#I don’t want us to call the landlord I don’t want to give them problem

[yoohyeon]

I left a note In the entrance cause it’s pass 10pm and the music is still as loud….

[jarofstyles]

Haze

Hi bestie babes, here is a best-friends-to-best-friends-with-benefits piece! I am unsure if I'm doing a second part but if I did it'll be later on down the line.

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WC- 8k

warnings- use of marijuana, friends with benefits, biting, daddy kink, soft Dom H hehe

“H? Do you really think I’m pretty?” Y/N’s voice was slightly slurred, a mix of both tired and high as a kite from the joint they’d finished just a bit ago. The cool air flowed in from the window they’d cracked in order for her landlord not to get a call to complain, but she welcomed the chill. She always got a bit hot in her skin when the high hit her. “Don’t lie to me. Give it to me straight.

She loved smoking, sure, but she hated how it made her mind think about things she had purposely been putting off. Like her awful fucking dating life and how stupidly lonely she was.

Harry sat next to her on the sofa, his legs spread in an obnoxious manspread, his fingers messing with the Rubik’s cube. It wasn’t uncommon for them to smoke together- he was her best friend- but she wanted his opinion. The poor man was going to be subject to her insecurity.

Her string of bad dating experiences lately had made it hard to believe it wasn’t a her problem.

"Pretty? Babe, you're beautiful. Come off it." he mumbled, eyes still on the puzzle game. He was in that fluid mindset, neither here nor there. His reassurance felt nice but at the same time, a little vague. Her face contorted in a frown as she looked over at him. He was still baked, so she got it, but still. A little more would be nice.

“You have to say that. You’re my best friend. Tell me honestly, H. What is.. what is wrong with me? Because I don’t know how someone can go on so many bad dates and it not be a them problem.” It had been plaguing her the whole time and harshing the high. The words needed to come out. “I’m the common denominator.”

Finally, he put the Rubik's cube down and turned to face her fully, his gaze locked on hers. Sure, he was dazed from the weed, but he wanted to be sincere with her once he had heard how she had actually been a bit torn up from it. As hard as she tried, it wasn’t easy for her to hide her emotions from him. Even high Harry could see past the playful quips she had made lately. It had only been a matter of time before she had asked him about it and in his opinion, it was bullshit. There was nothing wrong with her at all. Y/N was amazing, but it was only natural to become a little insecure when someone had the string of bad luck like she had.

"Y/N, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. I'm being completely honest with you, I swear. It's not you, it's them.” He winced knowing how cheesy it sounded but it couldn’t really be helped at the moment. “You're a fuckin’ amazing, smart, beautiful, funny, talented, kind person... I could list off all your good qualities cause there’s loads of ‘em, but m’high and can't think straight enough right now t’give you the fancier words like… exuberant? Pretty sure that one’s right ."

Y/N let out a little laugh. She could hear it in the low tone of his voice and how it seemed to take him longer than normal to say things when he was stoned and trying his absolute hardest to get that out, but it was a little cute. Too bad it wasn’t enough to get her out of her wallowing.

“Then I’m doomed.” She groaned, sinking into the couch. Her hands came up to cover her face, a tired sound leaving her as she tried to reset. “Dude, do you know how entirely and overwhelmingly exhausting it is? And don’t you dare call me dramatic.” Her eye peeped up at him before she fell back into a huff. “I know you get sex on tap but for the rest of us normal folks, it’s like a war zone out there.”

Harry snickefed at her little quip as he watched her sink into the couch. Letting out a sigh as he really thought about it though, a flicker of understanding crossing his face. "I understand how you feel, trust me. It's not easy for anyone. Although I have to admit, I can't exactly relate to your dating struggles, not really. I just happen to be lucky enough to have a very dedicated fanbase."

He was joking but… not really. He always teased her about this. The women who tended to hang out around the garage or try to get near him after hours to ride him in the cars that he just fixed… It wasn't hard for him to get what he wanted. Being good looking, tattooed, solid and single, it got you a lot of places, and a lot of ass. If only she could relate.

“Yeah, yeah. Slut.” She grumbled lightheartedly, kicking her foot against his thigh. It wasn’t fair it was as toned as it was. “You’re a mechanic and you’ve got all the rich soccer moms throwing themselves at you for a romp in the backseat while their husbands are at work. That’s nice and all, but the dating pool for us commoners is abysmal at best.”

Shooting him a glare, she grabbed the bag of goldfish shaped crackers and popped some into her mouth. “At this point I’d be fine with a friends-with-benefits sorta thing- but god damn it, I just want someone to love me at some point.” There was a moment of silence before she cleared her throat. They didn’t really discuss their sex lives and stuff often so she took his silence as one of not knowing what to say- which was fair. She was sorta dumping this all on him. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t that insane. Everyone went through shit like this. “Sorry. I don’t mean to actually be dramatic this time.”

Harry shook his head at her remark, giving her a reassuring smile that had his eyes crinkling at the corners. He locked his gaze on her face as he listened to her speak, his expression softening with understanding instead of the smug joking he was giving off before. "Hey, s’alright babe. You're not being dramatic. It's how you feel, and I understand that. Everyone deserves love, and I have no doubt you'll find it."

He paused for a moment, considering his next words carefully. When he spoke again, his voice low and sincere as he knocked his hand against her thigh to get her to look at him.

"Y/N... can I ask you somethin’? And don’t make it weird.” He warned, making her unsure what the hell he could be asking.

Brushing the hair out of her eyes, she turned to look back at him with a questioning look on her face. “Sure. What’s up?”

Harry seemed to hesitate for a moment, unsure whether he should ask or not. It would most definitely change their dynamic if she was offended or freaked out by it, but regardless he felt like it it was something he knew he had to ask. He shifted on the couch, turning to face her fully, taking a deep breath and letting his gaze lock on hers before speaking.

"Y’know how you were saying how you're open to a friends with benefits thing? And how you're tired of being alone?"

“Yeah…. I literally said it like, two second ago.” She replied, voice slow and drawn out. She knew she was foggy, but damn. Of course she didn’t want to draw conclusions but she had to wonder why he would be bringing that up again. Her heart beat a little harder as she narrowed her eyes at him. “Why?”

His gaze remained steady on hers, his expression unreadable. He took a moment before speaking again, his voice low and slightly hoarse. Of course he wanted to be careful with his words, in the off chance this could offend her but he knew that he’d kick himself for not asking if he avoided it. He took a deep breath before asking the question.

"I was wondering... if you'd be interested in having an arrangement like that... with me."

Blinking rapidly, she had to be sure she wasn’t just hearing things. Usually she wasn’t the type to have hallucinations when high, but she didn’t know if he would ever actually suggest that. “Uh.. can you repeat that?”

Harry smiled softly as he saw her surprise. He knew it was a big ask, but he was committed to the idea now.

Leaning forward, his voice was smooth and deliberate as he repeated his question, this time with more confidence considering she hadn’t completely looked disgusted at the idea.

"I was asking if you'd be interested in having a friend's with benefits arrangement with me. No strings attached, just a... way to fulfill certain needs without the commitment. What would you say to something like that?"

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said.” The nod was casual, as if that hadn’t just completely freaked her out. Not in a bad way! But in a…. What-the-fuck-my-best-friend-just-asked-me to-casually-hook-up-on-the-regular, sort of way.

“Uh… I’m not saying no, but I have to ask why you’d suggest that? I didn’t think you were attracted to me in the slightest.” It had completely come out of left field. The intent behind complaining wasn’t for him to offer but to get genuine advice from him considering he never seemed to struggle in the dating department.

"Who the hell said I wasn't attracted to you? I’ve always thought you were stunning.” It wasn’t supposed to come off defensively but he had to wonder in the moment if maybe it did. Harry had never once thought of her as anything but mind blowingly gorgeous.

“Okay, but you have to say that. You’re my best friend, like I said before. I just….” Hesitance grew on her face, looking over his own for any sign of joking. If he was, her ego really couldn’t handle another blow. “I really don’t want to be a pity fuck. And I also don’t want to like… no offense to you, I don’t want to sleep with someone who isn’t exclusive with me? Not like in the dating sense but like, I’d ask you not to sleep with anyone else for safety and I don’t know how you’d feel about that.” Maybe she was rambling but thoughts were running rampant in her already overcrowded brain. Asking him not to fuck anyone else felt like an overstep for some reason.

As she spoke, Harry nodded along, listening intently. He understood her hesitation and appreciated the honesty; it was one of the things he had always loved about her- But he certainly didn't want her to feel like a “pity-fuck” either. That was the furthest thing she could be. He could respect her wanting a certain degree of exclusivity, especially for safety. He knew he was a bit of a whore and he wasn’t ashamed of it, but he had full ability and sometimes the wish to be monogamous- more than he expressed. Granted, if it were anyone else he’d probably feel a little suffocated in an ask like that but… It didn’t sound so bad when it came to Y/N.

"I get it," he said, nodding in agreement. Reaching out and placing a hand on her knee, his touch warm and gentle, he tried his best to reassure her. "I wouldn't suggest it if I didn't find you attractive, Y/N. It's not about pity, it's about wanting a connection with someone I know and trust. And it’s not like it isn’t a convenience for me, too. No awkward leaving afterward, no like… ‘here I’ll get you a cab’ or saying no to a sleepover. We’ve slept in the same bed loads of times and you know I love a cuddle..”

Sharpening her gaze on him, she tilted her head. “Is this because you wanna do some crazy kinky stuff? Cause I’m open but I dunno how crazy I’ll get.” She was kind of kidding…. But kinda not. There were her own things she wanted to explore, but she didn’t want to be a lab rat.

Harry's eyebrows raised at her question, slightly taken aback. He couldn't help but laugh lightly at her tone, but there was also a hint of genuine interest in his reply.

"You really think I'm into kink, huh? Some sort of freak in the sheets?” Wiggling his brows, he teased her. It wasn’t as if it wasn’t obvious that he was a bit of a frequent fucker, but he didn’t have much shame in that. It wasn’t a kiss and tell sort of situation, but he wasn’t shy about letting her know he’d had a lovely night the day prior when need be. “Well, maybe. But no, that's not the only reason..." He let out a breath, a smirk on his lips. "But I'd loveeee to find out what you'd be open to, if we did this."

“Nope, you first, casanova.” She bounced in her seat, getting closer. Her nosy tendencies took precedence over everything else, it appeared. Getting to know more about him that was was enticing and she couldn’t hold herself back. “What's the crazy stuff you’re into? C’mon, we never talk about this stuff.”

Harry was open about the fact he had a healthy supply of offers and hookups but she had stopped him a few times from giving details. Mostly for her sake, so she didn’t see him as some sort of deviant- even if he was. Now, though, knowing she was potentially someone who could experience said things? Her curiosity was killing the cat. Her cat. Metaphorically speaking.

The man’s lips curled into a small smile as he saw her eager expression. He leaned back on the sofa, his arm stretched out behind her. He was throughly enjoying her nosiness- maybe for the first time- considering it gave him the perfect opportunity to tease her a bit more. "Oh, where do I even start... I have quite a few kinks, darling. But I have a feeling you'd like to hear about a certain one..."

“Okay… so tell me.” She rolled her hand to motion to him to continue. Patience really wasn’t Y/N’s strong suit and it was beginning to show, even if the smoking had initially relaxed her. “Let’s hear it. I want to know what I’d be getting myself into, besides greasy hands and the smell of motor oil.” Though she’d never admit how she’d learned to enjoy it, too.

He couldn’t lie and say he wasn't enjoying how intently she was looking at him, how her gaze was fixed on his every move. He leaned forward just a bit, his voice dropping lower as he continued* "Alright, y’wanted to know, you'll get to know like the princess y’are. But keep in mind, I've got a few of these, not just one." The taunting made her give him that impatient look he was used to, snickering under his breath as she bore her eyes into him.

“Okay. Lay them on me, tell me!” She huffed, knocking his knee. “You’re edging for no reason. I already know that one because you’re gross. Tell me the real stuff.”

Raising a brow at her eagerness, he leaned back again with his arm still draped behind her. He began speaking again, letting his voice drop a bit. "Alright, just a little tiny taste then… See if you can handle it. I've got a thing for power dynamics, darling. Particularly, I like to be in control."

“Mm… I could have guessed that. You’ve got the whole smolder thing, and you do the…” Y/N put her hand behind his neck before pulling it off. “Then you do the neck holding thing when we go out. You like to control where people go. Boss me around. So I had a clue. Give me one I wouldn’t expect.”

The perceptive observations hadn’t been something he expected, but it did amuse him. He reached up to brush a strand of her hair away from her face, his fingers lingering against her skin.

"You know me too well, little dove." He muttered, his eyes sparkling with mischief. This was a conversation he was enjoying. Not one he anticipated tonight, no, but one that had him on the edge of his metaphorical seat. His real seat was leaned against the back of the couch. "Okay then... how about this? I also enjoy a bit of exhibitionism. Kinky enough for you?"

“Oh?” She sat with it for a moment. “Actually… that makes sense too. You’re understated in public but you still get a lot of attention. Behind the scenes you’re an attention whore and stuff, which I know first hand but… yeah.” She huffed. “Damn. Can’t believe I didn’t guess that sorta stuff.” Another question popped into her mind. “Wait… what have you done with that? Are you talking like. Dressing rooms, cars? Or in front of people for real?”

Harry grinned as she continued to analyze his kinks, watching her as she went through it in her head. Had she thought about it before on her own? That wasn’t something he’d mind, in all honest. He chortled at her question and leaned back, his arm wrapped behind her. He didn't want to reveal too much but he was enjoying this back and forth. Maybe a tad bit more than he should be.

"You've got good instincts, darling. Yes, I enjoy exhibitionism. And yeah, both dressing rooms and cars are on the list. But not just that... I like a bit more of an audience sometimes. But that’s a different conversation. I can explain why I like it, though. Since you seem to be so curious.”

“Do tell.” Yes, maybe she was a little nosy but… it was slightly arousing. Harry was interesting to her before but now, with the idea of her being in those scenarios, she felt an elevated desperation to know.

Harry noticed how her eyes darkened with excitement as she listened to him and it made a feeling of satisfaction twist in his gut. Having an effect on her was something he hadn’t realized he’d enjoy so much, but now that he had a taste he wanted to see more of it. He shifted a bit closer, his voice dropping into a low whisper. "I like the thrill of being caught. The danger of it, y’know? I love that it’s risky, that your adrenaline pump and you’ve got t’be quiet. Or you don’t, and you have people see- when it’s appropriate.” That was something he’d experienced a few times. “I’ve had it happen before. Maybe I could arrange that, if that’s something you’d want. People watching, not touching, just watching me touch you... and I’d touch you plenty, darling."

“I think um, I’d like it” It was hard to talk with how her tongue felt tied. “I’ve not done a lot of it but I think I’d be open to seeing and doing more of it.” Her voice weakened, feeling him close to her. His cologne was warm and slightly spiced, his fingertips brushing her arm. Y/N had never experienced the sort of thing he was describing. The most she had done was fuck in a car. “Y-Yeah. I think that’s something we could um… try.” She cleared her throat, trying not to show how affected she actually was. It was hard not to. “What other kinks? Anything I wouldn’t guess?”

Harry saw right through her attempts to seem unbothered and he grinned, his hand continuing to lightly brush against her shoulder. He was enjoying the effect he had on her, the more the minutes passed by. It was a brand new side of her that he hadn’t been privy too prior, but now that he had a chance to? He was going to indulge.

"Glad you're up for trying it, darling. And as for other kinks..." He paused for a moment, his gaze trailing over her body before he spoke again in a deeper voice.

"I'm also into a bit of rope bondage, but that’s for another day too. The typical things you’d expect in kink too, the rougher stuff sometimes, but I really like working you up until you can’t take it anymore. Making you desperate, y’know?"

“Ropes?” She swallowed the shock. “Oh. Hm…” it made sense given the other things but for some reason she hadn’t expected him to be into actual ropes. “I’d have thought maybe more handcuffs but you do like being difficult, don’t you?”

It was a joke but it slightly intimidated her. Nothing she wouldn’t try, though. She trusted him to do that sort of thing with her, if they got to it.

Harry hummed at her surprise and leaned a little closer, his hand coming up to her chin to tilt her face towards him. His eyes locked with hers, his tone serious. It was hard to ignore how beautiful she was now that he was allowed to think that way. It was something he’d tried to limit his brain from indulging in before, but knowing he’d have all the rights to be the one to stare and touch her, he felt like a layer had been peeled back.

"Yeah, darling, I like being difficult. And I like being in control. But we'll take it slow, alright?" He saw the hint of intimidation on her face and the small act of rebellion he liked to see in her. He ran his thumb over her bottom lip, her skin hot and soft under his touch. “Nothin’ you don’t want t’do. I’ll make sure you're comfortable. Even if you’re a miserable little brat sometimes.”

“I…” her train of thought was stalled by the tender touch. Harry was… he was being a lot more liberal with his touches. Sometimes he was when he was high in general but this itself had her feeling hot under her skin. There was that intention now that this was slightly more than what friends do. “I can’t lie and say I’m not slightly intimidated by the thought of us doing stuff together. You’ve done a lot more than me.” She admitted meekly.

Harry simpered as he heard her confession and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He appreciated her honesty, understanding her intimidation. It would be the same for him in her position, but luckily he was going to use his advantage for good. "I know I've done more than you, but that's not a good nor a bad thing. Everyone is experienced in their own way, darling. And that's the point of us doing this... to explore each other, to learn what the other likes." He ran his hand down her arm, his fingers lightly tracing her skin, sending chills across her body.

His fingers curled around her wrist, lightly pulling her up and leading her to straddle his lap. This wasn’t at all where she had expected this night to go but… she couldn’t complain. With her nerves aside, Harry was by far one of the most attractive people she had ever met. There was no way she could turn away the opportunity to feel the way he touched someone romantically.

“You’re really okay not sleeping with anyone else in order to do stuff with me?”

Harry gazed up at her as she straddled his lap, his hands sliding up her thighs, pulling her closer against him. He looked up at her with a mix of desire and affection, appreciating her concern for his boundaries. "I'm absolutely fine with it," he assured her, his voice a low rumble. "I don't want anyone else." His hand came up, gently cupping her jaw. "I want to make you feel good, Y/N. I want to give you all the pleasure you deserve, and I want to be the only one doing it."

Y/N let out a weak sound as his lips pressed against the corner of her mouth. Having him so close was making her feel lightheaded, placing her hands on his shoulders as he tugged her closer to him, chest to chest.

“What do you want to do tonight?” She mumbled, eyes dropping to his lips back up to his eyes. “We don’t have to do like, everything and stuff but… I dunno.” The weed definitely made her aroused.

Harry chuckled softly, his lips just barely grazing the corner of her mouth, teasing her again. Feeling her body against his, her hands on his shoulders, it sent a wave of heat through his body. He doubted she knew that he’d started getting aroused when she started talking about what he’d be into.

"You're cute when you're bashful, darling. And high." He teased, his lips curving into a smirk as he spoke against her skin. "As for what I want to do... I just want to enjoy this moment. Maybe smoke a bit more, later. But mostly I just want to touch you."

“O-okay. You can touch me however you want.” Giving him that opening was bold, but she also knew she needed to just let him take charge. He said he liked to dom, so he would take care of her. Her eyes fluttered closed as she felt soft presses of his lips over her cheek, down to her jaw.

“You smell really good.”

Harry could feel himself holding back the pleased noise. The little compliment was a welcomed one, but he didn’t get them often from her. It was a new part of their dynamic but he couldn’t find himself upset with it. In fact, he was going to do everything he could to get some more out of her. He glanced at her, enjoying the way her eyes closed in response to his touch. Running his nose down the column of her neck, he took a little inhale of her scent. Sugary Sweet. Just like her.

"So do you, darling." He spoke against her skin.

In a test of how she’d react, he let his hands slid under her shirt, his fingers tracing along her bare skin. There was no stiffening, so he continued slowly moving closer to the hem of her bra. His lips continued their path down, leaving behind a trail of tingling sensations and wet marks on her skin.

The shaky exhale was louder than she had wanted, his hot fingertips burning a trail over her skin. He took the permission to heart, tracing the bottom of her bra as his lips moved down her collarbone.

Her breathing hitched as she felt his teeth sink into the skin lightly, a firm sucking making her fingers grip his shoulders tightly and nails dig into him just a bit. “Oh, shit… why does that feel good?”

Harry giggled against her skin as he felt her nails digging into his shoulders, enjoying the fact he was already getting a reaction out of her. He continued to kiss and bite her skin, occasionally sucking on the sensitive parts, marking his territory and drawing out more sounds from her.

"Cause I know what I'm doing, darling." He murmured against her skin before biting her collarbone again, this time a bit rougher.

“Oh my god.” She keened, head falling back as her hand came up to cup the back of his head. Fingers curled in his hair, feeling his mouth mark her up while his hand went under her bra, cupping her in his palms. “Fuck.”

Y/N felt the pulsing between her slick thighs, her sleep shorts riding up as she shuffled closer and pressed his mouth harder against her skin. It had been a while since she’d gotten laid but it was a little embarrassing how quickly he managed to get her to feel completely insane.

The sounds of her keening and breathing and the feeling of her arching into his touch was making his own need for her grow. His lips continued to work her her skin, marking and kissing and doing all the things he wanted because it felt like heaven to have this on tap. He could only imagine how much better their smoking sessions would be, how much more fun sleepovers would be if he got to love her up like this without a second thought.

“H…” she whimpered. Rocking her hips slightly, she rubbed against his bulge she could feel clearly between her thighs. “You’re h-hard already?”

Harry hummed quietly, feeling a thrill as she rubbed against him. His lips curled into a smirk against her skin before he lifted his head up, looking at her with darkened eyes. "Yeah, 'course I am, darling. You have no idea what you do to me, do you?"

Moving his hands back down to her hips, he gripped them tightly to grind himself against her. Give her a taste of just how hard his cock got for her. There was no reason for her to doubt. “You did this, sweet girl. S’all your fault.”

“Oh, shit.” She groaned, giggling at the end as she felt his mouth fall onto her chest. Wet, sloppy kisses were placed on the tender skin as she felt him guide her back and forth, setting a pace for the friction. “I can’t tell if it’s been a long time or if uh… if you’re just really good at this.”

Both. It was absolutely both.

Harry chuckled against her chest, his breath hot against her skin before his smirk widened.

"Mm, I would like to think it's because I'm really good at this," his hands guided her hips, setting a slow, torturous pace. "But maybe also a bit of both. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “9 months.”

Harry raised an eyebrow at her response and tilted his head to the side.

"Nine months? Damn, babe." He murmured, his hands going under her shirt, his fingers tracing up her sides, making her shiver. Getting the reactions from her felt almost as good as her rubbing over his cock. "That's a long time."

“Just didn’t find anyone good enough to let in my bed.” She retorted, using her grip on his head to guide him back to her chest. “Take my shirt off.”

Harry didn't need to be told twice. He quickly pulled her shirt off, throwing it over his shoulder, before his hands came back up to her body, slowly tracing up her stomach, his fingers brushing over her skin. The thought had been there quite a few times over what she’d look like bare, but this was a brand new vision for him. One he absolutely adored.

"Beautiful." He murmured, his gaze wandering over her chest as he took in the sight of her bare skin, his breathing growing a bit heavier.

Her voice interrupted his inspection of her body. “Bra, too, please. Have to bite the bullet.” Despite her nerves that maybe he wouldn’t like what he saw, she felt comfortable with him. Harry wouldn’t ever make her feel bad. That much she knew for certain.

Plus… she wanted to feel more of his mouth.

Harry chuckled softly and nodded, his gaze locking with hers for a moment as he ran his fingers over the straps of her bra, pulling them down over her shoulders.

"You're so beautiful, darling. Don't ever feel nervous around me," his reassurance grounded her, his voice gentle but firm.

He reached behind her back, quickly unclasping her bra and pulling it off, tossing it away. Taking a moment to appreciate the sight in front of him, his eyes lit with desire. “God. You don’t even understand how phenomenal you are, do you? M’a lucky son of a bitch that you’re letting me touch you at all.”

Y/N continued to rub herself against him, feeling flushed at the praise. It was embarrassing that she had a pretty good idea that her sleep shorts were getting soaked, but she was swollen and wet and the motions itself of him between her legs were getting her embarrassing close.

Feeling his mouth kiss over the naked skin, she let out a moan that she hadn’t expected to. He was delicate but demanding, taking what he wanted.

Harry groaned as he felt her rubbing herself harder against him, his hands gripping her hips tightly to guide her movements. He couldn't resist the need building up inside him, the need to make her moan and whimper and squirm beneath him.

"You sound so pretty, darling," The compliment murmured against her skin, his lips traveling down her chest, stopping every so often to leave wet kisses, claiming every inch of skin he could. Selfish, possessive, needy. He wouldn’t deny any three of those allegations should she so choose to label him.

“It’s gonna feel so good when you’re inside of me.” She whispered, almost in awe. He was thick and long and she could feel every inch under her. It was almost intimidating to feel it and know that was going to be inside of her at some point. “But I… we have to wait for that. Wanna do that when we aren’t all… you know.” High. At least the first time they fucked, she wanted to be sober completely. “I think I could get off just like this, though. I feel so good right now.”

Harry nodded, his lips continuing to leave wet kisses on her skin, his hands roaming up her sides as he continued to grind himself against her.

"Impatient, aren't you, darling?" He teased, nipping at her neck before moving his mouth to her ear, whispering in it. "You'll just have to wait for that, though. But...there's always other ways to get us both off, hm?"

“Which way?” She breathed, eager to hear any and all suggestions he had.

Harry held her gaze, his eyes dark and full of desire as he spoke in a low, husky tone.

"Let me show you."

He gently pushed her back until she was laying down, his hands running down her thighs, pushing them apart slowly. Shifting his position, he hovered over her, his body fitting perfectly between her legs. His weight rested on his forearms as he looked down at her, she felt her world right itself from how it had been tipped over.

Y/N hadn’t expected the shift of direction but she liked it. Feeling him on top of her, she felt… delicate. Protected. Even if his gaze was predatory and hot, she knew he was good hands to be in.

She also hadn’t expected his hands to grab her shorts, pulling them off and tossing them to the side- but as soon as her panties were exposed, he settled back between her thighs. It was less of a barrier between them.

Harry hummed in approval as he got a glimpse of her panties, taking a moment to admire the sight before him. "You're so fucking wet, darling. Made a mess of those useless shorts. Panties aren’t much better." He murmured, his eyes roaming over her body before they went back up to her face. "And I fuckin’ love that you're all mine right now."

Y/N couldn’t take it anymore. Grabbing his face, she pulled it back up to her own and kissed him. Taking matters into her own hands, she felt him reciprocate immediately. And god, could the man fucking kiss.

Harry let out a soft curse at her sudden action but didn't hesitate to kiss her back through it all, his lips moving against hers hungrily. He pressed his body closer against hers, trapping her beneath him as his tongue delved into her mouth, greedily tasting and claiming her like he had been teasing the whole time.

“I wish you could fuck me right now.” She whimpered, feeling him rock against her. His cock perfectly pressed against her cunt and their mouths lapping against one another’s, it was heated and desperate. They couldn’t, not right now, but the idea of it had her slick and throbbing. It was unfair how her body was so primed and ready for him but she had to do the right thing. He’d feel so perfect inside of her and she’d be so full and they both knew it. “I wish you were inside me.”

Harry groaned at her words, the sound almost like a growl as he buried his face against her neck, his breathing getting heavier as he heard her whimper. He rocked his hips against her, his own need growing stronger with every second that passed.

"You have no idea how badly I want that, darling. But we can't...not yet." He whispered against her skin, his hands gripping her hips tightly. “I’m plenty patient, though. I’ll wait for you to want it, and then…” the pause was heavy. “Then I’ll give you every fucking thing you’ve ever wanted out of a fuck. Can promise you that.”

“I know. I know.” There was no doubt that he was fully and utterly capable. She swallowed back her desperation, wrapping her legs around his hips to pull them closer. “You just feel so good against me. I never expected this…” she whispered against his mouth. “But I’m so happy you decided to be horny and suggest it.”

Harry laughed, leaning down to press his lips against her neck again, licking at the skin as he continued to move his hips against hers, his body hot and heavy against hers. He lifted his head up slightly, looking down at her with darkened eyes as he took in how she had started to look a little blissed out. Just how he wanted her.

"I didn't expect it either, darling. But... I'm glad I did." He murmured, his fingers caressing her skin as he settled into a slow, steady rhythm. Rubbing back and forth, rocking his clothed cock into the sticky heat of her ruined panties, he knew her scent would be on them and that just sort of did something to him. Her own mark left on him.

Y/N felt the bubbling pleasure in her tummy. Feeling him rutting against her, the softness of his tongue as it brushed against her own, his hand curled around the back of her neck in such a possessive and firm grip, she felt controlled in the best way. Her eyes rolled back as she felt him grind harder against her.

“Fuck, Daddy. That feels so fucking good, feeling you against my cunt.” She purred, keeping herself glued to him. There was a pause of moment but she could feel him twitch against her, the sharp intake of breath as he tried to catch himself. It had been a shot in the dark, but one that hit the bullseye. “You like when I call you that? Does it make you feel good too?”

The reaction was visible. The man liked it more than she could even seem but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to play into it to see just how far it went. “Daddy… daddy…. Dadddy.” She taunted, whispering it against his skin. “You’ll make me cum like this. Just keep grinding into me…. Just like this.”

Harry groaned at her response, his lips moving down to her neck, leaving biting kisses in his path. The honorific had him weak, even more worked up than he had thought he could be in this scenario. Little Y/N was getting bolder by the minute and he fucking adored it. It made him wonder what else he could get out of her.

"You're gonna get it, darling. Jus’ be patient and let me make you feel nice, the way you’ve been wantin’ too." he murmured against her skin, his hips continuing to move against hers, keeping a steady pace. His hand cupped her chin, forcing her to look up at him, his eyes dark and intense as he looked down at her. "Daddy's gonna take such good care of you, Y/N. Don’t ever doubt it."

Harry was hot to the touch, her fingers guiding his face back to kiss her as he ground his cock into her. She could feel how it twitched against her, her legs keeping him close so they could stay glued together. “That feels…” she babbled. “S’good. So good, H. I feel so hot and I’m so fucking wet and I wish there wasn’t anything between us but we gotta be good. So good.” She rambled. It was hard to control what left her mouth. She would call it temporary insanity if he brought it up again outside of their arrangement, but the simple movements were making her lose her goddamn head.

Harry's breathing was getting heavier by the minute, his heart pounding against his chest like they wanted to escape his ribcage as he continued to rock his hips against hers. He felt hot and needy, every fiber of his being screaming to be closer to her, but he held himself back, knowing that they had to at least try to be good. He’d get to sink his cock into that hot cunt another day, make her cum around it and squeeze and milk every drop from his balls into her. That was something he was going to look forward to. But for right now they were testing the waters, and he liked it way more than he thought he would.

"Y’feel so good, darling. So, so fuckin’ good, can barely stand it." He murmured against her lips, letting the praise flow easily off his tongue. It’s what the woman deserved. All these shitty hookups and no one knew how to get to those little itches she couldn’t scratch- but he could read her so easily. Harry knew what she needed. "You're doing so well for me, being so good. Daddy's proud of you."

The last sentence made her whine out loud. Pleasure flowed through her at his praise, wanting more of it. All of it. It had been so long since she had been touched by someone else, and while the last person she had expected to do it was her best friend, she had also never felt this level of desperation.

Harry could feel her body responding to his words, her whimpers and whines making his own desire for her grow even more. He loved knowing that his praise was making her feel good, that she needed to hear his words. He continued to murmur sweet, filthy things in her ear as his body moved against hers, his need for her growing more and more intense with every second.

"That’s my girl, sweetheart. You're doing so well for me, letting me take care of you like this."

He knew it had been a long time for her, felt it in how she kissed. Selfishly he would be glad to be the one she got to take care of her. No one else really deserved it. Maybe he didn’t either, but he cared for her genuinely. He liked her and he wanted the best for her- so that’s what he was going to do.

“M’gonna cum, daddy.” She whispered. “I feel it. You’re getting my clit so perfect each time you move… god, s’so embarrassing to cum dry humping but I forgot how good it feels.” Or maybe it just hadn’t ever felt this good with anyone else. It had been a while, sure, but she hadn’t actually had dry sex with someone since she was sneaking around with her boyfriends back home. Something about it made her know that it had to be a Harry thing, though. That he’s the reason it felt this fucking good and why she was desperate for it.

Harry could feel her words shooting straight to his core, his body growing hotter in response. He could tell that she was close before she had even said so, by the way her body trembled against him, by the way her words got breathier and more desperate. Hearing her say so only made him more eager to get there.

"That's it, sweetheart. Let daddy make you feel good, darling." Harry murmured in her ear, his hands gripping her tighter, his body moving against hers more frantically now as he chased his own release alongside hers. She was going to cum, she was going to cum because of him and fuck if that wasn’t the sweetest reward he could think of- he wasn’t sure what was. "You're doing so perfect for me. Just let go for me. You can do it. I've got you, sweet girl."

Y/N felt it approach quicker than she had wanted. It was no wonder, though. Harry was giving her everything she didn’t know she needed in the simplest way, and he wasn’t even inside of her yet. She felt safe and appreciated as his fingers held her and his lips cooed encouragement to her, the rhythmic back and forth of his cock rutting against her poor, soaked panties, the heat boiling over.

“I’m gonna- m’cumming, m’cumming, I’m cumming Daddy- Harry.” She babbled as her eyes welled up with pleasured tears, nails digging into his skin as she came.

Harry's breathing hitched as he felt her grip on him, her hands digging into his skin and her body trembling against his as she came. “There you go baby, there you fuckin’ go. Yes.” He gasped, feeling himself tip over the edge. His name leaving her lips in a strangled whimper had been the final straw, his own release hitting him like a wave, his body shuddering against hers as he followed her over the edge. Shooting right into his briefs, he felt the hot and sticky load and momentarily mourned the loss of it not being inside of her, but it was quickly passed over as the orgasm washed over him.

"God, darling," the man groaned, his voice low and rough as he buried his face against her neck. Mouthing over the skin as he tried to gather his bearings, he mumbled sweetness into her. "You did so well for me, sweetheart. You're so perfect. So good for me. Sweetest fuckin’ peach."

The loud groan that followed her own had caught her off guard, the sharp thrusts of his hips making her cry out in overstimulation but she did little to stop it, keeping her legs around his hips. “What the fuck was that?” She laughed, head falling back on the sofa with her eyes blurry and wet. It was hard to think.

Harry couldn’t say anything, his own brain fuzzy and his body in overload after that climax. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, his forehead resting on her shoulder. His curls brushed her skin, scalp slightly damp as her fingers settled in the mess of hair and brushed through it without a second thought.

"Bloody fuckin’ hell, babe." Harry finally managed to say, his voice a bit shaky. "That was… incredible." He lifted his head up, looking down at her disheveled and flushed form, his eyes roaming over her.

It was just dry sex, but it had been better than some of the full on stuff he’d had. Maybe it was just their connection, their vibe, maybe even being high, but he knew it felt impeccable. This was something he wanted to revisit- and he would, especially when he was all alone with his hand on his cock.

“If it feels good like that, what the hell are we gonna do when we do the real thing?” Y/N blinked up at him, the flush of her orgasm glowing on her skin. She felt her body shivering slightly, her poor panties a complete mess she’d need to change into, but there was no regret so far. It took her by surprise considering she had been anticipating a bit of awkwardness between the both of them but there was no hint of it as they recovered, a light kiss pressed over her cheek as his hazy eyes looked down at her.

Harry let out a half-laugh, his body still feeling heavy and spent after that intense release- one that had been a welcomed surprise. There had been no prior indication that would be happening tonight but for as insane as it was that it happened, he was more than happy that it did. Getting to experience this side of Y/N had been something he liked far more than he could have ever anticipated.

Leaning down, his forearms rested on either side of her head as his eyes locked with hers while he spoke. "I have a feeling that the real thing will be earth-shattering." He said, his voice low and slightly hoarse. "The wait might kill me, though."

[shanastoryteller]

HAPPY WINTER SOLACE SHANA HELL YEAH I MADE IT IN TIME!!! CAN I GET ME SOME TONKS AND PERCY AS A BIRTHDAY TREAT? 👉🏻👈🏻 (My birthday is the 22nd) HAVE AN AWESOME HOLIDAY! 🎄🎄🎄

 Percy is supposed to focusing on these reports that he technically shouldn’t have taken out of the office, but technically Crouch is supposed to be handling these, so.

While his absolute piece of shit apartment usually holds no more appeal than being stuck in the office overnight, it currently has Tonks resting with her head on his thigh “resting her eyes” since she refuses to go to bed before him because she believes in blackmail and manipulation. Which he can’t reasonably say he’s surprised by, considering, but it is a little inconvenient.

His work is important or he wouldn’t be doing it, but if he falls asleep at work the worst that happens is he embarrasses himself. If Tonks goes out on a call without getting proper rest, she could be putting herself in danger. Leveraging her own safety to get him to sleep is underhanded and irresponsible.

She’s going to do exceptionally well working under Shackbolt. He’d plucked her out from the other trainees from the beginning. It has nothing to do with him, but he can’t help the smug furl of pride anyway.

He clears his throat and her eyes flutter open. She has to blink a couple times for them to settle to her natural dark brown, cycling through several shades of blue and yellow. He wonders what she was dreaming about. “Bill has a meeting at Gringott’s on Thursday. He’s going to come by the office after and we’re going to go to the cafeteria to catch up.”

“That sounds nice,” she says, turning to press her face into his stomach and rubbing her nose against his sweater. He makes a mental note to try and talk to the landlord about doing something about the heating system, or at least refreshing the charms himself, but he’s not good enough to make them last long. Maybe Bill wouldn’t mind doing it before he returns to Egypt? “Are you done going through the Russian reports?”

No. Translation charms are imperfect and it takes him forever to parse through and figure out what’s actually being described. If Crouch wasn’t such a dick to them, they’d submit in English. “Do you want to join us? If you can. It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

That gets her attention. “Really? I mean, sure. I’m pretty sure I’ve spoke to Bill twice ever. One time he gave me detention.”

His lips twitch. Bill remembers that. “Thank you. He wants to meet my girlfriend. Or re-meet, technically.”

She beams, so pleased whenever he calls her that. She’s been calling herself his girlfriend for a months, but it still makes him warm to see how pleased she is with the title. He’d really though he was just a passing interest, a distraction while she was desk bound, but she’s still here. “Yeah, of course. It’ll be fun!”

He hums in agreement, the sound interrupted midway with a yawn.

“Come on,” she says, pushing herself to her feet then tugging him up after her. “We both need sleep. That’ll all still be there in the morning.”

That’s the problem. But he says, “Alright,” and lets her maneuver him as she likes.

Giving in to Tonks doesn’t sting like it does with other people. It’s always a relief and a pleasure to see her satisfied and happy.

[glitter-gutzzzz]

Hi Taylor. Shall I just call myself “chains anon” or just put an emoji ⛓️‍💥 ⛓️ as signature? 😊

Since you’ve said you’d be interested in my suggestions (bless you, finally I can share my thoughts with someone) I thought id threw a couple your way. Please, NO RUSH TAKE YOUR TIME. While it’s great that you agreed to write, please write when you are comfortable and this doesn’t not affect other activities in your life. Also if you don’t like the idea, just ignore it but I hope that they’ll be interesting.

OK LETS GO

1) James x reader, where she works on the Metallica crew (like logistics manager), everyone kinda treats her as younger/older sister, daughter, etc. but James really likes her. He kinda makes suggestions that he’d be happy to sleep with her, but she doesn’t want to be on the same level as groupies, so she always declines (despite she is attracted to him too). One time as a joke, he suggested to increase her paycheck if she does, but she is mortified by the suggestion as it seems like he considers her to be a prostitute. Next day, James finds out that she quit and realizes he pushed it too far. When the tour break comes, he comes to her place to apologize and explain that he’s not good with expressing his feelings. And she agrees to go on a date.

2) I don’t know if you have seen the black album documentary? At some point, the guys have a stripper dancing in the studio. And reader, who’s James’s fiancée comes over to bring them dinner since they stay late all the time. And she sees through the ajar door that all of them are really enjoying the dance. Obviously she’s upset, because the stripper is traditionally “hot” (curves, make up, lingerie, etc), so she quietly leaves the food in the fridge and leaves. When James comes home that night, she pretends to be asleep. Next morning when he wakes up, she is all dressed already ready to leave for work and when he asked her what is for breakfast she says “ask that stripper, I’m quite sure I’ll even give you a lap dance to go with it”. While he’s annoyed by that attitude he understands why she’s upset, as he promised her at engagement that he’s done with groupies and strippers. As “sorry” he writes nothing else matters for her?

3) reader being childhood friends with Slash from GnR, so she lets him crush at her place (cause these guys used to pretty much live on the streets, until some strippers took them in) because she’s living with James; she also gets Slash and Duff food, etc. of course James is very unhappy with this situation. Metallica goes on justice tour (I think this was the tour when the crew started to bring girls backstage to help the guys shower) and one night he calls her, drunk and breaks up with her, cause he thinks she is cheating on him with Slash. She tries to tell him that she’s just worried for her childhood friend but he doesn’t care and tells her to leave his house. The problem is she’s got nowhere to go - after her landlord found out that she lets GnR boys crash at her place, her rent contract was terminated. She tries to tell him the big news, that’s she pregnant, but he thinks that someone else got her pregnant and now she’s trying to pin the child on him.

During black album recording, he comes to Lars’s place one evening, and accidentally notes a picture of Lars, Slash, Duff with reader who is holding a baby who looks exactly like James - blonde, blue eyes, same smile. He demands to know where the reader lives know and shows up on her doorstep. She doesn’t want to let him in, but he bulldozers his way through. Turns out, after he kicked her out, GnR guys, who finally started to make good cash, pitched it and hit her a small apartment, so she has somewhere to live and raise the baby - as a thank you for taking care of them. Slash got drunk and accidentally told Lars about the kid, so Lars stated to help too. James is pretty much in tears at this point and he’s begging her to forgive him. She wants to kick him out, but the child wakes up crying so she goes to calm him down. The moment the kid sees James, he stops crying, so she takes it as a sign that they need to try again.

OMG, I can’t just write a simple ask 😂🤦‍♀️, it’s had to be excessive. And as you can tell I’m in love with angsty James story with happy ending.

If you’re not feeling like making these just please ignore.

OMG thank you SO SO much, anon!!! I absolutely LOVE all three of these ideas and I'm planning them out in my head already, lol. I'm glad you love angsty James stories with happy endings as much as I do.

Also, thank you for being so kind and understanding!! You've made my day, truly ♥️

Gonna start work on the first one and make my way down the list (":

[cursedbanalities]

"There Was a Hole Here..." (A Horror Story)

Index

Kate looked at him half surprised, “Wait, what do you mean?”

“I mean there was a hole here,” he knocked on the wall causing a dull, hollow sound to echo on the other side. “It’s gone now. Yep, someone must’ve patched it right up.”

“Well, that’s impossible!” Kate exclaimed, half chuckling and half trying to tell if he’s pulling her leg, “I mean, ugh I wish you were pranking me or something ‘cause that’s awful. I feel like I keep hearing freaky shit coming out of this wall. Like, I don’t know, faint voices, or something.”

“Well, sorry ta’ say Kate, but I ain’t able ta’ do a whole lot,” he scratched the back of his head. “The buildin’ next door’s prolly got some animals making noises, er’ druggies er’ some shit,” he lets out a raspy belly laugh, before coughing hard into his fist and clearing his throat. He saw Kate’s scowl and put on a guilty look. “Sorry, I know it ain’t funny,” he said, clearing his throat. “That buildin’ over there’s abandoned, though. Has been fer a while, and I personally check it fer squatters. I’ve been through there… prolly a dozen times and I ain’t never seen a hole. Chances are the other side is all bricked up, and this here little tunnel is all that’s left o’ it.”

Kate rubbed her temples. Of course. Not only did half of the stuff in this godforsaken “luxury” apartment barely work– this is the fifth time she’s had to call her landlord in the past month for plumbing, heat and electrical problems– but now there’s a mysterious un-filled hole in her wall. Great.

 “Okay, okay. Can you fill it in now? I don’t want any raccoons or anything tearing into my wall,” she sounded more exasperated than she meant, but this has really thrown a wrench in her mood.

“Erm, suuure,” he sighed and scratched his head. “I mean, we need ta’ get a permit from the city which’ll take a few days. This is an area ‘tween two buildings, so it might be considered a 'major renovation' under city code. I know a few people in the city ‘cause of my drywall business, so they should be able ta’ give us ‘special permission,’” he says with air quotes. “I also own the building next door. Been meanin’ ta’ make it into a rental like this one. I’ll swing by with some tools and start fillin’ it in maybe… in a week er’ so?”

Kate started to complain, groaning and throwing her hands up, but decided to take a deep breath before throwing a fit. It’s not like she had any choice in the matter, anyways. “Well, thanks Ed,” she sighed. “I wish it could be done sooner, but the fact you’re doing this for free is really better than the alternatives, so… yeah.”

Ed shrugged, “Hey, what’re landlords for, eh? See ya next week, and try not to have that ‘hole’ thing stress ya out too much, okay? It’s the middle o’ the summer, so it’s not like any of those pests over there are tryin’ ta’ find someplace warm. Hell, I’ll fix it up before you dwell on it too long!” 

Kate nodded, but wished she could believe him.

***

Waiting for the week to go by was agonizing, especially since Kate still had work to worry about. Thoughts about the hole in her wall thrashed around in her mind; she had to be careful about it, otherwise those thoughts would eventually wrap around her mind, constricting and crushing her sanity like a metaphysical anaconda. Her biggest fear was coming home to a pack of rabid raccoons ripping her whole life to shreds— or worse, a person who’d do the same thing. 

She spent most of her days at work alleviating her anxieties rather than doing anything productive. Security cameras were an idea Kate had, but the earliest she could get them installed was after the hole would’ve been filled. She thought she could fill it herself, but figured Ed would make her pay if she somehow made the problem worse. By the time the weekend rolled around, Kate was beginning to feel anxious about even the slightest things. Open sewer grates, the bagels she ate, even the pores on her face reminded her of that closed tunnel. Even now, as she sits at her desk on a Friday, tapping her pencil and trying to avoid staring at the perforated ceiling tiles, her anxiety was through the roof. Five o’ clock couldn’t come soon enough.

Kate really needed a vacation.

Unfortunately, the closest she could get to Margaritaville was at the bottom of a glass. Her friends took her out to the bar and laughed at her when she talked about the hole in her life, which seemed to be a back-handed way at making her feel better. Though, it could’ve been the drinks they shared and the jokes they made about each other’s lives that lifted Kate’s spirits.

For once this week, Kate forgot about raccoons or people inside of her walls. She even forgot about Ed and his stupid inability to do a complete job the first time. The only thing she remembered at this point was how to get home and get into bed, and that’s all she needed.

***

Kate woke with a groan. Her head pounded and stomach flipped as she stood up.

Ugh. She definitely had a few too many.

Hungover and exhausted, she stumbled into her bathroom and washed her face with cold water to shake the night away. She took a couple of long drinks from the faucet as well. The gulps were desperate. She was taking in the water like a wrung out sponge. It actually helped a bit— at least her stomach wasn’t doing backflips anymore. It was just cartwheels, instead.

Kate decided to brush her teeth as a way to sober herself up more, and was halfway through brushing her teeth when she noticed it. Her eyes widened as she focused on it: somehow, there was a large hole in her bathroom wall. Large enough for a person to easily crawl through. 

Kate peered into the hole with her brow furrowed and toothbrush hanging in her mouth. Toothpaste starts to drip from her mouth and onto her outdated bathroom tiles, but she’s so taken aback by the sudden appearance that doesn’t even notice. The hole in the wall seemed to go on for a while, and it was dark. Too dark for Kate to see the end of it, even when she shined her phone flashlight into it. The inside of the hole was strange, too. It was made of a brownish cement with ridges every inch of it. She has never seen anything like it. 

She spat her toothpaste out and called her landlord as she cleaned herself up. He didn’t pick up the first couple of calls, but on the third try Kate finally got through to him. He sounded groggy, and angry that she’s calling him.

“Geez o’ petes Kate! Y’know it’s my day off, right? What the hell’s going on?” 

Kate’s voice wavered, still shaken from the hole that seemingly appeared in her wall, “L-listen, do you remember that hole in my wall that was ‘gone?’ I-it’s back.” 

The landlord sighed, “Shit, uh, whaddya mean it’s back? Like, sum animal tore its way in ta’ your bathroom?”

Kate shook her head and looked at the hole, “No, it’s like… I don’t know. It’s grafted into the wall, I guess... Like it’s always been there, or maybe like the wall itself just opened up.” The landlord chuckles, causing Kate’s nostrils to flare and her brows to furrow. 

“Listen hun, I know yer stressed about this whole thing-“

“Don’t fucking call me ‘hun,’ Ed. I know what I’m looking at.” She ran her finger along the edge of the hole as she said this, trying to see if there were any gaps indicating it had somehow been added to the wall recently. Instead, it seamlessly blended from white drywall to a strange brownish-gray cement. “Just get your ass over here, please. I cannot go the rest of the weekend thinking I’ll get jumped by raccoons.”

Ed started to say something just as a sound emanated from the hole, causing Kate to jump. It was a strange, strained noise coming from deep in the hole. It started out low, and Kate told Ed to stop talking so she could hear it better. After a second, she realized it was a voice. It was strained and weak, though. Like someone was standing on their chest.

“Kkkkh— khhhaaaaayyyy….aaaatttttttteeeee,” said the voice. “Khhh-Kaaaaattttteeee, hhhhh….hhhheelp me… help me, please!” The voice sounded feminine—slightly deep and distorted as well. Maybe she’s saying it through the hole on the other side of the wall, or maybe she’s stuck in there somehow. Either way, Kate went through a paroxysm of shock. Even though she spent most of her week stressing over someone/something tearing through her wall, the idea of a woman in need was the last thing she expected.

She was silent for a while, ears ringing as she stared at the hole in a horrified silence. After a second, she realized that she still had her phone in her hand. Ed was still yapping, asking Kate where she went. She put the phone to her ear.

“Ed… Ed!” She said, interrupting him. “I think there’s someone inside the fucking hole.” Ed was silent for a second, which seems like an eternity for Kate. The continuous pleading from the woman in the hole grew louder, and more frantic. Finally, Ed just laughed.

“Kate, what- what’re ya talkin’ about?” There was a sense of nervousness in his voice. 

“Listen!” Kate placed her phone up to the hole, allowing Ed to hear the pained wails. After a second, she put her phone back to her ear. “Do you believe me now?” She said, half panicked and half impatient. “Please, you gotta swing by and help. I’m gonna call 911 and crawl in there, or something.”

Kate heard a quiet “Fuck,” come from Ed. Then, he said in a surprisingly stern voice, “Kate listen ta’ me. Do not go into that hole and do not call the cops. I’ll be there in an hour. If anythin’, lock yer bathroom door. Better yet, leave yer apartment. See ya soon.”

Before she had a chance to protest, Ed hung up. It was her turn to cuss, since the idea of just hanging back while this woman was in pain wasn’t one she was entertaining, especially as her cries grew in intensity. Kate wondered if anyone else in the building could hear it.

Screw Ed, she thought. This hole is probably big enough for me to crawl through. If Ed’s going to take that long to lug his ass over here, I might as well just crawl in myself. Besides, these buildings aren’t that far apart. I’ll be back before Ed’s even left his place!

Kate rummaged through her kitchen drawers until she found her flashlight, not wanting to take her phone in case she somehow broke it. She shined the flashlight down the hole, and it hit the darkness as though it hit a wall of black just fifteen feet away. She sighed.

Maybe it’s a bit further out than I anticipated, Kate thought, but still shook her hands to amp herself up. She’s going to go in there regardless. After the time she’s spent in this apartment, she couldn’t trust Ed to find his own ass. Putting her flashlight into her mouth, she grabbed each side of the hole. It was warm to the touch, almost matching her body temperature. It was a weird sensation, but Kate still dove headfirst into the mysterious hole that appeared in her bathroom wall.

She crawled into the darkness. The ridges every inch give good finger holds as she crawls on her hands and knees into the darkness. She realized that she’s been crawling for a while— much longer than what it should’ve been. She tried to turn around to see how far from her bathroom she had crawled so far, but she couldn’t see her bathroom anymore. In fact, it was hard to even turn around and look, the hole itself seemed to have shrunk since she went in, now closing around her shoulders and hips. Panic flared inside of her, and she tries to back up, but something was blocking her. Somehow, a wall came up behind her. After a couple of deep breaths, Kate figured the only way out was to go through, and went onwards. After what felt like a half an hour of crawling she ends up on her stomach. Her arms were like jello. She didn’t know if she’s even the one dragging herself along anymore. For all she knew, the hole is the one pushing her along, bringing her deeper and deeper into its bowels. The warm concrete ridges of the hole scrape against the exposed skin on her arms, legs and stomach. They feel raw, but it doesn’t matter. The hole Kate found herself in was getting tighter, crushing her and making it harder to breathe. The air was stale, and her lungs were being squeezed, causing her to only take short breaths. It hurt. Everything vibrated around her, but she didn’t know when that started. It’s hot. She’s sweating. She can’t breathe.  Even if Kate wanted to turn around, or push herself backwards, she couldn’t. Her arms were pinned to her side, and her head barely had enough space to look forward. She could feel her shoulders begin to pop out of socket. Her ribs cracked. Eventually, her flashlight went out, and she’s left in the all-consuming darkness.

***

Ed unlocked Kate’s door with his skeleton key for the building. He’s pissed at her, and rightfully so, he felt. The bitch who’s been ringing his phone nonstop since she moved in can’t seem to answer hers the one time Ed needed her to. Of course she just had to keep him locked out, too! Ungrateful fucking tennants, he thought.

“Kate! I’m here ta’ fix that damned hole ya keep yammerin’ about!” He stood in the doorway of her apartment. The lights were all still off except for the bathroom. The light seeps out of the doorway, slightly brighter than the glow of the afternoon sun. The silence was deafening, and Ed shifted uneasily. “Aight, well… I’m comin’ in! Don’t call the cops on me, er’ nothin’.” 

He muttered under his breath as he walked into the bathroom, complaining about how much of a bitch Kate was– so much of one that she wouldn’t even speak to him! He stopped in his tracks, though, when he saw the hole in the wall… and no sign of Kate. It’s not until he peered into the hole that he heard her. 

She’s sobbing, calling out to him.

“Eeeeehhhh…. Eeeeeeeeehhhhhddddd,” Her voice called between choked sobs. “Eeeeehhhhhddwaarrddd… hhhhhh….Heeellp me… Help me PLEASE! ” 

Ed swore under his breath. Then, he said to the hole, “Fuckin’…this is the fourth one this year, you piece o’ shit!” He kicked the wall underneath the hole out of frustration, putting another hole into the wall from his steel toe boot. He unleashed a steady stream of cusses, “Great. Just great. Now I need ta’ find another tennant and fill another fuckin’ hole!” He looks into the hole, puts his hands on either side of it, and yells in, “I hope yer happy, diggin’ around in holes ya didn’t belong in!”

Ed quickly plastered the hole from his foot. It was child’s play. He fixes holes in drywall like this three times a day. He looked into the hole that swallowed Kate one last time. The uneasy darkness seemed to reach out to him. Kate continued to scream his name between raspy sobs, but he shrugged it off. He knows that isn’t Kate. Not any more.

He plugged up the hole after an hour of work. Then, he went home and put up a new ad online for Kate’s old apartment:

“A wonderful one-bedroom apartment for rent in downtown Lansing. Rent is $2,500 a month. Fully furnished and recently retouched after the unexpected departure of the previous tenant. Aside from added luxuries, there was a hole in the bathroom wall��

 “...it’s gone now.”

[[I hope you all enjoyed this piece! I first wrote this when shopping for apartments in my state. It felt like, despite having a nice job at the time, nothing was good enough. Those of you who are nerds like me probably recognize the title of this piece. I was inspired by Silent Hill 2 and 4, but it doesn’t go much further than that, haha.]]

[[See you all next time!! 💜]]

Index

[polyamorouspunk]

Hi, just wanted to vent. I recently told me mum that I'm polyamorous and have another gf and I was just so disappointed in her reaction. She wasn't mean or unaccepting or anything so I feel so stupid for for feeling this way.

I gave her a letter via my sibling that still lives at home and when they told me they had given it to her I was super nervous all day. She took all day to reply to me (she is a self employed landlord so the fact she was too busy to get back to me straightaway is all self imposed) and even then it was my sibling who had to phone me in the end to have her talk to me. I poured my heart out to her in the letter, talking about how this was me involving her in my life and how anxious I was. And she just said something about how she didn't have a problem with it and it was really a "private matter" whatever that means. She also compared me to my cheating grandad (dad's side) and speculated on whether it ran in the family. She also doesn't seem that interested in my new gf (idk how else to refer to her) and only asks about the gf she previously knew about when on the phone.

I just wanted to have a real emotional conversation with me and she's clearly oblivious to that or doesn't care. She also will never approve of me telling my grandparents (her patents) and so won't give me any help with that which I know without asking because she won't tell them about my sibling being nonbinary.

It sounds pretty bad now that I've written it out so I feel less bad about being upset. Thank you if you take the time to read this

- 🐇💕

I never came out to my mom until my brother did first.

My brother was the first one to come out as gay, though as my mom says, he never had to, she ‘just knew’.

Me? I had to come out. And even when I came out I still got asked if I was allowed to call myself gay.

I never really outright told my mom I was “trans” either. She jokingly would call me “My boy!” And I would enjoy it, but then told me referring to me as a “son” was weird. But I agreed.

I never told my mom when I had other partners. To be honest, it just wasn’t worth it, just like it’s not worth it to argue with people over my pronouns or whatever or people assuming I’m cis or calling myself a lesbian without explaining that actually I like men too or whatever. It just wasn’t worth it.

But I hated myself for being polyam. I despised myself. I had so much internal shame that I had heard people talk about having for being gay or trans but had never understood in those regards.

I knew my brother’s dad had cheated on my mom and my dad had cheated on her, and I didn’t want to be compared to that.

My mom was fine with my brother being polyam, though, so I said I was too. But that’s all I’ve really said. I honestly don’t know the details of my brother’s dating situation anymore but it’s not any of my business.

She felt she was the one who had to tell my grandparents about my brother being gay, and probably me too.

My mom tells me about her ‘dating life’ which honestly I don’t really care to hear about, and I’m not really a fan of when she prys into mine.

While it’s not a “private” matter I think it’s a personal one, and one that’s to be disclosed at one’s discretion.

There will be people who understand parts of us but not others. I don’t think we can ever fully, truly understand someone else. How we support them- or I guess, don’t- is what matters.

And people come around sometimes. People change. Sometimes for better or for worse.

It can be hard to care for someone you see as… intruding… into what you know, even if it’s about someone else’s life. But I hope that maybe she can come to see them somewhat as equals. Not that one partner is more important than the other, that one matters and the other doesn’t. But just two seperate but equal entities.

[booksandchainmail]

Pale 8.2

It looked amazing.  Set outside the door to their dorm room was a little cart, and the food was laid out on that cart, each dish covered.

I can't tell if this is thanks for giving Bristow to the brownies, or an attempt to bait them into expressing gratitude for a final bit of revenge

“Aaaaaieee,” Verona kept her voice very quiet, picking up a skewer and bringing it close to the bubble.  “Before I pop, call me mister bubble, esquire.”

I mean, I laughed. But maybe Verona shouldn't be involved in trying to convince other students that the Kennet Trio are normal and not dangerous and trustworthy

“What do you think?” Verona asked.  She used her own Sight.  The dishes took on a weird uniformity, all white with red things struggling in them.

I suppose if that doesn't bother her, neither would the potential cannibalism?

“Souls, though,” Verona mused.  They left the cart behind and headed for the front door, against the loose collection of students.  “Do we really need souls?”

...yes?

More students were leaving the school campus than usual. Hadley Hennigar, the Legendres, Xerxes and his little brother, Jarvis’s group, who were waiting and looking impatient while Silas talked to Estrella, off to the side…

all allies of Bristow, the reverse of the beginning of the last arc. And I understand why: even if Ray isn't going after them, there's a chance other students might try to retaliate for things they did in the past days.

“It’s not a murderer’s truck, it’s a truck that murders on its own,” Clementine explained.  “She found her way to me a few years back.  I love the aesthetic, and I figured as long as she’s with me, she’s not racking up a body count."

... alright then! This sounds like the setup for a weird dark comedy

New Aware:

Old veteran who returns to war when he sleeps

Young woman whose work takes a long time

Guy who is being hunted by people who "want what they're owed"

“I wouldn’t want to be the one to try,” Shellie said.  “They’re frustrated he’s so hard to get to, these days.  Kind of like certain school staff, who were pretty eager for someone to give them a reason.” Verona looked away. Shellie laughed.

weirdly comforting to see that Verona is bothered by what happened to Bristow (and what almost happened to her)

Her stomach was sore, like she’d been punched there a few times and couldn’t relax the muscles.  She didn’t remember taking any hits there yesterday.

could be emotional? I know anxiety can sometimes show up as stomach pain

"What would do the most damage if I didn’t deal with it? Either in terms of mess and her opinion of me, or the… I don’t know. The reversed music box that turns random people nearby into babies. Lotion that makes you immortal, but more and more cruel. A paper airplane that was really good at flying, and slitting throats with papercuts.”

this is making me feel better about the amount of cleaning I don't do

“Start big. The most obvious, problematic stuff. And the stuff that’s easiest to handle. Then you work your way down. Then you ask yourself what the next biggest problem you’re facing is. What needs to be handled? And you work your way down."

priority matrix time

“You should be good at that,” Shellie said.  “The way you dealt with the biggest threat last night, and murked our landlord.” That feeling in Verona’s stomach, like she’d been repeatedly punched, shifted all at once. Like hands were gripping her guts, twisting.

ah. yeah that's the guilt hitting. I thought Verona was being a little callous/blase earlier, even by her standards. I think she was probably subconsciously trying to stave off the emotional impact of winning a fight that left the other guy as good as dead

The food stuff made her think of the brownie’s gift, like a prize or some crap, and the pain made her think of her dad, and of not going home, and karma, and the-

and also she ended up in some pretty dark places emotionally when she got captured and thought she had lost, and I don't think getting out of that situation actually resolved those feelings, just tabled them

“Verona bottles crap up and doesn’t think about it until it blindsides her.  It’s been a few years since you did that like this, Ronnie.”

right, Lucy mentioned this before, like when Verona trashed her room. She doesn't seem to have lost any memories this time at least?

“Not girlfriend. Partner, I think. I might be jumping the gun on that one, but… I really want it to be the case. I took the leap, reached out after talking to Charles, that old man you introduced us to. I told them my life was complicated, they’re okay with that. I’ll ease them into the rest.”

love wins <3

also happy that Avery is meeting more queer people

“They came after us, over and over again. They used us, they pit us against their enemies,” Lucy said.

Lucy switching to the plural here because she's referring to Alexander as well as Bristow

“I’m not glad it happened, I wish we found another way, but the important thing is that we found a way,” Lucy said.

honestly, this seems like a pretty healthy attitude. Yeah, it's fucked up what happened to Bristow, but they didn't have options for less lethal approaches and they gave him multiple chances to back down. No sense in beating themselves up about it.

Lucy hadn’t slept well last night.  None of them had.  But Lucy less than either Avery or Verona. A lot of Lucy spacing out today made sense too. She gave Lucy a one-armed hug, walking beside her. Lucy returned the hug.

friends help friends cope with murder :)

She’d seen enough monsters, enough shitty people.  Practitioners… she got why Matthew was so spooked, dropping them off here, the way he’d talked about the other kids and teachers.

Thinking back to one of my early theories on why, if the Kennet Others want their own practitioners to be homegrown and not acclimatized to normal practitioner society, they would send them to this school: Because the school/people are bad enough to make the girls poorly disposed to other practitioners

She didn’t want the light in Lucy to go dark.  She didn’t want Lucy to stop being about justice and fighting injustice and being elegant and being someone who could fit in with beautiful people like George and Amadeus and Mia.

:)

“We gotta keep each other on the straight and narrow, away from all those traps,” Verona said.  “Keep the best parts of ourselves.”

I've talked before about how being a three person team gives them a strategic advantage, but it also helps emotionally/morally. I think without other people they could trust, they'd all be spiraling. Verona the most.

“Self, spirit, soul.  Who are you?” the new teacher asked the class.  No introduction or anything.  “Who or what will each of you become?  What were you when you began, except your parent’s child, and what will you be when your story closes?  Do you really change, from start to finish?”

well that's on the nose

[theangstmeister]

Hold Me Tight (Before I Let You Go) - Chapter Two

Please see masterlist for warnings

Present Day

“Oppa-nim, have you finished drawing my princess yet?” Soyeon asked, skipping across the room from in front of the television which was tuned into some kind of children’s show. 

“Soyeon-ah, don’t be rude,” her sister, Jiwon, scolded.

Jungkook smiled at Soyeon, the little girl was pouting with her chin on the table-top.

“Nearly. But you did make me do your hair halfway through,” he reminded her, flicking the tuft of hair. 

“I wanted to be like oppa-nim.” 

The landlord had turned up late that afternoon, Jungkook assumed when the girls had finished school, and begged Jungkook to watch them for half an hour- two hours ago. He didn’t particularly mind though, it wasn’t the first time he’d done so and they were easy enough to keep an eye on. Jiwon was quietly doing her homework while Soyeon, with her youthful confidence, had Jungkook sketching her pictures to colour in.

He finished off the crown before sliding the picture across to Soyeon. 

“Thank you, oppa-nim!” she said, giving Jungkook a quick hug around his waist before running back across the room to lie on the floor, a collection of Jungkook’s lesser used coloured pencils scattered around her. 

Jungkook wondered if he’d ever been that carefree- he didn’t think so. 

He pulled his sketchbook towards him to continue working on his sketch for class. More like start it. The prompt was simply “love” but the seemingly endless possibilities were crippling Jungkook. He knew he should probably do something based on Yoongi but he couldn’t get Taehyung out of his head. 

However, before he had chance to fall down that hole, he was interrupted by Jiwon. She hadn’t said anything but her pen has stopped scratching its way across her exercise book. He knew she was looking at him, he’d developed a great sense for when attention was on him from a young age. 

“Oppa-nim?” Jungkook looked up, acting surprised that she had called him. “Can I ask you something without you telling my dad?”

“Of course, Jiwon-ah. What is it?”

“Promise?”

Jungkook held his hand out to her across the table, his little finger raised, “I pinky promise.”

Jiwon hooked her little finger through his and shook their hands together vigorously. 

Releasing Jungkook’s hand, she glanced furtively over to her sister, checking that she was either engrossed in her colouring or the television. 

“Did your parents ever get divorced?”

It hadn’t been the question Jungkook had been expecting and if her parents were having marital problems, it certainly wasn’t something Jungkook felt comfortable talking about- not with the complicated relationship he had with her dad, his landlord. 

But he also remembered what it had been like to feel like you couldn’t talk to anyone. 

“No...but they argued a lot.”

That was the child-friendly way of putting it, and while Jiwon was sixteen, Jungkook had learnt that sixteen year olds really were still children in the ways that mattered. 

“How did you deal with it?”

“You have to find a way to block it out and look out for your sister, but I can’t tell you how to do that because I only had to look out for myself.” 

And Jungkook had never stopped doing that. 

“You told me once that you’ve got a brother.”

Jungkook hummed, nodding, “I do but he’s older so he looked after me, like you look after Soyeon.” 

That was of course a lie. Junghyun had been one of Jungkook’s tormentors, one of many, but always the one capable of hurting him the most. 

When they’d been younger, they’d gotten along well and Jungkook had trailed after his brother, learning from him in the way that younger siblings tended to do. He’d even been reasonably close to Yoongi, who had been his brother’s best friend since their first day at school together.

But then those three years between them had carried more and more weight as Junghyun became a teenager and didn’t want his little brother around anymore. 

When the two older boys had found their way into Busan’s dark underbelly, Jungkook had been left behind to flounder on his own, ignored by everyone until Taehyung had appeared one day like a light in the darkness. 

Jungkook would have been happy if things had stayed that way, being ignored didn’t bother him that much but the drugs had brought out the worst in Junghyun, turning him into a miniature version of their father at the exact same time as it was becoming increasingly obvious that Jungkook wasn’t straight. 

It had been an unlucky combination of circumstances which had sent Jungkook’s life spiralling out of his control- bullied at school and beaten at home- with only Kim Taehyung to keep him afloat. 

But he didn’t even have that anymore. Just Yoongi with his own crippling self-hatred that made him so dependent on drugs. 

Except that Taehyung had slipped back into that role with such ease, and Jungkook’s heart ached to accept the lifeline that was being extended to him in the form of Taehyung’s phone number. 

He shook himself- such thoughts wouldn’t lead anywhere good. 

Because even if Taehyung’s boyfriend made the alarm bells in the back of his head clamour for his attention, he had no right to get involved. He’d forfeited that right years ago. 

Looking at the girl before him, Jungkook wished he could offer her something more concrete but what could he possibly give her when his own life was such a mess? If he could, he’d offer her a safe place to come to whenever she needed to get away- he was home most of the time during the day due to the nature of his degree and work, and his landlord lived in the building- but he didn’t think he should risk exposing them to Yoongi too much. Usually, he arranged for Yoongi to be out whenever he watched the two girls, only agreeing two hours earlier at such short notice because Yoongi had gone to deliver a track he’d produced to someone (Jungkook knew these things could be done digitally but he and Yoongi both knew it was an excuse for Yoongi to get hold of cash and then happen across his dealer on the way home). 

When the door knocked loudly, Soyeon leapt up, “Oppa-nim, it’s Appa!”

Jungkook rose from his chair, waylaying Soyeon, “Let oppa open it, just in case.”

It probably was her dad but it could easily be Yoongi, in god knew what state. 

With Soyeon’s small hand in his, Jungkook opened the door to what was indeed his landlord. 

“Appa, you have to come see my colouring,” Soyeon beamed, dragging him into the flat and towards the living room. 

“Soyeon-ah, I don’t think Jeon-ssi wants us invading his home any longer than we have to.”

“It’s fine, they’ve both been good as gold anyway.”

He knew that the other man didn’t really know how to treat Jungkook. After all, what were the chances that he asked any of the building’s other residents to babysit for him? And Jungkook would have bet good money that he was the only one sucking his dick to get out of paying his rent. 

“That’s really good colouring, Soyeon-ah,” he praised his daughter. “Did Jeon-ssi draw the pictures for you?”

Soyeon nodded emphatically, “And he tied my hair up like his so I can be a proper artist.” 

Meanwhile, Jiwon silently packed her school work into her bag. 

“Well, make sure you thank Jeon-ssi properly and then you and Jiwon can go back upstairs.”

Jungkook frowned slightly- he was clearly wanted for something. 

“Thank you, oppa-nim,” Soyeon said, hugging Jungkook. 

He hugged her back, “You’re welcome, Soyeon-ah, make sure you behave yourself.”

“I will oppa-nim.”

“Thank you, oppa-nim,” Jiwon muttered, taking her sister’s hand and leading her from the flat. 

Jungkook tugged on his earrings as he heard the two girls leave the flat- he honestly wished he could be more to help Jiwon but he also didn’t think he should get involved. He couldn’t risk getting kicked out of his flat. 

“Do you want to sit down, Park-ssi?” Jungkook asked, indicating towards the sofa. 

The other man sat down with a long sigh- he looked like he’d had an exceptionally long day- and Jungkook seated himself sideways on his lap, wrapping his arm along the back of the sofa. 

It was like being at work and Jungkook slipped into his role with ease. The other man had taken to talking to Jungkook about his issues but Jungkook would always be the pretty boy downstairs who sucked him off to pay his rent so he had to play the role of the seducer. 

Not that it would be the first time the two had done nothing but talk- the older man didn’t have anyone but Jungkook to talk to about his struggles with his sexuality.

Yoongi didn’t know that, though. Jungkook had told him that the landlord liked to watch him finger himself to cover up for the lack of noise. He wasn’t sure why he lied but something had told him that it wouldn’t be good for Yoongi to think their relationship was anything but a sequence of sexual favours over the last year. 

Not that Jungkook was at all interested in their landlord- he just wanted somewhere to live- but that didn’t stop him feeling sorry for him. 

He was like most of the men that came into the club. A good number of them were married to wives they didn’t love and they used the club as a safe place to express their true desires. For many of them, coming out would mean losing access to their own children so Jungkook liked to think he was doing some good. 

And perhaps that was why he attracted so many customers to him- he understood what his job really was. It was more than stripping (or even sex if you knew who to ask). It was about allowing those repressed men a moment of respite. 

In a way, Jungkook thought he’d been lucky. He may have been labeled as something he didn’t think he was, and he may have suffered for it, but at least he hadn’t had to pretend to be straight anymore. He’d been given a kind of freedom. 

And he’d had Taehyung to guide him, to help him see that there was nothing wrong with him but with his family and society at large. 

Jungkook brushed Mr Park’s hair away from his face, his fingers then trailing down the side of his face to hold his chin, “You can touch me.”

Jungkook had learned that once you took down the barrier between people and what they desired, everything else came spilling out. Sexual desire was so repressed in so many people that it was often like breaking down a dam. 

The older man’s hand settled on Jungkook’s thigh, still timid even after a year of their arrangement. 

“I don’t think I can stay with my wife anymore, Jungkook-ah.”

“What’s changed?”

They’d been together for, Jungkook thought, nearly twenty years- something had to have changed.

“I worry about what I’m teaching my girls by hiding who I am. I don’t want them to grow up thinking that they should be ashamed of themselves but shouldn’t I teach that by example?”

“I think your daughters would be very upset if you divorced your wife and they couldn’t see you anymore.”

“Maybe they’d be better off without a man like me. Look at me, I’m accepting sexual favours from my resident like a pervert.”

“One: I started it. Two: there’s nothing wrong with what you are. And there’s a difference between knowing and accepting that, and being out. Maybe that’s the balance you need to find.”

Taehyung had needed to find a similar balance when it came to Jungkook; a balance between his love for and attraction to Jungkook, and the fact that the narrow worldview of other people meant that they would never have been able to look past their ages. 

But Taehyung had never managed it and, in the end, it had strained them both to breaking point. 

“When people are ashamed, they hurt the people around them even though they might not mean to,” Jungkook said gently. “If our arrangement means that you’re not ashamed and that you can be a better father, then isn’t that worth something?”

The older man nodded, Thank you, Jungkook- for talking to me.”

He thought about trying to get the man to come to the club but he decided against it. Part of the reason their arrangement worked was that there was a kind of exclusivity to it, Mr Park got to feel like Jungkook was his and his alone for ten minutes each month, and that gave him the emotional gratification he needed. 

It would be far too risky to mess with that if Jungkook wanted to continue to have a roof over his head. 

“You should go back upstairs before your wife gets any more suspicious of me,” Jungkook chuckled, pecking him on the cheek before rising from his seat. 

The woman would have to be an idiot not to suspect there was something going on when Jungkook hadn’t paid his full rent in a year and her husband spent longer collecting Jungkook’s rent than he did with anyone else. 

Also, Yoongi would probably be home soon and Jungkook made sure to keep him far away from their landlord. Jungkook was exactly what he wanted- his wide eyes giving a look of innocence while his physique provided a touch of sin- while Yoongi was all sin with his bleached hair and arms covered in tattoos. 

Mr Park let himself out, leaving Jungkook to tidy up before going back to his classwork.

Half an hour later, completely engrossed in his work, Jungkook was startled by Yoongi coming up behind him. 

“What’re you drawing?” Yoongi asked, pizza box in his hand. 

Jungkook’s mouth watered at the smell of the warm dough but it wasn’t strong enough to cover up the distinct herbal scent clinging to Yoongi’s hoodie. 

“It’s just for class,” Jungkook said.

“Yeah, I know that but what actually is it?”

Jungkook had only got as far as an outline of a broad back with two wounds on the shoulder blades but he knew exactly what he was drawing now. 

“A fallen angel.”

“I thought your theme was love and sexuality?”

And to Jungkook, love was a fallen angel in ripped jeans and loose T-shirts, and he had been the one to make him fall from grace. 

“Let me get to a good stopping point and I’ll come eat,” Jungkook avoided the question. 

Once he’d finished, he sat beside Yoongi, who had the pizza box balanced on his lap, on the sofa, tucking his legs up underneath him. 

With one hand, he held a slice of pizza and with the other, he pulled Yoongi’s arm into his lap, turning it over to admire the brightly coloured ink that covered his arms. 

“What are you doing?” Yoongi mumbled around a mouthful of food. 

“Admiring my handiwork.”

Jungkook had drawn each and every tattoo, just as he’d drawn his own, for the tattoo artist to follow. He was most proud of the traditional style drawing depicting the mountains and the sea- for Busan. To Jungkook, that city would always be where he had been the most miserable but also the happiest he had ever been, so he’d had it inked it onto Yoongi’s skin. 

His own was reserved for his dragon, for Taehyung. 

Not that Yoongi realised that. Jungkook had cried when he’d gotten it done and Yoongi had assumed he was a baby who couldn’t handle the pain of the needle. 

As if Jungkook was a stranger to pain. 

“Do you remember when you drew that first one? When you were… how old were you?”

“Fourteen, it was just before my fifteenth birthday.”

August 2015

Jungkook sighed contentedly as he felt Taehyung’s fingers carding through his hair, easing them through where the strands had stuck together from the sticky heat of the afternoon. 

He relished these quiet, secretive moments with Taehyung. Nobody else knew Taehyung was there so they didn’t have to pretend that they were nothing to each other. 

In Jungkook’s bedroom, lying together on top of the duvet, they could simply be them. 

However, their peace was interrupted far too soon by Taehyung’s phone beeping, signalling that Taehyung needed to leave and come back in an hour (via the front door rather than Jungkook’s bedroom window this time). 

“I don’t want you to go,” Jungkook said softly, wrapping his arms tightly around Taehyung. 

“I have to go, sweetheart or you won’t have anything to eat. But I’ll be back straight away.”

“No, you won’t be, not really. You’re different when you’re with them.”

Taehyung may have been spending most of his time with Jungkook, holed up together in his bedroom, but he was still friends with Junghyun and Yoongi, which meant that he had to hang out with them, too. 

“You think I like the way things are? I can’t stand your brother, or the way he treats you, but it’s far less suspicious for me to bring you food if I pretend I’m still his friend.” 

Jungkook knew that, he did, but it didn’t stop it from hurting. He wanted people to know that Taehyung was his and that it didn’t matter how much they mocked him at school, or how many bruises he got at home, because he had something they didn’t. 

He was free in a way they never would be by constantly conforming to society’s expectations. 

“You can go if I get a goodbye kiss.”

“Are you eighteen yet?”

“No,” Jungkook pouted. 

“Then no.”

“But you’re not eighteen yet so it’s fine.”

“And you’re fourteen so it’s not fine.” 

Jungkook sat up, fiddling with the rings on his fingers, “It’s only kissing, it’s not sex. That’s what I have to be sixteen for.”

Taehyung rubbed his face with his hands, “Why do you always do this?”

“Do what?”

“Put all the responsibility on me to say no to you,” Taehyung snapped. 

“Maybe because I’d like it to actually be clear what this even is between us!” Jungkook’s voice rose sharply as his temper flared defensively. “Instead I’m left to feel like a- a-” Jungkook stumbled over his words, thoughts flying through his mind faster than he could catch hold of them. “-like a placeholder until something better comes along.”

Would they even be able to say they’d broken up when that inevitably happened? And without being able to use that phrase to describe what had happened, would he ever be able to get any closure on what they were to each other right now? 

Not that Jungkook fully understood whatever it was between them. Taehyung always skirted around it, only going as far as to describe them as “exclusive”, but Jungkook’s life was filled with too many uncertainties already. 

He never knew when his dad would come home drunk, or what tiny action might set him off when he did, and he never knew when his brother’s own pain would spill over into using Jungkook as his punching bag, either verbally or physically. 

But he did know that Taehyung cared about him and that had been the one constant in his life since he was twelve years old, and now, nearly three years later, he was willing to risk it all because he couldn’t ignore the feelings that swelled inside of him everytime he saw Taehyung. 

Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so caught off guard by them- he’d had a crush on Taehyung ever since they’d first met but that had been juvenile. Not like the way he felt now. 

Taehyung reached out for his hand, “Jungkookie-”

Jungkook snatched his hand away, “You should go before hyung starts phoning you in a bit and hears your phone going off in here.”

“We’ll talk about this later. I don’t know when but,” Taehyung sighed, “later.”

Jungkook didn’t respond. He knew all that would come out would be a demand that they talk about it now, and he didn’t want to ruin their limited time alone together more than he already had. 

Taehyung pulled Jungkook into his side briefly before releasing him and climbing out of the bedroom window. 

After a few minutes, Jungkook picked himself off the bed and carefully pushed his door open. He checked there was no sign of his brother before emerging fully. 

Whenever he was upset like this, he went for a shower. The running water hid any sound of tears that might be shed while the hot water reminded him of when his mum used to hug him. Not that she’d done so for years- his dad had made her stop, saying that Jungkook was a man now and men didn’t need hugs from anyone.

Jungkook had been ten and he definitely still needed to be held in someone’s arms. 

Now, that someone was Taehyung. Those gentle touches had started off with nothing more than the older boy ruffling his hair but then Taehyung’s fingers had started to linger and thread their way through Jungkook’s hair. Then Jungkook, seeking the kind of comfort he hadn’t had in years, had crept closer until folding himself into Taehyung’s arms felt as easy as breathing. 

But his feelings for Taehyung were like a double edged sword- impossible to grasp. 

Would things be easier when they were older?

Jungkook hoped so because he didn’t want to think about what his life would be like without Taehyung. 

Jungkook lay on his bed, his hair still damp from his shower due to the humidity of the summer air. Staring up at the cracked ceiling, he inhaled deeply, smelling the spicy aroma that wafted to his room from the kitchen. 

He’d heard Taehyung ask Junghyun where he was numerous times since he’d got back with the food shopping he’d done for Jungkook. 

Good, he’d thought to himself, let him be the one who’s left hanging for once. 

Barely a week went by without Jungkook having to powerlessly watch what seemed like every girl in Taehyung’s year flirt with him because Taehyung kept him secret. 

His secret shame- that he was in love with a fourteen year old (and Jungkook suspected at least slightly attracted to though Taehyung steered clear of the topic at all times). 

He knew it had nothing to do with coming out as gay, Taehyung would’ve come out before now if it hadn’t meant being cut off by Junghyun. It was all because he thought there was something wrong with him for loving Jungkook specifically. 

Well, if he was going to leave Jungkook to hang all the time, he could do the same 

Maybe he’d start flaunting himself around in front of Yoongi, that would certainly get Taehyung’s attention. And it was becoming increasingly obvious to Jungkook that as he filled out, love of dance gifting him with a more toned physique, Min Yoongi’s interest in him had grown. 

There was a soft knock on the door followed by Taehyung’s warm voice, “Jungkook-ah? I’ve cooked dinner but if you’re not hungry yet, I can leave it in the oven.”

Jungkook rolled over hugging his pillow to his chest as he lay there, not answering Taehyung. 

“Jungkook!” his brother yelled, banging violently on the door, making Jungkook jump slightly. 

“Why do you have to do that?” Taehyung’s voice was clear through the door. 

“Do what?”

“Try and scare him all the time. You know, I remember when you were scared of your dad and now you’ve gone and turned into him.”

Previously, Jungkook had wondered how Taehyung got away with speaking to Junghyun like that when nobody else would have dared. But he’d realised that Taehyung got away with it simply because he dared, and some part of Junghyun respected him for that. 

He also thought that was how Taehyung was never called out for wearing make-up and jewellery, or the way he carefully styled his hair. Instead of ever hiding those more feminine aspects of who he was, Taehyung left them out in plain sight, and that was what prevented him from being called out for it. 

In a city where the slightest deviation from traditional masculinity may as well be a death sentence, Taehyung expertly hid himself in plain sight. 

Not like Jungkook, who had only been able to truly express himself after he’d already been found out for not being straight (and incorrectly labelled as gay. Jungkook didn’t know what he was but that wasn’t it). But in a way, he was free from that now. 

Distantly, Jungkook heard Junghyun’s own bedroom door slam shut. 

After a few seconds, Taehyung’s voice came through the door again but lower down this time, like Taehyung was sitting on the floor.

“Jungkookie, please come eat.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier, I know it’s not easy for you either, and that you worry that I don’t feel the same way about you as you do about me.”

Jungkook rolled the other way to face the door. 

“Do you really think I’d be so worried about the legality of what we have between us if I didn’t feel the same way? Or if this was about stringing some kid along just because I could? I don’t want you to have any regrets or to ever feel pushed into anything you weren’t ready for because I want us to be able to be happy together in the years to come. And I hope that we can be together for the rest of our lives because I can’t imagine being with anyone else.” 

Jungkook could hear the sincerity in Taehyung’s voice, could imagine seeing it in his eyes. 

He rose to his feet and padded towards the door, pressing his ear to the wood as tears began to spill silently from his eyes.

“You’re everything to me, Jungkook and that scares me because I’m scared of what I might do in order to keep hold of you. So I have to keep those concrete boundaries in place to keep you safe from me.”

Jungkook opened the door to find Taehyung kneeling on the floor outside. At the sound of the door opening, he looked up, a plea in his eyes for Jungkook to forgive him. 

Crouching down, Jungkook cupped Taehyung’s cheeks in his hands, pressing their foreheads together and breathing in the light, vanilla scent of Taehyung, “You’re the only thing in my life that I don’t need protecting from.”

“I’m not so sure, Jungkookie.”

“Then let me be sure enough for the both of us.” 

Taehyoung picked himself up off the floor, holding his hand out to help Jungkook up.

“Come on, you should eat before Yoongi gets here.”

Jungkook frowned, “Why?”

“Did you not hear him the other day?” Taehyung asked, leading Jungkook by the hand to the kitchen table. “He found his biological mum, don’t ask me how, and he decided to go see her today.”

“But isn’t that good?”

Yoongi felt like a great disappointment to his adoptive parents, who had been hoping for a more well-behaved child that did better in school. Not one who smoked weed and did nothing but write lyrics and melodies during class. 

Taehyung placed a steaming bowl of beef stew in front of Jungkook, along with a set of chopsticks and a spoon, “She gave him up for a reason. I’m just worried he won’t like what he finds and then he’ll be looking for something or someone to take his anger out on.”

“I doubt that’ll be me.”

“If it was just Yoongi I’d agree but he goes along with your brother far too easily for comfort. I’d just feel better if you were safely out of the way.”

Out of the way and away from Taehyung. 

Taehyung must have seen the look on Jungkook’s face because his long fingers began threading their way through Jungkook’s hair, soothing him. 

“I’ll try and sneak into your room, sweetheart. They’ll probably just get stoned so it won’t exactly be hard.” 

Jungkook nodded, appeased, and tucked into his dinner. 

Distracted by the film playing on the television, Taehyung’s fingers absentmindedly traced circles into the skin above Jungkook’s knee, his legs slung over Taehyung’s, occasionally drifting under the hem of his shorts. His other arm was wrapped around Jungkook’s waist, holding him close.

Yoongi hadn’t turned up so Taehyung had suggested they watch a film, convincing Junghyun to let Jungkook stay in the living room with them. 

Junghyun was beside them on the sofa having fallen asleep- he always said he found horror films boring but Jungkook knew that he purposely fell asleep because he was scared. Taehyung probably knew that too.

Even so, it was still risky but they both needed to be close to each other, especially after their earlier argument.

Taehyung gripped Jungkook’s leg as a black figure appeared in a doorway behind the film’s protagonist

“Scared, Taehyungie?” Jungkook teased. 

“Why’d you have to pick one in a foreign language?” Taehyung whined, unable to look away from the screen lest he miss what was being said. 

“Because if you didn’t have to read the subtitles, you’d be hiding behind your hands.”

And Jungkook was perfectly happy with Taehyung’s hands where they were. 

At the sound of the front door knocking, the two of them leapt apart, and Jungkook quickly glanced over to his brother but he was still fast asleep. 

“I’ll get it,” Taehyung said, rising to open the door. 

Jungkook leaned forward so that it was in his eyeline, the film forgotten as Taehyung opened the door to Yoongi.

Jungkook’s eyes widened at the sight of him, not because he’d turned up at gone midnight, but because he had clearly been crying- his eyes and nose were bright red. Taehyung was obviously as shocked as he was, stepping silently to the side to let Yoongi in but making no move to comfort him. 

“Oi, Junghyun! Wake the fuck up!” Yoongi yelled, kicking his shoes off. 

Beside Jungkook, Junghyun stretched, rubbing his eyes blearily, “About time you turned up, Min.”

“Yeah, well, I got us something to have a little fun,” Yoongi smirked, pulling a small plastic bag of white powder.

At the sight of it, Taehyung crept around the back of the sofa, towards Jungkook. 

“Is that what I think it is?” Junghyun asked, grinning. “How did you get hold of it?”

“Our usual dealer gave me some other guy’s number.”

Jungkook thought it was safe to say that Yoongi meeting his biological mother had not gone well. His nose wrinkled at the cloying scent of alcohol that clung to the older boy. 

“Go to your room,” Taehyung muttered, leaning down to Jungkook’s ear. 

Jungkook nodded. He already knew he didn’t want to be around for this. Weed mellowed his brother out to the point where he didn’t remember Jungkook was in the room but cocaine was going to hype him up, and Jungkook didn’t know what that would entail. 

Unfortunately, Yoongi had overheard them. 

“No, the kid stays in here. I want him to draw something for me.”

Jungkook glanced up at Taehyung, unsure of what to do. 

“I’m not going to do anything to you, Kook-ah,” Yoongi rolled his eyes. “I want a tattoo and I want you to draw it.”

“Why would you want him to draw it?” Junghyun drawled. 

“Because have you seen the way the kid draws?”

“Whatever, as long as he stays out of the way.”

“I’ll stay until they fall asleep,” Taehyung whispered. 

Jungkook nodded and fetched his sketchbook and pencil case from his room, carrying them to the adjoining kitchen so he could sit at the table. 

He sat there for hours, drawing sketch after sketch, with Taehyung staying nearby, until Yoongi was satisfied. 

“Have you ever kissed anyone, Jungkook-ah?” Yoongi asked conversationally as he ripped the page out of Jungkook’s sketchbook and folded it up to take with him. 

“That’s a weird question to ask a fourteen year old,” Taehyung interjected. 

“He’s nearly fifteen, Taehyung. He’s not a child anymore.”

The two older boys were like day and night. Taehyung was warm and light, with his tanned skin and voice like honey, while Yoongi was icy-cold, his veins clearly visible under his pale skin, but there was a strange softness to him. 

Yoongi was the devil, enticing him towards sin, and Taehyung-

Taehyung was his guardian angel. 

“I’m the school faggot, remember? What do you think?” Jungkook muttered, twirling a colouring pencil around his fingers. 

“Don’t call yourself that,” Taehyung scolded. 

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Because you shouldn’t put yourself down like that. There’s nothing wrong with you.” 

“It’s a shame, really,” Yoongi mused. “You can tell you’ve started working out, I bet the girls would be all over you if they didn’t know you were gay.”

Taehyung’s fingers curled into a fist on the table. At first, Jungkook was confused but then he realised. Taehyung was getting jealous. 

“It’s really just for dance,” Jungkook shrugged. “Jimin-hyung, he’s on the team, he told me that it’s better for your muscles if you strengthen them, then you’re less likely to pull something dancing.”

“I see, and looking good is just a lucky side effect?” Yoongi smiled. 

“I can’t believe I’m having to say this again,” Taehyung hissed, “but he is fourteen whether his birthday’s coming up or not.” 

Jungkook knew the comment wasn’t aimed entirely at Yoongi, that Taehyung was also reminding himself of that fact. 

“Yoongi, time for another hit?” Junghyun asked, putting on some music. 

“Sure, let’s go,” Yoongi said, getting up. “Come on, Tae.”

Taehyung stood reluctantly, glancing back at Jungkook as he went to join his supposed friends. 

Jungkook pulled his sketchbook back towards himself, blocking out the drug fuel frenzied energy of his brother. 

Jungkook eyelids felt heavy, telling him he’d accidentally fallen asleep at the table again, too absorbed in his drawings to bother going to bed. 

“Get off,” he whined as someone lifted his arm. 

Taehyung’s voice hushed him, “It’s only me, sweetheart. I’m just putting you to bed.”

He was easily lifted into Taehyung’s arms, his own arm slung across Taehyung’s shoulder and his face nestled into the crook of his neck. 

“Wait, I need my sketchbook,” he said, reaching his other arm back towards the kitchen. 

“I already put it in your room, Kookie,” Taehung reassured him, knowing that Jungkook wasn’t keen on the idea of his brother looking through it. 

“Stay tonight, please,” he pleaded when Taehyung lowered him into the bed, clearly not planning on getting into it with him. 

Taehyung tucked the duvet up around him, “I’ve got work later or you know I would. But my break’s at two so you can come visit, if you want to.”

Taehyung worked at one of the many small independent coffee houses in the city so that he could buy Jungkook food whenever his parents were away as well as restock his art supplies. Most of Jungkook’s wardrobe and jewellery were also from Taehyung but in the form of hand-me-downs (not that Taehyung hadn’t tried to take Jungkook clothes shopping after his last growth spurt). 

“Of course I want to.” 

And with his parents away, there was nobody to stop him. 

“How about we have lunch together?”

“Sounds good, Taehyungie,” Jungkook murmured, being dragged back down into sleep. 

Distantly, he could feel Taehyung’s fingers stroking his hair while he sang to him, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”

Present Day

“What’s the theme?”

The sound of Jimin’s voice made Jungkook jump, snapping him out of the intense concentration that came over him when he sketched. 

He’d made excellent progress (in his opinion) on his project for his class. His piece for “love” was now a double-page spread with the fallen angel on one side, feathers scattered around the hunched figure, and a man laying spread-eagle on a bed of flowers on the other. 

Jungkook put his pencil down, deciding that it was as good a time as any to take a break since he’d already been interrupted. He looked around for Yoongi but he was nowhere to be seen- Jungkook assumed he’d gone to get takeaway, spending yet more of Jungkook’s money. 

“Love. It’s pretty broad.”

Jimin perched on the end of the table, his pupils blown wide from whatever he’d been taking (Jungkook kept an eye on what Yoongi bought and flushed anything he deemed too far, and generally Yoongi took the hint, but Jimin was a mystery to him as far as that was concerned), “I’ll be honest, Kook… I don’t get it.”

Jungkook sighed, “You have to look at both together, hyung. The fallen angel gives his wings to the man he loves.”

“So it’s about Kim Taehyung. You used to call him your angel.” 

“Not like that,” he lied. 

Jimin raised an eyebrow at him, “I was in Taehyung’s year, do you really think I didn’t see that photo?”

Who hadn’t seen that photo? 

Yet that day had been one of the best days of Jungkook’s life because Taehyung had finally-

No, he wasn’t going to think about it. It was pointless, he couldn’t change the past. 

“It wasn’t like Junghyun said.”

“I know, I remember thinking that picture was pretty damning but also that your brother must be blind and an idiot. And everyone else, actually,” Jimin mused.

“What do you mean?” Jungkook frowned. 

Jimi thought for a moment, dragging up his memories of what had happened back then, “Well, your brother obviously put it out that Taehyung was taking advantage of you-” Jungkook nodded along, he knew that part “-but I remember when he used to bring you to dance practice. At first, I thought it was a bit creepy the way he used to be so fixated on you but it soon became obvious he was absolutely head over heels in love with you. Guy must have had bad taste,” Jimin teased. 

“Very funny, hyung,” Jungkook said flatly. 

“Anyway,” Jimin continued with his version of events, “when you left the team and came back a year later with Min Yoongi, of all people, on your arm, I had to wonder what happened with you and Taehyung.”

He could keep on wondering because Jungkook certainly wasn’t about to start talking to him about it. He was very aware of where Jimin’s loyalties lay and wouldn’t trust him with anything he might not want getting back to Yoongi. 

Jungkook shrugged, “Well, things didn’t work out and I preferred Yoongi.”

Or he’d been an idiot and thought the ability to stick a clear label on a relationship, and to be given that physical aspect, was worth more than everything Taehyung had ever given him. 

Jimin rolled his eyes, “Yeah, and that’s why I haven’t seen you look genuinely happy in three years, because you and Yoongi are so happy together.”

He picked up one of Jungkook’s pencils, holding it up to inspect it. 

One of the pencils from the last set that Taehyung had ever bought him, and had been hidden at the bottom of a drawer ever since they moved to Seoul a year ago. He wasn’t sure why he’d gotten them out now except maybe to torture himself. 

“Stop acting like you know me,” Jungkook snapped, snatching the pencil from Jimin’s hand. “I’m going to work in the kitchen.”

He didn’t spare Jimin a second glance as he hurriedly gathered his supplies into a messy bundle in his arms and carried them into the other room. 

After dumping everything unceremoniously onto the small table, Jungkook moved over to the fridge. It was bare except for a single photograph, taken on a rollercoaster when he, Taehyung, Yoongi and Junghyun had gone to a theme park when he’d been fifteen. 

Really, Taehyung had wanted to take Jungkook out for the day but he couldn’t do that without taking the other two, or it would have looked too suspicious. However, Yoongi and Junghyun were both terrified of rides so he and Taehyung had plenty of time just the two of them. 

His fingers brushed across Taehyung’s face, his boxy grin impossibly wide as he’d laughed at the way Jungkook had cheered the entire way around the ride. 

But those days were over and there was no point crying over spilt milk. 

Except that Jimin was right- Jungkook was miserable, staying with Yoongi out of a sense of duty more than anything else. 

If he could, he’d walk out of the flat and get on his knees to beg Taehyung to give them a second chance. But Yoongi’s threat echoed through his mind. He’d been high as a kite when he’d said it but that only made his words more sincere. 

“Kook, can you get some plates out?” Yoongi called from the hallway, apparently back with food. 

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Jungkook moved to do as he was asked, reaching into the top cupboard to pull the plates down. 

However, he forgot about the mug he’d also stowed in there, just to the side of the plates, because he’d been too tired to put it in the proper cupboard after drying up. Unnoticed by him, it was pushed slightly by the edge of a plate until it tumbled from the shelf to shatter on the floor. 

Jungkook froze, staring wide eyed at the shards of porcelain scattered across the tiles. 

Quick, pick it up before dad sees, you idiot!

Heart racing, Jungkook threw himself onto his knees to pick up the broken pieces of the mug.

“It’s alright, Kook, it’s just a mug,” Yoongi said, coming into the kitchen “we’ll just- Jungkook, what are you doing?”

Jungkook stared at his hand clenched in a tight fist around a shard of porcelain, blood oozing between his fingers. He suddenly gasped in pain, like he hadn’t been aware of it until he looked at it, but he didn’t let go. 

Instead, he gripped it tighter until he cried out.

You deserve this pain for what you put Taehyung through and what you’re putting Yoongi through. To love you is to be burned. 

Yoongi prised his fingers open and the shard fell from his palm, sticky with blood which now dripped onto the floor. 

“Fucking hell, Jungkook.” Yoongi held Jungkook’s hand up towards the light, inspecting it. “Come on, we’ll have to take you to get this looked at. What were you thinking?”

Jungkook pulled his hand out of Yoongi’s grip, “I’m fine. I’ll take myself to the minor injuries unit.”

The hospital wasn’t far away, he could walk the distance in less than twenty minutes. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Yoongi scolded, yanking the tea towel from a drawer handle and wrapping it around Jungkook’s hand, “you can’t go on your own.”

“The Chinese takeaway down the road might not care that you’re stoned but the hospital will, Yoongi. I’ll be fine, it’s not like you’ve ever looked after me before.” 

Yoongi had no response to that because he knew it was true. Yoongi might have been in pain and needed the drugs to numb himself but what about him? What would they ever have done if Jungkook had seriously injured himself? 

Jungkook stood up and, being careful not to get blood inside the sleeve, tugged his jacket on in the hallway. 

“At least text me,” Yoongi said, following him. 

“Yeah, whatever,” Jungkook mumbled as he opened the front door and slipped out into the foyer. 

He had twenty minutes to think of a good excuse for why he had a gash across the palm of his hand. He definitely couldn’t tell them he’d zoned out while he’d done it, or that he deserved it. 

For one thing, he couldn’t afford to take the time off work when they no doubt chalked it up to stress and signed him off. The good thing about his job was that he was technically self-employed so could work as and when he chose but the disadvantage of that was the lack of sick or holiday pay.

Luckily, it wasn’t the first time Jungkook had had to lie about how he got an injury. 

Taehyung spun around on the swivelly chair that had somehow found its way into the break room. He should probably be making the most of his break but with ten minutes still left, he was bored. 

That was the problem with working the night shift- he couldn’t go anywhere on his break.

“Taehyung?” 

He spun back around to the door, sitting up straight but relaxed when he saw it was only Soojin. The two of them had been at university doing their nursing course together and after graduating that summer, they’d both gotten jobs in the minor injuries unit at the same hospital. He was glad for it though- Soojin was the closest thing he’d had to a friend in nearly ten years. 

“What is it?”

“There’s a young man in the waiting room, he’s just cut his hand, and I know you’re on your break but do you mind seeing him? I’ll tell Choi-nim and you can have the extra ten minutes after.”

“Why don’t you want to do it?” Taehyung asked, suspicious. 

“Remember that kid that came in a few weeks ago and we suspected that the broken arm maybe wasn’t an accident? And how you were really good with him?” Taehyung nodded, unsure where she was going with this. “Well, this guy’s crying silently.”

“And? Maybe he’s embarrassed?”

“No,” Soojin said firmly, “people cry because they’re hurt and their instinct is to attract attention so someone will help them. People only cry silently because they’ve been conditioned not to attract attention but they still can’t stop themselves.”

Taehyung considered her words- he knew she was right. Soojin’s hobbies included reading psychological research papers in her free time. 

“Also, he’s clearly lying about how he did it,” she added. “He’s dripping blood onto the floor but he says a broken bit of mug was wrapped up in something else and he accidentally grabbed it. He’s obviously used to having to lie about these things. And you’ve got a knack for these types of things. I haven’t got the emotional capacity for it.”

“Fine,” Taehyung strode towards her, holding his hand out, “give me the sheet. What's the name?”

“A Jeon Jungkook,” she said, checking the clipboard as she handed it over. 

Taehyung’s blood turned cold.

“Tae, what's wrong?”

“Nothing, I just know a guy with that name.”

And a boy who used to cry silently

“Well it's a pretty common name, so I'm sure it's not the same one.”

“You’re probably right, you always are,” Taehyung said, smiling reassuringly at her before making his way to the waiting room. 

He looked down at the board as he stepped through the double doors, acting as if the name meant nothing to him, “Jeon Jungkook?”

When a chair creaked to his left, he looked up straight into the eyes of his Jungkook. 

“I’ll go to a different hospital,” Jungkook said, hastily wiping his eyes as he walked away

Taehyung’s eyes moved from the blood-soaked towel wrapped around his hand to the blood on the floor to the trail of blood that dripped from Jungkook’s hand as he walked away. 

He took a deep breath, he had to be careful, he couldn’t make it look like he knew Jungkook. 

“The closest one is a forty-five minute drive away,” he called, following after him. 

He knew Jungkook wasn’t stupid and there was a concerning amount of blood on the floor. Hopefully, the reminder would be enough to make him stay. 

Jungkook stopped and turned on his heel. 

“I want someone else to see me.”

“There’s nobody else available.”

“I can wait.”

Taehyung stepped closer, keeping his voice low so only Jungkook could hear him, “Jungkook please, just let me-” do my job , that was what he was supposed to say “-look after you.”

Jungkook shook his head, “I can’t-”

Taehyung caught him as he stumbled slightly. 

Under the guise of supporting him, Taehyung discreetly moved one hand down to Jungkook’s waist, and whispered into his ear, “Sweetheart, this is silly… I’m still your angel.”

Jungkook’s breath hitched and Taehyung worried he’d pushed too far. But Jungkook silently nodded, allowing Taehyung to lead him out of the waiting area. 

Usually, he would have dealt with this kind of injury on the main ward but given the circumstances, he opted to go to one of the private examination rooms, making sure to lock the door behind them. 

“So you really did come to do that nursing degree,” Jungkook mused, seating himself on the bed. 

“Why would you think I didn’t?” Taehyung asked, putting a couple of pillows behind him and gently pushing Jungkook back against them. 

He then went to the sink and washed his hands while Jungkook spoke, “I wondered if maybe you’d lied so you had an excuse to leave.”

“You left me first,” Taehyung said, collecting a wad of gauze, a bottle of disinfectant, bandages and a needle and thread. 

“You pushed me away, you asked me to live with you but not as boyfriends, like a parent and child,” Jungkook muttered bitterly. 

If the night before he left for Seoul was the second worst night of his life then the night Jungkook was referring to was the worst night of his life. He’d messed up, he knew that, and he’d had four long years to think about that. 

Jungkook was right, he’d wanted Jungkook to live with him so he could look after him properly and get him out of that house, but he’d failed to appreciate that Jungkook would see that as a rejection, and Jungkook had reacted badly to that. 

The only person who had shown him genuine love and affection had seemingly rejected him, of course he’d lashed out and threatened Taehyung with the prospect of leaving him for Yoongi. It wasn’t as if Jungkook had ever been shown how to handle emotions properly in a home like his. 

And Taehyung had reacted even worse than Jungkook. 

He surreptitiously wiped his clammy hands on the inside of the pockets of his scrubs before pulling the trolley over to Jungkook. He also dragged the wheeled stool over with him to sit on beside him. 

When he unwrapped the sodden towel, Taehyung found that some of the blood had dried, sticking the towel to the wound. He pulled it off as gently as he could, tensing everytime Jungkook hissed in pain. 

“Remember step one, Kookie?” Taehyung asked, pressing some of the gauze he’d collected into Jungkook’s palm.

“Stop the bleeding.”

“So why are you still bleeding everywhere?”

“I tried,” Jungkook pouted.

“You should have lifted it above your heart,” Taehyung told him, lifting Jungkook’s arm with his own fingers pressing tightly onto the wound. 

“You were always better at this than me.”

“I kind of had to be.”

How many times had Taehyung patched Jungkook up, whether from his dad’s fists or the bullies at school? 

Jungkook leaned back against the pillows, “My head feels funny.”

“You’ve lost a fair amount of blood but you should be alright in the morning, you just need to rest and let Yoongi pamper you a bit.” Jungkook snorted derisively. “And no…” Taehyung paused awkwardly. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he needed to do his job still. “And no getting aroused for the next week or so or you’ll feel dizzy. You need your blood to stay in your head.” 

“I’ve only ever been attracted to one man in my life and it certainly isn’t Min Yoongi, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

“Why that one man?”

He didn’t need to ask who it was as he looked into those warm, doe-eyes. 

I’m not into boys either...apparently that doesn't apply to you... I want all these things that I’ve never wanted before and it scares me...

“I’ve never really been able to work out my sexuality but I think that for me, attraction is based on the emotional connection.” Taehyung nodded to show he understood. “The only man I’ve ever been attracted to is also the only man I've ever truly loved. But then he left me and came to Seoul.” 

“This isn’t the way I wanted things to be either, Jungkook.”

“If you’d let me have what I wanted, you would’ve had what you wanted.”

“You needed stability and a good home, and I had to choose between what you needed and what you- what we both wanted.” Taehyung lowered Jungkook’s hand, gently lifting the gauze to see that the bleeding had stopped for the time being. “Or so I thought but I was wrong, and I’ve regretted it ever since.” 

He knew he’d said too much but everything had always come spilling out of him around Jungkook. Just never the right things. 

He’d never managed to tell him that he loved him.

“Right, let’s get this clean and stitched up,” he said brusquely, avoiding the tension crackling in the air, not giving Jungkook a chance to shoot him down. 

“Does this mean I’m going to end up with a cool scar?”

Taehyung was glad that Jungkook was playing along.

“Maybe but you might not be able to see it very well because your palms aren’t smooth anyway.” 

The lines criss-crossing the skin were likely to obscure the kind of faint scar that Jungkook might get. 

He wiped the blood from Jungkook’s fingers before dousing a cotton pad in disinfectant and making sure the wound was properly cleaned. 

Jungkook flinched when it came into contact with the cut but Taehyung had been expecting that and held his wrist firmly. He’d always been the same. 

“What happened, Kookie? This wasn’t just from accidentally picking up a broken bit of china, it’s too deep.”

Taehyung prayed to a God he didn’t believe in that Jungkook would let him in the way he once had. 

“I’ll tell you but as Taehyungie, not Nurse Kim.”

“I was asking as Taehyungie,” he reassured him, threading the needle to stitch the wound. 

It would give him something to concentrate on while Jungkook talked. He just hoped he could keep his hand steady. 

“I accidentally dropped a mug and I was picking it up, but I… I don’t know… it was like I zoned out and when I came back round, I was holding one of the pieces in my hand and then I thought, I deserve this, I deserve to be hurt like this.”

“You don’t deserve it, Jungkook. You never have.”

“Don’t I? I kept pushing you when you were trying your best.” 

“And you’d never been given a chance to make mistakes and grow from them. It’s human to make mistakes, Jungkook. I wanted to give you a space to do that but I ended up doing the opposite.” 

With the cut stitched, Taehyung held a dressing over it and began wrapping a bandage around it with practiced movements. 

“I really am sorry, Jungkookie. I was so focused on your immaturity that I forgot about my own. But really neither of us were equipped to deal with such a delicate situation.”

He’d seen everything in black and white- what Jungkook needed versus what he wanted- but the two things weren’t that easy to separate. 

Jungkook hadn’t needed a boyfriend in general, but he had needed for Taehyung to take that final step after two years of walking that fine line. 

Most teenagers had the chance to have their little crushes and their “relationships” that nobody expected to go anywhere. But they hadn’t.

They’d collided into each other and neither of them had been able to handle it. 

The only difference between them had been that somewhere inside himself, Jungkook had known that so he had bowed to what Taehyung thought best while Taehyung had plowed ahead, sure that he was right. 

Maybe he shouldn’t be telling Jungkook that right now, maybe it was too late, far too late… but Taehyung was still desperate for the one thing that only Jungkook could give him. 

He wanted to be forgiven. 

“Wiggle your fingers for me.”

Jungkook oblingingly curled and uncurled his fingers. 

Satisfied that everything was working fine, and that the bandage was secure, Taehyung picked up the bloody gauze and got up to put it in the bin, turning his back on Jungkook.

Suddenly, arms wrapped firmly around his waist.

“I forgive you,” Jungkook breathed, his warm breath tickling the back of Taehyung’s neck. 

He stepped forward slightly and Jungkook’s fingers snagged in the fabric of his scrubs. 

“It’s alright, I’m just turning around.”

He hadn’t held Jungkook in his arms in three years, and this could be his only chance to ever do it again, he wanted to do it right. 

Taehyung held Jungkook tightly, burying his nose in the hair that was as feather-soft as he remembered. Jungkook had always seen Taehyung as his caretaker, his guardian angel, but there was something about having Jungkook’s arms wrapped around him that made Taehyung feel safe. 

It made him feel whole. 

“I’m sorry for being so aloof at the club,” Jungkook said softly. “I just didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want to get hurt again.”

“What are we going to do, Jungkook?”

He couldn’t bare to lose Jungkook again but he didn’t have the right to ask anything of Jungkook. 

“I don’t know but we’ll work it out. We found each other in this huge city, that means we’re meant to be.”

“I wish I had your optimism, Jungkook.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got enough for the both of us.” 

“Come on, I’ll give you a lift home,” Taehyung said, his heart heavy.

He wondered if this whole encounter counted as a form of self harm.

“I don’t think you’re just allowed to leave work, Taehyung,” Jungkook smiled, pulling away from him, though his hands still lingered on his waist. 

“Soojin can cover for me for a bit, she owes me for interrupting my break to deal with you.”

Jungkook raised an eyebrow, “I thought you said nobody else was available to treat me.”

“I lied.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I can’t believe you lived so close the entire time,” Taehyung huffed, pulling up outside of Jungkook’s block of flats. 

He noted that Jungkook’s directions had taken him the long way round despite Jungkook always taking the most direct route everywhere back in Busan. 

“Like I said, we’re obviously meant to be.”

“Except that both of us have boyfriends and I know you, you won’t leave Yoongi because we both know he’d end up on the streets.”

He was trying not to think of how he would ever get away from Hoseok. 

“Does that not mean we can be friends?” 

Taehyung felt like he’d been punched in the gut even though he shouldn’t have been surprised by the words. 

“Yeah, of course,” he said, smiling through the pain of his heart shattering into even more fragmented pieces. 

Jungkook unbuckled his seatbelt, “My phone number hasn’t changed, by the way.”

“Who says I kept it?” 

“I do because I know you. I bet you still have that memory box, too And I bet your boyfriend really appreciates that.”

“He doesn’t know about it

Jungkook clicked his tongue, “I see. You’re still ashamed of me.”

“It’s not like that, Jungkook. He gets jealous easily and I don’t want him to destroy any of it.”

“Sounds healthy,” Jungkook drawled, in a tone reminiscent of Yoongi. 

It made Taehyung want to punch something. 

“Yeah because you and Yoongi are the poster children for healthy upbringings and relationships.”

Jungkook shrugged, “At least now we’re only messing each other up, and like you say, neither of us were exactly undamaged to begin with.” 

“I should get back to work.” 

“Wouldn’t want people to say I was the bad influence this time, would we?” Jungkook chuckled, getting out of the car. “Bye, Taehyung.”

When Jungkook was a few paces away, Taehyung rolled the passenger side window down. “Jungkook!” he called. 

Jungkook came back to the car, leaning his forearms against the rolled down window, “Yeah?”

“Make sure you keep that hand clean.”

Jungkook smiled brightly, his slightly oversized front teeth on full display, making him look like that twelve year old boy Taehyung had first met all those years ago, “Of course, angel.” 

April 2016

Taehyung grunted as he lifted the shopping bags onto the kitchen side. 

“Hey, Taehyung,” Jungkook greeted him cheerfully, unphased by Taehyung letting himself into the house. “Do you want some help?”

At least he’d been able to come in through the front door instead of sneaking in through Jungkook’s bedroom window. He’d been hoping that Jungyun would move away for university to make things easier both for him to see Jungkook and for Jungkook to get some peace at least when his parents went away. But it seemed like the universe wanted to constantly spite him because Junghyun was still living at home and if anything, more likely to be there than he had been before since he needed somewhere to bring girls home to. 

“No, you just sit,” Taehyung said, starting to unpack the shopping. 

He knew Jungkook only wanted to sneak the bag of dried seaweed out of the bag before Taehyung could stop him and he didn’t want him ruining his dinner.

Jungkook hopped up onto the side, kicking his legs, “Do you know where Junghyun is? He’s been gone for two days.”

Taehyung wondered if Junghyun knew that Jungkook worried about him and always asked after him. Would he even care? Or would he find some way to twist it against that sweet boy?

“I’m sorry, Jungkook. I only saw him today. If I'd known, I would've brought you food sooner.”

Of course Jungkook could have text him but he never did so Taehyung had stopped expecting it. The pride that Taehyung had noticed in him when he was only twelve had only grown in the last three and a half years. 

“Is he alright?” Jungkook pressed. 

“He’s fine, Jungkook.”

“Is he with Yoongi?”

���I’ll give you three guesses.”

Jungkook hummed thoughtfully, “I tried texting Yoongi to find out but he never replied.”

Taehyung’s jaw clenched, he was having to constantly reign himself in whenever he was around both Yoongi and Jungkook. The way Yoongi was looking at Jungkook made his skin crawl. 

“I never used to like Yoongi,” Jungkook continued, “but he’s been different lately. He’s stopped calling me a bratty kid and actually talks to me. He told me he's going to move up to Seoul and make music.”

“You should stay away from Yoongi, Jungkook.”

He was only interested in Jungkook when it was convenient or when he wanted an ego boost, and Jungkook liked to use Yoongi to make Taehyung jealous whenever he was feeling insecure (which was most of the time), or to get back at his brother. Taehyung couldn’t think of a worse combination.

“Worried I’m going to replace you with another one of Junghyun’s friends?” Jungkook smirked.

“No, we both know you could never replace me, Kookie. Who else is going to remember to buy all your favourite snacks?” 

And who else would be willing to stand up to Junghyun the way he did?

“I’d like to try charcoals next but they might be a bit too messy…”

Taehyung had been listening attentively while Jungkook rambled about what he’d been drawing recently and what he had planned for the future.

They were sitting on the kitchen side together, their legs brushing against each other comfortably. 

“I’ll get you something to put down while you do it, then you can just wash that every now and then.”

Jungkook opened his mouth to say something but froze when the front door banged open. 

“Tae? What are you doing here?” Junghyun called from the living room, obviously spotting his shoes on the rack.

“Someone had to feed your brother.” 

“He’s capable of cooking, you know,” Junghyun laughed, coming in with his latest girlfriend on his arm. 

Taehyung had probably been told her name at some point but they came and went so fast that he never bothered remembering them. 

“Not when there's no food in the house he’s not,” Taehyung snapped.

“Just remember whose brother he is, Taehyung.”

“You’re the one who needs to remember that, not me.”

Junghyun laughed, “Maybe you could hook Tae up with one of your friends?” he said to the girl. “I think getting laid would really loosen him up.”

The girl looked him up and down appraisingly, “I’ve got plenty of friends who would be interested in him.” 

Taehyung fixed Junghyun with an icy glare, “I told you, I’m already with someone.”

Beside him, Jungkook tensed. 

Taehyung discreetly reached behind him until his fingers found Jungkook’s and squeezed them reassuringly. 

“And you won't let me, your best friend, meet them so you're clearly not that into her.”

“More like you're a dick and he doesn’t want to subject people to you,” Jungkook shot back, stung by his brother’s words. 

Junghyun’s cheeks flushed with rage and Taehyung shifted forward, ready to dive between him and Jungkook if he had to. Fortunately, Junghyun remembered who else was there and merely snorted dismissively before leading the girl to his bedroom. 

“You shouldn’t rile him up, Jungkook.”

“He already hits me for being something that I’m not, what else can he do to me?”

Taehyung didn’t know but something told him Junghyun was, despite his hard exterior, even more vulnerable on the inside than Jungkook, and far more volatile if pushed. 

“I just think you should be careful.” 

Present Day

Taehyung gazed out of the window towards Jungkook’s building, the engine still running. 

He knew he shouldn’t be there, that he should be leaving it alone, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that despite getting a scholarship, Jungkook was still having to work at a strip club. 

Just how much money was Yoongi wasting on drugs? 

He couldn’t stand the thought that despite managing to escape his childhood home, Jungkook might still be going hungry because of the person who was supposed to love and look after him. 

Except that had been him and what had Yoongi ever done? 

He doubted Jungkook would accept any kind of financial help from him but he wouldn’t be able to look his reflection in the eye if he didn’t try.

Hoseok would kill me if he knew what I was planning on doing , he tried telling himself as if that would do anything. 

Jeon Jungkook was quickly filling Taehyung’s world once more, eclipsing anything else, and Taehyung welcomed it with open arms. 

December 2017

“I just think you should try it, Kook-ah.”

Partway through his warm-up stretches, Jimin looked over towards the studio entrance, expecting to see a newcomer to the dance club. Instead, he saw a boy he hadn’t seen in over a year and hadn’t expected to see ever again. 

And certainly not with the infamous Min yoongi in tow. 

But there was no mistaking those wide eyes. 

He couldn’t help feeling sorry for the boy- Jungkook- after his brother had cruelly sent that picture around everyone in his own year, Jungkook’s and Taehyung’s. Of course that had been enough to make sure that the whole school saw it.  

Jimin went over to the pair hovering by the door, smiling brightly, “Hey, Kook-ah, are you rejoining?”

“No,” Jungkook folded his arms over his chest. 

“Yes,” Yoongi said firmly. 

Jimin thought he had a good idea of why Jungkook was so reluctant to come back. 

“Hyun-Woo left a while ago,” Jimin told him. 

Jungkook instantly perked up, “Really?”

“Really. You should go warm-up before we start.” 

Jungkook practically skipped on his way to the coat hooks. 

“Thanks,” Yoongi muttered, watching him go. 

“It’s nothing, I always thought he was kind of adorable. I’m Park Jimin, by the way.”

Yoongi fixed him with an intense gaze, “Min Yoongi.”

Jimin giggled, “Yeah, I know who you are. The only people more well known than you are him-” he stuck his thumb out towards Jungkook “- and Kim Taehyung.” 

Yoongi sighed, his eyes moving back to Jungkook, “Why do I get the feeling that name’s going to follow me fucking everywhere?"

Jimin didn’t respond, he didn't think Yoongi would like the answer that came to mind.

[jodilin65]

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1989 I had quite a hectic day. I went to Food Mart and waited an hour for a taxi which never came, so finally, after waiting for ages for Andy, who’s such a wonderfully considerate friend, he came in a rental car with Nancy, a gay friend of his I never met before. I finally got home, then a few minutes ago I called to thank him and he screams, “Fine! Forget it!” in a really snotty tone.

I am really sick and tired of his shit and his expecting me to be in a perfect mood 24 hours a day and never say anything depressing or negative. This is why I don’t associate with or meet people. I’m tired of kissing ass to the good, decent, stable people and having to watch everything I do or say. I am who I am and if people don’t like it and I’m not good enough for them, then they’re not good enough for me and I’m not gonna just settle for the mental cases and desperados.

Otherwise after getting home and everything over with I was feeling pretty good and Jai cooked us hamburgers, green beans and chicken noodles for dinner.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1989 This morning I woke up feeling somewhat like I was developing a cold, but I think it was just the usual stuffiness I wake up with due to smoking and allergies, and I still haven’t been eating well.

Tomorrow I’m going grocery shopping which I hate. I’d definitely rather clean and do laundry.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1989 I start music school tomorrow! Tomorrow’s my theory class from 3:30-4:30, then Wednesday’s my piano class from 11:30-noon, and voice is from noon-12:30. I’m really psyched, but my breathing’s really pissing me off. I got a scholarship, but cuz they only have so much scholarship money to go around, I put off the guitar for a while.

Jessie did convince me, however, to check out HCC. I know I didn’t give it much of a chance, but that’s cuz I didn’t want to have to take all the other stuff that’s required with it and was terrified of all the paperwork, but she says it’s a cinch and that the extra stuff is easy as hell.

Also, we were discussing the possibility of us moving to Easthampton where there’s no waiting list for subsidy and that’s not a housing project-type building like Carabetta. It allows you to choose wherever you want to live as long as the landlord accepts it, and you can have up to 5 bedrooms even though it’d be just me, her and Wyatt, who’s now 16 months. She is the only other one I could live with besides Andy and even though Andy and I have more in common than me and Jessie, me and Jessie don’t have this tension between us like Andy and I do. Well, I’m not gonna do anything unless I’m 100% sure of it, and if I do it won’t be for a while.

The other night me and Jessie went out to Chinese food and I teased the shit out of her over her $300 phone bill which got disconnected. Her adoptive father is Big Bird of Sesame Street. You’d think he’d want to help her out more often. Anyway, she said she’ll call me from a payphone or school or her mom’s house.

Dad was all psyched about school and I think he realizes now that it’s important to me to do only what I love and he definitely feels I’ve got what it takes.

They’re supposed to be sending me some clothes by UPS.

Later…

Well, they screwed up my schedule at school so I missed my fucking piano and voice class today thinking I had theory class instead and I spoke to both my piano and voice teacher and they sounded super nice and said there’d be no problem making it up.

I haven’t heard from Jessie yet today and there’s no answer at Andy’s. He’s probably asleep and I don’t wanna call him if he’s up watching All My Children, his favorite soap, and interrupt him.

Seeing that last night was a Friday night, I was hoping that Linda and Nissan and company would call, but they never did and they probably won’t again. I really wish they’d call, though, and I never should’ve let Linda see the recording device cuz that may scare her from calling. I’m just so curious to hear what they could have to say next.

Hank from over on Oswego St. called last night and today, but I didn’t feel like talking to the drunk. I wonder how long it’s gonna take him to wake up and get the hint without me having to break his face.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1989 The night before last, I got a phone call about Nissan. I talked to two women. I know the first one I spoke with was definitely Linda, asking about Jessie, Andy and Tony. Whoever the hell Tony is beats me, unless she’s talking about Tony the cop. The second person I spoke to knew Nissan for sure and mentioned some of the shit that happened with us, saying she’s out to get me and that she’s talking about me to everyone, and that she investigated me and knows I’m a pain in the ass and that I’ve been arrested, in institutions and so on. She says that Nissan’s been having a hell of a field day at my expense as if that hurts to know. Then, she said she wanted to meet me and that she understood my fears and concerns, after asking me a million questions and saying she didn’t know Julie and only knew Nissan vaguely, and that she was just a passenger at the time when she heard me go off and then apologize, saying I didn’t take my meds, which I don’t remember at all. Then she said that she thinks Nissan’s an asshole and she wants to meet me cuz she’s also a victim of society, foster homes and assholes, then she’d swing back to the Nissan’s-gonna-get-you routine.

She sounded very butchy and I sure as hell don’t trust her and I think she’s pretty pissed about my not wanting to meet her. I wonder what Linda’s explanation about all this will be. She was definitely the first voice I heard, but I never heard that girl with the younger higher voice before in my life.

I know this was tied in with Nissan, but now I know Linda’s involved, too. I wonder if Linda knows Nissan. And how do they know about my record? Did I mention it to Linda? Maybe she is a cop now or cop-connected. I don’t know if I can trust her now. Is this for not being interested in her after she told me she thought I’d make her a good wife before I moved back here?

I taped the whole thing, but couldn’t tape the first one I got several weeks ago cuz I didn’t have this recording device before.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1989 I am still wide awake after going to the Pub last night with Andy, then over to his place to see an old special of Charlie’s Angels. Kate Jackson was just as gorgeous as I remembered her to be except all their clothes were hideous as they were back in the 70s with those hideous bell-bottom jeans.

God and our grandparents sure were with us once again last night when a drunk driver came flying out of nowhere through a stop sign as we were cutting through side streets from Belmont Avenue to Sumner Avenue and we just missed hitting this car by only inches. We would’ve been dead for sure and Andy had kept saying he had this feeling all night that we’d have a close call with death. This is why I’m terrified to drive. If it had been me driving, and I did drive part of the way, I’d have panicked and not hit the brakes in time. There are so many crazy drivers out there, especially at 2am when the bars close. He’s an excellent driver. I’m not able to be as alert as he is and most people are and observe everything around me besides just straight ahead. He always wears his seatbelt, but that time he didn’t and after that close call we both buckled up. We just weren’t meant to die, I guess. We both know for sure why we’re alive.

I asked Andy why I’m not ugly or butchy looking since I’ve been ordered to be celibate by God and he says it’s for my career. He’s probably right. When I said God forbids me to have sex with an attractive woman and that it can only be ugly dykes or men, he said I could have sex with a good-looking woman, but that I couldn’t have a relationship cuz of my chemical imbalance and I agree for sure.

We went to the Springfield Denny’s for breakfast then did some errands, got my refill on Navane and am gonna go to go bed cuz he’s gonna be here at 6:00 to do his laundry.

[h0neyfreak]

If you are renting from Just Some Guy (aka not a managed apartment or condo building that has a maintenance department) I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to only ever communicate with your landlord about issues via email. Disclaimer for this being based on my experience with US law and landlords and not legal advice in any capacity, but if something is wrong in your living space, take pictures/videos (where possible) and send clear, concise emails that hit on all the “you aren’t fulfilling your lease obligations” pain points. If you have a landlord with any basic awareness it should get them to fix it and it’ll give you a nice start against the barely sentient slime balls when you’re fighting with them later.

Here’s the basic formula/template with an example letter below the cut:

Hi [landlord],

This is [name] at [address/unit]. We have been having an issue with [room/appliance/area] since [date/time]. [describe issue in 1-2 sentences]. I have attached photos/a video to better illustrate the problem. We have already tried [obvious solution like changing a bulb or basic cleaning] and it has not resolved. We are concerned because [property damage and/or limiting use of the space]. Can you please [maintenance request]?

If you don’t hear back, reply to the same chain with some variation of “Following up on my previous email. The issue is still present [additional photo or video evidence as relevant]. Can you provide an update on when this will be fixed?” And keep doing that as often as you feel is necessary.

If they call you, send a follow up email right after you hang up saying “Hi [landlord], thanks for calling. Just want to confirm that [whatever you discussed]. Let me know if this isn’t correct.”

Sample letter:

Hi Random Guy,

This is Your Tenant at 123 Street in Unit 2. We have been having an issue with the windows in the kitchen since we moved in on April 7th. The three north facing windows leak substantially whenever we get rain. Videos and photos attached. Those were taken during the storm last night. The windows are closed and locked and we have checked for anything jammed underneath them but it keeps happening. It makes it impossible to use the kitchen while it’s raining as dirty water gets all over the counter where we prepare food. We are also concerned about mold and bugs becoming a problem if this continues. Can you please send someone to repair the windows?

Thank you,

Your Tenant

[notrightnowsblog]

As someone who left an abusive situation as a teen I’m going to add a few more.

-if you have to leave/move out in a hurry take your identity documentation with you. Birth certificate, ID, passport, social security card, medical insurance, school transcripts. Anything you have that can be used to prove you are who you say you are. If you need to replace any of the big ones like the BC, passport ssc etc, those other documents may be useful. Bank statements. expired IDs, W2s and paystubs. If possible keep them somewhere you can access quickly, and they can’t. But don’t keep all of them on your person unless you need them for something specific, particularly not the birth certificate and ssn card. Just have the ID on you.

- never give those documents to anyone you don’t trust 1000%. That includes keeping them at someone else’s house or at a house that you could be locked out of or have the locks changed on you. Look into renting a safe deposit box in that case.

-keep all your documents and know where they are. Even if you have no reason to fear that someone might take them losing track of them can still cause a big problem for you. If you get married keep track of the marriage certificate, even if you get divorced. Keep both the marriage certificate and the divorce decree. Especially if you changed your name when you got married and/or divorced.

- if the name on your ID is different from the name on your birth certificate make sure you have documentation of the name change whether it’s a court order/ adoption certificate/ naturalization certificate/ marriage certificate/ divorce decree and so on. And if you need to show your birth certificate to get hired or housing or services bring the name change documentation too.

-lots of states allow you make your home address private on your ID. Look into your options if there’s someone you don’t want to have your address. Search for “safe at home” “secure address” and your state.

-po boxes and general delivery are also options for having things shipped somewhere other than where you live.

- I won’t debate the ethics of stealing from corporations. But ethical or not you could be hurting yourself in the long run. Depending upon how much you steal you could be charged with a felony and that can be applied if you steal many small things over a long period of time. Even if you never steal that much the cops could still be called on you. You could be detained and held so you miss a shift and lose your job, or housing. Someone who knows your employer or landlord could witness it or you being escorted out of the store. Any social services or assistance you are collecting could be cut off. Don’t screw yourself over in order to stick it to the man.

-research emergency cash assistance, snap benefits, housing assistance and know how and when to apply for them in an emergency. Don’t go for payday loans or put cash advances on your cards. Those will send you into debt/steeper debt so fast.

- if you are living paycheck to paycheck don’t put anything on automatic payment schedules. Overdraft fees are bitch and some banks will let you continue to spend for a while before they even alert you that you are overdrawn. Set reminders and alerts to pay your bills but don’t let any company take money out of your account automatically.

-if you are buying on credit cards, pay off the full amount if and when you can. If that’s not possible pay as much of the total as you can every month until it’s paid off. Paying monthly minimum does nothing to pay down the debt, the minimum payment is almost always less than the interest accruing on your debt. Example your minimum payment is $35 the credit card company is charged you $38 in interest. You’re paying $35 to see your debit grow by $3. If you have multiple cards choose the one it’s the highest interest rate and pay that one off first and as fast as you can. Put any extra cash you have to paying off that one until it’s paid off. Paying a little extra on one card one month and little extra on another the next does not help you. Once the highest interest one is paid you move on to paying the next highest interest card.

-if you live somewhere cold spend your money on a warm coat and good snow boots. Get ice cleats for your boots and snow tires if you have a car.

-learn when your area tests their emergency sirens. If you hear one going off when it’s not scheduled know where you need to go to be safe. If you’re in tornado country find a basement, or ground floor windowless room. If there is dangerous weather in your area take it seriously. Don’t go swimming in flood water for a laugh. Don’t speed skate on frozen sidewalks, or go polar dipping in below freezing windchill. If a sign says hazard/don’t climb/loose rocks/fast rising tide, whatever, stay away. Clout is not worth your life.

-you don’t have to do something that your friends do if you don’t like it. Your friends all drink but you don’t like it. Don’t. No social activity is ever mandatory. Let people do what they want (assuming it’s not going to endanger them or someone else) but they can’t make you do what they want. No matter how close you are, your friend/friend group/significant other is not the boss of you.

things i wish i had known when i escaped my family household and couldn't ask my parents for help

invest in a good mattress early on. there are many other ends you can save on - sleep is not one of them. this is key to how much energy you'll have throughout the day

you don't need a bedframe but you do need a slatted bed base (even if it's just pallets)

opening a bank account is easy

there's youtube tutorials for everything. how to install your washing machine, how to use tools, fixing stuff around the place. channels like dad, how do i? are a godsend

change energy provider as soon as your old deal runs out. you'll get better offers elsewhere and avoid price gouging

assemble a basic first aid kid at home: painkillers, probiotics, alcohol wipes, bandages, tweezers, antihistamine tablets - anything you might need in a pinch

and an emergency toolkit: flashlight, extra batteries, a utility knife, an adjustable wrench, multi-tool, duct tape

set your fridge to the lowest temperature it can go. the energy consumption is minimal in difference and it'll give you +4/7 days on most foods

off-brand products are almost always the same in quality and taste, if not better, for half the price

coupons will save you a lot of money in the long run

there's no reason to be shy around employees at the bank/laundromat/store; most people will be happy to help

vegetarian diets are generally cheap if you make food from scratch

breakfast is as important as they say

keep track of your budget in a notebook or excel file - e.g. rent, phone and internet bills, food, leisure so you'll have an overlook on your spending over the months

don't gamble

piracy is okay

stealing from big stores and chains is also ethically okay

keep medical bills and pharmacy receipts for tax returns

also, file your tax returns early

take up a hobby that isn't in front of a screen. pottery, music, going for a run every now and then, stuff that'll keep you busy and sane

and most importantly... you're allowed to get the stuff you want. treat yourself to the occasional mundane thing. a good scented candle. a bath bomb. that body lotion that makes you feel like royalty. the good coffee beans.

you're free and you deserve to be happy.

[tonguetyd]

I mean I’m US based so feel free to take everything I saw with a grain of salt, and PLEASE double check things on google bc I am just speaking from my own experience, but in best order of how you should (“should” used HELLA loosely) get started up:

Get a bank account. This one is step one because you need it to pay for all the other stuff, and fortunately is pretty straightforward, most banks make it super easy for you to open an account online. See what the minimum balance requirements are before you open - try to get a bank without one! And more important than that even, make sure it’s an insured bank. Idk how they do it in AUS but here every bank will have a little thing that says “FDIC Insured” on their home website page, which basically means if the bank goes under and has to close all the accounts, your money isn’t gone with it. “Insured” is the key word you want to find. I recommend if you can getting both a checking and a savings account, but keeping your checking account at $0 until you need to pay something and then transferring that money over from your savings. Because (again, might be a states thing, definitely check Google bc it’s your friend!) generally speaking, savings accounts earn interest and checking accounts don’t. So if you only move over what you need when you need it, you’re constantly earning small bits of money. Again, if your bank has a minimum balance requirement, don’t do that! Avoiding fees is WAY more important than earning a couple extra cents.

Get a credit card. Same general idea, except what you want to do is get something with no annual fee. None. Even if the interest rate is annoyingly high, because the secret to credit cards is (if you can), pay off the full balance every month. Or as close to it. I know that isn’t always possible, but that’s your goal when buying stuff - “can I pay off this whole thing when the month is over”. If you can do that, interest rates don’t matter because you won’t owe it. (If you know you can’t do that, then obviously don’t get something with a 50% interest fee bc you’ll drown immediately. But if you know your paycheck is usually [whatever] and you keep an eye on your balance and make sure it’s less than [whatever]? You’re set.) And then you’re only stuck with the annual fees, which just generally suck, I’ve never found a card that was worth it, no matter how much cash back or miles or whatever they offer you. Rewards are all secondary. That fee is what you want to check. You don’t want that sneak charge popping up and messing you up after a year.

Insurance. …you’re gonna have to google that one I’m afraid bc obviously I can’t give anyone advice on insurance as an American.

Housing. I hate to say it but. You’re probably not gonna be able to buy a house for a while, because like. Everything is still cluster fucky. So rentals! I love renting because if something breaks it’s a call to your landlord/maintenance person and then it isn’t your problem lol. Which is why the number one thing you want to check for is what their maintenance policy is, if people have left reviews saying they respond quickly, if whoever is doing the fixing lives nearby. Because you WILL (likely through no fault of your own) randomly lose heat in the middle of winter and that is NOT something you want taking 4-7 business days to fix. Be aware that you are probably gonna have to make concessions. You might need roommates, you might need to go to a laundromat, you might be far from public transit. Pick what is the most important things to you and go from there. And then go see places! The is the worst part! Because you have to see where you are going to be living, you CANT just go based on a random page online. You have to see if it’s clean, if its small, if it’s [insert whatever is important to you]. The people who are trying to sell you the place WANT you to sign for it. They want your money! Ask your questions to them. You will spend SO much time in your apartment/house, you HAVE to feel safe/comfortable. If you don’t feel good on your walk thru (even if it’s just a “eh, nothing wrong with it!”, that works!) and you are hesitant at ALL. Don’t move in.

If you got a place to live and a way to pay for it, that’s 90% of the battle to adulting. And it’s harder than it sounds - shit is expensive. Everything is REALLY fucking expensive! But at the core you just want to make sure your paycheck can cover rent, food, electric/utilities, and transport. And a bit extra for fun things, bc those are important. (And in our case in the states, student/medical debt 🙄. But that’s a different conversation.)

Ask Google, ask people that work at banks/rental companies, MOST people will want to help you. Promise

Hopefully this helps a little, it might not because again, not exactly the target audience to give advice, but. You’ll get there. Good luck!

This is probably a dumb question but does anyone have resources (maybe videos) on how to just… get started as an adult? Explaining things like how to buy a house, managing insurance, using banks and such. Preferably based in Australia?

I’m trying to get away from family

[coochiequeens]

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A program that relies on houses to provide transitional living spaces is about to lose its flagship location, prompting concerns about where those women in need will go next.

Walking Women Welfare helps women experiencing homelessness turn their lives around by placing clients in transitional housing where they get help finding jobs and treatment for medical issues, including addiction. WWW uses donated three or four-bedroom houses scattered around the Lowcountry as transitional homes.

While the clients are in the homes, they’re expected to keep them clean and even pay rent as they make their way to graduating out of the program. The program does not get any government assistance, instead relying on volunteers.

Recently the owner of one of the homes has decided to move back in, forcing WWW to lose that space.

“That was actually our flagship house, the first house that we opened. Since that time, we have opened three more,” Pastor Alfrieda Deas said. “However, losing any beds is a dilemma for women who don’t have anywhere to go. Six people being displaced is a big deal to us.”

Deas started WWW and says they’re a small organization and the need is too great for them alone.

“My Sister’s House is in overflow. I just got about five calls today seeking housing,” Deas said. “Women are at the mercy of organizations like ours and the community to give them a safe haven, not a shelter. It’s our goal to give them a space where they can grow, learn budgeting skills, learn cleanliness, get a job and sign up for the medical and mental health care that they need.”

Losing the house is a blow to the fledgling nonprofit that has been working hard to expand its capacity in an area of need that has been largely ignored by governments.

“We meet regularly with the City of Charleston, North Charleston . . . there’s a lot of talk about what can be done in two or three years down the line but what about right now. What about the women walking the street right now,” Deas said. “We need doors open right now.”

They have until May 15 to find a new place, or the women will once again be homeless.

“At this moment, I don’t know where they’re going. Our youngest is 23. Our oldest has medical problems and no family to take them in,” Deas said. “That’s why I am reaching out to the community to see if some landlord, some homeowner has a three to four-bedroom home that they would offer to us. We don’t want it for free, we pay a lease.”

[sweetdejun]

for the drabble game could I request prompts 1 and 29 with Lee Know from Stray Kids <3

prompts:

“it’s too hot, maybe we should take our clothes off" + “take a picture, it’ll last longer”

genre/trope: fluff, humor/roommates!au

warnings: none

pairing: lee know x reader

word count: 848

a/n: I hope you like it! I wrote this with a post-finals brain so I hope it makes sense lol

luck was usually not on your side. it came as no surprise to you that during the hottest week, your jank apartment's AC unit practically combusted, and your entire building lost AC for the day. on top of that, it's a long weekend so although you're thankful you're not working,  the city's busy so it would be impossible to find an open hotel to stay in. this leaves you with minimal choices for places to stay... but then, you can't just think about yourself anymore. you have a roommate now.

minho is a friend of a friend, who was looking for an apartment in a  new city, where you happened to stay. he moved to your place for the time being while he found another apartment, so he's been your interim roommate for a few months. he's charming, funny, and sometimes a smartass. you'd be lying if you didn't start feeling something for him, and you hoped nothing came off as obvious on your end. thinking about him as you were leaving work, you just hope that he's not passed out from the heat at the apartment right now.

you give him a call when you drive home. “hey minho, is the AC back on?” he groans in response, “no, I thought by the time I got home today, the AC would be fixed, but the landlord said that it’s gonna be gone for at least a couple more hours.” great. “well, shit. what now? I’ll pick up dinner on my way home, there’s no way I want to stand in front of a hot stove now.” “sounds good, why don’t you pick up some cold noodles from the Korean store that’s on your way home, I’m sure I can call and order them!” cold noodles sounded refreshing, especially for the inferno you were about to arrive to. “that’s perfect, I’ll see you in a bit.” 

you picked up the noodles from the Korean store mere minutes later. the lady had them ready, mentioning how your boyfriend requested for his to be extra spicy and that she marked it. you thanked her, the shy smile on your mouth at the mention of ‘boyfriend’. you dread the moment you enter your building because lo and behold, as soon as you step in, a wave of heat slaps your face. you quickly go up to your apartment in short, quick breaths. as soon as you open the door, you find minho on the couch, pinching his shirt and erratically pulling it away then back towards him, in an attempt to cool his body down. “thank goodness you’re finally here! let’s eat!”

you both take your time to enjoy the noodles, cool and refreshing against the thick, humid air of the room. unfortunately, your joy doesn’t last as long, because as soon as the two of you finish eating and hop back on the couch, the lights go out. it’s pitch black in the apartment, and it’s hot. “well isn’t this just fantastic,” you groan loudly. “it’s hot, and it’s dark.” minho hums in thought, before saying, “you’re right. it’s too hot, maybe we should take our clothes off,” and you hear the suggestiveness in his voice. you reach for the cushion behind your back and throw it at his direction, which you deem successful when you hear a thump and a “hey, I was kidding!” but you take the time to think, logically he can’t see you, and your phones can’t charge anymore so you won’t be wasting your precious batteries on using flashlights. it’s hot and he’s right, so you begin peeling off layers of your clothes. 

slowly but surely, your shirt comes off, and you’re exhaling at the exposure of your skin and the air that reaches it. you’ve lied back against the couch and closed your eyes, relishing in the silence. the problem is that you don’t realize when the lights turn on and more importantly when minho’s gaze falls on your half-naked form. it is only when you hear a surprised yelp that your eyes fly open and you see a nervous minho scramble off the couch. perhaps it’s because you’re in a tired daze, but you find your confidence when you look up at him, still staring down at you. “take a picture, it’ll last longer,” you tell him and he blinks, looking away immediately. “sorry! I didn’t think you would actually listen when I said to take your clothes off…” you stand up and grab your shirt, lazily throwing it on and smirking at minho’s flustered state. “don’t worry about it, I was feeling hot so I took my shirt off. it was dark in here anyway, and I didn’t know when the lights would come back on. anyways, I’m going to bed, I’ll see you in the morning, minho.” minho is speechless, and watched as you sauntered off into your room. when the AC turns on mere hours later, minho’s in his room, silently wishing that the power goes out one more time when the two of you are together again.

[sundaysundaes]

Love Bites

Lee Donghyuck/Haechan X Reader, ft. Mark Lee | Vampire AU, Roommates AU | Smut, Fluff, Humor, Romance

Summary: Supernatural creatures don’t scare you, so when the cute neighbor who lives just across the hallway offers you a chance to move in for cheaper rent, you agree in a heartbeat--even when he consumes human blood on a daily basis.

Warnings: Smut, vampire sex, sex in front of a mirror, blood sucking, unprotected sex, slight choking. For the sake of the plot, Y/N is slightly intoxicated in this fic (drunk sex). Please don’t read this fic if this makes you feel uncomfortable. I also don’t approve nor allow taking advantage of your romantic partner while they are under the influence of alcohol.

Supernatural things don’t really scare you. Growing up in a family that tells urban legends and mystical myths as bedtime stories makes you feel somewhat reserved toward spooky stuff, to the point that you won’t even bat an eyelash during a jump scare at literally any scary movie out there. It’s not like you’ve seen any supernatural creatures with your own eyes but you believe in their existence, especially when you live in a town where freaky things happen on daily basis. 

You’re not sure about werewolves and zombies, but vampires do roam the earth the second the moon replaces the sun. It’s not merely a rumor anymore, it’s a fact. But they keep their presence in secret, trying to act as humanly as possible so they won’t gather unnecessary attention. And since no one has found any dead bodies with bite marks or severe blood loss, people don’t really identify them as a threat. You perceive things in a similar way. As long as they don’t bother you, then you can co-exist in peace. That’s what you believe.

So when you visit your neighbor in the middle of the night, the cute guy—probably still in his early twenties—who lives just across the hallway, you figure you’ll see him smiling back, maybe even offer you a cup of coffee out of courtesy. Now, you don’t usually barge into someone else’s apartment even when the front door is unlocked, but seeing how the two of you are already on a first-name basis, always greet each other with a nod whenever your eyes make eye contact, you think to yourself, “Yeah, he wouldn’t mind if I come in, would he? What’s the worst thing that could happen? He’s too cute to be a serial killer anyway.” Which, you realize soon enough, was a poor, terrible logic on your part. 

But you turn over his doorknob with a click and invite yourself in.

So clearly, you do not expect to see him sitting bare-chested on the couch with his girlfriend’s legs hooked around his waist. Clearly, you do not expect to see his hand yanking at the roots of her hair, forcing her to expose the column of her neck and making her call his name in the most wanton moan you’ve ever heard in your life—even if you’ve had a fair share of watching porn movies (for research purposes). And you most clearly do not expect to see him sinking his canines deep into her skin, not caring when trails of blood start to taint her bare shoulder and groaning in bliss as he relishes the taste of her blood.

So naturally, the only thing you can think of is:

Oh shit.

“Wait!” A hand finds its way to tangle around your wrist when you slip behind his front door to run back to your own. His icy cold skin makes you flinch in surprise but you keep your face still. As you turn around to see the owner, you’re greeted by the sight of him with his eyes turning as dark as the night. His brunette hair is made of curls and waves, seems unbelievably soft and silky with bangs almost covering his eyes. His lips and cheeks are smeared with fresh blood, possibly from trying to wipe his mouth in hurry with the back of his hand. His fangs are no longer shown and although he seems breathless, you can tell he’s not breathing from how still his chest is moving (but you’re too distracted with the sight of how toned it is). His black jeans are hanging dangerously low on his hips, unbuttoned but not yet unzipped, and it’s harder for you to not stare at his v-lines compared to the amount of blood that painted his lips.

Trying to act nonchalant, you simply ask, “Yes?”

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Oh, so you’re not a vampire drinking blood from your girlfriend’s neck?”

He gapes, eyes growing wide, before, “Okay, then it is what it looks like.”

You retract your hand, giving him a formal nod. “Cool.” 

“Cool?”  

“Yeah, as in, no problem. You have a kink. I understand.”

“No, I mean—” He pinches the bridge of his nose, somewhat dizzy from your reaction. “Why are you so calm about this?”

You frown. “I’m confused. Would you rather have me freak-out and tell our landlord that you’ve been spilling maiden’s blood on his carpet?”

“Well, no, but—” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Also, I’m a professional. I don’t leave stains.”

“Congratulations, I’m impressed.” You clap your hands twice, face blank. “Well anyway, I guess I owe you an apology. I didn’t mean to sneak into your apartment without permission and disturb your…” You scratch your cheek, attempting to find the right word. “Late night snacking time—”

“Oh, God.” He rubs his palm over his face but before he can protest any further, his lover is calling him from the inside of his room.

“Lee Donghyuck, come back to me. I haven’t come yet.”

You stare flatly at him, trying not to look as judgmental as possible but most likely failing terribly at it. “She sounds nice.”

He mirrors the look on your face. “Yeah well, she tastes nice.”

“Ugh, too much info there, buddy.”

“No, I mean, her blood, not—” You’re not sure whether vampires can blush but this one surely seems like one. “Why did you even come here again?”

“Oh, that’s right.” You remember. “This is totally cliche and I wish I could say a better excuse but I was making coffee and ran out of sugar. Do you have some I can borrow? And maybe some cream?”

“Seriously?” It’s supposed to be a sarcastic response, but when he sees you nodding your head, he adds, “Do I look like I drink coffee in my spare time?”

“You spend eternity without drinking coffee?” You gasp, laying a hand on your heart. “I feel sorry for you.”

“Leave. Please.”

***

On the next evening, you find yourself crossing the hallway and knocking on his apartment’s door again. Knowing how patience has never been one of your virtues, you try to turn his doorknob after your third knock. Like last night, it’s unlocked with a click so you invite yourself in, calling his name.

��Lee Donghyuck, are you here—”

“I really need to fix that stupid lock.” 

The sound of his voice startles you when he suddenly walks into view, but not as much as the sight of him with a white towel hanging around his neck, his wet hair dripping water to his bare chest, and another towel wrapped around his waist. 

He notices you’re staring so with a small smirk, he comments, “So you’re fine seeing me with human’s blood on my face but completely left in shocked when I’m half-naked?”

You put your best effort to act unfazed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do know us vampires can tell when you’re lying, right? We can hear your heartbeat.”

“And yet, you didn’t hear me coming into your apartment last night.”

“I was…” He narrows his eyes. “Distracted.”

“You mean you were too horny to notice.”

“You—” He exhaled loudly, perhaps a habit he invented to make him seem more human. “Why are you here again today?”

“Can’t I greet my neighbor?”

He snorts loudly but walks away, throwing himself on the couch. “Seriously, why aren’t you surprised about this?”

“About you being a vampire? Or about your God awful taste in women?”

“Yeah?” He mocks back, making a face. “As if your boyfriend Mark Lee is any better.” When he sees a blush blooming on your face, he snickers. “Enlighten me, Sweetheart. How does it feel to have a lover that only last for one minute during—”

“Okay, I’ll take my words back. Everything. Can we move on, please?” You try to yank yourself back to your normal state, even when you feel downright ashamed. “So, this vampire thing. How long have you been a vampire?”

“Long enough.”

“How old were you when you first turned?”

“Young enough.”

“How often do you drink human blood?“

“Often enough.”

You glare at him, earning a sly grin in return. “You’re not taking me seriously, are you?”

He sends you the best serious expression he can manage. “Serious enough.”

“Right, okay, I’m leaving. Have fun being an asshole for eternity.”

But the second you turn around in your heels, Donghyuck is already on the other side of the room,  closing his front door and leaning his back against it. “Now, now, you come in as you please, uninvited. You don’t think I’ll let you go just like that, right?”

You raise an eyebrow in question. “What do you want?”

“I think it’s something that we both want.” He steps closer, voice sounding smooth and alluring. “You know what I’m talking about, right?”

You gulp, suddenly becoming nervous. He’s an arms reach away, and then closer, and closer until you can feel his cold fingers tracing against your cheekbone, lifting your face so his eyes are locked with yours. 

“I’m—” You can feel your breathing starts to stutter. “I’m not giving you my blood.”

“But it’s not blood that I want from you.” His eyes are half-lidded, his thumb tracing your lower lip. “I’ve been thinking about this so much lately.”

Your heart feels like a ticking bomb inside your chest. “A-about what?”

“About our rent. Do you want to move in together so we can split the rental fee?”

***

It’s both ridiculous and dumb, his offer to move in together for cheaper rent, so it’s even more ridiculous and dumb when you agree to it. There are several reasons that make sense, actually—at least, to you anyway: 1) your neighbor may be a vampire but he’s super hot and although that doesn’t make everything okay, it does make his offer sound incredibly tempting, 2) your landlord is going to raise the rent in the following two months, 3) your part-time job’s salary can only cover so much of your living cost and you have no savings whatsoever, 4) if you can ignore the fact that he brings random girls at night for midnight snacks, he becomes much, much hotter.

Of course, there are risks to think about as well. Sharing a place with another person can bring trouble, so you can only imagine how troublesome would it be to share your home with a vampire. What if he gets too thirsty and starts drinking from you instead? 

You gulp. The thought of it is actually kind of… sexy.

Mark. You mentally slap yourself in the head. You have a boyfriend. Stop crushing on your damn neighbor.

Well, there is nothing serious going on with Mark actually. You guys were just lab partners in high school, went on a couple of dates, had a terribly awkward first kiss, had a heavy make-out session with him ejaculating under one minute when you dry-humped him on the couch of your living room. 

So yeah, nothing serious.

“My apartment or yours?” You ask after a week has passed by, the second he opens his door for you. “Your apartment is bigger, but mine is cleaner.”

“Whatever you want, Sweetheart,” he smirks, leaning against the doorframe, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I don’t mind as long we can split the fee.”

“Yeah, why is that? You’re running out of money?”

His smirk instantly falters. “Well, it’s not exactly easy for vampires to get a job these days.”

“You literally have superhuman skills.”

“Well, you guys have the technology!” He throws his hands in the air, absolutely disgusted with the word by the sight of it. “And the Internet! Sure, I can run pretty fast, I have super hearing, I can see in the dark but these fucking technologies can do literally everything I’m capable of—and everything I’m not capable of—with only a few clicks!”

“Do you need a hug?”

He’s still pouting but shrugs. “Can’t hurt.”

“There, there.” You give him a pat on his back as he leans down so you can reach his height. “I’ll teach you some basic stuff to get you updated.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll get through this.” You pull away, squeezing his shoulders. “So, about moving in together. Shall we talk about house rules and stuff?”

“Sure, but before that,” he smiles, opening his door wider for you. “Come in. I don’t bite.”

It’s something about him using that poor choice of words with that teasing smirk on his face that makes your stomach feel uneasy but you nod and let yourself in. As he closes the door, he adds, “Unless it’s what you’re into.”

“Getting my blood drunk by a vampire?” You scoff, trying to steady your racing heart though he can probably tell already. “Why would it be something I’m into?”

“Well, my ladies surely enjoyed it,” he chuckles and you secretly think to yourself, yeah because you’re fucking hot, that’s why, but you keep yourself ignorant on the outside. “But if you’re ever curious,” he coos, eyes nearly glowing as he pushes his bangs back with one hand, “I’m down anytime you want.”

You shudder, but from disgust or excitement, you’re not sure. “Thanks, but no thanks. So, house rules?”

***

It turns out to be shockingly easy to share an apartment with an undead creature of the night. Your source of information regarding vampires are from the collection of your young adult supernatural novels, ranging from something serious like Interview with The Vampire, to something mediocre like The Vampire Diaries, and something absolutely ridiculous and downright outrageous like Twilight. So it’s not really surprising when your first assumption of vampires are dead people who look unusually pale but strikingly attractive, have constant frowns on their faces as they brood over literally everything that’s happening as if they’re constipated all the time (they’re not, since vampires don’t have that bodily function anymore) and kill people in their spare time by sucking their blood dry.

But Donghyuck isn’t like that at all, to the point you have to convince yourself that he’s a century-old vampire and not a brat going through puberty.

Because Donghyuck isn’t pale, his skin is tan as if he was kissed by the sun when he has been hiding from it his whole life. It’s smooth, unscarred, and almost golden under the fluorescent light of your apartment. 

He’s not heartless either. He cried during watching Hachiko even when the dog owner was still alive and well, shouting, “Bad shit is going to happen. Bad shit is going to happen to the dog—look how cute that dog is—look just how fucking cute he is—he doesn’t deserve any pain—if this dog dies by the end of the movie, I will combust,” to the screen. So the thought of him killing someone by sucking their blood dry? Seems very unlikely.

And he’s not broody or angry all the time. He’s extremely playful and annoyingly mischievous. He keeps his stock of blood in empty bottles of red wine and places them inside the fridge with a handwritten note that says: “It’s really just wine, Sweetheart. I bought some as a housewarming gift. Come take a sip.” You did, once, out of curiosity, and from that day on you promised yourself that you’d never ever trust his words for as long as you live.

Being a monster, he should’ve been the cause of fear, but in reality, he gets scared from a lot of things—even the things that shouldn’t scare a baby. You will never forget the day when a loud crash came thundering from his room, two seconds before he came barging into yours, screaming with wide eyes, “THERE’S A COCKROACH FLYING IN MY ROOM!”

“And what did you do?”

“I THREW THE TV AT IT BUT THAT FUCKING THING STILL LIVES!”

“WHAT?! But that’s our TV!”

“IT WAS FLYING TO MY FACE AND I PANICKED—WHAT THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!”

Even a butterfly that sneaks in from the window makes him jump on his feet. It was cute the first two times it happened, but seeing how he keeps on throwing random things—your phone, included—to keep the bugs away, you probably should start adding another house rule.

Speaking about rules, they’re pretty basic. It’s settled that you’ll both do your cleaning separately. No borrowing things without permission, no spending too much time in the bathroom because although he doesn’t need to go to the toilet, Donghyuck enjoys drawing himself a warm bubble bath for hours, as he takes a sip of his ‘red wine’. And you’re fine with him bringing girls over to your place as long as he does his midnight snacking in his own room. You were against it before but then you figure that you’re going to have Mark in your room from time-to-time (your date night is cheaper this way) so you really don’t have the right to forbid him.

But man, if only you could take back your words.

Because when Donghyuck said his ladies surely enjoyed it when he drank from them, you didn’t think that they would enjoy it this much. And you didn’t think that drinking blood from a human equals having sex with them all night long.

The sound of “Aah, yes fuck me just like that,” and “Bite me again, Lee Donghyuck, I want you to bite me as hard as you fuck me,” can be heard coming endlessly from his bedroom whenever he brings a girl—sometimes even two, for God’s sake—over. You have to plug your AirPods into your ears, blast the volume to the maximum until you can literally feel your ears going deaf while pulling a pillow over your head. And even then you still can hear them. Your apartment has excellent sound-proofed walls so your neighbors don’t really hear the loud screeches they’re making, but for you who sleeps in the room just across the living room? A living hell.

Fortunately, it doesn’t happen every day. It doesn’t happen every week, even, since he always keeps some stocks of blood in the fridge.

“Did you take this blood from those girls?” You grimaced one night, as you opened your refrigerator to slide in your pudding leftover and noticed three huge bottles of red wine completely filled up to the brim.

He laughed, waving a hand. “Of course not, stupid. How could I even do that in the first place? I bought some blood bags from the hospital, obviously.” He was sitting on the couch before but when he delivered his next line, he suddenly stood behind you, lips hovering dangerously close to your ear. “And just in case you’re wondering,” you could feel his smirk grazing your earlobe. “I only drink directly when I want to have sex.”

The heat was spreading almost immediately to your cheeks so you hid it by throwing a punch to his stomach, which he easily dodged. “Still,” you complained, “There’s blood in my fridge.”

“Hey, I never complain when you keep your celery juice in there.” He scrunched his nose in disgust. “I don’t eat or drink human foods, but who the fuck drinks celery juice?”

***

Donghyuck is also exceptionally talkative, you’ve learned along the way. It’s nice to have someone to fill the silence, moving from one random topic to another, never letting an awkward pause hang for too long. But he can also be exceptionally annoying when you have some papers to do and he’s bothering you because he’s bored out of his mind. He’ll start pestering you with questions—unimportant questions—like, “If you only have one eye, are you blinking or winking?” Or “Why is it that when you are sleeping it's called drool but when you are awake it's called spit?” And the stupidest of them all, “Why did Superman wear his briefs on the outside of his tights? This question intrigues me.”

And you’ll eventually start to lose it, throw a pillow to his face and yell, “GET OUT OF MY ROOM!”

But by the end of the day, it’s really fun to have him around. Not just because you can secretly enjoy the sight of him coming out of your shared bathroom with only a towel hanging low around his hips, but also because he’s a vampire and you can spend your time doing actual research about it.

“So,” you began one day after the sun has set and he crawled out of his room with the biggest bird's nest on his head. You had a romance novel on your lap, your fingers running through the pages. “Are you like an actual vampire or are you the romanticized, somewhat gay vampire they usually depict in books?”

“Well, I’ve never been with a man but I don’t really oppose the idea.” He took a seat beside you on the couch, laying his feet on the coffee table. You kind of just stare at him, not exactly judging his words, just… bewildered. 

He noticed the look on your face. “When you’ve lived for a century, you gotta learn how to keep things interesting, even if that means having a dick in my mouth.”

“That’s…” You swallowed. “Not exactly something I want to imagine.”

“You should, though. Try picturing me with your boyfriend Mark for a sec. Don’t we look hot together?” You had to look away when he wiggled his eyebrows at you. You just had to.

“So, these vampire books you said you read,” he went back to the previous topic after cackling for a whole ten seconds at the flustered look on your face. “How do they depict us exactly?”

“You’ve never read one?”

“Have you ever read any books about humans written by vampires?”

“Fair point. Well, it said that vampires couldn’t see themselves in the mirror.”

“Myth,” he replied, leaning his head against the couch. “I can see myself in the mirror and I like seeing myself just as much as you do whenever I come out of the bathroom.”

You almost blurt out the cinnamon cookie you just ate. “Excuse me?!” You cough, eyes starting to get a little teary. “Who said I like looking at you?”

“You don’t?” The way his eyes twinkled made you a little bit weak. A smirk grew apparent on his face. “You sure about that?”

You cleared your throat, flipping another page of your book. “Next question,” you continued, ignoring the soft laugh he emitted. “Do garlic, holy water, and silver scare you?”

“They don’t scare me,” he clicked his tongue, vexed by the way you composed your words. “I just don’t like them.”

“Right, so that’s a yes. Do you have to be invited in to be able to enter someone’s home?”

He tightened his jaw, quietly murmured, “Yes.”

“Can you read someone’s thoughts?”

“No, but I can tell how they’re feeling through their heartbeat.” His eyes were boring into yours, lips curving upward. “Like you, for example. I can tell that whenever I’m around you, your heartbeat runs just a little bit faster.”

You glanced away, rubbing your nose. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Ah,” he showcased his perfect marbled teeth as he grinned knowingly. “Just like that. Your heartbeat is increasing again. Are you lying to me, milady?”

“You’re freaking annoying, you know that?”

“It’s part of my charm.”

“Speaking of that,” you immediately said, knowing it was the perfect chance to avert his attention to another topic. “Can you charm someone?”

“With these looks?” He gestured to his entire body. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” But when you started scowling at him, he added, “But if you’re talking about mind compulsion, yes, I am able to do that. I can erase and alter people’s memories, even controlling them only by making eye contact.”

“That sounds pretty convenient.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like doing it.” He shrugged, staring at the ceiling with droopy eyes. “Hypnotizing them to get what I want just doesn’t sit right with me. I want to feel a connection, you know?”

“So doing one night stands with vampire groupies is the perfect way to earn that connection, I suppose?”

He tilted his head, poking the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “You really know how to attack someone’s pride, huh?”

“Part of my charm,” you mimic him with a nod. “Okay, next question. Can you die with a wooden stake piercing your heart?”

He rolled his eyes. “Everybody dies with a stake in—what is this, an interrogation?”

“Do churches—”

“Okay, Sweetheart.” He closed your book, smiling at you though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I think that’s enough. My turn.”

You furrowed your eyebrows, not really pleased with the way he just suddenly changed the direction of your conversation. “What do you want to know?” You indulged him anyway.

He tilted his head, propping his elbow on his thigh, fingers tapping against his cheek as he rested his chin on his palm. Gazing at you intensely, he asked, “Are you a virgin?”

It didn’t take even a split second for you to blush. “T-that’s—What kind of question is that—”

“Ah, so you are.” His smile grew a bit larger, but you weren’t sure whether he was amused, aroused, or just excited to mock you about it. “Is that why you’ve been staring at me a lot lately? Because you’re curious?”

“For the last time,” you emphasized, though your heart was hammering against your ribcages. “I wasn’t looking at you. I never—”

“You’re adorable when you lie,” he snickered, a lopsided smile painting his face. “Your heartbeat sounds like you just did a marathon. Are you okay?”

You threw your book at him, successfully wiping the smirk on his goddamn perfect face, and raced back to your own room.

“Ah, she’s really cute.” Was the last thing you heard him say before you slammed your bedroom door behind you.

***

For a vampire, Donghyuck’s presence is as bright as the sun, always managing to lift your mood whenever you’re too stressed about your college assignments or too exhausted from your part-time job. Of course, he’s also the cause of your stress more often than not, but whenever you get into a fight with him—usually because he’s so disorganized and you’re too obsessive to keep everything in order—it doesn’t last long and ends up with him making you the best dinner you’ve ever had to compensate, even when he’s not the one at fault.

Donghyuck doesn’t consume human food but he makes the best cuisine you’ve ever tasted in your life. And also the sight of him wearing your pink apron while humming to a Michael Jackson’s song with his bangs tied to the side using your hairclip is really, really something to behold—which is weird because that obviously doesn’t scream sexy in any way, or masculine even, but it makes your stomach do somersaults most delightfully.

“Dinner is served, Milady,” he says, laying down a plate of Spaghetti Aglio e Olio in front of you, making you gawk at the sight. “And it’s special because it contains a lot of garlic—seriously, like a lot. I had to put some gloves on and everything.”

“You’re an angel.” You nearly cry and it’s not an exaggeration. “I can’t believe you did this all for me.”

“Well, I haven’t really thanked you for covering my rent last month so…”

“It’s fine, you can pay me back later.” You take a hold of your fork, already wetting your lips in anticipation, and waste not a second longer before you dig in. When the cheese melts inside your mouth, you almost moan in joy. “Oh my God, this is so good. I love you.”

He chuckles, suddenly standing behind you, leaning forward so he’s next to your ear. “Yeah? How much?”

You raise your silver spoon in the air and he immediately leaps to the other side of the kitchen, startled and scared out of his mind. “Hey, that’s not nice! I thought we’ve talked about this!”

Rolling your eyes at him, you take another spoonful of it. “Man, you should really make a job out of this,” you comment. He only cooks whenever he feels sorry for you for going through a hard day—whether it was because of him or something else—but if that’s what it takes to have this magnificent dish entering your mouth, you don’t mind suffering more often.

“I really should, huh?” He takes a seat on the kitchen counter, his legs dangling a few inches in the air. “I’m really running low on money.”

“I thought vampires were supposed to be rich and like, noble.”

“You’re confusing us with Aristocrats.” He grieves. “Do you think I can get a night shift at a restaurant downtown?”

“Oh, I actually know a place. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

“Like on a date?”

You almost drop your fork. “Why do you have to make everything weird?”

His cheeky grin is contagious but you’ve become a master of handling your expression. “I just like seeing you blush,” he confesses. “Have I told you how cute you are?”

“Today? Not yet,” you mutter as you munch on your food. “Yesterday? Approximately two hundred and thirty-five times.”

“Then I’ll try to break another record today.” He throws you a wink.

“Shut up and let me eat in peace, please.”

***

“Donghyuck-ah.”

“Yes, baby?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop posting a goddamn selfie every ten minutes!” You almost throw your phone to his face but since it’ll be a waste, you decide to throw your shoe instead. “I didn’t teach you how to use Instagram for this!”

Donghyuck easily dodges every single thing you’re throwing at him. “Didn’t you tell me to promote my cooking skill? That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“How does this—” You show your phone’s screen to him, almost smacking him on the face with how fast and hard you’re doing it. You slide your thumb over his Instagram feeds, showing more than fifty different pictures of his close-up face and he just made that account two days ago. “—promote your cooking skill?!” 

“But, look,” he guides you, clasping his hand to yours so you’re both holding your phone. He taps from one picture to another. “This is me holding a spatula. This is me boiling water and this is me pouring barbecue sauce—”

“Oh my God.” You almost yank every hair out of your head—or out of his head. “I follow more than four hundred people and all I can see is your damn selfies!”

“Correction, my damn cute selfies.” He pecks your cheek. “You’re welcome, babe.”

But all jokes aside, it actually works. His adorable selfies—no matter how bad you hate to admit it—are attracting more followers each day that by the time a week has passed by, he has gained more followers than you (and you’ve had your account for three years, shame on you).

And on the following two months, he gets his first endorsement deal.

“I can’t believe this,” you say, gaping as you stare over his shoulder to look at his phone’s screen, shamelessly reading his direct messages. He’s getting an offer to become a brand ambassador for this little bakery with a cover photo of a lady with chubby cheeks baking cupcakes. “I can’t believe there are people crazy enough to hire you.”

“Hey, privacy!” He immediately stands up from the couch, covering his screen with his palm. “I could’ve been sending nudes!”

“You’re sending nudes?”

“Well, not my nudes.” He rolls his eyes.

“How is that any better?!”

“Look, I’m busy. I got a gig.” He grins proudly. “I’m on my way to becoming a celebrity, babe. Do you want my autograph now before it’s too late? I could sign your bra if you want. I mean, I’m totally down if you want me to sign your tits, but if you ever think that could be awkward—”

You smack his head with a spatula.

***

It’s your first date night after nearly half a year of not contacting Mark due to him going overseas for student exchange, and you’re nervous for various reasons.

First, you haven’t told Mark you’ve been sharing a place with a guy.

Second, you certainly haven’t told him that this guy is a vampire.

Third, you absolutely in any way cannot tell him that you’ve been secretly crushing on this guy while your boyfriend was away studying.

And last but not least, you know that if anything happens tonight, whether it ends up with you fighting with Mark or finally losing your virginity to him, Donghyuck can hear every single thing.

So you barge into his room, hand laying on the front of his bedroom door as you push it open. “Donghyuck-ah.”

Like always, he’s laying idly on his bed, head almost dangling on the edge of it with his phone in his hands. “Yes, baby?”

You sigh, rubbing your temple. “How many times should I tell you? Don’t call me that.”

“You’re not my baby anymore?” He fakes a loud gasp. “I am shocked.”

“Mark is coming over tonight.”

His movements stop abruptly. “I didn’t realize you were still with him.”

“Of course, I am. Why wouldn’t I be? He’s been nothing but sweet to me.”

His eyes lose the mischievous spark he usually displays in them. “And yet, you keep drooling over my body. Can’t say I’m not hurt.”

“I never—” You exhale loudly, throwing your head back. “I’m not going to have this argument again. He’s coming over tonight to have dinner—”

“But you’re a shitty cook.”

“By dinner, I mean take-outs,” you admit your defeat. “Anyway, I came here to ask you a favor.”

“Sweetheart,” he calls, turning over to his stomach so he can face you without having to see you upside down. “I know I said I wanted to make things interesting, but having a threesome with you and Mark? So suddenly like this? Don’t you think it’s gonna be a little awkward between us? I barely know the dude. You should at least tell me what kind of person he is, whether he likes action movies or romantic ones, whether he blames someone else when he farts—I need to know him before I have his dick in my mouth.”

Talking to him gives you headaches, you should’ve really come prepared. “Are you done?”

“Do you still want me to continue? Okay, well—”

“Shut up, please for the love of God, shut up.” You should take your leave before he starts yapping again. “Look, that super hearing thing you do? Can you turn it off just for one night?”

“Sure thing, click,” he says, snapping his fingers near his ear. “Done. Now I’m deaf.”

You flatly stare at him. “I’m serious.”

“Whaaaaat? I can’t heaaaaar youuuu.”

“Hyuck!” 

He groans loudly, rolling his eyes. “Well, it’s not like my ears have on-and-off buttons I can just switch, okay? What do you want from me?”

He’s right, there’s nothing you can do. “Then, can you leave the apartment for the night?”

He opens his mouth wide, hand going to his chest. “You’re kicking me out from my own apartment? This is heresy!”

“Donghyuck-ah, please!” Great, now you’re stomping your feet like a child. “I just really need some privacy for tonight.”

“Oh, you’re gonna get laid, aren’t you?” He raves mockingly, but his eyes are somewhat bitter. “Seriously? With that guy? I think you could do so much better, Sweetheart.”

Vexed, you jeer back, “Yeah? And who do you have in mind? You?”

You’re not sure whether it’s your words or the way you say them because his eyes suddenly turn darker, almost glowering at you but it only happens for a second or two so you’re not sure if you even see that clearly.

“Well, it’s not my business, is it?” He casually chirps, smiling at you again though something still feels off. “Don’t worry, I won’t eavesdrop on you two. I have a lot of kinks but voyeurism isn’t one of those. You won’t even notice I’m here.”

“You…” Something feels really off with the way he’s acting. It’s like he’s visibly upset but trying to act nonchalant about it. “You’re sure?”

“You have my words.”

“Okay then.” Whatever it is, you figure you can deal with that later. “Well, I’m gonna take a shower.”

As you shut the door behind you, uneasiness starts to fill your chest.

***

Your date with Mark is going well. It’s going so well, even, that you end up lying on your bed, perfectly naked,  lips swollen from his kisses, with him hovering on top of you, both breathless and speechless.

And unfortunately for you, also clueless.

He has a packet of condoms in his hand, and no matter how embarrassing it is for you, you already have your legs spread on the bed, waiting for him to… well, do whatever it is he’s supposed to do. Perhaps it’s okay for you to be clueless about sex because guys usually take the lead, right?

Wrong.

“Okay, wait, let me just—” Mark’s fingers are shaking due to anxiety. His poor, innocent mind cannot handle being so painfully turned-on and awkwardly embarrassed at the same time. Your boyfriend has always been awkward with literally everything, which kind of makes him adorable but it does not come as cute—not in the slightest—when he’s doing the exact opposite of what’s he’s supposed to do. Somewhere deep in his mind, he probably knows that he’s supposed to tear apart the packet sexily with his teeth,  put the condom on within seconds, and thrust into you as painlessly as possible. But in reality, what’s currently happening is he tries to catch the condom that flew out in the air after he managed to tear the packet apart with his shaky fingers. He then progresses to try putting on the condom for approximately fifteen minutes while flinching several times when he accidentally slaps the elastic band against his cock.

The whole thing is a fucking disaster (no pun intended) and all the passion, desire, and arousal that you once felt swirling in your stomach vanish in an instant. And when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, it does, because being a virgin himself, Mark doesn’t really know where to, for the lack of better words, put it in.

“Mark?”

“Y-yeah?”

“That’s my asshole.”

So with a reassuring (fake) smile, you lay a hand on his chest and gently push him backward, trying not to wince in chagrin when you suggest, “Maybe we should stop and try again some other time?”

You two dress back into your clothes in silence and after you escort him to your front door, Mark tries to kiss you at the same time you’re leaning in for a friendly hug so it ends up with him knocking his teeth against your forehead.

When he’s gone, you close the front door with a sigh, pressing your spine against the wooden surface as you soothe the pain on your temple away with your fingertips. It doesn’t take long before Donghyuck peeks his head from behind his door. Noticing you’re alone, he steps into the living room, leaning against the wall just a couple of meters away from where you’re standing. 

“So,” he begins, acting casual, “How was the date with—” He suddenly bursts out laughing, one hand holding his stomach as he nearly tumbles down to the floor, cackling like a mad man. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have eavesdropped but man, did he really put it in the wrong hole? Oh God, this shit is just beyond me, man.”

With your shoulders slumped forward, you walk back into your room, trying to gather back the pieces of dignity you have left.

***

“You know what I should do?” Donghyuck asks with a game controller in his hand. To stop him from making fun of you and your terrible incident with your boyfriend, you’ve borrowed a PlayStation from your cousin. Even though he claimed that he despised technology, Donghyuck is actually brilliant when he puts his mind to it. It doesn’t take more than two hours for him to master the game, already adapting to every button of the controller, even manages to land a few high scores in the last ten minutes. He used to prefer to live in the old school way, but that soon changed after your influence.

“Pray to God for forgiveness so He won’t send you to hell?” You offer, as you take a seat next to him on the carpeted floor, crossing your legs, eyes staring idly at the screen. 

“Cute, but no.” He clicks some buttons aggressively, trying to reach yet another high score. “I should become a historian. I mean, I’ve seen things happened with my own eyes—the first world war, the second world war, the birth of Jesus.” He sneaks a glance, but seeing no reaction coming from you, he juts out his lower lip in disappointment. “It’s cruel that you don’t indulge me with my jokes these days.”

“Oh, so you want me to respond? I thought you just liked hearing yourself talk.”

“Heeeeeey,” he hisses, leering at you. “I know you’re hurt that your boyfriend tried to butt-fuck you but don’t throw this all on me.”

Oh my God. “Right, then let’s try this.” You have no choice but to please him this way before he destroys whatever is left of your pride. You do a quick search on your phone, throwing a random question from what you found in the article. “Who led our country in 1950?”

“Easy. The guy with the bald head. No, wait, is it the skinny one with the huge mole on his neck?”

“Name, Hyuck. I need a name.” You exhale in exasperation.

“Oh, I got it! The one with the annoying high-pitched voice!”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“Well, how the hell am I supposed to remember shits that happened seventy years ago?”

You give him a look, eyes staring at him lifelessly. “You’re right, you should totally apply for the job. You’ll nail it.”

***

“I can’t believe this.”

“Saying that multiple times won’t really change anything, Sweetheart.”

“I can’t believe this,” you repeat, this time while standing up from the couch, slamming your fashion magazine down to the table. “I can’t believe our air conditioner broke when it’s nearly thirty degrees outside! Aren’t you hot?!”

“Am I hot—” He snorts, flipping a page of his novel.  Yes, it is actually quite bizarre that he spends his spare time reading. “What kind of question is that? Of course, I’m hot. Haven’t you seen the number of girls I brought into this place?”

“Ugh, God!” You plop back into your seat, throwing your head back in vexation. “What are you even reading?”

“That vampire book you talked about yesterday.”

“Which one?”

“The one that’s interesting.”

“Oh, Interview with The Vampire?”

“No.” The way he rolls his eyes as if he’s disgusted with your guess is beyond you. “Twilight.”

“Oh my God, stay away from me.”

“What—this is actually good!”

“These vampires sparkle under the sun—aren’t you, at the very least, offended? Because I’m livid and I’m human.”

“That’s what makes it interesting, actually,” he retorts, eyes moving back-and-forth as he reads through a passage. “They’re so different than us in real life, so it’s like seeing through a new perspective. I’m Team Jacob, by the way.”

“Good Lord.” You palm the side of your face. “You’re more than a hundred years-old but you have the taste of a teenage girl going through puberty. I’m ashamed of knowing you.”

“You’re just cranky because of the weather.”

“I’m literally dying.” You can feel sweat drenching your back, all the way to your shirt and you just took a shower twenty minutes ago. “You’re lucky you’re immune to temperature changes.”

“Then wanna sit on my lap?”

Your ears must be playing tricks on you. “Excuse me?”

Donghyuck sighs, closing his book and throws it away to the side. Turning to you, he repeats slowly, dragging out every syllable. “Do. you. want. to. sit. on. my. lap?”

You send him a blank stare, annoyed. “I heard you, asshole. I’m not an idiot. I’m just shocked at your offer. You’re really going all out in harassing me these days, aren’t you?”

“What—” He throws his hands in the air, exasperated. “I’m a vampire, remember? I have cold skin. Here,” he takes one of your hands, sliding it down his shirt as if it’s nothing, and presses it against his stomach. “Can you feel it?”

All the blood rushes to your face, making you feel lightheaded but also conscious of how his skin feels under your palm. It is cold, though not as cold as he’d made a big deal out of it. It’s like the room temperature during the spring season, at most. But compared to how sizzling it is right now, his skin is nice to the touch, relaxing even. 

But all that thought just goes straight out of the window when he shifts on his seat and you can feel his abs muscles contracting.

“Whoa,” he stops, looking at you. “Are you okay? Your heartbeat is insane.”

You smack him on the head and try to suffocate him with your cushion. It doesn’t work since he doesn’t breathe, but at least it can stop him from seeing how red your face is turning.

But when another day passes by and your landlord is still taking his sweet time trying to find a cheap handyman to repair your AC, you decide to take on his offer. You know it’s weird for roommates to cuddle but, as you try to reason within yourself, you will be sitting on the-sexiest-man-you’ve-ever-witnessed-with-your-eyes’ lap, your back pressing against his (hopefully) bare chest, and snuggle close until your body heat is no longer screaming at you in agony. You don’t really see any problem with this. After all, you have been imagining how it would feel to sit on his lap every time he does that manspreading thing on your couch. 

So really, what’s there to lose?

“Okay,” you begin, standing in front of him in an already awkward position. “So, how can we do this without being weird about it?”

Donghyuck tilts his face up, leaning his back against the couch, phone in his hand. “Do what?”

“Do…” You fiddle with the hem of your shirt. “You know, what you offered yesterday.”

“Hmm?” He raises his eyebrow in question, but the way one side of his lips is curving upward betrays his act. “I forgot. What exactly did I offer to do?”

“You’re seriously going to make me say this out loud?”

“Baby, I’m clueless.” His smirk grows wider, his voice filled with allure. “Please. Enlighten me.”

He’s toying with you, that’s for sure. And no matter how much you want to feel those arms around you, there’s no way you’re gonna let him degrade you like this. “Fine, then forget it,” you sulk, turning around on your heels with your scarlet cheeks puffed out but Donghyuck laughs in the most innocent way when he’s clearly nothing like that in reality. Calling your name in a sing-song voice, he circles his fingers around your wrist and tugs you back until you tumble down to his lap.

“You’re never honest,” he says, his velvety voice suddenly only a whisper away. His arms are tied securely around your waist, pulling you close until you can do nothing but lay your back against his chest. “But you’re cute so I forgive you.”

You can’t form a word, too busy trying to compose yourself. You can’t hear his heartbeat—since he’s the creature of the undead, obviously—but you assume with the proximity you’re being, you would’ve definitely heard it if he had one.

You didn’t notice it before but now that you’re sitting on his lap, your palm pressed against his thigh for stability you realize that he’s wearing black ripped jeans with holes that are oh so terribly distracting. If you dare to move your finger, you’ll be able to trace the smooth skin at the inner part of his thigh.

You gulp hard.

You can hear him snickering behind you. “Thinking about something dirty?”

You almost swallowed your own tongue. “What—no!” Flapping your hands in panic, you almost fall from his lap but his fast reflex won’t let you, as he embraces you tighter, making you fall back to his chest with a small oof.

“Relax, I’m just messing with you,” he chuckles lowly, his lips grazing against your earlobe. “This is nice. We should do this more often. You fit perfectly in my arms.” He says his line with sincerity with no trace of humor or teasing in it, which effectively make you curl your toes in bashfulness.

“You’re gonna have a heart attack if you keep your heart rate going like that, Sweetheart,” he titters.

“Yeah, well,” you try to push him away by pushing your palm against his cheek. “Unlike you, I don’t really spend my time snuggling with the opposite sex, so of course I’m nervous.”

“You’re sure it’s not because of me?”

“Absolutely. In fact, I’d most likely have a bigger reaction if Mark was the one holding me instead.”

The way he suddenly goes stiff intrigues you, but you don’t dwell on it. “Is that so?” He simply retorts back, tone suddenly becoming cold and it makes you feel uneasy.

“So, uhh…” Your breathing tatters when he becomes mute, only the sound of the ticking clock on the wall can be heard. “Wanna watch a movie?”

He only hums, placing his chin on top of your head. Since he’s always so talkative, it gets really tense when he’s quiet. “Did I offend you or something?” You question.

“I don’t know, did you?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I knew.”

“Then let’s just leave it at that.” Seeing how you keep fumbling with the remote in your hand, he snatches it away and proceeds to switch the channels. “We’re watching Twilight.”

“Nooooooo, not again!”

But his arm, as he raises it high in the air, is longer than yours so you can’t steal back the remote no matter how hard you try. And as you jump up and down, shifting back and forth on his lap, Donghyuck warns, “I don’t know if you’re doing this on purpose, but if you keep doing that, I’m gonna get a hard-on.”

You immediately stay still, hands tucked neatly on your lap, chest thundering. “You—Why—” You shake your head, flushed. “How can you say things like that?”

“Things like what?”

“Sexual things like that.” The more you reveal your thoughts, the harder you blush. “Don’t you have any shame?”

“What, I can’t be honest?” He snorts. “I didn’t mean to harass you or anything. Just letting you know in advance. It’s completely a guy thing.”

“No, it’s not just that. You always flirt with me—calling me baby, telling me how I look cute all the time when you don’t even mean it—“

You’re interrupted with a loud sigh accompanied by an impatient groan. “Turn around, look at me,” he orders and his tone is irrefutable. When you turn slightly, making eye contact, Donghyuck has his eyebrows furrowed, almost glaring at you. “I know you’re gullible, and I know you’re dense when it comes to things like this but I swear to God, if you don’t start taking a hint, I’m going to have to push you against the wall and kiss you to prove my point.”

You’re dizzy and nauseous, and your stomach is flipping like crazy and you’re conflicted between believing him or laughing at him because although he looks dead serious right now, you can’t help but wonder what if, after you give in to your feelings, he sends you that signature cheeky grin of his to reveal he’s just joking all along? You’re not even brave enough to imagine, even when the vivid image of him pushing you against the wall, his knee slipping between your legs while he brings your wrists over your head, holding them still with one hand is enough to keep you awake for hours.

So you decide to take the easy path. “Okay.”

He blinks. “Okay?”

“Okay.” You shrug, acting casual. It’s really a miracle that you don’t stutter when you deliver the next line. “You told me to take a hint, that’s what I’m doing.”

He raises one of his eyebrows, confused. “Just like that? You’re not gonna say anything more? Or do anything about it?”

“Nope.”

Slowly, there’s a shift in his expression. He shakes his head, tongue protruding against the inside of his cheek both irked and amused. “You’re really something.”

Surprisingly enough, he leaves it at that. Though it’s somehow uncomfortable, you follow his lead and just lock your eyes to your tv screen as he chooses his movie.

You have no interest in watching Twilight—absolutely nothing, zilch, zip, nada!—so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when your eyelids start to become heavy in the first thirteen minutes of the show. You would’ve fallen asleep way sooner though, if you weren’t too distracted with the way he laid his hand on your thigh, sometimes unconsciously rubbing or squeezing it with his palm when he got a little bit bored with the scene, making your breath hitched in your throat.

The room’s temperature is still hot even when it’s in the middle of the night, successfully making your bangs stick to your temple but Donghyuck is quietly humming something to himself. Soft, melodious sound is resonating from his chest directly to your ear and you begin to drift away, floating into your dreamland.

***

“Hey, wake up. It’s almost morning.”

Your bleary eyes are greeted with the dim light of the room. The TV in front of you has already been switched off so the only thing that can be heard in your apartment is the buzzing sound coming from your fridge and the faint ticking clock. 

“What time is it?” You rub your eyes, not aware that you’re still sitting on his lap, with your spine leaning against his chest. It’s until you feel his arms loosening around your waist that you begin to think, oh fuck, what have I done?

You immediately jump off his lap, tripping over your feet but manage to hold your balance by placing a hand on the coffee table. “Why didn’t you wake me?” You screech, face aflame. “You kept holding me in that position all night?”

“Yeah.” He stretches his arms above his head, cracking his neck. “I wanted to wait until you wake up by yourself, but you know, the sun is about to rise.”

You’re still pretty much flabbergasted by the whole thing. “You really should’ve woken me up.”

“Well, you seemed like you were having the best sleep you’ve ever had.” He stares at you with a twinkle in his eyes. “Was it that good being in my arms?”

You’re about to explode. “Okay, wow, look what time it is.” You try to look at your wrist and mentally slap yourself harder when you realize you’re not wearing a goddamn watch. “A-anyway, you really should go back to your room before it’s too late.”

He shakes his head, chuckling at your stupid antics as he stands up from the couch. He ruffles your hair once, making a mess out of your strands before he heads back to his room. As he slides open his door, he spares you a glance over his shoulder. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You kept calling my name in your sleep. What were you dreaming about?”

Whether it’s true or he’s just flirting with you to get your reaction, you don’t want to know. “Just go to your room!”

***

A few moments after the sun sinks below the horizon, Donghyuck comes out from his room with bleary eyes and his shoulders slumped forward. 

“Good morning, Princess,” you joke, your hands busy mixing coffee powder, sugar, and milk to make your own version of Dalgona coffee. Donghyuck scratches the back of his head, his eyes are barely open as he heads to the kitchen, not even sparing you a glance. When he opens the fridge, he groans loudly, noticing that he forgot to restock his red wine. He slams the door with a loud huff, drags his body to the dining table, and sits down with his cheek pressed against the table. Seeing how you’re not paying him any attention, he groans again, louder and whinier this time.

“Okay, what?” You ask, leaning your back against the counter, a cup of coffee in your hand.

“I’m thirsty,” he grumbles, jutting out his lower lip.

“Then drink.”

“I don’t have any money to buy even a bag of blood. Why do they have to make it so fucking expensive?” He pouts. “I mean, I can always steal one but I’m scared of being caught.”

“Scared of being caught? You, with your superhuman speed and strength?”

“Well, they have those security cameras installed all over the place! I don’t want to get arrested or worse, go viral!” You resist the temptation to roll your eyes at his nonsense. “These fucking technologies, man, I swear to God, they’ll be the death of me someday.”

“Then just go outside. Our town is filled with walking blood bags.”

He groans again, now pressing his forehead against the table. “Man, the effort I have to make just to survive. I’m so done with drinking blood from slutty girls. They’re bitter.” He sticks out his tongue at the memory.

“Yeah, why is that? Why do you only drink from them?”

“Because they’re the only ones who’ll agree in a heartbeat.” His voice is muffled as his lips are brushing against the surface. “Also the sex isn’t too bad if you can ignore how annoyingly loud they are.”

“Trust me, I’ve tried.” You grimace at the flashback. It really has been a while since he brought one of them back to his room and you were ecstatic about it, knowing you were the only girl he had been giving his attention to. “Why don’t you just compel someone to give their blood? You can erase their memories too after you’re done.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t like doing that. It makes me feel like a monster.”

It’s cute, you suppose, the way he tries his best to defy his nature. “Then…” You tap your fingers against the mug, somehow feeling uneasy. “Why don’t you try being in a relationship with someone? I’m sure they’ll be willing to give you their blood if they like you that way.”

“Yeah? With who?”

“I don’t know, like…” Your cheeks grow hot, bringing your face down to hide your eyes behind your bangs. “Maybe just someone you like.”

“Are you volunteering?”

The way he suddenly has you backed against the counter, trapping you inside his arms, and whispers seductively with his lips almost grazing your own make you jump on your feet, your cup slipping off your fingers, crashing to pieces when it hits the marbled floor.

“Careful!” Donghyuck holds you by the waist, stopping you just a split second away from stepping on the broken glasses. You realize your hands are fisting against the back of his shirt, embracing him for support without knowing. You pull away immediately, clearing your throat.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you,” he says, letting you go. “I mean I did, but not like this.”

You sigh. “It’s okay, just step away. I need to clean this up.” He tries to help but you won’t let him, because having him in such proximity is going to blind your senses, unable to function properly. Even just thinking about the way his strong arm fits the curve of your waist already makes you lose focus that you end up cutting your finger with a shard of glass.

He catches the little surprised yelp that escapes your lips and immediately bends down to check on you. “See, this is why I told you to let me clean up instead,” he complains, carrying you to the sink and drenches your finger with running water. “Let me see.” With a hold around your wrist, you can barely do anything but to let him examine your cut thoroughly. “Well, it’s not deep but it’s… still…” 

Noticing how he trails off, you look up to check on his face seeing how his eyes are now glowing a bit brighter, his lips parted as if in awe from the way droplets of blood seep from your fingertip, trickling all the way down to your palm.

“Hyuck…?”

His eyes are drifting back and forth from your face to your cut and you know where this is going but when he brings your palm closer to his lips, his tongue darting out to lick the blood off your skin, you nearly collapse to the floor. 

“Hyuck—” You hiss, cheeks reddening as you try to retract your hand but his hold is firm on your wrist. He licks his way up before he brings your fingertip inside his mouth. Donghyuck has his eyes closed, a moan almost falls from his lip when the coppery taste taints his tongue. He sucks on the wound, wanting to taste more, to rip your skin apart with his teeth and—

“Hyuck!” 

He blinks awake, shocked when he sees your face painted with fear. His fangs are drawn out but he immediately retracts them back before you get a detailed look, his face flushed as he takes a step back.

“S-sorry—” He looks away, rubbing his nape with shaky fingers. “I didn’t mean—shit I really have to go—I have to drink—” and when you blink your eyes, he’s vanished from your sight.

With your heart thundering inside your ribcages, you lean back against the kitchen counter again, your legs trembling under you.

That was close. So fucking close.

There’s a fear growing inside you but it’s not from the memory of him with his fangs extended like the true monster that he was. You’re not scared of him, you’re scared of yourself because you know you want him, you want him in any way possible. You want him to belong to you, to be with you, to be desperate for your touch, your blood, your presence, your everything, just as much as you are about him.

You bury your face in your palms. I am so fucked.

***

Hours turn into days and days turn into months, and before you know it, it has been a year since he moved into your apartment. The friendship that blooms between you feels nice and you want to keep it that way but it’s getting hard when he keeps on bringing random girls in skimpy dresses back to his room. You used to be furious by how loud they were being, but now you’re pretty much angry just simply by imagining him being with someone else. And it doesn’t even have to be sexual—just picturing him bonding with another person, even when it’s not as strong as what you two have, manages to irk you so much.

The thoughts of him keep revolving in your head no matter how hard you try to push them away. It even puts your relationship with Mark in jeopardy, as you can barely pay him any attention. It doesn’t surprise you at all when he decides to break things off, saying something cliche like, “I think we’re better off as friends,” and “It’s not you, it’s me,” which in normal circumstances will piss the hell out of you but when that happens, you simply just reply, “You’re right. Let’s be friends.” And there are no hard feelings—no feelings at all, even, which is weird considering you were only a month away from having your first anniversary with him.

Now that Mark is out of the picture, you can finally bring all of your attention back to Donghyuck. But the more you think about it, the more you’re not sure about the whole thing. He’s a vampire, isn’t he? What future do you expect to have with him? Let’s say you date him and things go well with your relationship, and then what? He’s going to stay young with that cute, boyish look on his face and you’re gonna be all wrinkled and gross, how are you ever going to be able to stand that? What if he wants someone prettier than you? What if he gets bored?

Or maybe it’s just lust you’re feeling. You don’t love him, you’re just physically attracted to him. That’s right. Strictly physical.

And yet, as you see him dressed up in a white buttoned-up shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, running a hand through his hair and pushing back his bangs to showcase his temple, you thought: fuck.

And when he smiles at you, as he places a plate filled with the exact dish he knows you love down to the dining table, saying, “I went ahead and did some research about you. I was about to buy you some presents but I thought it would feel more personal if I cooked something for you so,” and stopping to gaze at you with tender eyes before he adds, “Happy birthday, Sweetheart.” You thought: Jesus fucking Christ, just marry me already.

Donghyuck goes all the way with everything, from placing scented candles on the table, playing soft music in the background, even escorting you to your seat, pulling your chair back for you, and placing down a napkin on your lap. It’s too much for your poor brain to comprehend, and your chest is suffocating from all the feelings swirling behind it and Donghyuck looks so beautiful—almost goddamn ethereal even—in that shirt, in that hairstyle, in the dim light of the room.

“You’re not hungry?” He asks when a few seconds have passed by and you haven’t munched at your food like a caveman—because that’s what you usually do. 

“I’m—you—” You splutter, taking a deep breath to calm your nerves before you try again. “You look nice.”

You can already tell that he’s about to say something along the line of “But baby, I always look nice.” So when he just softly smiles back and thanks you about it, telling how you look just as nice when you know you look like a storm just hit you, you’re pretty much lost for words.

“You seem exhausted,” he comments, frowning in concern. “Hard day at work?”

You can’t trust yourself that you won’t start rambling nonsense again while answering his question so you decide to just reply to him with a timid nod.

“Why are you so nervous?” He laughs, eyes turning crescents. “Your heartbeat is going through the roof again.”

You loathe yourself for being so transparent. “I’m nervous because you’re suddenly being so nice. I can’t help but think you have a hidden agenda or something.” That’s a lie. A complete lie.

And you’re sure he knows it. “And what if I do?” He asks, raising an eyebrow seductively. “What kind of a hidden agenda do you think I have for you?”

Why is it so fucking hot in here?! “I don’t know…” You start fiddling with the fingers you have on your lap. “Drinking my blood, maybe?”

His expression is a mystery to you, even when his smirk seems familiar. “And would you be okay if that’s true?”

You can’t answer but fortunately for you, Donghyuck lets out a chuckle, telling you he was making a lame joke. You force yourself to laugh but it sounds like a wheeze so you stop before it gets even more humiliating.

Donghyuck walks to your side with a bottle of wine in his hands, sliding glass to your side as he says, “Wine, milady? It’s not blood, I swear.” And you believe him because this time, the liquid seems more ruby than crimson.

“You really need to relax,” he comments as he leans his back against the edge of the table, raising the glass of his usual red wine in the air before he clanks it gently against yours. “To the cutest, sweetest roommate in the world.”

You immediately take a sip to hide the blush that creeps up your face, flinching when the burning, mildly bitter flavor hits your tongue. You’ve never drunk any alcohol in your life and although this first experience feels rather unpleasant, you keep chugging more of it down your system. 

“Does it taste good?” He asks, secretly smiling to himself as he witnesses how fast you’re drinking the whole glass down. You shake your head in response, which earns another laugh from him.

You’re not sure whether it’s because it’s your first time drinking alcohol or you just have a low tolerance when it comes to it, but you can feel yourself getting both lightheaded and drowsy. Donghyuck who takes notice of that, move you to the couch so you can rest more comfortably. “I better take this away,” he says, circling his lean fingers around your wine glass but you push him away.

“No,” you say, eyes a little bit unfocused. “I’m fine. Pour me some more.”

“Don’t you think it’s enough?”

“Just another glass, Hyuck, don’t be a bitch about it.”

He’s taken aback but collects his composure within seconds. “All right, just don’t blame me for it,” he states as he pours you another one.

“I have a question for you, Lee Donghyuck,” you coo as he takes a seat on the coffee table, facing you. “Does everyone’s blood taste the same to you?”

“It differs, actually,” he answers, taking a sip of his own drink. “But only faintly. I’m not that picky about it.”

“And how does it feel having your blood sucked by a vampire?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy.” He sways his head from side-to-side in amusement. “I mean, of course, I can have my blood drunk by another vampire but I’m not that kinky. I know some vampires who are into that kind of shit though.”

“Well, by the sound of your girls screaming like they were giving birth, it’s either very painful or very…” The sight of him staring at you intently, taking in your features, nearly throws you off tracks. “Pleasurable.”

There’s an awkward pause and silence hangs around to fill the space before Donghyuck speaks again. “How come you’re asking me these questions?”

“Because that’s all I’ve been thinking about,” you confess, not sure why, but you’re feeling very brave at the moment. “And it’s not just about you drinking my blood, but more about you entirely. You know what I mean?”

Donghyuck places his glass down on the table, leaning towards you. “Not sure, but I’m all ears.”

“I… just…” It’s getting harder to speak when he’s so close, you can start locating every tiny mole he has on his face and his neck. The small one near his Adam’s apple is the one that distracts you the most. “I just think we’re compatible with each other, you know? And I’ve never enjoyed someone’s company this much before. You’re funny, you’re smart, and you’re both endearing and freaking annoying at the same time—how is that possible?”

But Donghyuck isn’t laughing. His eyes are deep and dark, raking over your profiles with so much intensity but when he swats the bangs out of your eyes, his touch is tender. “What else? Tell me more.”

You lean closer to his touch like how a kitten would, making him gulp slightly at the sight. “I get so vexed whenever you spend your time with anyone else. I know I have no right to be jealous since we’re just friends but I can’t help it.” You sigh, rubbing the side of your face with your palm. “It’s so fucking tiring to think about you this much when I can’t have you.”

You’re too lost in your own thoughts that when Donghyuck reaches out a hand to touch your face, you jump in surprise, spilling wine all over your blouse. “Shit, this is my favorite shirt,” you whine, sliding your glass down to the table. “Can you get me some tissues?”

But what he does is lifting your body with both of his arms and carry you to the bathroom. You cling onto him with a yelp, trying to keep yourself away from falling even though you’re sure he’s perfectly able to hold your weight.

Donghyuck places you down on the bathroom counter, your fingers dangling at the edge of your sink. Sitting up straight, you begin to feel conscious of your surroundings. “What are you doing?”

“It’s your favorite shirt, right? We need to wash the stain before it sticks,” He explains, his fingers going to your collar. You nearly stop breathing when he asks for permission to undress you, “May I?”

You swallow hard before you weakly nod.

He takes time unbuttoning your shirt one by one when you know he can rip it apart easily with one finger. He’s so gentle, his touches are paper-thin but whenever his icy fingertips make slight contact with your skin, it sends electricity to every inch of your body. 

When he manages to untangle the clothing from your body, you’re only left in your bra and your black satin lace cami top. You can tell he tries to be polite by not staring at what you’re wearing, and instead immediately drags your blouse to the sink, drenching it with water.

“Where did you place the detergent again?” He asks, reaching up over your head to check on the top cabinet and he’s so fucking close that you can see the movement of his Adam’s apple as he speaks. And it’s really, really tempting to just lean over and—

Donghyuck flinches when he feels you sinking your face in the crook of his neck, mapping your lips on his skin, breathing in his scent. You don’t know how vampires usually smell like but Donghyuck reminds you of summer even when you’re not sure how summer smells like. It’s funny how you’re not making sense, even in your own thoughts.

Pushing you away by the shoulders, Donghyuck’s eyes gleam in the way you’ve never seen before. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I…” You can’t form a word—you can’t even form a thought as you’re too busy staring at his lips, how smooth they look, how thrilling they must feel against your own. And maybe he’s thinking the same thing about yours because when you lean in for a taste, he meets you halfway.

It’s warm and it doesn’t make any sense, because the rest of his body is icy cold but as you press your mouth against his, all you can think about is how his lips are warm and soft, so fucking soft and delightful and maybe it’s just your mind playing tricks on you but you don’t care.

You breathe heavily through your nose, yanking at the collar of his shirt so he’s closer to you than he’s ever been, and you tilt your head slightly, angling your face so you can meld your lips deeper against his. He instinctively reacts by holding the side of your face, fingers slipping between your strands, tips curling around your nape.

He kisses better than any man you’ve ever been with and you’re sure he’s better than any man you’ll ever date in the future because Donghyuck knows what he’s doing, even when he’s caught by surprise. 

Sliding your hand up to his chest, you can tell how his skin stands in contrast to the warmth of his mouth and it makes you shiver, your breathing rags, and you moan into his mouth, tracing your tongue along the puncture of his fang that’s still retracted, almost as normal as a human’s but something inside you tells you it’s not going to stay that long if you continue doing this.

So anticipation builds inside you because there’s absolutely no way you’re going to stop what you’re doing.

But Donghyuck is surprisingly more chivalrous than he looks. He pulls away, giving you a few inches of space to break the attraction. It’s not enough, your mind is still heavily clouded by the thoughts of him, so you reach up to kiss him again, catching his lower lip between yours.

“No, wait,” he says, voice sounding breathy though he doesn’t breathe. He circles his fingers around your wrists, holding them down against the counter so you won’t be able to move. 

“Let me just kiss you,” you plead, eyes dazed and desperate. “Please.”

His chuckles are soft, almost inaudible. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m not, I swear.” It’s horribly embarrassing how you’re itching for his touch as if losing physical contact with him causes you madness. “Hold up your fingers and ask me to count them. I’ll guess it right, trust me, so can you just—” You try to move your hand to pull him close but his grip around your wrist is stronger than your strength. “Hyuck—”

“Look, I want this just as much as you do—” He hisses when you’re using your knee this time, sliding it between his legs, giving him the friction that he needs. “Fuck. I probably want this more than you do, but—” He loses control for a split second, re-attaching his mouth to yours with so much fervor, tongues desperate to taste one another. The way you whimper against him makes him groan, his hand sliding down your thigh and spreading your legs apart so he can fit himself between them.

It’s when his fangs suddenly puncture your lips, drawing a hint of blood and making you cry out in surprise that he wakes up from his reverie, pushing himself away immediately to the other side of the room. You almost topple forward from suddenly losing him to lean on but manage to keep your balance by gripping at the edge of the counter.

Donghyuck turns around, facing the bathroom tiles as he leans one hand against the wall while his other one covers his mouth.

“Hyuck—”

“Sorry, let me just—“ His shoulders are shaking, trying his best to calm himself and the thirst that overwhelmed him earlier. “They’ll go back in a minute.”

“No.” You jump down from the counter, moving to his spot with careful steps. “Let me see them.”

He shakes his head, still not turning around to face you.

“I want to see them, Hyuck.” You place your hand on his shoulder, caressing him gently until he finally submits to your touch. 

You only ever saw him with his fangs retracted twice in your life but even then, it was always too dark and too fast for you to see him properly. Now, you can take your time.

He’s so fascinating.

His eyes, as they peer into you in concern and uncertainty that he might hurt you, are glowing brightly in the color of topaz and they’re strikingly beautiful that you can barely look at anywhere else. His fangs are larger but he can still hide them behind his lips if needed. It’s the way they become frighteningly sharp that sends a shiver down your spine but you brave yourself enough to reach out to him.

“C-can I touch…?” You hesitantly ask, and he looks conflicted by the question but soon gives you a timid nod. He parts his mouth slightly so you can trace your fingertip along his cuspid, and you flinch as it feels like a knife splitting your skin. 

He hastily pulls back, terrified at the thought of hurting you. “You’re okay?”

“Do it with me.”

“What?”

You take a deep breath, your heartbeat going crazy. “I want you to drink from me.”

“You’re crazy—”

“Please.” You lay a hand on his chest, tilting your head to the side, exposing your neck to his eyes. “Just try, Hyuck…”

The glimmer in his eyes shows that he’s yearning to fulfill your wish but he cups your cheek again, telling you, “You’re gonna regret this in the morning.”

“I won’t.” Your fingers find a home in his waves. “I’ve been wanting this for a long time so—”

A high-pitched yelp escapes your lips and you have to muffle the rest of your scream by mouthing against the fabric that covers his shoulder because Donghyuck doesn’t waste any second after he heard your confession. His canines are prickling against the skin under your jaw, just between the earlobe and the collarbone. And it hurts when he sinks them—so, so badly—that tears begin to form almost instantly behind your closed lids. Donghyuck suddenly lets you go, his eyes widening as he gazes at the way blood is gushing through his bite mark. “Fuck,” he says, “How can you taste so—” and he dives in again, moaning rather loudly when the warmth of your blood fills his mouth, swallowing a big gulp each time. “So fucking good,” he murmurs in pleasure, tightening his hold desperately around your waist as if you’re the thread that keeps him alive.

The pain only stays for a few seconds before a rush of endorphin seeps into your skin, running through your veins and pumping euphoria to every inch of your body. You slowly relax against his chest, eyes becoming half-lidded as you go into a trance, heartbeat slowing. You’ve never done any methamphetamine in your life but you imagine that it must feel somewhat like this. 

“Hyuck…” You breathe out, feeling a little bit lightheaded, the strap of your camisole falling off your shoulder. You can feel your knees slowly giving out under your weight. “I… I can’t stand…”

He yanks himself away for a second, only to lift you so you can wrap your legs around his waist, your arms around his neck. He carries you back to the counter, placing you down in the same spot as before, your legs dangling in the air.

“Better?” He asks, rubbing comforting circles with his thumb along your cheekbone. You nod, eyes going down to focus on his fangs again. His lips are painted with your blood, with some of it trickling down his chin. He’s a monster and he definitely looks like one, but his eyes are tender and his hands are silky smooth on your skin.

He slides his hand down to the hem of your camisole, fingers rubbing against the fabric as he peppers soft kisses along your jawline. “Is this one your favorite too?”

“Huh?” You’re having the hardest time trying to focus. “Oh… No, not really.”

“Well, then,” his lips are still sucking bruises on your neck when he rips both of your camisole and your bra with one flick of his hand, exposing your bare chest to the air, making you jump in surprise.

“Hyuck—” You’re silenced with another kiss, and it’s so consuming, so deep, so wild that you nearly sob against his mouth. The taste of copper makes you frown in discomfort but the knot starts to loosen when his tongue darts out to meet you in a messy kiss.

His hand is going down to your breast, cupping the side while he runs his thumb along your sensitive bud, making you rake your nails against his back in response. His other hand is tracing the curve of your waist, going down to your hips before he tears your skirt away, tossing the clothing somewhere across the room, following your previous ones.

“Tell me if you want to stop,” he says, hooking his hands at the back of your knees before he pulls your legs forward, pressing his hardness against the wetness of your lingerie. You whine, circling your legs around his waist for stability, and murmurs, “No, don’t stop, please,” against his ear.

It’s not fair that he’s still fully clothed so you frantically toy with the buttons of his shirt, pushing the fabric off his shoulders with so much eagerness before you roam your lips to every inch of his exposed skin. 

Donghyuck licks along the wound of his previous bite, emitting a sinful moan from the back of his throat when your blood sparks ecstasy in his mouth. His fingers are tentatively rubbing you over your lingerie and you beg with your lips muffled by the skin of his chest, “Take it off, just take it off, please—“

You can feel a tiny laugh reverberating from his chest over your desperation but you don’t care. You really are that desperate.

Donghyuck is more than willing to comply, sliding the lingerie down your thighs and you help him push it off your legs completely. You guide his palm to your heat, his fingers immediately sliding between your folds, the heel of his hand pressing against your clit. His mouth finds his way down the valley of your breasts and goes lower and lower until he has his head between your thighs.

You nibble at your lip in anticipation when he presses open-mouthed kisses on the inner part of your thigh. Donghyuck makes sure he has his eyes fixed on yours when he dips his fangs into your supple skin, making you quiver with the sensation.

“God, Hyuck.” You’re going insane, you can feel it. “I want you. I want you in me. I want you all over me.”

And he probably is too because he’s abandoning all of his self-control at once. The way he sucks bruises on your skin, lapping at the trail of blood that painted your body is almost animalistic, raw passion mixed with lust and uncontrollable desire. He unbuckles his belt in hurry, pushing his jeans and boxers down just low enough to release himself from its confines. You can feel his tip grazing against your clit before he glides his length down your folds, pulling you by the legs so you’re almost laying down on the counter, half of your back pressed against the mirror behind you.

His eyes are hooded but they speak reassurance when they bore into yours. “I’ll be gentle.”

Now that it finally sinks you’re going to do this for the first time, your lustful desire gradually changes into jitters. You nod, permitting him to proceed. 

The feeling of him stretching you little by little is absolutely painful and he can tell that too, hissing, “Fuck, you’re so tight,” as his eyebrows adjoin in the middle. You can barely stand the pain and you’re about to stop him by reaching out a hand, but he grabs your wrist and sinks his teeth to your skin.

Another jolt of pain sends tremors all over your body but just like before, another rush of endorphin hits you like a wave, gradually reducing your pain until you’re in haze again, blissful even, but also even more aroused than before, hungry for his touch.

“You’re okay?” He asks, licking the blood that trails down your arm. “Are you still in pain?”

You’re breathing hard but you can feel your heartbeat slowing. “Stop talking and fuck me already.”

His glowing eyes are gazing down at you with desire, intense with lust. He runs his tongue along his lower lip once, smirking as he says, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Even when he said he was going to be gentle with you, he’s doing the exact opposite. Or maybe he is going gentle, which only makes you wonder how wild can he be when he’s not holding back. The thought of him losing control of his mind as he pounds into you senselessly makes you shudder, tightening yourself around his length unconciously.

“My God.” The feeling of your heat enveloping him—squeezing around him—makes him drop his temple on your shoulder, dissolving him into a groaning mess. “You are driving me insane, do you know that?”

“Don’t hold back,” you hold his face, caressing his sharp jawline with trembling fingers. “Just do what you want.”

“But I’ll break you.” Although his eyes seem like he’s about to grant your wish.

 You let your tongue slide up from his chin to his lower lip, stopping just to whisper, “Then break me apart, I don’t care,” before you crush his mouth with yours again.

Donghyuck’s thrust is both deep and hard, knocking your breath with each pound as he holds you by your hips, nails clawing into the skin. Maybe it’s the trace of endorphin left in your body that heightened all your senses while at the same time washing all your pain away because everything feels so unbelievably good. His touches, his kisses, his thrusts, and the way he moves his hips faster and faster until you can’t properly breathe—everything feels amazing. 

And his voice—God, his voice—the way he moans and grunts against your ear, or when he sprouts expletives while he buries his face deep in the crook of your neck, lips scorching against your skin, makes you think fuck why did I waste a fucking year doing nothing when I can have him like—

You’re interrupted from finishing your thought when Donghyuck suddenly pulls out of you, making you whimper from the loss, and turns you around, forcing you to land on your feet again, your stomach pressed against the edge of the counter. You place both hands on the marbled surface as he pulls your hips closer to him, pressing his hardness against your behind as he presses his chest to your spine.

“Come here, look,” he says, holding you by the chin and lifts your face so you can gaze directly into the mirror. He shifts his hand, now holding back your bangs so your eyes are reflected perfectly. “Look how beautiful you are,” he purrs near your ear, the tip of his nose brushing against your jawline.

It’s both embarrassing and arousing to see yourself being held domineeringly by him, the curves of your body fit his perfectly even from behind. Your lips are bruised and swollen, blood smears messily around your neck, your wrist, your thigh even on your hips from the way he trailed his coated fingers along the skin. 

Donghyuck raises two of his blood-smeared fingers to your lips, mixing your lipstick with your own blood before he slowly drags his fingers away, painting blurred lines of crimson to your cheek. He sighs at the sight, eyes half-lidded as they glow brighter. “If I’m a monster,” he says, voice low and breathy, “Then you’re a fucking goddess.”

You shudder and avert your gaze, ashamed of how sultry you look in the mirror and how sinful his gaze is as they rake over your body. He presses close, completing the dip of your spine with his chest like a matching puzzle. His fingers curl around the front of your neck, forcing you to look at your reflection once more as he licks a stripe up your wound. “We look good together, don’t you think?”

You’re breathing hard, chest heaving up and down with each breath. “Hyuck…” You crave for him to fill you again like before. “Please, just—"

He glides his hand down between your legs, teasing you with small touches but strong and fast enough to make you quiver. “So sensitive too,” he chuckles, nipping slightly at your earlobe. “You’re so fucking cute.”

Before you can retort anything back, he pushes the head of his cock into your heat again, agonizingly slowly at first but slams the rest of it with one snap of his hips.

“I’ve thought about this—about us—I think about you a lot,” he confesses, with low groans interrupting his lines. “You’re really driving me insane with that face of yours, your lips, your voice—whenever you call my name, whenever you pout after losing an argument—the way you secretly stare at me wherever I go—”

“I don’t—” You gasp, thighs trembling under your weight and he wraps an arm along your stomach, holding you still while he pushes in deeper. “I never—”

“And the way you lie just like now, with that blush creeping on your face.” He chuckles, kissing the middle of your shoulder blades. “Fuck, you’re so cute—so fucking cute that it pisses me off whenever you talk about Mark when we both know he can’t satisfy you the way I do—he doesn’t understand you— doesn’t get your stupid jokes—” He begins to fall out of rhythm, hips moving faster with each thrust. “He doesn’t deserve you—I deserve you.”

You catch the sight of your reflection, noticing how he sometimes throws his head back in pleasure, his strong hands gripping on the sides of your waist as he rolls his hips again and again, thrusting into you until you can only cry out his name and nothing more. It’s too obscene, too erotic for your eyes to witness, and when he locks his gaze with yours in the mirror, you nearly faint.

“H-Hyuck—” You reach out a hand back, trying to find his for support but he holds your wrist against your spine, pumping into you with strong strokes, leaving you with no options other than pressing the side of your face against the marble countertop, mouth parting in a silent scream.

The sounds of his groans and your whimpers echo through the bathroom walls, along with the sound of your skin meeting his. His teeth prickling against your shoulder, his eyes going to see how you look underneath him in the mirror before he sinks his fangs deep into you, making various sounds of pleasure as he drinks your blood.

The sensation of his thrust, his fingers slightly choking you as he holds you by your neck, and the amount of endorphin that washes over you soon drives you to your release and he embraces you closer, feeling every shake that you emit directly with his body. And maybe it’s from the loss of blood or everything else combined, but your vision starts to blur and suddenly your world turns black.

***

When you wake up, you’re laying on your bed, staring at the ceiling you’ve seen a million times with your eyes barely open. You’re still pretty much in a haze, not sure if you’re still floating inside your dream or back in reality. It’s until your door opens with a click that you can start to differentiate.

“Ah, you’re awake.” He peeks inside through the door holding your favorite mug, already dressed back in his favorite black tee and matching jeans. “I was wondering when you’d wake up. Can I come in?”

He walks in without needing an answer and, weirdly, he doesn’t seem nervous or awkward when the sight of him already makes you blush fervently and your heart races fast. A flashback comes in like an unstoppable train and you almost reach out a hand to your neck, wanting to know if his bite mark is still there. 

The way he acts is so natural that you begin to wonder whether all that happened was simply your imagination. But when you try to move your body, jolts of pain runs like electricity to your bones, making you freeze instantly. It feels like somebody is trying to crack your head open, tearing your body apart and you fall back to the bed, weak and exhausted.

“You all right?” He immediately rushes to your side, sitting on the edge of the bed, checking on your face. “You lost a lot of blood, so I wouldn’t move too much if I were you. I brought you some coconut water, here,” he places the mug down on your nightstand. “And some supplements too. They’ll help with your blood loss. I’ll cook some fish and eggs for dinner later.”

You can only nod, too tired to even speak. His eyes begin to soften, his fingers reaching out to caress the strands of your hair. “I guess I went a bit overboard, I’m sorry.”

“A bit…?” You croak out.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats but can’t help a smile forming on his face. “I tried so hard not to, but you were so cute.”  He leans closer, his lips hovering above yours but he rethinks his decision before he closes the gap, and moves to press a gentle kiss on your forehead instead. “You should get more sleep,” he murmurs against your skin. “Call me when you need help. I’ll be right outside.”

And he doesn’t spare you a glance as he stands up from the bed, but the way he trips on his feet once makes you realize that oh, maybe he’s embarrassed about all this too.

“Hyuck.”

He stops in his tracks, glancing over his shoulder as he lays a hand against your doorframe. “Yeah?”

“Where does this leave us?”

His face slightly goes stern. Turning over to face you, he questions further. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” you pause, wetting your lip in anxiety. “Do you want us to pretend it didn’t happen?”

His eyes darken, somehow seem a bit upset. “Do you?”

“I… Uhh…” The way your heart is beating so fast makes you feel nauseous. “I don’t, but—”

“Then don’t suggest something like that,” he sighs, walking back to your bed again. He kneels on the floor so you’re eye-to-eye, squeezing your hand with his larger one. “Don’t scare me, okay? I finally have you where I want you.”

You look away, attempting to hide your flustered face. “But then, what are we now?”

“I don’t care what we are. I just want us to keep doing this.”

“Doing what, sex? You drinking my blood?”

“No, idiot.” He rolls his eyes. “I mean, yes, of course, that too. Plenty of that. But what I meant was I want to continue to have this kind of relationship with you. Us living together, making fun of each other, having dinners together, even spend hours watching re-runs of your stupid tv shows—”

“They’re not stupid.”

“They’re stupid. I only watch them because of you. You are my favorite show.” He winks, breaking the tension and you blurt out laughing, shoving him playfully by the shoulder. But when your giggle starts to fade, Donghyuck leans in to cup your cheek, smiling softly. “I just want to spend more time with you, as long as you’d let me. So can we have that? Please?”

“I…” You’re so captivated by his features, especially the shape of his lips. “I guess…”

“You guess?” He scrunches up his nose. “You’re playing hard to get again? Seriously? After all the begging you did in the bathroom?” Seeing you blush only makes him want to tease you harder. “What was it that you said? God, Hyuck, I want you. I want you in me. I want you all over me—“

“Okay, shut up, geez!” You slap a hand against his mouth, steam practically coming out of your ears. “Yes, we can have that. I’d… love to have that actually.”

Kissing your inner palm, he lovingly smiles against your skin, appreciating your honesty. “That wasn’t so hard, was it, Sweetheart?”

***

Read the sequel here

[jodilin65]

I sent a message to the honker saying I saw him in Arkansas, explaining that I saw a truck identical to his when I was riding my virtual bike there. He read it but ignored it completely. This guy does not want to be friends. It’s like he added me to be polite but doesn’t want to actually be friends. That’s okay, though, because I have a feeling we don’t have much in common.

I’m pretty much stuck in Arkansas. When I look at the map it always looks like I’m closer to the border than I actually am. Still have another 40 or 50 miles to make it to Missouri, though.

Tonight’s goal is to finish checking 2008 and having all of that posted to Blogger. Damn, though. The Jes pest, as I’d call him, really was a pest. Never before did I have a landlord insert their presence in my life like that. We moved into his trailer in April and by August I realized he wasn’t gonna stop coming down and bugging us regularly. I don’t know if he just wanted to keep an eye on us or what but he and his barking mutts really took the joy out of what peaceful country living was supposed to be about. We moved there to get away from people and we just wanted to be left alone yet he came down nearly every week. His place still beat Phoenix any day but we moved there to escape car stereos, screaming kids and dogs just have to listen to his dogs, his motorcycle, his bulldozer, and his fucking engine gunning.

Tom was pointing out that I’ve had fewer problems and more energy since dropping Galileo and teasing me about them having been a curse. I don’t know about that but I know that at this point I’m just gonna go back to the old-fashioned way (minus the virtual appointments you didn’t have decades ago, of course), and stick to that since that still seems to be the norm and likely always will. You know what they say about all good things coming to an end, and I don’t want to have an app like Galileo, as much as I miss the peace of mind it gave me, or something similar just to have to give it up in a year or two for what’s cheapest at the time. So I’ll go back to my original goal before I even knew Galileo existed and find someone local that I like and who’s significantly younger that can hopefully be my forever doctor unless one of us moves.

I’m jumpstarting my diet by slowly switching out the no-nos. I still want to talk to a nutritionist, but I’ve done enough research to get a general sense of what they’re going to tell me.

All the white stuff has to go. White rice, white pasta, white potatoes. When I say white potatoes I’m talking about the flesh, not the skin. if I want potatoes, they’ll have to be sweet potatoes.

I’ll have to cut back on sugar of course and be mindful of condiments. I’ll also have to kiss the creamy stuff goodbye and my sprayable Parkay “butter.” Pretty sure they recommend real butter over margarine. Since I hate black coffee, I’ll be switching to tea.

I resurrected my Facebook journal account deciding once again that it’s better to have something you don’t use rather than regret dumping it.

My calves have been pretty much zapped to the point that I should never have to shave them again. All that may be lingering are a few fine skinny little hairs here and there that are very short and very thin and very hard to see. I’m working on my right thigh now.

Coincidentally or not, since freeing myself of the toxicity, arrogance and stupidity up north, I’m back to getting tons of sales calls, even though they don’t usually leave messages. For a while, I had hardly been getting any calls but now I’m getting them every day. No biggie though.