#I try not to do that but it happens sometimes

[kikizoshi]

Been thinking about Sun's voice lines again, and the "Attention! This carousel is out of service and will require repairs before we open tomorrow. ... That is the end of my instruction! If I had been programmed with the knowledge to fix it, it would've already been done," lines strike me as so funny. 'Cause like. It implies to me that Fazbear cared enough to keep even the briefing material on-brand with animatronic voiceovers, so they had Sun record the carousel how-to because he was associated with it (or associated with Fall Fest which was the closest they could get), but then they didn't actually tell him what to say or how to instruct, just like,

"Hey Sunman come record the maintenance briefing for the carousel."

And Sun's like, "Sure thing!" thinking they're gonna give him a script or something. And then they just. Set him in front of a microphone and say "go." And Sun's irritated 'cause if they're gonna give him a job they should give him something to work with. But they don't. And those lines are what we get. Brief, unhelpful, and very passive-aggressive. It's so funny to me.

[kaiist]

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐄 ⋯ 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊

𝐗𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐑

The lamplight casts long shadows across the room as you sit cross-legged on the edge of the bed, your thoughts tangling into knots you can’t seem to unravel. Xavier notices your distant gaze before you’re even aware of his presence. He’s been watching you for a few moments, standing in the doorway, his silhouette painted in soft golden light.

He walk towards the bed and settles beside you, the mattress dipping slightly under his weight. His fingers brush against yours, a silent question in the gesture.

“Something’s troubling you,” he says, his voice quiet but steady. Not a question—an observation.

You consider deflecting, but there’s something in his attention that makes you pause. His eyes, usually so calm, hold a flicker of concern.

“You don’t have to explain,” he adds when you remain silent. “Not if you don’t want to.”

He waits, patient in a way that makes your chest ache. When was the last time someone simply sat with you in your discomfort without demanding answers?

“It’s nothing serious,” you finally say, your voice barely above a whisper. “Just my mind spinning stories again. I don’t want to burden you with it.”

The words hang in the air between you, fragile as spun glass. “Your thoughts are never a burden to me,” he murmurs, his thumb tracing a gentle arc across your knuckles. The touch is feather-light, yet it anchors you in a way words cannot.

You exhale slowly, shoulders dropping a fraction. “It feels silly when I try to explain it. Just... shadows without substance.”

“Shadows can still darken our path,” he offers, shifting slightly closer until the warmth of his arm presses against yours. “Even when we know they cannot harm us.”

The simple understanding in his voice loosens something tight within your chest. There’s no judgment, no impatience—just quiet acceptance of your inner turmoil.

“How do you stay so centered?” you ask, studying his profile in the amber glow. “When everything inside feels like it’s spinning too fast?”

A small smile tugs at his lips—that rare, genuine expression that catches you off guard every time. “Bold of you to assume I don’t overthink.”

The unexpected admission draws a surprised laugh from you. These are the few times Xavier acknowledges his own vulnerabilities so casually just to comfort you.

“I simply accept that I can’t control everything,” he continues, his voice thoughtful. “That some paths can’t be seen until we begin walking them.”

He takes your hand in his, studying your intertwined fingers with unusual intensity. “When my thoughts become too loud, I focus on something else.”

He guides your joined hands to rest against his chest, where his heartbeat pulses steady and true beneath your fingertips.

“Like this,” he murmurs. “This is real. This moment.”

You close your eyes, letting the rhythm ground you. “Sometimes I spin elaborate worst-case scenarios for things that haven’t even happened yet.”

“Then perhaps balance them with best-case possibilities,” he suggests, his free hand coming up to brush a strand of hair from your face. The touch is brief, almost hesitant. “Or better yet—stay here, in what is real and present.”

Your eyes meet his, and something unspoken passes between you. His gaze holds yours, steady and certain in a way that makes the chaos in your mind recede.

“I���m sorry for withdrawing into my head,” you whisper.

“Never apologize for how your mind works,” he says, voice gentle yet firm. “I would rather you retreat knowing I will be here when you return.”

The words settle over you like a warm blanket. You lean into his shoulder, and he shifts to accommodate you—a subtle adjustment that speaks volumes. The warmth of him anchors you as the racing thoughts begin to slow.

“Stay with me?” you ask, voice barely audible.

His arm wraps around you, secure but gentle. “For as long as you need. I’m here,” he says simply. “Whenever you need. However you need. I’ll always be your light.”

The silence that follows feels like a blanket, protecting rather than smothering. Your thoughts, still present, no longer feel like adversaries but merely passing clouds—acknowledged but powerless against the presence beside you.

𝐙𝐀𝐘𝐍𝐄

Steam rises from the tea Zayne places beside you, the ceramic cup clinking softly against the wooden table. Your fingers fidget with the corner of a book you haven’t turned a page of in twenty minutes. The familiar scent of bergamot fills the space between you, a comfort he’s offered countless times before.

He hesitates by your shoulder, caught in some internal deliberation you can almost see working behind his eyes. Then he pulls up a chair, the movement careful not to disturb as he sits across from you.

The silence stretches between you, yet it’s comfortable. Your thoughts continue their relentless spiral, each one pulling you deeper until—

“You’re far away tonight,” he finally says, his voice breaking through the noise in your head.

Your eyes lift to meet his. The usual steel in his gaze has softened to something closer to concern, brows drawn together in subtle question.

“I don’t want to push,” he adds. “But I’m here if you need to unburden yourself.”

You draw a deep breath, fingers finally stilling against the book’s edge. “I’m sorry. I’ve been lost in thought, analyzing everything that happened today. I keep thinking I should have done things differently.”

Something shifts in Zayne’s expression—recognition, perhaps—as he reaches across the table, palm upturned in invitation. The gesture is simple but holds a weight of understanding that makes your throat tighten.

“The mind can be relentless with its second-guessing,” he says quietly, as your hand slides into his. His fingers close around yours, warm and steady. “Especially on days like today.”

The gentle pressure of his grip grounds you, drawing you back from the edge of swirling thoughts. “I keep replaying every moment, every word. Finding all the places I fell short.”

Zayne’s thumb traces a slow path across your knuckles, the motion soothing. “We often judge ourselves by impossible standards.”

“How do you deal with it?” you ask, watching the movement of his thumb rather than meeting his eyes. “The weight of decisions already made?”

He considers this, the silence thoughtful rather than empty. When he speaks, his voice carries an edge of softness.

“I remind myself that decisions made with the information available at the time are valid, even if hindsight offers different clarity.” His eyes search yours. “And I try to identify what I can actually change versus what I’m merely punishing myself for.”

The simple wisdom in his words settles over you. “That sounds... reasonable.”

A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “Theory is always simpler than practice.”

You take a sip of the tea he prepared—still warm, sweetened exactly how you like it. The familiar taste soothes something ragged inside you.

“Talk me through it,” he offers, still holding your hand across the table. “The specific moments troubling you. Sometimes articulating them diminishes their power.”

“You don’t mind?” you ask, uncertain. “It might seem trivial to you.”

“Nothing that causes you distress is trivial to me,” he says with such quiet conviction that warmth blooms in your chest.

So you speak, haltingly at first, then with growing ease. You unravel the tangled thoughts that have plagued you all evening—the interactions you’ve dissected, the words you wish you’d chosen differently, the responses you fear you misinterpreted. Throughout, Zayne listens with complete attention, occasionally asking a clarifying question or offering gentle perspective, but never dismissing your concerns.

When you finally fall silent, he squeezes your hand once. “Thank you for… trusting me with this.”

“I feel clearer,” you admit, surprised by the lightness in your chest. “Just saying it aloud helps.”

“I don’t like seeing you troubled when I could be helping,” he admits quietly. “But I respect your process. Whatever you need—space, distraction, a listening ear—I’m here.”

The certainty in his voice grounds you, a lighthouse in the storm of your thoughts. You squeeze his hand in silent gratitude, and his fingers tighten around yours in return—a wordless promise that neither of you need to translate.

𝐑𝐀𝐅𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐋

Rafayel’s eyes find yours across the sunlit room, narrowing slightly as if bringing you into focus. Everything else forgotten, he stands motionless, studying you with an intensity that feels like being seen beyond the surface.

“There you are, cutie,” he greets, his voice replaced by something softer, more attuned. He sets down his sketchbook, wiping his hands on a cloth as he walks towards you, bare feet silent against the wooden floor.

“Oh,” he breathes, tilting his head. “Something’s happening behind those beautiful eyes, isn’t it?”

You attempt a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “It’s silly, really. I shouldn’t let little things bother me so much, but I can’t seem to help it.”

Rafayel’s expression shifts instantly, concern reflected in his eyes. He takes your hand in his, leading you to the window seat overlooking the ocean. Sunlight dapples across your joined hands as he settles beside you, knees touching yours.

“Silly?” he echoes, brows drawing together. “No, cutie. If it troubles you, it isn’t silly at all.”

The gentle reproach in his voice makes your throat tighten. You glance away, watching the waves roll against the shore below. “It feels silly when I try to explain. Just... little worries that my mind has blown into monsters.”

Rafayel cups your cheek, his touch impossibly tender as he guides your gaze back to his. “The heart doesn’t differentiate between big worries and small ones. It simply feels them all.”

Something in his understanding breaks a dam within you. “It’s just... I keep fixating on things that probably don’t matter. A comment someone made, a glance I couldn’t interpret, a decision I’m second-guessing. My thoughts won’t stop circling.”

“Ah,” he nods, understanding immediately. “The mind can be such a noisy place sometimes.” He brings your hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to your palm. “Will you share these so-called little things with me? I want to help carry them, whatever they are.”

The sincerity in his eyes makes your chest ache. There’s no trace of his usual carefree demeanor—only deep attention fixed solely on you.

“I worry you’ll think I’m overthinking everything,” you admit.

His smile is gentle, almost wistful. “Your beautiful mind is one of the things I treasure most about you. Even when it troubles you.” He caresses your hair gently in a soothing manner that makes you sleepy. “Besides, who am I to judge what deserves your concern? Only you can know that.”

The acceptance in his words loosens something tight within you. You find yourself sharing the thoughts that have been chasing each other through your mind—insignificant moments that have grown thorns, small uncertainties that have cast long shadows. Rafayel listens as if each word is precious, his eyes never leaving your face, his thumb tracing soothing patterns on your wrist.

“Even if it seems trivial,” he says when you’ve finished, “nothing that causes you distress is insignificant to me. Your worries are mine to shoulder too.”

“How do you always know exactly what to say?” you ask, leaning into his touch as he caresses your cheek.

His smile is soft around the edges. “Because I see you. Not just parts of you—all of you.” His fingers intertwine with yours, an anchor amidst the turbulence of your thoughts. “And I love every piece, including the overthinking parts.”

You rest your head against his shoulder, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing. “Sometimes I wish I could turn my brain off. Just for a little while.”

“Then let me help,” he whispers, his free hand coming up to stroke your hair with infinite tenderness. “Tell me every little worry, every spinning thought. Nothing is too small if it’s causing you distress.”

He waits, patient in a way that surprises you, his thumb tracing patterns against your wrist as the sound of waves fills the comfortable silence between you. And somehow, with each passing moment in his presence, the chaotic swirl of your thoughts begins to settle, like sediment in still water.

𝐒𝐘𝐋𝐔𝐒

The balcony offers the nightlight view of the cityscape below, lights twinkling like earthbound stars. You stand with hands gripping the railing, the cool night air doing little to quiet the storm of thoughts in your mind.

Sylus approaches silently, his presence announced only by the subtle warmth at your back and the crystal glass of amber liquid he offers over your shoulder.

“The night sky suits your contemplative mood,” he remarks, his voice low as he settles beside you, giving you space while remaining close enough to reach.

You accept the drink but say nothing at first, taking a small sip before admitting, “Sometimes my mind won’t stop creating worst-case scenarios. Tonight is one of those nights.”

Sylus studies your profile, eyes missing nothing. A slight nod acknowledges your confession—not dismissing it, but accepting its reality.

“The mind can be a talented architect of fears,” he says, his own gaze turning toward the cityscape. “Building elaborate structures from the flimsiest of materials.”

The poetic nature of his observation draws a small smile to your lips despite yourself. “Yours seems particularly skilled tonight.”

He takes a measured sip from his glass, the movement elegant and controlled, something he’d done hundreds of times before. “What masterpiece of anxiety is it creating for you this time?”

The question is posed without pressure, an invitation rather than a demand. You hesitate, swirling the amber liquid in your glass.

“Everything feels... out of place,” you finally admit. “Like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, and one wrong move could send everything tumbling. I keep imagining every possible way things could fall apart.”

“And yet,” Sylus observes, “here you still stand.”

The simple truth of it catches you off guard. You look at him, finding his eyes already waiting, intent but not intrusive.

“The things we worry about rarely happen the way we imagine,” he continues, shoulder barely brushing yours—a point of warmth in the cool night air. “Our minds are great at making fears but bad at guessing what will really happen.”

“How do you manage it?” you ask. “The uncertainty of everything?”

A subtle smile plays at the corner of his mouth. “I plan for what I can control and prepare for what I can’t. Beyond that...” He shrugs, the gesture elegant even in its simplicity. “Beyond that is merely wasted energy.”

“It sounds so reasonable when you say it,” you murmur.

“I won’t pry further,” he says after a moment. “Some battles are fought in silence before they can be spoken aloud. But know this—” his voice drops lower, a velvet promise in the night, “—whatever ghosts are chasing you tonight, remember they must pass through me first.”

The declaration, dramatic yet sincere, loosens something tight within your chest. Your grip on the railing eases slightly.

“I’d rather you shared with me because you want to,” he adds, fingers brushing yours against the cold metal, “but I’ll stay either way. Your thoughts are yours to share or keep.”

The night stretches comfortable between you, his steady presence a counterweight to your racing mind. He doesn’t push, doesn’t demand answers, simply exists alongside you in silent support. The city lights blur beneath you, and gradually, the catastrophic scenarios your mind had been constructing begin to lose their sharp edges.

His hand covers yours fully now, warm and solid against the cool night air. “The world rarely ends the way we fear it might,” he says quietly. “And if it should try, it would find me standing in its way.”

“Thank you,” you whisper.

He hums, and somehow, with him beside you, the anxious thoughts that had been screaming for attention begin to recede to a manageable whisper.

𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐁

Rain patters against the windows, casting rippling shadows across the living room floor. You’re curled into the corner of the couch, knees drawn to your chest, watching droplets race down the glass with unfocused eyes.

Caleb approaches with careful steps, a mug of something warm in each hand. “Hey, Pipsqueak,” he says, voice gentle as he sets both mugs on the coffee table. “You’ve been quiet tonight.”

He settles beside you, close enough that you can feel his warmth but not so near as to crowd. His eyes search yours, concern evident in their depths.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he asks, then adds with a soft laugh, “Though I’d give much more than that to see you smile again.”

You wrap your arms tighter around your knees, gaze still fixed on the rain-streaked window. “I can’t stop worrying about the future. There are so many unknowns, and my brain keeps focusing on everything that could go wrong.”

Understanding dawns in Caleb’s eyes, his expression softening as he shifts slightly closer. “Ah, the future. That great unwritten chapter that keeps us all awake at night.”

When you don’t respond, his determination visibly sets in. “You know what? Scoot over,” he says, nudging you gently. He grabs the softest throw blanket and drapes it around your shoulders, tucking it carefully around you before settling back. “There. First step in the Official Caleb Protocol for Overthinking.”

Despite the weight in your chest, your lips quirk upward. “There’s a protocol?”

“Absolutely,” he replies with mock seriousness. “Step two involves this hot chocolate and complete permission to talk about whatever’s bothering you—or nothing at all.” He passes you the mug, making sure your fingers are securely wrapped around it before letting go.

The warmth seeps into your palms, grounding you. “Everything feels so uncertain,” you murmur, watching the steam rise. “I keep spiraling into worst-case scenarios about things that haven’t even happened yet.”

Caleb nods, his playful demeanor softening into something more tender. “The future’s always been uncertain. But our minds like to pretend we can control it by worrying about it.”

“That’s exactly it,” you agree, taking a small sip of the chocolate. “I know logically that worry doesn’t change anything, but I can’t seem to stop.”

“The mind is funny that way,” he says, reaching for your free hand, interlacing his fingers with yours. His thumb begins tracing small circles against your skin. “Always trying to protect us by imagining every possible danger.”

You exhale slowly, finding comfort in his steady touch. “How do you deal with it? The not knowing?”

Something vulnerable flickers across his expression before he answers. “I remind myself that whatever comes, we’ll face it together.” His eyes meet yours, earnest and warm. “The future’s always going to be uncertain, but that’s what makes the good surprises possible too.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way,” you admit.

“Step three in the protocol,” he says, squeezing your hand gently. “Reframing. For every worrying possibility your mind creates, I want you to imagine a wonderful one too.”

A small smile finds its way to your lips. “Is that scientifically proven?”

“Absolutely,” he says with conviction. “Extensively tested in the world-renowned Caleb Institute of Overthinking Prevention.”

The absurdity pulls a genuine laugh from you, the sound surprising after hours of quiet anxiety. Caleb’s face lights up in response, his own smile widening.

“There’s my favorite sound,” he murmurs, eyes crinkling at the corners.

You lean against his shoulder, allowing his familiar scent and warmth to envelop you. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Luckily, that’s one future you don’t have to worry about,” he says, wrapping an arm around you. His voice softens, losing its playful edge. “Whatever comes next, whatever you’re afraid of—we’ll figure it out together. That’s the one certainty I can offer.”

His thumb traces circles on your palm, steady and grounding. “Whatever you need, whenever you need it—I’m your guy, okay? That’s not going to change.”

The sincerity in his eyes makes something tight in your chest loosen. “Even when I’m being ridiculous?”

“Especially then,” he says without hesitation. “Besides, your version of ridiculous is still adorable.”

You roll your eyes, but settle more comfortably against him, your mug warm between your hands. “Thank you,” you whisper. “For knowing exactly what I need.”

“Always,” he murmurs into your hair. “That’s one future you can count on.”

The rain continues its gentle percussion against the glass, but the chaos in your mind begins to quiet beneath the steadiness of his presence. And for the first time all day, the relentless spin of your thoughts about tomorrow begins to give way to the comfort of right now.

I was kind of in a hurry when I wrote this—maybe because I hadn’t posted in a few days (╥﹏╥)—I had to scribble out all the words in my drafts before getting to the final version. Hope you all still enjoyed it!

[pepurika]

i wanted to thank you all for being patient with me, today i managed to ink half a page and made this small doodle!

it's been very difficult to get into that mindspace of being excited about comics and drawing. my main worry is that there might not be book two or three of tigers.

i've been trying to look for an agent to help me with the hiveworks and seven seas contracts and to give me guidance on how to move forward with all of this, but no luck so far! i've been sending emails right and left just hoping that someone would answer, but i know it's a long game anyway. my main driving force is that all the people who have bought the first volume deserve the rest of them in their shelves too. a single volume would look so sad haha! like a failure of some sort! and your money wasted somehow!

but today when i was drawing i forgot all about that for a little moment. i just drew and drew and i got that excitement again, that i can't wait to show this page to you. to see what people think about the story. and i felt so lucky that i have the opportunity to experience that communication between the creator and the reader, even if i've chosen to be a silent observator mostly, your comments and interactions mean so much for me. my way of talking to you is the comic itself, in a way.

i cannot promise you that the rest of tigers will ever be printed, but if it happens, it happens! for now i'll let all of this float slowly forward, maybe it will end up somewhere, maybe not. i hope you will be understanding with this issue, i am doing my best but sometimes things might not work out!

but i feel my excitement coming back today. the small hiatus was much needed, but i miss the comic so much and i miss this small internet world of our strange communication. i cannot even begin to explain how you have helped me through a slump after slump, during all these years. this has been the worst, but now it's finally starting to loose its grip from me.

so, you have my most sincere thank you. please know that tigers wouldn't have gotten this far without every comment, fanart, fanfic and interaction i've had with you.

only two more chapters to go- i hope you will keep enjoying the finale of the comic. i'm working very hard to deliver it through the finishing line, and i'm so, so excited to be able to show you this strange world of sea sponges, dramatic siblings and elder gods.

thank you!!!

[cocastyle]

I See You

Pairing — Bob Reynolds x reader

Word Count — 4k

Warning — SPOILER WARNING FOR THE THUNDERBOLTS* MOVIE I REPEAT SPOILER WARNING FOR THE THUNDERBOLTS* MOVIE!!

A/N — breaking my two years of not posting in honor of this amazing movie and character. the Thunderbolts* has reawakened my fire to write and I couldn’t ignore it. so here you go! this will be a bit of a short series. i kind of envision around three parts or so? anyways, i really hope you enjoy this and know this is your last warning before you continue on!! so if you haven’t seen the Thunderbolts* please save this for later <3

also, did you all notice the easter eggs i included ?? 👀

Part One Part Two

SPOILER WARNING FOR THE THUNDERBOLTS* MOVIE! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Bob Reynolds wasn't quite sure how any of this had happened. One minute he was pretty sure he had been dying and the next he was trapped in a series of never ending nightmares. Except it wasn't just his nightmares, there were other people's too.

He knew he had been having these moments where he didn't remember things, knew that there was something going on at a deeper level than he wanted to admit. He thought with Valentina explaining this power he had been given that it would explain everything he had been feeling, that the darkness wasn't truly his but something brought on by this experiment.

But he knew the truth and walking through these endless nightmares only proved that. The darkness was his. It was a culmination of everything he was feeling, everything that had been consuming him, and it had only taken more of a physical form thanks to the Sentry project.

Bob had no way of fighting this thing, no way of taking back control of his body. And at this point he wasn't even sure if he wanted control. After all, he was just Bob. He was useless. He was nothing. Everyone would be better off without him.

So now he was trapped with no where else to go but to walk through the thousands of rooms of everyone's deepest regrets and shames.

It had been an accident at first, but sometime after his own meth chicken nightmare was when he first started stumbling into the other rooms. He saw so many things, felt the guilt and weight that everyone else felt. One in particular had stuck with him when he had ended up watching the loop of a blind lawyer watching his friend die over and over. Bob couldn't watch that for very long before he was hurriedly trying to get to any other room but that one, the blind man's cries still rattling his bones.

Bob didn't know how long he walked for or how many rooms he went through until he got to one that made him pause as he came face to face with Tony Stark. It had been a while since the hero's death, but still seeing the face of the man that had helped bring everyone back from the Blip made Bob falter slightly.

Someone's biggest trauma was Tony Stark?

Bob took a couple steps back, his eyes scanning over the room as he tried to ground himself in what was going on. He seemed to be in someone's apartment. The place would've been nice if it weren't for the fact that whoever was living here clearly hadn't been picking up after themselves in quite some time. And by the look Tony Stark was making as he glanced at the dirty dishes in the sink, it seemed he was thinking the same.

Bob knew the signs before he even saw her. It wasn't just the state of the apartment, but it was the feeling in the air. That feeling of despair, sadness, and nothingness. That feeling of knowing you were alone and there was nothing you could do about it. It clung to everything in the apartment and Bob's heart ached slightly at the sight. After all, he knew what this was like. He knew it too well.

"I can feel you judging me," a voice said, instantly pulling Bob's attention to the couch where a girl was sitting with a blanket wrapped around her and a bottle of vodka in hand. She wouldn't meet Tony Stark's eyes as she stared at the bottle, her fingers numbly fiddling with the label. "I didn't ask for you to come over and judge how I'm living. Hell, I didn't even ask you to come over, so you might as well go."

Tony let out a soft sigh, "Kid, you were ignoring my calls. Of course I was going to come check on you."

"Ever think I ignored them for a reason?"

Tony huffed and grabbed a chair from the kitchen table before dragging it over in front of the couch. He sat down in front of the girl, tilting his head slightly as he watched her before saying, "You can't keep living like this."

"You think I don't know that?" she asked, her voice bitter. “Why are you here, Tony?”

Tony just watched her in silence before saying, "Listen, Steve and Natasha came to see me yesterday and—"

The girl slammed the bottle down on the table so hard Bob thought it would break. Her eyes were red rimmed as she glared at the man and muttered, "No. We're not doing this. You're not going to sit there and try to rope me into some crazy plot to try and bring everyone back. It's been five years and I'm done, okay? I have nothing left in me anymore and I don't give a shit, so just leave."

"Kid—"

"I said leave!" she exclaimed, her eyes beginning to glow white with a power that Bob could almost feel beneath his own skin. "I'm not some sob story for you to try to fix, okay? I messed up and didn't kill Thanos in time and half of the universe had to pay for it. I'm done trying to help. All I ever do is hurt people."

She looked away, her voice rough when she whispered, "You're all better off without me anyways."

Bob sucked in a breath at that, understanding washing over him as he watched the broken girl do everything she could not to cry.

"Y/N," Tony began but the girl simply shook her head.

"No, Tony. I'm done. Just leave and go ahead and do yourself a favor and never come back. It's not worth your time or energy and I sure as hell don't want you here," she said, her head still turned.

Tony stilled slightly at her words. "You don't mean that," he told her, but before he could even blink, Y/N had used her telekinesis to pick up the bottle of vodka and send it hurtling in his direction. The man barely had time to duck out of the way before it flew right past where his head had been and shattered against the wall. Tony turned to her in surprise but the girl was already getting up and walking to the door of what had to be her bedroom.

"I miss him too you know," Tony called after her causing the girl to still.

"Stop," Y/N warned him, but Tony ignored her and instead stood up, his eyes not leaving her as he clearly made no move to leave.

"Y/N, he wouldn't want this for you. That kid loved you so much. He would be devastated by—"

"I said stop!" Y/N yelled and before anyone knew what was happening, a force was suddenly throwing Tony across the room. The man thought fast and his nano suit had wrapped around him before he could even hit the wall and Bob watched as the color drained from Y/N's face at what she had done.

She was shaking as she stared at Tony, but by the time he was looking back up at her, the Iron Man mask sliding away from his face, she was cold once again. "Get the hell out of my apartment," was all she said before turning and walking into her room, slamming the door behind her. Bob watched her go, frowning slightly as the scene began to play again.

"That was before they won against Thanos," a voice said causing Bob to flinch in surprise. He quickly turned around to find Y/N a little ways behind him, sitting down at a chair in the corner of the room. Her eyes continued to watch the scene playing out in front of her and Bob was almost beginning to question if she had spoke in the first place when she muttered, "That was the last time I saw him before he died."

Her eyes met his then and Bob stilled under her gaze. She was a couple of years older than the version of her from the memory, a little more put together but in the kind of way that screamed help more than her younger self's look had. She had learned to mask it more, that much was clear. Or maybe it was just that Bob knew where to look, that he saw himself when he looked at her and knew in more ways than one just how tired she was.

"Who was he talking about?" Bob asked, silently cursing himself for that being the first thing he said but knowing he now had to just go with it. "The guy?"

Y/N hesitated, her eyes glazing over as she got lost in thought. There was a tiny moment of utter sadness that flashed across her face but it was gone so quickly as she muttered, "I don't know." She let out a sad laugh. "Isn't that sad? It's like there's blanks in my memory. All I know is that there is this immense feeling of loss not just once, but twice. Every time I try to think of him it's like the image of him only gets fuzzier."

Bob was silent for a moment. "I have trouble remembering things too," he admitted. "There are these moments where it's like I'll wake up from a dream I don't remember having and that time is just gone."

Y/N's eyes flickered his way, her gaze shifting over him in a way that made him stand up a little straighter. "I walked through a lot of rooms before ending up here," she told him, her eyes still studying him as though she were trying to piece him together. "This was the only one I couldn't leave."

"Why?" Bob questioned.

"Why did you stop in this one?" she retorted and Bob blinked in surprise. Her head tilted slightly as she stared blankly at the boy. It was a moment before she looked away and back at Tony who was watching her past self slam the door shut behind her as the memory started back up again. "I just wanted to see him again, I guess," she whispered. "I always hated this moment, hated that I pushed him away like that and left him to fight Thanos without me. Sometimes I wonder..."

She trailed off before shrugging slightly and looking back at Bob. "Guess I was as shocked by seeing Tony's face as you were when you walked in," Y/N said. Bob barely even thought his question before she placed a finger against her temple and let out a small sigh of exhaustion. "Telekinesis," she stated. "Just a fraction of the power I was born with, but it comes in handy from time to time. I knew who you were the second you walked into this memory. Your mind is very loud, but not in the way you'd expect it to be."

Bob wanted to ask her more, but it was clear she didn't want to expand on that comment. Instead she merely tapped her fingers against the arm of the chair she sat in and said, "So you're the one doing this."

It wasn't a question. She said it as though it were fact. Not that she was wrong, but something about the way she said it still made Bob's throat constrict.

"It's not. . .it's not me. It's—" Bob broke off and he could see the way she stared at him, knew that she was reading his mind. She blinked and quickly looked away. "Sorry," she whispered. "I can't help it sometimes. You lock yourself away long enough and you'll find it harder to control what once was so easy. But I get a sense that you know that."

Bob let out a small sigh, his eyes flickering over the past Y/N who sat on the couch with a haunted look in her eyes and a tight grip on the bottle in her hand.

"We've all done some bad things," Y/N told him, answering the questions flying through his mind. "I had the unfortunate experience of being the reason half the universe died. I was there that day that Thanos went to Wakanda to take the Mind Stone from Vision. I was the last one there before he snapped. I could've stopped it, but I let his words get to me and . . . well, you know the rest."

“The Blip,” Bob muttered and Y/N nodded solemnly. He could see her trying to keep it all together, but the tension was practically radiating off of her as she avoided his gaze.

“Go ahead and say it,” Y/N told him, her gaze locked on her past self who was busy hurling the bottle at Tony’s head. “You probably lost someone in the Blip, right? Had to suffer five years without them? Who was it? Family? Friends?”

Y/N didn’t even give him time to respond as she let out a sigh as if everything were pointless, “It doesn’t matter. Everyone still thinks the same thing, but I don’t blame them.”

“It’s my fault,” she admitted. “I caused everyone so much pain and suffering and then, when I had the chance to make things right, I pushed everyone away and locked myself in my room. Then Natasha died. Then Tony. And eventually Steve followed. And where was I? Drowning my sorrows in a bottle like the asshole that I am.” Y/N scoffed slightly at herself, the fury in her eyes something most people would probably flinch at but all Bob could do was soften at the sight. “So go ahead and say what you want. Call me names. Shout at me. Tell me how much of a monster I am. I deserve it. I’ll always deserve it.”

Bob didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what he could say. Not because it was all too much to process, but because he understood it. He understood what she was feeling. The pain and the anger. The guilt and regret. The shame. He understood it in ways he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

But the silence was loud and Y/N wouldn’t meet his eyes. She just stared at the scene in front of her as her past self’s voice filled the silence between them, her voice rough as she whispered, "You're all better off without me anyways."

Y/N flinched at those words, her face crumbling slightly as she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Bob felt his heart ache at the sight and for a moment, he saw himself sitting there in that chair. But more importantly, he saw her. He saw Y/N for who she truly was. He didn’t know what to say to her to make her better, so instead he just thought it.

I see you.

Y/N's eyes snapped up to him and Bob knew he hadn't had to say that out loud. She had heard him loud and clear.

She stood without another word, her eyes never leaving his as she walked towards him. She was quiet as she stopped in front of him, her gaze turning questioning as she studied him.

You do see me, don't you?

Bob let out a small gasp as her voice echoed in his head. He stared at her with wide eyes, but didn't flinch away not even when she took a step closer so that they were only a breath apart.

I can feel it, you know? That darkness. It calls to me.

"You know where he is?" Bob asked and Y/N quickly shook her head.

"I'm not talking about the Void," she whispered. She gently lifted her hand and placed it on his chest, right above his heart. "Here."

Bob's breath stuttered and he tried to keep his heart from racing as he whispered, "W-what does it say?"

"That it understands," Y/N replied. "That it sees what’s inside my own heart.” She hesitated before giving him a sad smile. “Like calls to like after all."

Bob stared at her, his eyes flickering over her face. He had thought she was pretty before, but up close she was even more beautiful than he could’ve imagined. Her eyebrow quirked slightly as if she had heard that thought and maybe she had, but Y/N was already moving on which he was silently thankful about.

“You feel it too,” she said and Bob didn’t need to say it out loud to confirm her thoughts. After all, he knew what she was talking about and she was right. Ever since he had emerged into this room, he had felt a sort of tug. It was the reason he had stayed. He thought it was because of seeing Tony Stark, but it was because he had felt her from the moment he had stepped foot into that room.

It was because he had seen her before ever laying eyes on her and it seemed she had done the same.

“I don’t know what to do,” Bob admitted, his words strained. “Every time I think I’m getting better, that I’ve finally pulled myself out of that darkness, I just. . .”

“Get pulled back under again?”

Bob was quiet for a moment, his gaze dropping to the floor as that same feeling of shame that always crept up when he thought about his problems beginning to rise in the form of a blush on his neck, “Yeah.”

There was a gentle touch against his chin before Y/N lifted his head so that his gaze met hers once more. Her touched lingered for just a moment, but then her hand was dropping back down to her side. Not once did she move the one that was still resting on his chest and above his heart, the only source of comfort either of them seemed to need.

She gave him a sad smile, her eyes getting a sort of far off look as she whispered, “Sometimes the hardest battle you’ll ever face is with yourself.”

Bob felt tears prick his eyes at those words and for a moment, he even felt a sense of comfort. Someone knew what he was going through. Someone understood.

He had never had that before.

“How do we beat it?” Bob’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Y/N seemed to come back to herself at those words, her eyes locking with his once more and her hand tightened on his shirt. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I’d like to figure that out. Together.”

Bob swore he stopped breathing at those words.

“Together,” he repeated, tears filling his eyes slightly out of disbelief.

Y/N merely nodded and she gently reached up, her thumb quickly swiping under his eye to brush away a stray tear that had fallen. Her own eyes were lined with tears as she whispered through a soft laugh, “Yeah, together. As long as you’re okay with being friends with the girl who does nothing but screw everything up.”

Bob couldn’t stop the small grin that began to peak out, the corners of his lips twitching up slightly as he opened his mouth to respond.

It was then that the doors to the room flew open, darkness flooding in and covering the walls and floors with black tendrils as it raced towards the two. The two stumbled back and away from each other as they tried to avoid the darkness creeping in and Y/N let out a small shout when her past self and Tony dissolved into nothing but shadows.

“Bob,” Y/N called out, but the boy was already reaching for her. He had ahold of her arm within a second and he pulled her to the one corner of the room not covered in darkness just yet.

His eyes were wide as he scanned what was left of the room, his grip tightening on Y/N’s arm in slight panic and confusion as he tried to process what was happening.

The darkness had never come after Bob before.

Not like this.

Something had signaled the Void. Something had scared him.

Bob’s eyes flickered to Y/N who was leaning into his touch, the tips of her fingers already beginning to glow white as she clearly analyzed the situation. His fingers felt warm against her forearm and for a moment he let himself remember the feel of her hand on his chest, the way her breath had fanned his face, and the way her words had wrapped around his heart like a hug he hadn't know he had needed.

And he knew.

The Void fed off of his sadness and loneliness and whatever Y/N had been making him feel was the opposite. The Void would do whatever he needed to crush this feeling, to stay in control. Even if it meant there were casualties along the way.

Bob’s heart ached at that thought and he quickly turned to Y/N who was backing closer to him as they were pushed further into the corner of the room and her memory. She moved her arm out of his grasp in order to hold her hands up, a white light emitting out against the darkness as she tried to hold it at bay.

"Bob, what's going on?" she asked. "What do we do?"

"I—" Bob was panicking now, the thought of Y/N getting hurt making him feel so many emotions that he hadn't felt in a long time. It scared him how much he felt towards the girl within just one conversation. He already knew he would do whatever needed to be done to save her and that thought alone scared him in more ways than one. Even more than the plan that was beginning to develop in his head, the plan that would save Y/N but would mean leaving her at the same time.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Y/N's head whipped in his direction. "Bob, no. You can't run. You have to fight this thing. If you don't, the darkness will only continue to consume you," she said.

"Cause you know what that's like?" Bob retorted, his panic and fear making him sound bitter. "We just watched the same memory over and over of you letting the darkness take over. If you can't fight it, what makes you think I can?"

Y/N's eyes softened slightly. "Bob," she started, but the darkness pushed closer towards them and she let out a strangled sound as she strained to keep her powers in check.

Bob watched her for a second, his eyes flickering over her one last time before he leaned forward. His lips brushed gently against her ear and he felt her shiver slightly under his touch. His breath came out shaky as he whispered, "I would've liked to be your friend."

Then, before she could do or say anything else, Bob had pulled back and thrown himself against the wall of the memory. His body broke through the barrier and into the next room, the darkness leaving Y/N behind in favor of chasing the boy.

"Bob!" Y/N cried out as she attempted to lunge after him, but the darkness threw her back and by the time she was up on her feet again, the memory had sealed itself around her, forcing her to relive the same moment with Tony while Bob got away.

- - -

Bob didn’t know how long he ran for. All he knew was that it took forever for him to get back to his own rooms. He almost cried when the meth chicken scene appeared before him, but he didn’t stop there. He continued his trek even after the darkness eventually faded away, now satisfied that Bob was back where he belonged.

Everything was just too loud, the memories too much for Bob to withstand while that feeling of utter loneliness crept up on him once more. It was foolish of him to think he could ever have someone understand him, that he could ever have someone in his life without hurting them in the end. He had done this to himself.

He deserved to be alone.

At some point Bob eventually managed to find the attic of one of his memories, the only quiet place in this miserable void, and he was quick to tuck himself away in there, away from all the noise and the darkness that he could feel feeding off of everyone's chaos.

It was only then that he sat down and curled in on himself, his breathing shaky as he tried to push every last thought of Y/N out of his head.

"She's better off without me," Bob whispered to himself like a mantra, his head tucked close to his knees as he let the stillness envelope him in a hug much different than the one Y/N’s words had given him. “She’s better off without me.”

“Everyone is.”

[wynnerwynner]

I headcanon that, in moments of peace, Bob fidgets with his partner's hair, because he likes the feeling in his fingers😭😭

.- (🦇)

𝐇𝐂: 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑

bob reynolds x nb!reader

warnings: spoiler free :)

a/n: i highkey love writing headcanons bc they're so easy and quick to put together hehe gimme more y'all

Bob is a huge fidgeter

With his attention span being so short and his own thoughts simply being loud in his head, he almost always needs something to occupy him

Before he met you, he’d pick at the skin around his fingers or bite his nails

He wanted to break the habit but he found himself doing it without even realizing

Then when you came along he found himself more at ease

He was able to finally break the habit by touching you instead

It started out when he would read a book and with your head on his lap he’d run his fingers through your hair

As his nails grew back and the biting almost entirely ceased, the feeling of his nails gently scratching your scalp brought you both comfort

His fidgeting with your hair progressed as time went on

Bob never used to attend team meetings because he could never participate in being a superhero but he changed his mind after you showed up

He wanted to stay up to date on what was happening and lend his support to you however he could

When you’d get stressed trying to come up with a plan, his hand would snake up the back of your neck and settle at your hair line, his fingers scratching and massaging your scalp there

Sometimes you’d catch him biting his nails so you’d take his fingers in your own and his free hand would come up to your face

He’d push your hair behind your ear, then pull it loose again just so he could feel the softness as he rid it from your eyes one last time

His favourite thing was when you’d come back from a long mission and lay in bed

Bob would bring you in close to him and stroke your hair until you fell asleep against his chest

On nights he couldn’t sleep he’d turn over and brush the hair from your face so he could see your features properly

When you were out somewhere and he noticed your hair getting tangled, he’d gently run his fingers through, detangling the small or big knots he found

He loved when you let him brush your hair

You even taught him how to braid and sometimes when you were on the couch with the team watching a movie or in bed after a long day, you’d find him absentmindedly braiding it

[heesmiles]

MAMA, I'M IN LOVE WITH A CRIMINAL P.JS

೨౿ ⠀  ׅ ⠀   ̇ 24k ⸝⸝ . ‌ ׅ ⸺ word count.

pairings 𝜗𝜚 criminal ! jay ៹ rival family ! kang ! reader ᧁ ; smut ˒ angst ˒ violence ˒ romeo and juliet au

warnings ⊹₊ ⋆ smut body worship fingering (in a church) angst graphic depictions of violence dark themes (i’m being serious) kidnapping held captive death injuries forbidden romance romeo and juliet au some toxic religious beliefs small town vibes ft taehyun (txt) ft yunah (illit) ft felix (stray kids) made up names for jay's parents fictional death of real life idols

in which ୨୧ He was a mystery. One you didn't know if you could solve. Hidden behind the shadows of his past and his duty to his family. He was no man for you, no. You needed a good man, a man that could provide and you knew that. So why did you want him so bad? No matter how dangerous, no matter how wrong.

★ ! rain's mic is on ⋆ ͘ . lord. I seen a tiktok edit to Britney Spears 'criminal' with jay and I literally couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm a sucker for Romeo and Juliet type of stories and jay is so perf for this. Also; I hope you guys will understand the ending to this — i tried to make it clear that i was not romanticizing the things that happened in here but also make it known that not everything is black and white in the world; sometimes decisions are more complex than just simply right or wrong. If you have any questions on my intentions with the ending; feel free to respectfully ask and i’m more than happy to explain. There will be no part two.

The chapel smells like old pinewood and older secrets. You sit between your brother and your mother, stiff in your Sunday best, your spine straight as the hymnals stacked behind the pew. The stained-glass windows cast slivers of color across the congregation, blood reds, bruised purples, the blue of a cold winter sky. Light falls like confession, quietly and without permission. You are not paying attention to the sermon. You never do.

The pastor drones on at the pulpit, words like smoke dissolving into the high beams of the chapel ceiling, but your mind drifts toward the murmuring of silk dresses and the creak of wooden pews, toward the undercurrent of small-town theater playing out in god’s house. Your father sits to your left, a statue carved of stone and pride. You feel the tension in his body like a heat source; silent, simmering, the kind of rage that has long since been iced over by responsibility. Your mother holds Minji in her lap, fingers curling gently around your little sister’s arm, but her eyes are watching everyone else in the church. 

The pews smell of lemon oil and something more human, powder and old perfume, the sweat of people trying to look holy. Minji starts kicking the pew in front of you, gently at first, like she’s testing the patience of the wood. Tap, tap, tap. Then harder. Thud. Your brother, Taehyun, flicks her a warning glance, but says nothing. You lean over, whispering sharp and low, like the way your mother does when guests are over “Minji. Stop.”. She glares at you with the full offense of a seven-year-old wronged. Her lip trembles. You already know what’s coming before she opens her mouth. 

She starts to cry; loud, wet, dramatic sobs that echo off the vaulted ceiling like thunder in a quiet storm. Heads turn. A few old women in floral skirts give sympathetic glances; others look annoyed. The pastor doesn’t pause, but you feel the church shift, the way it always does when something unscripted happens. Your mother turns to you, lips tight, voice sweetly cutting.  “Take her to the bathroom,” she hisses, her nails brushing your wrist like a warning. “Now.” You nod, standing and tugging Minji’s hand. She follows, sniffling, dragging her feet like she’s on the way to execution. You step out into the aisle, heat rising in your cheeks from the attention; most eyes pretend not to watch, but you feel them. You always feel them. Small towns are built on watching. You rush to the bathroom in the very back of the church, closed off and muggy. Surrounded by a long hallway of doors upon doors with who knows what in them. 

The bathroom smells like baby powder and old tile, the kind of sterile clean that never truly feels clean. Minji is humming a made-up song to herself behind the heavy door, the sound broken now and then by the rush of the faucet and the scrape of her shoes against the floor. You lean against the opposite wall, arms crossed, eyes flicking across the narrow hallway that leads deeper into the back corridors of the church; the kind of place children are told not to wander and adults forget to remember. It’s quiet here. Too quiet. You can still hear the low cadence of the sermon through the walls, like a heartbeat underwater. But underneath that; there. A sound. A sharp rustle, then a low thump. Muffled. Human. 

You stiffen. For a moment, it’s nothing. Could be a broom falling over, could be the wind sneaking through the stained glass seams. But then it comes again: a grunt, quick and strangled. Another thud. You glance toward the end of the hall, where a door hangs slightly ajar. Beyond it, darkness pools like ink in the corners of the church’s storage room. A place for old hymnals, broken nativity statues, forgotten folding chairs. You shouldn’t move. You know this. Every instinct in you, trained by caution, by family, by a lifetime of walking straight lines, tells you to stay planted, to wait for Minji and return to your seat and never speak of what you thought you heard. But curiosity, you’ve learned, is a quiet rebellion. A whisper that grows teeth. 

So you walk. Slowly. Barefoot-quiet in your heeled shoes. You reach the door, place your palm on the wood, breath hitched in your throat like a prayer waiting to break. You lean in, ear to the crack. Another grunt. And a voice; feminine, breathy, choked with a sound you’ve only ever heard behind closed doors in dramas you weren’t allowed to watch. You flinch, but your hand betrays you, fingers curling around the handle like it belongs to you. And then you open it. 

The light from the hallway slashes across the room, carving shadows into skin. You freeze. Park Jongseong. His back is bare, muscles flexing like a marble sculpture brought violently to life. His shirt is bunched around his waist, and his hands are on a girl. A girl you recognize, barely. Yumi. Her mouth is open in a gasp that doesn’t get the chance to leave. Her dress hiked up like it never belonged to her in the first place. Their limbs are tangled, their sins so vivid it feels like you're watching a sacred text being burned. Jay looks up. His eyes catch yours like a knife catches light. They widen, not with guilt, but with recognition — you, of all people. The breath leaves your lungs like glass shattering on cold tile. You slam the door so hard it rattles the frame.  

You’re trembling, though you don’t know if it’s from shame or shock or some strange cocktail of both. You spin around, heart thudding a war drum in your chest. Minji is just stepping out of the bathroom, drying her small hands on her dress. She doesn’t notice the way your hands shake as you reach for hers. Doesn’t see the way your eyes are wide, unfocused, filled with something that shouldn’t be there. “We’re going back,” you say, voice too high, too sharp. She doesn’t argue. Just nods and follows you, humming again, a tune too sweet for the ruin in your chest. 

You walk back into the sanctuary like a ghost in a girl’s body. You sit beside your mother, folding your hands in your lap like nothing happened, like you didn’t just see sin spill in a place meant for salvation. Your father doesn't glance at you. Taehyun doesn’t notice. But your mother turns slightly, just enough to give you a once-over; the kind that sees everything and says nothing. She thinks the crying was too much for you. She thinks you’ve been startled by your sister’s fit. And maybe she’s right, in a way. You’ve been startled. You’ve been unmade. 

And across the church, hidden in the shadows of holy silence, you feel him. Jay. And it’s not just what he did. It’s not just the shame of seeing it. It’s the way he looked at you. Like you were the one caught. Like he had nothing to hide. You stare straight ahead at the altar, but your mind stays in that room, with the taste of heat and velvet breath and the raw burn of a boundary shattered. You were innocent. Now, you’re aware. And awareness, you’re beginning to realize, is the beginning of every great tragedy. 

The service ends with the gentle hush of murmured amens and the rustle of Sunday clothes brushing past one another like leaves in a breeze. The congregation begins its slow migration out of the pews, a tide of polite smiles, handshakes, and the same conversations they’ve had for years, wearing different dresses. Your mother and father slip easily into their places; your father all firm nods and clipped words, your mother like a practiced socialite, her smile painted just perfectly at the edges. You, Taehyun, and Minji remain behind, lingering in your spot like the forgotten echo of a hymn, three children carved from the same silence. 

Minji swings her legs, her little shoes knocking against the pew in soft rhythm. She’s already forgotten the earlier outburst, too busy playing with the lace trim of her dress and watching Soojin across the room with an expression that flickers between curiosity and envy. Taehyun leans back, arms crossed, eyes roving lazily over the crowd. You try not to look for him. Not for Jay. But your eyes betray you like they always do, wandering before your mind gives them permission. And there he is. Standing by his mother, tall and lean like a shadow at sunset, too sharp around the edges to be beautiful, but too striking to ignore. Jay. His hands are in his pockets, posture relaxed, but there's a glint in his eye, dangerous, knowing. His mouth tilts into a crooked, unbearable smirk when his gaze meets yours. 

Like a match lit in the back of your throat. He knows. He knows you saw. You look down instantly, cheeks burning, staring at your shoes as though they can explain how to erase memory. But there’s no forgetting the picture burned into your eyelids. No way to smother the sound of that half-stifled breath, the friction of skin, the fall of a name not yours. You hear your name drift through the air like a ripple over still water. “Come here, sweetheart,” your mother calls, her voice sweet enough to sting. You rise on instinct, smoothing your skirt with trembling hands, and walk the long aisle toward her like you’re walking a tightrope, each step balanced between ruin and restraint. 

She stands with Jay’s mother, who is dressed in pastel pink, too pristine for the venom coiled beneath her voice. Their conversation is coated in sugar, but you can hear the brittle underneath; like porcelain tea cups about to crack. “Oh, she’s grown so much,” Jay’s mother says, her smile wide and empty. “Just lovely.” Your mother laughs, high and bright like wind chimes in a storm. “Time goes fast. I can barely keep up.” 

You can feel their words curling around you like ivy, decorative and choking. You nod, bow your head politely, try not to flinch as Soojin skips up to Minji and pulls her by the hand to the patch of grass outside the chapel. They giggle, bright as birdsong, unaware of the blood history buried beneath their fathers’ names. And beside them, like a wolf in Sunday clothes, stands Jay. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. He looks at you like he’s still in that room. Like he can still see you there, wide-eyed, breathless, trembling at the threshold of something you shouldn’t have witnessed. His smirk deepens, lazy and cruel, and you feel it all the way in your stomach.

Your skin prickles. “What the hell was that look?” Taehyun mutters behind you, his tone low, edged with suspicion. He nudges you sharply with his knee, and you nearly stumble. You keep your eyes on your feet. “Nothing,” you say, too quickly. “I’ll tell you later.”

Taehyun narrows his eyes but doesn’t push. He knows you. He knows when to wait. You stand there, between your mother and your enemy’s mother, with your hands clasped and your mouth sewn shut, while your past, your present, and your sins walk the churchyard outside; laughing like children, smirking like boys who don’t believe in consequences. You think maybe you don’t either. Not anymore. 

The conversation begins to wilt, as all forced things do; smiles sagging at the corners, eyes flicking elsewhere in search of escape. Your mother and Jay’s mother trade the kind of compliments that glitter like broken glass: delicate, dazzling, and meant to cut. Behind them, laughter ripples from the church lawn, where Minji and Soojin chase each other in slow, dizzying circles, their dresses fanning out like blooming petals, too young to know the soil they’re rooted in. You glance once toward Jay, who leans against the edge of the wooden steps with his hands still buried in his pockets, his dark hair curling slightly at his temple, his expression unreadable now, less amused, more distant, as if even he feels the weight pressing down from generations above him. And then your father arrives. 

He moves through the crowd like a tide against stone, unyielding and deliberate. The chatter quiets a little wherever he steps, the way air thins before a storm. You feel him before he speaks; a presence that coils around your ribcage and makes your breath shallow. His eyes are sharp beneath the brim of his hat, and when he stops beside your mother, you see the brief flicker of something harden in Jay’s mother’s posture. “Mrs. Park,” he says, voice even, smooth, but cold in the way marble is cold. “Where’s your husband this fine morning? Too busy for the Lord?” 

She blinks once. Her smile holds, but only just. “Business,” she replies. “He’s out of town, dealing with a shipment issue in the city.” Your father’s silence stretches just long enough to make everyone feel it. “I’m sure he is,” he says finally, the words slow and heavy, like stones dropped into a still pond. The implication hangs there; thick, clinging, undeniable. 

You feel your stomach twist. Even the sun seems to dim for a moment, slipping behind a lazy cloud as if to shield its eyes. Your mother steps in like a practiced violinist interrupting a wrong note mid-performance. Her hand grazes your father’s elbow with the familiarity of a thousand such interventions. “Well,” she says lightly, too brightly, “we should be going. The roast will overcook if we linger much longer.” She turns to Jay’s mother with that polished grace only women in battle can master. “It was so lovely catching up. Truly.” 

Jay’s mother nods. Her smile has slipped further now, the edges brittle. “Of course. Always.” You’re ushered away quickly, your mother’s hand at your back firm and urging, her pace brisk as she gathers Minji from the grass, calls for Taehyun, and pulls your family together like a shepherd herding sheep out of a lion’s den. No one speaks until the church doors are behind you, the air suddenly cooler, less suffocating.

You’re nearly free. The gravel of the church path crunches beneath your shoes as your family moves forward, a cluster of matching postures and purposeful steps, like soldiers retreating from a battlefield dressed in Sunday best. The weight begins to lift from your chest, bit by bit, with every step away from those lingering glances and brittle conversations. You tell yourself you’ll forget what you saw, that it was an accident, a fleeting mistake swallowed by stained glass and holy silence. But just as you pass the old oak tree near the chapel gate, a hand snakes out and closes around your wrist. You freeze. The world seems to narrow into a pinprick.

Jay. His fingers are calloused, his grip strong; not enough to hurt, but enough to root you to the spot like a nail through your spine. He’s close. Too close. His face is calm, cold, carved from the same shadows that seem to cling to him even in the daylight. There is no trace of that smirk now. No mischief. No boyish charm. Just steel. “Don’t tell anyone what you saw,” he says, low and sharp, each word slicing into the quiet like the snap of a branch underfoot. “Or you’ll regret it.” 

There’s no drama in his voice, no raised tone, no overt threat. Just certainty. Like a promise. Or a prophecy. Your breath lodges somewhere beneath your ribs. You can’t even muster a word, only a nod, small and trembling, as your heart begins to stutter inside your chest like it’s trying to run ahead of you. He lets go as suddenly as he appeared, melting back into the periphery like a sin you can’t prove you committed. The imprint of his touch remains, hot and phantomlike, as you hurry back to your family with your head down and your thoughts unraveling at the seams. You slip into step beside them just in time to hear your father’s voice break the fragile calm. 

“If I ever catch you talking to the likes of Park Jongseong,” he says, without turning his head, “I will ship you off to a convent so fast you’ll be reciting rosaries before supper.” The words hang in the air, stark and heavy as thunderclouds. “Yes, Daddy,” you say softly, your voice a breath against the wind, your eyes fixed on the ground. And that’s it. No argument. No protest. Because even if you wanted to fight, what would you say? That you didn’t talk to him? That his hand found yours, not the other way around? That he threatened you? That you saw something you can’t unsee?

No. You say nothing. You bow your head like the good girl you’re supposed to be. Like a daughter dressed in obedience and stitched with silence. But beneath your skin, something writhes. Something that feels a lot like shame and a little like fear, but more than anything, like curiosity warped by danger. And as the chapel disappears behind you, you realize this is how it begins. Not with a kiss. But with a warning. 

That night the dining room is warm with the scent of roast chicken and buttered root vegetables, the table laid with modest care, linen napkins folded neatly, wine glasses filled just a touch too high, as though the evening itself demanded the illusion of celebration. Outside, the crickets begin their song beneath the veil of twilight, and the house hums gently with the quiet rituals of family: chairs scraping wood, silverware clinking like distant bells, Minji humming to herself between bites of mashed potatoes. 

You sit across from Taehyun, who nudges your foot under the table once, curious, wordless, but you give him nothing. Not yet. Your mother, dressed in her favorite pale blue blouse, cuts her meat with careful precision, while your father, ever the figure carved from unyielding stone, sips from his wine like it's an act of judgment rather than indulgence. The conversation flits from the mundane to the mechanical, your father talking about a shipment delay, your mother noting the fundraiser next month, Taehyun making a dry comment about work. You listen halfheartedly, moving food around your plate, your thoughts wandering back to the church, to the oak tree, to the ghost of a hand still wrapped around your wrist. But then your mother says it. 

“So,” she begins lightly, as though she’s offering a dessert menu instead of kindling a fire, “Jiyo invited us to dinner next Saturday.” The clink of your father’s knife against his plate is immediate. A small, sharp sound that lands like a gavel. 

“She what?” he says, his voice too calm, the kind of calm that thins the air. Your mother waves her hand, trying to dismiss the storm before it forms. “Just a friendly gesture. She said she’s wanted to reconnect. It’s been years since we’ve sat down like civilized people.” Your father laughs, but it’s humorless, a short, cutting sound like a blade being tested. “And you said yes?”  

“I said I’d think about it.” 

He sets down his fork, dabs his mouth with a napkin, and leans back in his chair like a man preparing to deliver a verdict. “You know how I feel about Chul. That woman chose to build her life beside a snake. What makes you think we owe them the performance of kindness?” 

“She’s not her husband,” your mother says, her tone still soft but no longer passive. “She’s always been sweet to me. To the kids. Especially when you were… gone.” The word lingers — gone — and you feel it hit the table like a dropped stone. Your father’s jaw tightens. “There’s nothing sweet about a woman who lays down with scum and lets him poison the earth around him.” 

“Well,” your mother says, straightening her back, her voice sharpening to a whisper-thin edge, “then I suppose I must be just as rotten. I married a man who once made deals with him too, didn’t I?” The silence that follows is deafening. Your father turns slowly to her, his expression unreadable but his eyes like winter; the kind of cold that doesn’t melt come spring. “Say that again?”

Your mother holds his gaze for half a second longer, a war trembling behind her lashes. But she looks away. She says nothing. Only returns to her plate and cuts her chicken in silence. And that’s it. The conversation dies. No one breathes too loudly. Minji doesn’t notice, she hums and chews and swings her feet. Taehyun reaches for the salt, eyes flicking to yours with quiet warning. Your appetite vanishes like mist in morning sun.

Outside, the wind brushes the windows like fingers trying to get in. Inside, you realize that your family is not made of glass, but of iron, bent into shape by betrayal, rusted over with resentment. And some metals, you think, cannot be reforged. Only buried. 

The night unfurls like silk, cool and gentle, stitched with stars. The backyard hums with crickets and the distant rustle of trees whispering secrets to one another in the dark. You’re curled on a poolside lounge chair, the spine of your book bent beneath your thumb, but your eyes have glossed over the same sentence three times. The page is just a veil now; something to hide behind while your mind wades through the wreckage of the day. The pool glows a soft, pale blue beneath the surface lights, and Taehyun slices through it like a blade through water. His strokes are steady, strong, the kind of motion that speaks of routine, of something he’s learned to rely on. You envy that; his ability to push everything down, to lose himself in rhythm and breath and the sound of water folding in on itself. 

You sigh and adjust your legs, the night air cool against your skin. Sometimes, in rare hours like this, you let yourself believe Taehyun might be the only one who truly sees you. The only one who knows how to read the pauses between your words, the weight behind your silences. Besides Yunah, who is far away tonight, it's always been him; your confidant, your reluctant protector, your brother. He swims one final lap, then glides to the edge and pulls himself out in a single fluid motion, water streaming off his skin in rivulets that catch the dim light. He grabs a towel from the back of a chair and rubs it through his hair, gaze flicking toward you, unreadable but searching. You wait. You know it’s coming. 

He sits at the pool’s edge, legs dangling in the water, shoulders still rising and falling from exertion. The silence thickens, until finally he breaks it. “What was that today?” he asks. “At church. Jay looked at you like…” He pauses, frowns. “And then he grabbed you. What the hell was that about?” You close your book slowly. The words don’t come easily. They never do when shame tangles them first. But this is Taehyun. If there’s anyone you can give them to, raw and imperfect, it’s him. 

“I saw something,” you begin softly. Your voice is barely a whisper, as if the night might shatter if you speak too loudly. “In the church. When I took Minji to the bathroom.” His eyes don’t leave your face. “There were… noises. From one of the storage rooms. I thought someone was hurt,” you say. “But when I opened the door, it was—” You hesitate. “It was Jay. With some girl. Yumi, I think. They were…” 

Taehyun groans, dragging a hand down his face before you can even finish. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” you murmur, hugging your knees to your chest. “I slammed the door shut. I didn’t even mean to see it.” 

“And that’s why he grabbed you?” Taehyun says, his voice laced with disbelief and anger, a storm gathering behind his words. “That’s why he gave you that look; like he was daring you to open your mouth.” You nod. “He told me not to tell anyone. Said I’d regret it.” 

Taehyun curses again, sharper this time. “What a goddamn asshole.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, shaking his head like he’s trying to physically rid himself of the thought. “He treats people like shit. Always has. He walks around like the world owes him something for the family name he was born into. I don’t care how tragic his little story is; his dad screwing over ours, his mom pretending to be sweet, he’s just as rotten.” 

The silence stretches again, heavy with unspoken fears and the slow bloom of something darker. “He’s sick for doing that in a church,” Taehyun mutters, his voice low and hard. “And then threatening you about it? He’s lucky it was you who saw him and not me.” You glance at him then, at the way his jaw clenches, his hands balled into fists against his thighs. It should comfort you, the fierceness in him, the way he leaps to your defense without question. But instead, it only deepens the ache inside you. Because no matter how wrong it is, no matter how much your brother’s fury burns bright and righteous, there’s a whisper in the back of your mind that still wonders what it is about Jay Park that makes your heart stutter like that.

“I won’t talk to him,” you say quietly, more to convince yourself than him. “Good,” Taehyun says, looking over at you. “Because that boy doesn’t just bring trouble. He is trouble.” And yet even as the stars blink overhead and the pool water laps gently against tile, you feel the echo of Jay’s voice coil around your spine like smoke. You know what you saw. And worse; you know what you felt. You tuck your head against your knees and close your eyes, wishing the night could swallow the memory whole. But some things, once seen, never go quiet again. 

The house is still, cloaked in the velvety hush of after-hours, when dreams drip slow like honey and silence wraps around the walls like an old lover. The moon hangs low outside your window, its pale light slanting across your bedroom floor like an invitation, or a warning. You wake to something — not a dream, no — but the low hum of voices bleeding through the stillness, muffled and sharp, like the scrape of metal under cloth. Your breath catches. You sit up slowly, ears straining. The clock beside your bed reads just past three. The voices murmur again. 

You slip out of bed on bare feet, the cold floor biting against your skin as you tiptoe to the door. The hallway yawns long and dark before you, stretched like a corridor in some haunted chapel, the air thicker here, like it's been keeping secrets of its own. You hold your breath and follow the murmurs, each step soft, careful, barely there. The kitchen glows faintly ahead. dim yellow light spilling out like spilled whiskey beneath the doorframe. You press yourself to the wall and lean forward just enough to see. Your father stands near the table, sleeves rolled up, a glass untouched by his hand. Taehyun leans against the counter, arms crossed, face grim, eyes flickering toward two men you’ve never seen before, older, stern, the kind of men who carry weight without needing to raise their voices. They speak in hushed tones, but the tension rides every syllable, thick and bitter. 

“…can’t let them find out we’re disturbing their shipments,” one of the men says, low and urgent. “If Chul gets wind of it, he’ll burn this town down to find the leak.” Your heart jolts. Shipments? Leak? “They already suspect something,” the second man adds, fingers drumming against the table like a metronome counting down to disaster. “That little punk, Jay, he robbed one of our guys. Sent a message. You know what that means.” 

Your father’s face is carved from stone. “Of course I do.” Your stomach twists. Jay. “He’s getting reckless,” the man continues. “Acting like he’s untouchable. We don’t deal with people like that.” 

Taehyun’s voice is calm, but edged like a blade honed too long. “He can try,” he mutters. “If he comes near our side again, I’ll handle it.” Your blood runs cold. There’s no hesitation in his tone, only the promise of violence. Your hand flies to your mouth, breath trembling through your fingers. The room spins slightly, your body suddenly too small, too quiet for the weight of what you've just heard. The world feels different now, fractured. You’d known there were histories buried beneath this town, old grudges and whispered deals that had sunk roots deeper than the oak trees. But this — this was something else.

They weren’t just rivals. They were at war. And Jay, whatever he was to you, whatever strange heat curled around your being when you thought of him, was in the center of it. 

You back away from the doorway, heart racing, afraid they’ll hear the thunder of it. You scurry down the hallway like a ghost retracing its steps, back into the sanctuary of your room where shadows feel safer than light. You close the door with trembling hands and slide down the back of it, sinking to the floor. Your mind echoes with voices; dangerous, sharp-edged voices and Jay’s name spinning like a coin tossed too high. Sleep does not find you again that night. Only questions. And fear. 

The morning slips in on golden threads, soft and unassuming, the kind of light that warms the wooden floorboards and dapples the countertops in sleepy patches. You haven’t said a word about what you heard the night before those heavy truths folded into the silence between heartbeats but they thrum beneath your skin like a second pulse. Still, when your mother calls you down the hallway, brisk and bright, you answer as if nothing inside you has changed. “Put on something nice,” she says, her voice already trailing off into the kitchen. “We’re heading to the bake sale. Church is raising funds for that wedding coming up. Sohiya and Heeseung, bless them.” 

You pause with your hand on the stair rail, her words wrapping around your throat like ivy. Sohiya. She was your age, sweet and soft-spoken, with delicate wrists and laughter like wind chimes. And Heeseung, kind-eyed and quiet, the type who always held the door open and bowed his head when he prayed. The idea of them marrying, so young, so sudden, presses strangely on your chest. You dress in silence, the pastel linen of your skirt swishing against your legs like a lullaby as you smooth your hair, your reflection half-faded in the antique mirror on your wall. Outside, the town is already stirring, the sleepy streets of your village slowly waking, touched by the scent of sugar and cinnamon wafting through the breeze. 

At the town square, white tents have been strung with bunting, and tables bow beneath the weight of confections, pies with latticed crusts, sugar cookies shaped like doves, and cupcakes topped with icing roses that seem too delicate to eat. The air hums with the soft murmur of neighbors, laughter bubbling here and there like springwater. It is all so pleasant, so falsely perfect, like a painting trying to forget the shadows in its corners. You spot Yunah by the jam stall, her dark braid swinging as she waves you over with a grin, her mother deep in conversation with someone about flour prices and wedding favors. As soon as you reach her, she grabs your arm and leans in, eyes glinting with mischief. 

“Have you heard?” she whispers, the kind of tone that makes your stomach drop before you even know why. “Sohiya’s pregnant. That’s why the wedding’s so rushed.” Your brows lift in quiet shock. Yunah nods, savoring your reaction like a bite of forbidden cake. “I heard it from my cousin who heard it from Eunju, who heard it from her older sister. Her parents found out last week and demanded the wedding happen before anyone else starts talking.” 

You glance across the bake sale and find Sohiya near the lemonade stand, her hands wringing the hem of her blouse, Heeseung standing beside her like a ghost, present, but hollow. She looks tired, like someone who’s been carrying a secret too long, her smile wilting at the edges every time someone congratulates her. Your heart aches in the quiet way only girlhood understands. You’re the same age. You’ve braided your hair the same, sat in the same church pews, hummed the same hymns. But now she’s stepping into a life that feels ten years too soon. A house. A husband. A child. 

“I couldn’t imagine,” you murmur, voice soft and low, “being married right now.” Yunah shrugs, biting into a shortbread cookie. “You and me both. But you know how this town is. A scandal like that?” She shakes her head. “It’s either a wedding or exile.” You nod slowly, eyes lingering on Sohiya, on the way she keeps glancing over her shoulder like the whispers might catch up to her. The same way you feel the breath of last night’s secrets still clinging to yours. Beneath the sugar and sunlight, the square feels brittle. Like one wrong word could make it all shatter. 

It happens suddenly, like thunder splitting the hush of an approaching storm. One moment you’re nibbling on a vanilla cupcake and nodding along as Yunah whispers about scandalous bridal fittings and strict seamstresses, and the next, the air warps; sharp, brittle, buzzing like a struck wire. The shift is instant, the kind of moment that bends the bones of a quiet afternoon and sets hearts galloping. You hear it first; a voice, sharp and raw with fury. Then the low, sickening thud of someone being shoved against a wall.

Your head snaps toward the commotion, and the whole bake sale ripples with the echo of gasps and stilled conversations. Tables tremble, frosting smears, and parents clutch their children a little closer. Near the corner of the community center, just beneath the old iron sconce where flyers for choir practice flutter weakly, Jay is pinned; pressed against sun-warmed brick by another boy, taller, angrier, eyes gleaming with betrayal. It’s Felix. You know him. Sweet-talking, easy-laughing Felix who works at the town’s little mechanic shop and always smells like motor oil and mint gum. His voice is raised now, ragged and venomous. 

“You fucked my girlfriend, you sick bastard!” he roars, his arm slamming across Jay’s chest, voice loud enough to slice through every inch of sugar-sweet air. Yumi is there too, her mascara running like rivers down her cheeks, her hands fluttering uselessly in front of her as she pleads with Felix, voice breaking like porcelain in her throat. “It wasn’t like that, please,” she cries, grabbing at his arm. “Please, stop. It was a mistake — he didn’t mean—” 

But Jay only stands there, infuriatingly calm. There’s a half-lidded smirk painted across his lips, smug and gleaming like polished obsidian. “Relax, Felix,” he drawls, voice thick with venom-laced honey. “I didn’t know she was yours. She didn’t exactly say no.” The words are a match. Felix snaps. His fist connects with Jay’s jaw in a brutal arc, a punch that sounds like thunder cracking bone. Gasps scatter like doves taking flight. Yumi shrieks, and a cupcake tray crashes to the ground somewhere nearby, frosting splattering like a pink and white wound. 

Jay stumbles back from the blow, hand flying to his cheek but then he laughs. Actually laughs, a low, taunting sound, wild and cruel and so full of gall it steals the breath from your lungs. “You hit like a fucking choir boy,” he spits, blood blooming on his lower lip like a rose in ruin. People rush in, pastors, parents, volunteers with gloved hands and worried brows pulling Felix back, dragging Jay away, trying to stitch dignity back into the seams of a moment too far undone. 

The crowd swells, then parts. Jay is being hauled out by a man in a navy windbreaker and a church elder with trembling hands. But even bruised, even bleeding, Jay looks untouchable; smirking like he owns the goddamn town. And then he sees you. Eyes dark as ink, wild with something you can’t name. He meets your gaze across the chaos, across the bodies and ruined cakes and shattered calm. He winks. It’s slow. Intentional. And it sets your spine on fire. You forget how to breathe. He disappears into the crowd, the echo of that wink burning behind your eyes like the sun. 

Your heart is still galloping when the crowd begins to settle, when the ripples of scandal soften into murmurs and murmurs dissolve into sugared distractions. Parents usher children away with tight smiles and tighter hands, as if sweetness could scrub away the memory of fists and curses. Jay is gone, at least from sight. But not from your mind. “You know,” Yunah says beside you, folding her arms, her voice sharpened with knowing, “he’s no good. Just trouble in designer clothes.”

You nod, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. What you’re expected to believe. What every decent girl in this village is raised to fear. But inside you, curiosity blooms like a slow-burning match, small and dangerous. You mumble something about needing the bathroom and excuse yourself before she can press further, her eyes already narrowing in suspicion. The church looms behind you as you slip away, its whitewashed walls glowing warm in the early afternoon light, the air thick with the scent of sun-baked frosting and wilted roses. But beneath it — just barely, you catch another scent. Smoke. Acrid, earthy, wrong. 

You follow it. Each step feels reckless, like dancing barefoot on a chapel floor. Like carving your name into a hymnbook. The scent grows stronger as you round the corner of the church, your breath catching in your throat like a moth in a jar. And there he is. Jay.

He leans against the wall like he was born to break rules and balance on the edge of forgiveness. One foot propped behind him, head tilted back, the collar of his shirt loosened and stained with a drop of blood near the seam. His cigarette glows like an ember in the low light, the curl of smoke rising from it like a ghost ascending. He doesn’t look surprised to see you. In fact, he barely even glances your way. Just takes a drag, exhales slow, like the chaos he caused hasn’t even nicked his soul. Like the fight, the punch, the girl, the whispers, none of it mattered. 

“Didn’t think you’d come looking,” he says finally, voice low, almost bored. But there’s a thread of something else underneath; taunt or tease, you can’t tell. “You don’t seem the type.”  You should leave. You should turn around, march back to the bake sale, and pretend you never followed smoke down a church wall. But your feet stay planted, heart hammering as loud as the chapel bells. You don’t say a word. You just watch him, silently, like he’s a puzzle carved from shadow and sin and the ache of wanting something you know you shouldn’t. 

Jay flicks ash onto the gravel path, his eyes cutting toward you through the smoke, one brow raised lazily. His lip is split, a bloom of red painting the edge of his smirk. “You see something you like?” he asks. And for one terrible, breathless moment you don’t know the answer. The question drips from his mouth like smoke, slow, curling, coaxing. Not crude, not exactly. But not innocent, either. It lands somewhere in the charged space between your ribs and your throat, where breath gets tangled with hesitation.

You should scoff. Roll your eyes. Offer him the same disdain he so casually invites from the world. But you don’t. Because there’s something about the way he looks at you; like you’re not just another girl in a white dress and soft shoes, but someone he sees through, into. Like he knows your name and the weight it carries. Knows the walls you live behind, and the cracks that run silent and deep beneath your polished smile. You step closer without meaning to, arms crossed loosely, trying to look like the kind of girl who doesn’t care what boys like him say. But your voice comes softer than you mean for it to. “I didn’t come looking for you.” 

Jay chuckles, low and dark, like gravel skimming the bottom of a stream. He doesn’t believe you. That much is clear. He drops the cigarette to the dirt and grinds it out with the heel of his boot, the smoke hissing away like a secret being silenced. “No?” he says, stepping just slightly forward, head tilted. “Then why are you here, church girl?” You flinch a little at the nickname. It’s not mean. But there’s weight in it. A reminder of everything you’re supposed to be. Everything he isn’t. 

“I heard… noise,” you mumble, eyes darting away, to the cracked siding of the church wall. “From earlier. I just… I wanted to see if you were okay.” Jay scoffs this time, straightens, stretches the muscles in his shoulders like a wolf rising from slumber. “You mean after I got punched for screwing some girl who cried over it?” 

He says it like it doesn’t matter. Like he doesn’t matter. Like none of it, the punch, the drama, the girl, was anything more than a flicker in the dark. And still, the wound at the edge of his lip glistens like it wants to be noticed. You hesitate, then speak quietly. “That was cruel. What you did.” 

He watches you now, like your words are more interesting than they have any right to be. “Probably,” he agrees, not flinching. “But she knew what it was. I’m not the one playing pretend.” The words settle over you like dust, heavy and old and aching. You want to hate him. You really, truly do. You want to believe he’s everything your father says, that he’s rotten at the root, grown from betrayal and greed and the same sharp-edged steel his father used to cut yours down. 

But he looks at you then, and there’s something in his expression, not smugness, not bravado; but something rawer. Wearier. Like he’s been fighting a war so long he’s forgotten what peace feels like. You find your voice again, softer now. “Why do you act like this?” Jay blinks slowly, like you’ve asked him a question no one’s ever dared to. Then, in a voice barely louder than a confession, he says, “Because people already made up their minds about me a long time ago. Figured I might as well give them what they want.” It slices through the silence like a nail through silk.

You swallow, the wind tugging at your skirt, the chapel bells tolling in the distance; calling the faithful back inside, as if to protect them from boys like him and girls like you who linger too long in the gray. Jay takes a step back, pulling another cigarette from the pocket of his jacket, but he doesn’t light it. Just rolls it between his fingers like a habit he hasn’t learned how to quit. “Run along now,” he mutters, eyes dark. “Before your daddy comes lookin’. Wouldn’t want you shipped off to a convent, would we?”

And this time, when he smirks, there’s no cruelty in it. Just something almost sad. You hesitate one more breath, just one, before turning, your footsteps light on the gravel, your heart anything but. But as you leave, you can feel his gaze still on your back. Burning. Etching your outline into his memory like a prayer he’ll never speak. 

You scurry back around the side of the church, fingers fumbling with the hem of your dress, your breath still tinged with the ghost of smoke. The sun presses down hard now, warm and high in the sky, yet you feel cold beneath your skin, as though the truth of that boy has left a frostbite behind, unseen but pulsing. The bake sale has resumed its sugary rhythm, laughter bubbling from ladies with sunhats and teenagers handing out lemonade like the world isn’t slowly unraveling around you. As if it’s all sweet and simple, and boys like Jay Park don’t burn holes in the script you were meant to follow.

Yunah finds you with a look that speaks volumes, one brow raised, lips pursed slightly like she already knows you’ve done something that would make your parents spit their tea. She doesn’t say anything, though. Just hands you a paper plate with a melting brownie on it and raises her eyes toward the sky like she’s giving you a silent prayer. You offer a small, guilty smile and fall in step beside her. But your thoughts are no longer here. They wander, wild and unbidden, to the shadows of last night. 

To your bare feet on the cold wood floor, the whisper of your nightgown brushing your ankles. The hush of the house heavy around you as you crept down the hallway, drawn like a moth to the faint hum of voices in the kitchen. You hadn’t meant to listen. But once you’d heard, you couldn’t unhear it. The names, the threats, the implication that beneath all this civility was something far darker. Something like war. “We can’t let them find out we’re disturbing their shipments.” — “That little punk Jay needs to be dealt with.” — “He can try,” Taehyun had said, his voice sharper than you’d ever heard it, like a blade honed under moonlight.

Your father, standing there like a general. Cold. Unmoving. He hadn’t even flinched at the suggestion of retaliation. Of vengeance. You hadn’t wanted to believe it, but there it was, your family wasn’t just at odds with the Parks over pride and betrayal. There were stakes hidden deeper than Sunday sermons and fake smiles at bake sales. Stakes that bled and burned. Stakes that made boys disappear and fathers never come home. Jay. A name spoken like venom in your house, a boy your father swore was born from rot and ruin. A boy who had dared to look at you today with something that felt like a challenge. Or a warning.

Your fingers tighten around the paper plate in your hands, the brownie trembling on the wax paper like it knows it doesn’t belong in your grip. You don’t belong here, either. Not really. Not with your head full of cigarette smoke and secrets. Yunah is saying something beside you, but the words slip past like water on stone. You nod when you’re supposed to. Smile when expected. But inside? Inside, you’re still standing at the edge of that hallway, hearing the words that changed everything. Inside, you’re still by that church wall, staring into the eyes of the boy your father would rather see buried than anywhere near you. And worse than all of it is the ache that curls low in your belly because you don’t know if you’re scared of Jay… or of how much you want to understand him. 

That night, the air in the house is thick with something unsaid. Like storm clouds gathering just out of sight, grumbling low and slow in the distance. The walls creak with old secrets and the whispers of generations past, all of them watching, waiting. You lie in bed, the covers tangled around your legs, staring up at the ceiling where the shadows stretch like spiderwebs. But sleep doesn’t come. Not when your mind is still caught in that kitchen, when you still hear your father’s voice like thunder and Taehyun’s like flint striking stone. 

The question gnaws at you, small and sharp and relentless: what did they mean? What are they doing, what is Jay tangled in that your family feels the need to speak of him like a threat, like a ghost they can’t quite kill? So you get up. The floorboards are cold under your feet, the hallway dim save for the light spilling beneath Taehyun’s door, a golden sliver cutting the dark. You hover there for a second, unsure, your hand paused mid-air. Then you knock gently, once, twice. 

“It’s open,” his voice calls out, slightly muffled. You step in and find him hunched over his desk, textbooks spread like wings, his brow furrowed in concentration. He looks up at you, blinking like he’s surfacing from underwater. “What’s up?” he asks, the corner of his mouth lifting just barely. “Don’t tell me you need help with trig again.” 

You close the door softly behind you and step further into the room, suddenly unsure how to phrase what’s been burning in your chest for the past twenty-four hours. So you just say it, straight and small:

“I heard you. Last night. You and Dad.” His entire body stiffens like wire pulled taut. He leans back in his chair, pen dropping from his fingers as his face darkens with something between disappointment and dread. “You weren’t supposed to hear that,” he says, his voice low, more exhale than sound. “Conversations like that aren’t meant for young girls.” 

You bristle. “I’m only a year younger than you.” He gives you a look, half warning, half weary affection. “And that year makes a difference.” 

“No, it doesn’t,” you insist, crossing your arms. “I’m not a child, Taehyun.” He sighs and runs a hand through his damp hair, frustration flashing across his face like lightning. “You think being an adult is about age? It’s about what you’re ready to carry. And you’re not ready for this.”

“Then help me understand.” Your voice is soft but steady. “Help me understand why everyone talks about Jay like he’s poison. Like he’s something to be eliminated.” The name slips out before you can stop it. Jay. A matchstick against stone.

Taehyun’s eyes narrow. “Why do you care?” 

“I don’t —” you start, but the lie tastes bitter. He stands abruptly, the chair legs scraping against the hardwood. “You do care. Don’t lie to me.” 

You look away, your heart pounding like it wants out of your chest. “I saw him today,” you admit. “At the bake sale. We didn’t talk long. I just —” 

“You talked to him?” Taehyun’s voice cracks like a whip. “Are you out of your mind?” 

“He didn’t hurt me—” You started. 

“That’s not the point,” he snaps. “You don’t know what kind of shit he’s involved in. What his family is capable of. This isn’t some schoolyard rivalry, alright? This is blood and business. He’s dangerous.” 

“You don’t get to tell me who to talk to,” you hiss, your hands trembling. “You’re not the boss of me.” His jaw clenches so tight you swear you hear it grind. “Actually,” he says slowly, icily, “I am. Until you know better, I am.”

That does it. The fury rises in you like a storm tide. You don’t shout. You don’t cry. You just spin on your heel and stalk out of his room, your footsteps like gunshots down the hallway. Behind you, Taehyun doesn’t follow. He just lets the door click shut between you. And you, you retreat to your room with your chest heaving and your thoughts in shambles, torn between the brother who wants to protect you and the boy who might just ruin you.

But wasn’t that what drew you in the first place? Not the danger.The possibility. The proof that something — someone could make you feel something real, even if it burned.

The bell above the shop door tinkles faintly as you step out into the embrace of night. Mrs. Chen waves at you from behind the counter, her fingers still dancing with a needle and thread as the lamplight paints golden halos around her silver hair. You smile, small and tired, the weight of the day settling in your bones, and close the door behind you. The sky outside is bruised with twilight, bleeding violet and blue as the sun disappears behind the hills that cradle your little town. The street lamps blink on one by one, flickering like hesitant stars, and the cobbled road that winds through the town glows amber in the gathering dark. 

You wrap your shawl a little tighter around your shoulders, feeling the press of the cool evening air against your skin. The walk home isn’t far, just fifteen minutes down roads you’ve known since childhood, roads that smell of lilac and woodsmoke and safety. Roads that always, always felt like home. But tonight, something feels different. It begins as a whisper at the base of your neck. That sense; not quite sound, not quite sight but the ancient, instinctual knowledge that you are no longer alone. Your footsteps echo a beat behind yours, too steady to be wind, too light to be mere imagination. 

You glance back. A man. Far enough that he could still be a coincidence, close enough that your pulse begins to drum faster. You turn onto a narrower lane, hoping to lose him in the winding streets, past Mrs. Lee’s bakery now shuttered for the night, past the small chapel with its bowed iron gates and flickering candles in the windows. Your footsteps quicken. So do his. You try to convince yourself it’s nothing; just a late walker, a neighbor maybe, but your hands are starting to shake. Then you hear it. 

The scrape of shoe leather quickening. The sound of breath, heavy, sharp, close. Panic surges like a tide inside you. You break into a run, your feet pounding the pavement, your breath catching in your throat, heart clawing at your ribs like a wild animal. But you don’t get far. A hand slams over your mouth. Another arm snakes around your waist, yanking you back so fast your heels lift off the ground. You try to scream, but your voice is strangled by a palm that tastes of sweat and cigarettes, of something sickly and metallic. The world tilts. You’re dragged, stumbling, into the shadows of an alley.

The narrow passage smells of rust and rot, wet stone and old things. Your feet scrape against gravel, your knees buckle, and still he drags you like you’re nothing more than a sack of flour. “Shhh,” he hisses into your ear, breath hot and rank, “make a sound and I swear to God—” But you’re fighting now, kicking, flailing, desperate not to disappear into the black corners of this town like a ghost no one will remember. Your mind reels. You think of Taehyun. Of your mother’s soft hands. Of Jay’s cigarette smoke curling like a warning. You think: not like this. Not like this.

You are a wild thing now, thrashing and clawing like some animal pulled too soon from the womb of safety, a fledgling bird tossed mid-air and told to fly. His arm is like iron around your chest, squeezing until breath is no longer breath but gasps made of salt and fear. You kick. You scream. The sound doesn’t even sound like you, it's raw, primal, jagged like broken glass tearing up your throat. Then instinct, burning desperate inside your veins, you sink your teeth into his hand. Hard. Hard enough to feel flesh give, to taste copper and skin and filth. He howls, a sound not quite human, and in the next heartbeat, his hand rears back and strikes your cheek with such force that the world spins. White-hot pain blossoms beneath your eye like a cruel flower, petals blooming in shades of red and violet.  

You fall. Hard. The gravel bites into your palms, your knees scream, but nothing compares to the kick to your stomach that follows. A boot, sharp and merciless, lands right where your breath lives. It punches the air from your lungs and leaves you folded on the earth like a broken prayer, stars exploding behind your eyes, nausea clawing up your throat. He’s above you now, shadowed and snarling, and there’s a moment, a single, stretched-out beat of time, where you wonder if this is how the story ends. A foot raised. The night around you holding its breath. Your body too stunned to move. 

Then it happens. A blur. A sound like thunder colliding with flesh. The man is ripped away from you in an instant, tackled to the ground with such force that the cobblestones rattle. You hear the grunt of fists meeting ribs, the dull wet thud of a punch, another, another, bone against bone, like a drumbeat played by fury. Jay. He’s on top of him now, all sinew and violence, his face carved in rage, lips peeled back like a wolf in the final act of warning. His fists fly like they’ve waited their whole life for this moment, no technique, just raw, vicious instinct. The man beneath him sputters, tries to buck him off, but Jay is unrelenting. There’s blood, somewhere, someone’s and it paints Jay’s knuckles like war paint. 

“Touch her again,” he growls low, venom slithering through each syllable, “and I’ll make sure you never touch anything again.” He says it not like a threat, but like a promise carved in stone. You can’t move. You can barely breathe. You're crumpled on the cold ground, blinking through pain and fear and disbelief. But through the haze, you watch Jay stand, chest heaving, jaw clenched, the man groaning at his feet like something discarded. But Jay doesn’t stop. 

His knuckles keep rising and falling like thunder crashing on a cursed shoreline, relentless, wild, each blow drawn from something deeper than fury, a darkness that lives in his marrow, in the cracks behind his eyes. The man beneath him is coughing now, spitting blood between laughter, a cruel, rasping sound that haunts the alley like a specter. And Jay, jaw set like a guillotine, grabs the man by the collar, shoving him harder against the wall, until the bricks groan and dust spills like ash. “Who sent you?” Jay spits, voice sharp enough to cut air. “Who do you work for?” The man just chuckles, a hideous, broken sound leaking out of a bruised throat. His lip splits wider with every word, but still he smirks like a man with nothing left to lose. 

“You think I’d ever tell you?” he sneers, coughing through blood. “You’re just a kid playing gangster.” Jay growls low in his throat, an animal sound, and the next punch lands with such weight it echoes. The man gasps. You flinch. The wind shifts and carries the scent of blood and cigarette smoke into your lungs like smoke from a funeral pyre. 

You push yourself up, your limbs trembling, bones whispering protest. Pain blooms in your side where his boot struck, your face throbs, but still you crawl forward, palms scraping against gravel and broken glass. You reach them. Jay’s crouched like a storm about to strike, the man limp but still smirking like he knows some secret that Jay doesn’t. “Stop,” you say, voice hoarse, barely a whisper, like something stitched together with threadbare breath. “Jay, stop. You’re going to kill him.”

He doesn’t even look at you at first. His eyes are locked on the man, flame-red and feral, his chest rising and falling like the sea before it devours a ship. Then slowly, he turns, and there's something broken in his face, something wild and bitter and unspoken. “Good,” he says, teeth gritted like steel on steel. “He deserves to die.” The words fall heavy in the dark, sharp as glass in a chalice. You reach out, your fingers barely grazing his shoulder and shake your head, a tremble chasing the motion. “Please,” you whisper, not sure if you’re begging for the man’s life or for Jay’s humanity to return. “Please… just stop.”

He breathes in hard. For a moment, the silence stretches too long, pregnant with violence and decision. But then something flickers behind his eyes, a light sputtering back to life, weak and shaking, but there. Jay lets go. The man crumples to the ground, groaning, blood trailing from his mouth like ink from a broken pen. He stares at Jay, equal parts terrified and awed, and then stumbles to his feet, sways like a drunk ghost, and bolts into the dark alley without another word, just the sound of his heels slapping pavement like a heartbeat fleeing death. The world is quiet again. But not peaceful.

Jay turns to you, breath ragged, hands stained red. His jaw twitches as if he’s trying to say something, but the words dissolve before they can take form. He just steps forward, closing the space between you and reaches down, hand outstretched. “Come on,” he says, voice quieter now, softer, not sharp enough to cut but still trembling from what it almost became. You stare at his hand for a moment, at the boy who just fought like a monster to save you. And then, with shaking fingers, you let him pull you up from the wreckage. 

He looks at your face, and something flickers in those storm-dark eyes of his; something close to concern, but too buried beneath bravado to fully surface. His fingers ghost the edge of your jawline, not quite touching but close enough to feel like lightning waiting for the right tree. He tilts your chin ever so slightly, examining the swelling beneath your cheekbone with an expression that makes your stomach twist. “That’s going to bruise,” he mutters, voice low and sandpaper-rough. You nod, slowly, wincing as the movement stirs pain. “Why did you help me?” 

The question hangs in the cool night air like incense in a chapel, sweet, uncertain, sacred. He shrugs, a movement so nonchalant it’s maddening. Like he hadn’t just saved your life. Like the blood on his knuckles wasn’t still drying into his skin. “I don’t know,” he says, eyes flickering away like they don’t owe you the truth.

You stand there, aching and trembling and furious at the way your heart stutters beneath your ribs. You should be scared. You should be disgusted, shaken to the bone from the violence, from the pain still blooming like a bruise across your ribs. But all you can feel is warmth curling in the pit of your stomach, uninvited and undeniable. “Thank you,” you whisper, unsure if it’s gratitude or confession. 

“Don’t,” he says sharply, cutting his gaze back to yours. “Don’t thank me.” His tone is firm, but not cruel. It’s the sound of someone who doesn’t want to be a hero, who’s been told too many times that he doesn’t deserve kindness. And maybe he believes it. Maybe that’s why he can’t take your thanks, because it tastes too much like absolution. He glances down the road, toward the dim golden lights of town, and then back at you. “I’ll walk you home.”

You hesitate. “You don’t have to—”

“I’m not asking,” he cuts in, already moving. So you fall into step beside him, the silence between you stretching long and strange. Your body aches with every step, and yet you feel like you’re floating, disconnected, dazed, and tethered only by the steady rhythm of Jay beside you. Like gravity shifted the moment he touched you, and now you orbit around him whether you want to or not. When your house comes into view, a knot tightens in your chest. The porch light is still on, like an accusation. You can already imagine your father’s face, already hear the questions wrapped in thunder and expectation. Jay stops at the edge of the walkway, still cloaked in night. 

“When your father asks,” he says, voice low, “don’t tell him I helped you.” 

You blink. “What?” He looks at you, unreadable. “Make up a lie. Say you fell or something. Just don’t bring me into it.” 

There’s no warmth in his voice, no smile, not even the smirk you’ve come to expect from him. Just a quiet, raw kind of resolve, like he’s asking you to keep a secret that might burn you both if it ever saw daylight. You nod. “Okay.” Jay lingers for a moment, as if he wants to say something more, like maybe this night changed something in him, too. But whatever it is, he swallows it down and turns away without another word. 

You watch him go, his silhouette swallowed by the dark, and then you push open the door and step into the light of your home, where lies are stitched as easily as hems and truth is just another thing buried beneath silence. The bruise blooms like a purple flower across your cheekbone. The door clicks shut behind you with the hush of finality, as if the night itself is sealing the pages of its most brutal chapter. But there is no rest in this kind of silence, only the jagged inhale of your mother’s gasp as she turns from the hallway and sees your face under the dim foyer light. 

Her slippers skid against the wood as she rushes to you, hands fluttering like frantic birds, afraid to touch, afraid not to. “Oh my god — what happened? What happened to your face?” Her voice is thin, stretched like silk pulled too tight. You flinch as she brushes your cheek with trembling fingers, and just like that, the whole house stirs. Taehyun barrels in from the kitchen, his voice already rising. “What the hell happened?” 

Your father follows in his shadow, his presence larger than the room, chest puffed with immediate anger and the bitter scent of panic barely masked beneath the cologne he always wears. “Who did this to you?” The world tilts slightly as all eyes converge on you, their questions digging at your skin like teeth. You open your mouth and close it again, suddenly aware of how fragile the truth is, how it quivers in your throat, aching to be spoken but dangerous to free. 

So you breathe in, steady and slow, and choose the half-lie with the cleanest edges. “I was walking home from Mrs. Chen’s,” you begin, voice carefully pitched between tremble and calm. “There was a man… I didn’t recognize him. He followed me, grabbed me. I fought back. I bit his hand. He hit me, but then —” You hesitate, careful not to look in the direction of the window, of the dark where Jay had disappeared only moments before. “He must’ve gotten spooked. He ran off. I don’t know why.” You lower your gaze as the lie coils around your tongue, heavy and sour, but necessary. 

Your father’s fists curl at his sides, his jaw set so tight you wonder if he’ll ever speak again. “A man did this to you?” he growls, like the words themselves are fire in his throat. “He laid hands on you?” Taehyun mutters a curse and kicks the wall, hard. The sound cracks through the air like lightning, loud enough to make Minji stir upstairs. Your mother’s hand moves from your cheek to your arm, guiding you to the couch with the reverence of someone handling broken porcelain. She’s whispering something now, prayers, you think. Or maybe just the names of every saint she knows. 

“I’ll find him,” your father says, voice flat and cold. “I don’t care if I have to turn over every damn rock in this town.” 

“Dad —” you start, but he’s already storming toward the back office, barking orders to no one and everyone at once, a storm given form and fury. Taehyun sits beside you, anger still rolling off of him like heat. He watches you with eyes too sharp, too knowing. “Did you really not see who it was?”

You shake your head, slowly. “It was dark. It happened fast.” He exhales through his nose, not convinced but not ready to argue. “I’ll walk you from now on,” he says. “No more being out late by yourself.” You nod, grateful and guilty all at once, because what you’ve said isn’t the truth, but neither is it a lie that came easily. And somewhere, in the places they cannot see, your body still carries the memory of Jay’s arms, of his rage not directed at you, of the unspoken promise that lived briefly between the blood and bruises. You fold your hands in your lap and lower your eyes, letting your family whirl around you with worry and vengeance and vow. And inside, you tuck your secret into the hollow behind your ribs, where all your dangerous truths now live. 

The church bells toll in the morning like an old warning, iron-voiced and hollow, their echoes slipping through the mist that clings to the town’s narrow streets. You walk beside your family in silence, each step heavier than the last, as though shame itself has taken root in your heels. The church rises before you in its usual whitewashed sanctimony, but today it feels more like a stage and you, unwilling, have become the play. You step inside, and instantly, the weight of a hundred unspoken things crashes over you. The air is perfumed with lilies and incense, but beneath it, there's the acrid tang of gossip, hushed tones curled behind cupped hands, eyes flickering like candle flames in your direction. You feel them long before you see them: judgmental, narrow gazes that prick against your skin like nettles. Their stares are veiled in piety, but you know better. You've been raised in a house of wolves pretending to pray. 

“They say her daddy’s sins are catching up with him.”

“She was always going to be a target with a name like his.”

“Poor thing — pretty won’t protect you from retribution.”

You don’t hear the words exactly, but they ripple through the wooden pews like ghosts, rising and falling with the organ's song, threading themselves between hymns and halfhearted smiles. It’s in the way they glance at the bruise blooming on your cheek like a crushed violet, in the silence that stretches too long when you pass, in the pity dressed up like politeness. You lower your head, eyes fixed on your polished shoes, hands clasped demurely in front of you, but your pulse hammers in your ears. You don’t dare look around. You don’t need to. You can feel the weight of it all pressing down on you like a stone in your chest. The truth you swallowed last night has soured in your gut, bitter as wormwood. 

And then, you feel it. A gaze unlike the others. Heavy, direct. You look up instinctively and your eyes lock with Park Chul; Jay’s father. He is sitting two rows ahead with his family gathered close, looking too much like a king among snakes, his tailored suit flawless, his posture regal, and his smile; oh, that smile, it slithers across his face like oil on water. It doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s nothing warm there. Just calculation. Recognition. He sees the bruise. He knows what you’ve left out. The smile he offers you is slow, like a blade being drawn from its sheath.

You blink once and look away, your heart suddenly loud in your ribs. Your fingers tighten around the edge of the pew as you sit down beside your mother, who is already lost in prayer. Your father doesn’t notice, he’s too busy glaring across the aisle at Chul, his disdain worn proudly like a second suit. Jay is there, too, seated beside his sister and looking maddeningly unaffected. He doesn’t look at you. Not at first. But as the choir begins to sing and the congregation rises, you catch it, just the flick of his eyes toward yours, the shadow of a smirk tugging at his lips before he turns his head away like nothing ever happened. 

You stand, too, murmuring the first verse of the hymn without really hearing it, the sound a dull hum in your ears. And even though your lips are moving, your mind is far from holy things. Because something is shifting. And though you can’t name it yet, can’t shape it into something solid, you know, deep in the marrow of your bones, that the bruise on your face isn’t the last mark this war will leave. The sermon drones on, words thick with dust and self-righteousness, echoing off vaulted ceilings like old warnings written in blood and parchment. You sit in the pew like a ghost in borrowed skin, present in body but floating elsewhere. The preacher’s voice is meant to be comforting, commanding, divine, but today it’s just noise, a hum beneath the cold stares and whispered rumors still clinging to you like static.

Another glance. Another hushed voice behind a lace-gloved hand. You feel it before you see it, someone’s eyes skating down the bruise along your cheek like it’s a badge you chose to wear, like you’re not already burning beneath their judgment. Your heartbeat climbs, fluttering in your chest like a caged moth. The walls feel too close, the pews too narrow. You can’t breathe. You rise, a breath of movement in a still room, and excuse yourself softly. Your mother doesn’t look up. Your father is lost in thought, your brother staring ahead like he might kill a man with his eyes. You slip out the heavy doors like a shadow, letting the sun kiss your skin again, warmth meeting chill. Outside, the world is quieter. Calmer. Honest. 

The church steps are cool beneath you, stone soaked in centuries of rain and repentance. You hug your knees to your chest, resting your chin atop them, and try to slow your breathing. The air carries the faint scent of roses from the cemetery down the hill, and further still, the faintest trace of last night’s terror still lingers behind your ribs. Footsteps behind you, Soft but certain. Crunching gravel. You whip around, heart climbing into your throat. But it’s only Jay. Only. 

He stands a moment, watching you with that unreadable expression of his; half smirk, half storm and then lowers himself beside you without a word. He doesn’t touch you, doesn’t lean in close. Just sits, legs stretched out in front of him like he owns the steps, the church, the whole damn town. You open your mouth to thank him again, to tell him you haven’t stopped thinking about the way he pulled you up from the darkness like a ghost from the grave, but before you can speak, his voice cuts across the silence. “Don’t,” he says. Not cruel, not cold, just… tired. Like he doesn’t need your gratitude weighing down what he did. Like it was inevitable.

Then, quieter, more tentative: “Are you okay?” Your heart stutters at the question. You nod, slow. “Yeah. I think so.” He scoffs, not at you, but at everything. The town. The church. The bruises on your face and the venom on their tongues. “Fuck what those hypocrites in there think,” he mutters, eyes flicking toward the stained glass windows above. “They’d rather pray for sinners than help them. Would’ve left you bleeding on the street if it meant saving face.” 

A breath of laughter slips from your lips. Not out of humor; more like release. Like someone finally said what your heart couldn’t. And something shifts. The air between you thickens. No longer easy, no longer innocent. It crackles now, like a wire pulled too tight or a sky just before thunder. You turn to him, and he’s already looking at you, really looking, like he sees through the bruises and the silk dress and the good-girl smile you’ve worn like armor for years. Like he sees the fire buried beneath the ashes. And before you can think, before you can flinch, he leans in. 

His mouth is warm and certain on yours, and everything slows. The birdsong quiets. The breeze stills. Your breath catches, trembling in your lungs, and for a moment you forget where you are, who you are, just lips and heat and the wild drumbeat in your ears. It’s your first kiss, and it doesn’t feel gentle or hesitant. It feels like a match struck against stone, sudden and bright and dangerous. He pulls back, just slightly, and his eyes hold yours with something fierce and searching. As though he's not sure what to say, or if he should say anything at all.

And then, with aching softness, he leans in again and places a second kiss on your lips, quieter this time, reverent almost. A kiss like a secret. A kiss like a promise or a threat. You don’t know which. Then he stands.

Doesn’t say goodbye. Doesn’t look back. Just runs a hand through his hair and strides back into the church as if nothing just happened. As if he didn’t just turn your world on its side. And you sit there alone, the stone still cool beneath you, the taste of him still on your mouth, your heart trying to decide if it should beat faster in fear or in longing. And for once, you don’t feel like a girl waiting to be told what to do. You feel like a match still burning. 

You don’t know how long you sit there, still as breath in a cathedral, the stone steps beneath you holding the echo of his kiss like holy ground. The air around you feels different now, touched by something raw and shimmering, like the hush after lightning splits the sky. Your fingers brush your lips, still warm, still tingling, as though they remember him better than your mind dares to. You’re not sure if it’s madness or magic, but whatever it is, it’s lodged in your chest like a second heartbeat, louder than the church bells, steadier than the sermon inside. Eventually, you rise, legs stiff from sitting too long, and drift back into the chapel’s shadow. Inside, the congregation is standing, voices rising in a hymn that scrapes the heavens, all sharp harmony and practiced devotion. You slip into a seat beside Yunah, whose gaze flickers toward you. There’s something unreadable in her eyes, not judgment, not surprise, just knowing. She doesn’t ask, and you don’t tell. Some moments are too fragile for words, too wild to be captured without breaking. 

The service ends, and the tide of townsfolk washes out of the church, trailing perfume and rumors behind them like smoke. Your family is gathered near the front steps, your mother speaking softly to the pastor’s wife, your father speaking not at all, his eyes like twin flints scanning the crowd for any spark of danger. Taehyun stands off to the side, arms crossed, watching Jay with the wary contempt of a guard dog who’s seen the wolf smile. You don’t say anything as you fall into step beside them. Your father reaches for your shoulder like a shield, and you let him, though you feel the ghost of Jay’s touch burning on your skin. The day unfolds like it always does in towns like this, slow and sun-soaked, filled with the scent of pies cooling on windowsills and the soft echo of children’s laughter skipping down cracked sidewalks. But inside you, something is stirring. Something restless and wild and hungry for the unknown.

At home, lunch is quiet. The clink of cutlery against porcelain plates sounds louder than usual. Your father doesn’t ask again about last night, he simply studies you, the way a man might study a cipher he doesn’t like not knowing how to read. Your mother fusses over your bruises with gentle hands and worried eyes, placing a cold compress against your cheek as though she can will the world to be kind with the sheer force of her care. Taehyun is brooding beside you, silent but heavy, like a storm that hasn’t decided whether to stay or roll in angry over the hills. But even with their eyes on you, even with their questions unasked but still hanging in the air like incense, your thoughts are elsewhere. 

You think of the alley. The press of fear. The sharp, unforgiving sting of a slap and the curling pain of a foot against your ribs. You think of the man’s laugh, hollow and fearless, and how Jay’s fists had answered it like judgment. You think of Jay’s eyes, dark as spilled ink, and how they’d searched your face like he didn’t want to miss a single flinch. How he kissed you like he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. You think, absurdly, foolishly of what it would be like to kiss him again. And that thought terrifies you.

Because you shouldn’t want him. You shouldn’t even know him. He is every warning your father ever gave you made flesh. He’s trouble written in bold letters across your stars, a promise of ruin in every glance. But still… you want to read him. You want to open that book and trace every redacted page with trembling fingers. That night, you sit on your bedroom floor, your journal cracked open in your lap like a confession booth. You don’t write his name. You don’t dare. But you write how it felt to be seen. To be saved. To be kissed like the world had stopped spinning for a heartbeat. You write it down not to remember, but to prove to yourself it happened. That it was real.

Outside, the moon hangs low, a silver eye watching you from behind thin clouds. And in the silence, your body aches, not from the bruises or the fear, but from wanting. From wondering. From knowing that something has shifted inside you, and nothing will ever be the same again. You lie back on your bed, staring up at the ceiling as though it might whisper answers to your questions. You close your eyes, but sleep does not come. Only his face. Only that kiss. Only the fire you didn’t know could live in someone like you.

The night presses against the glass like a velvet shroud, moonlight sifting through your curtains in soft, trembling strands. The tapping begins like a whisper too shy to speak, delicate and insistent, a beckoning on the other side of the veil. Your heart jolts, caught between sleep and something more primal; something curious, something afraid. Barefoot and cautious, you cross the cool wooden floor, each step light as breath, each movement threaded with unease. When you pull the curtain aside and see him; Jay, standing beneath your window like some starless phantom, your pulse skitters. He’s bathed in silver, his jaw sharp in the moonlight, a shadow of rebellion scrawled across the lines of his face. His hand lifts, two fingers beckoning you closer, not like a thief in the night but a boy who’s lost and desperate and burning with something too big for words. 

You lift the latch. He climbs in without ceremony, without sound, landing like wind on the floorboards. The air shifts the moment he enters, and suddenly your small, worn bedroom feels like a world away from everything else; everything loud, everything righteous. You barely whisper his name before his hands find your face, cradling it with a hunger that feels like grief and something more dangerous. He kisses you like he’s been drowning since birth and your mouth is the first breath of air he’s ever tasted.

It’s urgent, almost clumsy in its passion; his fingers lost in your hair, your hands curled into the cotton of his shirt, anchoring yourself to something that shouldn���t feel safe but somehow does. He walks you backwards with care disguised as chaos until your knees hit the edge of your bed, and you sit, breathless, dizzy. He follows, mouth never straying too far from yours, until the world disappears around you. But you pull away, gentle but firm, your palms pressed against his chest like a barricade made of hope and confusion. “What are you doing?” you whisper, your voice trembling not from fear, but from the storm gathering beneath your ribs.

He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes search your face like he’s looking for absolution in your gaze, something holy to balance the weight of whatever he carries. Finally, he breathes out, low and rough. “I needed to see you.” You sit in that truth for a beat, the quiet humming between your heartbeats. “Is everything okay?”

Jay looks away for the first time. His jaw clenches, his hands tightening into fists at his sides. “No,” he says, simply, honestly. “But it doesn’t matter.” A bitter smile plays on his lips. “My father wants something I don’t want to give him.” You nod, not asking, not pushing. There is so much you don’t understand yet, but you understand him. The way he sits next to you with shoulders heavy and breath uneven. The way his fingers find yours again like it’s instinct.  

Your hand finds his cheek. It’s a quiet gesture, a lullaby without words. “You can stay,” you whisper. He exhales, and there’s something sacred in the way his forehead falls against yours. The kiss he places on your lips this time is different; softer, deeper, unhurried. It tastes like gratitude and confession, like the first pages of a book too dangerous to read aloud. His hands settle at your waist as if anchoring himself in you, and yours curl around his shoulders. You don’t speak again. Not for a while. You let the silence fill the cracks, the breaths between kisses soft and slow, the kind that linger and promise without saying anything at all. 

And when he finally falls asleep beside you, his head resting against your shoulder, you stay awake a little longer, watching the way the moonlight rests on his lashes. You think of what it means to keep a secret this delicate. What it means to fall for someone forged in the fire your family fears. You don’t have the answers. But for tonight, you have him. And that is enough. 

Dawn unfolds like a sigh across the sky, the pale blush of morning slipping between your curtains and brushing the walls in hues of gold and rose. The world is still hushed in its waking breath, and for a moment, it feels as though time itself is holding its inhale, reverent of the quiet magic nestled between tangled sheets and slow, secret heartbeats. You stir, not with the abruptness of alarm, but the gentle unraveling of sleep's cocoon. There’s warmth beside you, not the abstract kind, but the tangible, breathing presence of someone tethered to this moment with you. Jay lies on his side, propped slightly on an elbow, his gaze fixed not on the window, nor the ceiling, but on you. 

There’s something unguarded in the way he looks at you; no smirk, no mask, no carefully constructed armor. Just eyes like storm clouds caught at sunrise, soft and searching. It startles something in your chest. You blink sleep from your eyes, voice still laced with dreams as you ask, “What time is it?” His lips quirk, that familiar crooked grin ghosting over his features as he leans closer and murmurs, “Almost six.”

Then, without waiting, without asking, he presses a kiss to your lips, slow and deep and reverent, like he’s memorizing you all over again, like he’s tracing every fragile thread that tethered last night’s chaos to this quiet intimacy. You kiss him back, languidly, until the haze lifts just enough for reality to set its feet back down. You pull away, breath brushing his cheek, and whisper, “What are we doing, Jay?”

There’s a pause, a brief flicker of hesitation across his brow. His hand, warm against your hip, stills. “We’re having fun,” he says at last, like it’s simple, like it’s something that doesn’t ache to hear. You sit up, the sheets slipping from your shoulders like petals falling in protest. There’s a steel note in your voice now, a tremor wrapped in resolve. “I’m not just some girl you kiss in the dark,” you say, eyes catching his. “I don’t do this. I don’t just… fool around. I believe in love.”

He’s quiet for a heartbeat too long. Then he sits up, too, crossing the small distance between you with one hand gently cupping your jaw. The air stills. His thumb traces the edge of your cheekbone as his eyes search yours. “You’re my girl,” he says, voice low, like a promise soaked in shadow and light. “If you want to be.” The simplicity of the words catches you off guard. No grand declarations, no silver-tongued poetry. Just that raw and real and something you can hold. 

A blush colors your cheeks like the blooming of first spring after a cruel winter. You nod, your voice a thread of warmth, “I want to be.” And then you’re kissing again, with a new kind of urgency, not born from fear or secrecy or rebellion, but from the aching sweetness of something finally named. His hands cradle you with more care this time, reverent, as if he knows what you’re giving him. Your fingers twist in the fabric of his shirt, anchoring him, anchoring yourself to the weightless gravity of this moment. 

It grows heated; breath against necks, hands skimming skin, whispered sighs and unspoken want. But there is no rush, no need to chase the edge of desire. You pause, your forehead pressed to his, and he doesn’t push. He stays. He breathes with you. And in that moment, it feels like the world, with all its judgment and fury, has fallen away. There is only this morning. Only this softness. Only the boy who held you under a bruised sky and the girl who believed, still, in love. 

His kisses continue softly, his hands still like steel on your hip — grazing the skin where your pajama top rose slightly. “Jay..” You trailed, breathless. 

“Yes, sweetheart?” He looked at you with heavy eyes, a dopey smile on his face. You were playing with fire here — suiting up to get burned. This was dangerous, who knew what your father and Taehyun would do if they knew Jay was in here with you, kissing you. It could very well be the end of him as you knew it. Your hands found Jay’s chest, pushing slightly to give yourself room. 

“I’m worried.” You say, your voice small. “My family hates you —” 

“Who cares?” 

“I do.” Your voice was stern. You wanted him to know you were serious. That even though you sometimes hated how protective they were, you still loved them, respected them. And what you were doing right now in your room was forbidden, it was wrong. A part of you didn’t care. You felt free from the shalkes tied to your life for the first time and you’d do anything to keep that feeling. But an equal part of you felt ashamed at the lying. You were not one to lie. Especially to your family. 

“They can’t tell you what to do.” Jay’s tone is soft like he knows this is a delicate topic. He’s using his kid gloves on you and you hated it. 

“They don’t.” You huffed. Jay’s eyebrow lifts slightly, like he doesn’t believe you in the slightest. “Fine.” You sigh. “They do.” 

“Don’t let them.” 

“It’s not that easy Jay.” 

“It can be.” He argues. “Just do whatever you want.” 

“You try doing that with a father like mine.” The words slip from your lips before you could stop them, before you could think. Because Jay did have a father like yours; they were one in the same no matter how much they hated each other. Jay looked at you like he understood your slip up. He said nothing further, he didn't need to. It was an unspoken agreement between you too. 

“Jay?” You asked warily. Jay hums, returning his lips to your collarbone as he leaves feather-like kisses over the skin. “What did your father want you to do that you didn’t want to?”

You don’t miss the way his entire body stiffens like a statue made of clay. You don’t miss the second he takes to answer and the shift in his tone. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that, okay?.” He says, a smile on his face. You stay silent and he doesn’t elaborate, instead reattaching his lips to your neck once again. Maybe in distraction, or maybe because he really didn’t care — either way, it worked. 

You allowed him his freedom to roam your body as he pleased. and you enjoyed it, god help you — you actually enjoyed it. You craved more and like the devil himself took over you, your lips parted only a sigh leaving “Please.” 

What were you asking for? Were you ready to have sex? To lose your virginity? and to Jay of all people? You weren’t sure. It was like Jay could sense your hesitance, his head shaking no as soon as the words left your lips. “You’re not ready, baby.” He whispered into your temple. and he was right. You weren’t. So instead he stayed in your bed. Not much longer but long enough for you to really miss him when he left. 

It was barely seven am when he decided it was time to climb out the window he came from the night before leaving only a whisper of himself and the memory of his lips on your own. It was a hollow feeling, one you couldn’t show when the rest of your family awoke and crawled out of their beds. You had to act normal. Like the enemy wasn’t right under their noses only a door down for the entirety of the night. 

The morning light was pale and indifferent, stretched thin across the sky like a faded lace curtain, and you watched your father and Taehyun disappear down the long gravel drive, their figures swallowed by the dust trail of the pickup truck and the unspoken weight of their business. You didn’t need to be told anymore, it was stitched into the sharp glances exchanged over dinner, into the coded conversations that dropped into silence when you entered the room. “Shipments,” they called them. But you were no longer a child swayed by misdirection and empty euphemisms. You had lived enough in shadows now to know when men spoke in half-truths and loaded words. Still, you said nothing. Because silence, you were beginning to learn, was its own kind of survival.  

Your mother bustled through the house like a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower, gathering Minji’s shoes and packing a tin of the sweet bean buns Mrs. Lee down the road had brought over. You watched her from the hallway, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, half-lost in your thoughts until she mentioned she’d be taking Minji over to the Parks’. “To play with Soojin,” she said, not looking up from her careful wrapping. Her voice was light, casual, like it was nothing more than an errand, like the name Park didn’t hold tension in your bones and a sudden, blooming heat in your chest. “I’ll come,” you said suddenly. Your mother looked up, startled, brows slightly lifted. “You want to come?” Her voice held a delicate edge of suspicion, like she couldn’t decide if she’d misheard you or if you were up to something you hadn’t yet put into words.

You nodded, steady. “Yeah,” you said, reaching for your coat. “I’d like to see Soojin.” That was the lie you chose. And to your surprise, your mother offered no protest, just a quiet, searching look and then a simple, “Alright then.”  The drive to the Park house was quiet, save for Minji’s soft humming in the backseat and the rhythmic turning of tires on dirt. The landscape rolled past in sepia tones, fields dotted with brittle grass, fences leaning like tired old men, the occasional burst of gold where the last stubborn wildflowers refused to bow to autumn’s chill. And then, the house appeared, grand in its own weathered way, with its wide porch and flaking paint and the lingering ghost of old money, old power, clinging to its bones. Soojin ran out to greet Minji, her laugh a bright trill in the cold morning air, and your mother excused herself inside with Mrs. Park, Jiyo, with a container of red bean buns tucked beneath her arm like a peace offering. 

You lingered on the porch, pretending to straighten Minji’s jacket, pretending not to scan the windows, not to listen for footsteps. The air was thick with anticipation, though nothing had yet happened. That was the trouble with secrets, you carried them even when no one asked you to, let them soak into your skin until they colored everything. And then there he was, Jay, stepping out from around the side of the house with that same easy, careless gait, a cigarette between his fingers and mischief in his gaze. He was the storm you had let into your room, into your lungs, and now he lingered like the scent of smoke in your pillowcase. You didn’t speak, not yet. Just held his eyes as he approached, the ground between you crackling with everything unsaid, everything that was coming. And in the quiet beat before words, before explanation, you realized you hadn’t come here for Soojin at all. You’d come for this, to stand in the belly of the lion’s den and feel the pulse of something forbidden, dangerous, and real. 

The sun was yawning low over the tree line, casting molten ribbons of gold across the Park’s backyard where Minji and Soojin chased each other in dizzying circles, their laughter rising like wind chimes caught in a summer gust. You watched them through the gauzy screen door, a ghost on the threshold, your arms folded across your chest like you could contain the gnawing question that kept pressing against your ribs: Why had you come? Inside, your mother and Jiyo sat in the sitting room with glasses of white wine that caught the light like glassy honey. Their voices rose and fell in polite crescendos, dulcet tones masking whatever quiet rivalries or histories they once shared. You could see the familiar curve of your mother’s mouth as she smiled too much, nodded too often. The room felt warm and distant, like a dream you weren’t quite invited into. 

You didn’t feel like staying downstairs, didn’t feel like sitting with women who spoke in codes and closed-lip smiles. “Excuse me,” you said softly, stepping into the living room. “Could you tell me where the bathroom is?” Jiyo looked up and gave you a generous nod, her hand gesturing vaguely toward the hallway. “Upstairs, last door on the right,” she said, then turned back to your mother with the easy grace of someone who had already forgotten you were there.

You climbed the stairs slowly, each step creaking beneath your weight like a warning whispered through wood. The house above was hushed, muffled by carpet and secrets. You passed doors half-ajar, the sterile scent of lemon cleaner and aging wood perfuming the air. But when you reached the top of the stairs, something stirred in you, an itch, a pull, the unmistakable gravity of curiosity. You didn’t go to the bathroom. Not at first. You wandered. 

It started as a glance into rooms left ajar. A study with a too-clean desk, a guest room with a bed so stiffly made it looked untouched by any soul. And then, Jay’s room. You knew it without needing to be told. The door was slightly cracked, and the air that filtered through was familiar, cologne and cigarette smoke, sweat and something wild, something him. You pushed it open. The room was dim, cluttered but lived-in. A guitar leaned against the far wall, strings dusty but taut. Sketches littered the desk, some crude, some startling in their intensity. A record played softly in the corner, a crackling blues tune that seemed to slow time. You stepped further in, eyes skating across his world, your fingers itching toward the mess.

You told yourself you weren’t snooping. But then you saw them. A pair of sneakers shoved halfway beneath the bed, saturated with dried blood, crusted around the soles. Beside them, a shirt, rumbled and wrinkled, with a maroon stain blooming like a dying flower across the chest. The sight of it stilled the air in your lungs. Your mind raced. You knew that shirt. Or thought you did. It haunted the edges of memory, like a face seen once in a dream or a name heard in a half-slept conversation. Your fingers hovered above the fabric, not quite brave enough to touch it, not quite smart enough to turn away.

“What the hell are you doing?” His voice broke across the room like thunder ripping through a still sky. You spun around. Jay stood in the doorway, a silhouette carved in shadow, his face unreadable and hard. The kind of hard that wasn’t born overnight, it was forged, sculpted in fire and violence and too many buried truths. “I — I was just —” you stammered, your throat drying like sand beneath sun.

“You were just what?” he growled, stepping forward. “Looking through my shit?” His eyes blazed with something you didn’t recognize. Not anger exactly, something deeper, more wounded. Betrayed, maybe. Or scared. You opened your mouth, tried to explain, tried to make it sound innocent, but the room felt like it was tilting, spinning around the bloodied cloth and your thundering heart. He was inches from you now, his chest rising and falling like he’d just run a mile. “You shouldn’t be in here,” he said, his voice low, like gravel and regret.

You swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.” But even as you said it, you knew sorry wouldn’t fix this. You stiffened, the air around you charged like the moment before a summer storm breaks, still, electric, heavy with the promise of thunder. Your fingers twitched away from the shirt just as his voice split the silence again. “I was looking for the bathroom?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Jay said, his voice cutting through the space between you like a cold blade. “You weren’t looking for the bathroom.” You turned to him, spine straightening like iron pulled through a fire, and lifted your chin. You took a breath, steadying your pulse, willing your voice not to tremble. “Don’t talk to me like that,” you said quietly, firmly, like a line drawn in the sand. “I asked you not to.” 

He blinked, thrown off by your calm. His chest rose sharply with a breath he hadn’t meant to take. For a heartbeat, the fire between you crackled without direction. Then you reached down, hand hovering once more above the bloodied shirt, and asked the question that had begun clawing at your ribs since the moment you saw it. “What is this, Jay?” Your voice wasn’t accusatory, just soft, curious, laced with something more dangerous than suspicion. Concern. “Why is there blood on this? Are you hurt?”

He didn’t answer right away. His eyes flicked to the shirt, then back to your face, something stormy building behind his lashes. Without a word, he stepped forward and yanked it from your hand with a violence that wasn’t meant for you but sliced through the moment all the same. “Mind your own damn business,” he growled, gripping the fabric so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Don’t touch my things.”

The room seemed to grow smaller, the walls pressing in. Your stomach twisted, not in fear, but in hurt. The air between you, once filled with charged possibility, now choked with something unspoken and ugly. “I care about you, Jay,” you said, voice softer than it had any right to be. “If that blood’s yours, if you’re hurt, I deserve to know. I want to know.” He looked at you, really looked, his features warping with conflict. And then, so quietly it was almost a breath, he admitted, “It’s not mine.”

You waited, searching his face for more; anything. But his jaw locked, and his eyes shuttered, and you knew he was already pulling away from you. “Then whose is it?” you asked.

“I’m not telling you.”

“Jay —”

“I said I’m not telling you.” There was finality in his voice, a wall thrown up in a single breath. The boy who kissed you on the church steps, who tapped at your window like a lover from a poem, he was gone now, replaced by something harder, colder, cloaked in silence. Something broke in you. Not loudly, not with fireworks; but quietly, like frost spreading across glass. “Fine,” you said, each syllable clipped and cool. “Keep your secrets.” 

You turned and walked past him, your shoulder brushing his as you stormed through the door. His scent lingered; cologne and smoke and something wild, and you hated how your body still ached for him even as your heart folded in on itself. You didn’t look back. Not even when you heard him sigh behind you. 

The hour was brittle with sleep, the kind of silence that makes the world feel like it’s holding its breath. Your room was bathed in pale moonlight, the only sound the hum of the summer night outside; until the tapping began again. First gentle, like fingertips brushing a memory. Then louder. More insistent. A quiet desperation dressed in knuckles against glass. You curled tighter beneath the covers, clutching the edge of your pillow like it might anchor you to the dreamless dark. You didn’t want to see him. Not tonight. Not after that. Your heart was still bruised from the words he’d thrown like stones, from the blood he refused to explain, from the locked vault of his silence that you could not pick no matter how softly you knocked.

But the tapping wouldn’t stop. You hissed under your breath, casting a panicked glance toward your door; no footsteps yet, no flickering hallway light. If your mother woke, if Minji stirred... you’d never hear the end of it. Gritting your teeth, you kicked off the covers and padded to the window, throwing back the curtain with a fury that masked the fluttering inside your chest. There he was.

Jay. Like some bruised ghost conjured from a fever dream, standing half-shadowed in the night. But the moment your eyes landed on him, all that anger, the sharp, glittering shards of it, melted away like ice against fire. His face was a tapestry of pain: lip split, eye swelling, blood at the corner of his mouth. There were scratches across his neck, and he was holding his side like something inside him was broken. You pushed the window open without a word and stepped back. He climbed in slowly, like every movement cost him something. And when his feet hit your floor, his strength gave out, he sank onto your bed with a groan, his head tipping forward, hair falling over his eyes.

“Jay,” you whispered, kneeling beside him. You reached for him instinctively, your fingers ghosting along his arm. “What happened?” He winced, jaw tightening. “Don’t ask.”

“Jay —” 

“I can’t tell you,” he said, voice raw and quiet, like something torn. “Just — don’t ask.” And for once, you didn’t. You swallowed your questions, letting them die inside your throat. Because the way he looked, beaten, broken, and showing up at your window anyway, was answer enough for now. You fetched the first aid kit you kept hidden in your drawer, remnants of scraped knees and childhood falls, and returned to him. The bed dipped under your knees as you leaned in close, the soft sound of tearing wrappers and unscrewing ointments the only conversation. He hissed as you dabbed antiseptic across a gash on his temple, his hands gripping the bedsheets so tightly his knuckles went pale. But he didn’t pull away. 

You worked in silence, your touch gentle despite the chaos churning inside you. There was a sacredness to the moment, a kind of intimacy that didn’t need words, just breath, and closeness, and the quiet permission to fall apart in front of someone. You brushed the blood from beneath his nose, cleaned the dried smear along his jaw. Your fingers trembled, not from fear, but from the unbearable tenderness that unfurled inside you. He looked at you then, through one bruised eye and one clear, his lips parted like he might say something. But nothing came out. 

You could’ve leaned in. You could’ve kissed him right then, let him forget the pain with the press of your mouth. But you didn’t. Instead, you cupped his face, thumb stroking gently beneath the bruise that bloomed like a violet shadow under his eye. “You didn’t have to come here,” you whispered. “I didn’t know where else to go.” And your heart cracked wide open. 

Jay turned his face toward you, and for a moment, he looked unbearably young. Not the smirking boy with chaos on his tongue, not the ghost who haunted alleyways with fists and fury, but just a boy, lost in something far bigger than himself. The confession was quiet, barely more than breath, but it landed heavy in the hollow of your chest. You looked at him for a long moment, searching the shadows in his face for something, fear, regret, guilt. You didn’t find it. Just sorrow. And a strange, bitter tenderness. 

There was a silence, then. The kind that doesn’t ask to be filled. The kind that stretches its limbs across a room and curls up beside you like an old friend. Your fingers found his beneath the covers, roughened knuckles grazing your softer skin, and for a time, you just breathed together, matching rhythm for rhythm, heartbeat for heartbeat. But then it spilled out of you, like water through a cracked dam. “I hate the secrets,” you said, voice catching. “I hate not knowing. I hate feeling like I’m being kept away from something real.” 

He turned to face you fully, his brow furrowed. “They’re not to hurt you,” he said. “They’re to protect you.” You scoffed lightly, the sound bitter on your tongue. “That’s just another way of keeping me in the dark.” Jay reached up, brushing your hair back from your face. His fingers were still trembling slightly from whatever hell he’d crawled out of, but his touch was impossibly gentle.

“There are men out there,” he said slowly, “much worse than the one who grabbed you in that alley. Men with no soul behind their eyes. Men who would burn down your world just because it’s beautiful. If they ever came for you…” His jaw tightened, that fire lighting behind his gaze again. “I’d burn the whole fucking earth down first.” Your breath caught. There was no poetry in his words. No soft metaphor. Just pure, raw promise. And it hit you harder than any poem ever could.

Your chest ached with a tenderness so sharp it almost felt like grief; for the boy in your bed, for the pain in his silence, for the thousand versions of himself he had to bury just to survive in the daylight. And in that quiet ache, you leaned in. Your lips met his like a secret, like a prayer. Not rushed. Not ravenous. Just two souls pressing together in the quiet lull of honesty. His hands cupped your face with reverence, as if you were something sacred he wasn’t sure he deserved. You kissed him again, and again, letting the silence slip away with every touch. This wasn’t heat. It wasn’t the chaos that had sparked between you before. This was slower, deeper, an unraveling.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours, and he whispered something you couldn’t quite make out; maybe your name, maybe a plea. You didn’t ask. Because for now, this moment was enough. 

The night seemed to stretch on forever, suspended in the quiet hush that followed whispered promises and half-spoken truths. The air in your room was still, yet it hummed with something electric and unspoken; like the pause before a storm or the moment just before a symphony begins. Jay lay beside you, his fingers threading gently through yours, his gaze roaming your face as if memorizing it, committing it to something deeper than memory, carving it into bone, etching it into breath. You turned to him, eyes wide and open like the night sky, and he met your gaze with the same soft wonder. No more walls. No more masks. Just two young hearts aching for something real in a world built on silence and shadows. “I want this,” you said, voice no louder than a falling feather. You were ready to give yourself to him; completely. 

Despite the lord's word of marriage before intimacy this felt right. At this moment you couldn't think of anything more perfect than this. He didn’t ask if you were sure. He saw the truth written in the way your hands trembled as they found his face, in the way your breath hitched not from fear but from anticipation, from a kind of reverent awe. The kind that settles between two people who have never done this before; who, even if one of them had, had never done it like this. 

There was no rush. No fumbling urgency. Just slow hands and soft sighs, as if the whole world had narrowed to this moment; the curve of your cheek beneath his touch, the shape of your name in his mouth, the warmth of his skin beneath your fingertips. Outside, the night pressed close to the glass, the moon a silver sentinel watching over the hush of your room, the silence of surrender. When you gave yourself to him, it wasn’t with hesitation; it was with trust, wrapped in candlelight and starlight and the unspoken understanding that nothing would ever be quite the same. Not after this. And in that moment, you weren’t the daughter of a man wrapped in danger. 

“Oh my god.” You sighed out as he thrust into you with a decadent ease. His touch light, his hands roaming your body like he owned it. And tonight, he did. Your moans were quiet — not to disturb your mother and sister. The soft thump of the headboard against the wall only slightly worrisome to your otherwise clouded judgement. Tonight, He wasn’t the boy with blood on his hands and secrets behind his teeth. You were just two people, breaking open beneath the weight of something delicate and real. 

He held you like something precious, like a wish whispered into the dark, and you clung to him like a prayer. And when it was over, when your bodies stilled and the world exhaled around you, you lay in his arms with your heart thudding softly against his chest. Not afraid. Not uncertain. Just full. And maybe that was the real miracle. Not the act itself, but the way you both emerged from it; still whole, but changed. Softened. Strengthened. As if love, in its quietest form, had found you in the dark and called you home.

Morning came like a whisper you didn’t want to hear; pale light creeping through your curtains, unwelcome, stirring you from the warmth left behind on your sheets. You reached instinctively for him, for the imprint of his body beside yours, but your fingers met nothing but the cool quiet of an empty bed. Jay was gone. You sat up slowly, sleep still crusted in the corners of your eyes, the remnants of last night clinging to your skin like faded stars. It wasn’t disappointment that he’d left, he was never the type to stay but a hollow ache bloomed in your chest all the same, tender and unnamed. You didn’t know if you expected a note, a goodbye, or even a lie wrapped in sweetness, but the absence spoke louder than anything. And still, you weren’t sorry. 

Your house felt changed when you walked through it; heavier, like the walls had swallowed some of the night’s truth and were trying to keep it secret. Your father and Taehyun had returned, the sound of the front door slamming earlier than sunrise pulling you halfway from sleep. Now they were back and the air was different, taut like a fraying wire. You didn’t know what had happened during their absence, but Taehyun carried the shadows like a second skin. He moved through the house like a ghost with a fuse in his chest, snapping at your mother over nothing, brushing past you with glass in his eyes, his hands shaking when he thought no one could see. You stayed out of his way. The silence between you two felt sharp and uncertain, like the edge of something waiting to be named.

Dinner that night was a ritual gone wrong, a prayer said with a mouth full of venom. You sat at the table, poking at your food, the warmth from your mother’s cooking doing little to ease the unease curling in your stomach. Your father, red-cheeked from whatever he’d been drinking, leaned back in his chair like a king on a crumbling throne, waving his glass with a crooked smirk. “That bastard Chul still thinks he can outplay me,” he muttered, voice thick with contempt. “His whore of a wife putting on fakeness like she’s better than the rest of us. And that boy of theirs... that Jay. Arrogant little shit. You can see the rot in him from a mile away.” 

You stiffened. The words felt like claws scraping against your skin, peeling away the quiet you’d wrapped around yourself. You looked up, your fork frozen in your hand. “He’s not like that,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper, but it rang clear through the room like a church bell cracking. “You don’t know him.” The silence that followed was immediate and suffocating, like the house had stopped breathing.

Your father’s face twisted, his eyes going dark in an instant. The chair groaned as he shoved it back and stood, fists curling like thunderclouds. “Don’t you ever defend him again,” he snarled, the words spit like poison. “Do you hear me? If I ever hear you say that bastard’s name in this house again, I’ll lock you away so tight you’ll forget what sunlight feels like. There is nothing about that boy worth defending.” Your breath caught in your throat, your heart a frantic drum against your ribs. Your mother said nothing, eyes fixed on her plate like it could save her. And across the table, Taehyun stared at you; not with anger, not with disgust, but with something else. Something unreadable. Suspicion, maybe. Or worry. Like he was trying to put together a puzzle that suddenly had one too many pieces. 

You looked away first, throat burning, fingers shaking under the table. The warmth of last night felt galaxies away now, replaced by the cold realization that you were dancing with danger on a threadbare stage. And everyone around you was starting to notice. 

Sunday returned like clockwork, draped in solemn hymns and ironed dresses, as though the week’s secrets hadn’t been dragging behind you like chains. You found yourself sitting in the same pew as always, hands folded politely, head bowed beneath the weight of a hundred stares that whispered like ghosts behind you. The church was beautiful in that way all cages are, ornate, holy, and full of silences no one dared name. Incense curled like serpent smoke in the air, clinging to your lungs, your clothes, your bones. Jay was there. He always was. 

But today, he looked like the devil in disguise, ink-black suit pressed sharp enough to wound, and that crooked halo of hair that caught the light like it knew exactly how to tempt. He didn’t sit near you, didn’t look your way. Not really. But you felt him, his presence a gravity that tugged at your pulse. You couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t think right, not when the ghost of his mouth still lingered on your skin like last night had never ended. When the time for confessionals arrived, you rose slowly, walking the familiar path toward the booths. The red velvet curtain felt like blood between your fingers, and the small wooden seat creaked beneath your weight. You bowed your head, ready to whisper into the lattice the half-truths you’d rehearsed in your mind. But then you heard it. 

The rustle of fabric. The soft push of the curtain behind you. The scent of cigarette smoke and something darker, familiar. Before you could turn, Jay slid into the booth beside you, his body too close, his knee brushing yours in the dark. “What are you doing?” you hissed in a breathless whisper, heart already rioting in your chest like a church bell rung wrong. 

He didn’t answer at first. The space was small, too small, like a secret made physical. You could feel his breath at your temple, the heat of him seeping into your skin. “Forgive me, Father,” he murmured, voice low and sacrilegious, “for I am about to sin.” You turned sharply toward him, eyes wide. But in the dark, you could barely make out his expression, just the glint of something wild in his gaze. His hand found yours in the stillness, fingers threading through with the quiet urgency of someone drowning. 

Jay—” you tried to protest, but he leaned in, forehead resting against yours, and the world tilted. “I want you so bad.” he said, softer now, like a confession. “I couldn’t help myself.” Your breath caught, and suddenly you weren’t in a church anymore. You were in a storm. You were in a dream. You were in that fragile place where you didn’t know where faith ended and he began.

“You shouldn’t be here,” you whispered, though you didn’t really want him to go. 

“I know.” His hand slipped to your jaw, tilting your face toward his. “But I had to see you. Had to let you know that you’re still mine.” His lips brushed yours like a prayer, slow and reverent, and you kissed him back, like you were trying to absolve every wicked thought in your head, every rule you’d ever followed, every chain you were ready to break. The booth was a confessional, ye; but what you whispered into each other’s mouths were not sins. They were truths. Unholy. Beautiful.

You hear a rustle next to you — the priest had entered the booth beside you, ready to hear your sins. Your eyes widened with a mix of panic and excitement. You were not the type of girl who hopped into confessionals with their boyfriend. You weren’t the type of girl to rebel in anyway, it seems like lately that's all you've been doing. 

“Good morning.” Father Lee sighed from the otherside of the confessional. “I will begin with a prayer.” Jay’s fingers danced delicately along the lines of your dress, pulling the hem up slightly. Your eyes are wild as they shoot to his face. Jay only sends you a smirk in response, his thumb ghosting over your panties. 

“Dear heavenly Father..” Father Lee starts the prayer but his words fall on deaf ears, the only thing you can concentrate on is the way Jay’s fingers feel over your clothed clit. Circling his thumb like a bird on prey. “We’ve come here today to atone for our sins..to seek forgiveness… —” 

Jay’s moves your panty to the side; now ready and bare for him. Your breath shutters in your throat as a moan threatens to spill past your lips. You let out a squeak as Jay’s fingers found your sensitive nub rubbing slowly up and down. Jay looks at you with a devious smile, lifting his unoccupied hand to shush you with a finger against his lips. Your eyes narrow in his direction. This was so wrong. So so very wrong. How could you let him do this? How could you like? 

“We ask you, our lord, to bring peace unto us. To help us prosper —” Your hand grips Jay’s shirt, a sigh leaving your lips as he dips one single finger into your entrance. 

“Oh god —” You let slip out. A wave of panic washes over you. 

“Yes.” Father Lee hummed. “Call onto our lord and our savior..” Jay adds another finger his pace quickening along with your breathing, your chest heaving and moans knocking at lips begging to be set free. 

“Yes, god.” You whimpered, moving your hips to better aid Jay’s fingers. “Yes, yes, god.” 

“That’s it.” Father Lee nods. “Call unto him, as he is the only one who can judge you.” You feel your orgasm building in your belly, clutching onto Jay’s shirt and the arm chair you sat in; the small booth becoming hot and humid. Luckily your chants had been mistaken for prayer — something you knew you’d be ashamed of once the haze of Jay’s magnificent fingers faded. 

“I’m–” You whispered low, so close you’re not even sure Jay had heard you. He continued his movement inside you catapulting you closer and closer to your end. 

“Do you accept this prayer and are you ready to confess all your sins?” Father Lee says as a closing statement. Your orgasm washes over you like a wave, pleasure coursing through your veins straight to your belly. You convulsed around Jay’s fingers withering under  his touch. 

“Yes! Yes!” You chanted “Oh my god.” Your breathing was uneven. Father Lee shuffled beside you. “We can begin..” He trailed off. 

“Tell me, what would you like to confess?” Your eyes find Jay’s once again as your breathing slows. What did you just do? Jay flashes you a smile, a shit eating grin that you can’t help but send back. You were in trouble with him, you were falling in love with him. And nothing good could come from that. 

The morning opened soft and unsuspecting, wrapped in the perfume of maple syrup and brewed coffee, the clink of cutlery on porcelain playing a quiet lullaby in the kitchen. You sat across from your mother at the table, a gentle spring of sun dripping through the curtains, casting golden bars across her cheekbones. She looked peaceful, almost angelic, eyes trained on the television in the other room, the morning news murmuring low and steady in the background. Minji giggled somewhere down the hall, her laughter like bird song, but your focus remained tethered to the screen, distant, detached, until you heard the name. “Breaking this morning,” the anchor announced, her voice dipped in solemnity, “the body of Lee Felix, was found submerged in Blackwater Lake just after midnight…”

You froze. The fork slipped from your fingers and clattered against the ceramic plate, a jarring sound in the otherwise delicate quiet of brunch. Your breath caught like fishbone in your throat, your entire body leaning unconsciously toward the screen, as if proximity could rewrite the story you were hearing. The screen flickered. A photo filled the frame. Felix.

Smiling in that too-cocky way he had at the bake sale, his cheek bruised, his eyes alight with some reckless thing. But it wasn’t his face that rooted you to the ground like a gravestone. It was the shirt. The unmistakable burgundy fabric. The fraying collar. The splash of print along the bottom edge. The shirt you’d held in your hand just days before, trembling with unspoken questions, stained with blood and too many terrible possibilities. Felix was dead. The shirt was his. You couldn’t breathe.

“Oh my God,” you whispered, a tremor leaking into the quiet air. Your mother looked up in surprise, her brows creasing with maternal concern. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” You were already moving, scraping your chair back so violently it nearly tipped, heart pounding so loud you could barely hear her through the static in your head. You mumbled something, a headache, a book you left at the shop, you weren’t sure. Lies came too easily these days. 

You didn’t wait for her permission. You ran. Out the door, down the walk, across the street. The wind caught at your hair like fingers trying to pull you back, but you didn’t stop. The streets blurred around you, faces passing in a smear of color, sunlight too bright and air too thick. Every step closer to Jay’s house was like descending deeper into a question you weren’t ready to ask, but couldn’t leave alone. You didn’t hesitate to slam your knuckles against the front door, the sound thunderous in the quiet morning, like something wild had come knocking. The door opened too slowly for your frayed nerves, and Jay’s mother stood on the other side in a lavender cardigan and confusion painted across her face. 

“Oh… hello, sweetheart,” she said, blinking at your expression. “Is everything all right?” 

“I need to see Jay,” you said, your voice sharp and breathless, like it had been carved from ice. She flinched slightly at the urgency, but stepped aside, her brows drawing together. “He’s upstairs…” You didn’t wait for further instructions. You moved past her like a wave breaching the shore, like fury given legs and purpose, charging up the stairs that once felt so intimate, so safe. Each step was a scream. Each breath a question with no answer.

His door was closed. You didn’t knock. You pushed it open with trembling hands and a pounding heart, ready to wield truth like a blade. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, thumbing through a worn paperback, the early light painting soft shadows along the cut of his jaw. He looked up, startled, and then he smiled. “Hi, beautiful. What a surprise.” You could have wept. For a moment, you could have let the lie of his voice fold around you and lull you into peace again. But the pain sharpened you, drew you back into the wound he left open. 

“Cut the bullshit, Jay,” you snapped.

He blinked, the smile faltering. “What’s going on?”

You stepped further into the room, the space between you tightening like a noose. “Felix,” you said, your voice trembling at first, but hardening with every syllable. “They found his body. He’s dead, Jay. And he was wearing that shirt, the one I saw in here. Don’t lie to me again.” Confusion flickered across his face for the briefest second. A hesitation. Then a breath. Then something darker took root behind his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking abou — ” 

“Don’t.” Your voice cracked like thunder. “Please don’t lie to me again.” A long silence stretched between you, thick with guilt, with ghosts, with things unspoken and too dangerous to name. Finally, Jay stood. His hands trembled. “I didn’t want to,” he whispered. “But it wasn’t supposed to go that far.”

“So it’s true,” you breathed, your heart crumpling like paper inside your chest. Jay looked at you then, really looked at you. Not with the charm he wore like a second skin, not with that crooked smile, but with a hollow kind of desperation. A boy unraveling in front of the girl he swore to protect. “My dad…” he began, his voice thick. “He wanted to send a message. He made me follow Felix after the bake sale. Said we had to scare him. But things got out of hand. I — he — ”

But his confession never found its end. Because in the next moment, there was a hand. It covered your mouth. Strong. Cold. Reeking of cologne and iron. You tried to scream, but it caught like thorns in your throat. You thrashed, but the grip was vice-like. Jay’s face drained of color. His eyes widened, not in confusion, but in shame. In knowing. He didn’t move. From behind you, a voice like oil and gravel poured into your ear.

“Good job, son,” it said, calm and cruel. “Right where we wanted her.” You couldn’t see him, Jay’s father, but you could feel the venom in his smile. The triumph.

Your blood ran cold. You looked at Jay. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t reach for you. Didn’t fight.

And that was the worst part of all. The boy who once held you like he could protect you from the world now stood silent as it swallowed you whole. Everything went black. The last thing you remembered was his eyes. And how he didn’t even blink. 

The world came back to you slowly, like a fog lifting, like a dream turning to ash in the light of dawn. The first thing you noticed was the ache. Not just in your limbs, which were bound tight and cold against the wooden arms of a chair, but deep in the soft animal center of you, where all tenderness used to live. There was a throb behind your eyes, a ringing in your ears that ebbed and pulsed like the ocean, but no comfort came with the sound. Just dread. Just the realization that this wasn’t a nightmare. You were really here. The room was dimly lit, bare walls stained with time and secrets. The air smelled like mildew and something sharper, gasoline, maybe, or the acrid ghost of sweat and fear. Your heart pounded in its cage as your vision cleared and faces came into focus.

Chul was there. So were two men you’d never seen before, both cloaked in the quiet violence of people who had done unspeakable things too many times to remember. One was smoking, the other cracking his knuckles absently, like he was waiting for permission to break something. You realized with a start that the "something" was you. And then there was Jay.

He stood a little apart from the others, like the guilt itself had pushed him away. His eyes were on the floor, fixed on a crack in the tile like it was the only thing holding him to this earth. Not once did he look at you. Not when you stirred. Not when you cried out his name. Not when you whispered, “Jay?” as if saying it softly enough would undo everything. You struggled against the ropes that held you, panic rising in your throat like a scream half-formed. “What is this?” you demanded, voice raw and hoarse. “What the hell am I doing here?” 

Chul stepped forward, all easy menace and slick suits, the kind of man who wore his power like a second skin. His mouth curled into something that was almost a smile, but not quite. “Payback,” he said simply, like that single word explained the rot in the walls, the bile in your throat, the betrayal eating you alive from the inside out. He crouched beside you, eyes level with yours, and you hated how calm he looked, like this was just business, like you were nothing more than a bargaining chip on a bloody chessboard. 

“Your father,” he said, voice smooth as oil, “has been a real thorn in my side. Took down nearly every operation I had on the east side. Raided our shipments, turned men against me. You know how much money I’ve lost because of that self-righteous bastard?” You stared at him, your mouth dry, your stomach turning over with nausea and fury. 

“You’re lying,” you whispered, but the words held no weight. “Am I?” Chul chuckled. “You’re just a pawn, sweetheart. Your old man declared war, and war always has casualties. You just happened to be the most… convenient.” Your gaze darted to Jay again, desperate, pleading. But still, he wouldn’t meet your eyes. He stood there, carved of stone, spine rigid, jaw clenched.

“How could you?” you asked him, voice shaking, eyes burning. “Jay, please… how could you?” But something in your question broke him. Or maybe it simply exposed what was already broken. His shoulders heaved once, and he turned abruptly, storming from the room without a single word. The door slammed behind him like a sentence passed. Your heart shattered in real time. The betrayal settled into your bones like frost. You were alone now with wolves.

Chul clicked his tongue, rising back to full height, then nodded toward the men beside him. “Don’t worry, princess,” he said. “We’re not gonna kill you… yet. But if your daddy wants to see you again, he’s gonna have to cough up something big. Otherwise?” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. They left you then, all of them, the door groaning shut with finality and locking behind their footsteps. The silence that followed was unbearable. You sat there, in that cold, empty room, and the sob that broke from you was ragged and deep, a sound pulled from the belly of something ancient and wounded. Tears fell hot and relentless down your cheeks, carving rivers through the dust on your skin, baptizing you in despair. 

You had loved him. With the kind of reckless tenderness that only a heart untouched by betrayal could offer. And he had handed you over like a gift-wrapped threat. You didn’t know what was worse, the fear of what was to come, or the ache of what had already been lost.

Four days passed like smoke curling in a dark room, slow, choking, shapeless. Time didn’t pass so much as it bled, drop by drop, down the walls of your confinement. There were no windows in that room, no clocks, no way to mark the hours except by the grumble of your stomach or the ache in your spine. You lived in the rhythm of silence broken only by the door creaking open, just once a day, when she would come. Jay’s mother.  She entered like a ghost, quiet and grieving, her eyes rimmed with something too deep for sleep to ever touch. She carried with her a tray of food, a bowl of water, a cloth to wipe the bruises blooming across your face like cursed flowers. She said little, only the softest of whispers falling from her lips, prayers to a God that seemed to have turned His back on this house long ago. She would kneel before you, brush the hair from your face with fingers trembling as if your pain were a flame she longed to touch but could not bear to hold. “I’m sorry,” she’d murmur, like a litany. “I’m so sorry.” Then she would rise and vanish once more into the dark.  

Jay never came. Not once. And that betrayal festered like a splinter lodged too deep to remove, its pain dull and constant, until it owned you. But the fifth night was different. You felt it before it began, an electricity in the air, a crackle in your bones. The door opened like a breath being drawn, sharp and final, and in stepped Chul with the air of a man who enjoyed drawing blood from stones. His suit was immaculate. His smile, not.

“Well,” he said, striding toward you with slow, deliberate steps. “Looks like Daddy dearest doesn’t want you back after all.” The words crashed over you like waves too high to rise above. You gasped, shook your head, tears leaping unbidden to your eyes. “No,” you whispered. “No, you’re lying — he wouldn’t — he —” Chul crouched, one hand on the arm of your chair, the other cupping your chin with mock gentleness. “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” he said, tone slick with venom. “This is what happens when you pick the wrong side.” And then the slap.

It came like thunder, a sudden crack of bone against bone that left your ears ringing and your vision swimming. Your head snapped to the side. The copper taste of blood bloomed on your tongue. You barely registered the movement beside him until a voice, hoarse, breaking, cut through the din. “Stop!” Jay shouted, lunging forward, only to be yanked back by one of the other men. “Don’t touch her!” Chul’s laughter was a bark, cruel and sharp. He turned to Jay and struck him hard in the stomach. Jay doubled over, coughing, and Chul’s voice hissed through the room like smoke curling from a fire.

“You idiot. You love her?” he spat. “You really think that means anything here?” Jay didn’t answer. He couldn’t. But his eyes oh, his eyes, finally found yours. And in them you saw ruin. You saw remorse painted in broad, bleeding strokes. You saw a boy unraveling beneath the weight of his choices. A boy who had built his house upon the sand and now watched the tide take it all away. Chul pulled out his phone, leaned down, and took a photo of your face. “Let’s send this to her dear old dad,” he sneered. “Maybe this’ll make him reconsider.” 

You tried to turn your head away. You tried to disappear into the corners of the room, to become so small the violence couldn’t find you. But the blow came anyway. Sharp, final, slicing through your mind like lightning through a tree. The force of it sent your chair tilting, your cry echoing like a bell rung in mourning. “Stop it!” Jay shouted again, voice ragged with desperation. Chul raised his hand for another strike, and then the world changed.

The gunshot split the room in two. It was not the loudness that startled you but the silence that followed. A breathless, unnatural stillness, as if even the air had forgotten how to move. Chul’s eyes widened in shock before his body pitched forward, collapsing like a house gutted from the inside. Blood pooled around him, red as prophecy, thick as grief. Behind him stood Jay. Still. Gun in hand.

Smoke rising from the barrel like a spirit torn from its shell. He didn’t move. Not at first. Just stood there, breathing hard, his expression hollow and carved from something beyond pain. He looked older in that moment. Not like a boy. Not even like a man. Like something ancient. A myth unraveling in real time. Then he dropped the gun, and it clattered to the floor like a broken promise. He rushed to you, hands trembling as they touched your face, your shoulders, your bindings. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, again and again, as if the words could erase the hurt, the betrayal, the pieces of yourself that now lived in a place too dark to name. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know — I didn’t know how to stop him. I should’ve — God, I should’ve…”

And for the first time, you saw him for what he truly was. Not your savior. Not your villain. But a boy who had been used like a blade and turned back to find himself stained in the blood of everyone he loved. Jay’s fingers worked at the ropes in frantic desperation, his breath uneven, ragged with panic and something else, grief, maybe, or guilt so deep it had built a home inside his lungs. The ropes gave with a rough snap, and your hands were free, your legs unbound but the weight that clung to your chest, to your soul, was not so easily unknotted.

And then the world broke open. The thunder of boots against tile. Shouts reverberating down the hall like echoes from a war long lost. The door burst open in a flurry of violence and authority, police in black and navy, weapons drawn, voices commanding surrender. Behind them, a storm of familiar faces: your father, his jaw set in stone, and Taehyun, eyes wide with something between horror and relief. And in the center of it all, your body still trembling, Jay standing before you with blood on his hands, his father’s, and maybe his own. They pointed the guns at him. They shouted at him to step back, hands up. 

He did. Quietly. No resistance. Just a soft exhale from lungs that had been holding the moment too long. His eyes flickered toward you once more, and something like peace passed through him, fleeting and fragile. The cuffs clicked around his wrists like fate locking its teeth. “No!” you cried, stumbling forward before your knees could give way. “Wait — wait!”

The officers halted just long enough for you to cross the room, pushing past your father’s grasp, past Taehyun’s startled call. You stood in front of Jay, close enough to feel the heat of him, the sorrow radiating from his skin like the fading warmth of a star long burned out. He blinked at you, the shimmer of unshed tears catching on his lashes like morning dew. You reached up, took his face between your hands as if to memorize it, every angle, every flaw, every beautiful, broken piece. And then you kissed him. Fiercely, tenderly. Like the world was ending, because maybe, in some way, it was.

Your forehead rested against his when you finally pulled away, breath mingling with breath, time halting between heartbeats. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words shattering against your skin. You didn’t say it was okay. Because it wasn’t. Not really. Not ever. But you let him hold your gaze, let him see that despite the betrayal, despite the blood and the lies, despite everything, you still saw him. Beneath the wreckage. Beneath the boy who had chosen wrong and tried, far too late, to make it right.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, voice breaking. “I love you.” And then they took him. Through the door and out into the blinding blue morning. The house echoed with the quiet that follows storms, shattered glass and distant sirens, your own pulse pounding in your ears like a drum. You stood there long after he was gone, your wrists red and raw, your heart half in your chest and half walking away in a squad car under the watchful eye of justice and tragedy alike. Your heart is split open like a wound that hasn’t quite healed. Like a prayer said to a god who may or may not be listening. You carry him with you, in the silence between breaths, in the spaces love once occupied. Some nights, when the wind howls just right through the trees, you swear you can hear the echo of his voice.

Not calling for forgiveness. Not even for understanding. Just saying your name like it was the only true thing he ever had. And somewhere out there, the world goes on.

(★) @izzyy-stuff , @beomiracles , @dawngyu , @hyukascampfire , @saejinniestar , @notevenheretbh1 , @hwanghyunjinismybae, @ch4c0nnenh4, @kristynaaah , @simj4k3 , @sangiewife , @hyunj00 , @firstclassjaylee , @teddybeartaetae , @i-am-not-dal , @xylatox , @desistay

[cressidagrey]

Building Blocks

Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Felicity Leong-Piastri (Original Character)

Summary: How to parent a genius: A guide by Oscar Piastri.

Notes: Because I felt like it was very mean to just give you "half" a new piece of writing, with an edited version, here you have some fluff!

(divider thanks to @saradika-graphics )

Oscar had long since accepted that he was raising a genius.

It wasn’t the kind of genius that screamed for attention or rattled off multiplication tables at age two (though she could, and did, if she was annoyed enough). No, Bee’s genius was different—patient, precise, methodical in a way that sometimes made Oscar forget she was still learning how to tie her shoes consistently.

At the moment, she was halfway through assembling the LEGO® Technic Ferrari Daytona SP3—3,778 pieces, ages 18+, and she was building it upside down just for fun.

Oscar had found it complicated enough to need a YouTube tutorial and was now trying to attach one very specific connector piece. It was not going well.

“Papa,” Bee said gently, not even looking up from her own section, “that axle doesn’t go there. It’s a two-length, and you’re using a three. That’s why the gearbox won’t sit flat.”

Oscar blinked. “How do you see that?”

She shrugged. “I counted the ridges.”

Of course she had.

He changed the piece, and—miraculously—it clicked into place.

They were seated on the living room rug, surrounded by plastic trays of sorted bricks and half-finished subassemblies. 

Oscar had tried giving her a kid’s set once this year. Something with animals. She’d built it in seven minutes, asked him if it was a prank, and requested the Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 next.

He looked at her now—curled over her build instructions, her tongue poking out slightly in concentration, tiny fingers moving with frightening efficiency—and wondered, not for the first time:

How do you race a kid like this?

Not race in the literal sense.

 Race in the life sense.

How do you raise someone who could probably code her way into a Mars rover before she loses her first tooth?

 How do you parent brilliance?

Oscar loved her completely. That part was easy.

 But raising her… it sometimes felt like trying to build IKEA furniture with the instructions written in Latin while she translated them into quantum theory beside you.

When Bee was two, he’d brought home a simple Lego castle. The 5+ kind. Pink turrets. Smiling bricks. It had taken her twenty-four minutes. No instructions. One correction.

They moved to the 10+ sets after that. Then 12+. 16+.

Now they didn’t bother with age labels. If it didn’t come with multiple gear assemblies and at least two bags of axles, she got bored.

He leaned back, stretching out his legs as she sorted bricks with the focus of someone solving a global crisis. Her curls were pulled back in a lopsided ponytail, and she was humming to herself—some hybrid of Beethoven and the Paw Patrol theme. A mix of classical and chaos. Just like her.

And Oscar found himself smiling.

 “Do you think you’ll want to build real cars one day?”

Bee paused. Thought. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll restore cars like Mama does. I like knowing why something works. Why people make the choices they do.” She looked up at him. “I like your choices.”

Oscar’s heart stuttered in his chest.

“You do?”

She nodded. “You always come home. Even when you go far.”

He swallowed. 

Bee smiled, then reached for another piece, her tiny hands precise. “Mama said you have to go race soon.”

“Yeah. In Japan.”

She nodded. “Don’t forget my shirt.”

Oscar smiled, eyes crinkling. “Never.”

They worked in silence for a while. The only sounds were the click of Lego pieces and the distant hum of the dishwasher.

Oscar watched her move—steady, focused, brilliant. She didn’t fidget. Didn’t question herself. She just knew what she wanted to build and made it happen.

He was raising a genius.

 And not just the kind with facts in her head—though there were plenty. She had empathy. Precision. Curiosity.

And she scared the hell out of him.

 In the best way.

The thing was, Bee wasn’t just smart. Lots of kids were smart. Bee was something else entirely. Curious in a way that never stopped. Observant in ways that made you feel like she could see under your skin if she tilted her head right.

She didn’t just memorize—she understood.

She asked how DRS worked when she was two and followed up with, “But doesn’t that affect battery deployment?”

She once looked at telemetry on Oscar’s laptop and said, “Why are you lifting before Turn 9 now?” and then told him why when he didn’t answer fast enough.

And somehow, she still wanted him to sit beside her while she built things. Still curled up under his arm during movie night. Still called him Papa like it was magic.

Oscar ran a hand through his hair, watching her snap together a section of bricks like she'd been born doing it.

“How’d you get so smart?” he asked softly.

Bee didn’t even pause. “Because you and Mama never make me feel weird for asking questions.”

Oscar blinked. His throat tightened.

“You don’t get mad when I want to read the building manual instead of the storybook,” she continued, turning the model gently to check the incline. “And Mama says it’s okay to love logic and glitter.”

Oscar nodded slowly, words caught somewhere between pride and awe.

He watched her now, slotting in a gear mechanism with tiny fingers and utter focus, her brow furrowed like a seasoned engineer.

How do you raise a kid who’s already looking three steps ahead?

Who watches a race and times pit stops with a stopwatch app she downloaded herself?

 Who reads two books a week and corrects the science in children's cartoons?

You don’t try to match her, Oscar thought.

You just show up.

You sit on the floor and sort the bricks. You listen when she talks about dolphins and binary code in the same breath. You answer every question, no matter how bizarre. You fold the shirts. You build the drawer. You take her seriously, because she always takes you seriously.

“Papa?”

Oscar looked up. “Yeah?”

Bee held up a completed axle assembly, expression bright. “Do you want to click this piece into place?”

He smiled. “Will you judge me if I get it wrong again?”

“Only a little.”

“Deal.”

He snapped the piece in. She double-checked it, nodded solemnly, and handed him the next one.

Oscar didn’t know how to raise a genius.

But he was learning how to build with one.

 Moment by moment.

 Brick by brick.

[mallory524]

a bunch of teenagers

bob x reader

(she/her)

pictures from pinterest

summary- Bob has really started to like you, but he assumes you don’t feel the same way about him. You do though, and everyone seems to know that except Bob… and apparently also Walker, who really thought he had a chance

warnings- thunderbolts* spoilers kinda, thunderbolts being roomies and hanging out yayy, pining, slight jealousy, bob not feeling very confident :( small mention of void stuff, slightly suggestive mention, john walker likes you and of course that goes absolutely nowhere, bucky is getting too old for this foolishness, hand holding, fluff

word count- 1443

notes- i will write for any of the thunderbolts, you guys, the obsession has reallyyy set in

The view of the sunset from the Watchtower is a beautiful backdrop for an already nice evening with the group. You’re all sitting around, waiting for Bucky to come back with food for everyone. Alexei is telling some awfully embarrassing childhood story about Yelena, who keeps trying to cut him off mid-story. "No listen, I was a small child-"

Bob is listening and occasionally laughing, but he’s focusing on you more than he’s focusing on the story. You’re sitting right next to Alexei and trying really hard not to laugh at his story (for Yelena’s sake) but occasionally you cover your face as your whole body shakes with laughter. Bob loves it. He loves seeing you smile. He feels like he’s being weird so he looks away, but he quickly notices that he’s not the only one looking at you.

Walker, who’s sitting right across from him, keeps glancing your way, too. Bob’s never considered before that Walker would like you, but it's not surprising. Of course he would. You’re so funny and smart and you’re tough, but you can also be so kind and, of course, you’re absolutely beautiful... Walker would have to be so dumb to not to see all of that, but it doesn’t mean that Bob approves of this at all.

He doesn’t think Walker is right for you, and he's never considered that you might see Walker that way, but now the idea is in his head and he hates it.

Walker can be a real jerk, (and of course he’s got some rage issues), but he is good looking, and he’s actually able to help on missions. Bob has to stay back most of the time. Plus, sometimes Walker can be pleasant. Sometimes.

Walker also doesn’t risk showing you your most awful traumatic memories every time you touch. Bob’s mostly got it under control now, but it doesn’t matter because now he’s got the mental image of you and Walker touching and that makes him feel nauseous. The idea of you and Walker-

He doesn’t realize he’s been intensely staring down Walker until he looks up at Bob with the most confused look on his face and mouths “what??”.

Even the mere idea of something happening between you and Walker is bothering him, and he can't get it out of his head. I don't know why I'm upset. It's not like I ever had a chance.

After dinner, everyone starts to split up and do their own thing around the tower for the rest of the night. Of course, no one bothered to clean up after themselves, so you take it upon yourself. Bob walks over and hands you another dirty plate. “Sorry”, he says with a shy little laugh.

“Aww dang", you say with a chuckle, "Thanks for actually handing me your dishes, though. Ava left hers on the floor”, and the two of you quietly snicker.

Bob awkwardly fiddles with random things on the counter, as if one of them will give him another excuse to stay there and keep talking to you. You suspect that's what he's doing, but you never know exactly what's going on in his head. Whatever he's doing, it's endearing. Although, you find everything about him endearing: his smile, his little laugh he does every time he's nervous, his messy curls that are starting to fall over his eyes...

You realize neither of you have said anything in a while. "Hey, how are you feeling tonight? You've been extra quiet", you tell him with a sweet smile.

Bob panics, "No, what? I'm fine. Um. I'm just tired, that's what it is", and he smiles at you, but then the direct eye contact is a little too much for him and he redirects his smile to the tile floor.

"Okay, just checking", You aren't sure if you believe him, but you're not going to push it. "Hey, did you see that video where-", and you start talking about something else.

Yelena walks back into the room to grab her phone, and she smiles and rolls her eyes when she sees you happily talking and laughing together.

At some point, Walker strolls in and soo casually leans against the counter, (he thinks he's being really cool), and thanks you for cleaning up, completely ignoring Bob, who is standing right there and helping clean up, too. Bob glances at you, trying to see if you act any different when Walker's around.

As Walker steps back into the hallway to go to bed, he stops walking for a second and glances back at you from afar, until a voice totally pulls him out of his thoughts.

“Don’t even think about it”

“Geez Bucky, don’t sneak up on me like that”, Walker says before turning back to look at you and Bob again. “But seriously, do you think I should go for it?”

“No”, Bucky says with no hesitation.

“Well don’t think too hard about it.” Walker responds sarcastically and crosses his arms defensively.

“I’m not just saying this to be disagreeable. Everyone knows she kind of…” Bucky starts to say before trailing off.

“What? What is it?”

Bucky hesitates and then decides Walker isn’t going to let it go. He leans in and quietly says, “Everyone around here kinda thinks she likes Bob.”

He’s dumbfounded. “Bob?? You cannot be serious. There’s no way that-”

“Watch it, John”

“No, you know I love Bob! But come on, don’t you think if I put the idea out there that maybe she’d at least consider it?”

Bucky groans dramatically, “Ughh I do not want to be involved in all this. I’m just letting you know I think you’d be... unsuccessful”, and as Walker rolls his eyes and walks back to his room for the night, Bucky notices that Bob’s down the hall, and has apparently been listening to the entire thing.

Bob quickly walks up to Bucky. “Do you think that’s true? Actually?”, he says in a hushed tone, with what can only be described as big hopeful puppy dog eyes.

Bucky mutters something under his breath about his new team being “a bunch of teenagers” and then turns to face Bob again. “I mean, she hasn’t said anything to me, but it’s pretty clear. Yelena and Ava were talking about this earlier and they think so, too.”

Bob can’t believe this. There’s no way. He doesn't want to get his hopes up, but if 4 of his friends think so, then maybe it really is true?

Bucky puts a hand on his shoulder. “Ask her to get lunch with you or something tomorrow. You can decide for yourself.”

Bob starts to frantically shake his head, “No, no I can’t do that, it would be so embarrassing if she didn’t want to.”

“Come on, man. She’ll want to. You should probably do this soon before Walker beats you to it”, Bucky says with a little laugh.

That was enough to convince him.

The next afternoon, you’ve been training for a bit, and now you’re going over some random important documents the group was sent. You see Bob over at the counter, so you decide to walk over and pour yourself some tea, too.

“Hey, Bob”, you say cheerfully, and he turns to look at you.

“Hi”, and he pours the tea into your mug without you having to ask.

You thank him and then look in his eyes. He’s clearly thinking about something. “Bob?”

“Would you like to go get lunch with me today?”, he says out of nowhere. He says it like he thinks that if he didn’t ask you now, he never would. Which is probably true. Any more time to think about it and he might've convinced himself it was the worst idea ever.

You smile warmly at him. “Yeah I’d love to. What time were you thinking?”

Bob is so caught off guard by your positive response that he almost doesn’t answer. “Uhh, we could go in half an hour. If that works for you, of course.”

“Yeah that works. Thanks Bob!”, you say, and then you gently pat him on the shoulder and leave the room to shower and get changed. Bob stands there for a second, hoping he didn't just imagine all of that.

When the two of you are ready, you slowly take his hand, and he lightly squeezes your hand back and smiles at you.

Over on the couch, Ava smiles, and Bucky pats Walker on the back with no real sympathy. "Told ya".

Walker kind of scoffs, but he can't help but smile just a little as he watches Bob step into the elevator, happily holding your hand.

[reignpage]

The Best Kind of Remedy

Synopsis: in which your herbalist boyfriend, Geto, has just the thing to cure your ailments Warnings: smut, established relationship sex, penetrative sex, sex whilst under the influence (smoking weed), dubcon?, thigh riding, dirty talk, degradation, lots of praise, unprotected sex, creampie, handjob, brief fingering, spitting, dacryphilia, cum eating, personification of the pussay, not proofread Word Count: 3.1k

Herbalist!Geto is your boyfriend — you can always count on him to cure your ailments with a conversation, sometimes even with just a glance. He has green tea bags ready for your morning bloating, elderberry syrup for your colds, and aloe vera compress for burns, among other things.

Visits to his clinic on Friday nights are routine; you show up just as he’s closing, and he gives you a small smile when he lets you in. “Hey, was just about to text you.”

“Long day?”

Popular and well-respected, he gets customers from all over the country. They swarm to his clinic in hopes of securing a face-to-face consultation with the man himself, eating up every advice, and treasuring each prescription. He’s trustworthy, smart, observant, innovative, and so damn hot. Long hair tied at the back, broad shoulders stretching out the lab coat he wears, and smelling of something floral and earthy, you don't blame any of the girls who come in just to ogle at him.

“A little tiring but I feel energised now that you’re here.” He brushes a lock of your hair back, thumb tilting your chin up so he can get a good look at you. “You haven’t been sleeping well again?”

Herbalist!Geto shrugs off his coat, revealing a loose black shirt underneath, which rises up when he stretches out the lethargy in his bones, revealing a seductive sliver of his boxers and the sharp cut of his abs. 

“I’m exhausted but I can’t rest; I feel on edge all the time.”

He's quiet for just a second, analysing the depth of your dark circles and jittery limbs. There’s an odd glint in his eyes when he places a heavy hand on your head and says, “I might have just the thing.”

That’s how you find yourself in the backroom, sitting on his sofa next to him. He’s rolling up a joint with expert hands, sprinkling a green line across the paper, shaping it into a neat little cone. Fingers pinching the air, he rolls it back and forth, and when ready, puts it up to your lips.

“Go on, pretty girl.” A little nervous, you eye him first and he waits patiently. You lick the edge of the paper, keeping eye contact, even when brings it up to his mouth and licks exactly where you did. It’s sealed and he taps it against your lips like some kind of good luck ritual. “This is your first time, right? Well, then, you’re going to have to listen very carefully to me. Can you do that?”

You nod. 

He tuts. “Use your words, pretty.”

“I’ll listen.”

“Good girl.”

Window open, he seems at ease when he lights the spliff and takes a deep inhale, immediately slumping back into the sofa, arm thrown over the back right behind you, and legs spread so far you’re trying hard not to stare at what’s between them. “Start off with a light inhale. Just suck gently, like you’re sipping from a straw, and don’t hold it for too long. Only a second or two and then breathe out. Got it?”

Smiling, you follow his instructions. It smells earthy, like him, with a hint of something sweet. Embarrassingly, you’re coughing not even a second after you’ve inhaled — it’s dry in a way you weren’t expecting. Head falling onto his chest, his amused huff shakes you a little.

“Sorry, baby. Here, drink some water.”

Just as you’ve gulped down a whole cup of water he had prepared like he knew this would happen, you grill him about this part of him he’s been hiding. “I didn’t know you smoked weed. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Blowing a puff into the air, away from your face, he shrugs. “Always forgot. I don’t smoke too often; don’t ever want to get reliant. But I’ve been growing my own, experimenting, trying to find the best kind. I didn’t want to make you smoke anything less than perfect, after all.”

You’re leaning against his chest, too scared to reach for another puff so you settle for listening to him instead. “There are different types of weed?”

“Yeah. Different strains of weed, just like growing any kind of plant. Some people mix different things into their harvest based on preference. I’ve mixed all sorts of juices with mine. This one has a hint of strawberry — thought you might like to taste something a little more familiar.”

The air’s growing thicker and hazy. Even from one inhale, you’re already feeling more relaxed, like time’s moving slower. “Hmm, this is kinda nice. I want more but I don’t want to choke; it’s humiliating.”

Head tilting back, he pecks you on your lips, tenderly. 

“Don't be embarrassed. It's just me. Come on, I’ll blow it for you. Open for me. That’s it.” Hot air, tasting ever so slightly like strawberry and him, fills your mouth and you swallow, letting it float into your lungs. "Better?"

Nodding, you climb onto his lap, suckling on his lips, seeking more, unable to help yourself. Something is making you feel restless even though you’re slowly melting into your most relaxed self. “Sugu…I feel weird.”

Herbalist!Geto’s free hand smoothes your hair, calming you. “You’re alright, baby. I’ve got you. I had a feeling you’d get worked up.”

“The weed’s making me horny?”

A slow grin appears on his face. He tilts his head, slightly mocking, and says, “You haven’t had nearly enough to go all empty in that pretty head of yours. Look at you. You’re grinding on my thigh and you don’t even realise? That’s adorable.”

You gasp and glance down. He’s right; you’re rocking back and forth on his muscular thigh, leaving a wet trail over his cotton pants whilst your skirt pools around your hips. Senses heightened, you can’t stop, not when the friction feels so good and he’s flexing his thigh to urge you to an orgasm. 

“Hmm, I treat you to my weed and you thank me by feeling good by yourself? Maybe I should start calling you my ‘selfish girl.’ You’re making me feel all lonely here.”

An apology is muttered against his lips. Clinging onto his shirt, you use him as leverage to get into a rhythm. The haze is emboldening you and the only hint of surprise that pops up on his face is a quirk of a brow when you fish out his hard cock. It’s thick and pretty — he keeps it tidy down there and the dark pink tip makes your mouth water. Leaking pearlescent drops, you use it to lubricate his length. Then, you rub up and down in time with your grinding, keen to see his lips part and his eyes go glossy. 

“Poor baby doesn’t like cumming by herself, does she? No, of course not. But you’re already making a -hah- mess on my thigh so you might want to -ngh- pick up the pace otherwise we’ll both be very disappointed, won’t we?”

Shuddering, the corner of his mouth twitches when he feels your thumb rub his slit, running it down a bit of his foreskin. Exposing more of his sensitive skin to the air, he has to take a puff to stop himself from cumming too soon. 

Herbalist!Geto’s head is thrown back, long, slender neck looking so delectable you mouth kisses all over his skin, smiling when he groans. “I thought weed was s-supposed to make you less tense, not more mean.”

He laughs and blows the smoke right into your open mouth. “That’s a lot of —tighter, baby, rub my tip too, you know just how I like it, yeah, good girl— a lot of -hah- talk from someone who always cums hard after being treated a little mean.”

True to his words, you cum all over his leg, tightening your hold on his cock subconsciously and he grunts with the sudden pressure. 

“Ah, Suguru! Fuck, so good.”

Palming your thigh, he smiles to himself when you slump on his chest. “Got a filthy mouth on you. Should wash it out, shouldn’t I?”

You’re just about to get up and lap up his length when he stops you. 

“N-no, don’t think I can wait.” Panties pushed to the side, you embrace the fingers he slides inside your sloppy pussy, stretching your gummy walls in preparation for this cock. You’re moaning, emboldened by the curling of his fingers against a spot inside that renders you breathless. “Hmm, you’re so tight. That the weed or have I not been taking care of you recently?”

A squeal leaves your lips when he withdraws those fingers without waiting for your answer and pulls you down on his leaking length all in one go. It’s almost painful, but the smoke you’ve inhaled is dulling and heightening your senses all at once — you can’t feel the pinch of the stretch but you can feel every vein, every throb, every inch of his cock filling you up completely. 

“Sugu,” you whine, “not so suddenly.”

Herbalist!Geto chuckles. “Sorry, baby. Just couldn’t -hah fuck you’re too tight- h-help myself. You know I love feeling you stretch around me.”

Tears spring to your eyes from the stretch. He throbs inside you. Once. Twice. 

“Pretty baby crying for me? Oh, you spoil me.” Fallen tears are licked up, thoroughly hydrating and fuelling his teasings. "Once you've adjusted, get to work, alright? Want you to show me how grateful you are."

Leaning back on his wide-spread thighs, you offer him a great view of your pussy lips wrapping around his girth. There’s already a light sheen of wetness coating his length and the sight is making him lightheaded. Slowly, you begin gyrating, grinding in circles so you can get used to the ache before your thighs are pushing up and down. He shoots you a wink when he senses your growing embarrassment at just how sloppy you've gotten and so quickly. 

"Hear that? Pretty pussy's saying, 'Thank you.' Polite little thing, isn't she? She needs to be rewarded, no? So go on, ride me."

Barely been touched, and loud squelches are already coming out of your pussy, reminding you of just how well-trained your body is for him. Never wanting to disappoint him, you push your limbs to set a pace you know gets you both going. His breathy moans guide you, setting tingles all over your skin. 

Your shirt is pulled up and pressed to your mouth. You bite the hem, baring your tits to his eyes. “Missed my girls — was thinking about them -ngh- all day. S-still taste as good as they look?

He’s sucking a nipple, rolling the bud around with the tip of his tongue, flicking and suckling in rapid succession. Undeterred by your bouncing, he keeps his mouth full, groaning when you grind down on his balls. "Oh, yeah, my sweet girls."

Every bounce makes you lightheaded, dazed with pleasure. 

"Should come visit me more often. Was starting to think you hate me." He teases. 

Frantically shaking your head, you say, "N-no. I was just busy."

"Too busy for me?"

"Never."

He blows yet another puff of smoke into your mouth, enjoying the breathy mutter of gratitude that you give him. "Good. I'd be devastated if I —oh, fuck, baby, ride me faster, yeah, good girl— if I couldn't see you as often as I'd -hah- like. You know you're the only thing that keeps me going, don't you?"

"Yes, Sugu —ah, yes, yes, you're so big!"

Sucking a mark in between the valley of your breasts, he gazes at his work, licking his lips and loving the salty taste of your skin. "If I didn't love your pussy as much as I love you, I might start to get jealous over h-how much you love my -ngh!- cock."

Kisses to that gooey spot inside you by his angry cockhead has your pussy growing sloppier and sloppier until a thick creamy ring forms around his base and he can’t help but thumb it and bring it up to your lips. It’s dirty, it’s filthy, obscene, and you suck it up with no hesitation, tasting both of your juices on your tongue. 

Herbalist!Geto dives forward, smothering your moans. The earthy taste of strawberries mixes in, tongues wrapping around each other as he seeks out your taste, swallowing every drop of you. He grunts. 

Swivelling your hips, you have to pull back, gasping for air and finding nothing to bring you sanity. Your pussy’s gripping onto him like it could absorb his soul into your very being and the plap plap plap of your skin smacking against his is all you can hear. 

This is unlike your usual sex — he's usually much more controlled, much cleaner in his movements, more thoughtful in his approach. Now, you're seeking out your pleasure with no care in the world, just bouncing rhythmlessly and clumsily, slipping and sliding, moaning and whining, and he's letting you. 

It seems you're not the only one affected by the weed.

A cloud of smoke rises up from his mouth, jaw hanging from just how hot and heavenly you feel around him. You suck it in, swallowing the dry air. But then he’s pulling you back into yet another kiss, that puff being exchanged back and forth like a dirty game of tennis until it’s completely gone and you’re fuelled only by the sickly sweet taste of him. 

“Your stamina’s improved, hah. Remember your first -ngh!- first time riding me? Hmm, pretty? You could hardly last more -ah fuck! don’t squeeze down on me like that- t-than a couple bounces before you were drooling on my chest and begging me to f-fuck up into you.”

Wetly smacking back down onto his lap, your clit grinds down on his pelvis, teased and tortured. 

"Always so keen to make me feel good, aren't you?"

"Yes, yes, yess! Oh, fuck, so full. I feel so full."

Herbalist!Geto hums sardonically. "Silly girl isn't even listening to me. You say you want to be praised m-more but we both know you get wetter when you're called a dirty, little slut. My dirty, little slut."

His free hand travels down your ass, giving it a tight squeeze before he lays a not-so gentle slap against it just to feel you tighten around him. 

"Say it."

SMACK!

“Ah, Suguru! I'm your dirty, l-little slut."

You gasp. You could have sworn another vein grew on his long length, teasing your walls and catching onto your greedy pleats, desperate to keep him inside. 

Thick cock worms its way inside, forcing your walls to memorise every curve and vein on its way up and back down. He’s making shallow thrusts up, striking against your g-spot with expert skill. “Missed you so much, baby. All those customers drive me crazy — none of them follow instructions as well as you do.”

Herbalist!Geto's growing closer to a damn good orgasm; he always gets more sentimental at the brink of cumming and it's why your hips don't dare stutter as you work him again and again, taking him deeper and faster.

“I’m a -hah- good girl, that’s why, Sugu.” You grin. 

He plants a sloppy kiss on your lips, enamoured by that sparkly smile. “Hmm, you are. Always such a good girl. My best girl.”

Blunt completely forgotten about and discarded somewhere, both of his hands are clutching your body close to him. One is digging into the plush of your ass, loving the ripples of the flesh with every collision of your hips to his, and the other is groping your tit.

Hips so nasty and gluttonous, it steals grunts from him, ugly, unrefined sounds that he doesn’t care if you hear. “You’re close…I can feel it. Go on, pretty. Cum all over my c-cock. Show me -hah- how much you l-love me.”

Both of your eyes are glazed over, whether from the weed or from the waves of pleasure cresting, neither of you can tell. You just fight through the ache in your joints as you bounce faster and faster on his cock, fingers rubbing against your swollen clit, sticky and slippery. Inside, you can feel his cock stiffening, growing bigger and bigger ever so slightly and you know he’s about to burst. 

Foggy, the only thing in the room you can see is his face: bead of sweat dripping down his temple, strands of hair come loose from his bun littering his forehead, and his lips are bitten pink, matching the flush on his cheeks. He's beautiful.

“Fuck, the weed’s drying my mouth out. M-make yourself useful and -hgnh!- help me out, won’t you, baby?” Like it's been wired into your brain, a fat glob drips down from your mouth and onto his awaiting tongue before you can even process the command. Just as soon as it pools into his mouth, he’s swallowing it, eyes rolling back from the taste of you.“Such a good fucking girl. You're making me lose my goddamn mind.”

You cum first. 

Clinging onto him, you whimper, clit oversensitive from the weed coursing through your veins. There’s no rhythm to his thrusts, he’s simply chasing the pulsing of your sloppy cunt, cockhead kissing that spot inside you he loves so much before his orgasm quickly follows. 

Herbalist!Geto buries his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent and painting your walls white with a flurry of hot cum. It fills your entire body, almost as if you can feel it in your lungs and when you swallow, you delude yourself into believing it's reached your throat too.

The haze still hasn’t passed — it’s making your heartbeat so damn loud and you’re just about to ask if he can hear it but he beats you to the answer by pressing a tender kiss against your pulse, murmuring, “Me too. Mine’s beating fast too.”

Neither of you takes out his cock, much too content to let it soften inside you and much too tired to care that it’s unplugging all your cum out and making an even bigger mess on his lap. 

You’re dozing off, coming down with him when he slumps back into the sofa, letting your head rest against his chest. Deeply satisfied, you mutter, “We gotta do this again.”

“The weed or the sex?” 

Herbalist!Geto’s rubbing soothing circles on your back, pulling down your shirt and keeping you close. He chuckles when he hears you say, ‘both.’

“Whatever helps you sleep, pretty. I’m always happy to be of service, even off-hours, for my favourite client but let’s keep this bonus package between us, yeah? Don't need more of those people coming in here.”

Half-asleep now, you mutter, “Just for me?”

He lays a kiss on top of your head. 

“Only you.”

[randominchident]

the good luck charm

⋆ 𐙚 ̊. max vertsappen x reader ⋆ 𐙚 ̊.

you kiss max's forehead one race morning "for luck". he wins. it becomes a thing.

It started as a joke. As most things do.

You were both exhausted and half-dressed in a hotel room in Monza, Max trying to stretch out sore muscles while you searched (unsuccessfully) for your other shoe. Something about the early morning, the nerves, the jetlag, the weird sleepy love you always carry for him—it made you lean in, cup his face in both hands, and press a long kiss to his forehead.

"May your tires be warm, your brakes be cool, and your competitors forget how to drive," you said solemnly, eyes still half closed.

He gave you the flattest look imaginable, though the end of his ears blushed a faint pink from the kiss. As they always did. “What are you doing?”

“Blessing you,” you replied, as if it was obvious. As if it had happened a hundred times before. "So you win."

Max snorted, jokingly thanked you for your wise words, and then won the race.

The next weekend in Baku, just before he headed back into the garage, he stopped in front of you. Didn’t say anything. Just stood there with his helmet under one arm, brows raised. Waiting.

You blinked at him. “…Yes?”

Max looked around and then lowered his voice. “Aren’t you gonna do your weird blessing thing?”

You smiled. You were obnoxious about it. You made it a whole scene. Two hands to his cheeks, a huge dramatic smooch in the exact middle of his forehead, a made-up chant about tire degradation and curses upon the other drivers' decision making capabilities. He pretended to hate it.

He won again.

Now it’s a ritual. It practically part of his warm up routine.

He always finds you. Doesn’t matter if it’s Silverstone or Suzuka, if you're sitting quietly in hospitality or standing in the garage trying not to get run over by a mechanic on a scooter. He finds you. Every single race.

Helmet in hand. Suit half-zipped. That laser-focus look on his face until he sees you. Then it softens—just slightly. His jaw unclenches. His hands flex like they want to hold something. You.

You rise on your toes, brush your lips across his forehead, whisper the familiar words: “For luck.” Because sometimes he doesn't need the big speech, the dramatic show, the curses upon the other cars—he just needs you.

He never says much. Just nods, or gives you the tiniest smile. Once, after a win, he muttered “works better than pole” with a blush he tried to pass off as heat exhaustion.

You didn’t tease him for it. Much.

One day the camera's pick it up, and suddenly it becomes clear that your little tradition is not a secret and private as you once thought. Even the Sky Sports commentary team has something to say:

“And there’s Max Verstappen’s girlfriend giving him—what’s clearly become—a bit of a pre-race tradition. Can’t argue with results.”

It's nice. You like being part of the flow of race day. Its nice to be relied upon, even for something as small as this.

And then… one weekend, you’re not there.

You tried. You really did. But your flight got cancelled, the backup was overbooked, and Red Bull’s private jet was full of engineers and people who don’t think “I give Max forehead kisses before lights out” qualifies as essential personnel.

You call him from the airport instead, bags at your feet, coffee in hand. Max offered to send his own jet back to pick you up, but it would never have arrived in time.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I really wanted to be there.”

Max is quiet on the other end. “You tried.”

“I’ll scream your blessing into the sky from here, okay?”

He huffs a laugh, but it sounds tight. “Might need it. Grid’s a mess.”

“You’ll handle it. You always do.”

You want to say more. Something sappy. But you can already hear noise in the backgorund of the call. He's being pulled away by Christian or Helmut or someone asking about tires. So you settle for, “I love you. Drive safe.”

His voice softens. “Love you too.”

Back at the track, people notice something’s… off.

He’s still fast—because of course he is—but there’s a tension in his shoulders. The calm, razor-sharp version of Max that usually shows up on race day feels thinner, more like a mask.

Christian corners him right before the anthem. “You good?”

“Fine,” Max says. Short. Clipped. Cold.

But his eyes keep scanning the garage, looking for something—or someone—he knows isn’t there.

The race goes okay. Not amazing. A few things go wrong. His start is messy. Pit stop’s a second too slow. He finishes second, which for anyone else would be great, but for Max it’s a shrug and a “whatever.” Second place always hurts. Always has for him.

After the cooldown room, after media, after debrief, he ducks away from everyone and finally calls you.

“You cursed me,” he says.

“Sorry?”

“I had no forehead kiss. And now look. P2. Disaster.”

You smile, curling up in the airport lounge chair. “Guess you need me, huh?”

He exhales like he doesn’t want to say yes, but then, quietly: “Yeah. I do.”

And then impossibly quieter: "I always do."

The next weekend, you’re definitely there.

He doesn’t even say hello when he finds you sat in the garage. He just walks up, stands in front of you, and tilts his head down expectantly.

You blink. “Wow. No ‘how are you,’ no hug—just forehead service?”

He glares at the ground, but there is a small smile on his face that you can just barely see. “Do the thing.”

You grin, place your hands on his cheeks, and kiss him gently on the forehead.

“For luck,” you murmur.

He exhales. Content. “There it is.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“Says the one casting spells on my head.”

You lean in a little. “They work, don’t they?”

Max just smiles. The small, secret one. The one he saves for you. Then he nods.

After he wins that race, he dedicates it to the team. Then, on the radio, voice quieter:

“Tell her thanks. It worked again.”

You hear it. Of course you do. And when he lifts the trophy, champagne flying, there’s a tiny smile on your face that says yeah. you’re welcome.

[scarletmika]

Peace and Quiet : ̗̀➛ Robert "Bob" Reynolds x Reader

Pairing: Robert "Bob" Reynolds/Sentry x Former Avenger/New Avenger Witch!Reader

Summary: Sometimes the tower is too loud, and Bob can feel himself getting overwhelmed. He's always found comfort with you, in your room, where he can find peace and quiet whenever he needs it. And you'll never turn him away, finding the same comfort in him.

Warnings: fluff, idiots not realizing how in love they are, two generally kinda mentally ill individuals, SPOILERS I guess for Thunderbolts*

Word Count: 2,369 words

Requests are open!

Find my masterlist here

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: ✧

If there was one thing the Watchtower, which stood high above New York and housed The New Avengers, lacked the most, it was quiet. Given the newest inhabitants of the staple tower in New York, it wasn’t surprising that peace and quiet were hard to come by, or even a moment alone to think.

Between Alexei running through the common room, ranting and yelling about his latest idea for a marketing opportunity for the team, or stories of his glory days, and Ava and John arguing about the smallest things in the world while Yelena tried to get them to ‘desperately shut up’ while Bucky mumbled about his ‘idiotic team,’ there were very few places in the entire building where one could go to find quiet.

Sometimes, peace was all that Bob wanted. There was only one room in his entire new home where he could find it most days, and it was your room.

The team wasn’t entirely shocked by how close you and Bob became in the few short months that Valentina had moved them into the Watchtower, after proclaiming them as “The New Avengers” to the public. From the moment you met in the vault to the moment you held him and helped pull him from his own Void in the middle of the city, everyone could see how much you’d come to care for him in such a short amount of time. Truthfully, of everyone on the team, they knew if Bob was going to lean on any of them for support, it definitely should be you, given you were the only one of them that was ever truly touted by the public as a hero, as an Avenger.

At the moment, you weren’t sure what kind of commotion could’ve been happening upstairs in the common room of the tower. This morning, Ava had thrown a knife across the table at John, who deflected it with his own fork while still digging into his waffles, sending the knife flying toward Bob as you stopped it with a flick of your hand from across the table, magic holding it in place as you send both of your teammates an unimpressed look. In the middle of the day you’d passed by Alexei trailing after Bucky as he left the training room, trying to convince the super soldier that they could make so much money doing their own “Super Soldier Swimsuit Calendar,” which left Bucky mumbling why he had even agreed to stay part of this team as long as he had.

You’d retired to your room within the tower long before you could witness the inevitable dinner fight or argument, as entertaining as it was sometimes to watch your new friends fight. Skipping dinner was something that you’d been doing for months, ever since Alexei wanted to make it mandatory that you eat in the dining room as a “family.” There were too many memories that resided in that room, in this entire tower. It’s how you found yourself on the piano bench by the windows of your room, fingers dancing across the keys to a familiar tune that you’d heard for many years as you hummed the lyrics you knew all too well to yourself. The music helped you not think about the past.

“That sounds really pretty,”

The voice at the doorway of your room startled you, fingers hitting the wrong keys as the progression of the song was interrupted. You whipped around, heart racing for a moment until it quieted, seeing who was standing in your doorway across the room.

“Bob-”

“I’m sorry!” he was quick to apologize, shaking his head as he wrung his hands together, actions that brought that soft smile you reserved only for him to your face in seconds. “I didn’t mean to startle you, or just barge in like this, that wasn’t okay, I’m sorry. You just left the door open, and usually you come grab dinner after everyone has left the table, but I didn’t see you up there-”

“Bob!” you cut in with a laugh, one that ceased Bob’s rambling and brought a shy smile to his lips as you looked at him. “It’s okay, I just lost track of time, that’s all. Also, I’ve told you before you’re allowed to come in whenever you want, when the door is open, you don’t have to apologize. I was just lost in thought, is all.”

Bob seemed frozen in his spot for a moment, just simply looking across the room at you with a smile, before he ducked out of the room for a second before reappearing with a plate.

“It’s not much, but uh…I made you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

He hadn’t admitted it out loud, though he’d thought about it daily, but your laugh was probably the best thing that Bob had ever heard.

“Shut the door and get your cute butt over here with that sandwich,”

Most of their interactions went like this, with a slight flirty edge to your words, something that Bob couldn’t quite decipher was legitimate flirting or just how you talked to him. John and Alexei tried giving him pep talks that you had feelings for him and that he should ‘man up’ and make a movie, all while Yelena tried to tell him to ignore their words and take it one step at a time.

Bob had gone with the ‘one step at a time’ approach, simply just inserting himself into your time over and over again every day. From the moment you’d first met in the vault and you’d flicked John across the room with a single wave of your magic because he’d rushed at Bob, he’d been drawn to your side. Now, living with you every day, he’d found comfort in your presence the most than in all of his new friends. When this sense of comfort turned into romantic feelings, he wasn’t sure, but Bob was terrified at the thought of crossing that invisible boundary in your interactions. He was a mess, and he knew it. What would a hero like you want with the mess of a man he was?

You’d moved over on the piano bench, leaving space for Bob right beside you. The smile hadn’t left your face, even laughing lightly as Bob still managed to sit as far from you on the bench as he could, terrified of invading your personal space.

With the plate placed on top of the piano, you quickly ripped it in half, handing the other half over to Bob. Slices in hand, you ‘clinked’ your half against his, the pair of you laughing quietly together over the little moment. Your eyes stayed on Bob for a moment, smile never leaving and softening even as he looked down at his hands, taking small bites of the sandwich as his cheeks flushed red.

“I uh, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you play the piano before,”

Placing your half of the sandwich back on the plate, your fingers quickly moved back to the keys of the piano, playing that same familiar tune you had before. She glanced over to Bob, his eyes following your movements over the piano keys in wonder.

“I don’t do it often anymore, usually just when my thoughts are the loudest and I need a distraction,” you confided in him as you played. “Piano was something my mother taught me when I was little, she was good at it. Told me I had a knack for it, had me in lessons the earliest that she could put me in them.”

Bob found himself looking at you again, observing you as you played and stared out the window over New York City before you both. He could see it, the slight frown in the corner of your mouth as you spoke.

“You…you said your thoughts were loud?”

You glanced over to him as you played, seeing the hesitation in his question. You gave him the softest of smiles to try and comfort him as you spoke.

“You know how I used to be an Avenger? Part of the original team?” Bob gave you a small nod. “There’s…a lot of memories in every corner of this tower. It’s different now, Valentina has made sure to give it a complete makeover, but I can still feel the memories everywhere. Especially in the dining room. When I saw everyone in there earlier together for dinner, it all came flooding back to me. I just needed to come and find some-”

“Peace and quiet,” it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. You and Bob shared yet another smile, a similar red flush to both of your faces in that moment of understanding. “I look for that too, a lot. Our friends they’re uh, they’re loud.”

Another laugh fell out of you as Bob spoke, nodding your head in agreement with his statement.

“You’re not wrong in the slightest, they’re the loudest people I’ve ever lived with. I’m glad that you’re able to find some peace and quiet here, though,”

“Yeah, it’s usually just when I’m with you,” even Bob seemed surprised at his own comment, stumbling for a moment as he tried to understand where that came from within him. “That uh…sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come off as-”

“If that was your first attempt at flirting in awhile, I have to hand it to you Bob you aren’t half bad at it,” the giggle that fell from your lips fell in line with the music that you were still playing as Bob ran his hands down his face, shaking his head over the entire thing. “Come here.”

Bob hesitated for a moment, but that moment didn’t last long. He slid across the bench to your side, legs pressed together and shoulders just barely touching. You stopped playing for a moment, turning to him with a smile as you flicked your hands, magic dancing from your fingers as it flipped the sheet music in front of you back to the beginning of the book.

“Have I mentioned how cool your magic is?”

“Just about every time I use it in front of you, though I wouldn’t mind hearing it again,”

“Well…it’s really cool. Do you think you could uh, maybe show me how to play?”

“Give me your hand,”

You took hold of Bob’s hand, placing it on top of the keys and laying your own on top of his, spreading your fingers to cover his own. Both of you flushed, silently hoping the other couldn’t hear the intense beating of both of your hearts at the gesture.

“Just relax and let your fingers do what I tell them to,” you told him softly, experimentally pressing one of his fingers down onto one of the piano keys. “This is a song Steve used to play all the time, here and in the compound. It was hard not to get it stuck in your head after so long.”

“Does it bring up memories?”

“Yes, but good ones,”

Bob felt himself relax, something he hadn’t truly done in a long time. In the rush of it all, there had been very few moments to relax since he’d awakened in that vault just a few months ago. He felt truly at peace as you worked your magic, dancing his fingers across the keys in the same patterns as the sound of the piano was the only thing playing in the room. Your eyes lay on your hand and Bob’s together as you helped him play the music, but his eyes rested solely on the side of your face.

“Can you…can you sing the words?”

You didn’t answer him, instead doing just as he asked.

“Never thought that you would be standing here so close to me. There's so much I feel that I should say,” you sang in the softest voice you could muster, glancing up at Bob’s flushed face as she smiled at him. “But words can wait until some other day…Kiss me once, then kiss me twice then kiss me once again. It’s been a long, long time.”

Bob smiled, every memory and bad thought tucked away in his head fighting to get out simply background noise at this point, every one of his senses invaded by you instead, and he never wanted you to leave.

“Haven't felt like this, my dear since can't remember when. It’s been a long, long time,” you bumped your shoulder with Bob’s, smile growing andchest fluttering with an emotion you knew was far some simple fondness at this point as he laughed at you. “You'll never know how many dreams I dream about you…or just how empty they all seem without you…”

Your singing trailed off as you and Bob simply looked at one another. The piano keys beneath your two hands ceased playing as you took a leap of faith, sliding your hand into Bob’s as you fingers intertwined together. You could hear the sharp intake of breath from Bob at the initial contact, but it didn’t take long for his hand to mould to your own, gripping it like it was the only thing keeping him anchored to the world and keeping the Void inside him at bay. 

With one hand still playing the piano, music drifting through the room, your head made it’s way to Bob’s shoulder, tucking itself into the space between his shoulder and neck as you stared out at the setting sun over the New York City skyline. It didn’t take Bob long to rest his head back against your own, every ounce of tenseness in his body leaving as he settled against you, overwhelmed by the feel of you against him, grounding him in the real world and keeping his thoughts at bay. Just two people who found one another, basking in the peace and quiet they’d found in each other.

They were none the wiser to Yelena right outside the bedroom, peaking through the doorway that Bob had forgotten to close in his haste to enter the room, smiling softly at the pair closer together than ever before, and shut the door to give them the privacy that they deserved together.

[formulaonecrumbs]

Hello :) Could you make one where Lando introduces the reader to two or three of his friends as his girlfriend for the first time? Everything goes well at first, but when he leaves to go to the bathroom, they start making some slightly microaggressive comments about her relationship with Lando. It’s not something obviously bad, but it’s clear they’re doing it to make her uncomfortable like comparing her to his ex or something else

they don’t know about us

Lando Norris x gf!reader

summary: lando introduces you to his friends for the first time.

warnings: uncomfortable reader, weird friends.

A/N: low-key i was gonna give the friends names of lando’s ACTUAL friends like connor or wtv but i didn’t wanna make them seem like bad guys so we got liam and tom 😃 anyways thank u anon!!! ur req is greatly appreciated. i’m sorry for getting to it so late. i have exams going on (until june btw i could be very inactive sometimes) enjoy, beautiful people ❤️

୨ৎ ୨ৎ ୨ৎ ୨ৎ

you could tell lando was excited.

he kept glancing over at you as he walked a few steps ahead, practically buzzing with nervous energy, his hand wrapped tightly around yours. “you’ll like them,” he said for the third time, smiling at you. “they’re good guys.”

you smiled back, even though your stomach was tight. meeting your boyfriend’s close friends was a big deal—and he hadn’t introduced you to many people yet, so you knew this mattered.

the rooftop bar he picked was quiet, upscale, and lit by soft golden lights. the two guys were already there, standing by a tall table with half-empty drinks. you immediately clocked the way their eyes flicked to you. curiosity. maybe even a little surprise.

“boys, this is my girlfriend,” lando said proudly, arm wrapping around your waist. “this is her.”

you gave them your name and a small smile, and to your relief, they were friendly. they shook your hand, made a few jokes. one of them—liam—asked where you were from, and the other—tom—complimented your dress. everything was fine. lando was glowing, leaning into you like he couldn’t stop himself.

but eventually, he excused himself to the bathroom, brushing a kiss to your cheek before he went. “be nice,” he teased them over his shoulder.

the silence that followed was just long enough to feel… heavy.

then liam laughed, sipping his drink. “he really does have a type, doesn’t he?” he said to tom, not even looking at you.

tom raised an eyebrow. “yeah, remember sofía? same kind of vibe.”

liam nodded. “just quieter, i guess.”

you blinked, unsure what to say.

“not a bad thing,” tom added quickly, smiling at you in that way people do when they’ve already said something loaded. “you seem sweet.”

“lando usually goes for girls a little more… out there,” liam added, like it was helpful. “big personalities, you know?”

“maybe he’s maturing,” tom joked.

you laughed politely, but it didn’t reach your eyes. something about the way they kept circling back to comparisons made your skin crawl. like they were trying to measure you up. like they weren’t just talking to you—they were sizing you against some invisible scale.

“he’s really into you though,” liam said, almost like it surprised him. “must be something special.”

you forced a smile. “he’s pretty special too.”

they exchanged a quick look, and you caught it—just a flash of something. doubt? amusement?

but then lando came back, slid his arm around you again, and everything changed. they laughed louder. tom made a joke about lando’s old haircut. liam brought up a karting story. it all smoothed over so quickly, you almost questioned what had just happened.

almost.

later, when lando drove you home, you were quiet. he glanced at you, brow furrowed.

“they liked you,” he said softly.

you smiled, nodding. “yeah. they were… interesting.”

he didn’t say anything right away. but his hand found yours again, fingers lacing together, and he held on like he knew.

and maybe he did.

you watched the city blur past the window, the lights streaking like watercolors. lando hadn’t let go of your hand since you got in the car. his thumb brushed the back of it slowly, over and over.

“you okay?” he asked again, quieter this time.

you hesitated. the kind of silence where you could either swallow it down or say the thing that’s been pressing against your ribs since the rooftop.

“they were a little weird,” you said finally, still staring out the window. “your friends.”

lando didn’t say anything for a second. just kept driving. “weird how?”

you turned to look at him. he glanced at you, then back at the road, and you could see the tension creeping into his jaw.

“just…” you sighed. “i don’t know. they said stuff about me being like your ex. and that i’m not as loud. or outgoing. or whatever. it wasn’t mean, exactly, but it felt like they were trying to figure out why you’re with me.”

lando’s fingers tightened around yours.

“i didn’t want to make it a big deal,” you added quickly. “but it kind of stuck.”

he pulled into your street and parked, the engine still humming. the dashboard lights painted his face in soft orange.

“i’m sorry,” he said quietly. “i had a feeling. i saw the way they looked at you when i introduced you. like they were surprised.”

you nodded, suddenly unsure if you’d said too much. but then he turned to you fully, hand still holding yours.

“look, they don’t know shit,” he said. “and honestly? they’ve always had this thing where they act like i’m not serious about people. like they know better than me.”

his voice was steady, but you could tell he was angry underneath.

“you’re not like anyone i’ve ever been with,” he said. “not because you’re quieter or whatever bullshit they said. because you make me feel… real. grounded. like i’m actually where i want to be.”

your throat felt tight.

“and if they can’t see that, that’s their problem. not yours.”

you gave him a small, grateful smile. “i didn’t want to ruin the night.”

“you didn’t,” he said instantly. “you were the best part of it.”

he leaned over and kissed you then—soft and sure, like a promise. and when he pulled back, he pressed his forehead to yours and whispered, “next time we hang out with people, it’ll be with the ones who actually deserve to know you.”

you nodded, heart a little lighter.

maybe the night hadn’t gone perfect. but this part—him, choosing you over the noise—meant more than anything else.

THE END :>

[kxsagi]

hii, i hope you're doing well ^^ I really enjoy your style of writing :) i was wondering if you can make my request with tooth rotting fluff the reader's love is so gentle and she takes time trying to understand her S/O and she will always ask for permission to touch them even if they given her permission already, the reader cares for her S/O so gently and delicate like something so dear to her life? Feel free to do this with any blue lock characters ^^ and you can also ignore this if it's way too much work haha, another thing is that i love your works and please take some rest whenever you need it.

“𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞”

a/n: hi! i'm doing well and i hope you are too beautiful :) and thank you so much!!! take rest whenever you need it as well

this was some good needed fluff

ft. itoshi rin, isagi yoichi, bachira meguru, nagi seishiro, mikage reo, chigiri hyoma, kaiser michael, shidou ryusei, itoshi sae, ness alexis, niko ikki, hiori yo

itoshi rin

at first, he doesn't understand why you're so soft with him. you’re careful when touching his hand, always asking “can i hold you?” like he’ll shatter if you don't ask. 

it overwhelms him. the kind of love that doesn't demand, doesn’t press, but patiently waits for him to be ready. 

you’d brush hair from his face with trembling fingers and say, “is this okay?” even after years of dating, and he’d nod, ears pink, mumbling, “you don’t have to ask.” 

“i want to,” you’d smile. “you’re important to me.” 

that sentence alone makes his chest hurt (in a good way). 

sometimes he stares at you while you're fussing over his bruises, and all he can think is how the hell did i get this lucky? 

isagi yoichi

he melts like butter in the sun. absolutely smitten with how gently you love him. 

the first time you tucked a blanket around him after a long match, whispering, “can i kiss your forehead?” he blinked at you like you'd just proposed. 

he’s not used to being treated like he’s fragile, but you do it so sincerely that it never feels emasculating. just loving. 

you’ll brush your fingers over his knuckles and ask, “can i?” even though you’ve kissed him a million times, and he’ll smile like it’s the first time every time. 

he tries to match your softness. fails most of the time because he’s clumsy with words, but the love shows in how tightly he holds your pinky when you're walking together. 

bachira meguru

thinks your gentleness is the best thing to ever happen to him. 

he’s so used to loud, chaotic love that your careful affection hits different. it makes him slow down. breathe. 

when you cup his face and softly say, “can i kiss you right here?” pointing to his cheek, his grin goes all lopsided and shy. 

“why do you always ask?” he teases, nose bumping yours. 

“because you’re someone i never want to take for granted.” 

he’ll blink, then full-body tackle hug you like a golden retriever in love. “you’re my favorite human.” 

you take care of him in the little things: asking if he wants to be held, if he’s overstimulated, if he needs quiet or chaos, and he falls a little more in love every time. 

nagi seishiro

was confused at first. “you can just touch me, y’know. i’m fine with it.” 

but when you still ask every single time – "can i sit closer?" "can i touch your hair?" – he realizes something. 

you don’t do it because you think he’ll say no. you do it because you respect him. you love him with your whole heart, but never assume. 

“you’re so… careful,” he murmurs once as you gently rub lotion on his sore hands. 

“you’re important to me. and i want you to feel safe with me.” 

he didn’t even know he needed to feel safe until you made it so easy. 

now he’ll pout if you don’t ask first. “you forgot to ask,” he says, even though he’s already curled up in your lap like a sleepy cat. 

mikage reo

falls so stupidly hard for your gentle love. 

he’s used to grand gestures and flash, but your love is quiet and reverent, and it wrecks him. 

when you brush your thumb over his temple and whisper, “can i hold you for a little while?” he just nods and pulls you in like he’ll never let go. 

he’s amazed at how someone can be so kind, so considerate, and yet still make him feel absolutely cherished. 

you remember all the little things – asking before touching his hair, checking if he wants space after a stressful day – and it makes him fall in love a little harder every day. 

sometimes he’ll just stare at you and go, “you’re seriously the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

chigiri hyoma

you love him like he’s made of porcelain, and it gets him every single time. 

he acts cool about it – rolls his eyes when you ask for permission to touch his hair – but the tips of his ears go pink and he can’t stop smiling. 

after injuries and fear of fragility, your tenderness heals something deeper in him. 

“you can touch me,” he’ll whisper. “you don’t have to ask.” 

“i know,” you smile, “but i like knowing you still want me to.” 

that? that makes him blush so hard he covers his face with a pillow. 

he feels like a beloved treasure when he’s with you, and it makes his heart ache in the best way. 

kaiser michael

used to flirty, shallow affection, most times none, so your pure, patient love absolutely unravels him. 

you treat him like he’s so much more than his ego or his game. 

“can i touch your hair?” you ask, even after months together. and he just stares, like you’re something otherworldly. 

“you already know the answer,” he says, softer than he means to. 

“i want to hear it anyway.” 

you care for him like he’s someone worth loving for who he is, not what he shows, and for the first time, he believes it. 

when you hold his hand with both of yours and treat it like something precious, he suddenly forgets how to flirt. he’s just… quiet, overwhelmed, grateful. 

shidou ryusei

surprisingly receptive to your gentle love, even if he plays it off with grins and jokes. 

“asking permission? what is this, kindergarten?” he smirks. 

but the way he goes quiet when you softly say, “can i hold your hand?” gives him away. 

you’re the only person who touches him like he’s not a weapon, just a boy who wants to be held. 

sometimes, in rare moments of vulnerability, he’ll whisper, “you’re the only one who makes me feel... human.” 

and when you cradle his face like he’s something beautiful instead of dangerous, he leans into your palms like they’re the safest place on earth. 

itoshi sae

at first? he's confused. suspicious, even. 

he’s used to people either putting him on a pedestal or wanting something from him, so when you gently tuck his hair behind his ear and whisper, “can i touch you?”, he just blinks. like, actually short-circuits. 

“you’re already doing it,” he mumbles. but his voice comes out softer than he intends. 

and you just smile and say, “i still want to ask. you matter to me.” 

and that? that undoes him. 

you treat him like he’s not a prodigy, not a golden boy, but someone worth loving gently. and that’s something he didn’t know he needed. 

when you ask, “can i kiss you?” even after you've kissed him dozens of times, he’ll whisper, “yeah… but don’t stop asking.” 

he doesn’t say it outright, but he lives for the way you love him like something fragile. because sometimes, deep down, he feels like he is. 

he’ll rest his head in your lap during quiet nights, pretending to scroll on his phone. but the second you whisper, “can i play with your hair?”, his screen’s forgotten and he’s quietly nodding, eyes closing, letting himself exist in your love. 

it takes time, but eventually, he starts asking too. awkwardly. stiffly. like: “can i hold your hand?” “can i lean on you?” “can i stay over tonight?” 

all while pretending to be nonchalant, but his ears are burning, and he gets so soft when you say yes like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

ness alexis

he’s so touch-starved and desperate for validation that when you treat him with gentle respect, he thinks he’s dreaming. 

you’ll brush your fingers along his arm and softly ask, “is this okay?” and he just blinks, stunned, because no one’s ever cared enough to ask. 

he says “yes” every time – quick, eager, needy – but the way you keep asking anyway? it makes his heart ache in the best way. 

“you’re so careful with me…” he murmurs one night as you tuck a blanket around his shoulders. “like i’m someone who matters.” 

“you are,” you say it simply, like it’s fact. 

and ness hides his face in your shoulder because he’s never felt so loved before.

he starts to mirror your habits – asking “can i hug you?” or “can i play with your hair?” – because you’ve made him believe love can be soft and mutual. 

niko ikki

gets really flustered at first. like, blushing to the tips of his ears when you ask, “can i hold your hand?” 

“y-you don’t need to ask,” he stammers, already squeezing your fingers. 

but when you keep doing it, every time, even for the smallest touches, he gets it. 

you don’t ask because you doubt, you ask because you respect him. and that’s what makes him fall so hard for you. 

niko’s love language becomes sitting in comfortable silence, your pinkies linked, as you glance over and softly whisper, “can i lean on you?” 

he nods every time, too stunned to speak. 

“you treat me like i’m precious,” he says one day, voice quiet. 

“you are,” you reply, just as gently, and niko short-circuits on the spot. 

hiori yo

oh, you destroy him (in the softest way possible). 

he’s always been scared of getting too close, of being a burden. but then you come along – so patient, so kind – and ask, “is this okay?” before every hug, every kiss, every forehead touch. 

and hiori just… melts. fully, completely, beautifully. 

you cup his face with both hands and ask, “can i hold you like this?” and he’s already nodding, eyes glossy with emotion. 

you ask him if he’s okay when he zones out. you check if he wants to be alone or held. you don’t assume, you care. 

“you make me feel safe,” he confesses one night, voice barely a whisper. “like… no one’s ever done that before.” 

you brush your thumb under his eye, smiling softly. “you deserve to be loved that way.” 

and hiori hugs you tighter than he ever has before, like he never wants to let go. 

© 𝐤𝐱𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐢

[jungwnies]

co-parenting | charles leclerc

୨ৎ : featuring : ex-husband!charles x ex-wife!reader ୨ৎ : synopsis (requested by anon) : co-parenting with a kid who wishes you guys were still together.

୨ৎ : genre : romance & comedy ୨ৎ : word count : 525

୨ৎ masterlist ୨ৎ 10k event | masterlist ୨ৎ

the drop-offs were always the same. quiet. simple. polite.

a soft bonjour. a shared update. a backpack passed between cars. you never lingered and neither did he.

not because it was hostile — you’d never let it get that far. not with your daughter watching.

but it hurt, sometimes. the way you went from late-night laughter and pasta on the stove to schedules and calendars and “see you next friday.”

charles never stopped being a good father. maybe that made it harder.

today, she came running toward you from the steps of his monaco apartment, curls bouncing, cheeks flushed with joy.

“maman! papa says we can have dinner together tonight. all of us.”

you blinked. “oh?”

she nodded furiously, looking back at charles, who stood in the doorway, one hand in his pocket, eyes already on you.

“i made pasta,” he said, almost sheepishly. “her idea.”

of course it was. your little peacekeeper. your tiny schemer.

still, you nodded. “alright.”

the kitchen hadn’t changed.

same marble countertop. same magnets on the fridge. same faint scent of his cologne lingering in the air. you didn’t realize you’d missed it.

dinner was easy. laughter spilled without trying. she told stories between bites of pasta and charles watched you with that soft, familiar look — the one that used to undo you in quiet places.

after she fell asleep — curled up in your old hoodie on his couch — you stayed to help clean. he didn’t ask. you didn’t offer. it just… happened.

you stood side by side at the sink, hands brushing.

“you still remember where everything is,” he said quietly.

you shrugged. “hard to forget.”

charles nodded, setting a plate on the drying rack. “i still forget you’re not here sometimes.”

you looked over at him. “charles—”

“i’m not saying it to make you uncomfortable,” he said quickly. “i just… i miss you.”

you froze.

he didn’t look at you. just kept rinsing dishes like he hadn’t shattered something soft and unspoken between you.

“it was hard,” he said after a moment. “losing you. coming home and not hearing your voice.”

“it was hard for me too.”

he finally turned toward you. “but we still work.”

you hesitated. “as co-parents.”

“as more than that,” he said gently. “we laugh. we talk. we still know each other.”

you swallowed. “charles, we divorced for a reason.”

he nodded. “and i’ve learned since then. grown. i don’t want to force anything. but i think our daughter sees something we’re scared to admit.”

you looked back toward the couch — toward the little girl curled under a blanket you once shared, peaceful and smiling in her sleep.

“she misses us together,” you whispered.

“she’s not the only one.”

charles reached for your hand.

“would you ever consider trying again?” he asked, voice quiet. “not for her. for us.”

you looked down at his fingers wrapped around yours — calloused from the wheel, familiar from a lifetime ago.

“do you think we've matured since then?” you asked honestly.

“i do,” his voice didn’t waver. “but we can go slow, i want us to work, no matter how long it takes.”

2021-2025 © jungwnies | All rights reserved. Do not repost, plagiarize, or translate

[elodieunderglass]

There was an utterly random person who accused me of reblogging things in a pattern indicating I was part of a group that secretly gathered to mock them. They asked why I was bullying them, which was done by reblogging specific posts that were secretly about them, in patterns and times designed to trigger them and mock them. For example, reblogging a certain piece of art and a certain queer positivity post in succession was a pattern, and if I thought I was fooling anybody, look how other people did it too (clearly their dash had a lot of mutuals who were online at the same time and reblogged the same thing.)

I had a similar conversation, and they pretty much instantly calmed down and explained that they sometimes had trouble distinguishing reality, and that perhaps I was participating in the pattern in all innocence. I attempted to handle this compassionately. I worried that I shouldn’t block them, because what if that harmed them?

This came back recently, and I searched for their name, and saw they were having some sort of outbreak, and doing this to other people as well. Some of the people they messaged had their own troubles with distinguishing reality, and being told quite firmly that they were a bully, part of a secret bullying ring, who gathered on tumblr to mock nudes - the evidence being the pattern of posts they’d reblogged; look who else reblogged this, they’re in the ring with you, aren’t they, you disgusting bully - was incredibly destabilising for them. This was so awful, and helped me understand how Beyond My Problem this person was.

I think I’m someone who tries to behave fairly sensibly and scrupulously, and with decent manners, online. Unfortunately, that often results in me feeling like I have to manage other people’s reactions for them. Like, if I was a better person, and hit every word perfectly, nobody would get mad at me. That’s certainly the impression the Internet likes to give - that if people get mad at someone, it’s because they were Wrong and Okay to Punish, so if you don’t want people mad at you, you just have to behave perfectly. Simple, right?

But interactions like the OP and the one I had recently really go to show that you can’t manage other people. There is no perfect behavior you could pull off that would have stopped this happening. They are just having a separate experience that’s nothing to do with you as a person. They are mad at you not because of you as a person, or anything you did, or even on purpose (they might be genuinely distressed by feeling this way.) sometimes people are just mad and you can’t fix it and it’s not about you.

Are they trying to be funny? Are they trying to set up some false accusation blackmail thing? Are they having trouble distinguishing reality? Did they mistake you for someone else? Is it a bot? Are they genuinely in need of help? Are they doing a bit to screencap you? Do they think that you deliberately reblog posts in significant targeted patterns?

None of them are within your gift to solve over internet messages. Sometimes people are just mad, and you happened to be there. Sometimes it’s just something that happens, like weather.

I’m sorry it happened, OP. You were really funny about it but it’s not pleasant.

what the hell is going on

[chahnniesroom]

the way home

pairing: none (platonic ot8 & female reader)

summary: a peaceful walk home takes a turn for the worst when you notice you're being followed.

word count: 0.8k

tags/warnings: 9th member au, sasaeng/creepy fan

a/n: i am currently working on a longer fic for this collection, but i wrote this super quickly over the weekend inspired by this clip that i randomly saw on ig.

where the heart is collection | read it on ao3 | masterlist

You notice the person about halfway between the company and home. You'd decided to walk back since the weather was nice, but now regret your decision.

In general, you try not to be too paranoid when you’re out in public, after all, Seoul is a big city and there are a lot of people going to a lot of places. It's a humbling experience to worry about being spotted by a fan and then realise they just happened to be heading to the same area as you.

You walk past the man first, then notice he's behind you a couple streets later when you happen to turn around. You make a few strategic turns, bringing you back into the direction of the company, alternating between more popular streets and quieter ones. Each time you look back, he's still training behind you and you know it's no coincidence.

His pace isn't particularly fast, he's stayed about half a block behind you this whole time, and his gait is casual. Large but even steps, you would think that he's just taking an evening stroll if he didn't match you every time that you deliberately sped up or slowed down.

You feel hunted.

You call the guys immediately, blindly hitting the call button for your group chat.

“I think I'm being followed,” you say, the second the call connects. You don't even know which of the members picked up.

“Where are you?” Chan replies back, his tone urgent.

“I was walking home, but now I'm heading back to the company. I'll send my location now.”

“Do you have any details?”

“I think he's a fan. He looks young, early 20s and it seemed like he recognised me. I didn't realise until later that he had turned around and was still behind me.”

“Try to stick to a busy street,” Chan urges you. “Y/n-ah, do you think he's dangerous?”

“He doesn't seem dangerous, per se,” you say slowly. Your voice barely comes out as a whisper. “But I’m scared, oppa. I don't feel safe.”

“We're on our way,” Minho replies. You have no idea when he joined the call or who else is listening in, but you already feel a bit better knowing that they're there. “We'll be there soon and security is sending a team too.”

“Can you stay on the call until then?” you ask with a tremulous voice. “I don't want to be alone.”

“Of course.” It's Chan again. “I promise, we won't hang up until you're in our arms.”

“I'm close to the cafe we went to last week,” you tell them. “The one with the green grape ade and the sweet potato cake that I liked. I think they're still open. I'm going to go in."

“Got it,” Han confirms. “I know the place, we'll send everyone that way.”

You don't want to run or do anything that might set off the person following you. It feels like forever until you finally reach the cafe's entrance and make it in. The jingle of the bell has never seemed so welcoming.

You nod to the worker at the counter and head to a table further into the cafe. You’ve visited enough times that they don't question you since you sometimes meet up with the boys and wait until they arrive before ordering.

“I'm inside,” you update the boys. “Sitting at a table. He’s out there just- he's just standing there. Why won't he leave me alone?!”

Even though you feel significantly safer now that you're inside with other people, your heart is still racing and adrenaline has filled your body. The hand that's not holding your phone is shaking.

“It's okay if you feel scared,” Seungmin soothes you. “We're almost there. He won't bother you again.”

“Okay,” you say shakily, trying to compose yourself.

“Security is close,” Chan says. “What does this person look like? What are they wearing?”

“He's average height, slim. Wearing a baseball cap, big black jacket, baggy jeans. He's right at the window beside the door.”

“Got it,” Chan replies.

You watch, moments later as a couple of men approach the guy. They talk to him for a second before they lead him away with a firm grip on each shoulder.

The second after he disappears from your view, the members burst into the cafe, frantically scanning the room.

You stand up and meet them in the middle.

“Thank you.” Is all you can say, before you burst into tears of relief. The boys waste no time surrounding you and wrapping you in their arms murmuring reassurances, uncaring of how it must look to the cafe patrons.

where the heart is collection | read it on ao3 | masterlist