

you KIM SUNOO.

kazuha WHEN?????

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

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

kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml

you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED

sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart

you were* and no we weren’t

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

kazuha sunoo…?

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

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

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

you …

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

kazuha cuuuute

you i resent these accusations.

sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will

kazuha ???

you SUNOO?

sunoo WHAT

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Y/N…”

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

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

--

jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension

you you idiot what did your parents say?

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

you boo-hoo

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

you … are you feeling better?

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

you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?

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

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

jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon

you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!

jong :) see you tomorrow pretty 

 --

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You smile. “Never.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Give me five minutes!” you call back.

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

--

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

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

He’s still Jong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In any case, he’s hiding something.

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

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

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

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

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

Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until you didn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You said so yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

“Did you guys sit next to each other?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”

“Now?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.

“Really.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I think I did, too.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fifty years, huh?”

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

“I wasn’t planning to.”

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

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

--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You smile. “I am.”

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[songofwizardry]

thoughts on the mighty nein echoes of the solstice liveshow! gonna try and make this spoiler-free (it's mostly just my Emotions and reactions) until the recording airs, but under a cut just in case!

what a fucking experience. genuinely still buzzing, on an unreal level. (i may stop vibrating with energy in about three weeks. but i can't guarantee it.) i don't think i've ever been in a venue that large, and certainly 12.5k d&d nerds was... something else. the (many, many, many, incredible and inventive) cosplays! the conversations in the queues! the whole entire Vibe of Wembley last night—including the sheer number of people in cosplay on a late-night metropolitan line tube, which i have never seen before and definitely would like to see again. getting to yell out the NEINs and the cheering for the big moments and the whole-room gasps for the plot twists!

it's such a good one-shot, and honestly so fucking impressive to me that they were able to do that and pull off a game like that, live, in front of an immense fucking audience in a massive venue. (i am incredibly impressed both by matt's DMing and by everyone's synergy and character knowledge and just. hitting all those beats so well. it is not an easy thing to pull off but boy did they do it.) everyone was on fire. you're all in for a treat tonight/tomorrow morning when it airs. i will probably never recover from this for the rest of my life.

[g4rvez-r3id]

I’m Here, Now

Post Prison! Spencer Reid x Girlfriend!Fem Reader

Synopsis: Your boyfriend, Spencer gets released from prison and you’re his first stop after dealing with Cat Adams and her schemes. And all he wants to do is see you and love you.

Category: Smut, Fluff

Warnings: 18+ MDNI established relationship, prison arc, spoilers of season 12 of Criminal Minds, it’s a lil sad tbh but it only lasts for a second, reader’s in disbelief, spencer and reader being cutesy, crying, kissing, mentions of bruises, threats, sappy speeches, fluffy ending, lowkey not true to 12x22/13x01 so this could be an au! smut warnings: soft!dom spencer (firm believer here🙋‍♀️), a lil body worship from reader to spencer, oral sex (m receiving & reader receiving), facefucking, cum swallowing, “good girl”, riding, unprotected sex, mentions of masturbation, creampie, overstimulation, spencer lowkey being a munch- that should cover it 😃

Author’s Note: hey lovelies, i can’t stop writing smutty oneshots ahhhh i can’t help it, i just love my man 🤭 i hope y’all enjoy this because i’ve had my mind on prison arc reid bc i’m watching s12 rn and oooo he so fine in 12a and in 12b 😩 anyways hope y’all like this <3

You worried that maybe he’d never come back. Upon hearing he was in jail in Mexico, you worried you’d never see Spencer again.

If your past self could tell you that your boyfriend, Dr. Spencer Reid, who was a nerd at heart, who spent his free time playing chess and reading and watching Doctor Who with you under your fluffy blankets and wore mismatched socks because he believed it was good luck, that he would one day end up being framed and sent to prison, you would’ve laughed in your face.

You never would’ve expected this to happen. But then you heard why. He was framed for murdering a woman named Nadie Ramos, who was helping him get his mother medicine that seemed to calm her from her episodes. If there was anyone he would’ve risked everything for besides you, it was his mother.

And to be honest, you were a little mad at him for lying to you. He told you that he was going to Houston to talk to some of his mom’s doctors. You’d been together four years now and not once did he ever lie to you until now. When he got transferred to the Milburn Correctional Facility, due to overcrowding, he’d requested to see you and only you.

It wasn’t until Spencer wrote you a letter, practically begging you to come and see you. The first time you’d gone to see him, you actually didn’t even recognize him, skipping over him and almost staring at him in confusion when he walked over to the other side of your plexiglass.

And you tried to play it off like you expected him, even while looking like he did, but he knew deep down you didn’t recognize him. He chose not to acknowledge it but you both knew.

And you visited him frequently, until he decided to cut you from the visitor log with no warning. You were hurt, to say the least. And you ended up avoiding everyone after that. You even ignored the many fruit baskets Garcia kept sending over but you kept sending them back.

But then a miracle happened.

They proved his innocence. And he was out.

You would’ve found that out if you’d checked your phone but you spent the entire day in bed, away from society and sobbing at the fact that he was gone and he wasn’t here, comforting you like he did so well.

You hated him, you hated him for putting you in this position, for making you deal with the aftermath, for pushing you away. But you loved him. You would never stop loving him, no matter how much you hated him right now.

You’d been laying in bed, tossing and turning all day as the TV played some random sitcom you watched every now and again. And you’d heard something. A soft knock coming from your front door.

You almost missed it but it was faint. And you heard it. Choosing to finally get out of bed, you opened your room door and walked to the front door. You opened it without checking the peephole, because at this point you’d had enough and just wanted death to get you over with already.

But death may have stopped your heart only for a moment when you open the door.

Because standing there, in the suit he’d gotten arrested in when his bail was denied, his hair outgrown and his stubble framed nicely on his face — was your boyfriend, Spencer Reid, in the flesh.

You gasped softly as you backed away from the door and stared at him, almost as if you were disbelief. You’d had a dream like this before. Where he came back and promised he was here to stay. (But it was another one of God’s cruel jokes and you cried when you woke up the following day).

He walked in and closed the door right behind him, standing tall in front of you. You noticed the bruises on his face, how his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and stared at you.

“Hi.” He said softly and all you can do is stare at him. “Am I dreaming?” You find yourself asking out loud and his heart breaks. He can see that you’re scared. Scared that if you go up to him, he’ll disappear like smoke. And he hates that.

“No.” Spencer shakes his head and he waits for you to approach him and you do, walking slowly towards him as the floorboard creaks beneath your socked feet.

He waits as you first grab his hands, and interlock your fingers together. When that seems not to be enough for you, your hands move to his face. You caress the sharp new grown stubble on his face and drag your index finger to his plump lips and stare into his hazel eyes and they’re full of wonder and love.

You don’t even register the tears until you hold him in your arms and you hold onto him for dear life. He holds you tightly in his arms as you find yourself wrapping around him like a koala and all he can do is hold you back. And it grounds him, you ground him.

Your head moves towards his and you kiss his lips, like you’ve longed to do for three months. And part of you still couldn’t believe this, that he was here, holding you like you were going to break.

You kiss him a few more times before you pull back and ask with tears in your eyes, “Are you okay?” Spencer nods toward your forehead, “I’m okay, now that I’m here.”

“You’re here, now.” You look him in the eyes as you say this and he nods at your words, repeating them to himself. “I’m here, now.” It’s as if he’s reminding himself that he’s here with you because he’s worried he’s gonna wake up any minute and he’ll be back in that cell. You weren’t the only one who had a hard time believing this was real.

Spencer’s lips catch yours and he pushes into the kiss and you get back on the ground, your hands (or mouth) not leaving him for a second and making their way up to his hair and pulling. You whine into his lips as he you pull him by his belt and walk backwards to your bedroom with him following you.

With your strength, you twirl the two of you around and straddle him as you continue to kiss him. You rock your hips into his growing bulge and he moans into your mouth and you smirk in the middle of the kiss.

You begin to unbutton his suit and successfully get his blazer off and now next is his dress shirt but he’s quick to grab your hands and you look at him with wide eyes.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” You ask, willing to put a stop to this if he wasn’t ready. “Nothing, I just…” Spencer looks down as he lets go of your hands and seemingly now growing insecure all of a sudden.

He stands up from the bed and you look up at him as he holds his arms over his stomach. “I just… I got hurt pretty bad in there. You’re gonna see some bruises. I just don’t want you to freak out. He admits and your heart breaks, “You don’t have to take your shirt off. Or we can just stop entirely and—”

Spencer shakes his head, “No, it’s okay. You’re gonna see them eventually.” With that, he begins to unbutton his dress shirt and you give him all the time in the world to do so, not wanting to rush this at all.

When he takes off his dress shirt successfully, you finally see it. He has bruises everywhere on his ribs and some near his belly button and on his stomach. Some are still in the process of healing with yellow and gray hues and some are purple and mucus green.

“Oh, my love…” You whisper to yourself as you stand up and you turns him around and find more on his back and there’s just too many of them. You find yourself tearing up but you know you need to keep it together for him. Who could hurt your sweet boy? Was this why he didn’t want you to see him anymore while he was still in there? How long did this go on for?

It’s then that you register the bruise near his eye. You thought that it was due to the lack of sleep he’d been getting and assumed it was the bags under his eyes he so often got but it was a bruise. How did you miss that when he walked in?

He almost wants to hide himself, like a turtle under its’ shell and you look down at his body. “Baby…” You start but he shakes his head. “I’m so sorry.”

He looks at you as you guide him towards the bed and he lays back and you go back to straddling him, but this time, you’re careful as you hover over him.

You kiss his lips before making your way down to his neck and then to his body and it takes a second for him to register that you’re not just kissing his body, you’re kissing the bruises.

He feels himself getting choked up as you kiss every visible one and his heart swells for you. What did he did to deserve you?

You begin to unbuckle his belt but he rests his elbows on the bed and looks down at you. “You—You don’t have to…” He trails off but you quickly shake your head. “I know. But I want to. It’s your first night back. This is about you tonight, baby.”

Spencer doesn’t interfere, just stares as you unbuckle his belt and pull out his cock through the hole in his underwear and it springs into action, dripping pre-cum from the head. “Oh, my sweet boy. You must be so pent up.”

You kiss the tip of his dick and he shuts his eyes tightly as if he’s trying to hold back from already cumming. You lick up his shaft and fit his cock inside your mouth and he curses to himself as he grips your bedsheets as tight as he can.

You notice this, grabbing his hand and interlocking your fingers together, as if you’re telling him and giving him permission to touch you as you bob your head up and down.

He takes this opportunity to caress your face as you take him into your mouth. He ties your hair into a makeshift ponytail as he pushes deeper onto his cock and even lifts his hips to ensure that you’re taking all of him until you’re gagging.

“Let me know if it’s too much, okay?” Spencer tells you and you nod to the best of your ability until you begins to fuck your throat, using your mouth for his pent up pleasure. “Fuck… God, you’re so good at that. Letting me fuck your throat like the good girl you are.”

His words could make you cum on the spot without him even laying a finger on you. He rarely cursed in your domestic setting but he did it often when you two were in bed.

All you can do is take it as deep as it can go in your mouth. He whines into the ceiling as he says your name until you feel his hot cum dribble down your throat and your nose is buried into his crotch as he holds you there and makes you take all his cum into your mouth.

He pants as he releases your head from his cock and you swallow the rest of his cum. He looks at you with worried eyes, concerned that maybe he’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, baby. Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” He asks, like he didn’t just cum into your mouth and call you a “good girl”.

You shake your head at him with a small smile. “That was just about the hottest thing you’ve ever done.” (And everything he did was always hot). He blushes and crooks a smile.

“Are you willing to keep going?” You ask him and he nods with an immediate answer, “Absolutely.” He’d never let you go to bed without making you cum at least twice.

You climb on top of him with a smirk and look deeply into his eyes. They’re filled with lust, love and adoration for you and for you only. “You’re so beautiful.” You say to him in a whisper but Spencer chuckles a bit, “I should be saying that to you.”

You look down as your pussy catches the tip of his cock and you sink down into him carefully. He moans at the feeling and you gasp. He fits perfectly.

“God, I missed you. Missed this…” Spencer catches his breath. “Perfect pussy.” You chuckle and looks into his eyes as you rock back and forth. “It was so lonely without you, Spencer.” You whine. “I missed you so much.”

You lean down as you kiss him on the lips. “Did you…” He pauses, not wanting to be crude even while he was inside of you. “While I was away?” It took a second to figure out what he was talking about. And then you realized that he was asking if you’d masturbated while he was away.

“A few times,” You admitted shyly, despite suffocating him with your pussy. “I thought about you every time. It just wasn’t the same. Missed your body.”

Spencer smiles darkly, “Maybe I should punish you for that.” He says, half-joking. You lean forward as you smirk, “I’d like to see you try.”

And without a second thought, it was as if a switch flipped as Spencer was quick to flip your bodies over and he hovers over you, both hands on either side of your head, gripping the pillows. “You really wanna test that theory?”

You bite your lip and smirk once more as you pull him in for another kiss and he glides himself into you and you gasp at the feeling of his dick inside of your pussy. It’d been such a long time since you felt him like this, here, in your arms. God, you love him.

He rocks his hips, thrusting deeply into your body as leans his head in your shoulder, mumbling sweet obscenities and how good your pussy feels and how responsive you were. He dreamt of the day he’d have you like this. And since being in prison, he longed for it more.

He reached down in between your legs as he found your clit without even looking down and staring deeply into your eyes and your moans reverberate through the walls as keeps his eyes on you and you only.

“Baby, I’m sorry, I need to cum— where? Where?” He asks and you shut your eyes tightly as you shout, “Inside! Oh, god, inside!”

He pushes himself hard into you as you finally cum, your legs shaking as you moan his name into the ceiling and he collapses on your body, still sheathed inside of you.

You both lay there, panting and reveling in the feeling of each other. Eventually, Spencer does pull out of you and you feel as he lowers himself, eyeing your pussy up close and you look down at him sleepily. “Baby, you don’t have to. This was about you.” You assure.

“Nonsense,” Spencer tells. “I need to clean up my mess and even the score, might as well kill two birds with one stone.” He jokes, diving face first into your pussy and you whimper at the contact he makes, especially with the way his stubble is rubbing against your thighs, cleaning his own cum out of your pussy and relishing in the way you both taste.

His mouth captures your clit and he twists his tongue around the bud in that delicious way you love and he moans into your pussy. “We taste so good together, baby. Cum again on my tongue, this time.”

You tug at his messy hair as you hold his head to you pussy and you use him, rocking your hips into his mouth. You feel as your legs shake once more and you let go of his head for him to take a breather.

That breather lasts only a second before he dives back in and you whine at the contact. “Spence… baby, I’m sen—sensitive.”

“You can take one more, baby. I know you can. You can cum again.” Spencer says, his pupils are blown as he looks at you and he’s commanding you to cum again. “Just one more, baby.”

You nod at him and Spencer grabs your hands. “Here,” He interlocks your fingers with his and somehow, the pleasure is so much and yet not at all as makes you cum for a third time tonight. If he could spend forever eating your pussy, he would.

You close your eyes for a moment and when you finally open them, he’s right next to you and holding you. (He’d cleaned you up properly with a warm rag and left your favorite snack and water bottle on the desk next to your bed whenever you were ready to wake up). You remembered the loving words he whispered to you as you drifted off into a heavy slumber.

And you’ve finally woken up. You look up at him, still in awe of him being here. You take the chance to check the time. It’s already 5am and the sun is still shy away from rising but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters because you have your boyfriend right next to you, holding you for dear life and loving you the way you deserve to be loved.

You worry that he’s still up, but you figure that after all those months in prison, maybe he has trouble sleeping every now and again. You find yourself holding him tighter as you look down at the bruise near your head. You can’t believe he was hurt. How did he manage to survive in there? You’re still wondering why he’d taken you off the visitor’s log.

“Spencer?” You ask and he looks down at you, your voice surprising him. “Yeah?” You sit up and look at him, face to face, swallowing the lump in your throat. “Why did you take me off the visitor’s list?” You decide to ask.

He’s about to respond and you don’t want to hear another lie. You’d been through plenty of those already. “I mean, I didn’t even want to see you at first and then you begged me to and then all of a sudden, I wasn’t allowed to. I feel like I have the right to know.”

“No, no, you do,” Spencer knows that much. He hates the fact that he’s lied to you and has forced you to deal with this when all you deserved was the best from him. He sits up next to you he knows he’s gonna need to tell you, even though he doesn’t want to.

“The last time after you came to visit me,” Spencer started. “I got cornered in my cell. A lot of the guys there were asking about you. And they said that it’d be a shame if something happened to you when you came to visit again.” You look down as he talks about it. “And I didn’t want to risk that. And I wanted to tell you, really, I did.” He grabs your hand assuringly. “But I didn’t have any way to. And I didn’t want you to get hurt. I would’ve died if something happened to you and I didn’t do everything in my power to stop it. I’m sorry it went down like it did.”

You shake your head. And you finally understand. Because if the roles were reversed, you would’ve taken him off the visitor’s list, too. If it meant protecting him. “You were just trying to protect me, I understand.”

“I just…” Spencer looks at you, holding your face in his hands. “I love you, so much.” He looks deeply into your eyes. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He reveals and your eyes widen. “What?”

Spencer closes his eyes and holds his index finger up. “One second.” He stands up and grabs his blazer from off the floor and digs into one of the inside pockets and pulls out a red velvet box.

Your eyes widen as you cover your body with the sheet and he kneels down on one knee in his boxers and opens the velvet box to reveal a ring. “I didn’t want to do it like this but I’d rather do it now than wait for the right time to.” Your eyes glance down at the box for a mere second and then to the love of your life.

“I love you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You make my days better, hell, you’ve made my life better. And no matter what we’ve gone through, you’ve stayed by my side and you never ran. I love that you sing off-key, I love that your nose twitches when you get mad, I love that you like… pineapple on pizza, oddly enough.” You chuckle at this. “I love everything about you. And I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve you. But… but true love, it fosters a connection that goes beyond the superficial. It's a bond that often involves understanding each other's core values, beliefs, and life goals. And you’ve made me believe in true love.“

You stare at him in disbelief as he continues, “Will you marry me?” You feel tears spring into your eyes as you nod vehemently, “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!” You smile widely and he smiles at you, slipping the ring onto your ring finger as you continue to mutter a million yeses.

When you finally get the ring on, you pull him in for another kiss and he holds you to his heart’s content. It wasn’t the way he envisioned it going, but with you, you knew you didn’t want big and bold ways of him saying he loved you and wanted to marry you, you were content with something small and sweet because it was coming from him and that was the biggest gift of all. You were one for grand gestures, you liked it just the way it was. It was perfect. He was perfect. And you’d spend the rest of your life reminding him he was.

So, you laid back in your bed with your fiancé and talked and talked about sweet nothings until the sun came up. And all of the ache you felt the night before, the pain you endured was long gone and now replaced with something beautiful and sweet.

[obsessedhoneycomb]

Heating pads

Max Verstappen x fem!reader

Summary: Your good time in Portimao being interrupted by your endo flare up again.

Warnings: endometriosis, cramps, love and care, infertility and baby talk

A/N: Wrote this last night and I poured into it some of my personal experience with endo, more this time. Surgery worked a little for me, it gave me a three months without cramps. Every body is different, every treatment works differently for us. But we’re in this together, endo sisters!

For @amberjazmyn 🧡

Don’t use my writings without my permission! Pictures found on Pinterest.

———

The weather at Portimao circuit wasn’t so pleasant as it was nearing the end of the year. F1 season was long gone and Max was able to finally avert his attention to his other hobbies (not gonna mention it’s still racing, but for his kinda own team).

Meeting with all the people around Verstappen.com Racing was a great one, especially with Thierry Vermeulen, because he was so funny, but humble at the same time.

You were always amazed how Max was so good at handling his many duties and hobbies at the same time. He was a great mentor, passing his legacy and wisdom and you watched how his temper calmed down a little through the years.

It wasn’t long ago when you moved to his apartment at Monaco, making your relationship more official after three years of being there and nowhere, between your job and his races. One day you decided enough is enough and you didn’t want to face your life alone anymore. That stirred some rumours through his fan base and also your parents weren’t able to hold back in their questions about you two starting a family. Truth was that you and Max weren’t exactly against having children, but the main problem was your endometriosis. Severe pain episodes, ending in ER may times, being neglected by doctors, saying it’s only in your head and that you need to sleep it off. You thought, for so many years, that you’re just insane, but after Max got through one of your endo flare ups with you, he got you through many doctor appointments, to the best specialists in the field, where you finally heard your diagnosis.

The surgery date was set after the new year’s, when Max would be still around to help you get back on your feet and mend your wounds with his love and care. But to that date your body just decided that you need to suffer.

You stood in the garage, watching how Max talked with the engineers and Thierry about some issues, his yapping always getting more and more interesting, when you felt a cramp in your lower back. It wasn’t unusual, you always had similar, and you brushed it off as some kind of back pain, most likely from standing for too long.

Watching Max racing at the empty track was always fun, he gave it his all, enjoying his time and it made you genuinely smile. But now you were pale, your forehead getting a little sweaty, same as your whole body. Feeling the need to sit down, you understood immediately, when the pain shot through your abdomen, pooling at your right side, that stretching burning sensation ghosting to your lower back. Trying to play it cool, you swallowed hard, smiling at everybody around.

About two hours later, Max was done with the testing, leaving the car to Thierry and he went to look through some performance reports, when he spotted you sitting at the bench, having that weird expression on your face like you were trying so hard to hide something, but failing miserably.

“Hey, love.. are you okay?”

His hand went to your cheek and you quickly shot him a look full of pain. He knew that look, seeing it more frequently in past weeks.

“Come here.” Without further words, he grabbed your hand and led you through the corridors to your car outside, where you had your things. Sitting you in the backseat, he quickly went to the trunk, rummaging through his bag, coming back after a while with some packages.

“Max, it’s okay, I can manage it.” You tried to protest but he dismissed you.

“Let me take care of you, I’m prepared.” Sitting beside you at the backseat, he opened both packages, shaking the contents a little with an approving hum. Heating pads. Your eyes went wide with surprise, but then your face softened, your eyes nearly welled with tears.

Warming his hands with the pads a little, he carefully lifted up your hoodie along with your top, to get to your bare abdomen, placing one pad under the waistband of your pants and the other at your lower back. You were always taken aback, how he remembered the location of your pains, where it hurts the most. After he was sure he placed pads securely, he pulled down your top and hoodie.

“Does it feel good?” Cupping your cheek, he had a concern written all over his face and you just nodded. With soft hum, he wrapped his hands around you, getting you closer to his chest, holding you tight against him, making sure you’re comfortable.

“Thank you, Maxie..” your sweet murmur made him smile, your hands hugging his warm and huge body like a teddy bear, the heating pads bringing you comfort you needed.

“Anything for you, my love.. I would go to the end of the world if it meant for you to be in less pain.” Max kissed your temple softly, letting out a soft sigh.

“You’ve done so much for me in this case, I don’t know how I deserved this.”

“You deserve the world, darling. And those pains.. I would do anything to take it on myself instead of you. I hate to see you contorted by it. Packing those heating pads it’s less than I can do for you, to make it easier.”

“You really changed my life, Max.”

“Oh, baby. You changed mine. A lot. I wasn’t this happy like I am beside you. I never forget that moment you smiled at me at that coffee shop in London, because you absolutely stole my breath.”

You chuckled softly, but the slight shot of pain made you wince a little.

“Can you please rub my back a little? It helps also..”

Max just nodded, sneaking his hand under your top, his warm hand rubbing the heat into your skin slowly and gently, making you relax more.

“You know, when we bought this car back then, I thought that it will be different action we’ll be doing on the backseat..” his voice was laced with teasing, trying to make you smile.

“Well.. I thought so too, but I can’t even imagine doing it right now.”

“No, love, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re in discomfort and never in the right mind I would try to make a move on you like this.”

Max liked being intimate with you, your chemistry being something undeniable when you two got to bed, but he respected you and your body. He would rather not have sex with you for weeks than to cause you pain.

“I know, I know, sorry. But we can try after I’m healed from surgery. And there can be a little miracle after. Like we talked many times before. Little Verstappen tapping around.”

It was true happy smile he saw on your face in a while. His heart skipped a beat at the idea of having a baby with you.

“Sure, whatever makes you happy, love. And whatever doesn’t cause you pain.”

His soft lips kissing your nose in the most lovely way was something only you could see. To the world he was that unbeatable lion on the track, dominating champion. But with you he was a caring, loving boyfriend, who would die for you in every way possible.

[straylightdream]

meet me in the hallway

𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭: jeon wonwoo x f.reader x kim mingyu

They been best friends their whole life. They’ve shared everything but they have never shared a girl. What happens when no one can keep their emotions out of this?

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: neighbor / friends with benefits au, non idol au

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 24.4k

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: angst, body image issues explicit language, drinking, smut warning below

an: I wrote this a long time ago and decided to edit it and rework some stuff.

𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐬.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: intercourse, multiple sex scenes, talks of sleeping with someone else, wonwoo is kinda rough once, sex while intoxicated (both parties are fully consenting, oral (f, receiving), shower sex, threesome, some fluffy smut as well, Mingyu accidentally listening to the mc and wonwoo have sex

ONE - THE BEGINNING

You had all lived in the same apartment building. Wonwoo and Mingyu were childhood friends who moved in together right after college.

You were a teacher who lived next door to them. You had never been the type of girl who dated around or anything like that. Monogamy was alway the way for you. You had only ever been in long term relationships.

Your last boyfriend was an asshole who would break up with you to sleep around. He gave you this long winded speech about how he was still young and really wanted to see other people. He did that for about two months before he came crawling back to you.

You had been single for the last two years, and it was probably the happiest you had been. It was nice to not have to worry about being in a relationship. You just got to do what made you happy.

You had lived next to the boys for the last year and a half and over that time you had grown to have a pretty good friendship with them. At least once a week, which normally was every Friday night. You would all hang out, drink lots of wine and play board games or something like that. According to Wonwoo you all hung out on Friday just so you could get wine drunk.

It was Thursday and Wonwoo and Mingyu had invited you over to eat Chinese take-out and watch a movie. You came over and you were all sitting on the living room couch with plates filled with Chinese food. Mingyu was flipping through Netflix trying to find something for them to watch. Wonwoo and you were too busy chatting about something random that happened at his work.

“So, what should we watch?” Mingyu asked.

“I’m cool with anything,” Wonwoo said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Let’s just watch that anime Wonwoo was talking about,” you said sitting in the middle of the two boys.

“Sounds good,” Mingyu said, clicking on an episode.

You sat on the couch joking around and eating Chinese food until about ten when you said it was time to head home. You had to get up at six to go to work. If you stay any later you’ll be too tired at work tomorrow.

“Hey (YN), just so you know I’m going out of town tomorrow,” Mingyu said standing with you at the door to his apartment.

“Does that mean we can’t have wine Friday?” You can’t help but sound disappointed. You always look forward to Fridays with the boys.

Wonwoo yelled and walked over, “hey, we’re still friends we can have wine Friday without Mingyu.”

Mingyu rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Fine, have wine Friday without me,” Mingyu stepped forward and wrapped his arms around you to give you a hug goodbye. He always gives you the best hugs.

“Wonwoo, did you want to come over to my place tomorrow?” You asked.

“Yeah that sounds good,” he said before giving you a hug goodbye.

“Alright Mingyu, have fun on your trip, and I’ll see you tomorrow around five Wonwoo,” you smiled before walking out the door.

TWO: A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO WINE FRIDAYS

Mingyu let out a sigh as he turned to look at Wonwoo who was smiling, and Mingyu just shook his head. Wonwoo was a huge flirt and he knew while he was gone Wonwoo was probably going to hit on you the whole time he was gone. Wonwoo could tell by Mingyu’s face that something was going on. “Mingyu what’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Mingyu lied.

Wonwoo had known him basically all his life. He knew he had something on his mind, “I don’t believe you.”

“Okay I have a little crush on her.” He sighs.

Wonwoo smiled, “I can’t say I blame you, she's really pretty.” He patted him on the shoulder.

“We’re all really close and I don’t want to ruin it, but she’s such a sweet and funny girl,” he let out a light sigh.

“Yeah she’s one hell of a girl,” Wonwoo smiled.

-

Wonwoo knocked on your apartment door with a bottle of wine in his hand. He couldn’t lie for some reason he felt slightly nervous about the fact you were going to be hanging out alone. Opening the door, you had a smile on your face, and your hair was pulled back showing off the pretty skin on your neck. You wore a sundress and a blazer. You didn’t have a chance to change after work. “You look pretty,” he said as he stepped inside and slipped off his shoes.

“Thank you, Wonwoo. So I was thinking we could order some pizza. Because nothing screams classy quite like pizza and wine,” you said with a breathy laugh.

You walked into the kitchen area and handed Wonwoo the wine opener and reached into the cupboard and pulled out two large wine glasses. Sitting the glasses down in front of Wonwoo, he poured you both large glasses of wine. Grabbing your phone off the counter you ordered some pizza. Wonwoo sat at the kitchen table working on drinking his glass of wine. He couldn’t help but love how easy everything seemed between you. Walking back into the kitchen you went and removed your blazer and were now only wearing your pretty floral sundress. You sat down a game of scrabble you had under the coffee table, that you had literally only bought for wine Fridays.

“So, we’re playing scrabble tonight?” he asked arching his eyebrow so it showed over his circular glasses.

“Yes, we're playing scrabble. It’s the only two-person game I own,” you said sitting down.

You played scrabble and ate pizza together and finished off the bottle of wine Wonwoo had brought. You were now sitting still at the kitchen table but you had switched to taking shots of tequila and playing never have I ever. You told Wonwoo that you were boring so this wasn’t going to get you super drunk.

You tossed back your first shot and suddenly regretted even agreeing to play this stupid game. As the golden liquor slid down your throat. Tequila has never been your friend. Especially when it came to drinking games.

“Never have I ever gone streaking,” you said with a pointed look hoping that Wonwoo was going to have to drink. You’ve heard college stories from both Wonwoo and Mingyu and you knew the both got a little wild back in the day.

He gave her smirk and took a shot. Shaking his head, he said, “never have I ever had sex with a teacher.”

With a heavy sigh you grabbed the shot glass and quickly took the hard liquor. “First of all, I need to explain, he wasn’t my teacher. It was the stupid hot history teacher at the school I work with, we dated for a little while.”

“Damn that’s scandalous,” he smirked, causing your cheeks to burn.

“Never have I ever had sex in public,” you stare at a little shocked he took a drink.

“Never have I ever had sex in my room-mate’s room,” he said, hoping in college you had sex in your roommate's room.

You shook your head letting him know you were going to be drinking to that. With a raised eyebrow you said, “never have I ever had a body shot taken off me.”

He tossed back another shot and then looked at you extremely confused, “why has no man ever been smart enough to lick alcohol off you?”

You shrugged your shoulders, “probably has something to do with the fact I’m not a small girl.”

“Fuck that you’re beautiful and I say we change that right now,” he stood up quickly and became extremely aware of the fact that he was pretty drunk. He’s never gotten this drunk hanging out with you.

“Are you being serious?” You asked, confused.

He nodded his head and handed you a shot glass, “drink up doll, because I’m about to lick your skin.” Your cheeks burned even more as you clinked the shot glass with the one Wonwoo was holding. You stood by the table staring at each other for a moment before Wonwoo walked away and walked over to the fridge to pull out a lime. He quickly cut it up into a few pieces and grabbed the salt bottle off the counter. You stood in front of the kitchen table like actually in shock this was happening.

“Wonwoo, showing off my body makes me uncomfortable,” you said, reaching out and resting your hand on his chest and you swayed a little bit at the feeling of the mixture of wine and tequila flowing through your system.

Leaning forward he put his lips to your ear and whispered, “you’re beautiful and let me show you that.”

A shiver went down your spine as you nodded your head silently. She moved back and bumped the kitchen table. Wonwoo reached down and pushed your dress up over your hips. Helping you jump onto the kitchen table. You were suddenly extremely happy that you wore a cute pair of cheek underwear to work today. Laying back on the table, you sat back on your elbows as Wonwoo pushed your dress up further.

“May I,” he asked, holding the lime close to your breast.

Silently you nod as he dragged the lime up your chest towards your neck, wetting the skin. He then reached over and coated it lightly with salt. Holding the lime up to your lips you slowly opened your mouth holding the lime for him. He gave you one last smile before he poured the golden tequila into your belly button. You held her breath as his lips kissed your skin drinking the liquid. You felt yourself becoming turned on as he dragged his tongue across your chest removing the salt. Without a word his lips brushed your as he took the lime from your mouth. You stared at him completely breathlessly, you weren’t sure if anything in your life had ever aroused you more than what Wonwoo had just done to you. Pushing your thighs together you attempted to remove some of the tension.

He pulled the lime from his own and sat it down on the table as stared at you biting his bottom lip. You couldn’t even bring yourself to speak, because you were pretty sure the only thing that was going to come out of your mouth would be a moan.

“Did you like that YN?” he asked, smirking.

With wide eyes you silently nodded.

“Did you want to take one off me?” he asked, knowing it was only fair.

You nodded your head again and slowly sat up. Wonwoo helped you off the table and removed his shirt before jumping onto the kitchen table. Turning to the counter you grabbed a wedge of lime and dragged it across his extremely toned stomach. You poured salt across the trail of lime, and then brought the lime to Wonwoo’s lips and he bit down with his eyes locked on yours. Silently you poured the liquor into his belly button. You glanced at him for approval and he gave you a nod. Licking the liquid from his skin you took a breath before you dragged your tongue across his abs, before your lips moved up to his mouth to take the lime. Stepping away slowly you bit the lime for a moment before sitting it on the table. Wonwoo sat on the edge of the table staring at you with lust filled eyes. Suddenly it became very clear that he might have made a mistake when he said you should take body shots. Because his brain was fogged with lust as he stared at you.

“Was that fun?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you said softly, standing in front of him.

Without a word he jumped off the table and crashed his lips into yours. You were caught off guard for a moment but it didn’t take long before your lips moved against his. His hands gripped your soft hips pulling you closer to him. Your hands wrapped around his neck holding on to.

His lips moved from your mouth and started kissing his way down your neck. You couldn’t help but moan as he nipped at your neck. Pulling away he looked at you with lust blown eyes, your bottom lip was captured between your teeth. You stared at each other knowing that what was about to happen could change everything.

“What do you want to happen right now?” he asked with his hands still gripping your hips.

“I don’t ever do this, but I just want you,” you sighed, feeling drunk on lust. There has been a part of you that has had a lingering crush on Wonwoo since you met him. There was something about a kind of nerdy guy who wears glasses with a black cat personality.

“Okay baby girl, I will give you anything you want,” he whispered into your ears. Him calling you baby was enough to make you wet right there on the spot.

He turned you around so you were leaning against the table. Looking over your shoulder you watched as he dropped down to his knees and hooked his fingers into the elastic on your undies, slowly he slid them down your thighs. He quickly unbuckled his pants and reached into his pocket. He pulled out his wallet and grabbed the single condom. He sat it down on the kitchen table and then quickly undid his pants the rest of the way and pushed them down his thighs. As his pants hit the floor, he reached for the foil pack and tore it open with his teeth. He rolled the rubbed down his length. Your hands braced the table anticipating what was about to happen.

“Can we remove the dress?” he asked with his lips pressed to the back of your neck.

You nod your head quickly. If there wasn’t quite a bit of alcohol going through your system, you probably would have said no because of how self-conscious you are. He reached for the zipper that ran down your spine, he reached up and gently pushed the strapped of your dress down your shoulders and the fabric fell to the ground.

“What about this?” he asked with his fingers running under the straps of your bra. Silently you nodded your head once again. He unclasped your bra and you helped push it off. You stood there completely naked as he kissed down your spine. He reached around the front of you and dipped his fingers into your wet folds as he kissed the back of your neck. You couldn’t help the light moan that passed your lips as he gently stroked your sensitive nub. “Are you ready?” he asked with his lips brushing your ear.

Silently you nod anticipating what’s to come. He slowly pushed inside you. A low gasp passed her lips at the stretching feeling. You hadn’t had sex in about two years and you were going to have to get used to the feeling all over again. The slight pain you felt probably had to do with the fact that Wonwoo was quite a bit bigger than any other guys you had slept with. As he bottomed out his hands gripped your hips and you leaned forward on the table resting your elbows on the white wood and moaned.

“Are you good?” he rasped knowing you probably needed a minute. His hand gently ran up and down your sides giving you time to adjust.

“Yeah,” you said, speaking for the first time in a while. You weren’t sure if you could form proper words for a moment there.

He started his pace pretty slowly giving you time to get used to him, but as you arched your back and moaned he picked up his pace. Leaning back up you stood there with your hands pressed to the white hardwood table moaning as he thrust into you at a quick pace. One of his hands moved from your hips and reached around to massage one of your breasts. Gasping as he rolled your taut nipple between his fingers as he continued to thrust quickly.

“Wonwoo,” you moaned. “I’m close.”

He leaned forward and left a trail of wet kisses up your spine, and with his lips ghosting you skin whispered, “cum for me then baby.”

Your eyes about rolled in the back of your head as the coil in your stomach grew even more taunt. “Harder,” was about the only thing she could even think to moan.

“Come on baby,” he gripped both of your hips and continued to thrust into you even harder.

A loud gasp falls from your lips as your high crashes over you. Instantly falling to your elbows as Wonwoo continued to pound into you. He only got a few sloppy thrusted in before his own release. Slumping forward he rested his body against your back as he fought to catch his breath.

“Wonwoo,” you paused trying to catch her breath. “I need to sit my legs feel like they’re about to give out.”

He let out a soft laugh and pulled away from you and sat down in the chair by the table. You took a deep breath and sat in the chair that you had been originally sitting in. You were both completely naked as you just stared at each other trying to take in everything that had just happened.

“I’m gonna be sore tomorrow,” you said with a little laugh, knowing that you were most likely gonna be hungover and sore from the rough sex you just had.

“I’m rarely that rough with someone the first time,” he ran his fingers through his hair, surprised at how rough he had gotten. “Was I too rough?” he was suddenly concerned he hurt you.

“I’m fine,” you ran her fingers across your face and looked up at Wonwoo who was still staring at you with a concerned look. “Wonwoo, believe me you weren’t too rough. I’m not the type that normally likes rough sex, but damn that was pretty hot. I’m also not the type that casually sits around naked,” you said as you reached down for your sundress that was on the floor.

“I feel like I should let you know, I didn’t have sex with you just because I’m drunk. I actually think your beautiful,” he reached out and placed his hand on your bare thigh.

“Thank you, Wonwoo,” you smiled. You stood up and pulled your sundress without bothering to put your bra on. You walked over to the fridge still wobbly from the mixture of all the alcohol and the intense orgasm that Wonwoo had just given you. You pulled out a bottle of water and started chugging it and stared at Wonwoo who was still sitting at the kitchen table completely naked.

“I think this puts a whole knew meaning to wine Fridays,” he said with a little laugh.

You shook your head and suddenly felt awkward about the fact that the one-time Mingyu goes away, you and Wonwoo had sex on your kitchen table.

“Should we blame body shots for all that?”

He nodded his head, “yeah I mean body shots gave me a reason to basically get you naked.”

“I can already feel my hangover coming,” you sighed sitting back down at the kitchen table.

“Yeah let’s never mix tequila and wine again,” he leaned forward and gently pressed his lips to yours. It was a nice change after how rough he had just been.

“Did you want to cuddle on the couch and watch your anime you like?” You asked.

“Yeah maybe I should put boxers on,” he said reaching onto the floor to find his boxers.

You both got comfortable on the couch and curled up together. As you laid there for a while you finally said, “Mingyu missed a crazy wine Friday.”

Wonwoo couldn’t help the wave of guilt that washed over him. He had just slept with the girl that Mingyu had told him he like. He knew Mingyu said it was just a crush but suddenly he felt terrible, and knew that when Mingyu came home, he was going to have to tell his best friend about what had happened.

“Even though I can already feel the hangover coming on, I had fun Wonwoo,” you glanced up at him.

“Me too (Y/N),” even though he knew he might of fucked up with Mingyu he couldn’t lie he was glad he spent his Friday with you.

THREE: SOMETHING NEW

After the events that had unfolded with you and Wonwoo, you hadn’t seen each other. There really hadn’t been time for you to be able to talk about what had happened that Friday night. You had to go see your mother for a family birthday party and Wonwoo had some work stuff of his own to take care of.

Sunday rolled around and Wonwoo was eating lunch at the kitchen table when Mingyu walked in. The moment his warm eyes locked onto Mingyu he was suddenly filled with a sense of guilt for sleeping with the girl Mingyu had a crush on.

Mingyu sat his suitcase down and walked over and sat down across from Wonwoo. Mingyu could instantly tell something was wrong by the look on his face. “What’s up Wonwoo?” Mingyu was curious to know what was going on.

“I’m a terrible friend,” he sighed as he sat his fork down.

Mingyu tilted his head slightly to the side and looked at Wonwoo confused on what he could possibly be talking about. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I slept with the girl you have a crush on,” he sighed pushing his fingers through his dark locks.

Mingyu let out a light sigh and closed his eyes, processing what Wonwoo had just said to him, “you slept with (y/n).” It wasn’t a question by any means it was a statement. Mingyu wanted to be mad at him, because he had literally just told him about his crush on you. But he knew he didn’t have a right to be mad. He didn’t have claims on you or anything, he had no right to get between you and Wonwoo.

“Yeah, we got drunk, and it just kind of happened. We just had a fun time, and if you don’t want me to hook up with her again I won’t.”

Mingyu shook his head and let out a sigh, “Wonwoo I’m in no place to even try to be involved with anyone, so don’t let me get in the way.” Mingyu is so busy with his tech company he works for he barely has time to attempt and a relationship with how much he travels for work.

Wonwoo stared at Mingyu attempting to read his expression. He had known Mingyu basically all his life and normally he could tell what he was actually thinking by his expression. But at the moment Mingyu just kind of seemed indifferent or emotionless to the situation.

“Are you sure?”

Mingyu nodded his head, “yeah go for it, Wonwoo.”

The two of them talked about Mingyu’s trip for a little while catching up before Wonwoo knew he needed to have a serious talk with you. Walking next door he knocked on the door wondering if you were home. As he thought about it, he wondered if maybe he should have texted and asked if you were free. As he reached into his pocket for his phone to text you, he looked up at the sound of the door opening.

“Hey Wonwoo, what’s up?” You asked, leaning against the door frame.

He couldn’t help but let his warm eyes travel up and down your body. You were once again barefoot and wearing a cream-colored sundress that hit about an inch above your knees.

“Do you have time to talk?” he asked.

You nodded and stepped inside signaling for him to follow. You walked over and sat down on the couch that was in front of a large window. Wonwoo sat next to you and stared silently for a moment. You could tell he seems like he’s trying to figure out what to say.

“So…” he said awkwardly. “Friday was kind of wild…”

Your stomach dropped, wondering if Wonwoo may have regretted what had unfolded between you. You couldn’t help but wonder if it was suddenly a mistake. You were never someone who just casually had sex with someone. You had always waited to be in a relationship with someone before having sex with them.

“Wonwoo, we can forget it if you want,” you said awkwardly.

His eyes went wide and he shook his head, “um, (YN) I don’t want to forget that happened.”

You had a confused look on your face as you stared at him, “wait what did you want to talk about then?”

He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly wondering how he could possibly ask this next question without offending you. “I was wondering if you wanted to hook up more often?”

You couldn’t help but smile a little as you thought about the idea of you and Wonwoo having sex more often. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

“Like we could sleep together more often. I know we're both really busy, and you’ve mentioned that relationships aren’t really convenient for you right now, and I’m not exactly good at the whole relationship thing. But I personally think we have a good connection, and the sex was fun even with us both being drunk.”

You reached over and placed your hand on his thigh and asked, “so you want to be friends with benefits?”

He shrugged his shoulders, “I mean I guess yeah. Like we can hang out and have sex and stuff.” He couldn’t lie he had never once in his life had a friend with benefits relationship, but for some reason his mind was telling him that it was a good idea.

“I mean, I haven’t had sex in like two years before Friday. It would probably be nice to have a way to relieve sexual tension and relax. You’re also nice to look at,” you said, causing Wonwoo to let out a laugh.

He leaned back on the couch, getting more comfortable. “So do we have rules?”

You hadn’t even thought about the fact that you might need to lay down some rules. You stared at him for a moment before saying, “as long as we’re doing this, I would like it if you didn’t sleep with anyone just out of respect for me.”

He nodded his head. He hadn’t even thought about sleeping with anyone else while they were doing this. “Anything else?” he asked.

You nodded your head, “I’m on birth control but I still want to use a condom every time. The last thing we need is for you to knock me up.” He nodded his head knowing that was a smart decision. You didn’t need the possibility of you accidentally bringing a kid into the picture.

“Oh, and just so you know I’m clean, I got tested last month, and I haven’t slept with anyone since then,” he said.

“I’m clean too.”

You smiled and stuck your hand out and he reached forward and shook your hand. He tugged on your arm and pulled you forward so fell towards him. He placed his hand on each side of your face and brought his lips to yours slowly. The kiss was slow and passionate, you placed your hands on his chest firmly as your lips moved together. Pulling away from you slowly he tugged on your bottom lip and you let out a soft moan.

Your eyes were locked on each other for a long moment, before you stood up and took his hand on your and stood up. You led him down the short hallway to your room. The second you were in your room he stood behind you and dragged the zipper on the back of your dress slowly. The cream-colored dress was in a pool at your feet. Without a second a thought his fingers unclipped your bra and it fell to the floor landing in the cream-colored pool. Turning around you faced him bare chested and reached for the bottom of his shirt signaling for him to take his shirt off. He rid himself of his shirt. You reached for his belt making quick work of removing it. Neither of you could seem to get your clothes off fast enough. Your focus was then on unbuttoning his pants. He pushed his pants off as you slid your panties down your thighs. Walking over you lay on your queen-sized bed. He got rid of his boxers and socks, and followed you to the bed.

“I wanted to taste you, baby,” he said, breaking the silence that had formed between you.

Silently you spread your legs as you laid back. You watched with hungry eyes as he crawled onto the bed. He started placing kisses on your knees and then worked his way to the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. He placed a wet kiss on the top of your mound before dragging his tongue up your slit slowly. The moment his tongue lapped at your bundle of nerves you instantly let out a moan at the sensation. He rubbed index finger up and down your entrance, as he gently licked your sensitive clit. As his fingers slowly started pumping in and out of you, you tangled your fingers in his hair as you moaned. Each drag of his slender fingers earned a gasp.

It didn’t take much before you hit your high and your inner walls were clenching his fingers. Pulling away from you he licked his fingers and smirked as your chest was heaving as you came from your high.

“(YN), where do you keep your condoms?” he asked as he reached down and slowly pumped his hard length. The sight of you still coming down from the orgasm he gave you was turning him on even more.

“Top draw of the night stand,” you panted, closing your eyes.

He walked over and grabbed the box of condoms that you had in the top drawer and sat them on top of the night stand. Grabbing a foil packet he tore it open with his teeth, and slid the rubber down his length. Crawling back on to the bed he slowly spread your legs again. He hovered over you and pressed his lips to your for a heated kiss as he slowly slid into you. You gasped as he bottomed out and reached up to hold onto his back. Your back arched off the bed as he slowly thrust into you.

“I’m going to be gentler this time, and take care of you,” he said with his lips ghosting the skin of your neck. “I got you baby,” he rolled his hips into yours over and over again at a deliciously slow pace.

You lifted your hips to try and match his thrust as his lips moved across your skin, kissing wherever he possibly could. His lips moved down to your breast and he sucked gently on your taut nipples. With every thrust you couldn’t help but let out breathless gasp. Your fingers clawed at his back wanting him closer. He placed open mouth kisses wherever his lips could touch. The sounds you were making were driving him wild. The echoing sounds of your moans and whimpers, with the sounds of slapping skin was erotic.

“Wonwoo, I'm close,” you whined desperately.

“Baby come for me,” he moved his lips up to your ear and whispered. “Just let go baby,” his breath alone against your ear sent you over the edge. Your walls pulled on his length, and Wonwoo got a few more thrust in before he hit his high.

He came moaning your name and collapsed on top of you. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to yours for a soft kiss before he rolled off of you.

You laid there silently as you both rode out your highs. Wonwoo leaned over and pulled your soft body against his to cuddle.

“I could get used to this,” you sighed.

FOUR: DYING OF EMBARRASSMENT

It was the first Wine Friday since Wonwoo and you had started sleeping together and Mingyu couldn’t lie, he wasn’t exactly excited to be hanging out as a group. He kind of hated the fact that he knew you and Wonwoo were having sex. Mingyu had ordered Thai food from a place up the street and you were all sitting at the kitchen table discussing your work week. You and Wonwoo weren’t acting like you were a couple or anything so Mingyu was pretty happy about that. He also was happy about the fact you hadn’t had sex in Wonwoo’s room yet. Whenever you would hook up, Wonwoo would go over to your place.

The group was finishing up a bottle of wine when you started to play scrabble together. Mingyu was happy that everything between the group hadn’t seemed to change at all. Wonwoo and you never talked about what was going on between you, and Mingyu didn’t ask any questions.

As it was getting pretty late Mingyu told you guys he was going to head to bed because he was tired. He left you alone in the kitchen as you finished off what was left of the wine.

“Did you want to spend the night?” he asked knowing that you actually hadn’t had a sleep over yet, and you hadn’t had sex at his place.

You pushed a piece of your hair behind your ear and asked, “is that allowed?”

He shrugged his shoulders, “why wouldn’t it be?”

You raised her hands and shrugged, “I don’t know we haven’t had sex here before, and we haven’t had a sleepover.”

“Well Mingyu doesn’t care, and I want to cuddle,” he smiled standing up.

“I don’t have pajamas or anything,” you sighed.

“Okay let’s run next door and get your toothbrush and a change of clothes for tomorrow because you’re sleeping naked tonight,” he smirked.

You rolled your eyes and shook your head, “I need to bring something in case I have to get up.”

“Fine, whatever you say.”

You walked over to your place and you packed a little tote with something to wear tomorrow, an oversized shirt, and small sleep shorts, and your toothbrush. Once back at Wonwoo’s you brushed your teeth in the bathroom that was across the hall from Wonwoo’s room and was in your pajamas that Wonwoo told you he was going to take off you the second you were in his bedroom.

He kept his promise and the second you were in his room he quickly removed your clothes, and had you lying on your stomach on his bed. He laid naked on the bed next to you and placed kisses up and down your spine. He gripped your hips and laid on top of you slowly thrusting into you. You couldn’t help but moan as he gently bit the bare skin on your shoulder. Without a word he got off of you and rolled on to his back and told you to ride him. His hands gripped your soft hips as you slowly sank down on to his length. He sat up and massaged your breast as you continued to slide up and his length picked up the pace lightly. You couldn’t up but moan his name as he reached between you with one hand and rubbed your clit as you continued to ride him.

“Wonwoo,” you moaned.

Out in the hallway Mingyu had made the mistake to get up to use the restroom when it was obvious that his roommate was having sex with his crush. Mingyu let out a light sigh as he walked into the bathroom. His body seemed to be responding to the sounds of your moans. He walked over to the sink and splashed cold water on his face trying to calm down. He walked back into his bedroom trying to avoid hearing you have sex.

He laid in his bed for about twenty minutes before he got up to get something to drink. Walking back into the kitchen, he found you bent over wearing tiny shorts that didn’t even fully cover your ass. He couldn’t help but groan at the sight. You stood up quickly and awkwardly found Mingyu standing in the dimly lit kitchen wearing only his boxer-briefs. You couldn’t help but let your eyes wander across his extremely fit body.

“Hey (y/n),” he said, giving you an awkward wave.

“Hey Mingyu,” you awkwardly waved back. “Do you mind that I’m staying over?” You asked, wondering if he wanted you to go home.

“You can stay over,” he said as he watched you slowly tug on the bottom of your tiny sleep short. He couldn’t help it when his eyes wandered across your soft body. He knew he probably shouldn’t think about you naked, but he suddenly wanted to know how you looked underneath your shorts that were leaving little to the imagination.

You bit your bottom lip and tugged on the bottom of your sleep shorts again, your eyes wandered down to Mingyu's small boxer-brief and noticed that his bulge had grown quite a bit. Suddenly your cheeks burned when you realized that you were barely wearing any clothes in his kitchen and now he had an erection.

His eyes went wide when he looked down, and suddenly he wanted to die. He couldn’t help that not even ten minutes he had heard you and Wonwoo going at it and now you were standing in front of him wearing basically only underwear and a shirt. He couldn’t control that his brain was automatically turned on by all this.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he said, sighed, moving his hands down to cover it.

“Hey it’s not a big deal,” that was a total lie because from the bulge in his boxer-briefs it looked like Mingyu was quite big.

You hated that suddenly you were thinking about seeing what was inside of his tight boxer-briefs. You ran your hands down your face not even sure what was going to happen now.

“I kind of want to die of embarrassment now,” he sighed.

“It’s fine, if you want, we can totally act like this never happened,” you gave him a soft smile knowing that he would probably prefer to act like this never happened.

“Yeah that would be great,” he sighed. “Well not that this isn’t a great time, but I came in here to get some water.

You gave him a smile and reached into the fridge to get a bottle of water. You held it out and Mingyu walked towards you. His hand touched yours and your eyes locked onto each other. There was suddenly even more tension between you. You both still held onto the water as Mingyu stepped closer. There was about a foot between you and your eyes hadn’t moved from each other’s. Both of them were silent, not even exactly sure what they should say. You looked up at him suddenly wanting to kiss him, and those thoughts made you feel like a terrible person. Not even fifteen minutes ago Wonwoo was literally inside you, and now you’re in the kitchen with Mingyu wanting to kiss him.

With his hand that wasn’t holding the water bottle he reached up and gently brushed some of your hair behind your ear. It was taking everything in him not to kiss you right then and there. He couldn’t do that though. He gave Wonwoo permission to be with you. He had no right to want to kiss you.

“Mingyu,” you whispered as you leaned forward slightly.

There wasn’t much space between you as he leaned forward and rested his forehead against yours. He took a deep breath wanting to say that you needed to stop, but at the moment he was at a loss for words.

“I should go back to bed,” you said softly as you pulled away from him.

He nodded his head and stepped back, “yeah let’s forget this ever happened.”

You nodded your head.

You both quickly left the kitchen and you slipped back into Wonwoo’s room. He was laying on his bed looking at his phone. He put his phone down and gave you her a smile and she suddenly felt guilty. Crawling back into bed, you laid on your side looking over at Wonwoo. You knew that you needed to tell him what just happened.

“I almost just kissed Mingyu,” you confessed.

He knit his eyebrows together and looked at you extremely confused, “what happened?” He couldn’t really be mad but he was just kind of confused about what had happened.

You rubbed your face feeling suddenly even more terrible, “I don’t even know, we just got close and almost kissed.”

He couldn’t help but feel guilty that he might have gotten in between you and Mingyu. Wonwoo noticed that there was some chemistry between Mingyu and you. He knew deep down inside he couldn’t be mad.

“Do you want to sleep with him?” he asked, knowing that you could slap him for asking her that.

You knit your eyebrows together and stared at him for a moment. You never even thought about the possibility of sleeping with Mingyu. Sure, you’re attracted to him, but you didn’t think about having sex with him. After seeing him only in his boxers though your mind did wonder what he would look like naked.

“I don’t know,” you said softly, feeling embarrassed.

“So, there’s tension between you two maybe you should have sex.” He couldn’t believe he was asking you to have sex with Mingyu. Part of him thought it might ease some of his guilty conscience about hooking up with you when Mingyu liked you first.

“Would you be okay with that?” You asked, reaching over and resting your hand on top of his.

He nodded his head knowing that he couldn’t be selfish, “yeah I can talk to Mingyu about it tomorrow.”

You couldn’t help the butterflies that seemed to form in your stomach. You couldn’t believe that Wonwoo had just offered for you to have sex with Mingyu, and that you actually agreed with it.

FIVE: YOU MAKE ME FEEL GOOD

You stood in the shower together with Wonwoo’s hands wondering your naked body as his lips moved down your neck with open mouth kisses. You couldn’t help but moan as he nipped at the sensitive skin.

You pump his length as he kisses his way across your skin.

“Fuck-“ he moans. His moans egg you on. You continue stroking him until he cums painting your stomach. “You’re so good at that,” he sighs.

“Thank you.”

“Let me make you feel good.” He presses his body to yours as he kisses you. You’re in the mix of a heated makeout session as he moved his fingers down to your core and his fingers started doing lazy figure eights as his lips were still on your wet skin. He removed his fingers from your core and gripped your hips walking you back towards the shower wall.

His strong hand reached down to lift your leg, and squealed a little as you felt your foot slip and seconds later, his hand lost its grip on your thigh and you slipped and landed on your ass. Before Wonwoo could lose his own footing, he managed to catch himself. He looked down at you with wide eyes worried you hurt yourself falling. “(YN) are you okay?” he asked.

You groaned lowly and nodded.

“I’m so sorry,” he reached down and helped you stand up.

Rubbing your ass, you looked over at him and shook your head, “what happened to, I promise I won’t let you fall?”

“I think there was soap on the floor,” he looked down trying to see why you slipped. “I’m so sorry (YN), I promised I wouldn’t let that happen.”

You let out a soft laugh knowing that Wonwoo didn’t mean to drop you, “I guess it’s my fault because I washed my hair first.”

“I can massage your butt and kiss it to make it feel better,” he smirked.

Her eyes narrowed on him, “you aren’t touching my ass anytime soon after this.”

“I’m really sorry baby,” he leaned forward and pressed his lips to your cheek.

“I think it’s safe to say we aren’t having sex in the shower.” He nodded his head knowing you were in no mood for shower sex after falling.

You got out of the shower and were still in the bathroom drying off when Wonwoo brought up the idea of him talking to Mingyu.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” You asked, unsure if Wonwoo was actually fully okay with this.

He nodded and said, “yeah I think this is a good idea.”

“Alright if you’re okay with it, I’m okay with it happening.”

SIX: PURE BLISS

Sitting on his bed Mingyu stared at Wonwoo dumbfounded. He wasn’t sure if he heard Wonwoo properly. There was no way that he had brought up the idea of him having sex with you. He was fully expecting for Wonwoo to be upset about him almost kissing you. He never expected for him to be completely fine with it and offer for him to sleep with you.

He scratched his neck and stared at him, not even sure what he should say to him. This had to be some sick joke, there was no way you were was okay with this.

“Wonwoo you’re joking right?”

He shook his head, “no, I think it’s a good idea.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbow on his knee and sighed.

“Mingyu, you liked her before I started hooking up with her. She’s not my girlfriend, and she is obviously attracted to you.”

Wonwoo walked over and sat down on the bed next to him. He looked over at Mingyu and rested his hand on his shoulder, “she’s fine with this by the way. She’s not my girlfriend, and I kind of got in between what could have been between you guys.”

Mingyu’s eyebrows knit together, he couldn’t lie he had thought about what it would be like to have sex with you, but the idea of sleeping with you seemed so strange to him. Sure, he and Wonwoo had shared a lot of things over their friendship, but they had never shared a girl.

“Wonwoo you hang out with her all the time, and you guys are having sex all the time. Why isn’t she your girlfriend?” he asked him the question that Wonwoo had been asking himself quite a bit over this last week.

“We both know I make a terrible boyfriend, and I’m not great with commitment.”

Wonwoo knew that he wasn't good at being in a relationship. He figured that out back in college when he dated Yeri. She was an amazing girl who was sweet and beautiful, but for some reason commitment freaked Wonwoo out to no end. He broke up with her out of nowhere claiming he needed to spread his wings

“Wonwoo don’t you think this is a really bad idea?”

Wonwoo shook his head.

“Maybe we should all talk about this.” Mingyu said, trying to think logically about the whole situation.

“We can all talk about it. She’s home right now, we can walk over there right now.”

Mingyu nodded and stood up. He wasn’t going to be fully on board with this idea until he had a chance to see what you had to say about this situation. The whole time Mingyu had known you he didn’t know if he had heard her even bring up sex before. Every time Wonwoo would crack a joke about sex you would just get shy and stay silent.

They walked out of their apartment and headed next door to your apartment. Wonwoo knocked on the door and Mingyu stood back awkwardly. He couldn’t believe they were actually going to have this conversation. You answered the door and gave both the boys a big smile and led them into your kitchen, where you were making yourself a cup of coffee. Both the boys silently sat at the table and watched as you moved around the kitchen. You were once again wearing a sundress like you normally did during the warm weather. Wonwoo loved seeing you like this, he thought you looked so beautiful.

Sitting down at the table you looked at both the boys and smiled, “so what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Wonwoo leaned back in the chair and smiled, “Mingyu and I talked about the possibility of him sleeping with you, and he’s unsure about it.”

You couldn’t help but wonder if you made a mistake letting Wonwoo know you were interested in sleeping with Mingyu. The fact that he was unsure about it, suddenly gave you the feeling that he plans on rejecting you.

Your face had fallen a little and Mingyu automatically noticed. “(YN), are sure you’re okay with this? I mean I think you’re beautiful, and everything,” he started to ramble on stumbling over his words. “Are you really sure you’re okay with this?” he needed to hear you say that you were one-hundred percent on board with this.

You nodded and couldn’t help but smile as Mingyu was nervously rambling, “I’m okay with this. I was never the type of girl who had sex with someone unless I was in a relationship, but with you guys things are different. I really trust both of you.”

Wonwoo reached over and patted Mingyu on the back, “see Mingyu, she’s good with it. (YN) you have to promise us, if at any point you want to stop any of this, you’ll tell us. You don’t have to worry about hurting our feelings.”

Mingyu nodded along with Wonwoo, “he’s right, anything that happens here, is completely up to you.”

You smiled feeling way better about the situation. “You guys need to promise me that if we do this, this isn’t going to ruin your friendship. I can’t be what comes between the two of you.” They both nodded in agreement. “Also, like jealousy can’t be a thing here,” you said.

“It won’t be an issue,” Wonwoo agreed.

“Also, we need to make sure we always use condoms because I’m for sure as hell not going to have a pregnancy scare and then have to worry about who the father is.” They both nodded knowing that could be really bad for all them. “So, when does this whole thing start?” You asked.

“Well why don’t you two spend some quality time together now?” Wonwoo asked.

Mingyu shrugged, still feeling pretty awkward about the whole situation. You looked over at Mingyu and gave him a smile, “right now works.”

Wonwoo stood up and walked over to where you were sitting. He leaned down and gave you a quick kiss, and made his way out of the apartment. He knew it was going to be awhile before you actually hooked up but he wanted to give you both some privacy.

You sat at the kitchen table for a few moments making small talk while you worked on drinking your coffee. As you drank the last sip you stood up and walked over to Mingyu and reached your hand out. He laced his fingers with yours and you led him down the hallway to your room. You were suddenly feeling extremely nervous about this whole situation. You told yourself that this experience was a chance to really work on feeling self confident and was a chance to explore more of your sexual side.

Walking into your room you shut the door behind Mingyu and stood there staring at him silently wondering how this was even going to start. Never in your life had you made plans to sleep with someone you weren't actually dating. Things with Wonwoo naturally happened. You didn’t make a plan to have sex before you did.

“Maybe we should kiss,” you said softly, trying to soften him up. He nodded his head. Stepping forward you placed your hand on his cheek and leaned forward gently pressing your lips to his. Your first kiss was sweet but passionate. You placed your hands on his chest as both his hands reached up to hold your face. Your lips danced as his tongue slid along your bottom lips asking for permission.

Your hands were slightly shaky from nerves as you reached up to start unbuttoning his white dress shirt. He could feel your hands shaking and he slowly removed his lips from yours and looked into your eyes. “We can stop this if you want?” He needed this all to be on your terms.

Shaking your head, you softly sighed, “I’m not exactly comfortable in my own skin, and I normally don’t like people seeing me naked.”

A look of confusion crossed his face as he stared at you, “what do you mean? Wonwoo has seen you naked.”

You stepped away from him and wrapped your arms across your soft stomach, “the first time we had sex, I was drunk and didn’t have time to think about what was happening. I didn’t really have a chance to feel self-conscious.”

Reaching out he rested his hand under your chin and tilted your head up so you were looking right into his warm eyes, “hey (YN), I think you’re beautiful, and the other night in the kitchen I practically saw you naked. Since that awkward encounter I haven’t been able to stop picturing you naked. So don’t doubt yourself, I already know I’m going to like what I see.”

His sweet words caused a huge smile to form on your face. “Thank you, Mingyu,” you reached out for the buttons on his dress shirt again.

His eyes stayed locked on yours as your fingers seemed to steady as you made work of unbuttoning his shirt. The moment his shirt was fully unbuttoned you reached up and pushed it down his toned shoulders. You reached for his belt, he wanted to stop you and ask if he could take off your dress first, but he knew he needed to do things at your pace. You tugged his belt off and unbuttoned his jeans. Reaching down and pushed off his jeans and stood in front of you in nothing but his boxer-briefs.

Your lust filled eyes traveled across his extremely toned body. You were still in awe that you were sleeping with Wonwoo who looked like he was made by the gods and wasn’t real, and now you were going to sleep with Mingyu who looks the same just in a taller stature.

“Are you liking what you see?” he awkwardly asked with a little laugh.

Biting your bottom lip, you fought back a small smile.

“Can we possibly take off your sundress?” he asked knowing you might say no.

You nodded and turned around and pulled up your hair to give him access to the zipper. He reached up and slowly slid the zipper down. He gently reached up and pushed the straps off your shoulders causing the dress to fall to the ground at your feet. He slowly ran his finger down from the top of your neck down your spine to the top of the clasp on your bra. He paused and whispered, “can I take this off?”

Silently you nodded.

He unclasped your bra and removed it. He stepped in front of you and let his eyes travel down your soft body as you stood in front of him feeling very exposed. He reached down and started placing gentle kisses across your chest. His lips placed kisses on your taunted nipples and you closed your eyes enjoying the feeling of his lips on your skin. He reached down and hooked his fingers into your panties and pulled them down your thighs. As your panties hit the floor you looked up at him with wide eyes.

Stepping away from you he pushed down his boxers and he freed his growing erections. You bit your bottom lip wondering how bold you should be. If this was Wonwoo your hands would be all over him right now, but you were still nervous about being with Mingyu. You fully trusted him, but you didn’t know his body like you did Wonwoo’s. In the time you were with Wonwoo you had learned all about the things that make him tick. You know all the right places to touch that turn him on, and he knows the way to make you putty in his hands.

Slowly you stepped towards him and started touching his growing length. He closed his eyes tightly enjoying the feeling of your soft hands touching him. Your soft hand moved up and down his hardening length. He’s definitely thicker than Wonwoo.

“Can I touch you (YN)?” he asked, dying to know what you felt like.

You nodded as you continued to stroke his heavy length. He reached forward and rubbed his fingers up and down your folds feeling how wet you already were. Your eyes stayed locked on each other as you touched each other. Mingyu rubbed your sensitive bundle of nerves attempting to make you even wetter than you already were.

A loud moan passed your lips as you closed your eyes feeling the coil start to tighten in your stomach. You stepped away from Mingyu and removed your hand from his hard length, earning a whimper. He stared at you with wide eyes wondering what was going on.

“I need you, all of you,” you walked over to your nightstand and grabbed a foil packet and handed it to Mingyu before crawling the bed.

He tore the foil packet open and slid it down his length and looked at you as you laid on the middle of the bed waiting for him. It had been a while since the last time he had sex, so he was kind of worried he wasn’t going to last long. You spread your legs and he sat back on his hunches between your legs. He stared at you in awe of how pretty you were. He couldn’t believe that Wonwoo had gotten to experience the sight of seeing you like this quite a bit over the last week.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said lowly.

“You sure know the right things to say to a girl,” you smiled.

He slowly lined himself up with your entrance and pushed his way in, you gasped as he bottomed out and stilled with his strong hands gripping your soft hips. You moaned as he reached down to where they were connected and started to toy with your sensitive bundle of nerves. You moaned loudly and gripped the sheets, he hadn’t even moved yet and you were close to the edge.

“Mingyu, please move,” you whined, wanting to feel him more.

He smiled and leaned forward so he was hovering over you. With his lips next to your ear he whispered, “put your leg up.”

Silently you did as he asked and he slowly started to thrust into you. You reached up and held onto his back wanting him to be as close to you as possible as he thrust into you over and over. His lips were on yours for a sloppy kiss as you both moaned.

He was glad you were at your place so you both could be as loud as you wanted to without the fear of Wonwoo hearing you. With each thrust the pull of your tight walls was intoxicating. He moved at a slow steady pace. Each intent thrust earning a moan.

His pace started to pick up as your moans grew more frequent. The push and pull of his length against your velvety walls was hitting just the right spot inside you. Mingyu was slightly thicker than Wonwoo, but that didn’t stop him. He knew exactly what he was doing. He made you a whimpering mess without even trying.

“I’m close, so close,” you moaned.

“You take me so well,” he said breathlessly with his lips ghosting yours.

“Mingyu- you feel so good. I need - more.”

With one quick thrust he earns a high pitched moan.

“Good girl,” he crashes his lips into yours for a heated kiss.

“Can I come?” You whimper desperately.

His soft eyes lock on yours as his hips slowly roll his hips into yours. “You never have to ask.”

“Okay,” you moaned.

As you let go and as your walls pulled on his length, he only got about two more thrust before he hit his own high. He was still in you for a moment and kissed you as the both were riding out your highs. He slowly pulled away from you and laid on his back next to you on the bed. Reaching up you ran your hands down your face as you were trying to stop panting.

“Wow,” was all you could think to say. You and Wonwoo over the last week had quite a bit of sex, and Wonwoo was beyond amazing in bed. He always went out of his way to make sure you orgasmed before him, but something with Mingyu was different and you liked that. You couldn’t even figure out what it was, but you knew this arrangement with Mingyu was an amazing idea.

“So, is that what you and Wonwoo have been doing for the last week?” he asked, resting his hand on his chest slowly calming down.

Silently you nodded.

“Damn, I have been missing out,” he leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

As you laid there in silence for a few moments with both you coming down from your highs. He leaned over and pulled your soft body next to his so you were curled up next to him.

You knew that you needed to make more rules about this whole situation, but at the moment you just seemed to be caught up in everything. You also didn’t know if either of the boys had a clue about how any of this would work out. You weren't sure how long you were going to be able to keep your feelings out of this either. In the last week you and Wonwoo had grown even closer than they already were. And you knew that was going to happen with Mingyu. Part of you couldn’t help but slightly worried.

“You're amazing (YN),” Mingyu whispered, bringing you out of your thoughts.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to the top of your head. “I can’t believe I’m sleeping with both you and Wonwoo.”

“I can't believe we’re both sleeping with the same girl either, but (YN) you’re a special girl,” he said, causing you to smile.

SEVEN: WERE NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS

A few days have passed since you had slept with Mingyu. Work had kept you so busy you hadn’t been able to see either of the boys. You couldn’t say you were exactly surprised when someone knocked on the door and see Wonwoo standing on the other side smiling while he was cleaning his glasses. You step aside and he follows you towards your small kitchen area.

“What’s up Wonwoo?” You asked looking around in your kitchen for you wine opener.

“You look hot today?” His warm eyes traveled up and down your soft body. “What’s under that tight skirt?” he asked suggestively.

You put your hand on your hip and looked over at him shaking your head, “please tell me you didn’t come over to my place the moment I walked in the door from work, to have sex with me?” You had a really rough day at work and at the moment just wanted to drink a whole bottle of wine and relax. The thought of having sex did sound relaxing but at the moment you wanted more than sex. You needed someone to listen to you complain and vent a little. You needed a friend more than anything.

“I’m offended,” he put his hand on his chest dramatically. Rolling your eyes, you turned back to look for the wine opener. He couldn’t help but say, “your ass looks great in that skirt.”

Turning back, you looked at him and glared, “you aren’t allowed to touch my ass after letting me fall in the shower.”

“Hey, what happened to, it’s okay Wonwoo, it's not your fault. It was my shampoo on the ground?” he asked with a little laugh. You didn’t say anything, you just continued to glare at him. “I can kiss it all better, and massage it if you want,” he winked, stepping towards you. Silently you just continued to watch him, it was moments like this that reminded you that maybe Wonwoo was too charming for his own good. Reaching up he pushed your hair behind your ear that had fallen in your face. Your glare softened as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to your cheek for a soft kiss. “(YN), I’m very sorry about dropping you on your ass in the shower.”

You couldn’t help but smile as you looked at him, “you’re forgiven.”

“Thanks baby girl,” he leaned forwards smirking and pressed his lips to your for a heated kiss.

“Why did you come over?” You asked, pulling away from him.

He shrugged his shoulders as he ran his hand up and down your side, “Mingyu wants us all to hang together.”

Your cheeks flushed lightly at the mention of Mingyu’s name. You hadn’t had a chance to talk to him really after sleeping together. You wondered if he was still okay with this whole situation. So far you had only had sex once, and you wanted it to happen again, but you weren't sure how he felt about it.

“So, how was Gyu in bed?” he asked, curious to how things went down. He couldn’t lie he had thought about what it was like between you and Mingyu. After he left you alone his mind quickly wandered about what was happening between his friends.

“We’re not talking about this,” you stepped away from him.

“Why not?” he asked, walking towards you.

“Because I just don’t want to talk about it. Up until having sex with you I didn’t even like saying the word sex out loud, and I don’t want to compare the two of you with either of you.”

“You’re being just like Mingyu,” he said, annoyed.

You turned and looked at him and was once again glaring, “of course you asked Mingyu.”

“Hey I just asked him if it went okay, and all he said was yes and left the room.”

Rolling your eyes, you shook your head at Wonwoo. You didn’t want to discuss the differences between them. Both experiences were very different, but also really good in their own way.

“I don’t want to talk about what sex is like with Mingyu, with you,” you sighed, turning back to the wine bottle.

He stood behind you closely with his hips pressed up against your ass and ran his hands up and down your sides slowly. As you pour yourself a glass of wine you grind your hips back knowing that Wonwoo might have actually come over to talk. But his body wanted something else too. You were pretty sure your body was starting to want something else too.

Pulling away you turned around and leaned against the counter holding your wine glass. Wonwoo stood right in front of you staring at you intently. Silently he watched her as you drank your wine. You sat the glass on the counter and reached up and rested your hand on his beautiful cheek right below his glasses. He licked his lips intently as he stared at you with lust filled eyes.

You leaned up and pressed your lips to his neck as you started to kiss your way up to his jaw. Biting his lip, he held back a moan.

“Baby, I didn’t actually come over for sex,” he groaned trying his hardest to behave. It wasn’t a lie he actually came over to talk.

You pulled away and looked at him, “are you sure about that Wonwoo?”

Slowly he shook his head knowing that he would never pass up the opportunity to have sex with you. Reaching down you grabbed his hand and led him toward your bedroom. He didn’t say a single word as you led the way. The moment you were in your bedroom Wonwoo untucked your blouse and left you in your bra and tight skirt that hugged your ass perfectly. He dropped to his knees and stared at you enjoying the view of your soft body on display for him. Reaching behind you he dragged the zipper down on the tight skirt. Slowly he dragged the skirt down your thighs. His mouth watered at the sight of your red bra and matching cheeky lace panties.

“Please tell me you bought this just for me” he reached up and ran his hands down your thighs.

“I bought it recently. I wouldn’t say I bought it just for you,” you giggled lightly. You hadn’t had a man look at you with the same look of awe like Wonwoo was doing right in the moment. You couldn’t lie the way he was looking at you was turning you on quite a bit.

“Baby girl, say you bought for me,” he groaned before pressing his lips to your lace covered mound.

You moaned as he moved your panties to the side and started sliding his fingers up and down your entrance, “I bought it just for you.”

“All of this just for me,” he stared up at you with hooded eyes as slid a finger into your already wet core.

You held eye contact as he continued to pump his fingers into your core. Whiny moans we’re passing your lips letting him know you’re close.

“I want to be inside you, baby,” he groaned, removing his fingers from you. You gasp at him pulling out as you’re on the brink of falling apart.

He stood up quickly and started removing his clothes. You took this as your cue and removed your bra and panties and crawled onto the bed. Wonwoo quickly grabbed a condom and rolled it down his length.

Laying on your bed you spread your legs inviting him in. Crawling across the bed he settled between your legs and leaning forward his lips connected to yours for a searing kiss. His hips thrust into yours slowly as your lips continued to move together. Your hands gripped his back as their hips kept meeting with each thrust. His lips moved from your lips down the base of your neck leaving a trail of wet kisses. Gently he nipped at the skin where your neck met your shoulder.

Your hands moved from his tone back down to his butt, gripping his skin trying to keep him close to you. With each thrust the coil in your stomach tightens more and more.

“I like when you wear your glasses when we fuck,” you moaned.

“I need them to see you,” he laughs before thrusting harder.

You moaned his name and let him know you were growing close to the edge. With his brown eyes locked on you he told you to let go. Rolling your head back you moaned his name as you hit your high.

Gasping as you rode out your high Wonwoo thrust into her a few more times before hitting his own high. His lips connected to yours as you shared a sloppy kiss. Rolling off of your soft body he laid on his side staring at you as you stared at the ceiling completely blissed out.

Reaching over he laced his fingers with yours and gently squeezed your hand. Looking over at him you couldn’t help but smile at him.

“You’re so pretty,” you whispered, still attempting to catch your breath.

The smile that was plastered across his face grew even more, “I don’t think a girl has ever told me I was pretty before.”

“Well more people should tell you how pretty you are, Jeon Wonwoo,” you smiled.

“(Y/n) you’re so beautiful,” he squeezed your hand once again.

You laid in your bed for about a half hour when Wonwoo left to go back to his and Mingyu’s apartment so you could get ready without being distracted.

EIGHT - WHO ARE YOU SLEEPING WITH?

Sitting at the kitchen table Wonwoo was telling some random story about Mingyu getting wasted in college. Mingyu looked down at the table with blushing cheeks, you couldn’t help but let out a little laugh at Mingyu embarrassment. Reaching under the table you squeezed Mingyu’s thigh capturing his attention. Looking off to the side he saw you smirking at him.

You both looked over at Wonwoo who was still talking about pouring Mingyu into bed when he was black out drunk.

“I think we have all had those moments,” you said, making Mingyu feel better. “One time when I was black out drunk I smacked my ex boyfriend.”

“I bet he deserved it,” Mingyu said, speaking up.

“Oh yeah the guy was an asshole,” you let out a soft laugh.

“What is the game plan for tonight?” Wonwoo asked.

“We could always go down to the bar tonight. A couple of the teachers at my school are going to be the bar down on second street,” you said.

“I would be down with going to the bar,” Mingyu said, placing his hand on top of yours under the table.

Shrugging his shoulders, Wonwoo said, “I’m down.”

-

The three of you caught a cab and headed down to the bar on second street. You walked inside and found a couple of the teachers that you worked with at a table against the wall. You headed over to the table all her coworkers were at. Wonwoo and Mingyu walked over to the bar to get drinks. Wonwoo leaned against the bar and watched as you were laughing about something across the room.

“Gyu, I think we’re in trouble when it comes to (YN).”

Mingyu nodded knowing that his friend was right. He knew deep down inside this couldn’t just be a casual thing.

“I don’t think I have ever known a girl like her,” Mingyu said. You were something else, you’re pretty, funny, nice, and neither of the boys could seem to get over it.

They grabbed their drinks and walked over to where you were with all your coworkers. Mingyu handed you a cranberry and vodka and put his arm over your shoulder as you introduced the boys to your coworkers. The group were all talking and laughing. Mingyu stayed by your side for a while before Wonwoo and two of her male co workers Chan and Seungkwan dragged him off to play a game of pool.

It wasn’t long before Wonwoo dragged Mingyu away from you to join the game. You watched for a short period before leaving the boys to their game.

Walking over you sat down in the booth next to your coworker Honey who was one of your good friends you worked with. Honey sipped her drink and looked over at you wondering what was going on.

“So are you sleeping with Mingyu who can’t keep his hands off you or are you sleeping with Wonwoo who can’t seem to keep his eyes off you?”

You sipped your drink wondering how you could get out of answering this question. You could easily just say nothing is going on. The thing is, you and honey were pretty close and you didn’t want to lie to her.

“I’m sleeping with both of them,” you said softly, hoping nobody other than honey would hear you.

Honey’s eyes went wide and she smacked your thigh in shock, “no fucking way?”

“Yep,” you said before taking another sip of your drink.

“So do you guys like have threesomes all the time?” Honey asked dying to know the dirty details.

Shaking your head you couldn’t believe you were actually having this conversation, “no we don’t have threesomes, but I’m sleeping with both of them.”

“Damn girl that’s pretty hot.”

Looking over to the pool table you found Mingyu holding the pool stick and staring at you. You gave him a smirk before looking back at honey. “It’s something I never thought I would do.”

“So are you worried about falling in love with one of them?” Honey asked.

Slowly you nodded, “I’m terrified that’s going to happen, but for some reason I think this is a good idea.” Looking back across the room you found Wonwoo now staring at you. “Why don’t we go watch the boys play pool?”

Honey and you walked over to where the boys were playing pool. Wonwoo wrapped his arm over your shoulder and held you close to his body.

Biting your lips you looked up at him smiling, he leaned over and pressed his lips to your temple and whispered in your ear, “you look really good.”

Since this had started between you and Wonwoo never acted like a couple other than when you were alone. You couldn’t lie you were a fan of the affection he was giving you. Mingyu was the one who had no issue holding your hand or touching you while they were out.

He pulled away from you when it was his turn and you walked over to Mingyu who was a couple feet away. You elbowed him gently and he smiled at you.

As the night went on you all had a blast hanging out with your coworkers. Walking into your apartment building. The boys walked you to your door and they both kissed the top of your head and wished you goodnight before they headed to their apartment. They walked inside and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

“I’m shocked you didn’t go into her apartment with her,” Mingyu said before taking a drink of water.

“I slept with her today when I went and saw her, I assumed you were going to go home with her. I thought you two might have some stuff you want to talk about,” Wonwoo said.

Knitting his eyebrows together, Mingyu stared at his best friend, “Wonwoo, are you sure this is a good idea?”

Shrugging he said, “it might not be, but it might be worth the risk.”

Wonwoo smiled and patted his best friend on the shoulder, “I’m going to bed, why don’t you go see her?”

Mingyu stood in the kitchen for a moment wondering if he should just go to bed. Letting out a heavy sigh he walked out of his apartment and walked over next door. Hesitantly he knocked. He stood at the door with his hands shoved in his jeans pockets. The door opened and you stood in front of him with her hair pulled away from your face and wearing nothing more than an oversized shirt and a pair of panties. Capturing his lip between his teeth he stared at you for a long moment silently.

“Hey Mingyu,” your voice was soft.

You hadn’t really spent any one on one time since you had slept together. You were surprised when you opened the door and found Mingyu standing on the other side. When you heard the knock on the door you expected to find Wonwoo on the other side.

“Are you okay with this happening again?” Mingyu asked, stepping towards you.

Silently you nodded.

Without another word he leaned forward and pressed his lips to yours. His strong hand rested on your cheek as your lips moved together. His other hand rested on your soft hip and walked you backward slowly inside your apartment. Pulling away from you he reached down and laced his fingers with yours and led you towards the bedroom.

Standing in your room he pulled his shirt off. You stripped off your shirt and pulled off your panties. You stood naked in front of him watching as he worked on taking his jeans off.

Once you were both naked your lips connected again for a heated kiss. Mingyu only pulled away to grab a condom.

Laying on your back you spread your legs as he sat on his hunches. He pumped his length a few times before lining up with your entrance. His hands gripped your hips as he moved. His thrust were slow but deliberate. Your hands gripped the bed sheets as you moaned loudly. Leaning forward he palmed one of your breasts as his lips connected to you. Moaning into his mouth as his thrust grew sloppier.

There were many differences between Wonwoo and Mingyu. One of them being Mingyu effortlessly made you feel delicate. When Wonwoo was with you, he made you feel like he couldn’t get enough of you.

Mingyu’s soft lips moved against yours as his fingers glided across your delicate skin.

Slow thrust earned echoing moans. The tightening coil in your stomach had you desperate. “I’m close,” you moan, reaching between you. Desperately you started to touch your clit.

He pulled his lips away from you and stared into your eyes as the both you were panting as both your their highs were near.

It only took a few more thrust before you fell apart together. One hand gripped your blush colored sheets while the other tangled in his dark hair.

His forehead rests against yours slowly opening his eyes. Pulling away he couldn’t help but smile. Pulling away from you he quickly discarded his used condom.

As you both rode out your highs you laid curled up against him with your head rested on his chest as his strong hand stroked your side. Mingyu had a way of making you feel safe.

“Are you allowed to spend the night?” You didn’t want him to leave.

“I’m not sure exactly what the rules are here,” he leaned down and pressed his lips to the top of your head.

“Stay the night please, I want to cuddle,” you whispered looking up at him. You weren’t ready to say goodbye to him.

He nodded and smiled, “alright I’ll stay.”

NINE: THE SUNSETS IN YOUR EYES

-Four Months Later-

Mingyu was away for the weekend on a business trip and you had spent basically the whole day with Wonwoo. You went to your favorite diner that was down the street and got breakfast together and on the way back they picked up some coffee to take back to the apartment.

It was a calm summer afternoon as you were sitting in Wonwoo and Mingyu’s living room. Wonwoo was relaxing on the tan colored sofa that was sat across from the tv with his legs kicked up on the coffee table. You were laying down comfortably on the couch with your head resting on Wonwoo's lap. Your bright eyes were fixed on the tv that was playing the third episode in a row of How I Met Your Mother. Wonwoo was half paying attention to the TV while he was partially focused on twirling pieces of your hair around his fingers. You have been in this position since Wonwoo had turned on the first episode and you hadn’t really moved other than for you to take a quick trip to the bathroom.

“Do people actually like Ted Mosby?” Wonwoo asked, breaking the comfortable silence that had formed between you.

“I mean I personally don’t,” you say with a soft laugh. “I mean he’s kind of an asshole, and pretty selfish.”

“He’s really selfish,” he said.

“I mean lets be honest, why would you be with Ted when Marshall is there,” you said looking up at him.

“You’re right Marshall is pretty awesome,” he said before he leaned down and kissed your nose gently.

“Are you annoyed by me laying on you yet?” You asked rolling over so that you were laying on your back staring up at him.

Shaking his head he let out a soft chuckle, “no.”

“Mingyu is supposed to be home Thursday so we can finally have another wine Friday,” he said as twirled another piece of your hair around his finger again.

“Well you two might have to start wine Friday without me.” He knit his eyebrows confused by your comment. “It’s my sister’s birthday that day so I won’t be home until after nine,” you reached up and rested your hand on his cheek.

“You don’t talk about your family much,” he said, realizing that you were never the type of person to talk about yourself too often. “Can you tell me about them?” He asked.

“Well my parents got divorced when I was eleven and there’s not much to tell about my father. He made it clear when he left that he didn’t want much to do with my mom, my sister and I. My mom is a strong woman. She raised us as a single parent until I was about sixteen when she started dating my now step dad Jack. He’s a nice guy who always treated my sister and I really well. Chaewon is two years younger than me and Jack is really the only father figure she’s known.”

Reaching up he rested his hand on top of your, “is your sister anything like you?”

“My sister is way more confident than me, she’s also a spitfire according to my mother,” you said with a soft laugh. You tried to play it off as a joke, but you had some insecurities when it came to being compared to your little sister. You loved her sister dearly and would do anything for her, but you had grown up hearing you were cute, while everyone talked about how beautiful your sister was.

“(YN) what do you mean? You are confident as hell?” He asked.

You shook your head, “I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin, and that probably has to do with the fact that I have been compared to my sister almost all my life.”

“I would bet all the money in the world that your sister has nothing on you. You are one of the most beautiful people I have ever met inside and out, and I’m barely able to keep my hands off your beautiful body.”

Your cheeks burned and suddenly you felt like crying because of his kind words. You had never dated anyone who went out of their way to tell you how beautiful they thought you were. Other than Mingyu who would also reassure you that you’re beautiful.

“You haven’t met my sister,” you whispered.

“I don’t have to,” he leaned forward and pressed his lips to yours for a soft kiss.

It was at times like this you couldn’t understand how you got lucky enough to have both Mingyu and Wonwoo in her life. For some reason Wonwoo seemed to know just the right things to say to you, and how to push away all your insecurities. You rolled onto your side to look over at the TV that was playing another episode of How I Met Your Mother. Wonwoo rested his hand on your arm and gently started rubbing it as his eyes stayed trained on you. He wasn’t even paying a little bit of attention to what was on TV. Biting his bottom lip he couldn’t help the feeling in his chest as he watched you.

“Wonwoo thank you,” you whispered as your eyes brimmed with tears.

“For what?” He asked with his eyes still locked on the side of your head.

“For letting me know that I matter,” you whispered with a shaky voice.

“You’ve always mattered to me, and you’ll always matter to me no matter what.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the side of your head. This was the first time that he had seen you this vulnerable and he wanted you to realize how special you are to him.

You laid in the same spot for another episode, you tried to focus on the episode and shake away the feeling in your chest while Wonwoo couldn’t even tell you what was going on in the episode. His eyes barely left the girl who was still laying in his lap. Before you knew it both your stomachs were growling letting you know it was time to eat dinner.

Moving off of Wonwoo’s lap you sat next to him on the couch and looked over at him with a soft smile on your face, “I don’t know about you but I’m starving.”

Normally Wonwoo would have made a joke about being starving for you, but there was a shift between you after your conversation. “Are we thinking we should take out, or maybe we could go downtown and get dinner together?”

“Are you asking me on a date?” You joked.

He shrugged his shoulders, “would you actually go on a date with me?”

Your eyes were wide as you stared at him, “is that allowed?”

“Why not?”

A smile formed on your face, “I would like that.”

“Okay let’s go then,” he stood up and held his hand out.

Taking his hand you stood up, “should I change?”

Shaking his head he led her towards the door where their shoes were. You both put on your shoes and Wonwoo led you out of the apartment. You walked down the street as the sun was beginning to go down hand in hand. Wonwoo kept looking over at you and he couldn’t help but see how beautiful you looked during golden hour. You looked as if you were glowing, especially as you wore a smile on your face.

You walked about a mile before you stopped in front of a café that was across the street from a park that had a beautiful view of the sunset.

“How about we get some food to go and sit at the park?” He asked.

“That would be wonderful.”

You walked inside and ordered some sandwiches and salad and quickly headed across the street and found a park bench that was near the edge of a pond. You sat next to each other watching the sunset eating. Wonwoo couldn’t help but keep looking over at you as you seemed focused on the sunset.

“Nobody has ever taken me out on a sunset picnic before?”

“Something tells me you have been dating the wrong men,” he reached over and rested his hand on your thigh.

“Before I started this whole thing with you and Mingyu I didn’t exactly have men bang on my door to take me out let alone sleep with me.” You paused and looked over at Wonwoo, “I took a really big leap out of my comfort zone starting this whole thing with you guys. With me sex and feeling have always gone hand in hand, and honestly keeping my feelings out of this is hard.”

Wonwoo closed his eyes, shaking the feeling in his chest. He was afraid to speak, that if he opened his mouth he might say something that he probably shouldn’t say. “I know I was probably crazy to agree to start this whole thing with both you boys, but it’s done nothing but help my confidence.

Looking straight towards the sun that was setting he was fighting the urge to say something that he shouldn’t say to you, “I feel like I’m a different person when it comes to you.”

Glancing over at him you wondered exactly what he meant by that, “is that a good thing or bad thing?”

“It’s a good thing,” he smiled, staring at the sunset.

“Do you ever look back at things that have happened and wished you could change them?” You asked, still staring at him.

Looking at you he stared into your bright eyes, “all the goddamn time.” In that moment there were a lot of things he wished he could have done differently. He wished he would have acted on his attraction for you long ago. He wished that he could have kept his heart out of this, and he wished that he wouldn’t have let his best friend get involved in this. “What would you change?” He asked.

“I would have told myself long ago that I need to love myself, and probably would have kissed you long before our first solo wine night,” you said with a soft laugh.

You stayed at the park until the sun was fully set and walked back to the apartment building with Wonwoo’s arm thrown over your shoulder holding you close while your arm was wrapped around his waist. Everything between you felt so easy, and Wonwoo knew that was for a reason. As they got to your floor of both of your apartments you went to walk off to your apartment when Wonwoo reached down and grabbed your hand. “stay the night?”

A crooked smile formed on your face as you nodded. Wonwoo led you into his apartment and off towards his room. Once in his room you stood at the edge of the bed wondering if this was when he was going to work on seducing you. He never asked you to stay the night unless you planned on having sex. Wonwoo walked off to his dresser and pulled out your pajama shirt you had left in his room a few weeks ago. You reached out and grabbed it and watched as he removed his shirt and jeans. Once he was down to his boxers you waited for him to remove them but was surprised when he reached into his dresser and pulled out a pair of gray lounge pants and put them on. You stared at him, still completely dressed, almost confused.

He walked over and pressed his lips to your temple and said, “I need a cuddle buddy tonight.” He walked over and sat down on the bed.

You removed your sundress and bra and pulled on your sleep shirt Wonwoo had given you. In nothing but an oversized shirt and panties you crawled into bed next to Wonwoo. Laying on your side you looked over at him knowing that you felt something more for him then you should. You were in love with him and you were a fool for feeling that way.

Wonwoo laid down and reached over pulling you close to him. Your soft body curled up against him. With your head resting on his chest it didn’t take long before you were sound asleep. It took Wonwoo a little longer to fall asleep as he held you. He couldn’t help the sense of guilt he had as you laid in bed together.

TEN: I MISSED YOU

As the sun was rising Mingyu walked into the apartment. He peeked his head into Wonwoo’s rooming expecting to find the room empty, but was surprised when he found you lying in bed sound asleep fully dressed with Wonwoo. Quietly he closed the door and headed off to his room. As he laid in bed he couldn’t help but be a little jealous of his best friend.

After waking up to find that Mingyu was home from his trip you had breakfast with him and Wonwoo and headed home to get ready for the day. You barely made it into your living room when Mingyu knocked on your door.

Walking into your apartment he stood there for a moment before leaning forward and pressing his lips to yours for a needy kiss. The whole time Mingyu was away he thought of you often. Ever since you had first slept together you never seemed to leave his mind.

“Did you maybe want a cup of coffee?” You asked.

He nodded his head and followed you to the kitchen area. Mingyu sat at the kitchen table as you worked on making a pot of coffee. He loved watching you move around the kitchen. You were dressed in her usual sundress and barefoot. You were humming something as you moved around.

“How was your trip?” You asked as you brought two cups of coffee over to the table.

“It went great,” he smiled, taking the cup from your hand. “What did you and Wonwoo do while I was gone?”

You took a sip of your coffee and sat your cup down before saying, “we just hung out and watched How I Met Your Mother.”

You couldn’t help the smile that formed on your face as you thought about the day you had spent with Wonwoo.

“That sounds like a lot more fun, then sitting in a meeting like I was doing,” Mingyu said as he slowly brought his cup up towards his mouth.

“Well we missed you.”

Mingyu had a feeling in his gut that maybe you didn’t miss him as much as you thought you did. He knew that you cared about him, but he also knew that you cared about Wonwoo a lot too.

“I missed you too (YN).”

You sat there drinking your coffee talking more about Mingyu’s trip. You were really enjoying your time you were getting to spend with him. Walking your empty cups to the sink you turned and said, “I was just getting ready to take a bath.”

“Do you mind if I join?”

“Of course not.”

Taking his hand you led him off to your room. Standing by your dresser you slowly started to strip away your clothes. Standing there naked in front of him you gave him a small smile before heading off into the bathroom. Mingyu removed his own clothing and then followed you into the bathroom. He found you filling the tub up with warm water and pouring bath salts in vanilla scented soap.

Mingyu stepped forward and slowly got into the warm water. You stepped into the water and leaned back so your soft body was pressed against Mingyu’s toned body. Your head was resting against his shoulder with your eyes closed enjoying the feeling of his closeness. Mindlessly he drew circles on your thigh. You felt so peaceful leaning against him. Biting your bottom lip, you smiled as he softly said, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

You had spent all of the day before with Wonwoo, and that day had left you feeling very confused. But you couldn’t lie, you missed Mingyu quite a bit while he was gone. Over the last few weeks you had to constantly remind yourself not to catch feelings for either of the men you were sleeping with. After the day you spent with Wonwoo yesterday you weren’t sure your heart could stay out of this.

They spent about ten minutes in that bath before Mingyu’s lips moved to the base of your neck distracting you from your thoughts as he started placing wet kisses across your skin. A moan passed your lips as his hands moved up and gently started to massage your breast. Leaning your head back you closed your eyes taking in the feeling of his hands on your skin. Slowly you rolled your hips back against Mingyu's growing length. Biting your bottom lip you held back a loud moan.

“I need you,” he whispered in your ear, sending a shiver down your spine.

Silently you stood up and got out of the bath. You reached for a towel and turned to watch Mingyu get out of the tub, you could tell by his growing erection that he wanted you. Standing in the bathroom you dried off with lust filled eyes staring at each other.

“You are so pretty,” he walked towards you and pushed a piece of your wet hair behind your ear.

Taking your hand he led her off to the bedroom. With his lips pressed to your he walked you backwards until the back of your legs hit the bed. Slowly he leaned you back and you laid on the bed staring at him with hungry eyes. Crawling onto the bed he pressed his lips to yours once again and your lips moved together. Your hands were wrapped around his neck. Holding him close to you as their lips danced. He left you with a feeling of butterflies as his lips dragged from your mouth down to your neck. Closing your eyes you bit your bottom lip attempting to not moan.

Pushing on his chest and he removed his lips from you and looked up at you with lust filled eyes. His lips were parted as he stared at you silently. You took a moment to just take in his closeness. Your hand moved from his chest up to his neck. The world seemed to stilled for a moment as you stared at each other. Your eyes were locked on each other for a long moment.

“You're so amazing,” his voice was low.

You paused for a moment before saying, “how do you always know the right thing to say?”

“I always just tell you what I honestly think,” he leaned forward and pressed his lips to your forehead. His lips stayed there for a long moment and you closed your eyes taking in his closeness.

Pulling away from you he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling for a moment before he looked over at you who was staring at him. You moved and crawled over to him and sat on his thighs. Your finger drew soft circles on your chest. He couldn’t help but smile at you.

“Baby you’re so pretty.”

Leaning down you pressed wet kisses across his collar bones and moved down his chest. As your lips moved down stomach he reached to stop you before his lips could get anywhere near his length.

“Lay back down baby,” he said lowly.

Slowly you crawled off of him and laid back down on the bed. He sat up and reached into the nightstand to grab a foil packet before moving so he was sitting on his hunched between your legs. His hands moved to part your thighs even more. Leaning forward he pressed his lips to yours for a sear kissing. Pulling his lips away from your he gave you a lopsided grin as he tore the foil packet open. He rolled the rubber down his length. His hands gripped your soft sides as he slowly slid into you. A low gasp pasted your lips as he filled you fully.

He leaned forward so he was resting on his arms hovering over her. Your leg was swung over his waist holding him close to her as his hips did slow thrust. Your hands held his face as your eyes stayed locked onto each other’s. Your bodies moved together in perfect sync.

The coil in you stomach tightened as he leaned forward and rested his forehead against your. Low groans past his lips as his hips pick up pace slightly. Through parted lips soft moans escape. Little was said between you as their bodies moved together.

As your hips continued to meet with everything slow, Mingyu pushed you closer and closer to the edge. He dropped down to his elbows so he was closer to you. Leaning down he pressed his lips to yours for a sloppy kiss pushing you over the edge. A gasp passed your lips as you rolled your head back. Mingyu got a few thrust in before he hit his own high. His body was clasped on top of you, his head was resting on your breast. Your hands reached up and you massaged his scalp enjoying how close you were.

They laid like that for a few minutes before Mingyu rolled off of you and disposed of the condom. You laid on your bed, both of you staring at the ceiling quietly. The longer you laid there the heavier Mingyu’s chest seemed to feel. Things between the two of you felt different and Mingyu knew you needed to talk about it.

“(Y/N),” his voice was shaky and unsure.

“Yeah?” You looked over at him and gave him a soft smile.

“Do you love Wonwoo?” Mingyu needed to know. He had noticed how close you had grown and could tell by the way that Wonwoo looked at you and how he talked about you that Wonwoo felt more for you then he was willing to admit.

You took a deep breath trying to figure out what exactly you were feeling, “I think so.”

Your eyes suddenly started to brim with tears. Mingyu nodded his head knowing that all good things had to come to an end.

“He’s a really great guy,” Mingyu said.

You rolled onto your side so you were facing Mingyu who was still laying on his back staring up at the ceiling.

“I think I love you too,” your voice sounded desperate.

“I think I got involved in something I knew was going to hurt all three of us. I was selfish, and I should have just let you and Wonwoo keep this up. If I wouldn’t have never gotten involved you wouldn’t have to sound so guilty about being in love with Wonwoo.”

The room suddenly felt as if it was spinning and you felt sick to your stomach. Warm tears started to slide down your cheeks.

“Mingyu.”

“(YN), we knew when this started somehow someone was going to end up hurt. I think that Wonwoo and you could have something special,” he reached over and laced his fingers with your and gently squeezed your hand.

“Are you ending things with me?” You asked as tears slid down your cheek.

Slowly he nodded his head, “(Y/N) I think I love you too and honestly I can't keep my feelings out of this.”

You took a deep breath as tears continued to slide down you cheek, “We can work this out.”

“(YN) we can’t, if we don’t stop now someone is really going to get hurt.”

“Mingyu but this hurts,” you begged. You weren’t ready to say goodbye to the man that was laying in the bed next to you. Even with all of your confused feelings you knew that she cared deeply about Mingyu. Even though you were trying to deny it. You knew deep down inside you loved Mingyu.

“I know this hurts, it’s hurting me too. I just want you to be happy, and I want Wonwoo to be happy too,” he leaned forward and pressed his lips to your forehead.

“I don’t think anyone gets a happy ending here,” you said softly as he started crawling out of bed.

“(YN) this is for the better.”

He got dressed and walked back over to the bed where you were sitting wrapped up in the blankets watching him with tear filled eyes. You weren't ready for this to be over and neither was Mingyu, but he was trying to do the right thing.

Standing next to the bed the twisting guilt filled feeling is almost too much to handle. His sad eyes stared at you for a moment before he pressed his lips to the top of your head.

“No matter what I want you to know that I still think you’re the most amazing woman ever.” That was his goodbye, he was leaving the girl he fell for trying his hardest to be selfless.

His feet carried him as he left the apartment and headed back over to his and Wonwoo’s place. Mingyu walked straight over to Wonwoo’s room. He found his best friend sitting on his bed with his laptop. Wonwoo looked up at the sound of Mingyu lightly knocking on the wall.

“What’s up?” Wonwoo asked.

“I ended things with (Y/N).”

Wonwoo’s eyes went wide as he tried to process what Mingyu had just said to him.

“What?”

“It’s clear you’re in love with her, and to be honest I think I am too. I want you to have a real chance with her.”

Wonwoo knit his eyebrows together as he stared at him, “Mingyu I don’t love her.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Mingyu said leaning against the door frame.

Wonwoo stared at his friend, unsure of what he should even say to him. Over the last few weeks each time he saw you he seemed to grow even more confused on what exactly he was feeling. He had told himself over and over again that he wasn’t allowed to fall in love, but now that his best friend was standing in his room telling him how he felt he wasn’t sure if he could lie to himself any longer.

ELEVEN: ALL IS WELL THAT ENDS WELL

It had only been a day since Mingyu had ended things with you, and in that time Wonwoo had kept to himself. He was completely unsure of what he was feeling or even what he should do. He stood in the shower just blankly staring at the wall, as a million things went through his mind. He thought back to the times that he had showered with you. And how you would stand there talking while he was washing your hair. He thought of how your bright eyes would stare back at him. You always seemed to show exactly what you were thinking.

Jeon Wonwoo had never been in love, and he wasn’t sure if the stabbing feeling in his chest was the feeling of guilt of betraying his best friend or the fact that he was indeed in love with a girl next door. He felt so guilty for hurting Mingyu, he knew when he started this with you that Mingyu liked you.

The cool water continued to fall on him as his eyes looked down at his feet. Reaching forward he turned the shower off and wrapped a towel around his waist.

Sitting on the edge of his bed he placed his face in his hands and let out a heavy sigh. He felt sick to his stomach as he started getting dressed.

Once he was fully dressed he walked into the living room to find Mingyu sitting on the couch with a sad look on his face. Mingyu looked over at him with his sad eyes and attempted to give him a smile.

“Where are you going?” Mingyu asked.

“I need to talk to (Y/N),” just saying your name made him feel guilty.

“Wonwoo, she's a good girl and you could have something great.”

Mingyu was trying to encourage Wonwoo to continue his relationship, but he knew Wonwoo wouldn’t listen to him. He could tell by the look on his best friend's face that he was sad and riddled with guilt. Mingyu didn’t want Wonwoo to feel guilty. He didn’t feel like Wonwoo had done anything wrong. It wasn’t his fault that you had fallen for him, and that Mingyu had fallen for you.

Wonwoo nodded before heading out of the apartment. Walking next door he took a deep breath before he knocked on the door. As you opened the front door he could tell by your puffy eyes that you had been crying. You gave him a sad smile before stepping to the side.

You had a feeling that Wonwoo didn’t come over to make things better. Walking into your apartment he followed you into your kitchen. Silently you poured him a cup of coffee and sat down next to him.

For a solid two minutes neither of you said anything to each other, you just silently drank your coffee. The sound of you clearing your throat broke the screaming silence.

“I’m assuming Mingyu told you he ended things with me?” Your hand clutched your large coffee cup. Silently he nodded his head unsure of even what to say to you. “He asked me if I loved you,” you felt sick thinking about the night before.

“What did you say?” Wonwoo asked, finally speaking for the first time.

“I told him I think I do,” tears once again started to brim your eyes as you confessed your feelings.

He looked down at the table as if he was suddenly afraid to look at the girl in front of him. Placing his elbow on the table he rested his face in hand and took a deep breath. He was so unsure of everything he was feeling.

“I think it’s pretty obvious you don’t feel the same way,” tears started slowly sliding down your cheek. His silence was heartbreaking. You had managed to fall in love with two men, one who wasn’t going to ever love you back and one who loved you but didn’t want to be with you.

“Mingyu is my best friend, and the closest thing to a brother that I have, and I hurt him,” he sighed, feeling guilty that he hurt the most important person in his life. “I have gone my whole life from the moment I met him doing everything I can to be the best friend I can be, and I fucked up.”

You closed your eyes and winced knowing that you were the reason he fucked up.

“I’m sorry (YN),” his eyes finally looked up to see your teary eyes.

Tears slid down your cheeks, you opened your mouth to speak and suddenly nothing came out. You didn’t even know what you should say to Wonwoo.

“How much I want to keep things going between us, I can’t do that to Mingyu. He means too much to me to do anything that could hurt him more than I already did,” he reached up with a shaky hand and pushed away the tears that kept sliding down your cheek.

“Okay,” your voice was low and shaky.

Wonwoo pulled his hands away from you and stood up and stared at you for a long moment. Biting his bottom lip he held back telling you that he didn’t want to do this. Walking out of your apartment he couldn’t let himself look back to see you crying.

Shutting the door he took a deep breath and leaned against the door. He wanted desperately to run back inside and tell you he didn’t want to end things but he couldn’t do that.

Sitting there at your kitchen table you couldn’t hold back the sob that broke in your chest. You knew when Wonwoo came to your door that you had not only lost Mingyu, but you were going to lose Wonwoo too. Closing your eyes you tried to hold back the tears that just kept falling.

Walking off into you bed she crawled under the cover and just laid there crying until the evening. You hated feeling like this, but you couldn’t help it.

Without a second thought she walked over to your closet and pulled out her overnight bag and worked on packing enough clothes for a week. Zipping your bag up you headed out of your apartment with your purse on one shoulder and your duffle bag on the other. Entering the car garage you went to your car and tossed your bag in the backseat.

You drove the two hour drive up north to where your sister lived. You didn’t bother texting or calling her. You just knocked on your sister's door. It was eight at night and your sister Chaewon was very confused when she found her older sister standing on the other side of the door with puffy eyes.

“(YN)?”

“I got my heart broken,” you cried as she dropped your duffle bag on the floor.

Reaching forward your sister pulled you into her chest and rubbed you back as you continued to cry. Can’t remember the last time you cried this much.

“Who broke your heart?” Chaewon asked.

You hadn’t told your sister about what had been going on with Wonwoo and Mingyu. You hadn’t really told anyone what was going on with the boys. You followed Chaewon inside to the kitchen where your sister made you a cup of tea, and then you went on to tell her all about Mingyu and Wonwoo and what happened.

Chaewon couldn’t lie, everything you told her seemed crazy, but she was never going to judge you for sleeping with both men, or falling in love with both of them.

“Why didn’t you and Wonwoo keep things up?” Chaewon was confused on why things needed to end between you.

“Because he didn’t want to hurt Mingyu more than he did,” you sighed knowing that you had gotten between two best friends that were basically brothers.

“I was so stupid I needed to keep my heart out of this, and for some reason I couldn’t help but fall for both of them,” she cursed. “If I could of just kept this strictly about sex this wouldn’t of been a problem, but I couldn’t keep my stupid heart out of this.”

“Sweetie, anyone would have fallen in love with them.”

You let out a heavy, “the last week with Wonwoo things had just seemed different. We were spending more time together and it wasn’t all about us having sex. I literally stay over with him just to cuddle and sleep together. We didn’t even have sex.”

“It sounds like Wonwoo might have feelings for you too,” Chaewon said.

You shrugged, “I thought he might, but from what both Wonwoo and Mingyu had told me Wonwoo doesn’t do relationships. He doesn’t exactly believe in love, he is the kind of guy that just likes to have sex.”

You couldn’t help but feel even more stupid, you knew how Wonwoo was but it didn’t stop you from feeling getting involved.

“Why don’t you stay here for a while. You don’t have to worry about going back to school for another month. You can totally stay here the whole time if you want,” Chaewon said, knowing that you couldn’t just go back to seeing your neighbors every day.

“I can’t stay here for a whole month, but I can stay for a week. I packed enough to be gone for a week,” you sighed. You knew sooner than later you were going to have to see Mingyu and Wonwoo again, but you needed at least a week to try to move on.

“That works perfectly,” Chaewon smiled.

Chaewon helped you move your stuff into the guest room. You took a shower and then went into the kitchen with your sister to make some cookies together before you decided to eat those cookies with some popcorn while watching a movie together. You sat on the couch together watching St. Elmo’s Fire, both of their favorite movies from the eighties. This was some much needed time that you needed with your sister.

TWELVE: TIME TO HEAL

When morning came around you sat at the kitchen table with your sister as she was making you banana pancakes. You had a cup of coffee in your hand as you said, “what’s the plan for today?”

“Hyungwon wanted to come over tonight for dinner if you’re fine with that?”

Hyungwon was Chaewon's boyfriend that you had always loved. You thought Hyungwon was the best possible guy for your sister. Chaewon was a kind and big hearted person, and Hyungwon was the exact same way. He would do anything in the world to make Chaewon happy.

“Of course Hyun can come over, but tell him he has to bring me my favorite Apple pie from the diner by his house,” you let out a soft laugh.

“You know he’ll bring that in a heartbeat for you,” Chaewon said as she put a plate with a stack of banana pancakes down.

“Did you tell him why I’m here?” You were curious to know if Chaewon had told Hyungwon about your relationship with both Mingyu and Wonwoo.

Chaewon shook her head as she sat across from you, “I just told him you got your heartbroken by your neighbor, I didn’t give him any details.”

You couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved, you didn’t really want everyone knowing about your relationship with both boys.

You ate breakfast together and then sat in the living room together watching your favorite show to watch together. You had a bowl of popcorn sitting between you as Chaewon clicked play on the next episode. Chaewon was the perfect distraction to keep your mind off of Wonwoo and Mingyu.

When it got closer to dinner time, Hyungwon arrived with an apple pie from your favorite diner. You sat at the kitchen table eating a slice of pie as Chaewon and Hyungwon worked on cooking dinner. Hyungwon had asked you how you were doing but didn’t ask you anything about getting your heart broken.

You all ate dinner together and then decided to watch a movie together. Hyungwon and Chaewon curled up on the couch together and you sat on the other side of the couch wrapped in a blanket. They decided to watch Catch Me If You Can. As soon as the movie ended, you headed off to your room to give Chaewon and Hyungwon some alone time.

As you laid in bed you couldn’t help but miss the boys. You had rarely slept alone much since everything had started up with the boys. The spot on the bed next to you felt cold and empty. You fought back tears as you closed your eyes before falling asleep.

THIRTEEN: I’M REALLY SORRY

You had been gone for a week and Wonwoo was very aware of it. He tried to not think about you constantly but his mind wandered back to you constantly. Everything seemed to remind him of you. He also noticed that Mingyu seemed to be distracting himself with work. Mingyu was sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop working on something, and Wonwoo stood in front of the fridge blankly staring inside, not even sure what he was looking for.

Mingyu looked over at his best friend, noticing that he was staring at nothing. He let out a heavy sigh shaking his head.

Mingyu was also very aware of the fact that you hadn’t been home in a week. He was also aware of the fact that his best friend seemed completely out of it. Mingyu knew that even if Wonwoo didn’t want to admit it he was pretty heartbroken. When Mingyu ended things with you he didn’t expect for all three of you to end up heartbroken. He thought if he stepped away that maybe the two of you would get together and not have to worry about his feelings.

Wonwoo walked off to his room not bothering to get anything from the fridge. Mingyu wasn’t sure what to do but he couldn’t deal with Wonwoo moping around.

-

You had arrived back home and you couldn’t lie you weren’t ready to see the boys. Walking up to your front door you unlocked the door and looked over when you heard your name. You glanced over to see Mingyu leaving his apartment. You both stood still staring at each other for a long moment. Mingyu went to step forward to talk to you but he stopped because he wasn’t sure what exactly to say to you.

His sad eyes locked on your sad ones. He could tell that you were as heartbroken as Wonwoo. Your bright eyes lack the gleam they normally had. Biting his bottom lip, he thought of what he should even say to you.

He wished that he could tell you that Wonwoo was miserable without you. Hell he wished that he could tell you, he was miserable without you. He knew he lost that privilege when he left you. He wished that Wonwoo hadn’t left you too. He never intended for Wonwoo to end things with you. He knew in his heart you had fallen in love with Wonwoo and he couldn’t blame you. Mingyu also knew that you had extremely strong feelings for him even if you weren’t in love. He felt like he had been put in a rock in a hard place. He had managed to put himself in a love triangle without meaning to.

“(YN) where did you go?” He finally spoke up and walked towards you.

You stood still at your door not even sure what you should say to Mingyu. You hadn’t spoken to him since he broke your heart that night. Just seeing him brought back a lot of emotions.

“I went to see my sister,” your voice was soft.

Mingyu took another step towards you and stopped a couple feet away from you. He wished things between you could go back to normal but he knew he was the one who had ruined everything.

“(YN) I’m really sorry.”

“Mingyu it’s not your fault it’s mine,” you reached for the door and opened it.

“I never meant for things to be like this.”

You had planned to walk inside but you stopped and stared at Mingyu for a long moment.

“Mingyu, let's be honest, if you didn’t end things when you did, we were both going to get even more hurt then we are now. How much I wish it wasn’t it true I don’t think I could have ever kept my heart out of this,” you let out a sigh as your eyes brimmed with tears. “Mingyu you mean a lot to me and I think you will always have a piece of my heart.” He walked towards you and stopped right in front of you.

Reaching forward he rested his hand on your cheek. He stepped closer so he was a couple inches away from you. He wished that he could tell you he wanted to take it all back but he couldn’t.

“(YN) you’ll always have a piece of mine too. I know we’re both hurt, but I need to have you in my life. Even if we’re just friends. I also need you to not give up on Wonwoo. He’s confused and he’s trying to be a good friend. I need you both to know there are no hard feelings on my part. I want you both to be happy.”

A soft smile spread across his face. You looked up at him and gave him a sad smile.

“Why can’t I be happy with you?”

“Because I know you can make Wonwoo happy,” he sighs.

“I don’t think he feels the same way for me that I feel for him, and one day I’ll be okay with that.”

“(YN)-” he wished he could convince Wonwoo to get his head out of his ass but he didn’t know if he could.

“It’s okay Mingyu,” you leaned forward and pressed your lips to his for a soft kiss.

“We were great while it lasted,” you stepped away from his touch.

“(YN) I’m here if you ever need anything and I would really love for us to be friends again.”

“Mingyu, I want more than friendship. I'm still trying to work out how to tell myself we can’t be together.”

You walked inside and Mingyu was left standing outside your apartment, wishing he could fix things between you.

Mingyu stood outside your apartment feeling more heartbroken than before. He sighed knowing that he needed to convince Wonwoo to fix things between you.

He walked back into his apartment and poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table waiting for Wonwoo to get home from work. He needed to convince him to get his head out of his ass and fix things with you immediately. In all the years he had been friends with Wonwoo he hadn’t ever seen him so broken up over ending things with a girl.

When Wonwoo finally got home from work he stepped into the kitchen and found his best friend sitting at the kitchen table waiting for him.

“What’s up Mingyu,” he said as he walked over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water.

“Wonwoo, we need to talk,” Mingyu said, speaking up.

Wonwoo knit his eyebrows together and gave him a confused look before sitting down across from Mingyu. He opened the bottle and took a drink of the water.

“You need to talk to (YN),” Mingyu said, jumping to the point of not bothering to dance around things.

Wonwoo closed his eyes taking a deep breath before he looked down at the table with a guilty expression. He slowly shook his head, “I can’t”

“Wonwoo, I don’t think you realize that you’re in love with her. In all the years I have known you I haven’t ever seen you broken up over someone,” Mingyu stated, attempting to get Wonwoo to realize how he felt.

“Mingyu I don’t love her, love isn’t real.”

As long as they had known each other Wonwoo had always told Mingyu he didn’t believe in love. Even after his high girlfriend cheated on him, he told Mingyu he wasn’t heartbroken because according to him love wasn’t real.

“You might not think love is real, but what you feel for her is love. You aren’t the only one completely torn up over this. I talked to (YN) today and she’s just as messed up as you. Hell, I'm just as much of a mess as you are.”

Wonwoo stood up and groaned as he pushed his fingers through his hair, “Mingyu it’s pretty clear you’re in love with her, so why don’t you get together with her? Like make her your girlfriend and have something with her that is something more then sex.”

Mingyu shook his head and stood up, “Wonwoo I talked to her and it’s clear she loves you. I can’t just date her. I already made the mistake of letting her go.”

Wonwoo paced in front of Mingyu for a moment silently. It was almost as if he was at a complete loss of what to even say.

“Fix it then Mingyu!” He shouted at his best friend.

He slammed his hand on the table, “I can’t fix it, she was yours first. I don’t get to be happy here.”

“Mingyu, she was never mine. She doesn’t just love me. Why are you dismissing her feelings for you?” He pushed his fingers through his dark hair. He took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes for a moment.

“Because even though I love her, Wonwoo. I love you too. You’re the closest thing I have to a brother and you mean too much to me,” tears brim his eyes as he looks up at his best friend.

“How do we fix this?” Wonwoo sits down sighing. “Why do we both have to walk away?”

“Wonwoo, do you love her?”

“You think I love her?” He looked up at Mingyu.

“I think we both love her,” Mingyu sighs.

Slowly Wonwoo nodded his head, “I think I do love her, and I know that she loves both of us.” The world felt like it was spinning sideways to him. “Mingyu if I fix things with her. Could you fix things with her?”

“I don’t know if she would take me back,” Mingyu reaches up, pushing away his tears. “I hope you realize just because we tell her we love her doesn’t mean she’ll just want something casual again. She deserves more, she deserves a relationship.”

“Could we make that work with both of us?” Wonwoo had never thought of the possibility of them both fully getting to be with her.

“I think we both need to talk to her, it’s up to her if wants one of us at all or both of us.”

FOURTEEN: I WANT TO FIX THIS

With the bottle of wine in hand Wonwoo reached forward with a shaky hand and knocked on the door. Seconds seemed to be creeping by as he waited for you to answer the door. Mingyu rested his hand on his shoulder attempting to calm his best friend's nerves.

As the door slowly opened he took a deep breath waiting to face you. You stood in front of him with sad eyes.

“Hi,” your voice was soft and unsure.

Wonwoo didn’t know what exactly to say to you. He had tried to prepare what he wanted to tell you but all of it seemed to leave his mind the second his eyes locked with yours.

“So Mingyu says I’m in love with you. I haven’t ever been in love and to be quite honest I don’t know if love is exactly real. I know I feel things that I haven’t felt before for you. I hadn’t seen you in a week and honestly this week has been hell. I haven’t been able to think straight knowing that I lost you. I never meant to hurt you by ending things,” he rambled on, not even sure if he was even making any sense at all.

You look next to Wonwoo and sees Mingyu standing there with his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Do you think you love me?” You look up at Wonwoo's tall figure.

Wonwoo slowly nodded his head, “I feel things for you that I have never felt for another person.”

“What about you Mingyu?” You asked, speaking to the other man standing in the hallway.

“I already knew I love you,” he gives you a gentle smile.

“What made you decide to come over here?” You asked, looking up at Wonwoo.

“Mingyu told me I needed to make sure I didn’t lose you,” he sighed. “Mingyu and I don’t want to lose you.”

“Did you want to come inside?” You asked, stepping aside. The whole apartment building didn’t need to know what was going on between you.

He nodded and walked past you. Mingyu stops in front of you before walking in. “I’m sorry,” he whispers before pressing his lips to your cheek. Your eyes lock as he pulls away and you can love behind his eyes.

You led them over to the living room coach. You sat down on one end of the couch and they sat on the other end staring at you.

Wonwoo still had a million things he wanted to say to you, but he wasn’t even sure how to say them. He had never really put himself out on the line like this.

“(YN) I can’t really picture my life where you aren’t with me. This last week has been hell not being able to be with you.” Wonwoo is trying his hardest to convey how he’s feeling.

“I can't be with you if you’re going to break my heart again,” you couldn’t deal with having your heartbroken again by the man sitting across from you.

“I won't break your heart again,” he reached over and rested his hand on your thigh.

“What about you Mingyu?” You looked on the other side of Wonwoo to see Mingyu staring at you.

“I fucked up.���

“Are you still done with me,” you stood up moving so you stood in front of Mingyu.

Silently he swallows staring up at you. He stood up, taking one of your hands and resting the other on the side of your neck. Gently he dragged his thumb across your delicate skin.

“(YN) I love you,” he whispered, leaning forward resting his forehead against yours. “Please forgive me.”

“Kim Mingyu, I love you too,” leaning back you stare at him and you can’t help but smile. “Is it still over?” You don't think your heart could handle losing him again either.

“If you’ll take me back it’s not over. I won’t ever walk away again.”

He leaned forward pressing his lips to yours for a soft kiss. Both his hands hold your face as your lips move together for a heated kiss. Butterflies fluttered in your stomach, missing the feeling of his lips against your.

Pulling away from you his nose rests against yours. A soft laugh passes his lips. “All this is complicated and not traditional, but just know we both love you.”

Looking over on the couch you find Wonwoo still sitting on the couch. Mingyu steps aside and you move to sit down next to the tall boy with glasses. You rest your hand on his thigh and give him a smile.

“I just need you to know that I’m new to this whole being a boyfriend thing, and I’m going to mess up sometimes, but I’m begging you not to give up on me.” He reached down and took your hand in his. “I won’t give up on you, but I need you to always talk to me and be open and honest with me.”

“I can do that,” he leaned forward so his face was a few inches away from yours.

“I love Wonwoo,” you say softly, moving forward so your lips were brushing against his.

“I think I love you too,” he pressed his lips against yours for a heated kiss. Your lips danced for a moment before Wonwoo pulled away from you and rested his forehead against yours.

“Did you both want to stay the night?” You asked not wanting to spend another night without them.

He nodded and smiled, “yes I would love to stay.”

Looking over at Mingyu he gives a soft smile and nods.

Wonwoo pulled your body close to his and they sat on the couch with you curled up next to him. His hand gently rubbed your side as your head rested on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure at that moment how he had gone a week without you. You had somehow managed to break down his walls without even trying. He wasn’t sure if Mingyu didn’t make him fix things if he would have been to get you back. The thought of you slipping through his finger hurt.

You reached for Mingyu's hands, pulling him down onto the couch next to you. You held his hand tightly as you cuddled closer to Wonwoo.

“So you both love me?” You beamed.

Mingyu leaned over, pressing his lips to the side of your neck. With his lips ghosting your skin he whispered, “I love you more than anything.”

“I believe I do too,” Wonwoo presses his lips to the top of your head.

You all sat together on the couch for probably an hour before you looked at both the boys with bright eyes and said, “can you take me to bed.”

Silently Mingyu nodded and took your hand leading you off to the bedroom. Wonwoo wasn’t far behind, taking in the sight of you two in front of him.

You stood at the foot of the bed and Mingyu slowly stripped away your clothes. Standing in front of them both completely exposed just smiling. You had spent the last week thinking you had lost Wonwoo and Mingyu forever and now here they were together confessing how they really felt. Reaching forward you worked on removing his clothing.

Standing naked in front of each other his hungry hands roamed your soft body as your lips moved together. Wonwoo leaned against the wall watching as it all unfolded in front of him with lust filled eyes.

Mingyu pulled his lips away from yours and said, “I missed you so much”

“I missed you too,” you walked away from him and moved to the bed.

You laid naked on the bed staring at the man you loved with lust filled eyes. He stared at you for a long moment. Things between you felt suddenly even more different than they ever had before. This didn’t feel like just sex like it normally did. Slowly he crawled on the bed and hovered over you. Gently he connected his lips to yours for a heated kiss. He dragged his lips from yours down the base of your neck. He left a trail of wet kisses across delicate skin. His lips kissed across each breast earning a gentle moan.

Your eyes looked over to the wall where the other man you loved was standing. “Wonwoo I need you,” you said as you reached for him. Your words did nothing to deter Mingyu who continued to kiss his way across your skin.

Pushing himself off the wall, Wonwoo made quick work of removing his clothes. Stepping towards his best friend and his girlfriend who were sprawled out on the bed in front of him.

Dragging his lips away from your soft skin, Mingyu eyes stayed locked on your. He crawled off you sitting on his hunches next to you.

Reaching into her nightstand by the bed you grabbed a foil packet and handed it to Wonwoo. He tore the packet open with his teeth and slid the rubber down his length. Laying on your back you stared at him in complete bliss that she managed to find two men who truly loved you.

Crawling on the bed he sat opposite of Mingyu, whose lips have not left your neck. Wonwoo pumps his hardened length watching.

Wonwoo leaned forward and kissed your cheek for a moment before moving his lips up to her your. “On your side baby,” he whispered with his lips brushing against your ear.

Mingyu pulled his lips away from your delicate skin and looked at his best friend. He couldn’t help but be a little unsure of what his position was in this situation.

You moved so you’re laying on your side and looked over her shoulder watching as Wonwoo moved behind you. His hand rested on your soft stomach as he slowly slid into you. Gasping as he bottomed out. He was completely still as his lips rested on your shoulder.

Leaning back and connecting your lips with a passionate kiss. Slowly he rolled his hips into you and he felt like he was home. It was almost as if you were made for him. His strong hand moved from your stomach and lifted your leg up. Hooking your leg under his arm as he continued to move into you at a slow pace.

“Mingyu, we can share,” he groans, not wanting his best friend to feel left out.

Mingyu’s eyes grow wide as he stares at the couple in front of him.

“Gyu please touch me,” you moans running your fingers across his abs. His stomach tenses as your fingers graze his hardened length.

Mindlessly he moves so he’s laying in front of you. You’re face to face. Your bottom lip is captured between her teeth as Wonwoo thrust into your velvety walls over and over.

One of Mingyu’s hands takes your breast massaging it as he kisses your jaw. Your hand grazes his length earning a moan. Reaching between you to of you pump his erection, desperately wanting to be close to both boys.

Your lips crash together, muffling the sounds of each of your moans and cries of desperation.

The air felt thick as the coil in your stomach tightened. Your pace you were stroking Mingyu picked up as you were getting closer and closer to the edge. Pulling your lips away from Mingyu you moan his name, earning a cheeky grin from him. Your head rested on Wonwoo’s chest as his hips continued to roll into you over and over again.

“Baby,” Wonwoo groaned before connecting his lips to yours for a rough kiss.

Your lips danced for a moment before you pulled away and looked at Mingyu who looked like he was on the brink of falling apart in your hand.

“Mingyu, please touch me,” you begged.

You were so close to falling apart and it wasn’t going to take much for him to push you over the edge. You had never felt as greedy in your life as you did right now. You wanted anything and everything the boys would give you.

Mingyu reached over brushing your sensitive clit with his thumb earning a whiny moan. He made quick work of playing with your sensitive bundle of nerves. Touching you just the way he knew would have you falling apart with very little effort. You continued pumping Mingyu’s length until he crumbled, moaning your name, while he painted your stomach with white ropes.

“Let go,” Wonwoo groaned with his lips ghosting yours.

With another thrust he pushed you over the edge and finally reaching the high. You couldn’t help the moans that passed your lips as he slowly rolled his hips into you a few times. It didn’t take long before he reached his own high. He dropped your leg and was still holding you close to him.

Mingyu laid on his back, his chest rising and falling coming down from his high. He looked over at the girl he loved, completely blissed out.

“I love you baby,” Wonwoo finally admitted how he felt as he held you close to him.

Laying there holding you close he hesitates letting go. He removed himself from you slowly and rolled onto his back. Laying on your back you look over at Mingyu for a moment before you smile at Wonwoo. He made a quick word of disposing of the condom and ran off to the bathroom to get a rag to clean you up.

Crawling back into the bed he couldn’t help but smile at the sight of you and Mingyu completely blissed out.

“So you both love me?” You asked not being able to hold back a huge smile.

“I believe I do baby” Wonwoo reaches forward pulling your soft body close to his. “I love you.”

With your head resting on his chest you couldn’t help but feel like you had finally found happiness with Mingyu and Wonwoo. Mingyu moved over, curling his body up close to you. He placed a kiss gently on your shoulder.

“YN I love you so much,” Mingyu said.

Pulling away from Wonwoo, you laid on your side with your back once again to him. Wonwoo wasted no time spooning your soft body.

Mingyu leaned forward pressing his lips to your for a gentle kiss. Things suddenly felt so right between you all.

Things between you weren't traditional by any means. You weren’t exactly sure how things would work out, but they knew you would have to learn as you go.

[endless-ineffabilities]

the sapphire and his sun

Aemond Targaryen x f!reader

Musings about Aemond Targaryen and the only one he truly needs. His one true hope and love. His beloved wife.

a/n : i had to write something after that episode! holy Aemond! This pretty much wrote itself and I could expand it in the future ~ if inspiration strikes true!

word count : <2k ▪︎ masterlist

Aemond used to think his only solace was himself.

His mother had never been much of a mother in her own right, too muddled in the web of deceit that she and Otto spin at their fancy. Criston posited as something of a father figure, but his true loyalty is to his Queen. His brother has always been a wastrel, and his sister wasting away in her own mind.

Aemond never had anyone. Not truly.

Until you.

He still remembers the day you walked into his life, a lone ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds of stormy grey. You appeared to be a frail-hearted young lady, eager to please and to be a devoted wife to her prince. All the while he saw your spirit dimmed from being offered by her House to be Prince Aemond's newly betrothed.

All to secure an alliance.

There was no promise of loyalty or love. Being the prince, he is able to take into bed any whore he wishes. But one look at you - just the one - and all thought of any other lover vanished from his mind.

The first night he was supposed to take you to bed and consummate your marriage, the meek cast in your eyes had disappeared, and in its place a defiant glint he hadn't seen before.

"If I am to be used by my prince, I will do it with the remaining shred of my dignity. I will not cry, I will not beg for a life I have already lost. If all that I am now is a vessel for duty, then so be it." You looked at him, as if for the first time, and with the flames dancing across your face, Aemond would remember that moment as when his sun first shone down on him.

He felt his anger flare for but a moment, his constant fear of being betrayed taking over him. Had everything been an act? Was this to be a marriage of unpleasantry and resentment?

But it quickly dawned on him that the act - the betrayal - was that if his wife was willing to play a fool and dance under his strings like some marionette.

He preferred this. He preferred you.

"Mayhaps I will not bed you tonight, my lady wife. Not yet," he had said, your face slowly twisting in surprise. "I will let you keep more than just your dignity, for you will also possess the choice. Trust that it is only for the time being, at least, until it is imperative that I produce an heir. From this moment forward, I swear to take no else to bed as it is my oath as your husband."

He watched the minute switches in your expression. The wariness. The confusion. The relief. And he already felt it then, as silly as the notion might be, that you had recognised who he really was and that you accepted him.

Aemond was no scoundrel. He wasn't a villain in your story. He wasn't some mighty, untouchable prince.

He was a boy. He was now your husband. He had decency. He had a heart.

And you may not have yet realised, but this heart - wretched as it might have been - he was surrendering it to you.

With the turn of the moon came ill tidings - the death of his father Viserys. Although he was also not much of a father to begin with. Aemond felt numb to it all and there was no time for any emotion to take root, for the conspiracy festered like an open wound. His brother was to be made king.

"Must you go and find him?" you asked. "What if something were to happen?"

He had been blank and unfeeling, unsure of what to make his father's passing. But then, some warmth bloomed in him at your concern. His darling wife cared. He hadn't yet been allowed to indulge in the pleasures of your flesh, but your nights were filled with conversation and confiding.

He took your hands and pressed a kiss atop each one. "It is I who understands Aegon's doings, my wife. Ser Criston is in need of my aid. My brother would sooner sail away than fulfil his duty, which is why he must return at all cost."

"Let him sail away. Let him go and live as he pleases, husband. He never possessed the temperament of a king. You on the other hand... "

His father is dead. His brother could be gone. The enemy encroaches.

But gods be damned, you believed in him.

Aemond didn't know for certain what happiness felt like, he'd never had a single taste of it. And how morbid it was for him to possibly feel it then. But...

"You would make a far better ruler than anyone, and I don't just say that because I am your wife."

Happiness. How fascinating.

How utterly... simple.

For he realised that he had felt it before. Not even in grand moments, no, but in the littlest of things.

He had felt it when you once laughed in pure bliss when he first rode with you atop Vhagar.

When you would help fasten him into his training armour.

When he would watch as you read one of your stories.

His happiness was standing right in front of him. His ray of light, his sun.

And his sun persisted even when he singlehandedly cast the realm into macabre blacks and greens.

Shaken and despondent, he stumbled into your chambers to deliver the news to you first. In the passing hour, everything will change. Will you turn on him too?

"It was an accident," he confessed. "I thought I could control Vhagar, but... she is her own beast. She always has been. I admit I was angry and it was my folly to seek vengeance, but I did not mean to... " His voice broke, and he felt your finger wipe at something wet from his cheek.

He did not even notice that he was crying.

You still said nothing, so he grew frightful. What if nothing he said would ever be enough? No explanation, no apology. He can't lose his light.

"I never held any love for him," he carried on painfully, "but he was my blood. And I... I just - "

"It wasn't your fault, Aemond."

A ray of hope. A remaining strength.

You repeat, "I believe you, and it wasn't your fault."

It mattered not whether his mother would shun him, or his grandsire would frown upon his gruesome action. Rhaenyra was coming for him, as sure as dragonfire, and he would soon have to face the consequences of his actions.

But none of that worried him, not then.

He had to stay alive, however he can, so that he can protect you. It was not remiss of him to overlook that the ladywife of Lucerys' apparent murderer would also have a target on her back.

Aemond knew that the fight was inevitable, and he was going to win it. For you.

In tears, in love, in pale shades of grief, he kissed you with everything he had in him.

A solemn promise. A declaration of love.

"No one shall know the truth of it, my love."

"What do you mean?"

"They will not know, but you will. And that is all that matters. There is no stopping it now and I must face the war head on. What the realm will come to accept is that I intended to fell my nephew and that I do not regret doing so. They have to fear me. This is how I can keep you safe."

"Aemond - "

"Do you trust me?"

The only thing that mattered, the one answer that decided whether he bent or broke. The Seven Kingdoms were to be covered in gloom and shadow, its fields marred with blood and many a broken bone.

His world, however - his world still had light.

"I trust you. With everything I have, I do."

To be tagged in Aemond or Daemon fics, comment on this post !

[losers-clvb]

famine // sam winchester

pairing: sam winchester x best friend!female!reader

summary: you and the winchester boys went to go look into a case on a couple mysteriously eating themselves to death. after discovering this is brought on by one of the four horsemen, famine, coming into town, dean and sam create a plan. the only problem: you've been whimpering at the sound of sam's voice since that morning.

content: basically just porn with small amount of plot, slightly dom!sam (not insanely so, just a few words), praise, reader begs sam to fuck her, fingering, unprotected piv penetration, sex pollen adjacent storyline, dubcon (due to said "sex pollen"), dean and castiel walk in on the pair after they're finished, no use of y/n

word count: 3k

note: this is based on season 5, episode 14 "my bloody valentine". i wrote this all in a day, so unedited, but i watched that episode and the idea just came to me. this was my first time writing smut so be kind if it isn't the best. second part of "mayor's banquet" coming out soon, which also has smut, if you are into that. enjoy!

masterlist

----

It started slowly. At first it was discomfort, one that left you wiggling in your jeans. You felt hot and no amount of air conditioning was helping. You moved in your seat as Dean drove through the small time. The three of you had arrived that morning, opting to eat at the local diner before investigating what was going on. A couple had eaten each other to death the night before which threw up alarm bells for the hunters. You were Sam’s best friend, a relationship that had begun in college. It wasn’t until you had an encounter with a werewolf four months after Sam left that you decided to join the boys on their hunts.

“You gotta take a piss or something?” Dean asked after he had noticed you were moving around in the backseat. You blushed when you met his eyes in the mirror.

“Leave her alone, Dean.” Sam smacked his brother playfully. You were grateful for this, as you always were for Sam. Coincidentally after he spoke, the need to move increased. You squeezed your eyes shut and breathed deeply.

You were contemplating asking Dean to pull over when the car stopped. You opened your eyes to find the motel you three would be staying in that night. Dean was already opening the door to the room, but Sam stood in front of your open door with his hand held out, ever the gentleman. You grasped his hand in yours and an actual whimper hummed in your throat. It was like your senses were heightened and Sam was the key to making it all better. Sam looked at you with his head cocked to the side.

“You alright?” He asked as you climbed out of the car. Oh God, his mouth, the way his lips moved when he talked, you wanted them on you, every part of you.

“Yeah.” You whispered, clenching your other hand in a fist. You shouldn’t be thinking of your best friend in that way. At least, not when he was leading you into your shared motel room with his brother. It wasn’t like the thought hadn’t crossed your mind, late at night, with your hand between your legs. You had walked in on Sam with Jessica once, back in the first few months of college. And God did that image give you something to think about. You mostly thought about how easily Sam could pin you on the bed, kiss and suck his way down your body until he reached your core, right where you needed him most. The idea of him devouring you like a starved animal, hands wrapped around your thighs, tongue-

“God, Cass, I thought you didn’t need to eat!” Dean exclaimed as the angel took another bite of his burger. Somehow you had missed entering the room and Castiel appearing inside. You let go of Sam’s hand and beelined to the bathroom. You shut the door and locked it, but not before hearing Dean gloat about how his earlier question had been correct.

You looked in the mirror and analyzed your blown pupils. You scoffed at yourself, splashing cold water onto your face. Why were you acting like a cat in heat? You had more self control than this. It didn’t make sense. You were fine this morning, yet now you were ready to grind yourself down on the edge of the bathtub.

You must have been in there a while because there was a knock on the door and you heard your name.

“I-I’m okay.” You stuttered out while holding back moans. It was Sam, who never wanted you to be uncomfortable. You bit down on your lip as you slipped a hand in your pants. After a few minutes of dissatisfying touching, you knew you had to stop and go back out into the room. When you opened the door there were three pairs of eyes on you, one playful, one uninterested, and one worried. You cleared your throat and shuffled to the table before taking a seat. Silence, aside from Castiel’s chewing, filled the room. You pulled out your laptop from the bags that had been brought in and began researching. What, you didn’t know, but it beat trying to avoid Sam’s gaze.

----

It was official: you were horny for Sam Winchester. It was bad, worse than it had been that afternoon. You all had figured out that one of the four horsemen, Famine, was in town, and he was looking for something to satisfy his hunger. It explained everything. Cass’ insatiable hunger and your insatiable need. Even Sam was going thirsty for some demon blood.

Now, you stood, or more squirmed, in the motel room as the boys created a plan. They were starting to suspect something was wrong with you, they just couldn’t figure it out. Dean was a bit more clued into the fact that you seemed to whimper every time you looked in Sam’s direction. Sam, completely clueless to this, had been trying to get you alone in hopes you would tell him what was wrong.

“We find Famine, take his little ring, and everyone will be back to normal.” Dean said, slapping his hands on his lap. You hugged yourself, chewing absentmindedly at your thumbnail in an attempt to stop the desire from coming out of you.

“Dean-” Sam’s voice made you melt and a small moan escaped your lips. The brothers looked at you before turning back to the conversation.

“-I can’t go. The demons-”

“I get it.” Dean interrupted Sam. He knew he couldn’t expect Sam to risk something like this. He had it handled. He had Castiel to help. He would’ve had you also, but he could tell you were ready to pounce on Sam. Your resolve was breaking. There wasn’t much more you could do. You decided - you were going to ask Sam to help you get over this.

“Sam,” You breathed out as you walked to him. Your legs were wobbly. You watched Sam shoot up from his seat, but before you could get to him Dean was grabbing both of your wrists. You whined, trying to pull away. You needed Sam, needed his body, his c-

“No.” Dean spoke sternly, pulling you to the door. He had to get you another room and lock you in. It was for your own good.

“Wait, let her g-” Sam tried to walk to you but Castiel, even in his hungry state, stepped in front of him. You yanked against Dean but he was stronger than you.

“Not right now, man.” Dean spoke as he dragged you out.

“What’s wrong with her?!” Sam was desperate. He needed to know why he couldn’t be around you.

“I think you know.” Castiel said before turning his attention back to his food. Sam shook his head and tried to think. Realization came across his face as he put it all together.

----

An hour had passed since Dean left you. He had locked you in the bathroom of a room as far from the original room that they had available. You had somehow gotten worse. You were bucking from the ground, trying to find something to alleviate the pain. It was horrible. You knew Sam was close. You could feel it. You needed him. The door was locked from the outside, but you were pulling on the handle, trying to get it open.

“Please,” You whined out. You banged on the door, trying to break it down. You whimpered a few times when you felt the fabric of your jeans rub against you. You had grown stronger since joining the boys. You could do this. You needed Sam.

The sound of wood cracking encouraged your efforts. You slammed your body up against the door and hit it with your fists until you felt it give way. You fell to the ground surrounded by the scattered pieces of wood from the door. Your recovery was quick and was sped up by the overwhelming need bubbling in you. You stumbled to the door of the room, which was, stupidly on Dean’s part, simply locked with the deadbolt. You ran out into the night like a caged animal escaping. You searched around trying to find the room where you knew Sam was.

There. Room 12. You ran for it, panting as your core grew wetter. You reached the room, shuffling around for the key that Dean had forgotten to take from you. You fumbled to unlock the door. You could already smell Sam, hear his own struggle to get his fix. You searched the room trying to find him.

“Sammy…” You whined out and clutched your stomach. You couldn’t find him, even though you knew he was here. You heard your name muffled through the door to the bathroom. Of course! Dean had hidden him in the same place he had put you. You practically ran to the door, yanking it open. There he was, handcuffed to the sink and looking up at you with those puppy dog eyes. You whimpered and fell to your knees next to him.

“Sammy, it hurts.” You said, gripping onto his shirt. Sam scrunched his eyebrows in worry and understanding. With his free hand he rubbed your side in an attempt to soothe you.

“I know, honey.” He breathed out as you leaned on him.

“Please, Sammy, help me. Please.” You whimpered and breathed in his scent.

“I don’t know if you-” He began.

“No, I do, I do, I do.” You chanted as his hand gripped onto your side. You could see him roll his head to the side. He could tell you were in pain. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to help. He did, more than anything in the world. He had wanted you since you joined him and Dean on the road. The time was never right, his confidence never high enough. And now he had a chance. The only problem was he didn’t know if you actually wanted it or if it was the old man controlling your desire. When Sam was silent to your begging, you moved in closer.

“Sammy, please… it hurts so bad… I want you… all of you…” You moaned out. Red hot need flashed across your vision. It was getting harder for Sam to not touch you in the way you both wanted. The final crush of his hesitancy was the whimper that came out of you when he took his hand off of you.

“Let me see you, baby.” His tone was delicate even when his words were dirty. You were quick to pull your clothes off. You didn’t care where they went and threw them in every direction. You were left naked and kneeling next to him. His eyes raked down your body before stopping on your acing core. You watched him, whining. He traced a finger across your burning skin. He stopped just before reaching your wetness.

“Please…” You breathed. He flicked his gaze to your eyes momentarily before moving his hand. He started slow, rubbing your clit mindfully. You fell backwards in pleasure but made sure you were still close enough for Sam to touch you. Sam’s pace never slowed or quickened, which made you buck your hips up. He pulled his hand away, leaving you cold and whiny.

“Ah ah,” Sam locked eyes with you, “let me do it.” He placed his hand back where it was to continue his rubbing. Your chest heaved as you willed yourself to stay still. God, you needed this. Your hand moved to your breasts. You toyed with your nipples. This made Sam pull at the cuff around his other wrist. He wanted to touch you, touch all of you. Damn Dean for restraining him like this.

“Just like that, baby, rub them just like that.” He slipped a finger in you. You moaned and clenched around it. He swore under his breath as he moved his hand. You felt like heaven and he hadn’t even had you around his cock yet.

“Yes, Sammy, yes.” You encouraged him. Looking at him from your spot on the floor, you could tell he was getting hard. You wanted to help him, helping him helped you. You moved to get up when Sam pulled his hand back again.

“I said, no moving.” He growled and moved his hips to hide the growing erection. You collapsed on the floor, desperate for him again.

“Wanna make you feel good, Sammy.” You mumbled as you felt not just one, but two fingers slip in. Sam sighed in pleasure, loving how you felt on his hand.

“You are, baby. You can have it, have it all. Just wanna make you come first.” His gentle tone only made you louder. You ran your hands down your body, sparks of pleasure erupting wherever you touched. You were close, so so close. You squeezed your eyes shut as Sam sped up the pace.

“So close, Sam, so so so…” You trailed off, the words falling off your tongue as he curled his fingers. He smiled devilishly, and if you didn’t know any better, or if you were in the headspace to even think, you would’ve thought he was possessed. No, this was completely and wholly Sam Winchester.

“That’s good, baby, come on. Come all undone for me.” He cooed. His words were what sent you over the edge, waves crashing down as you moaned through a bitten lip. The moment of reprieve from the pain was short lived as the need seemed to multiply. You figured this must be what torture was. You turned to your hands and knees before crawling to Sam. He groaned as he watched you look up at him, asking for permission to undress him. He nodded and your hands flew to his zipper. You unbuttoned his jeans, pulling them down his body with his boxers.

His cock sprang free, looking achingly hard. You sucked in a breath, the sight making your clit throb. You moved a hand to touch him, but was stopped by his hand on your wrist. Your eyes shot to his.

“I want you around me.” His words were almost a beg, like he was just as needy for this as you were. You whimpered in reply, a new wave of pleasure washing over you. You climbed on top of him so you were chest to chest. He looked in your eyes before crashing his lips into yours. It was sloppy and full of desire. His hand gripped your hip, kneading the skin there. You groaned in response. Your arms wrapped around his neck and you tried to hold him as close to you as possible. His hand snaked down to position himself with your hole. He broke the kiss to speak.

“Ready, baby?” He asked. You answered by sinking down onto him with a sigh. You kissed him again, grinding your hips. He helped you move, lifting you with one arm only to guide you back down. His lips left yours, moving down your face then to your neck. He nipped at your skin sharply before kissing it better.

SamSamSamSamSamSam. The only thing in your mind was Sam. His name was racing through your brain in a never ending loop. He left little marks on you everywhere, causing you you speed up your movements. Your fingers tangled in his hair. You needed him closer, needed him deeper.

“God, you feel so good, baby. Just like I dreamed about.” Sam grunted out against your skin. Your walls were warm and tight around him. He could feel you tighten around him when he spoke, which only motivated him to keep going. His words made you moan. You loved this, and though the instant need for it had been brought on against your will, you had been dreaming about this moment for a while.

The room was filled with breathy moans and the sounds of sex. You pulled Sam's head back by his hair, gentle enough, before kissing him again. It was sloppy and wet, full of lust. You could feel yourself growing closer to orgasm again. It was insane how this felt. Most guys hadn't ever gotten you off once, much less twice in the same night. You whimpered into his mouth and felt a smile curve up his face. He was glad he could bring such pleasure to you.

The final breaking point for you was when you felt his hand holding you grip onto the soft fat of your bottom. You let out a few breathy whines as you felt Sam come a second later. You didn't care that the two of you had forgotten to use a condom in your sex driven states. None of that mattered. All that mattered was the euphoric high of multiple orgasms was washing over you as you stayed on Sam. Neither of you were moving anymore. He was still inside you when you let your arms fall to his chest. Your head lolled to its side onto his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around you.

“You okay, baby?” He said in between pants. You simply nodded. The overwhelming need to go for another round wasn't coming and you were so glad for it. Finally, you were at peace. Dean and Castiel must have gotten Famine’s ring somehow. You didn't think of what this meant until you heard the door to the motel room open.

“Sam-” Dean began, but was cut off by the sight of the two of you on the bathroom floor, Sam still cuffed to the sink. Castiel appeared behind Dean.

“She wasn't there.” He stated in a monotone after seemingly being sent to check up on you.

“Yeah, I got that.” Dean mumbled. Sam looked up at him sheepishly. You were starting to doze off. The energy it had taken all day to not be able to get off was taking a toll on you. Dean cleared his throat before grabbing a blanket off the bed. He draped it over you in an attempt to keep some of your modesty in tact.

“Can you, ya know?” Sam questioned while rattling the handcuffs attached to him. Dean pulled a key from his pocket and quickly freed his younger brother.

“We'll talk about this later.” Dean said before swiftly getting out of the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.

[sockmeat]

Never done this before so I’m not sure I’m doing this right but I saw you take requests for Lucifer so I wanted to try.

How about a romantic Lucifer x good human reader where reader somehow ends up in hell while still alive and meets Lucifer and he falls for her.

In the first episode it said that he never got to see what good came from humanity so maybe he finally does when getting to know reader.

(Sorry If I did this wrong ^^“)

                                                        𓆩♡𓆪

✼__________________________________________________________✼

𝐅𝐄𝐌 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑 -- 𝐌𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥… (𝑯𝒂𝒛𝒃𝒊𝒏 𝑯𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒍)

(𝐰𝐜): 428

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: Thanks to some asshole friends, you're stuck in Hell with no way out. Thankfully, you find a nice hotel to stay in, but the owner's dad is going to be making visit and he just so happens to be the king of Hell.

(𝐀/𝐍): Can you tell I'm just cycling through the same 3 images......

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠(𝐬): Wrote this while I was tired so it might be trash fair warning

                                                        𓆩♡𓆪

♡ You ended up in hell after a sleepover with your friends, where they were playing around with an old book of portals they found and went too far. You were the one singled out and thrown in and now you have absolutely no way of going back.

♡ You heard of the Hazbin Hotel and how they were trying to redeem sinners and figured that was your best shot at being safe and finding a way to get back to Earth, so that's how you ended up there.

♡ Charlie was not only excited to show her father her hotel and hopefully get some support, but maybe also get some input on how she could help you.

♡ You and Lucifer met when he first visited the hotel.

♡ You were very nervous about it; you weren't sure what kind of man the king of Hell would be.

♡ But the second he burst into the room and greeted Charlie with a big hug, you relaxed significantly.

♡ He went on to greet Keekee, then Razzle and Dazzle, then Vaggie before he saw you.

♡ He looked instantly surprised to see you, then confused.

♡ He asked Charlie, very bluntly, what a human was doing in Hell of all places.

♡ You stepped in, introduced yourself as kindly and smoothly as you could to the literal king of Hell, and explained how you got there.

♡ Sleepover, creepy old book, bad friends, Hell.

♡ The day went on and Lucifer found interest in you.

♡ Not only were you a human in Hell, but you were so considerate there was no way you even deserved to be there.

♡ Lucifer watched your interactions with the others with something swelling in his chest. He could barely work up the nerve to talk to you himself, he wanted you to treat him the way you were treating them, but he didn't feel confident that he could be normal under that attention.

♡ When it was finally time for him to leave, Lucifer was surprisingly reluctant.

♡ Even with Alastor up his butthole about being like Charlie's new dad, Lucifer wasn't certain when he'd see you again.

♡ He couldn't exactly just find you wandering around the pride ring. And when was the next time he would be invited to the hotel?

♡ But, eventually he left, with a plan to make more excuses to visit the hotel.

♡ He stuck true to his gut and did visit, getting closer to Charlie and you in the process.

♡ Win, win!

                                                        𓆩♡𓆪