#SORRY THIS WASNT REALLY X READER

[osaemu]

omg i inspired u...blushes.........anyway trick or treat ft dazai :333

dazai definitely says "im gonna kms" at every minor inconvenience . . . it becomes so frequent that everyone around him starts sayin it too LMAO , like one time kunikida breaks his pen for the millionth time and it just slips out of his mouth ! the whole agency goes quiet and someone (ranpo) calls out "dazai when did u dye your hair blonde ?!" and dazai starts laughing so hard he cries 💀 . . . but the reason hes so comfortable with casually sayin "im gonna kms" is bc he doesnt actually want to all that much anymore and I HAVE A LOT MORE TO SAY ABOUT THIS BUT THIS WAS SPOSED TO BE SHORT !

[baeshijima]

sometimes i find it so funny when ppl dont properly tag their works for the reason of “oh, but then others won’t be able to see my work!” or “but if i tag it then it will spoil the twist!” (usually a darker or more… questionable twist, for a lack of better words) and so on. but that… that is literally the whole purpose of tagging? so that the ppl who have the tag(s) filtered because they dont want to see it just. wont.

like dw, ur work will reach ur audience one way or another bc theyre either following u, see it rbed on their dash, or they dont have it filtered; tho that will also have ppl who dont want to see it exposed to it so, for the love of god and the sake of our sanities, pls just list the warnings beforehand like it really isnt such a difficult concept to grasp ???

and bold it, especially if it is in the small text. the whole purpose is for it to be easily visible for the very reason that it can be avoided by readers who dont want to read it. idc if it ruins the aesthetic bc the lack of proper tagging ruins my already declining sanity :]

[amvro]

pairing: amuro tooru x gn!reader

summary: HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMURO !

cw: none :) (please lmk if i should add any!)

He could not remember when, but at some point he stopped celebrating his birthdays. Well, somewhere in him he knew it was most likely the first year he was alone.

But it really didn't matter to him, just as long as he knew how old he was. There was truly nothing exciting about getting a cake and lighting and candle for him to eat alone, and he didn't see the point in getting himself a gift so it was just like any other day.

Now, this year was a little different. The two of you had been dating for three months now and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t wonder if something would happen for his birthday this year. However, he did not mention his birthday in any way, let alone tell you when it was so there was no way you would know. And he didn’t plan to tell you either because he really didn’t think his birthday was a day necessary of celebration. It was just a little thought in his head.

His birthday had finally rolled around, but it was truly just like any other day. He got up bright and early to exercise and he was working until horribly late, just like always. It was only until late in the night that he was finally able to check his phone and you were asking if he was still at work and telling him to take care. This was practically your routine at this point. If he didn’t say anything by 9 pm you’d text him a few messages, except these days were unfortunately far more common than not. Yet, this was all he needed to feel a little better after a long day at work.

“Furuya-san, did something nice happen?” Kazami asked.

“Hmm, why?” he questioned.

“Well, you looked so delighted,” Kazami replied. 

“Oh...” Amuro said, smiling. It was nothing but sweet to him that he’d let something show on his face, and that it’d be happiness out of all things. “I got the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten in my life.”

“Oh, what did you get? Hold on it’s your birthday today Furuya-san? Happy birthday! I hope--” Kazami started to go on.

“Hmm... it’s a secret,” Amuro responded. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He was finally driving home after he sent you a message that he was done work and that he’d be alright. The whole way home he could tell he was ecstatic and he was horribly embarrassed, he felt like a little boy for getting so excited. 

He was finally getting over his little burst of excitement when he reached his place and turned the lights on but his eyes shot open.

“Happy birthday Rei!” you said, cake on the table and a few balloons here and there. He wanted to cry.

”How... did you know?”

“Of course I know my boyfriend’s birthday!” you said, acting a little offended almost, but then you laughed. “It was a lot harder to find out than I expected.”

“I didn’t think someone still knew my birthday,” he said, still shocked.

“Sometimes I really think you don’t get just how much I love you,” you said, grinning. “Because I would rather die than miss your birthday.”

Everything was finally sinking in and he walked over to you without a word and kissed you. It was long and sweet, but he went in for another one right after, and yet another one after that, before he finally pulled away.

You were ever so slightly out of breath, looking so caught off guard, and he started to laugh.

“Hey!” you said, pouting slightly.

“No, I’m sorry it’s not that. I would never laugh at you,” he said. “It’s just that there’s no way I don’t love you more.”

[catboymiles69]

[skeletonlvr22]

Since Coffee has always had Wine to help guide him through his panic attacks and Coffee doesn't really know what to do without the guidance of an outside party, will Willa fill that role for Wine and take his place in helping Coffee?

I think it would be kinda funny/interesting to see how Wine would react, I can see it now. Coffee having a panic/anxiety attack and instead of coming to Wine for help, Coffee instead goes to Willa.

Someone get Wine some toast because HE IS JELLY!!

(lol I know its such a bad joke sorry!)

Yes, yes! Though, the way they'll help him through it will be worlds different.

Wine would assuredly not enjoy some human chick comforting his itty bitty babybones of a brother (and it helping better than he could would bother him, too).

Willa's also strong-willa-ed (now we have TWO silly jokes between us, lol) and wouldn't let Wine do what he normally does to 'help' Coffee through the panic.

It's sure to cause some tension. Not only between Wine and Willa, but everyone else around them, too.

Thank you for your ask 😊 I enjoyed this heavily!

[periprose]

What happened to ur Joel fic??? 😭😭

Oh I'm rewriting it! I was really not happy with the original fic and how much random stuff was in it... it also was paced way too quickly. I really like soaking in themes so I'm gonna post an updated version soon :)

[hoshiina]

pairing: hoshina soushirou x gn!reader (no prns)

request: a reader that keeps messing around w him and at some point they mention they like him but then hoshina thinks theyre just playing... ..but they r not and he doesnt quite get it at first because hes so used to them joking around and then he ends up overthinking the whole thing until reader actually goes up to him to kiss him (or hug him very tight!!!!!!!! or both maybe!!!!!!)

maybe he liked them too but that thought didnt sit right with him because he doesnt believe hes worthy of something like that

notes: mentions the readers face "flushing", reader is rather lively/outgoing, reader is not a fan of horror and is more a fan of romance, reader is a hoshina stan, one part is inspired by a scene in wakaba no komorebi, omg why are there so many notes I'm so sorry TY FOR THE REQ!!

wc: 2800

A new day, a new chance for you to shoot your shot at none other than your vice-captain of the third division.

You were always messing with him. This ranged from embarrassing pranks a grade school boy would menace his crush with, all the way to borderline hitting on him. There wasn’t a single day you’d forget to remind him he was stunning, and you’d always be bragging about him to the officers in the first division, regardless of the fact that you had absolutely nothing to do with the things you were bragging about. Simply put, you were loud about Hoshina.

Yet, every day, he'd brush you off and tell you to get to work. You didn't let that mind you much though, because you could tell he wasn't actually upset. You liked him unconditionally, and as long as you weren't actually bothering him, you couldn't care less if your feelings weren't returned. Well, you did care, but that wasn't going to stop how you felt for him.

Now, you said all of that, but naturally, you were still scared to just put your feelings out there so you hadn’t actually told Hoshina you liked him. You assumed he knew, but if you said it out loud, you’d have to hear an answer. And that, you were not ready for.

However, you weren’t going to stop messing with him anytime soon. Hoping one day he’d actually fall for you and one day you’d have the courage to properly tell him how you felt.

You were in the cafeteria with the rest of the division, having your breakfast while mindlessly scrolling through your phone, when you saw a post about a new movie in theatres. Immediately your mind went to possibly inviting Hoshina and you scrolled right back up, trying to find out what it was about. Horror. You sighed and continued to scroll. Horror was absolutely not your favourite.

“Oh, is it finally out?” you heard a voice from behind you say— your favourite voice say.

“Would you like to go?” you asked, whipping your head back to see none other than Hoshina Soushirou. Just the sight of him and your heart would flutter. How you loved him. “Together? Us? Just us? You and me?”

“Oh, like we have time to go,” he said.

“Man,” you said, knowing he’d say that. The entire defence force in general had been a lot busier ever since the appearance of so many identified grade kaijus. However, it did make you wonder if that meant he would if he did have time. No, he’s just declining your invitation politely, you’d tell yourself, bringing you back to your senses.

You’ve done this since always, and you do this every time without fail. Whenever a new shop had opened, or a new movie to watch had come to theatres, you'd always shoot your shot— hoping he'd say yes one day. Yes to a date.

Although you were used to getting turned down, it still wasn’t the best feeling. Recently, you've been letting it get to you far more than you used to. Maybe after all these times, the rejection did start to have an affect on you. Maybe you were falling for him even harder recently, or maybe you were starting to hope for your feelings to be returned.

Perhaps a relaxing day at the movies was exactly what you needed. Maybe you’d ask for a day off next week— just to go watch a movie you liked.

So you did exactly that, you filed a form to Captain Ashiro, requesting a day off anytime the next week. Preferably on a Tuesday, because movie tickets were cheaper on Tuesdays.

A few days later, you were called over to her office. You assumed it was just to let you know if you could have your day off and if so, when it was. To your surprise, when you walked in, it wasn't Ashiro but rather Hoshina there, working away.

“Hoshina?” you asked, pleasantly surprised. “I didn't expect to see you today.”

“You didn't?” he asked, genuinely perplexed. “But this is my office?”

“Your office? I thought it was Captain Ashiro’s?” you said.

“It used to be, but I took it over a little while back,” he said. “It's just a lot faster for me to do the paperwork.”

“Oh… I see,” you said, rather surprised you weren't already aware. There was a moment of silence.

“It was rather recently that I had officially started working here,” he said, somehow noticing that you were dejected. Oh, how did he always know exactly what to say? You were never going to get over him at this rate. “Anyways, you requested a day off next week?”

“Um… yes,” you said. Now you felt a little awkward about going to a movie alone, and you really hoped he wouldn't realize where you were going.

“On a Tuesday… are you going to see that movie after all?” he asked and he noticed you stiffened a little, so he immediately followed with, “Sorry, you don't have to answer that. You're absolutely free to take that day off.”

“I am,” you said. Half a lie, because there was no way you were watching a horror movie, let alone by yourself. But you were going to the movies. That was true. “It's been a while since I watched a movie in theatres, I realized.”

“I've never gone alone actually,” he said, imagining you were planning to go alone. “Or are you going with someone?”

“No, I'll be by myself,” you said, but instinctively you asked him out again. It was practically in your subconsciousness to do so. “Unless you'd like to tag along?”

There was a long pause before he said anything, and his unreadable expression only made the silence feel longer. You were expecting a quick rejection again, so the silence was absolutely killing you— you hadn't expected it one bit.

“Actually, I'd like to,” he said. “If that's okay with you, of course.”

You couldn't believe your ears. What did he say? You couldn't have possibly heard that right. What had he said?

On the other hand, he had no idea why he said yes. Why after turning you down all these times? Why now? He had turned down every offer of yours because he knew you were just messing around. You didn’t feel about him the way he felt about you. He knew this because you had done this since the moment you joined, and you couldn’t have liked him back then— you hadn't even know him yet.

But still, he hoped you were serious.

“You're joking,” you said.

“Were you?” he asked. This must be why he said yes. He wanted to know so badly— he was rather exhausted of playing the guessing game with you.

“Not at all,” you said. You thought he had known, but perhaps not. “I've never been. Not for a moment.”

“Then, let's go,” he said with his poker face on, but he was a little shaken. He didn't think you were at all serious, let alone that serious.

“Okay…” you said, but you were spaced out. You had no idea what had prompted this all of a sudden, but this was the moment you had been waiting for, for your whole life. Yes to a date.

A date? Was it a date?

“Hoshina, is this a date?” you asked, and you could tell your cheeks were flushed. However, there wasn't much to be embarrassed about at this point, so you might as well have asked before you drove yourself insane.

“Would you like it to be?” he asked. You had no idea what he was thinking.

“Yes,” you said. “Of course…”

“Then, let's go on a date,” he said. “On Tuesday, at 2pm. I'll pick you up from your unit and we'll go and watch a movie.”

It was yes to a date. A date with none other than the love of your life. You were going on a date with Hoshina Soushirou.

You left the office soon after, thanking him as you left, and you were lost in thought. You truly felt like the world around you had stopped, but at the same time, the time passing was a blur. You thought it’d be forever before your long awaited day, and you’d have plenty of time to calm yourself down and prepare, but it had rolled around before you knew it.

You put on what you personally thought was your best date outfit, but you had no idea if he’d like it. You really hoped he would. Now, you were sitting around, waiting for him to come pick you up. It was still 10 till 2, but he was always ahead of schedule— he hated making people wait, so he was always early. A few minutes later, you heard a few footsteps and some rustling outside your door, and you were pretty sure it was him. You waited for a knock, but it wouldn’t come.

Quickly, you opened the door and it was him, waiting by your door with his phone in his hand, opened to your messages with him.

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry, were you waiting?”

“No,” you said, immediately. “I just finished getting ready. Why didn’t you knock?”

“Well, I’m early,” he said. “Didn’t want to rush you.”

Gosh, you were on a date. With him. You had actually never seen him in anything other than what he wears at the defense force, and as much as you liked that training shirt he had on, he looked so incredibly gorgeous today. And this was just for you. He wore a black corduroy turtleneck, and a simple long coat to go over it. You were still so lost, how had you gotten to this point in the first place?

“You’re stunning today,” he said to you as he smiled a little and you swear you felt your heartrate spike. Did he even know what he was doing?

“Not to mean you aren’t usually…” he said immediately. “Sorry, I never say the right things when they count, do I?”

“No, I thought my heart was going to stop,” you said, frankly. This was the way you always were, there was no point in getting flustered all of a sudden. “You’re gorgeous everyday, but even more so today.”

“Well, I’d have to be glad our date is today then,” he said.

While the two of you walked to the theatre, it was rather quiet. Far more quiet than you usually were. Suddenly, you were so nervous, and there was nothing to say to him. So many questions filled your head but none of them felt appropriate to ask. You felt like the spell would break if you took one wrong breath. You wanted to know why he was here with you today. Why he said yes all of a sudden, why he took a precious day off to go on a date with you, and what he was thinking when he said yes. You wanted to know how he felt about you, or at least how he felt about this date.

“I’ll go get us tickets,” you said, as soon as you got to the theatre. “Please pick a snack and a drink in the meantime, I’ll get the tickets quick.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, I’m getting the tickets, and the drinks and snacks, for that matter,” he said. “Besides, we haven’t even decided on a movie yet.”

“We haven’t?” you asked. “I thought we were watching the movie that came out the other day?”

“What? Why would we?” he asked, genuinely confused. “You don’t even like horror." He pointed at another poster on the wall. "Why don’t we watch that one? Romance is more your type of thing, isn’t it?”

You thought you’d cry. If there was one thing that was worrying you about this date, it was the movie. Horror really wasn’t for you, and you weren’t sure if you could watch the movie without showing it.

“How did you know?” you asked.

“It’s obvious,” he said. “You’ve never asked me out to a horror movie, have you?”

Just how did he notice? “But didn’t you want to watch that one?” you asked.

“Please, I can watch that whenever, on my own,” he said. “I’m here with you today. I’d be a horrible date to make you watch it with me.”

“Thank you,” you said, starstruck. “At least, let me pay for it then?”

“No way,” he said. “I’m taking you out today.”

“No, I asked you out,” you said.

“Don’t care!” he said and went off to get the tickets and snacks.

You were in love with him, and you were going to tell him. You were sure he knew, but you had to tell him properly. It wasn’t even that you were hoping for him to return your feelings, you just wanted to tell him.

You thought you wouldn’t be able to focus on the movie at all, but you were, strangely enough. You were watching a cliche romance movie that couldn’t possibly be about you and Hoshina, no matter how much you tried to stretch the narrative, but you loved it. It was a sweet movie, a type that you've always loved, and you were watching it with the one you always loved. You couldn’t be happier.

So as soon as the movie was over, you went for it.

“Hoshina, I love you so much,” you said, and kissed him. On the lips.

His eyes were wide and his cheeks were faintly flushed. You weren’t expecting that, not even for a moment.

“You’re serious?” he asked.

You were confused, did he think you were playing around all this time? “Yes, of course,” you said. “I’ve loved you for forever.”

“Since… when?” he asked.

“Since the day you saved me, 3 years ago,” you said, immediately. It was like you had waited all your life to answer this. “You definitely don’t remember, but I remember like yesterday.”

He wouldn’t reply, but he was still looking at you surprised, so you continued on.

“I thought I had told you this actually. Not the part that I liked you, but the part that you saved me. I joined because of you, Hoshina,” you said. “Yes, you’re my vice-captain and the love of my life, and I’m one of your officers, but you were my hero and I was your biggest fan for all this time.”

Something in him shifted. It felt like someone had woken him up from a weird haze, and showed him how much colour there is to the world. You joined for him. Not for Mina, not for Gen, but him. To you, he was a hero. To the one he treasured most, he was irreplaceable.

“I love you too,” he said, with the softest smile you had ever seen from him. He was serious, you could tell.

“No way,” you said.

“I do,” he said, but he could tell that you were a little skeptical, or at least puzzled. “I love the way you work hard, the way you joke around, but actually care so much. I love the way you give everything your all. I love the way you always smile when you see me— it makes me feel so special. You make my day, absolutely every single day.”

It took everything in you to stop yourself from sobbing, but that made Hoshina laugh. He kissed you this time, and tears rolled down your cheeks anyway.

Wiping your cheeks with the pad of his thumb, he kissed you on the forehead.

“I absolutely adore you.”

BONUS:

Later that day, you were going to open up the one cardboard box you still hadn’t unpacked. The one filled with your posters and merch of Hoshina you had collected through these years. You were hiding them, because you thought it’d be a little too weird if you had those just hanging around, but finally, they’d see the sunlight. You would never have even imagined this day when you had those in your room, dreaming of him. If only you could tell your past self— just how thrilled you would’ve been. Well, not that you were any less thrilled now.

The next time Hoshina came to visit you in your room, he was utterly flustered, it was absolutely adorable. He couldn’t believe people actually bought the merch they sold of him, let alone put them up— and in the room of his loved one nonetheless. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it, because it made him so incredibly happy.

He was thrilled that you did, in fact, love him the way he loved you.

[piastappies]

always the same ♡ lando norris x verstappen!reader

time flies by, people around you change, but there’s no doubt that lando is the one for you—or so you think, and so does he.

happy austria win !!

yourname

🎵 sorry for party rocking • lmfao [E]

liked by maxverstappen1, isackhadjar, lando, and 26 287 others.

yourname isacks parents took me to dinner for passing an exam and made him pay 🩷

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user1 i can only see logan sargeant holding a fish when i hear the song

user2 why is max verstappen’s sister being taken out by isack’s parents for dinner ????

user3 we’re losing the ancient texts…

user2 i seriously wanna know though

user3 smh

user4 theyre friends n i think yourname lives with isack cos of her erasmus!!

kikagomes restaurants and bars hate to see us coming like 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

yourname no fr we gotta go out more 💔

isackhadjar you gotta write your THESIS not your name on a piece of paper for some guy smh

kikagomes damn… he clocked you

yourname those words can’t stop me because i can’t read

user5 i dont believe in that erasmus crap they GOTTA be dating

user6 can’t two people be friends anymore 🫠

user7 i wonder if they ever talked about ad21 considering isacks a hamilton fan

pepemartiofficial barcelona clears paris dawg

isackhadjar why is this child speaking

pepemartiofficial i hope you get promoted to drive rbr soon

isackhadjar ???????? stop threatening me

user8 LMAOOOOOO

user9 god bless yourname for giving us pepeisack

yourname honestly they r like bedbugs…

isackhadjar YOU live in MY house who is more of a bedbug???

yourname hehehe i’m too pretty to be a bedbug | liked by lando ♡

user10 what is HE doing here ??

user3 you guys dont know the lore at all do you??

twitter

yourname • close friends

liked by kikagomes, pietra.pilao, gabyprentice_ and 23 others.

kikagomes girl if someone had a screenshot of what you said you’d be gone…

yourname you r laughing but i’d kill myself in a second

yourname i was fourteen n calling him my baby daddy 😭😭😭😭😭

kikagomes BAD DOWN ???

yourname isack cant literally stop laughing n wheezing @ me

yourname you might hear abt me on the news 🔜

pietra.pilao LMFAOO‼️‼️

yourname get your brazilian ass outta here 😭😭😭😭

yourname you’re so much WORSE than me whore

pietra.pilao this is really uncalled for 😣

yourname istg if you hear max or HIM talking about it just kill them for me

pietra.pilao only for you 🩷🩷🩷

pietra.pilao blocking the acc on max’s twt for u

yourname muito obrigada🙏

maxverstappen1 why are you posting pictures of me without permission

yourname this is not a safe space for males

gabyprentice_ u look like u need a hug

yourname ive got tickets to paris with your name on it

yourname bring christian and i’ll call pepe i cant deal with isack

gabyprentice_ OH YOU WERE SERIOUS

maxverstappen1

🎵 i always wanted a brother • lion king

liked by danielricciardo, lando, kellypiquet and 728 917 others.

maxverstappen1 brothers in law since day one dawg 🐶

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user11 oh my god someone put a go pro on yourname i gotta see this

user12 he always can be talking about victoria…

victoriaverstappen he isn’t 😂😂

user13 you are TWENTY SEVEN why are you saying DAWG

user13 someone ban isack hadjar from interacting with him

user14 HE SAW THE LORE DROP TWEET @ user3

user3 OH MY GAWD LOOOOL

lando day one dawg 👊👊

user15 lando definitely knew about this post beforehand 😭😭😭

mickschumacher she’s gonna kill herself

sophiekumpen 😂😂😂😂

user16 SO MESSY WTF

user17 @ isackhadjar check on yourname PLEASE

yourname WHAT THW DFUCK

maxverstappen1 this is not a safe space for males

user18 THE SONG CHOICE JAJAJAJA 😭😭

isackhadjar BAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

yourname washed up driver

yourname bully

yourname george russell was right

yourname ban this guy for life

yourname give hamilton his wdc from 2021 CHEATER

user19 yourname’s crashout wasnt on my bingo this year 😭😭😭

user20 SHE DOESNT FOLLOW HIM ANYMORE LOOOL

lando @ yourname text me back xx

user21 OH MY GOD

user22 so normal about this 🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️

yourname

🎵 starting line • luke hemmings

liked by lando, pepemartiofficial, gabyprentice_ and 21 728 others.

yourname crashed out so bad had to reconnect with nature 🩷

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isackhadjar “reconnect with nature” but not “write my thesis”

yourname shut the fuck up omg you went there WITH ME

user23 ultimate best friends

user24 propaganda i’m falling for: isackyn

user25 she’s a real girl

nikola_tsolov wow you met your long lost sister

yourname shut the fuck up omg

yourname big bomboclaat

danielricciardo max asks you to unblock him

user26 she really did block him omg 😭😭😭

user27 annoying older brother lmaoo

pietra.pilao garota linda 🩷🩷 | liked by author ♡

user28 honestly if i was lando i’d wife her up in a SECOND like… shes even friends with your friends ????

user29 they gotta be together n just trolling that theyre not

gabyprentice_ best field trip 😁😁😁

christianmansell i had a tick on my back and had to see a doctor

pepemartiofficial so ??? best field trip EVER!!!!

user30 i love how yourname friends are just red bull juniors and their colleagues 😭😭

user31 this is isack’s doing i swearrrr

yourname they r my kids wdym !!!!!!

unifriend1 how are you so gorg ??? | liked by author ♡

kikagomes went for a hike and didn’t take me…

lando did you reconect enough to text me back?

yourname please stop texting me idk who you are ??

lando yourname be serious

yourname okay 😣😣😣

twitter

lando

🎵 like that (jack’s version) • jack and jack

liked by maxfewtrell, patriciooward, maxverstappen1 and 726 910 others.

lando uncle duty on vacation dawg

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user31 so does his finger slipped when he was choosing the pictures?

user32 he’s too cheeky for it to be an accident

maxfewtrell nice pictures brother

lando thanks brother

user33 oh he’s soo serious

user34 weird theory but this is nawt magui

user35 wdym… why is she even in the debate 😭

user34 people on twt keep saying that they r back together but i’m pretty sure it’s yourname

user36 i think its delusions

user37 landoyn truther

maxverstappen1 dawg… 🐶

lando dawg…! 🐶

user38 just one taste please

user39 whore 🫵🫵🫵

isackhadjar i wonder who that is

user40 magui

isackhadjar sure girl 🩷 | liked by author ♡

yourname you should reconnect with nature a bit

user41 she finally stopped pretending that she doesn’t know him 😭

user42 she wants to have his babies bffr

user42 SHE JUST BLOXKWD ME

lando fancy joining me?

yourname go away | liked by maxverstappen1 ♡

user43 max is like i accept but i don’t support

yourname

🎵 bed chem • sabrina carpenter

liked by lando, pietra.pilao, isackhadjar and 33 004 others.

yourname he is MINE so STOP SAYING HES WITH SOMWONE ELSE WTF or i’ll SMOKE your ugly stupid asses

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lando when she’s possessive 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

user44 how is he here so fast ???? i literally have notifs on

user45 imagine being in a obsessed with yourname contest and lando is there before they even open the door

user46 the song choice 😭😭 just release the damn sex tape

user47 someone make another rumour that hes with magui and she’ll do it | liked by author ♡

user48 she’s so messy i love it

pietra.pilao practically sisters in law now 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

yourname WIVES*

lando over my dead body

user49 pr relationship lol

yourname do i gotta post a vid of us doing it raw or something ?

user50 PLEASE DO OMG

maxverstappen1 PLEASE DONT

mclaren please don’t 🧡

oscarpiastri why are people shocked

user51 i love how yourname is like ohhh here’s my boyfriend and then LOOK AT HOW HOT I AM my queen

isackhadjar never going to vacations with you

user52 LMFAO

isackhadjar hotel walls are not that thick nor soundproof

yourname shouldve joined us 🩷

isackhadjar FUCK OFF

user53 sex must be so good like . . . | liked by lando ♡

pepemartiofficial i basically made it happen

[munsonify]

admiring

pairing. bob reynolds x reader

summary. three times bob catches you staring, and the one time he confronts you about it

content warning. slight nsfw thoughts 18+ (very very brief/light detail), a little angst but mostly just a load of fluff, pining, new avengers!era and new avengers!r, mentions of insecurities (bobs), overthinking (both bob and r), non-established relationships

word count. 3695

a/n. i’m hardcore projecting myself into some of this my bad gang. also the dialogue kind of sucks so im sorry. not proofread

———

the briefing room

it had been an oddly quiet day for bob. he’d spent it alone, catching up on laundry that was 2 weeks overdue, finishing a book that’d been glued to his hand for the past couple days. there wasn’t a single interruption, not a single word spoken or an accidental run-in from anybody on the team.

bob hadn’t quite noticed until around 6 in the afternoon, lounging on his bed, staring at the ceiling. music played lowly in the headphones he had on, fingers thrumming against his chest in tandem with the soft bass in the back. normally by now, he would’ve had a knock at his door from walker, or a handful of missed texts from yelena claiming they needed him for something important.

he found that the word important meant very different things to these people.

the only person who seemed to have a grasp on what that was was bucky - who, by the way, was the one who interrupted his incredibly peaceful day. the thrumming of his knuckles against bobs door broke him out of his trance. letting his eyes roll into the back of his head, he pushed himself off of his bed, tugging his headphones off and letting it settle around his neck.

bucky was standing outside bobs door, visibly annoyed. and as if reading his mind-

“can’t let you rest for too long, kid. val wants us down in the briefing room in ten.”

“did she say why?” bob asked, scratching the back of his head. he really didn’t want to deal with her today.

“nope,” bucky told him, shaking his head in disbelief. “she barely ever does. just be there, got it?”

that’s how bobs perfectly fine day turned into a raging headache. val had practically nothing of value to say, and even if she did, he wasnt listening. after five minutes of sitting in those god awful office chairs, his mind began to wander elsewhere. specifically, it went to how comfortable his bed had been just 20 minutes ago.

what snapped bob out of his thought was the odd feeling that someone was staring at him. with furrowed eyebrows, his eyes began to flick through the room until they landed on you.

in the few short months that the team had been living inside of the tower, bob hadn’t quite gotten a read on you. he’d spoke to you briefly in passing, just a simple hello, but never anything more. that seemed to be how you were with everyone though. quiet. he never took quietness personally. needless to say, seeing you staring at him caught him by surprise.

bob saw the way your eyes grew wide the moment he noticed you. you quickly pried your eyes away from his, your fingers that were once fiddling with a pen grew steady, gripping it enough for it to bend and nearly snap in your hold. his eyes lingered on you for a long few seconds, trying to finally get his read on you, only to fall short.

he wondered if, by accident, you had zoned out just like he had. that’s happened to bob before - zoned out directly staring at someone he didn’t mean to be. he remembers how mortified he’d been when that’d happened. surely, that’s what you’d done. simply tuned out of the conversation at hand.

and while bob left it at that, your mind started to spin.

for the weeks that you’d known bob, you’d grown a raging sense of curiosity about him. even from the beginning, there was something about the man that intrigued you - it wasn’t the serum he’d stumbled upon or the powers he’d gained from it, no. it was the way he carried himself, awkward and lanky with a sort of sideways confidence tied in with it. the sharp features he had didn’t seem to quite fit him you didn’t think, though you couldn’t help but admire them, especially in contrast to his soft, round blue eyes.

you were simply admiring bob when he’d caught you staring. god you wished he hadn’t. despite how entranced you were with him, you’d barely spoken to him. you couldn’t quite bring yourself to hold a conversation with him just yet. eventually, you were sure you would.

———

the training room

training with walker was always exhausting. he’s a diligent, hardworking, relentless man who strived for perfection - of course that shines through when he trains. it was good practice sparring with him, and you always felt good about yourself after somehow managing through workouts with him. still, you were over the moon when you finally called it quits for the day.

“you did good, just remember to keep your shoulders back when you’re throwing punches,” walker commented, tossing a cool towel at your chest.

“thanks walker,” you mumbled as you searched around for your crisp water. neither of you were the best with words, so you kept it at that. simple. effective.

your knees nearly gave out on you as you bent down to grab the water you were in desperate need of. walker was somewhere across the training room putting away the rest of the equipment you’d used today. somehow, he still had the energy to do all of it. you simply chalked up to the super serum. it makes you feel better about yourself.

through the clanking of metal, you could hear footsteps approaching the training room. the sound of two voices slowly began to echo into earshot, one in which made your heart miss a beat or two. you looked down at yourself in agony.

with the towel hung around your neck to soothe your heated skin, you began to realize just how worn you looked. your thin tank top clung to your sticky skin, sweat dripping slightly down onto the floor below you. your knees were trembling still, something that only worsened the moment he walked into the room.

yelena strutted her way into the room with confidence, bob right behind her, nearly tripping over the foamy mat as he stepped onto it. you were quick to look at the man - tall and clumsy, wearing workout clothes you were sure he’d never wear out of this room. your mind was quick to move from your appearance at the sight of him.

while your confidence has grown the longer you’d been in the watchtower, you still couldn’t bring yourself to communicate properly with bob. you were beginning to be a little better with it, making small talk that eventually died down after a few minutes. otherwise, you fell short.

“i was just telling bob how you finally did the widow move,” yelena spoke out to you, snapping you out of your thoughts. a few awkward moments passed as you realized bob had caught you staring again before you forced your eyes away. “it was pretty badass.”

you hummed out in agreement with yelena, taking a nervous drink of your water as you started your way towards the exit. this was your time to leave before things became worse for you.

“yeah,” you chuckled nervously, small smile playing on your lips. your eyes glanced over at bob, who hadn’t let you out of your sight since he’d caught you. “‘s a pretty cool move. glad to finally master it.”

“oh, i didn’t say master,” yelena quipped, pointing her index finger at you sternly. “i just said you did it.”

“i’m sure you did g-great,” bob finally spoke, stuttering slightly on his words. he knew the widow move, he’d seen yelena do it himself. the thought of you doing it successfully had him choking on his words.

he was quick to move past your stare this time around, his mind otherwise preoccupied. that didn’t stop him from wondering on it later in the day, long after the both of you left the training room. he still chalked your gaze up to nothing but a coincidence, even if it did have him a nervous mess.

———

the kitchen

it was never uncommon for bob to stay up through the night. silence was hard to come by in his mind when he had so much to think about. when he became restless like this, he turned to quiet walks around the tower to try and clear his mind, or a book to read to try and suppress it all. unfortunately for him, none of his coping mechanisms quite worked for him some nights.

the coffee that just finished brewing was the first of many attempts bob made to keep his body going today, the late night turning into a very early morning. he could already see the sunrise on the horizon out of the corner of his eye as he poured the coffee shakily. his normal mug was sitting in the sink, the insides stained slightly by coffee he had drank the day before. the man settled on a mug with a garfield graphic instead.

bob glanced over at the stove, a huff of air coming out of his nose the moment his eyes found the time. 6:05. the grip he had on the mug tightened while he finished preparing it. with hunched shoulders, he shuffled over to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair just enough for him to slide into it. he wanted nothing more than to rest in his bed, large and warm and welcoming. but alas, his mind still wouldn’t quiet down, not quite. a buzz rang low and steady in the back of his head.

that’s when you walked in. bobs head snapped up the moment he heard your quiet footsteps, eyes that were once unfocused on the table focused in on your figure as you stumbled into the large kitchen. he could feel his whole body tense, throat tightening up slightly as you glanced over at him and offering him a small smile.

bob noticed that he tensed up around you a lot. he was prone to nervousness around you. everything about you captivated him - the way you spoke, the way you looked, the way you carried yourself. even if you never really interacted with him, he couldn’t help but admire you. a part of him knew that he tensed up around you for another reason. that weird little staring problem you had, one that only seemed to be directed at him and no one else.

“g’morning,” you spoke, voice quiet and a little raw from sleep. bob gave you a half-hearted smile back, mumbling a good morning to you. his eyes began to dart between you and the open space that surrounded him in an anxious sort of way. he wasn’t quite sure where to put his eyes.

“mind if i have some?” you asked, thumb motioning over to the pot of coffee on the countertop. you were already grabbing ahold of a floral mug in the cabinet, though, like you already knew the answer.

“‘course,” bob nodded. he suddenly became aware of how he must look - hair a mess, eyelids drooping and bloodshot, a slump to him that he couldn’t straighten up to save his life. he tried to distract himself from his own appearance with yours.

not in a bad way, never a bad way. simply in a curious way. with your back to him, pouring yourself a cup of coffee, he noticed that your baggy shirt had a few holes in it. it reminded him of the clothes he wears to bed, old and worn and perfect to sleep in. as a matter of fact, there was a hole in the armpit of the shirt he was wearing now. most of his clothes were like that.

bob noticed that you poured an obscene amount of milk into your coffee, almost too much. he was well aware of the bitter taste, a taste he didn’t like much, but this was just absurd. he could excuse it though on accounts of you being so pretty. even fresh out of sleep, you caught his eye.

his gaze snapped back to the table the moment he noticed you starting to move again. you turned around, mug in hand, before waddling yourself over to a seat. you sat at a respectable distance from the man - far enough away so that you weren’t crowding his personal space, but close enough so that it didn’t seem like you were allergic to being around him. you sometimes wished you could consider being a chronic over thinker a hobby.

you found your eyes wandering off to bob again. it’s like they couldn’t help but gravitate towards him. the first thing you noticed about him was his eyes, and how tired they looked. you were aware he struggled to sleep. there had been nights where you had caught him walking the halls of the tower while you were in search of a glass of water or a late night snack. he truly looked exhausted this morning, though, like he was forcing his body upright.

your eyes eventually drifted down to his hands. bob had both wrapped firmly around his mug with two fingers slipped beneath the handle. if you hadn’t known there was a garfield mug inside of the pantry you wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint what the orange peaking past his fingers was - bobs hands were large.

you blinked a few slow, hard times as you processed that thought of yours. you watched as a pointer finger of his traced the ceramic rhythmically, a grounding technique of his. you began to wonder what his fingers would feel like against you, dancing against your skin like they were that mug. you wondered what his hands would feel like against your face, warm and a little shaky. you wondered what they’d feel like against your hips, firm and unmoving as he held you close. the thought of his hands drifting further down your body has your head going a little fuzzy.

it wasn’t until bob let out a strained cough, shifting uncomfortably in his seat that you’d realized you’d been staring for far too long. your bottom lip that somehow traveled between your teeth was released from its confines quickly, eyes darting away immediately. now it was your turn to tense up.

while bob didn’t say a word, his mind began to swirl. of course, the moment he’d thought he’d had his mind under control, his thoughts began to betray him again, picking right back up at the speed from earlier.

why were you always staring at him? what he once thought was a coincidence was now quickly spiraling into something that had to be purposeful, personal. was he doing something wrong that was making you stare? were you upset with him? were you wanting the mug he was using? or was this all in his head? couldn’t be.

rather than asking you, bob chose to do nothing but sit in his uncomfortable-ness. this was something for him to deal with when he wasn’t so tired.

———

the common area

it was hard to find peace and quiet in the tower. between constant bickering, mission briefing and debriefing, and simply existing together, noise was something that was inevitable. while a fact, it didn’t make it any less frustrating. that’s why you appreciated any silence you were handed greatly. today was no different.

for the first time in two weeks, the common area was empty, motionless, and quiet. you were quick to occupy one of the squishy rocking chairs that inhabited the open room, resting into it and sighing in relief. the warmth of the sun spilled into the room through the large floor-to-ceiling windows, engulfing you perfectly. the sun wasn’t shining in your eyes, though it gave you the exact lighting you needed to get some reading done.

with your feet propped up on the now reclined chair, you did just that. in peace.

there were only two other members of the team inside of the tower. bucky was in his room, finally finding peace in the quiet tower just like you were. without walker and ava bickering, or alexei’s usual obnoxious demeanor, he didn’t have anyone to rope him into their bullshit. you liked bucky, and bucky liked you. you respected each others personal space.

bob was also inside the tower. though, while you respected each others space, you somehow always ended up within it anyways. at the beginning, you didn’t mind his company. he’s thoughtfully quiet, and you found that he made good conversation. but now? now all you wanted to do was crawl out of your skin and hide while he was near.

he made you painfully shy and insanely flustered and you hated it. the worst part? it didn’t even seem like he was trying.

it’s why you tensed up the moment you saw bob walk into the common area. you were sure that if you weren’t partially facing towards the entrance you wouldn’t have noticed him. the man was always so quiet on his feet. your eyes flicker up from your book, forcing a small smile on your lips to acknowledge and greet him.

bob offered up a small, toothy smile back at you, fingers wiggling slightly in a wave. if you weren’t so caught up in breathing properly you would’ve noticed the way he cringed at himself, nose crinkling up all cute as he overthought and instantly regretted his hello.

he went over to a chair closer to the windows, slipping on his headphones, before fumbling with his phone to find music to play. bob loved having this opportunity. it wasn’t often he could sit and listen to music, simply staring out the window and into the large city. sometimes he admired the sight, looking at what hustle and bustle he could make out down on the streets, scanning the skyline for everything and nothing. other times, he simply just stared, engulfed in his own thoughts or the music he had playing.

and, despite pressing shuffle on a good playlist of his, bob decided that thinking was the way to go today. especially since the thinking had to do with you, and how he desperately wanted to confront you. now would be the perfect time. you two were alone, and bob was sure bucky wouldn’t find his way in here anytime soon.

even if the man didn’t intrude on the conversation, bob felt like he was cornering you. you were so clearly enjoying your quiet time, engulfed in a book he couldn’t quite see the title of. he’d hate to interrupt you. that was until he caught you staring. again.

in your defense, you were also deep in thought. bob looked so cozy in his seat, a large black hoodie engulfing him in warmth, hair slightly disheveled. he finally looked well rested, too. you were simply admiring the man as your mind started to run laps, wondering how it’d feel to hug him, feel the warmth he felt right now. you didn’t even really notice you were staring at him this time.

“do you, like, hate me or something?” bob blurted out, breaking the silence between the two of you. he was quick to take his headphones off, placing it in his lap with a little too much force. your book that was once loosely grasped on your hands was in your lap in an instant, pages fluttering shut, losing your place.

“what?” you croaked out, eyes wide. you began to shake your head quickly. “no!”

bob couldn’t help but scoff. “are you sure? it kinda seems like you do!”

“yes, bob, i’m sure!”

“then what’s going on?” he asked you in a weak voice. his eyes were owlish as he stared at you, face etched in nothing but worry and anxiousness. bob looked like he could cry. “if you want me to give you space i can, i just… i wanna know why you’re always so weird around me. why you always stare.”

your heart dropped to the bottom of your stomach as he spoke, guilt and anxiety filling your bones as you tried to think of a response. all this time, bob thought you didn’t like him, that your staring and your awkwardness was out of spite, not out of admiration.

“bob,” you let out, voice cracking slightly as you adjusted upright in the chair you sat in. “i’m sorry, i don’t hate you.”

a hand found its way to your forehead, rubbing gently as you let out a shaky breath. you couldn’t believe you were about to say any of this.

“i stare cause i think you’re really nice to look at. like really nice. and you’re always so kind to me. i just get so nervous around you and i forget how to act. im so sorry i made you think i hated you or something, i actually quite like you.”

those round blue eyes of bobs don’t leave you even after you’re done speaking. they stare into you like it’d hurt to leave, or like he’d miss something important if he didn’t keep staring. you noticed quickly that his hands started to mess with the headphones in his lap, anxiously feeling against the warm material.

he tried and failed to push down the adorable red blush that started to creep up his neck, the tips of his ears thankfully hidden beneath his hair. this way, he was able to spare some of his dignity. your confession had him flustered and at loss for words. which really sucked right now. you were staring at him again, this time expectedly. you’re patient, you always had been - that didn’t stop him from feeling like he needed something to say to you, and quickly.

“oh,” bob whispered, only barely finding something to say to you.

“yeah,” you whispered back, tugging your bottom lip between your teeth, chewing on it anxiously.

finally, bob had something meaningful to contribute. “i think you’re really nice to look at too.”

he let out a relieved sigh the moment he saw a small smile play on your lips. this time, when you looked over at him, bob didn’t overthink it. he didn’t question himself, or try to fold in on himself. he simply let it happen. he let himself stare back at you, eyes gazing into yours, smiling just like you were. it finally felt right.

[checkeredflagggs]

Baby Lion

Pairing: max verstappen x girlfriend!reader

summary: baby shower shenanigans with rich financially irresponsible F1 idiots drivers

a/n: I needed to do something funny 🤷🏻‍♀️

Masterlist | Taglist

Rookies Masterlist

Private Messages, the Grid (Unserious) [February]

Private Messages, Max and the Duckies Rookies [February]

y/n

liked by victoriaverstappen, sophiekumpen, maxverstappen1, and 1,824,349 others

tagged: sophiekumpen, victoriaverstappen

y/n: so many thanks to Sophie and Victoria for the amazing baby shower! Can’t wait to get the party started

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user1: What a party!

↳user2: it’s so aesthetic!

↳user1: Exactly! A Pinterest board dream

annehathaway: Looking forward to it! liked by y/n

oscarpiastri: Lily and I are on our way!

↳y/n: excellent! Shoot us a text or just come in when you get here — we probably won’t be able to hear you knock

↳lilyzneimer: Thank you again for the invite!

↳y/n: well since we’ve nearly taken custody of Oscar away from Charles — we really need to get know you!

↳charles_leclerc: stop stealing my kids!

↳nicolepiastri: is there something I need to know?

↳y/n: we can do shared custody Nicole? liked by nicolepiastri

↳hattiepiastri: or you could just take him?

↳oscarpiastri: 😑😑

user3: love love love the jungle theme 🦁🦒🐘

serenawilliams: Sorry we can’t be there but enjoy our gifts!

user4: ok but who all is going??

↳user5: Right? I need a full attendance list

↳user6: I’m guessing most if not all of the current grid?

↳user5: I mean obviously but who else?? Max and y/n are weirdly connected to a lot of different people

↳user6: you do have a point…

taylorswift: Can’t wait to see you again!

↳killatrav: do we get a trophy for winning the most baby shower games?

↳y/n: We’re so glad you could come! And Trav — absolutely

alex_albon: The theme is on point and I approve

↳y/n: not the albon approval I want tbh

↳alex_albon: 🙄

↳albon_pets: 🐾 paw prints of approval from us!

↳y/n: score!

caitlinclark22: Thanks again for the invite, sorry I couldn’t make it liked by y/n

user7: ok but I NEED to know if the rookies are there…

↳maxverstappen1: they invaded air max after Shanghai, then my apartment when we got to Monaco and they haven’t left

↳y/n: stop being mean to our sons!

↳olliebearman: yeah! You invited us!

↳jackdoohan: Don’t lie — you love doing arts and crafts with us

↳isackhadjar: You have to, you’ve stolen all the red beads

↳maxverstappen1: no one needs red anyway

↳y/n: well…

↳maxverstappen1: no

sophiekumpen: Oh, it was no problem sweetheart! Anything for my newest grand baby

↳victoriaverstappen: Yes! It was very fun to put it together and not have it thrown for you!

↳alexandrasaintmleux: It looks absolutely lovely! We can’t wait to get there to enjoy it in person

francisca.cgomes: Oh it’s so cute! (And I can’t wait for some of the games…)

↳landonorris: A chance to show off for my godchild? Sign me up!

↳y/n: what?

↳user8: Oh that’s not a good what… liked by y/n

y/n

liked by maxverstappen1, landonorris, charles_leclerc, and 2,821,628 others

y/n: now onto the games! We’ve got the Chug Bottle, Diaper Baby, Guess the Belly, Guess the Baby Food, Don’t Say Baby, and an Adopt an Animal Station!

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user9: oh my god Netflix needs to be there…

user10: I need details. I need receipts. I need videos.

maxverstappen1: All of this is going to be great blackmail material…

↳landonorris: Blackmail? No no no. This is gonna be video evidence of how great at games I am

↳y/n: I cannot begin to say how much over you were at Guess the Belly…

↳user11: ok but how much over was he?

↳y/n: based on his guess, I’m birthing a whale…

↳user11: oh my god 🤣🤣🤣

↳landonorris: I WASNT THAG BAD

↳y/n: Lando your ribbon was like 20 feet long!

oscarpiastri: Proud Winner of Don’t Say Baby 🏆

↳user12: that’s our Australian!

↳danielricciardo: rude!

↳jachdoohan: so rude!

↳user12: ok but he won?

↳danielricciardo: still rude

user13: I love the names but what even are those games???

↳y/n: chug the bottle is exactly like it sounds — we gave everyone champagne and whoever finished their bottle first won (Raikkonen won)

↳user13: I love that??

↳y/n: Diaper Baby had teams try to wrap a member into a toilet paper diaper (Trav’s team won this one)

↳user14: unexpected result…

↳y/n: the Guess the Belly had everyone cut a ribbon to the length they thought my belly was wide (Max, predictably, won)

↳user13: this was what Lando thought he won??? liked by y/n, maxverstappen1

↳y/n: Guess the Baby Food is again just like it sounds — they grabbed an unlabeled jar and had to guess the flavor (Yuki and Elton were shocking good at this one)

↳y/n: Don’t Say Baby had people trying to NOT say baby and if you heard someone else say it, you got to steal the clothespin for yourself. (Oscar was like a ninja and won by a landslide)

↳y/n: and the Adoption station was to adopt an animal, with a travel journal/camera, so the animal could go on adventures with the adopter and eventually baby lion will get those animals back with lots of fond memories

user14: ok i literally love all of these but the adoption center??? 😍😍😍

↳user15: that’s such a cute idea and for them to also have a journal and camera so there’s a story/timeline of their travels…

↳user15: and like we know/can guess Taylor and Sabrina and other singers were there…imagine the travel journal of those guys…

user16: ok but who ALL was there??? Cause we now have proof Kimi R was there…

↳user17: this is gonna be my white whale I just know it…

↳user18: oh that’s such a big mood! Need to know everything. Everyone there. All the gossip.

y/n

liked by taylorswift, zendaya, oscarpiastri, and 2,823,910 others

y/n: Everyone was so so generous today (and maybe a bit financially irresponsible — baby lion is a BABY who is gonna GROW why did you buy them so many shoes…) We ended up with a whole zoo of stuffed animals and somehow (ignoring my desperate pleas) enough electric cars for them all to drive see more…

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user20: that is the most extra baby crib I have ever seen in MY LIFE

↳user21: That it is. I think baby lion is destined to either be blessed by fairies or cursed by the fae with that crib…

↳user20: THATS SO TRUE OMG

georgerussel63: Well we had to get the child started with the right team!

↳maxverstappen1: and it’s not that one! All of it will be donated to charity (far far away from me)

↳user22: oh to be on max’s level of haterism…

↳kimi.antonelli: all of it 🥺🥺🥺

↳y/n: not yours sweetie! Baby lion will definitely be rocking your number occasionally!

↳kimi.antonelli: yayayaya!

oscarpiastri: Mum said that stuffed animals and diapers would be very welcome?

↳y/n: And they are! I just didn’t think we’d be opening our own stuffy zoo

↳alex_albon: But the custom Albon pet line is the cutest right?

↳y/n: No that would be the custom Lion family with scent beads and realistic purring capabilities

↳alex_albon: foiled again…

landonorris: No picture of the rad McLaren merch and car I got you?

↳maxverstappen1: sorry it’s already been disposed of.

↳y/n: he was too fast for me — I opened it then it was already thrown away…

↳user23: I’m loving the fact that they’re talking about all the gifts because the fomo I would have otherwise…

user24: who on earth bought a diamond encrusted pacifier???

↳user25: FINALLY! That’s my biggest question too…

y/n

liked by lewishamilton, charles_leclerc, oscarpiastri, and 3,122,392 others

tagged: charles_leclerc, lewishamilton, sebastionvettel, kimimatiasraikkonen

y/n: and a very special thank you to you guys for all the Ferrari love! Forza Ferrari Sempre!

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charles_leclerc: Of course! We have to show Bébéte the real team to root for! liked by y/n

↳user26: Loving the wife and the mistress working together liked by y/n, charles_leclerc

maxverstappen1: we’re not keeping all of that

↳y/n: yes we are!

↳maxverstappen1: Redbull!

↳y/n: Ferrari!

↳maxverstappen1: Redbull!

↳y/n: you don’t even like Redbull that much anymore!

This comment has been deleted

pierregasly: Really? Jack and I got you so much Alpine stuff and we don’t get our own post?

↳y/n: Forza Ferrari Sempre!

↳jackdoohan: really?

↳y/n: oh don’t worry Jack! Baby Lion WILL be wearing the Doohan #7!!

↳jackdoohan: really? liked by y/n

↳pierregasly: really 😑

lewishamilton: It was a pleasure 🖤

↳y/n: So many thanks for all the clothing — lord knows I’ll need all the help I can get…

↳maxverstappen1: hey!

↳lewishamilton: 😂

user27: Are you telling me that y/n and max have Ferrari wonderkids Sebastian and Kimi giving them special Ferrari merch???

↳user28: I don’t know if I’d call Seb a Ferrari kid…

↳y/n: and yet we have so much Vettal merch in Ferrari red… liked by sebastianvettel

kimimatiasraikkonen: 👍🏻

↳y/n: 👍🏻👍🏻

y/n

liked by maxverstappen1, landonorris, oscarpiastri, and 2,827,193 others

y/n: my heart has never been so full. thank you everyone who came out today and thank you to everyone else who sent well wishes!

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[chuulyssa]

── ★ the one bed trope™ with the squid game men

teaser the guards cleared out too many beds after the last game, assuming there are far fewer survivors than expected. so when your group stumbles into the dormitory, you realize the horrible truth: there’s only one bed for every two players, and your bed is missing!

starring inho gihun (drabbles) & daeho sangwoo ali (hcs) x gn!reader genre fluff fluff all fluff, some nightmares, some crack

a/n wasnt gonna watch s2 but then i saw the lee byunghyun edits and sjsjs theres only few chars here because i havent watched the whole season :( i dont think ill be watching the whole thing any time soon, jus waiting for s3 to drop before watching it all together

inho / youngil / the frontman / 001

youngil stared at the guards while you stared at the bed in front of you. it looked stiff and scratchy, and barely wide enough for one person, let alone two.

“we can share. i don’t mind,” he had said to you, though he had looked tense as well. he sat on the bed, allowing you to scoot over. he laid as close to the edge of the cot as possible.

“oh, it won’t be necessary.”

“well, what other choice do you have?”

you sighed and nodded, awkwardly laying down next to him on the bed. as your shoulders touched each other, he relaxed visibly, though he was still lying on the edge, and that scared you a little.

“stop lying on the edge like that. you’ll fall off,” you warned.

“i’m fine,” he mumbled, staring right up at the ceiling. you kept looking at him, not minding the three times he had glanced your way pointedly at all. “don’t stare.”

“hm, why not?”

“it makes me feel strange,” he said simply.

you nodded, your hands instinctively reaching to your arms to shield yourself from the cold. there was only one blanket with only one bed after all. next thing you knew, you felt the blanket being nudged towards you by youngil’s foot.

“i saw that; it’s not very subtle, you know.”

“what’s not very subtle?” he asked innocently. then he shifted his body closer to yours. “it’s not because of you, okay?” he muttered quietly. “i just didn’t feel like falling off.”

“are you asking for cuddles now?” you snickered.

“no,” he replied gruffly, though his eyes softened slightly at the sound of your silent laughter.

“nuh uh, i think you’re cold as well,” you lifted the blanket up to accommodate him as well. you then glanced at him expectantly. he hesitated for a moment before slipping under the blanket, taking the moment to tightly grasp your hand. you smiled, resting your head above his shoulder on the shared pillow.

you woke up in the middle of the night to find him softly murmuring your name in his sleep. he looked peaceful, beautifully so. you brushed your hand on his chest to wrap it around him, and felt him waking up as well.

“hush, go back to sleep,” you whispered to him, and he raised an eyebrow at nothing in particular. his eyes were still closed. then he let out a tiny giggle and tightened his grip on your hands.

the guards executed this one perfectly, right as per orders from the frontman; hwang inho will make sure to reward them later, but for now he’d rather stay in this shared bed with you by his side.

seong gihun / 456

“i guess it can’t be helped then,” gihun said simply, sitting you down on his bed and pulling the covers over you. “sorry if i snore by the way.”

“what do you mean? where will you be sleeping?”

“on the floor, of course.”

“no, you’re not,” you shook your head, patting the empty space beside you. “i still have some place left here for someone.”

“oh, then let me find someone who can’t find a partn—”

you pulled the man down onto the bed, his face crashing against the pillow. throwing the covers over him as well, you turned to face him, muttering, “you really aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“no, uhm, what if i hog the blanket? that would be unpleasant—”

“i can live with that.”

gihun blinked rapidly. “i don’t think i should be sleeping. what if someone attacks?”

“relax, they’re keeping watch.”

“i think i should keep watch with them,” gihun gulped at your proximity.

“well, i don’t. and you need sleep; have you seen yourself?” you laughed.

gihun beamed at the sound. “then how about I tell you a story?”

“a story?”

“yeah, to make you happy.”

“why though?” you said tiredly.

“to make you laugh. i like seeing you laugh,” he said genuinely, and you nodded in response. his eyes lit up and he began, “so there was this one cow, and it had a baby cat—”

…

“gihun?”

he snored.

“gihun!”

he snored again.

did he really fall asleep mid-sentence? you sighed, shaking your head before snuggling up to him. he unconsciously draped an arm over you in his sleep.

throughout the night, he kept tossing and turning, before—

smack !

you clutched your face where gihun’s hand had just made contact. before letting out the loud cuss you wanted to, you peeked over to see if he was asleep. and sure enough, if the snores hadn’t let it be known earlier, then the closed eyes did.

“this dumbass,” you muttered, nuzzling your face into his side.

but what could you do either way? if you complained, he’d be mortified and force you to switch places, and you’d lose a chance to cuddle with him. so you instead figured the occasional smacking would be worth being the first person to see his hair sticking out in every direction with his sheepish grin in the morning.

a/n: i’ve only got hcs for the others; sorry guys i prefer my old men inho and gihun :P

daeho / 388

he insists on taking the less comfortable side of the bed

even if that meant he barely has any space MY GNELTMAN

at some point his hand will brush yours (because its an ff duh) and he’ll get all startled like :O

but he won’t move away because he decides he likes it

we all know the trauma this man carries :( so don’t be surprised when his grip on your hand loosens in the middle of the night and his face scrunches up because he’s having a nightmare

just please cuddle with him :(( he’ll try to play it off like it’s nothing but know better!

when you quietly offer comfort, his defenses will crumble, and he’ll whisper a quiet thank you to you

in the morning he’ll wake up before you and realize just how close the two of you are.

he’s been bearhugging you in his sleep and you’re reciprocating it? hes so confused like ??????? do you wanna get choked or sum yes you do

he’ll just quietly stare at you as if he’s in a daze. he’s got that lovesick smile and all, just silently looking at you like you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen you are

he just as silently fixes the blanket on you because he wants to offer as much comfort as you did last night to him

then he’ll gently apologize to you for disturbing you, smiling to himself when you grumble in your sleep

sangwoo / 218

this little shit

he’ll pretend not to care about you or about the bed or about the entire situation at all

but you can see how he tries to be as subtle as possible when adjusting the pillow under your head to make sure you’re comfortable

you’re practically begging him to accept his feelings atp but this man is a menace

as soon as he saw the one bed he started calculating how much space you’ll take and how much he’ll get

if you shift closer in your sleep he’ll freeze for a moment but he won’t pull away

if you move a lot in your sleep he won’t say anything just yet

but expect to be bombarded with complaints when you wake up in the morning

he watches you out of the corner of his eye, something he describes as “just trying to protect you” by “keeping watch” but you know he’s just dazzled by your beauty who isnt

he’ll lie awake for a while staring up at that huge piggy bank that his future lies in, and he knows he can’t love you like he wants to, but he hopes that just this once his brain will accept what his heart feels

when the sunlight hits his face in the morning, he’ll look so peaceful that it makes even ali question his mood

all the while gihun is just staring in horror at sangwoo like he got some puss

ali / 199

THE POOKIEST POOKIE

he’s so shy UGH i jus wanna gobble him up sjsjsjkgnskjn

but he can’t help smiling softly when he realizes how comfortable you seem to be around him

he’ll offer to sleep on the cold hard floor and insists you take the blanket for yourself, but duh you don’t allow that

so with a grin on his face he lies down next to you

he asks you if you need more space at least 10 times, he’s that nervous

the blanket stays on you though, he can’t risk you feeling cold or uncomfy because of him GNELTMENANN

he’ll stay awake if you want someone to talk to, or to make sure you’re warm enough, or even just to admire you

but if you don’t want that, he’ll pull an aurora and fall asleep so quickly you don’t even realize it

his hand stays brushing against yours under the blanket though, and you feel so warm and fuzzy next to him

he’s a snuggler, so there’ll be times where he’ll shift very close to you in his sleep, not realizing the hand he’s keeping on your waist or the head he’s resting on your chest

someone points it out in the morning and he’s so flustered he apologizes profusely even though you keep telling him you didn’t mind it all

definitely says something like “i slept with you, remember?” because he doesn’t realize it’s an innuendo

© chuulyssa 2025 - do not copy, plagiarize or repost my works on any platforms. do not translate.

[biteyoubiteme]

blue raspberry flavored

soobin x fem!reader

synopsis: he’s so cute when he asks, he’s even cuter when he doesn’t

warnings: 🔞!!! breeding kink, baby trapper, dubcon/manipulation, nipple/breast play, use of teeth, marking, no protection, creampie, talk of pregnancy, soobin calls reader bunny a few times prob forgot some sorry

wc: 1.5k

an: don't know how this one will go over but hope you guys like it feedback is appreciated :)) [m.list]

this is apart of my mini kinktober event check out the other fics here [dumdum m.list]

Soobin was never really forgetful of anything. He never forgot your birthday, missed an anniversary, messed up on your coffee order, he never even had to write down what he needed when he went grocery shopping. But bringing a condom always seemed to slip his mind. 

At first it was easy to write off in the beginning of your relationship, every time the two of you got closer to having sex and not just messy make outs every pouty ‘its okay ill just pull out’ sounded more and more appealing. But you bought a box of condoms for your apartment and didn't realize the way his jaw clicked at the sight of them. 

Soon after soobin was suddenly into pda. Purposefully teasing you out in public, hand slipping up your thigh under the table at a friends house, pulling you into heady kisses out at events, pushing you into bathroom stalls to try and undress you. You didn't make the connection until later that he was avoiding taking you home. ‘I just can't wait i need you right now,’ 

He knew exactly what to say for you to fold, slowly chipping away at the idea that the two of you even needed protection at all. It was so easy for you to remember when in your own bed, the nightstand right there. But in the back of the car with his lips all over you, hands kneading your thighs, pushing your knees apart; you let so much slide. Mumblings for him to pull out lost between moans. Where was he supposed to cum in the car anyways? He’d hate to ruin the interior or your pretty skirt. 

In the beginning it wasn't so bad, soobin could restrain himself. If you two didn't use a condom he would make sure to pull out and if you did use one he was easy to comply. But it only took one time and it was an accident, a real accident where he didn't pull out fast enough. It was in the mix of his fucked out apology that he realized he wasnt sorry at all, not when he was watching the way your abused cunt was pushing out his cum and all he could really think about was going right back in for more. 

post nut he was a bit ashamed but as soon as he thought about it for long enough he had his hand down his pants begging in an empty room to get you pregnant. And when you're ovulating it's only worse. Not only does he know it would be so easy to knock you up but it's like you're beckoning him to do it. Your hands squeezing your boobs, pushing up your bra while you're watching movies together. “Ugh im so sore,” the pout on your lips instantly makes him hard. His imagination taking over thinking about just how big they would get if he did get you pregnant. 

And when you wear that tiny little tank top he is insatiable. Nipples peeking through the thin fabric as you lay against the pillows on the bed. You didn't even notice that soobin is paying no attention to the tv, his eyes watching the way your chest rises and falls. Adjusting in his seat to not make it too obvious he was already leaking in his sweatpants. Only it does the exact opposite, your eyes drawn to the bulge outlined in the gray fabric. 

“Need help there?” it's the slight invitation he needs to roll over on top of you, lips working down your throat, hips rutting against yours. 

“Please bunny, i need you,” he begs as you run your fingers through his hair pushing the strands behind his ears. Pleading brown eyes working on you instantly, he was always so desperate to have you and he knew it always made him get what he wanted. 

He tugs down your tank top far enough for your boobs to spill out, hands reaching up to cup them both, thumbs sliding over your skin as he groans. “Look at your pretty nipples,” he squeezes his hands, pushing them together to watch the way your cleavage deepens. 

You whine softly, “gentle i'm still tender,” the reminder only adding to his want, mouth coming down to suck on your nipple, your moan going straight to his aching cock. 

Kneading the handfuls he has of your breasts, your back arches, lips popping off obscenely from one nipple only to capture the next. He's rough as he massages, your nails scratching along his scalp, his moans reverberating through your chest as he swirls his tongue over the hard bud. 

He's humping you like you don't have layers of clothes separating you two, every slow drag of his hips pressing his hardness right against your clit, his teeth softly biting at your nipple tugging to watch how you react. Soobin knows that getting you off at least once before actually fucking you led to your inhibitions being weakned enough to forget about the condom all together. His hand slipped down between you two, pushing past your waistband to rub on your clit. 

Lips coated in his spit he starts sucking marks along your chest, watching the way your head rolls back, fingers sliding through your slick as your hips buck up into his hand. He knows your body well enough to see the first orgasm coming, relishing in the way you tremble against him. With no time to let you ride out your high he's pulling down your shorts and panties, kicking off his sweats using all your wetness to lube up his cock. 

But even in your haze you reach out beside you fumbling for the drawer to the nightstand pulling out the little shiny packet. You don't even see the disappointment on his face as you rip open the packet helping to slide the condom on him. 

And he wants to be good, truly, only when he slowly pushes in he cant think about anything else except fucking you hard enough the condom breaks, neither of you knowing until its too late, until all his cum is spilling out of you. It’s that thought alone that makes him pull all the way out, his fingers slipping along the condom as he tugs it off. “What-” 

“It's okay,” he mutters, tossing the condom to the pile of your clothes on the floor. “I need to feel all of you please,” and he tries to kiss away the worry on your mouth, and you shake your head. 

“No you need another one we have extra in the nightstand,” but he's already prodding your entrance, tip slipping in as he begs, "I'll just pull out I promise, please, please,"

You don't even get to respond before his hips slam into yours, fully seating himself inside you, promptly shutting up anything else you could say. Even if after the two of you were done you were upset it's not like you would leave him would you? Not if he got you pregnant, the two of you were ready, and he'd take such good care of you. “Fuck,” his drawn out moan pressed right into your neck as he bullies his cock into you, “you feel amazing bunny,” 

You're clinging to him, moans mixing with the obscene wet sounds coming from between you two. “Soobin s-slow down,” but you're not sure you want him to, not when he's hitting just the perfect spot inside of you, pressed so deep you swear you can feel him in your stomach. 

“No,” he pants pulling you closer, “im going to stuff you full of my fucking cum, we will stay here all night if we have to,” your clenching gummy walls aiding him on. “Don't you want my baby?” 

You can't even think straight let alone answer his question, his long fingers moving to work on your clit, “you'd be so pretty full of me, my cum, my baby, everyone would know youre all mine,” 

The room is full of your desperate moans, your legs wrapping around him as if you could pull him any closer. “You like that idea huh?” 

“Y-yes,” you're practically crying, tears welling up in your eyes, “i want it, please,” 

That alone makes soobins balls tighten, cock jerking inside you before he spills the biggest load he's ever had inside you. He presses his hips against yours making sure you're flush together as you cum, fluttering walls sucking him in deeper milking him dry of all he has. He takes your hand in his lowering it to press over your pelvis, pressing it down enough to make you moan, “i don't think once will do it,” deep slow thrusts pushing his cum further in making you dizzy, “but you did such a good job im sure you can handle the rest,"

a very special thank you to @aduh0308 and @chyuuiung for beta/proof reading this for me ily you're the best

🏷 taglist: @kissmekissykissme @bts-txt-ateez @apeachty @stwq2349 @isa942572 
@tomorrowxforever @beestvng @soobingf-blog @lovinjjong @lola-horore-553 
@cypher-03 @midnight-mochii @hueningwhy @choibeomning @soobinbunnie5 
@yunjinswifee @cupidtaehyun @bamgeutsz @prince-jjae

[whokilledsamara]

HEYY POOKIE!!! I was wondering if you could do a Mr. Crawling from homicipher x a fem reader smut.(idk if you do fem reader if you don't feel comfortable just do gn)

THANK YOU SO MUCH IF YOU DO THIS!!! ♡♡♡ I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY!!

ENDLESS

a Mr. Crawling {homicipher} x reader fic. {an: hi friend!! ofc! i actually prefer writing fem {afab} because it is what i am and i find it easier to write for. you have a good day aswell :)}

warnings! : not too much for this one, hes a friendly boy. smut, blood mention, claustrophobia, size difference, switch!reader, afab, female genitalia described, mr. crawling has no idea what hes doing, language border. sorry there isnt TOO much plot on this one, i need to study more on the game and plus i didnt really know how to write his character.

{an : this takes place in the part where Mr. Scarletella walks past the room, and Mr. Crawling has to protect/shield you. my apologies if it isnt completely accurate, i have yet to watch a full playthrough.}

theres.. blood on the floor. you make a mental note of as you walk down the eerie hallway, "Mr. Crawling" or so you called him, close behind you.

he muttered the same word over and over to you, in a hushed yet worried voice. with not a single understanding of what he was saying, you took his facial expressions as a better way to figure it out.

your best guess was that he was attempting to say "unsafe." as his veiny hand kept pointing down the hallway. "unsafe?" you ask in a curious tone. he pauses for a second before nodding.

halting your movements, you stare at him nervously, your eyes darting from him to down the hallway. "i have too.." you say softly as you look at him.

he tilts his head in lack of understanding but allows you to continue walking, close behind you on his knees.

turning the corner, there is more blood and chains on the wall.

gross.

you think to yourself. your head snaps up as you hear footsteps seemingly getting closer to you, and before you can react, you are jerked into the closest room and underneath the usually crawling man.

"w-wha... what are you doing..?" you whisper up at him, his worried expression flicking from you to the door.

he lets out a hushed whine, and again, in a language you cant understand, he huffs out panicked words. from your previous understanding with the others, you get the words "someone else, near"

you instantly shut your mouth, his body hovering over you in attempt to shield you from whatever was walking past. thats when you see it.

a tall, slender man with red hair, covered in red clothing, and a.. red umbrella for some reason, walking past.

the man pauses, static around him, before he continues walking as if he didn't notice you. your body instinctively huddles closer to Mr. Crawling, wrapping your arms around his neck and pushing your body against his.

after a few minutes, and after both of you are sure the tall man is gone, he starts to whimper, his forearms holding him above you, and his knee so perfectly placed in between your legs.

what you thought was chaste, was him feeling an unknown desire for something he had never felt before.

his whimpers turn into almost desperate whines, and you finally look up at him. while you cant see his eyes, his face is a deep red and light pants leave his mouth.

"a-are you okay..?" you ask in a hushed voice. while he doesnt understand you, he understands your body language. he presses his knee further into your clothed core, your body instantly reacting and jerking. "a-oh.." you flinch, hands sliding down his cloth clad chest.

his hands make their way up your body, testing the waters and curiously grabbing your plush skin. the cold concrete floor wasnt making it easier to stay focused, along with his cold hands grabbing anything he could.

"fuck.. i cant believe this is happening.." you mutter more to yourself than anything. his knee still pressed in between your legs. grabbing his hand, you trail it up under your shirt and place it on your heavy breast- allowing him to explore.

he begins kneeding it, with an unknown curiosity. your breathing come out in short huffs and gentle moans, moans that he seems to enjoy hearing.

"do you even... have the equipment to be doing this..?" you ask, motioning to his groin. his eyes follow your hand, and he tilts his head while staring at it. he pulls his hands out from under your shirt and slips down the cloth covering his groin.

fuck hes big.. his heavy and semi-hard appendage springs out, a slight throb to it. your hand experimentally reaches out to touch it, its hot and leaking. his body instinctively jerks as your hand grazes it, a needy plea in his sounds.

well.. if im gonna die here i might aswell..

you slowly begin stroking it, his mouth agape and hips jerking towards your hand.

he gently reaches for your clothing, quick yet gentle as he slides down your pants. you involuntarily squeak, but dont make a move to stop him as his hand curiously grazes your folds. with a swift motion, he pushes a finger inside your entrance, tilting his head with confusion as you moan heavily.

wetness grows on his hand, leaking down his forearm. "oh fuck..." you breath shakily, pumping him faster. his face scrunches up and he lets out a cute noise, moving his finger faster. after a hot minute of this, you pull your hand off much to his dismay, and you gently remove his hand from you. as you position yourself in a slightly different way under him, you make a 'come here' motion with your finger. he obediently complies, above you once more.

teaching him what to do was kind of hard with the language barrier but you made it work.

it wasnt long before he was slipping his length inside of you, stretching you as far as you could go.

sure it hurt like hell, but you couldn't deny the pleasure that came with it. his thrusts were unpredictable, due to his lack of experience.

he was good, really good in fact, and teaching him what to do was quite easy as a fast learner.

you let out a harsh whine as his tip grazes your cervix, and his hips pause, eyes focused on your face. another word from that confusing language. "you, okay?" he asks. you nod hastily and reach out, grabbing his hip and pulling him back deeper. luckily he gets the hint, and starts moving again.

a white ring forms around the base of his length, his breathing heavy and hitching with each thrust. his long, skinny hand covers your mouth, preventing most of your noises from escaping your lips.

no matter how much he wanted to hear them, he had to keep you safe.

his thrusts became sloppier, signaling his upcoming orgasm. yours was approaching aswell, and quickly you reach your fingers down, rubbing in a rhythm he noticed. he looks from your face to your hand, shoving it out of the way and replacing it with his own, rubbing harsh circles on your bead.

soon after, he had you coming undone on him, cunt clenching and unclenching around him. his whining hit a peak and his surprisingly cold seed shot through you. he came a lot, filling you to the brim and leaning over you.

his large form casted a shadow over your body, his hair falling on each side of your face as he desperately pressed his lips against yours, his cum seeping around him and out of you. harsh pants and whimpers fill the small room, as he pulls out and hurriedly pulls your clothing back on, not wanting to get caught.

he notices your struggle to stand, moving to his knees to help you up. after everything is stable, you and him make your way through the long corridors, hopefully finding an exit to this place.

maybe we can try again..

{an: this was so fun to make!! i kinda procrastinated a bit, so i apologize if it is sloppy. i don't know much about Homicipher other than my deep attraction to the characters XD}

{ made by @whokilledsamara }

[wcters]

CLOSE FRIENDS

pairing: lando norris x fem!reader

word count: 3.5k+

summary: after travelling with lando to the last couple of grand prix’s, it takes another driver flirting with you for him to realize his feelings

request: “i've been seeing clips of lando not eating and taking care of himself properly during this short break and max stressing out on the stream could you please write a lando x reader please, where reader is close friends with lando and max and takes it upon herself to travel with lando for the remaining of the gps to make sure hes well. maybe one of the drivers tries to flirt with her during one of the races and thats what makes lando realise he has feelings for her. “

warnings: sweating, talks of unhealthy habits, awkward flirting

author’s note: what other driver to flirt with her than the one who flirts with everyone, sorry i’ve kind of made him look like a dick i just don’t know how to flirt 🤷‍♀️ not too confident in this one

You’d been friends with Lando almost as long as Max had. You’d been friends with Max for almost your whole lives ━━ meeting him when his family was visiting some of their family during the summer in your town and you two hit it off. You had known about Lando, but you didn’t fully meet him until about a year after the two boys had met. The two of you connected instantly. Both of you don’t know why, though Max had always joked that you two were each others person . . . and you both didn’t know, but he tried the trick the two of you into getting together. He could see the look in Lando’s eyes when he’d look at you, but he’d always make excuses. ‘She’s just a friend, I’m too busy with formula 1,’ etc. Max would just roll his eyes.

You were a bit more accepting to the idea, because you did like him a little bit. Though you didn’t want to ruin the friendship and didn’t want to interrupt his career. You cared too much, and would rather be friends with him than mess it up in a chance that he liked you. Don’t get me wrong, you’d had boyfriends over they years, but the came and went, and you ended up going to Lando or Max about another boy who broke your heart. Every time that happened, Lando swore his heart broke a little bit, but he never told you. He was never really open with his feelings, and that’s why you didn’t notice he wasn’t doing for awhile.

You had known Lando was stressed about this current F1 season. He always talked about it, not about the stress, really, just more about how the car was, the team was, and there was undertone that only you or Max could sense. You both kept an eye on him, but you had recently gotten busy with some stuff. Checking your phone had slipped your mind and you don’t even think to do it until you finally had some time to yourself and you ordered some takeout. It wasn’t until you texted the group chat that Max called you.

“You alright?” You asked him, mouth full of Chinese food. “Yeah. You?” You nodded even though he couldn’t see you, “yeah.” There was some silence before a sigh from the other end. “Usually I don’t get into his business because he can handle himself, but I’m worried about Lando.” You raised your eyebrows and set your food down on the coffee table and paused your television. “What do you mean? Is he okay? I know he’s been stressed but I didn’t think it was anything he hasn’t handled before. It’s Lando, you know?” You ranted, eyes drawing to a picture of the three of you on your wall.

“I know. I wasnt going to do anything besides talk to him about it, but he’s blocked me out. He’s been mentioning ━━ unknowingly, because if he did he wouldn’t say it all ━━ that he’s not been eating well. In the sense that he’s eating expired food that will get him sick but he doesn’t want to go out and not showering a lot. At first, I thought he was just over-exaggerating, but then it continued and when I’d ask, he’d push me off. I don’t think he’s well.” You frowned. “Where is he now? At home?” “Yeah. We’ve been streaming together, and that’s when I started to notice his tone of voice and stuff. I think the stress of the championship is taking a toll on him.”

“I’ll talk to him. I’ll force him to talk to me. I’ll see what we can do. And before you apologize, I know you have other shit going on right now. It’s also nothing to apologize for. He’s our friend. I’ll let you know how it goes okay?” You smiled, hoping Max was feeling better. Knowing him, he was. You picture him with his shoulders becoming less tense and him letting go of the ridge of his nose he was squeezing. “Okay,” he sighed, “let me know if you crack him. “Like an egg.” You both laughed and you ended the call.

You grabbed your computer from the coffee table and opened it, checking the time. It was eight pm. Monaco was only an hour ahead of the UK, and you knew he’d still be up. He’s usually is ━━ and he doesn’t sleep well when he’s stressed. You went on to FaceTime and clicked his name. It only rang a couple times before his face popped up. “Hey.” He greeted you. Even before he talked you could tell something was wrong ━━ his sunken cheeks, his pale face, he literally lived in Monaco, he should not be pale, and his eye bags. His voice solidified your thought. It was tired and strained, like he didn’t have the energy to fake it.

“Hey buddy, how are you?” He replied with an ‘okay and kept eating whatever expired thing it was now. “. . . Are you sure?” You paused before asking, not wanting to set him off. He paused as well and looked up at the screen. “Did Max put you up to this?” He asked you. He wasn’t even mad, he was just tired. “Lando, you’re not doing okay.” You softly told him. He was about to reply before his resolve cracked and he started to sob. You wished you were there to hood him, knowing that he was alone, and he was alone while he want okay. “I know, I know I’m not. But I’m too tired to do anything about it,” he hiccuped as he spoke, “i just wish you were here. I cant do this alone. I have to go back in two days and I’m not ready.”

It was at that moment you made your decision. You kept him on as you booked a one way ticket to Monaco. “Then you won’t be,” you told him, “I’m coming over there. Max can’t, but I can. And I will. You won’t be alone Lando, not anymore.” The man let out a sigh in response and his face started to loosen up. It was quiet before a small ‘thank you’ made its way out of his mouth. “Always.” You smiled at him. “Now, when I get there I expect your ass to be waiting for me in one of those stupid cars of yours.” Lando let out a guttural laugh, and he had to admit it felt good. “You got it.”

Lando kept his promise, and as you stood out front of the Monaco airport, you spot him. His face is scanning the area, trying to find you, but he passes right over you. You shake your head ━━ for a formula one driver, he can be oblivious. “Muppet! Over here!” His eyes finally meets yours and his face lights up. “Hey.” You greet each other as you hug. “Hey. Nice to see you.” He told you as he grabbed your bags and piled them into the trunk. “You too. Someone had to save your ass.” He looks at you with a ‘really?’ face and you shrug and get in the car.

You chat all the way to his house. It took a little while because when you stopped for gas, a couple fans spotted him and asked for pictures, but you weren’t in any rush. A rush meant less time with him. You also knew meeting the fans made him happy, his face may not say it, but when you three would FaceTime he’d rant with a giant smile on his face about the fans he’d met and gifts he’d got. You and Max always teased him about it, joking that he’s such a hotshot and ‘you’re so popular!’ but that’s all that it was, jokes.

When you got to his house, you only pulled a couple things out of your suitcase as you were leaving with him the next day. You showered, and then forced him to take you to the grocery store to make him real food, not food that’s been sitting in his fridge or freezer for months. You ended grabbing things to make Alfredo and headed back, putting music on, grabbing some wine, and getting to it ━━ though it was mostly you cooking and Lando almost hurting himself with the most random things. You didn’t know how he lived by himself.

After that, he still hasn’t packed his bag ━━ which you scolded him like a child for ━━ and helped him pack it. You think his neighbours thought it was a domestic by the way you two bickered.

“What about this one?” “I don’t know.” “Lando. You have until tomorrow, and at this rate, you’ll be going naked.” “People won’t mind that.” “You’re so gross. Get out of my sight.”

You continued to bicker to the point where you shoed him off with a wave of your hand ━━ he didn’t actually leave, just talked to you with a smug look on his face ━━ and you chose clothes for him. You were definitely telling Cisca about this. At the end of it, you two were giggling at the movie you had put on, drunk off wine and delirious after the loss of sleep. You didn’t even know you fell asleep until you woke up by the sound of Lando’s alarm. You had to wake him up with so much force it almost pushed him off the couch. “Wake up you dickhead.” You two were a mess of limbs tangled together. That was the closest you two had ever been.

It didn’t take long ━━ with you practically shoving him out the door ━━ to arrive at the airport and get on the McLaren private jet. You felt a bit weird getting on as you even offered to get your own flight, but Lando looked at you like you had grown two heads and replied with “Oscar’s girlfriend uses it, you get to too.” That made you blush. You didn’t think he realized how the words sounded. When you got in, Lily and Oscar were already seated. You greeted each other and you went off with Lily as Oscar and Lando talked about the race coming up with their team over a zoom call.

Though you had heard of Lily, this was your first time meeting her. She was incredibly nice and you two got along great, even exchanging numbers incase you wanted to rant about ‘how annoying the boys were’ with a wink. That was pretty much how the plane ride went, you and Lily chatting and laughing as the boys talked strategy. Both of you didn’t know this, but you and Lando kept stealing glances at the other. When Oscar asked, Lando’s excuse was ‘she’s my best friend, just making sure she’s alright,’ but yours was a bit different.

You had been showing Lily pictures of the three of you: Max, you, and Lando, and sharing stories before she asked “what’s up with you and Lando?” You paused and turned to look at her. “What do you mean?” She gave you a look. You sighed, “we’re just friends.” “In a ‘I’m denying it way’ or a ‘I like him, but we’re just friends’ way?” “The second one. I mean, he’s my best friend and I love him, but I like him a little bit. But I’d rather face it alone than lose the friendship.” You whispered that part, looking to make sure Lando wasn’t looking. She nodded, “I get that . . . But are you sure he doesn’t like you back?” “He burps in my face and eats my food. I’m sure.

She let out an ‘okay’, dragging out the ‘y’. Though Lily wanted to say that Oscar did that too ━━ besides the burping part ━━ she didn’t. She figured you’d eventually figure it out, or she and Oscar’s would give you the little push you needed.

You must’ve fell asleep soon after you put in your hand phones and put on your playlist as you woke up to someone attempting to pick you up. “Hm?” You asked, still half asleep. You heard a quiet ‘shot’ before the voice spoke up louder. “Time to wake up.” You opened your eyes to see Lando standing in front of you. “What a way to wake me up with a jumpscare of your face.” You mused as you got up and stretched. You were always a bit grumpy when you woke up and that’s why Lando wanted to lift you so you’d stay awake. “I will hit you.” He replied to you as you made your way down the stairs of the plane and on to the tarmac. “I’ll tell Cisca.” That shut him up real quick.

The city of Austin, Texas passed by you in blurry images. Usually Lando would’ve poked you until you finally turned to him and hit him in the back of the head, but it was your first time in Austin and he let you take it all in. When you got closer to the hotel though, that’s when he started to annoy you. You did hit him in the head when the car parked in front of the hotel, and Lily and Oscar heard the aftermath of that with Lando mumbling an ‘ow’ and rubbing the back of his head.

“I don’t even hit you that hard!” “Yes you did, I have brain damage.” “I’ll give you brain damage if you keep complaining.”

The four of you made it into the hotel and up to your rooms, albeit with a little fuss with you and Lando bickering, but when you got into the room, you immediately flopped on the bed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a hotel with a bed as nice as this.” Lando looked surprised. “Really?” You nodded as you sat up and crossed your legs. “You told me Max payed for you for that one hotel in Italy?” You stayed silent. “Did he not pay for you?” “No, i payed for myself . . . At a different hotel. It’s not his fault though, I told him you payed for me.”

You knew you were in for a scolding when you saw his face, and you were. You tried so hard not to giggle at his face. He was halfway through a sentence when you finally broke. “What?” “Your face is really funny when you’re mad. You make a weird face.” “I do not!” “You do, ask Max.” “Whatever.” He continued and then made you promis to never do that to him or Max with a pinkie promise. You rolled your eyes and did it. After that, you two got ready for bed. You had gotten into your individual beds and turned the lights off when you spoke up. “It was a good plan though. None of you had a clue.” “. . . It was good. But you’re not doing it again.” “. . . Damn.”

You stayed with Lando for the rest of the US Grand Prix, only letting him go for interviews, racing, and media ━━ though you made sure to check on him during the day when you could. When you couldn’t be with him, you’d hang out in the garage with Lily, or you’d tag along with the other girls who were there that Lily introduced you to. You’d particularly made friends with Alexandra, you two hitting it off almost immediately.

You passed out almost immediately when you got back to Monaco for the next couple days before you had to leave again, and it felt like a blur. You only remember a little of it ━━ showers, movies with Lando, and sleeping ━━ before you were being shipped off to the next Grand Prix. You had no idea how he did it. You knew he’d been doing this awhile, but the jet lag was enough to hve you feeling hazy. You were sure Lando had gotten so many pictures of you sleeping and sent them to Max. There was one time when you woke up while he was taking one and you couldn’t get his phone in time . . . Though you did threaten to post an embarrassing photo of him during his teenage years if he didn’t delete. He showed you him deleting it, and the redownloaded it. You found this out later after Lando sent it to the group chat. That dickhead.

You were now in Brazil, two weeks later, heading into the Paddock with Lando. You offered to stay behind and let him have pictures taken of just him but he waved you off, joking that ‘you’d make him look better.’ In response to that you gave him the finger and walked in front of him ━━ thought you had no idea where you were going ━━ with his laugh resonating behind him.

You were excited for Brazil. You’d always wanted to go there since you were kid, fascinated with the culture and country, but your family never had enough money and you had been busy every previous time the Brazil Grand Prix took place. You had ranted to Lando the whole car ride there, him giggling at how excited you got. He didn’t find it weird or annoying, just happy that it made you happy. You hung it in the McLaren garage with the boys and Lily until it was time to start media, then you made your way to the Williams garage to find the other Lily. It was one of the races she was able to make it to and you had planned to meet up.

When you got to the garage, you passed Alex and Franco. You had met Alex, but you had yet to the men the new rookie. You’d heard of his flirty reputation from Lando, laughing at him. You eventually found Lily with some help and you two stayed at the Williams garage for a little bit before you both decided to grab some coffee. You talk about her career, your families, friends, and things going on recently. You told her how you ended up here ━━ obviously keeping some details out for Lando’s sake ━━ as you grabbed the coffee and made rounds around the Paddock.

It when you had stopped by the bathroom so Lily could go that you saw Franco again. You were on your phone when you heard his voice. “I saw you at Williams, no?” You lifted your head to see him leaning against the wall beside you, facing you. “Yeah. I was going to see Lily.” He nodded and hummed. “Are you here with Lily?” He smirked. When he did that you realized what he was doing. “No. I’m with someone else. A friend.”

“A friend, huh?” You forced yourself not to roll your eyes. You nodded. “Well, since they’re just a friend, do you want to get to know each other?” You were about to respond when Lily came out. You handed her her stuff as she greeted Franco. You were about to leave before you turned to him, “not really.” He looked like he’d been slapped in the face, not expecting that response.

Lily never asked, but you had a fleeting she knew what took place based on what you said last to him, the look on her face, and the quiet giggles she let out. You two continued to walk around the paddock until Alex texted her that he was done. She apologized but you told her not to be and tell Alex you say hi.

You weren’t in a hurry to get back to the McLaren garage so you took your time, strolling past different areas and looking at food stops. When you did get the garage, you saw Lando with an annoyed expression and you made your way over, bumping your shoulder into his. “What’s up?” He looked at you. “You met Franco?” You raised your eyebrows, not expecting him to know that. “Yeah . . . How’d you know?” “Oscar told me.” You nodded slowly. He seemed upset. There was a beat of silence before you realized what he was feeling.

“Are you jealous?” He spun his head around to face yours. “No!” You raised an eyebrow. “Sure. Sure.” You looked at the screen he was just watching, pretending to leave it as you noticed him fiddling with his hands. “Yes. I was.” His voice was quiet as he spoke, almost as if he was scared to say it. “Why?” He cleared his throat, “because he was flirting with you. I know he was.” “Why does that matter?”

There was some more silence. “Because i like you.” You opened your mouth in shock, not prepared to hear that. You opened and closed it before you spoke. “Really?” He took your expression in the wrong way and responded with a ‘forget it’ and moved to put his headphones back on before you grabbed them out of his hands and forced him to look at you. “I like you too, you muppet.” Now it was his turn to be shocked. When he repeatedly opened and closed his mouth, you grabbed the sides of his face and kissed him. It was weird. I mean, you’d imagined it, but you never expected it to happen.

When you pulled away, his cheeks were red and he had a sappy smile on his face. “So . . . Can I take you out on a date after this then?” You snorted, “well I hope so. I want to be treated, Mr. Norris.”

[maplesyrupsainz]

˖⁺｡˚⋆˙one of the girls | DR3 ˖⁺｡˚⋆˙

pairing: daniel ricciardo x northern english!reader y/n (she/her)

genre: social media au

warnings: none just fluff, pretty short too

summary: in which your new boyfriend is adopted into your friendship group as if he was one of the girls

a/n: this is saur funnie to me & lbr it's me & my bffs only wish in life to go for pints with daniel & this request inspired me af

request!!!: hiiiii can i pls req daniel ricciardo x northern english!reader pleaseeeee kiss kiss kiss

my masterlist

fc: various brunette girls from pinterest

messages ->

instagram ->

yourusername posted a story

liked by danielricciardo, yourbff, and others

yourbff pints

friend1 pints

friend2 pints

danielricciardo pints?

yourusername YES PINTS

user1 PINTS!!!

user2 lol i love u y/n

user3 pints pints pints

yourusername

liked by danielricciardo, yourbff, and others

yourusername self explanatory really

view all comments

user4 funniest wag tbh

user5 i wish i could go on a night out with them omg

user6 same omg my dream

maxverstappen1 i wasnt invited?

yourusername are you one of the girls, max?

maxverstappen1 im a man?

yourusername see there's ur first problem

user7 LOL he absolutely has no idea what she's on about whatsoever

user8 daniel dating a british girl is my fav thing ever

user9 literally especially a northern girl and not jus a rich girl from london 😭😭

user10 fr im obsessed with her she dgaf

user11 she is so jarring

user12 u jus dont get her tbh

danielricciardo woo hoo

yourusername lol i am obsessed with you.

user13 HAHAHA what? she's so me

yourbff BEER CIRCLE BEER CIRCLE

friend2 it's a heart ❤️!

danielricciardo beer heart. where have you been y/bff/n

yourbff sorry i was busy drinking the beer not analysing what shape it was in.

twitter ->

instagram ->

yourbff

liked by yourusername, friend1, and others

yourbff beach day with the girls!!! and daniel

view all comments

user21 and daniel omg HAHA

user22 he's actually one of the girls omg i thought it was a joke...

landonorris my invite got lost?

yourusername YOU DONT DESERVE ONE

landonorris oh.

yourbff hahahahaha

danielricciardo sorry lando 🤐

user23 y/n & her one sided beef w lando is all of us

liked by yourbff

user24 oh to be in this friend group

user25 not the weirdest f1 related friend group

yourusername love my girls!!! and my daniel

liked by yourbff, danielricciardo

friend2 hahahah we love him too! thts our girl

friend1 FR!!!!! one of us one of us

danielricciardo omg i've never felt so welcome in my life... #newhome

yourbff honorary brit 🇬🇧

yourusername 🥹🥹🥹

messages ->

instagram ->

danielricciardo posted a story

liked by maxverstappen1, yourbff, and others

user26 the giiiirls

user27 you & the girls again!

maxverstappen1 miss you babe

danielricciardo 😂 see you in aus soon i hope

landonorris are any of them single 👀

danielricciardo not for you, no

landonorris boo 👎

user28 such a cute lil family

user29 cant tell if im more jealous of daniel, y/n, or her friends

yourusername posted a story

liked by danielricciardo, landonorris, and others

user30 stop it

user31 #1 wag forever and ever

user32 THIS IS TOO CUTE FOR A RANDOM THURSDAY MORNING

maxverstappen1 😍😍😍

liked by yourusername

user33 FREE USSS

user34 jealous

yourbff pints pints pints tonight?

yourusername obviously

twitter ->

instagram ->

danielricciardo

liked by yourusername, lewishamilton, and others

danielricciardo my home 🇦🇺 away from home 🇬🇧

view all comments

user40 no beers in the photo dump 😮

user41 let me guess ur on photographer duty

liked by danielricciardo

user42 the third pic ahhhh so cute

user43 oh to be ✨ them ✨

friend2 our fav aussie always!!!

danielricciardo im honoured truly

friend1 we never wanna leave

yourbff let's all live here woohoo

danielricciardo true. im down

yourusername YIPPPEEE

user44 ugh me when

landonorris i can make the next trip :)

danielricciardo oh where you going?

yourusername & who with? coz i know it isnt us

landonorris ...worth a try i guess

yourusername I LOVE YOU!!!

danielricciardo i love you my sweet girl

THE END 💙

[gldrushh]

MY KINK IS KARMA | | KTH (m)

"Your boyfriend is wimpish, toothsome when he needs to be, self-sacrificing and you would've liked a hero to spend a breezy simple life with but it turns out he's not everything he claims to be, turns out that he's selling you down the river. His boss, meanwhile, is none of these things but worse, in a compelling-compelling way."

➵ PAIRING Idol!Taehyung x fem!reader

➵ GENRE Idol au, enemies to lovers (?), boy obssesed, smut

➵ W.C 50k (this was supposed to be pure porn sigh..)

➵ WARNINGS kim taehyung or he who shall not be named (yes he's a warning), loser boyfriend, neglecting, oc gets stood up multiple times, consuming alcohol, lots of it, loser boyfriend is taehyung’s manager, oc hates his ass, like unadulterated loathing,murder fantasies,he's chill and smug like that, also obssesed,mature language, chaotic girl group, jk pulls a jackson wang, the whole gang is here, fangirling, yoongi is short :p,mentions of throwing up, mentions of cheating, crying, slow build up, sexual tension, banter, obsessed! taehyung, smoking, sharing a cigarette, buff! tae, flirting, tae speaks french, props to his duolingo membership <3, revenge scheme, oc is out to get, explicit content, dirty talking, brat oc, brat tamer tae ayee, lil spanking here and there, praise kink, size difference, fingering,cum tasting, finger sucking, edging, oral (f! Receiving), face riding, multiple orgasms, dom!tae, mirror sex, he likes to make her watch, big dick! Tae, penetrative sex, protected sex, and that's a wrap I think :D

➵ A/N: SORRY SO SORRY i promise it wasnt in my plans to ghost you!! I was going to release this one shot on the day tae and joon got back AHAHSJAHS but I got a little shy about this fic and I still kinda am. Now about this fic, I didn’t used to a big fan of idol aus, maybe because I thought there wasn't much artistic freedom in that universe but guess what? There's free fucking will and I used it to make this big self indulgent baby 😼😼 probably should have added that as a warning because it's self gratifying as it gets girls 😔🙏 writing some parts of it made me really think twice about posting it or not because it's certainly not the work I could be proud off or something that reaches up to a caliber I have set up in my self loathing mind but it also made me giggle OH did it 🤭😜 like trust me when I say I had to take a minute to myself whenever it came to writing Taehyung’s dialouge or his mannerisms. That's a man OBSSESED and it may not come across in big neon letters because I love me some subtle infatuation and I really really hope I did the trope justice. Speaking of tropes, I know I tagged this as enemies to lovers but it's mostly one sided hatred so don't come at me for that and please don't take it too seriously haha <3 the last section is unedited becuz i'd literally jump of a clif if I have to edit any more 😓💗 love you, have a good time reading and pls tell me what did you think of it?? Should I be making more of this vibe? Feedback is always always appreciated!!

| MASTERLIST | WATTPAD | AO3 |

Wax is made of organic compounds you wouldn't be able to name with a gun to your head but what you would tell was that, it also contained your wearing patience that made a mocking sound with every drip: the candle had burned halfway down, and he still wasn’t there.

You didn’t need to check the shining silver wrapped around your wrist. Your wineglass had already gathered precipitation twice over, the bottom of the flute damp with waiting. The feiriness of the flame casted shadows against the wineglass, all rippled red and wet. It almost looks romantic. If someone were sitting across from you. If he were sitting across from you. The waiter had stopped pretending not to notice and now gave you the kind of pitiful glances reserved for women with romantic delusions or no sense of time.

But you had time. That was the whole point of tonight.

The above-named waiter had smiled like he was in on something private when he lit the match and said, “Celebrating?” And you’d smiled back, a little flustered, and said, Yeah. I guess I am.

You don’t feel like celebrating now.

You swirl the warm wine in your hands that you don't even like anyway, but you make a face that looks like you’re on the verge of tasting something rich, something worth all this waiting, when in truth it’s a defense mechanism of some sort. Something to do with your hands that should have been held and kissed. Too dry. You judge ruefully. You only picked it because he likes it.

Even when it's supposed to be about you. Tonight is about you. A rare, like rare-rare personal triumph that came in the form of an offer letter with your name printed in ink that precieved graver than it should. It will the inception of a title bump. A salary hike that would finally fill the remaining fifteen percent of a jar you had named: trip to greece. A right set of circumstances you had earned after weeks of late nights, caffeine abuse, and grinding until your bones felt hollow. You’d spent the whole morning grinning into your toothbrush, rehearsing the announcement. The breed of joy you can’t help but choreograph when it was about a milestone as big as that after you’d finally closed that deal. Got your name attached to something worth bragging about. He said you’d celebrate. Said he’d be there to toast to your achievement with the same kind of urgency he reserved for phone calls from idols. Even picked the place — God, he picked the place.

But now you’re sitting in it alone, dodging glances and wondering if you should’ve worn something less “I’m someone’s girlfriend” and more “I’m the whole fucking meal.”

Because while you may feel like a whole meal most of the times. It's a very casual number of times you feel like a girlfriend. What isn't a casual number is when you check your phone and it flashes right back at you. 8:37 PM.

He was forty minutes late.

And you could swear you had checked your phone fifty times in that length, even had memorized what you saw in the fifty times, you did: one new email with zero new messages. No calls. Your phone’s screen is a galaxy of just unanswered calls. Four, five, six if you count the one that went straight to voicemail.

You don’t, but you remember the sound. The robotic please try again later feels more honest than he’s been in days.

You try again because someone has to do the trying after all.

Calling: Hajoonie 🩷🩷

Ring. Ring. It drones again and again and again.. You tap on the angry red button with force more than needed because if you'd have to hear to that sound any more, you'd spare yourself of the theatrics and just smash it on the ground of this expensive restaurant.

You focus on what's in front of you, rather than what's not. Check the menu even though you’ve already ordered, the way people do when they’re trying not to look lonely. You fiddle with the edge of your napkin, press the clean one over your phone screen, a random thing, really, but that's what dolorous people do when they are trying not to look dolorous.

Theres a twinkle of panic when you start to run out of them, after counting the petals of the rose flower, situated in a vase, as expensive as the nails you got done. Should you do a re-over? Maybe you will get a different number than thirty two this time. Maybe you didn’t got it right the first time? You're just about to, when your phone buzzes, once.

Finally. You were two minutes away from someone tearing up over how pathetic you look.

You hold it in your hands, gentler this time, with more care, and when you read the caller id, your heart jolts, thought it's not in the way when he first said said the l word to you, or when he got you the purse you've been eyeing with hopeless eyes from his first paycheck. Not in the least, actually, it's

not any kind of relief- recognition, mayhap. Comes after a stable three year love affair. More like the way you feel when your foot misses a step but your brain already knew it would.

You snap it up. “Where the hell are you, Joon?”

"Y/N, I— God, I’m so sorry," he exhaled, the background noise already too loud, a obtuse, chaotic bustle you knew too well. "Something came up with the boys— with Taehyung. I swear I tried to get out of it, but it's really important, I—"

Your perfectly manicured red nails dig into the soft fabric of the napkin. “What?”

"He—uh, it’s kind of urgent. I have to be there.”

Your eyes shut slowly, lashes trembling. “Are you serious right now?” you whispered, voice razor-sharp despite the volume. “You promised. You looked me in the eye this morning and promised you’d be here.”

“I know, I did, and I meant it,” he babbled. “But I—I’m so fucking sorry, babe, they really need me. It’s not a normal night. there’s a situation with the sound tech, and he’s panicking, and— It's a whole thing."

A whole thing.

You want to laugh. You almost do. But it comes out as a sharp exhale instead, as you open your eyes and look around the restaurant. You view as a paranoia mode of a camera would: The couples toasting. The waiter avoiding your table. The candle welling wax made up of your ended endurance, putting up the act of as if it’s weeping for you.

You lean back in the chair, press your fingers to your temple. “Of course. Of fucking course it is.”

“Babe, please don’t be like that. I wanted to be there. You know I did.”

You’re about to bite back, when exactly did you stop being a priority and start being a placeholder,  even if you know the answer, the exact date, heavens, when you hear what is the most aggravating sound.

"Joon-sshi."

That voice. That empty headed, unwitting, greatly vexing voice.

Deep as if a hollow well would be when you say something ridiculous for it to echo back. Leveled enough that it could iron a wrinkled shirt, hot and fast. Fucking smug because it has ever right to (or so he thinks). His voice, slicing through the call like a machete that is unapologetic about whatever comes in it's way. The vocal equivalent of an expensive whiskey poured over a fire nobody asked to be set.

It pearls casual bidding, cushioned but sharp, sharp enough that it doesn’t ask for diligence. It assumes it like a ceo expecting standing ovation just because he entered the room. You hear it in variety shows, in fan compilations, in your hallway on rushed mornings when you’re trying to get a goodbye kiss and he’s halfway down the stairs already while you were busy tying your shoes and praying for a civil goodbye.

You knew it so well that you didn’t even need to see his face to imagine the annoyance etched into it. The burnished voice that was built to be beautiful and custom made just to madden you in the same breath belonged to one man and one man only, Kim Stupid Taehyung. A name that boiled your blood. A man that spiked your nerves as if you had swallowed down a live wire.

“Seriously? I told you I need that list now. We’re behind.”

And just like that, your boyfriend’s voice is smaller. Scrambled, submissive in that way he only ever got around him. “Shit—he’s calling. I’ll text you later, okay? I’m so sorry—please don’t be mad.”

Something bitter amplified in your mouth. And it's not the wine anymore. It has never been the wine.

You don’t get the chance to say anything. You couldn’t if you wanted to. If you would have opened your mouth, you would have screamed. Something like "You and your Kim Taehyung can go choke on his tech list!"

Heat crawled up your throat, all the way to your temples. People around you blurred as your thoughts tunneled into a familiar black hole.

Kim Taehyung.

Of course.

It was always Kim Taehyung.

You hate Kim Taehyung.

There’s no real logic to it, not when you’re being honest with yourself. But there it is, this raw little wound that carried a little infection with and turned it into something worse.You don’t hate him because he’s famous.You don’t hate him because he’s talented, or loud or has enough money to make it up for it and more.

You don’t know him enough for that, not really, never seen him person or had his gnawing charisma touch you through a distance even, you only know his voice; that empty headed, unwitting, greatly vexing voice. Prechance his schedule too for godsake. How he needed too many people to straighten his tie, hold his venti iced caramel macchiato, but made with oat milk instead of regular milk, added an extra shot of espresso for that kick and drizzle some extra caramel on top. And not to forget, a pump of vanilla syrup blended in with ice held down to keep it from getting too watered down. He probably needed your boyfriend for that too. He needed him for many things, always at his beck and call because that’s what this job is about, isn't it? Passionate art requires finding the vibe and running after it, at even four in the morning apparently. The endless excuses gone round and round his name like satellites. Passionate art, your ass. You hate him with the kind of bitterness that has layers: resentment stacked on frustration stacked on exhaustion. You hate the way he takes up space in your life without ever having to be in the room.

He had this way of swallowing Hajoon’s time like it belonged to him. Ever since your boyfriend became Kim Taehyung’s manager, you'd been in a three-person relationship, except the third wheel was a global superstar with a schedule more sacred than God’s while you're just another fleeting name in the schedule that gets crossed out in red ink.

This wasn’t the first time that had happened. Not even the tenth (you're keeping count). It was just the latest and every single number that adds up, also adds to your loathing.

You could still remember last spring, standing outside a theatre in the rain, makeup running and heels killing you, only to get a last-minute text: “Taehyung’s rehearsal ran late. So sorry. Tomorrow?”

Or the time he’d invited your boyfriend on a “quick trip” to Jeju for a shoot that turned into a five-day disappearance — radio silent that included no texts, no calls of even informing you whether he's dead or alive. And when they’d finally returned, he said that Taehyung had said that time flies when you're working. You’ve listened to him make excuses in every register of apology, from bashful to exhausted to just plain numb.

And now, here you are. Sitting alone in a restaurant with his favorite wine and cold fries.

You close your eyes. You breathe once, twice. Your phone is still in your hand, thumb ghosting over the last call.You don’t even consider reasoning or finishing the fries, only lift a hand to signal for the check.

Because you’re done.

You’re done letting this job, this man, this life play second fiddle to someone else’s. Especially his. Not tonight. Fuck that.

As the waiter walks off, polite and wordless, you pull your phone back up and open the group chat: Witches Who Wine, a name born in blood pact and bottomless mimosas. You’d earlier declined. The one that’s been buzzing with drunken selfies and glitter emojis since seven.

Earlier, you sent a regretful “Raincheck, girls. Girlfriend duties.”

It had felt responsible at the time. Sweet, even. Embracing that you were choosing stability over chaos, embracing you were the kind of woman who got celebrated over dinner and candlelight by a man who couldn’t stop looking at her.

Now, you typed:

“Hajoon bailed. Plans back on. Where are we drinking, ladies??"

The replies came fast like an avalanche.

[LARA]: WHAT?! HE BAILED?

[JIA]: noooooo. again???

[SAFIYA]: girl drop his ass we have shots lined up and glitter everywhere

[LARA]: WHERE IS HE I JUST WANNA TALK. with my fists.

[JIA]: You told him it was your celebration night, right?? You reminded him??

You blink at that last one, because, yes. Of course you did. You reminded him last night, this morning, this afternoon when he sent you a thumbs-up emoji and a “Can’t wait, babe.”

He could at least have the decency to cancel for himself. But no.

He let the one that wears silk shirts and smirks like he knows he has a leash around your boyfriend while he watches him obey do the honors.

[JIA]: just come over. we’re already tipsy. safiya just tried to kiss the bartender.

[SAFIYA]: he flinched.

[LARA]: so did we.

Your friends, for all their dramatics, mean well. But they’ve got the wrong villain.

Your boyfriend isn’t the real problem. Well he is technically. But he’s also predictable. Spineless. Hiding his light under a bushel and sugar-mouthed and easily tugged in whatever direction the golden boy points.

[LARA]: Don’t think, just get here. We already ordered that ugly sangria you love.

[JIA]: You owe us shots too. Plural. We saved you a booth and a sparkly crown.

[LARA]: Also your tits look amazing in that brown top you were gonna wear tonight. You're wearing it, right?

[JIA]: Wait i thought it was green

[SAFIYA]: No it’s brown she wore it to my birthday and made my cousin stutter

[LARA]: EXACTLY.

You tip the last of the wine into your mouth, it still tastes like disappointment, but the buzz that follows is warm and insistent. Insistent that you go and have the time of your life.

You type:

"Yes. Yes I got the brown top on which made safiya's cousin sutter. Lipstick’s still perfect too. Be there in ten 💋"

You have friends. You have heels. You have a face that looks fantastic under bar lights. You’ll go out. You’ll drink. You’ll laugh too loudly. You’ll just dance until your muscles ache and your chest is lighter.

You are not an afterthought.

The club smells like citrus and hidrosis and possibility.

A little dictatorial perhaps, granted you smell it the moment you step in. Temperature bandaging around your knees, bass thudding in your ribs like someone knocking to be let in. Altaria is packed, bodies glittering under pulsing lights, and your friends are already halfway drunk, half-sticky with sangria and stubborn lip gloss, wedged into a booth that should only seat four.

They scream when they see you.

A harmony of “Girl!” and “Oh my god!” and “Look at you!” rings out across the booth like gospel.

Lara practically climbs over Safiya to hug you, arms flung tight around your shoulders, perfume and tequila catching in your nose. “Oh the audacity of that man-” she gasps, pulling back to stare at you like you've just announced a felony. “You look like that and he bailed?”

“Please let me key his car,” Jia adds, sliding a pink drink across the table toward you. “I’m serious. I’ll even Google how to spell something dramatic.”

Safiya wiggles a tiny plastic crown between her fingers, slipping it onto your head. “To your promotion. Raise your glass.”

You do. You have to. They clink theirs against yours, and the moment presses in, frames you in and the joint giggling, the element, the tiny sting behind your eyes that you refuse to let spill out. You don’t wanna come off as pitiful on the night where you should be anything but, when you're surrounded by glitter and noise and people who love you so loudly.It burns like validation.

And for a while, it works.

It fades and fades and fades until it works.

Pulls you into their chaos, that's just compulsory for sisterhood. And you should be unable to picture the word without mentioning the thousand attempts at blurry phone selfies just to get one aesthetic one, the dancing to decade-old pop hits, the game where you all list your worst kiss and Jia wins when she describes a guy who meowed mid-makeout. You laugh at lara’s drunken flirting with the server (he is flustered and trembling and clearly gay, not catching on the hint that she's for the girls too, which makes it even funnier).

You drink too much too fast. You’re halfway between giddy and feral, clutching a fourth drink and a fifth reason to forget.

Lara’s on your left, knee pressed against yours. She smells like oranges and expensive perfume and she’s too beautiful to be comforting but she tries anyway. Her glitter eyeliner is slightly smudged and it suits her. Jia is across from you, chewing the straw in her sangria like it personally offended her. Safiya is already halfway gone, resuming her story about how she almost hooked up with a bartender but forgot she was still wearing her Invisalign.

You tip your head back and knock back another shot. The ice clinks against your teeth like a tiny applause.

"God," you mutter, licking lime from the side of your hand, "I should’ve just come out with you from the start."

“Should’ve dumped that man two months ago,” lara says, her voice equal parts affectionate and judgmental. “Seriously. He’s like rice cakes, bland and barely functional.”

“You know,” Jia starts, leaning in like she’s revealing state secrets, “you really could just… break up with him.”

The table becomes deathly still. The music doesn't. It's some pounding club remix of a song you once loved but now just feels like a headache with a bassline.

You blink. And then something clicks loose in your jaw. It's not like it has never been suggested or your boyfriend’s name hasn't been paired with a loads of "You should leave him" but it has been a while since you had so much to drink.

“Oh my god,” you say, and it sounds like a laugh, except it’s not. “You guys don’t get it. It’s not just Joon.”

Lara raises a brow. “Please don’t say ‘it’s me.’ We know that's far from the truth and we’re not letting you do this drama tonight or ever."

You slam your shot glass down a little too hard. “It’s him." The way you say him is a snarl adorned in lipstick. "Kim stupid Taehyung."

“Ohhh,” Safiya says like she’s watching a fuse light.

Lara points up a finger like a child asking permission to speak. "I take back what I said about your boyfriend." Your brows shoot up. "That he's boring. I think him working under south Korea's pride and honor is really interesting."

Jia leans back. "Really interesting. His boss is really interesting."

Safiya stirs the ice in her glass with the straw. "Shame Hajoon never lets us meet him. Or the hotter one with dimples."

You throw your napkin at her. "His boss is cockblocking our relationship. Ending it, if anything, actually. He’s in everything. I swear he’s got some kind of sixth sense. Any time I have plans with Joon? Suddenly it’s, ‘Tae needs this, Tae’s freaking out, Tae forgot his fucking sunglasses and now we’re all gonna die.’ And Hajoon just goes like some errand boy."

“You know what it’s like?” you say, gesturing with your hands, already a little wild. “Its embarrasing. So embarrassing. It’s like dating a guy who’s secretly married to someone else. But the other person is tall, hot, famous. And so, so self important. I swear to god, he thinks the sun rises and sets on his profile.”

Jia whistles. “I mean… it is Taehyung.”

You whirl on her. “Don’t.”

She lifts her hands, placating. “Sorry. Go off.”

And oh, you do. Glass clutched like a lifeline, tiara threatening to fall off your head. Grandeur already on the floor so there's nothing left to loose.

“Everyone loves him, right? He’s so talented, he’s so artistic, he has depth, blah blah blah. Well guess what? He also has no fucking respect for boundaries. He doesn't give a shit that he has my boyfriend enslaved or maybe hypnotized. I don't know."

“He is kind of hypnotic,” lara mutters into her drink.

You turn to her sharply. You don't care that he's carved from marble and dipped in Versace. He has ruined everything. “Lara. You're supposed to be on my side."

“I am,” she grins, clinking your glass. “I just also have eyes.”

You groan, slouching down in your seat. “God. I hate him. I hate that he’s in every conversation. I hate that I know his voice better than my boyfriend’s now. I hate his stupid face and how it's everywhere and his stupid, stupid…”

You trail off, realizing your mouth is still open, mid-sentence. The girls are watching you. Smiling like they know something you don’t. Which is insulting, really. You are the wronged party here. You are the woman left alone in a restaurant with a melting candle and cold fries. You are the girlfriend with lipstick wasted on an empty seat. You are-

“…I hate him,” you finish weakly.

“Sure you do,” lara says softly, dragging a finger through the salt on the rim of her margarita. “So much that you’re obsessed.”

Your head snaps toward her. “No—what? No. No, no, no.”

Jia’s already snorting into her glass, Safiya is ducking like she’s dodging a flying object.

You glare at all of them. “It’s not that. I’m not obsessed.”

“Okay,” lara says, suspiciously agreeable, sipping slowly.

Jia leans forward on her elbows. “You said his name like twenty-three times in the last five minutes, though. I counted.”

You sputter. “It’s not—it’s not like that. I don’t want him. I want my boyfriend back. Like he was before he started working for he who I shall not name. We were good. Normal. He remembered birthdays. He texted back. We had sex that didn’t get rescheduled for a backup dancer rehearsal!”

"Your boyfriend who's only interesting because of who he works for. That’s cute,” lara says, deadpan. “But also… lies. There's no way you both are not thinking about Mr cheekbones in the bedroom. Hajoon is not enough to spice it up."

You gape. “Excuse me?"

“Just hypothetically,” Safiya chirps.

"You guys are disgusting."

“And you’re in denial,” lara says, raising her glass.

You huff, cheeks burning. It’s the alcohol, probably. Or the lights. Or the fact that there are times when you think about him. You don't count how many. It doesn't matter if you've hated him the whole time, right?

"Fine. It's more of a murder fantasy." You mutter.

"Where he has you pinned down?" Jia asks innocently. "Beause same."

You gasp, mortified. “NO. Stop it.”

They erupt in laughter, the whole booth shaking with it, and you cover your face with your hands.

This is a mistake. Coming out. Drinking. Talking about him. Because it brings your dignity to an end and to a conclusion that you don't wanna give the benefit of doubt. That Maybe they’re right. Maybe there’s a line between hate and something else, and maybe you’ve been tap dancing across it for months.

But you don’t want to think about that.

So you think about smothering him with one of his own stupid silk scarves.

And since you'd let these sadistic thoughts in, in the first place. You let them go a little wild too. Imaginably, in public too.

Smashing a pie in his face.

Yes. A cream pie. Banana, maybe. A flavor he’d probably have strong opinions about. Somewhat humiliating. A lot whole sticky. Maybe he’s in the middle of giving a Very Serious Interview, saying something about creative control or the burden of artistry or whatever poetic bullshit he spills like he invented suffering, and then BAM! Pie ik his full face.

He would blink slow with his mouth open. Meringue on his perfect lashes.

You’d stand there, triumphant, arms crossed. Maybe you’d say something cool like “This is for every fucking dinner you’ve stolen from me, you time-sucking peacock.” then walk away while never breaking eye contact because you'd want him to see and acknowledge.

Or — okay — maybe it’s more violent sometimes.

Like pushing him into a koi pond.

You don’t even know where the koi pond came from, but it’s there. Lush garden surrounds and the tranquil museum courtyard envelops. And he’s wearing something expensive — linen, probably. Designer as you and everyone else would except yet it would be something that makes everyone turn and stare, and just as he says something snide and smug, you grab him by that overpriced lapel and shove.

Right in.

He flails with a loud splash for special effects.

You feel so good in this vision. Calm. Peaceful. Like a war general watching her final enemy fall.

You desire.

It’s laundry day.

Which is to say, it’s a day off. Your day offs come in a diversity. Last Sunday...fuck you can't remember. This sunday, howbeit, smells of detergent and damp cotton and a little bit like lemon because you spilled your candle while reaching for a sock behind the couch. It's a type of array where the floor is scattered with warm, wrinkled heaps of your own productivity and you’ve convinced yourself that folding things is a spiritual exercise.

Your playlist is somewhere between defiant and nostalgic. Beyoncé yelling about self-respect, then Norah Jones gently reminding you that you are, in fact, lonely. It’s a whiplash thing.

You’re cross-legged on the floor,in your baggy home shorts, knees to chest, tugging a fitted sheet into some approximation of a square. It’s a long weekend. Or a short one. You’re not sure anymore. They all blur together.

So well that you don't even notice when the door creaks open. Or you just pretend you don’t. That you don't see him.

Hajoon. The absentee boyfriend. Today’s featured guest star in: Please Forgive Me, Baby.

He has come to embody the role, he has come prepared with flowers. Of course he has flowers. They’re not even the cheap kind this time. Tulips, you think. Or maybe he googled “I fucked up” and picked the first bouquet suggestion.

You don't get up, neither do you look up. You keep folding. Badly.

“Hey,” he says.

You hum in reply. Not a mean hum. But not a friendly one either. Something between I acknowledge your existence and say another word and I’ll cut the sleeves of your shirts in a criss-cross way.

He hovers. Shifts his weight like a nervous intern. “I’m really, really sorry,” he starts. “I know I messed up. I was an idiot. I should’ve been there.”

“But you weren’t.”

“No.”

You fold a towel like it owes you money.He comes over, kneels across from you, places a careful hand on your ankle. And you think that only if he had thought of this carefulness before, he'd here with flowers just because. But your thoughts and you, sometimes don't align, so you don’t move either.

“I should’ve picked you over—” he catches himself, clears his throat. “Over work. I just… I got caught up again. I didn’t mean to bail. Especially not that night. I know how much it meant.”

"Did you?"

He winces like it physically hurt. “Okay. You're furious. I deserved that.”

You look back at the dryer. The silence stretches like gum. He sighs.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me right now,” Hajoon says. “Just let me make it up to you.”

"And how are you gonna do that? What if it comes between your errands?"

He flinches. That’s new. Usually, he deflects. Laughs a little. This time, he just takes it.

"I'm sorry, Y/N. Please just listen to me."

You raise an eyebrow but don’t reply.

“There’s… there’s an event this weekend.” He shifts, awkward, like he’s not sure if this is the right time to mention it. “It’s a listening party. For the new album. Jungkook’s, you know him? The youngest one? He's hosting it at the studio loft, but it’s like..fully catered, private, some press, but mostly just close circle people. And I was invited.”

You blink at him. “Okay?”

He swallows. “With a plus one.”

You look at him, one brow raised yet again. “And you want me to be your arm candy?”

“I want you to come with me,” he says. “To celebrate something with me for once. I want to show you off. Properly.” He traces circles on your calf. "Will you let me do that, babe? Let me make up?"

Your first instinct is to say no. Out of spite. Out of principle. Because this entire idol-shaped job has eaten half your relationship and still wants dessert.

But…

You’ve never been to one of their parties before. Hell not even to his workplace. So this whole showing off thing feels flat to you. You turn this over in your head like a coin. Glint. Weight. Intent. But the rumors you've heard are tempting. Oh, they are Glamorous. Lavish. Free champagne. Rooftop views. Gold-plated hors d’oeuvres that you pretend to understand. You’re not a fan of the world — but you do like a little spectacle. You do like heels and dresses and glittering places where people look at you like you matter.

And because you’ve spent so long hearing about this world from the sidelines that part of you wants to see if it’s really as ridiculous as it sounds. Maybe sip something from a crystal glass and pretend you don’t know what it cost.

Still, you have to play it cool.

“Can my friends come?”

He blinks. “What?”

“My friends,” you repeat, looking him dead in the eye. “Lara, Jia, Safiya. I’m not going in without my pack. And they like the group. It’d be a big deal for them.”

He hesitates, like he’s not sure he has that power to pull that, but then nods. “Uh—yeah. I mean, yeah. If they’re okay with signing NDAs.”

You bite back a grin. He said yes. Of course he said yes. Guilty people, and your boyfriend was one hell of a guilty man, would scrape dirty off a three thousand square feet lawn with a spoon if the desire to purify themselves of that is strong enough.

You'd like to belive that for him, it is too when you finally look up at him, arching a brow.

“I’ll think about it.”

He sags like you just handed him oxygen.

“Still mad,” you say. But your voice is softer now. Less ice, more mossy.

“I know.”

You glance back at him, tilt your head.

“But you’re making up for it.”

His whole face brightens, like a kid who just found out the punishment’s being lifted. He doesn’t move to touch you.

“Don’t fuck it up,” you say, and toss him a clean shirt from the basket.

He catches it with a grin. You let him lean in and kiss your temple. You let it feel a little like forgiveness.

You have habitually, always been on to prefer night time over mornings. Early mornings are nice too because they closely similar to the segregation of the dark sky, where sun and moon blink at each other. Doesn’t beats the former though.

It's a flurry of neon flash, on Saturdays. Colorful star-like-lights taking over the whole of the city, on the rest of weekdays.

Tonight, it's too much. You knew it would be. You just didn’t know how much.

The elevator doors part like a curtain and you step into a room that looks less like an event and more like a fever dream manifested by someone with too much money and too little sense of restraint.

The ceiling’s strung with Edison bulbs shaped like teardrops. They flicker warm, flattering light across every sleek surface and high cheekbone. The floor’s a herringbone wood polished to a shine that threatens to reflect your thoughts if you look down too long. Exposed brick walls, brutalist furniture, and vinyl booths arranged like museum exhibits. You espy that it's a look of modern minimalism that only the rich can afford to make look careless.

It smells like vanilla, white musk, and champagne mist. If the words: luxury and aloofness and contracts had a smell, it would be this. And something underneath it all. Cologne, sweat, the heat of nerves just under the skin.

There’s no red carpet, but there may as well be.

Everyone’s dressed like they knew they’d be photographed, magical silhouettes and glittering details, statement pieces skimmed over delectable nonchalance. Too many people are wearing sunglasses indoors. There’s ambient bass threading through the room, sultry and self-assured, just like the man whose music it celebrates.

You don’t know Jungkook, but you get him from this space. From the custom scent diffusers, the soft glow of film cameras on tripods, the tray-passed hors d’oeuvres so tiny they feel like a joke.

You’re in a black slip dress that hugs just enough and what it doesn’t is draped in the denim jacket you grabbed at the last second. Your friends flank you like bodyguards, looking like different kind of unaware.

Lara’s in a blood-red two-piece with her hair slicked back, a look she went for when she was trying to get laid. Safiya’s practically see-through in a mesh blouse and sequined pants, halfway to an afterparty already. Jia’s in glitter boots and capturing every moment like she’s the official documentarian of your reckoning.

And Hajoon, dressed in a tailored jacket and that rare sheepish smile, keeps glancing at you like he’s waiting to see if this counts as absoulation or just probation.

You haven’t decided yet.

He’s been clinging to your side all night. Part guilt. Part presumption. Like he wants the whole room to see you and know you're with him. And you let him because a small, treacherous part of you likes being a prize sometimes. Especially in rooms where the stakes are stupid high and nothing is real except the flash of a camera and the clink of ice in a glass.

“Come on,” he says, fingers brushing your lower back. “Let me introduce you.”

You nod once, you'd like to meet the people who are a group of what'd you just made up in your head; sold their souls to stand in the shadow of multiple stars, (no harm meant) you can pretend. You can be charming. Just long enough.

He leads you through a maze of press assistants and studio people. A woman in chunky boots talks to a man with purple eyebrows about lighting design. Someone else passes with a tray of glasses shaped like perfume bottles.

You pass a silky curtain you’re pretty sure is hiding a private recording booth, a whole lighting rig hanging above it like a halo.

The first people you meet are benign.

“This is Chul,” he says, gesturing toward a guy in a sweater vest with half a headset tucked under his jaw. “Props coordinator. Always bailing me out when I forget which box the custom mic sleeves are in.”

Chul offers a friendly wave, eyes darting between you and the champagne like he’s calculating the weight of the room.

“And that’s Seojin,” Hajoon continues. “She handles most of the press logistics.”

Seojin is tall, thin, glossy. Her smile is tight but not unfriendly. She appraises your outfit once and seems satisfied. She doesn’t comment on your presence — merely nods at Hajoon’s introduction only becausw it's a formality. As if she already expected someone like you would appear eventually.

She turns away before you can thank her.

Next is a short man with a clipboard and hair dyed a pale green. Hajoon barely gets to say his name, Sangwoo, you think , before he’s muttering something about timing and the rental van arriving without the riser extensions.

It’s strange. The people here don’t talk the way your coworkers talk. There’s no chatter about lunch or traffic or the weekend. Everyone looks at everyone like they owe each other something, everyone talks with everyone; coded. Shorthand for a world you’re not quite part of.

Your boyfriend, though levitates like a local and you'd expect nothing else. He's a man here who knows which hands to shake and which not to, whose shoulder to touch and who to call sunbae. It’s like watching him speak another language. One he never teaches you.

There’s Minae, who runs digital content, and who immediately compliments your dress before asking if you’re single in front of your boyfriend. She’s clearly three drinks in already, her lashes tipping dangerously close to her cheeks every time she blinks. When she says that you're too pretty for this one, lara with her all too overwhelming charm slides in with an: "am I pretty too?" The rest of you resist the urge to facepalm. Minae on the other and very contrary hand, chuckles a breathless chuckle. All her focus on the brunette with stars in her eyes.

Though all of this, you too focus. On how somehow, somewhat, this isn't all too bad.

It’s flashy. Frenetic. A little unhinged in a way you kind of like. There’s too much perfume and everyone talks like they’re mid-episode on a show you haven’t watched, but you’re starting to get the monotony of it.

A little like clockwork, a sound of tick-tick you didn’t have a liking to but tolerated for the sake of peppiness of it all, spoke to you on the first date, alone. Might you add, that you had left a little bit of impression too. He couldn't speak a full coherent sentence when you saw the first time, had him stopped in his tracks and all.

So it's a suprise when hajoon does that thing again. Literally halts. Dead in his tracks.

In front of a woman whos tall- statuesque, really. That low-key brand of Gorgeous, you don't mind admitting to yourself. Sharp collarbones, sharper eyeliner, a pantsuit tailored within an inch of its life, it could've been stitched to her bones. Her lanyard reads “logistics,” but it may as well say “don’t fuck with me.” in big bold letters. Maybe it's your habit of trying to put people in a drawer that squares them in limited or weirdly specific characters (you know it's a bad one) but she has the air of a girl who once stole your charger in college and never gave it back, but made you feel like the asshole for asking. Jesus. You've got stop.

“Y/N, this is Bora." Hajoon says, voice going smooth at the edges, that press-conference tone he saves for moments when he’s trying to impress. "She runs most of our on-site coordination. Couldn’t function without her.”

Bora turns.

She smiles. With full teeth. All of them perfect. Friendly enough to pass inspection, but you’ve seen that smile before. It’s the version that lives on corporate brochures and social media bios. The smile worn by girls who never lose their temper, because they’re too busy winning and taking what they want, when they want. Her eyes catch on yours and hold.

She steps forward. Extends her hand. Her nails are immaculate — almond-shaped and the color of blush wine. You shake it out of reflex.

"Bora, this is Y/N. My girlfriend."

“Oh,” she says with a laugh, low and sugar-sweet. “So this is the girl who finally gets him to show up on time.”

Hajoon chuckles. “That’s her.” Her tone is warm and she doesn't bother laughing at her own joke. Was that a joke? Okay. Okay.

You nod, lips parting into a smile that feels functional. You don’t trust her. You don’t know why, but you don’t.

Her? You? You think it over and over again but heart flicks only once. And it tells you that it’s nothing. Hearts are trusting.

She lingers a second too long. Her eyes slide over you, not , but curiously. Like she’s trying to find the catch. The why. The how.

You know girls like her. They remember everything. And she’s definitely remembering you. Her eyes flick over your shoulder, over your friends, back to Hajoon. The corner of her mouth lifts, just scantily. You can't pinpoint if she’s thinking something you wouldn’t like or break into tears over.

She gives you the time and benefit of dount when she lingers too long. She laughs when she doesn’t need to. She doesn’t touch Hajoon, but she doesn’t need to. It’s in the way she angles her body, the way he doesn’t quite meet your eyes when she jokes again, calling him “sir” sarcastically. The way he chuckles and mutters, “You’re the one who runs the place, not me.”

She waves him off like it’s an old joke. Something only they get.

And then, because maybe she knows you’re watching too closely, she looks at you. Her smile softens. Reveals pity. Some people just arrive with a sense of prelude.

You hate that most of all.

Before you can pin down the nauseating twist in your gut, Hajoon’s already guiding you away. His fingers skim the small of your back again like punctuation.

“She’s just intense,” he whispers. “Work mode. Don’t worry.”

Which is the worst thing to say if you want someone not to worry.

And something about the curve of her mouth does bothers you. You don't know why. Just that you clock it. Quietly. Internally. The way you clock exits and weak wine.

The girls show up just in time to interrupt.

Lara practically materializes at your elbow. “This is what you’ve been hiding?” she whispers. “Christ. It’s like Versailles had a baby with Spotify.”

Jia appears next. “I think I just saw a marble ice sculpture of Jungkook’s face.”

“It’s real,” Safiya confirms. “I licked it.”

You bury a laugh in your glass.

A commotion near the back of the room makes a sound.

Having said that, a commotion is not the right word to describe when it debuts, they don’t enter like a movie cast all at once, no spotlight and chorus as you would have expected.

You spot the man of the hour halfway across the room, posted near a soundboard station with one hand around a glass and the other curled into a pocket. Black shirt, unbuttoned just enough, loose on the shoulders, as if he got dressed by thinking about air. The tattoos swirl out from under his sleeves like ink in water. He’s listening to someone speak but his gaze is darting.

Hoseok's mid-laugh when you see him, sunglasses on top of his head, leaning sideways into someone else’s story. He moves like he’s music itself, like tempo runs under his skin.

Jimin’s close behind, ghosting between clusters of people. He’s silver and silk, all fluidity and elegance, nodding to guests with a smile just shy of wicked. He’s so beautiful that makes your brain short-circuit for a second, he's what you’ve just seen something your nervous system wasn’t designed for.

Namjoon takes the longest to notice. Or maybe he’s just the most subtle. He’s in conversation with someone in a crisp gray blazer, gesturing with one hand, thoughtful and deliberate. He laughs at something, rubs the back of his neck, and then turns. You catch his face fully for the first time.

They’re not together in a pack like you'd have expected. They extent to a limitless, shimmering sky.

And then Hajoon is pulling you forward

“The boys are over here,” he says before you can even turn. “I can bring you guys over.”

Your friends, already half-buzzed and vibrating with filtered excitement, light up because for them, they’ve just been offered a VIP pass to heaven.

“No way,” Jia hisses.

“You’re joking,” lara breathes.

Safiya grabs your wrist like it’s a lifeline while mouthing oh my god oh my god as if prayer might help, and Jia is trying to fix her hair mid-step.

They hover behind you as Hajoon brings you over. The boys are — unfortunately —stupidly attractive in real life. Now when you get a clear look of Namjoon, he looks like he walked out of a cologne ad that rivals the oldest's version. Hoseok’s already grinning like he knows a secret. Yoongi barely nods but it feels like a bow.

They greet you like you’re someone, which is probably part of the charm. Idol magic.

“This is my girlfriend, Y/N,” Hajoon says. “And these are her friends- lara, Jia.." He pauses, glances at you awkwardly for a brief second like he's asking for help or bracing for the impact of some kind of punishment from you because there's no way he forgot your friend's name. Best friend's name. Idiot.

"Safiya." You jump in before her face can fall. "He's terrible with names."

The girls mumble variations of hi and holy shit and we’re fine, thank you, so fine.

Namjoon asks how you’re enjoying the night. Hoseok compliments Mina’s outfit. Jungkook flushes a hint of pink when a collective congratulations for his album is spoken out loud and safiya looks like she might actually combust.

And you smile, gracious and composed. Atleast you try. You can see the faint shimmer of Jungkook’s under-eye highlight. You can smell Jimin’s cologne.

It’s a lot. But you manage.

"Hajoon-sshi, never shuts up about you.”

You smile again, because what else do you do when one of the most famous men in the country is shaking your hand with dimples that could murder with, double- barreled friendliness that makes you want to tell him your secrets. “I’m sure he exaggerates.”

Jimin tilts his head. “Definitely not. You're the one who made him cry when he forgot your anniversary, right?"

“Jimin-sshi.” Hajoon groans, face red.

You blink. “He told you that?”

Hoseok laughs. “We heard it. He was inconsolable.”

You catch Hajoon’s eye. He smiles, sheepish.

And just like that, something inside you thaws. Invaraibly by a degree.

“It’s really nice to meet you all,” you say, because it’s the right thing to say, and you are currently functioning entirely on instinct and adrenaline.

"Really nice." One of the girls add.

Seokjin beams. “You too. Hajoon’s one of our favorites, by the way. He’s a total lifesaver."

“He also has terrible snack taste,” Yoongi says. “But we’ve forgiven him.”

Laughter rises up, light and easy. For a moment, you almost forget your nerves. Because they’re funny. And not the over the board funny, It comes off easy to them, kindness comes off easy.

Jia is flushed. “Congratulations, by the way,” she blurts to Jungkook. “On the album. It’s insane."

He blushes. Blushes. “Thank you. Please enjoy yourself."

Safiya looks ready to melt through the floor.

Eventually, the moment fades. Doesn’t last long. Nothing golden does.The boys wander off in pairs, pulled away by studioheads and stylists and producers. The girls flock back to your side, still breathless.

“Did you see Seokjin's outfit?” Jia hisses. "I saw nothing else but that."

“I didn’t even blink,” Safiya says. “I’m too stunned.”

Lara sips her drink. “Yoongi is shorter than I thought, but it’s working for him. It’s all working for him.”

You’re still processing.

The wine’s working too, and the lights are low, and there’s a strange feeling in your ribs like you’ve walked into someone else’s movie. Feels as if you’re not just in the room, you’re part of the pixels that make up the ambience.

It's overwhelming. You're not sure how one can make a living out of this, of being tbis marshallsd, of being this seen, this on all the time. . How one can breathe, even. You can barely maintain eye contact with the barista when your name’s misspelled on a cup; how do they manage this?

You couldn't have been here for a more than a hour and you already feel floaty. Flaccid, that isn’t entirely unpleasant, but definitely not normal either. As if your limbs are operating on a delay, still trying to recalibrate from being in the blast radius of status, beauty, and whatever volatile charge comes from standing too close to a reality that was never meant to include you. Your brain fumbles, rewinding the scene with all the clumsy finesse of a dropped tape recorder, replaying glances, tones, shifts in posture that must’ve meant more than they let on.

You let out a breath but even that feels too loud so lean your weight against the cocktail table. It's draped in something black and ravishingly silk.

You sip your drink. Smile to yourself when you catch lara around the corner hanging off around the content manager you met just minutes ago. She’s high on proximity, her pupils blown wide with it. Safiya’s comparing the shade of Jungkook’s lip tint to a fruit that doesn’t grow in your hemisphere. Jia looks like she just lost her religion and found it again.

This is good. You're having a pleasant time. Your friends are having a pleasant time.

Until something twitches at the edge of your memory. Was it memory? was it an observation?

That creeping thought finally pierces through the buzz. Wait.

Six.

There were six.

You count again, lips moving. An uncanny whisper of movement. You don’t know how you missed it.

Except... maybe you do.

Maybe you didn’t miss it at all. Maybe you muted it. Maybe you folded it into the background noise the second it reached your ears. Much like static. Very much like self-preservation. Developed selecting hearing for a moment there because there was a name too.

There was a name.

Something one of them said. Something just under the music, a passing remark folded into a compliment meant for Hajoon. You try to scrape it back. Rewind the moment. Seokjin had been speaking, something about Hajoon being essential. Someone else chimed in. You think it was Namjoon, or maybe Jungkook, saying:

“Good pick on Taehyung's part. He's got a good eye.”

That’s it.

And it registers now, belated and prickly. You’d tuned it out. Of course you did. It’s laughable, really. The way your body chose to keep the peace when the moment someone says his name, your brain switches off. You name it muscle memory. But it could also be survival instinct. And the primal knowledge that a name can curdle a whole night if you let it. While your mind filed away the omission.

The face you’ve been dreading. The one you’ve cursed in your sleep. The reason you almost didn’t show up tonight at all.

And he wasn’t here. And all the stars were alligned. And all was right in the universe.

You look around for confirmation.

He wasn’t in the group you met. He wasn’t hovering nearby. You were secure in your belief that a collection gasps of he just walked in would have followed too. You would’ve felt it; that particular flavor of atmospheric change he brings with him, whetted and exact. You’d have known, the shift in barometric pressure, the interference that clings to your neurons and doesn’t let go. The voice you know too well, molten steel with knive sharpened. The name that tastes of vinegar every time you say it, and you say it often. So you'd know.

He really wasn’t here. Which tracks. Of course, he’d skip his own friend’s party. Or maybe he’s late. Maybe he’s allergic to punctuality like he is to personal boundaries. For people like him time bends differently since they clearly don't have respect of it. Or maybe he’s already come and gone, and the universe just spared you the fallout.

You exhale, long. Unpacking a suitcase full of tension you didn’t know you were carrying. Somewhere deep in your chest, a locked muscle unclenches and thanks you for the mercy.

Hajoon slides in beside you again, glass of champagne hovering near his mouth, eyes all sparkle and hope, gets him one inch closer back into your good graces through this whole ordeal that is a grand, glittery olive branch.

You lean into his side, casual. "Didn’t see...your tae yet?" You ask, because you can’t not. It comes out breezy. Offhand.

He glances down, surprised by the question before he looks around, like he half-expected to find him behind a ficus.

“Taehyung?” he echoes.

You nod. Yes, he who shall not be named.

“Off-duty tonight, apparently. Said he wasn’t sure if he’d make it. Probably laying low.” He says. "You know how he is."

You hum. You don’t. Not really. But you’ve spent enough time seething in his shadow to make up your own conclusions.

Off duty. Right. Still, your eyes scan the room one more time, just in case. A surprisingly wise decision on his part. He only spared himself from the embarrasment in his own bandmates party. So you plan to keep your peace and your boyfriend tonight too.

Alas, you can only have it all before someone — some twenty-something in black denim and a lanyard swinging like a pendulum — approaches with a slightly panicked look and Hajoon’s name half-formed on his lips.

“Hyung,” the kid pants, half-doubled over with his hands on his thighs, hair damp and sticking to his temples. “Sorry—sound crew’s losing their shit over the back-lounge mic feed. Something about the press audio not syncing right. They said they tried to ping you—five times, I think."

The words fall out in a rush, tripping over each other, frantic and full of a bad conscience. He says five, but you can tell by the way he won’t meet Hajoon’s eyes that it’s probably more. Potentially ten. Potentially enough to take your boyfriend away.

Hajoon exhales through his nose. The sound is barely audible, but it echoes anyway, through the bones of the moment, through the space you occupy beside him. You don’t need to look up to know he’s already halfway annoyed. Guilty? His irritation blooms in the shift of his weight, in the flex of his knuckles behind your back, as though weighing whether to pull away entirely or hold ground. Feasibly both.

“Right now?” he asks, like there might be another option. Asks it like the rhetorical density of someone already calculating the cost of interruption.

The runner hesitates, eyes darting toward the corridor behind him where shadows of movement flicker and vanish. “They’re melting down.”

Hajoon hesitates. It almost seems like it's for dramatic effect. You can feel it on him, the feigned reluctance. Feel him preparing the apology, not the words themselves, but the posture of them. It hovers at the corners of his mouth, teeth pressing into thought, mouth pulled thin. There’s no remorse in it, nonethless, the apology is curling at the corners of his mouth before it’s fully formed.

“I can come right back,” he says. “Fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”

You almost roll your eyes. Not because you think he's lying but because fifteen minutes turns into forty. Forty turns into never mind, just go home without me.

And maybe a few days ago, you would’ve folded your arms and dared him to choose. Another moment to keep score. You don’t do that tonight. You don’t call him out. You give him a soft shrug. A little smile that doesn’t reach your eyes. “It’s fine. Go.”

He leans in, brushes a kiss against your temple, a flutter thing, gone before you can even decide how you feel about it. “I owe you.”

You hum. “Mhm. Keep the tab open.”

And then he’s gone, flesh peeled from the frame of the moment. Grooved into the mass of bodies, ingested whole by noise and colored light. One blink too slow and his back is already someone else's, indistinct and moving. The crowd does not opposes him, shoulders belonging to glittering bodies and bad decisions open for him without hesitation. His absence walks away before you get the chance to apperceive it properly. Before it earns its configuration.

He moves through crowds with that easy-breath peridiocity that suggests he belongs more to movement than to restfulness. More to them than to you.

And just like that, you’re solo again.

Empty-handed and bare-shouldered- Unattached.

Empty-handed and bare-shouldered- Unsupervised.

Everything around you surges forward, and you remain perfectly still, there’s nothing in your throat but salt and silence.You edge toward the periphery, toes brushing the spill line of the room. Where the light flickers but doesn’t touch. Where the music swells and bruises the walls but doesn’t crawl into your skin. You imagine what you must look like from above, drifting toward the rim, toward the places where no one dares to notice anything too tenous. While your group of girls (havoc I sequins) are scattered like confetti.

Jia is dancing now — on the actual dance floor, in a sea of glitter and swaying silhouettes. Her boots flash under the lights. She throws her head back laughing, some guy in a turtleneck and too much confidence attempting to keep up with her steps.

Safiya is talking to someone near the catering section — maybe flirting, maybe arguing. It’s hard to tell with her. One hand’s on her hip and the other is spearing a cherry tomato off a toothpick like it insulted her mother.

Lara, as always, is missing. You scan the crowd for a glimpse of red but instead catch her exiting a side hallway, shoulder-to-shoulder with Minae, the digital content manager from earlier. They’re laughing, low and conspiratorial, and Mina’s got that subtle half-smirk she wears when she’s decided to keep something to herself. You let her be.

There’s something freeing about the anonymity here. The lights are low, and the music is louder now, bass thudding like a second heartbeat in your chest. You drift along the perimeter, your heels clicking a slow rhythm over polished tile. You accept another drink from a server. It bumps up fizzy. It turns up pink. Something you don’t have to name. You don’t ask what’s in it. That’s part of the fun. Not knowing. Not caring. (Some of the time, it is. And you say that with all precautions took care of.)

Eventually, your path leads you to the lounge side of the floor. Past the floral arch near the DJ. Past the velvet ropes draped over low-lit staircases. Past a corner where someone famous is pretending not to be famous while arguing about streaming rights. It’s less crowded here. The velvet couches are sunken and soft, little groups curled into them like petals around a flame.

The crowd thins out here. The sound mellows.

It’s cooler, too. A reduced amount of throat-choking cologne, fewer elbows in your side. The air smells feebly of melting ice and broken promises, probably vodka, possibly floor cleaner. You cradle your glass against your lips and take a sip. Sweet, cold, suspicious. The taste clings to the roof of your mouth in that way syrups do when they’ve got pharmaceutical derangement of power lust. You swallow anyway. At this point, hydration is hydration.

You have no plans to dance, you're not feeling it. There’s a part of you that still hasn’t forgiven your shoes for existing, and the beat impressions an accusation rather than an invitation. You're satisfied with it nestling somewhere inside your thorax, warming you the way wine does, gradually, dishonestly.

You stare ahead, trying to look occupied but vaguely important. It's a difficult balance, one most people fumble by the first hour. Your eyebrows lift occasionally, your mouth hovers near a smile. You even nod once at no one. Masterclass. Topper, you could've been, if someone didn't turn up in your sideways and made you want to run in circles until the loss of face wore off.

“You’re not with the label, are you?”

You turn, eyes adjusting to the source. He stands there, taller than expected, with that soft-focus face they breed in casting rooms. Brushed-back hair, that only exists in idol genetics or drama leads undone tie, an earring catching the light like it’s been waiting all night to be noticed. A smile so polite it might actually be genuine. Friendly within reason that isn’t threatening, yet somehow still feels practiced. For all you know, he came with the furniture. For all you know, he’s been here the whole time, waiting for a line.

You're a woman with theories waiting to spill out but you're also a woman with many talents so you oversee them all at once while also managing to utter out. “Sorry?”

He chuckles, mouth tugging upwards. “Sorry. That came out weird. I just meant—I haven’t seen you before.”

“It did,” you agree, but your tone is light. You’re not mad. You’re just surprised. No one’s talked to you tonight that wasn’t paid to or pretending not to know your boyfriend. A bold choice. A choice you're thinking you admire.

“I just meant,” he says, still smiling, “I haven’t seen you before.”

You angle your head, enough to let your earrings swing forward. Small weights on delicate hinges. “Do you make it a habit to keep track of everyone?”

He laughs again. This time, less apologetic. “No. Just the interesting ones.”

You raise a brow. “Is that a line?”

He shrugs with a grin so flashy, it could classify as something you would note aside and overanalyze till you've reached to one reoccurring culmination that you need better hobies than overthinking. A heathly one, most preferably. “Only if it’s working.”

You sip your drink. It’s not. But it’s a valiant effort, and in this economy, effort counts for something.

He pretends to look wounded. One hand on his heart, the other cradling his glass like it’s the only constant in his life. Winces. “Harsh.”

You allow the moment to hang, loose and golden, like fairy lights that haven’t short-circuited yet. “Y/N.”

He sticks out his hand. “Sangmin.”

You shake it, out of politeness, out of boredom, out of habit. His grip is good. Palm is warm and fingers are steady. No limpness, no clamminess. The bar’s low, and he clears it.

He smiles. “Nice to meet you, Y/N-who’s-not-with-the-label.”

You glance sideways, scanning for cameras or people pretending not to eavesdrop. “And you are?”

“Former trainee. Now an occasional singer. Sometimes dancer. Full-time mascot, depending on who you ask.” he says as if narrating a bed-time story.

That draws a laugh out of you before you can stop it. “That’s oddly honest.”

He leans against the railing beside you, drink in hand. “Honesty’s underrated.”

You nod. "True, that."

The conversation drifts into easy banter. He asks how you’re liking the party. You say it’s beautiful. He agrees. You say it’s loud. He says it’s always loud. He tells you a story about tripping on a camera wire during a rehearsal and breaking someone’s ankle. You raise your brows. “Their ankle?” He winces. “Yeah. Not my finest hour.”

And the truth of it is; it’s nice. He’s nice. Funny, even. Bothersomely so. The ease of it, of his voice that has a soft-spoken allure that slips out between sips of whatever he’s drinking, the way his sentences land on the floor between you like coins: unsubstanial, eye-catching and never heavy enought to bruise. A clever theif would take great advantage of that because his smile doesn’t ask anything of you. His eyes don’t crawl. And that should be comforting, but in some twisted, tired corner of your chest, it feels worse. Because this could be something. He could be something and that sounds inviting, when you give regard to the attention he gives you, where you don’t have to earn by vanishing parts of yourself.

It would take almost nothing to tilt this into flirtation. You would work a little on your smile and reshape your unit of speech just right, take a sip longer than imperative. Could sink into the clearance he’s offering without ramification, owing to the fact that men like him never ask, they come with tidy intentions and open palms. They don't come with an entourage or an aftertaste.

But your blood doesn’t reach for him, so you don’t. Because you’re not here for that.

Because your boyfriend, who hasn't looked at you properly in days, is still somewhere inside this building, elbows in cables, lungs full of static, cursing at machinery with the conviction of a prophet. The air around him probably smells like copper and stubbornness. You can picture his shoulders already, hunched and wired, chasing perfection with shaking hands and a deadline no one asked him to meet. He’s the reason you’ve spent the last hour smiling politely at people who might never know your name properly and won’t say it. And even if he deserves to be punished for it, for dozens of things, for all of it, you won’t be the knife. You won’t be the thing that you are inherently not.

So you smile. But you dull it with your eyes. You sip your drink, but only because your hands need something to do. You let Sangmin speak — witty, harmless, charming Sangmin — and you nod at the appropriate beats, but your solidity stays pressed into your heels.

You stay where you are.

You say. “My boyfriend,” without flinching. “He works with the group.” When he leans a little closer, elbows resting on the edge of the lounge railing. “So if you’re not with the label, and you’re not a reporter, and you’re not secretly here to pitch a demo... who are you here with?”

You’re not the type to go looking for trouble.

Even if it’s standing beside you in a perfect shirt, making you laugh like nothing matters.

You crave for a distraction from that and it comes in the fashion of a text message.

Your phone buzzes with a little tremor in your hand, screen lighting up like a jolt against the warm, dim haze of the lounge.

You glance down with the mildest sigh, thumb swiping across the screen with practiced detachment, only to freeze at the message lighting it up. Shit. That wasn't the distraction you meant.

[safiya:] emergency. jia’s throwing up in the bathroom. she drank something w dairy i think. help?

The screen lights up in your hand, and at first, the words don’t register. They stall for a second, indefinite at the corners, stubborn in the glow of your phone screen, smearing into background noise. Blame it on the cocktail fogging your bloodstream, or the hundred moving pieces around you: tinsels catching in fake candlelight, voices climbing on top of each other, the sound of a laugh that isn’t yours clamorously too close to your ear. Ends when, reality seizes, Glitter loses its glint. Music overlays inward. The dalliance hanging between you and Sangmin deflates mid-air. Safiya’s words, your friend’s, aren’t long, but they’re enough to lance through whatever artificial calm the evening had built around your shoulders.

You barely finish reading when you mutter, “Shit.” It escapes before you can pack it down.

Sangmin straightens slightly beside you. “Everything okay?” He’s attentive now. Alert even when there's no need him to be. His voice has edged out of flirty and into rigorous.

You force a smile that doesn’t reach anywhere. “Friend emergency.Like a real one.”

“You want help finding them?” His expression shifts, subtle but immediate. He offers help without posturing.

“No,” you say quickly, already stepping back. “Thanks, though. You’ve been… really sweet.”

“Anytime,” he says. A tilt of his glass like a farewell salute. Jeez. You’d laugh if your pulse wasn’t in your throat.

You murmur something like a goodbye, barely audible over the bass, before ducking through the crowd with narrowed eyes and a racing heart. Body tense and forward-leaning, pace picking up without warning. Your heels slap the floor, too fast for elegance, too slow for panic, caught somewhere in that in-between speed people only use when they’re chasing clarity. You’re dodging limbs and cocktail glasses, highlighter-streaked shoulders and half-spilled secrets, all of it flexuring away from you in waves. It’s a cartoon version of what it was ten minutes ago, voices rubbery, lights too sharp, music melting at the confines.

The hallway feels longer now. Louder. The clicks come faster. The party’s music muffles and distorts as you turn a corner and push through a crowd, moving like someone with a mission,which you are. You pass a stylist laughing too loud, a guy adjusting his bowtie in a mirror, someone accidentally spilling champagne that smells too floral. All of it, noise.

All of you, instinct. Blisters when your phone buzzes again. This is messier. This is what did she say? and how bad is it? and god, how far did she get before she texted?

[safiya:] we’re in the second-floor bathroom. back hallway. jia’s on the floor.

Of course it had to be dairy. Jia’s lactose intolerance is the stuff of group lore. And of course she’d think the mousse was vegan just because it was “foamier.”

You find the stairwell, a close-mouthed back corridor lit by cooler lights. As soon as the party noise dulls behind the wall, your adrenaline kicks in sharper.

The second-floor bathroom isn’t hard to find. The door is cracked, music muffled behind layers of expensive soundproofing. You knock once and slip inside.

“Hey,” you call, already tugging your jacket off.

Safiya’s crouched by the sink, holding Jia’s hair back. Jia herself is hunched over the toilet, looking pale and miserable, makeup streaked and dignity somewhere down the drain.

“Oh, babe,” you say softly, dropping beside them. “You okay?”

Jia mumbles something that might’ve been, “Never eating dessert again.”

“She’s burning up,” Safiya says, brows furrowed. “And I can’t get lara to pick up. Her phone’s on DND.”

“She left with that content manager woman,” you mutter, digging into your bag for a napkin or some tissues. “Minae? The one with the bob and the designer clipboard?”

“God, I knew it,” Safiya huffs. "It's like she gets off being reckless."

You dab gently at Jia’s forehead. She’s sweating now, shaky and miserable but not in danger. Not thus far. Her breath’s steady. Her eyes flutter.

“Think she just needs to get it all out,” Safiya murmurs. “But I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I’ll kill whoever made that mousse,” you mutter, brushing a hand down Jia’s back. “Or at least file a passive-aggressive complaint.”

You glance around, noting the neatly folded hand towels, the stack of fancy soaps, the porcelain sink that looks like it cost more than your rent. The absurdity of handling real shit in such an unreal place; it grates and comforts at the same time.

“Okay,” you murmur, trying to steady your own voice. “Stay with her a sec. I’ll go get water or ginger ale if they have any.”

"O-okay." She nods, shoulders relaxing.

You slip out of the bathroom like you’re walking through water.

The passage feels dissolvent now, air dense with all the words you didn’t say. You push a palm over your forehead, feel the warmth building under your skin, and wonder if it’s sympathy sickness or just frustration curling low in your gut. The worst part is you can’t blame Jia. Not really. She’s the soft one and you say that with documented proof of that one time when cried at a commercial and she still believes in horoscopes.

Your heels echo through the corridor as you walk towards the hallway spits you into another corner of the venue, this one unfamiliar, all wood-paneled doors and golden sconce lighting, like the architectural equivalent of whispering. Everything feels a little inarticulate here. Like you’ve slipped behind the curtain of the night and crashed in its quiet, unsupervised heart.

The party tucks beneath you now, flattened into a low, quaking throb that doesn’t so much speak as it vibrates, deep in the hollow between bone and breath. The music no longer reaches your ears in any clean, decipherable way. It’s washed-out, guttural, absorbed by walls and fabric and distance, reduced to a genesis that hitches itself to your chest and rides every exhale, as if a secret.

You don’t know where the catering crew disappeared to. Whether they’ve set up shop in a closet-sized prep station behind some satin curtain or if there’s a staff kitchen buried somewhere in the maze of corridors, guarded by stress and stainless steel. You don’t know if there’s a vending machine kinetic in it's opertion, in a forgotten corner, stocked with warm soda and crackers designed to outlive civilization. You don’t know, and at this point, you don’t really care. steady hands, firm jaw, no time for collapse. The crisis manager, the de facto medic, the girl who always knows what to grab when someone’s bleeding metaphorically or otherwise, is here now, and she’s got the wheel in a death grip.The part of you that runs crisis control has surfaced in and refuses to log out.

You spot someone near the elevator, clipboard in hand, wearing the haunted eyes of someone paid too little to care too much, and you slide into their eyeline before they can disappear into usefulness. “Sorry,” you say, swallowing the rest of your breath before it breaks apart. “Do you know where I can find bottled water? Or soda? It’s for someone upstairs.”

They blink at you, startled, as if you’ve spoken a spell in a language reserved for emergencies. They were expecting a headset, maybe. Most definitely from an official. Instead they got a girl in heels and unfinished mascara, looking halfway between guest and ghost. “Uh—check the prep station near the west corner? Just past the photo booth. There’s always extra stuff stored back there.”

You thank them before they can ask who you are. Your heels resume their mindless candace. Though defining it mindless would be a contradiction on it's own.

Because the longer you’re away from the bathroom, the more you start thinking. You don’t want to- this is supposed to be simple but your thoughts mutate away from the simple task of fetching a drink. Keep a friend alive, make sure she’s breathing through whatever hell clawed its way up her throat. Return. The distance from the bathroom grows, and with it, the space for your mind to spiral. Your brain won’t shut up, now. Won’t let you have that peace cause its so inconveniently wired for emotional noise, keeps dragging you somewhere else.

Hajoon still hasn’t followed up. You’d texted him, told him where you were. You told him emergency triage, and if that wasn’t enough to get his feet moving, what is?

You turn the next corner, pass a cluster of interns half-hunched over a light panel, then veer off toward a hallway marked “STAFF ONLY.” The rope is halfway slipped already, forgotten or ignored. You lift it with one hand and step through, no hesitation. There’s a kind of freedom in crossing boundaries that no one’s watching.

The floor changes under your shoes, softer now, something ductile or carpeted, dulled at the edges.

The hallway branches once. Then again. Everything here smells faintly of cleaning supplies and flowers that died too expensive. You keep left. You pass a storage room door half-cracked open.

There’s a linen cart parked haphazardly against the wall, as though someone meant to wheel it somewhere and then simply forgot how to follow through. Its wheels are crooked, one half-swallowed by the seam in the tile. Cloth napkins spill from the top shelf, un creased in places, crumpled in others, some folded with care, others balled up like someone gave up mid-shift. The cart smells unclearly of starch and lemon polish, though the scent is old now, faded. It shouldn’t register as anything important. It’s background, set dressing. But your steps hesitate all the same. Something in your gut makes you pause- it's not dread that mimics one of the many classic horror, not instinct either. It's marginally a pause. What it is, is one of those micro-moments when your brain forgets what the next step is supposed to feel like, and in that blank space, everything else happens.

You wouldn't have noticed, except you hear it. It's suprising that you hear it at all. Not at first obviously. Even-handedly a sound that feels like it shouldn’t be there, the sound being the slightest rustle of movement. You're still taken aback from the fact that you heard it before you even sum up what's in front.

There’s a door ahead of you, it’s half-open. Few and far between to be an invitation, but enough to make you wonder whether it was meant to be closed at all. Light spills through the narrow gap and pools on the floor in a long diagonal, slicing the hallway in half. It has that fluorescent, salubrious tint that makes everything beneath it look more exhausted than it already is. It paints a harsh stripe across the tile, across the napkins that have spilled out and frozen mid-collapse.

It should be nothing.

Keyword: Should be.

But your stomach twists because it not nothing. You hear it before your eyes have caught up to the chassis of it, voice seeping through the thin air, delicate in tone but heavy in intention, that unnervingly lacquered pitch women use when they want to sound wounded while making do with the peaked ends. Too close to a whine to be professional and too retiring to be a whisper held between teeth.You know that voice. From an hour ago and a handshake held too long.

“—don’t know why you brought her.”

You stiffen calcifies, muscles wrapped in an invisible brace of knowing before thought has the chance to intervene. Notwithstanding as it dawns upon you. There is no alarm in your blood, only a slow, curling recoil, a heatless burn under the structure of your bones, only happens when your body recognizes a truth faster than your brain allows. And in that second, divulgence feasts on it, on this limited space which inhabits, too much light and too many truths.

Inside, there’s a shuffle of feet. You assume Hajoon’s feet because his voice is right behind. Tired it sounds.You know the articulation of Hajoon’s steps by heart. You’ve counted them. On staircases. Sidewalks. Your apartment floor. It’s him. It’s absolutely him. And this is definitely a moment you were never meant to witness, unlike those ones.

“Bora, come on.”

You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t.

The thought spirals like a siren in your head, acute and shrill, but your limbs won’t respond. Your name—well, her edited version of it—still floats between the syllables like a ghost. It hovers in the stale air, waiting to be dissected. Examined. Embalmed. It follows that, Hajoon is right there, sufficiently beyond the narrow slit of the door, sufficiently close enough to see if you lean another inch. The thought loops inside you, blinking red, warning you off like a flashing exit sign in a building that’s about to go under.

You shouldn’t stand on the edge of a threshold holding your breath like a child in a horror film. But your feet carry you the last few steps anyway. You stop at the edge of the door. Your body does what it always does: disobeys in the ways that matter. You drift those last few steps forward, against reason, against self-respect, against your own better judgment, which has never won a single fight with your curiosity. You stop before the door, which is, predictably, ajar. Drawn by a magnetism you hate yourself for responding to, step into the slice of light spilling out, allowing you permission. You lean, carefully, slowly, not with intent to spy, but because gravity is a cruel thing when verity is involved.

But you can’t not hear. Some truths calcify on impact.

“You knew I had to,” Hajoon’s voice replies.There’s strain there, but no outrage. “You knew she was coming.”

“No, I knew you invited her. That’s different.”

Something inside you hollows, it's not a feeling of being stabbed but more like a scoop. It happens when someone’s hand just reaches in and takes a part of your stomach out. The distinct sensation of absence, of a piece of yourself being removed so gently you might’ve missed.

And then she replies, and her tone slips even further into something sugary and rehearsed, a voice performing vulnerability without ever being touched by it. “Is she really worth this whole scene? You don’t even look at me anymore.”

Your breath catches in your throat as Bora’s shadow moves. Her heels click lazily against the tile; catlike, the gait of someone who knows they won’t be interrupted. She enters the sliver of your view, the sleek line of her calf, the shimmering hem of her dress, the glint of earrings swinging arrogantly near her throat. You hear the brush of her hand against fabric and you know exactly what part of him she’s touching. You imagine the press of her palm over his chest, the lean of her body into his. It all happens in your boyfriend’s silence. And in that silence, a occurence too hefty to explain.

Your heartbeat rises in your ears. Hajoon doesn’t say anything. That’s what terrifies you. Guts you. The relevation that this isn’t new. This isn’t some messy misunderstanding begotten in champagne and ambient lighting. This isn’t just some bad timing and worse boundaries.

She knows how close she can stand. He knows not to push her away. Her encroachment and his compliance is perfection.

You don’t realize when your hand finds the doorframe, only that it’s there now, clutching the edge with a grip so tight your knuckles pale, fingers curled in as though the wood might be the only thing keeping you upright the floor. Your weight has shifted forward, barely perceptible, but enough to feel how precarious your body has become. There’s a dizziness curling at the corners of your vision, the faint, reeling you until, the floor doesn’t just spin outright but diagonals the whole hallway, sluggish and silent, until every step forward feels steeped of jeopardy.

Her voice floats closer, closer than it should be, caramel-coated and too aware of itself, dripping with old secrets cladded up as affection. “You never used to hesitate,”Bora says, purring the words confidently. Comes from years of being let terribly close, terribly often. “Remember that night in Jeju?”

Your stomach turns with such violence that your throat tightens to contain it, not quite because of the place but because of the specificity. You hate how specific it is. How casually it falls from her mouth like it was theirs, like it still is. And you’re the stranger here, the interloper. Your mind flinches against the image, desperate to resist its outline, but it sculpts itself out anyway. Sand underfoot, spending nights which rewrote everything you had spent years wasting your ink on.

“I remember, baby.” Hajoon murmurs. Three words form bruises under your skin, one by one, swelling inward, He never called you baby in years of your relationship. In that soft voice, to be exact, immensly soft to belong to anything except regret or concede, and yet there’s no regret in the accentuation.

You want to laugh. Hardly because it’s funny, nothing about this is funny, but because the absurdity of the pain has reached a point of detachment, the way your mind sometimes offers humor when the body is close to collapse. You want to cry, too.And part of you wants to throw the door wide open, break the performance into pieces, shove the truth into the light and force him to look you in the face while it burns. But your body refuses to do any of it. You remain exactly where you are, stuck in a moment too excruciating to interrupt, a bystander in your own devastation. You’re the frame that flickers on screen before the plot pivots.

You press your knuckles against your mouth, the skin there soft from earlier, now dented under pressure. The contact is painful on purpose, in the best interest of you because you need the grounding. You need the reminder that you’re real. That this moment, for all its cruelty, is happening, and you are standing inside it.

Inside, Bora sighs, and the sound is so pleased with itself you almost swerve. “You shouldn’t have brought her if you didn’t want me to do this.”

There’s no reply. And the silence, this time, is deafening. Deeply, fatally familiar.

You hear a shuffle, drag of fabric, potentially a foot dragging closer to another, following the sound of movement you don’t want to identify, a insufflation exhaled that sounds mightly satisfied, getting intimate, too sure of its position and of this delicious game. You don’t want to imagine what’s happening in that pause. You don’t want to wonder how the bated breath you hold hostage anyways, speaks like your brain, atrocious in its survival instincts, paints the picture anyway, and your body responds with a sickened tightness that has nowhere to go.

Your breath catches so sharply in your throat you think it might scratch you from the inside. You feel stupid. You feel stupid.

You told yourself this was just you overthinking, that Hajoon was tired all of the time and started to perpare for the older times when you will be older too and he'll get worse but you'll be there. Distracted, mayhaps. Pulled a hundred directions by this event. You gave him excuses. You always did — so eager, so stupidly loyal — gave him that room.

And the part that stings the most, makes you want to claw his betraying heart out, is that he let you, let you build that little myth Took advanted of the room of uncertainty you gave him. Gods, gave him so much room to disappoint you. Over and over. Until all he had to do to keep you was nothing.

Padded every missed text with understanding. Gulped down every late night, every unexplained absence with that stupid stupid smile. You rationalized his silences, handed them over with thought too. Made up for them in your head. Built a cushion out of benefit-of-the-doubt and laid down in it, eyes closed, telling yourself it wasn’t what it looked like, because you loved him. Because you chose him. Because love, as you were told, is supposed to be work.

From both fucking sides. It didn't function so when you alone did the work and never asked if he was doing it too.

And now you’re here. In this hallway. Listening to the soft undoing of your entire relationship through a half-open door and the giggle of a woman who never saw you as a threat.

The humiliation feels cinematic,doesn’t come all at once, but ponderous; seeping, viscous, with the heft of something that’s been waiting a long time to be acknowledged. It rivulets into you with the same progression as dread, thick and sticky as honey spilled across cold tile, where every inch it spreads becomes harder to scrub clean. Fills your ribs, then slips deeper, into the squishy discomfort of your sternum, and you know without needing to be told that this is a hurt that's gonna stay, will make a home.

Your body already knows what your mouth isn’t brave enough to say. You were so oblivious.

You think back to every red flag you plucked from the air and re-dyed white, into a color you could live with. The nights he came home later than he said he would, the smell on his collar (not yours, never yours) smelling faintly of something exceedingly floral to be your detergent. The half-sentence that rarely ended with an i love you, even when you had made it very clear on the early on stages of your relationship that you liked being told that you were loved, that too often. You think about all the things you chalked up to stress, to work. Every thing everyone around told you to reconsider, tried to warn you in gentle silences and wary glances, their voices cautious with pity, never saying the thing outright but circling it like buzzards. Because they knew probably. They knew.

You were the only one who refused to sit with the pattern of it. You just didn’t want to listen. Because to listen, to truly listen, would’ve meant accepting what you’ve always suspected in the nooks and crooks of your gut. Because if you listened, you’d have to admit it.That maybe it wasn’t just his job or a global popstar keeping Hajoon from you. Maybe Hajoon wanted to be kept.

You feel sick.

And suddenly your body revolts against the thought, stomach tightening as odium coils innermore and flourishes beneath your abdomen. Your mouth goes dry, the taste in it metallic and sour, and you swallow down the spasm, in hopes that it might buy you a few more seconds of composure. Your molars ache, clenched so tightly together that your jaw begins to pulse. You suddenly remember the first night he told you he loved you, how his voice cracked as if the words startled him too, you didn't even dare think about, or how that maybe he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Was that a lie too?

Or did he mean it then?

Does it even matter now?

But those questions come with their own claws. So you don’t answer them. You don’t try, press the heel of your hand to your eye before the tears can fall, as if you could shove the tears back into their ducts through sheer will alone, refusing to let them fall here. You will not cry in this hallway. You will not give this place that power. So you don’t cry. You don’t let your anger catch fire and drive you through the door with fists full of questions.

But you think about it.

Lords, do you think about it.

You think about how it would feel to crack the illusion open, to make them both look at you, really look. You picture it in flashes- your fingers curled in Bora’s silken collar, dragging her back two steps just to see if her voice stays as sweet when it trembles. You imagine staring Hajoon dead in the eye and asking him if this is worth it, if she’s worth it, if it was all just a game to see how far he could bend your bones before they snapped.

You want to interrupt. You want to step inside that room and let the breath you’ve been holding slice through the air like glass.

You want it to be loud. Messy. Unforgettable. But your body won’t let you, again.

You’re still standing in the same spot, though you aren’t entirely sure how. Breath shallow, limbs made of rust, you feel distant from your own being,every joint stiff and unreliable, as though they were never made for movement. Your fingers are locked around the thin strap of your clutch, knuckles aching from the strain, but still, you can’t let go. Your knees buzz with a numbness that teeters too close to collapse, and you know, without testing it, that if you tried to walk away too quickly, you’d falter, legs would fold in on themselves, dragging your self-esteem down with you.

As if it hasn't already fallen so far, in the narrowest depths, probably making it's way to the seventh circle of hell, every time your mind plays it on a loop. The select few parts run on and on, and the implications that came with when Hajoon didn’t refute her. While you were left in the hallway, on the other side of the door, invisible.

And it’s in that invisibility that you forget yourself entirely. Forget why you’re here, what you’re holding, what you promised. The scene overtakes you, pushes you out of your own context. You are not the friend on a mission to fetch water for her shaking best friend anymore. You are not the responsible one, the stable one, the friend who had her life sorted out, the moment she was out of college with a fixtures on her side, all the time and not one who's witnessing the slow infidelity of your relationship in a quiet, candlelit corridor. Except the reminder comes. Sounds like ting. And reads like urgency and concern all at once.

Your phone buzzes against your thigh, a single jolt. But it ricochets through you like thunder, breaks away the trance.

You blink hard, pull yourself out of the daze like yanking the string of a broken marionette. Your fingers fumble against the screen.You don’t know how long you’ve been gone, only that it’s been long enough for concern to find you.

[safiya: everything okay? what's taking so long??]

The words feel like someone cracking a window open in a burning house.

And in that small, merciful moment, you remember the things that matter, try not to waste away at people who shouldn't have in the first place. If you would have, it wouldn't have taken you so long to remember who you are.

You swallow hard. The lump in your throat feels alive, not figurative, a snarling beast with claws scraping against your insides, trying to claw its way out through the thinnest part of your chest. The taste of it is sharp, astringent, nauseating and it's as overwhelming as a broken heart.

You shift and move.

It’s a small step- barely a shuffle- but the sound paraphrases in the tight space.

Inside, everything falls placid.

Like prey sensing danger.

You hear the soft scrape of a heel. A breath catching follows up that results in the slow, cautious creak of movement. They heard you. It's the only answer that makes sense in a moment that has your mind in pieces. They heard you, and for the first time, you’re no longer invisible.

Panic rises like heat in your throat, replacing the cluster. Your body kicks into survival mode, muscle memory taking the wheel with foot on the pedal, before they can come out. Before they can see your face. The car kicks into ignition and it turns. So do you. Fast.

You move like a current, wind-slipped and sharp. Your heels barely touch the tile. One foot, then the next, then the next. You duck around the corner just as the storage door creaks open behind you.

You don’t look back.

You can’t afford to.

Because if you see them now- if you see him- you’re not sure what will survive the encounter.Your pride, your restraint, the tight seal you’ve managed to hold around your devastation, all of it would shatter. And you are not ready to fall vulnerable in front of them.

Your pulse races like it’s sprinting ahead of you, trying to outrun the shame.Your heart races, anything but in beats, but in gallops, hurrying and zooming, trying to put as much distance as it can between you and what you heard, what you saw, what you now have to carry.

You press one hand flat to the wall, desperate for contact with something unmoving, presumably cool, the tiles are cool. You lean into them with the full weight of your trembling shoulders and try to slow the shaking in your chest. You don’t know how long you stay like that, listening, waiting, cursing the damn universe, back to the corner, ears straining for footsteps that never come.

But no footsteps follow. No voices chase you.

Maybe they think it was nothing.

Or worse, maybe they know exactly what it was.

You straighten, finally. Shake out your shoulders like you’re resetting them on your frame. Willing the bones to don’t feel foreign inside your skin. You glance down at your phone again. Safiya’s message blinks back at you like a lighthouse in fog.

You type back:

[omw.]

It’s all you can manage.

You don’t even realize you’re crying until the first tear hits the corner of your lip, warm and sharp like betrayal distilled.

You scrub the tear away with the back of your hand, rough and rushed, by its nature friction alone could erase what you saw, as though maybe if you wiped hard enough, the memory would peel with it, lift off the surface of your mind and dissolve somewhere into the air behind you. The sting lingers, anyway, heartbreak nests where it should. And somewhere down the corridor, from a place your feet no longer remember how to reach, laughter drifts upwards. It wafts through cause it has every right to, unaffected and unbothered, the fluky soundtrack of people who haven’t had their insides rearranged by the sound of someone else's name spoken too tenderly. The absurdity of it settles in your chest like lead, that the world is still turning.

You push open a random door at the end of the lobby and exhale like you’ve been holding it for a year. A folding table sits near the back wall, crowded with plastic water bottles and packets of mints, and behind it, a server looks up, startled but not alarmed, the way people do when they’ve seen enough parties to know when to mind their business.

You blink. “Water, please?” you say. Your voice doesn’t sound like yours.

He hands one over without question. You nod in return, a stiff, graceless gesture meant to approximate gratitude, and clutch the bottle so tightly that the plastic creaks in your grip.

You feel the crispy cold of the bottle in your hand. It sweats against your palm, a sharp contrast to the flush still radiating from your face. You feel the chill of it in your bones, grateful for the shock. Pain, at least, is something you know how to hold.The world around you feels loud again, even though you’re moving through a quieter section of the venue. The dull thud of bass somewhere beneath your feet. The muffled laughter of strangers who proude the sound of the clink of glassware. Every sound scratches.

Your feet start moving before your brain catches up.

First one foot, then the other, and then your body begins to catch on, muscles remembering the purpose even if your mind hasn’t fully returned to it. Left. Then right. Then forward again.

Back to the place where your friends are waiting. Where your absence must be starting to bloom into concern. Back to the bathroom, where Jia is still hunched over porcelain and Safiya is probably pacing, biting her lip, thinking you’ve gotten lost in this maze of flashing lights and secrets.

The steps are small. Practiced. But your body is still off-kilter, like the force field has shifted slightly out of sync. The party’s glow pulses in the walls around you, muffled and amber hues, but you feel none of it. Each step feels disconnected from the last, like your legs are acting on instruction rather than instinct.You are aware, in the strangest way, that you are walking. That you are moving through space. That you are passing through light and shadow. You feel everything and nothing. You could be gliding. You could be drowning. You’re not sure which would be more forbearing.

Nonethles, you try to hold onto the task. Just give them the water. That’s all you have to do. Just get to the bathroom. Just—

But the walk is long. And your mind won’t cooperate. It's franternizing in a way that plays everything that happened back there again and again. That sing-song tone that was viscous, tunes in and out, how it still manages to cut through the unbearable, monstrous silence.

You were good.

You’d always prided yourself on being composed. Reasonable. You weren’t the jealous type. You weren’t the skeptical possessive girlfriend. You’d never demanded keys or passwords or explanations. Love, in your definition, if was true, it needed no surveillance. Needed not to feel like a rope wrapped around a neck, except it did now.

And the person who held the end of it was the one you told yourself to trust. Told yourself it was the job. That the industry was brutal, demanding, parasitic. That he was a victim of it too, just trying to survive in its current. You gave him space, understanding, flexibility. You let him treat you like an supplementary information because you believed it would pay off. That this, tonight, was the beginning of him showing you off.

And he was infact. Just not to the right audience. God knows not to the right audience. The abashment of sits high in your throat, making it feel lodged yet again. The discomfort of it (or so you'd like to belive) manifests itself in a new wave of tears. They’re not falling gracefully now, they sting, angry and sudden, pooling along your lashes before you can wipe them. Still you wipe your cheek with the back of your hand again.

When you do, you become aware of how your eyes are rimmed with betrayal and your hands are shaking and your entire face feels cracked like porcelain that’s been dropped once, twice, too many times.

You round the corner to the hallway where the second-floor restroom is. You can hear feeble voices inside that start to come off as not so softened. Makes you pause just outside the frame. Look at yourself in the polished reflection of the fire extinguisher box in case your own hand failed you but that has been one of the many things that has not. Eyes glassy. Nose red. Lipstick worn off at the corners. You look like someone who’s unraveling. Methodically, even.

You can’t walk in like this.

Jia is in the feels, Safiya is perceptive. One look and they’ll know something’s wrong. And once that happens, the dam will break and you’ll start crying in front of them. And you'll cry ugly.

And right now, you can’t. You just- can’t.

Just as you're about to turn away, a woman in a slate-blue dress steps up beside you. Mid-thirties, elegant. One of the guests, you assumed. She gives you a polite smile, one hand reaching for the door.

You step in front of her before you’ve even decided to speak.

“Sorry—excuse me.”

She stops, brows raised in mild surprise.

You hold the water out, trying to steady your voice. “Could you… would you mind giving this to the two girls in there?One’s in a pink dress. One’s holding her hair back. They’re my friends—I just need to step outside for some air.”

The woman blinks once, then nods, smile softening into understanding.

“Of course.”

You hand her the bottle and add, “Please tell them I’ll be right back. I just—yeah. I’ll be back.”

She gives you a look. The kin of one where women give each other a type of laconic solidarity when they recognize something. Two words starting with the same letter. The thin line in between. Then she disappears inside, and you’re left alone again in the corridor. Alone again, the hallway exhales with you. Shallow, breathy, reluctant to hold what it’s just seen. The silence afterward is dense, thick with ghosts of hands and things not taken back. And you-still holding yourself like glass, too fine for touch-let it all soak in.

Your body wants quiet. Soundlessness is subjective, seclusion is primary. Somewhere you can let your face drop out of its composure, somewhere you can drop the mask of the girl who’s just fine.

You think about going home. But the apartment that basically gives off the odour of a once lasted relationship with a shoe rack that holds heels and loafers despite how it was shaped just for boots, a kitchen that never for once stopped smelling like raspberry jelly will make you all the more disordered. Speaking of ill, you also just can't leave your friends with no explanation at all. Disappearing for an hour or so is one thing, leaving entirely is another.

So you extract the idea from your mind whole. And since intuition has been the reason behind some very important unveiling, you chose to follow it once again. This time you distinguish it as a palace of carved panels and red rope that seems increasingly untethered from the celebration it’s supposed to contain. You follow the curl of tawny sconces as they dim behind you. You don’t have a direction, not by any means. Merely this straight urge to be elsewhere. Away from mirrors and pity and the way your voice will shatter if anyone dares to ask what happened.

The air changes again- the assuage of walkway giving way to the softer allay of space. You blink, slow, and find yourself facing tall double doors cracked just enough to tease a sliver of moonlight. You follow it like a moth and press a hand to the cool wood and ease it open when you've reached.

The balcony is mostly empty (or so you think). It's mostly meant for people who duck into here when their dates say too much, or when the music says too little. You don’t belong here for those reasons. But for a second, you let yourself pretend you do. Pretend is all that you can do, after all. Pretend is all one can do when no place reaches out like it's own.

You step out into the night.

The breeze is soft, carrying the perfume of late-blooming things that represent the late of march and early on days of may. There’s a railing with ornate curls, and a small potted tree beside it. You lean against the edge like a ghost at a masquerade, hidden in plain sight. Far from a invisible ghost, righteously misplaced.

The skyline shimmers in the distance. City lights doing their best impression of stars. Because the sky is unkind tonight. Clear and full of stars. One of those nights that dares you to feel small.

You close your eyes.

It should hurt less than it does. You should be angry, you think. Fury has a vibration, a tempo, that is not entirely senseless, that you could move to. But all you have is this ache. This underdone, expanding bruise of disbelief. That Hajoon, your Hajoon, the one who texted you goodnight from studio floors and once cried during the middle of your anniversary dinner because you surprised him with a scrapbook - that Hajoon had someone else’s lipgloss on his cheek.

And he let you walk into that party wearing your best, heart in hand, eyes wide and bright like you weren’t already being laughed at. The fact alone that he could ever be this savage measures up higher than the mere word spurning. Your fingers tighten around the railing.

You breathe. In. Out. In again.

He cheated on you.

You say it in your head, then again. Try it out. Grant it to parrot.

He. Cheated. On you.

How long? you think. It can’t have started tonight. The intimacy you saw take place takes time. That comfort is and that silence intertwines complexly.The way he let her talk over you like you weren’t even there. It takes a history. You sniff, furious.You want to rip out whatever pages it's sanctioned in. You want to punch someon-

— and the scuff of a footfall to your left startles you mid-thought, cracking clean through the violence of it. You breathe in too sharply and choke on the tail end of it, a hiccup caught mid-throat. The sound escapes before you can swallow it back, a soft, broken thing that snags in the night air.

You flinch, just barely, but it’s enough to pull you upright, palms peeling away from the ornate railing. The sound was soft; softer than it should be for how it lands in your chest. Impalpable, but undeniable. The categorical gospel is not the wind, nor is the sway of branches or the groan of old fixtures. It's plainly in a presence. A presence that exples in a dramatic, public way.

You turn your head.

In the first instance, it’s just a silhouette. Broad shoulders caught in a slant of moonlight, leaned casually against the far railing where the wall curves into the night. You hadn’t seen him when you first stepped out- he’s tucked into the darkness like he belongs there. You blame the sleek sweep of a jacket that gleams ink-black where the light touches and vanishes where it doesn’t. Depthless black, that's the kind of shade it is. He’s fidgetless against the opposite end of the balcony, arms folded, head tilted just enough that you know he’s looking out — not at you, seasonably. The night swallows him in patches, makes him blur into the dark, view as a conundrum, lets him melt into the obscurity. Only the gleam of a metal clasp or maybe the faint shimmer of a watch betrays the shape of him at all.

Your breath halts for a different reason now. This time in mortification. How long has he been there? How much did he hear of your inner voice that would sometimes refuse to stay just inside?

You should have known. Of course someone else would be here. This party is a haven for the overexposed, the adored and overworked — balconies are harbours, and privacy is a drug. You suppose you’re not the only one tonight with a reason to step away from too much attention.

You clear your throat, subtly, and swipe at your cheeks once more with the back of your hand, hoping whatever disaster your makeup has become is at least concealable under the night’s forgiving ink. You press yourself a little more into the corner, make yourself smaller.

“I’m so sorry,” you blurt, voice cracked and low-pitched but unmistakably sheepish. “I didn’t mean to… disturb you. I didn’t know someone was here.” you gesture vaguely toward the door as if it explains your presence, your unraveling, your trespass.

You’re already turning, embarrassment washing over you, warm and prickly, when you hear that voice. That empty headed, unwitting, greatly-

Oh come on!

Dwindling deep. Familiar in that unmistakable way, because it's the voice that’s been replayed in the background of your vehemence for months. Velour worn sharp.

“It's alright.”

There’s a haitus his mouth decides upon, and so does the surroundings with him like even the night is startled into inaction.

Your breath catches, shallow. Your backbone straightens, sharp.

He turns as if on cue.

It does not take place pointedly. An appropriate response that would be startled. No, not even that. But slow, like the metanoia of a thought that’s been brewing for too long. His face is in shadow, but the movement reveals the slope of his jaw, the lazy fall of dark hair over his brow. You can’t see the details, not in this light. But something about his presence is sharp in your periphery, like recognition trying to claw its way forward but tripping on the haze.

You retreat a step. Not far away, but enough.

"Stay." He adds, a beat slower that turns the night warm around him than it was a second ago.

He says it like it’s not a big deal, offering courtesy. But the sound of his voice reaches somewhere in you that you didn’t know was flammable. It scrapes gruffly, like a match. He hasn’t moved from his spot. Still standing there, half-shrouded. Watching, maybe. Or not. You can’t tell. But the certainty in his tone, unbothered, solid, undoes you in a different way.

You know that voice.

You don’t want to know that voice. But you do.

He who shall not be named. Of all people. Of all fucking anyone.

You don’t turn yet. You stare ahead, blinking hard, gathering yourself. That name has been the thread you tugged every time you felt distance growing between you and Hajoon before the awakening dropped upon you that he was actually not.

And now he’s here. On the balcony. With you.

Your throat bobs awkwardly, unsure what to say. Maybe you misheard. Maybe you’re imagining things because he was not supposed to be here. Your brain is playing cruel little games because tonight’s already stitched together from surreal fabric.

If it was any other time, hell had it been any minute before the past half hour, you'd have applauded the timing. Would have marched over to Kim Taehyung and said everything you wanted to.

Would have looked him square in the eye and asked if it felt good, demanding Hajoon’s time, his energy, his apologies, until there was none left for you. Would have told him, with teeth bared behind a smile, that he was the reason you ate cold fries alone on your own celebratory dinner.

You would have let it out. All of it. The slow rot of resentment you watered like a houseplant. The tantrum you tucked neatly beneath your tongue every time Hajoon said “Taehyung needs me.” You would have unspooled every sentence you rehearsed in the dark, every imagined confrontation sharpened over sleepless nights.

But this isn’t then.

This is now. And now you know the truth.

He didn’t bend Hajoon’s lynchpin until he broke. He didn’t whisper temptation or rearrange the tiles of loyalty under Hajoon’s feet. He didn’t need to because Hajoon walked willingly.

And you were too busy blaming the him to see it.

Now, stripped of that blame, that convenient villainy, you’re left with nothing but the naked awkwardness of this moment. The rage you’d once felt toward him feels foolish now. Juvenile. Like screaming at the moon for letting the tide pull you under. It doesn’t quite hold the shape it used to. You don’t know what to do with it. And so you stand there, stiff in the corner of the balcony, unable to move toward him, but unable to leave.

He hasn’t said another word. Hasn’t even looked at you again. He just exhales again. Smoke blooming from between his lips like it’s part of the night.

That’s when you notice the cigarette. You hadn’t clocked it before, but now you see the faint cherry glow at his side, the way it illuminates the curl of his fingers, the slow draw of breath. It looks romantic on him, of course it does. Doubles some tragic French film character leaning against the edge of ruin, too well-dressed to decipher publicly.

And as much you loved to make joke of comments under candid clips of this man that raved about some aura of his, you found yourself then just barely, just quick enough to pass as you scoot under the luminescence, catch a better glimpse of him.

His jaw is too sharp for comfort. His hair, mussed just enough to seem accidental, shimmers like ink under the silvered light. His lips (you don’t even know why you notice) are plush and parted. And his eyes, when they finally flick toward you, are darker than the night behind him. Flippant. Sleepy. Unfathomable.

He doesn’t speak. But he doesn’t look away either.

You want to look away. You do. But it’s magnetic, the stupid made up ambience around him. Easy in a way that demands nothing and everything. He’s not performing. He’s not even curious. Seems diserepctful but at the same time it makes you understand how someone like Hajoon could crumble under it. Why people orbit men like this and call it the law of nature. You’d scoffed at it before. Scoffed every time Hajoon said he just gets so intense sometimes, you know? like Taehyung was weather instead of a man.

Yet, you're not sure how understanding the possibility of it makes any difference to you. Makes any sense.

But how the hell do you share space with someone who’s been mythologized in your mind for so long?

Because now you’re sure. You know it’s him. You could draw the line of his nose from memory. The corner of his lip. You’ve seen this face on billboards, in moving gifs, in phone screens where your ex-boyfriend kept scrolling even during dinner.

Except now he’s real. Not flattened into pixels. Breathing the same air as you. You blink hard. Try to focus. To reroute your brain back into safer waters. But all it gives you is a memory.

Because this isn’t the first time you’ve spoken to him, is it?

It comes uninvited. Like most things do.

Back when Hajoon had just started as his manager. Everything was new then. Boundaries blurry. You still thought the industry was glamorous, not exhausting. You remember being home, hair wrapped in a towel, half a sheet mask on your face when your phone that was running a tutorial video paused on a frame. You'd have turned it back on if it wasn't for the name popping up on your screen at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. You had picked up without hesitation.

Except it wasn’t Hajoon.

"Good evening. This is Taehyung. Can you send a picture of the contract folder on Hajoon-sshi's desk? He forgot it."

You blinked at the screen, furrowed your brow.

"Sure, Taehyung. 😂 Joon your impersonation game is trash and that's tough considering you're trying to speak like the man you work for. At least commit to the bit."

The message pinged back too quick for someone pretending to be a important, busy man.

"It's actually me. Taehyung. Hajoon-sshi's busy with some stuff."

You laughed. Alone in your bathroom. Holding a spoonful of some face oil and scrolling up and down the chat.

"And I'm the CEO of Mars. Let me know if you need a crater named after you."

You had awaited hajoon finally breaking out whatever character's in.

"You're funny. Send the photo."

This wasn’t the tone a boyfriend of sixteen months should be talking in, you had thought. Unaware as ever. If only you had learned how that unawareness will end for you.

"If it’s really you, Kim Taehyung, send a selfie holding a spoon."

You hadn’t expected a reply.

But a few minutes later there it was. There it came.

A dimly lit photo that was non debatable who it captured. Grainy in a way that none of his chronicled, edited ones were. Sleepy-eyed. Hair in disarray. Wearing a black hoodie and holding a spoon between his fingers with the most unimpressed expression you’d ever seen.

You stared at the image longer than you’d admit. Tried not to cringe too much at the cataloged annoyance. And then you sent the damn contract.

"Told you. I commit."

You didn’t respond. You told yourself he was probably just weird. Probably forgot all about you two minutes later. He never brought it up again. Neither did you. But sometimes, the memory flickered. A weird little moment stitched into your timeline, half-unreal.

And maybe he doesn’t remember you. Maybe that moment was just a Tuesday to him. You'd love to take advantage of that before it gets any more lumbering here. You tuck your arms around yourself and inhale the smoke-laced air stretched thin across the span of a few meters and commodity that has you topid. Hovering at a cautious distance, two steps too far to be friendly and one step too close to be indifferent.

You didn't realize acting indifferent was something that Kim Taehyung had a copyright on until he moves again. Abundantly. A loosening of limbs, the slow unfurling of someone at ease in their own myth.

“I don’t bite,” he says, voice low, drowsy. Just on the edge of humor, like he’s saying it more for himself than for you. His head tips toward you, not quite looking. Still, he flicks the ash from his cigarette with a lazy hand, like he’s bored of his own invitation.

You swear it’s the wind at first. The words fold into the air too smoothly.

You know you should just offer a polite smile. A nod. Some kind of noncommittal noise that maintains distance. But your mouth, as always, has other plans.“Mm,” you murmur, under your breath, not even meaning for him to hear, “I doubt that.”

You don’t think he’s listening. But he is.

You catch it - just fairly - in the slight turn of his head, the way one corner of his mouth curves, slow and serpentine. twitch of lip, more ghost than grin. The kind of smile you don’t see so much as sense. Felt more in your knees than your chest.

Great. Now you’re giving him lines.

Then - like it’s a casual thing, like it costs him nothing - he speaks again. Doesn’t even glance at you this time. Tilts his head, exhales another cloud of smoke, and lets it wander up into the sky.

“Come closer.”

Um hello? What did he just say to you? Did he actually demand of you?

Though the words are simple; not barked; not begged, they still alter an insolence capillary of yours. You hesitate, the word itself making a heat rise under your collarbones. A place it had no buisness eliciting a reaction in.

Your body moves before your brain signs off. Not by a great deal, but enough to close the distance between polite and probing. The necessary for the chill in the night to fade from your arms. Proportionality to fall under the scent of his cigarette, sharp and spicy and soaked in something faintly herbal, like bergamot and smoke and warm resin.

But you catch yourself before you go further. Straighten your spine. Scupper your voice.

“I’m not doing what you tell me,” you say, and the words are sharp, snapped like a twig underfoot. “Just so we’re clear.”

That almost-smile on his mouth doesn’t move, but it changes. And to your horror, it even deepens. Grows snobbish in a way that’s unapparent but impossible to miss. It’s pompous. Infuriatingly so. That elusive tilt of his lips that makes you want to shove him and ask what’s so funny and maybe push him off the damn balcony just to see if the smirk stays midair.

He leans a little more into the curve of shadow, gaze flicking sideways. Meticulously near enough to make your pulse skitter. “I didn’t think you would,” he says, and the amusement in his voice is unmistakable now. “You don’t strike me as particularly obedient.”

You stare. You hate that your throat goes dry. Because that's a totally normal thing to say to a stranger when you've got a face like that, isn't it? "Excuse me?"

He takes another drag from the cigarette, watching the embers burn down like a timer. The tip glows in his fingers — elegant fingers, of course they are, long and unhurried in how they cradle the smoke. The ash hovers before fluttering down like snow against the stone.

“What do I strike you as, then?” you ask before you can stop yourself.

It’s too much of a question. It slips past your lips like a dare that has been sent rolling on a slippery path you didn’t mean to voice. But it’s out there now, and you can’t take it back. Idiot.

Taehyung doesn't answer right away. He just exhales smoke and thought at the same time, head tilted still back toward the sky as if the answer might be hidden between the tapestry of the stars. You find he’s giving the question the time it doesn’t deserve. It’s flamboyant. It’s aggravating. And, worse, it’s effective.

Your arms remain crossed, body drawn in like a bow pulled taut. You don't regret handing your denim to Jia but you wish the night was colder so the goosebumps could be blamed on temperature, not tension. But the breeze is tepid now. Brushed in his voice, his perfume, his stupid legendary presence that has no right smelling as expensive and ancient and fucking grounded as it does.

Finally, his gaze shifts.

And this time, he does look at you. Fully. Directly.

A slow turn of his head, the sweep of his eyes over your face with the exasperation of how he would read the fine print of something he’s already decided on. “What do you strike me as?” he repeats, softly. Then clicks his tongue once, like he’s disappointed with you for even asking. "Are you sure you wanna know?"

The words are quiet. But his voice darkens at the question. Your stomach twists, and you don’t know if it’s indignation or intrigue. You’re fairly certain it’s both. And before it permeates into a shabbier feeling that'll have you clutching your torso, you put out your blundering silence as a response that he takes willingly, haughtily so.

His mouth twitches again. Not quite a smile this time. Closer to mischief. He shrugs one shoulder, loose and languid, eyes still trailing somewhere over the skyline, this conversation’s just a side project evidently.

Whatever. If the unnerving diagonal beside you can go back to doing what he painfully seems most interested in, so can you.

The railing is back beneath your palms, familiar now, some dumb metaphor made real — edges cold, aloof chill biting. The edge of your heel nudges against a loose leaf caught in the wind. It flutters once, twice, then gives up and sinks to the floor. You almost envy it. The city is still sprawled in the distance, impersonal to your cognizing. Behind you, the door stays shut. Back there, you envisage, is too bright, too loud, too full of people who might ask what’s wrong and not wait for the right silence before answering for you. Out here, you only share oxygen with a man who has ruined half your calendar and all your curated patience.

Unbothered, broad-shouldered, draped in the kind of serenity that only belongs to cats and men who’ve never been told no. Taehyung’s jacket gleams where it catches the low light- some brand you’ll never afford and he probably didn’t pay for. His posture is too facile.

The rubescent of his cigarette hisses as he draws in again — as if every drag is advised, intented, abrasive. That mouth was made for sin or sermons. Hard to tell which one he’d preach first.

You glance over once. Quickly. Then regret it instantly.

He’s watching you. In a way he did after you threw your sharpest tone at him, just stood there — barefaced and unflinchinb —like he’d seen this particular performance from you before. Maybe in another life. Maybe in a dream.

The silence between you drones with electricity. It's not awkward, exactly. It’s too thick to be awkward. Too charged. Like the aftermath of lightning —  you don’t know if the flash already hit or if it’s coming, if this is clement or consequence.

Then, casually, the cigarette hand lifts again. He turns it between his fingers once, then holds it out across the space between you, his gaze flat and unreadable, offered to you with the same ease most people use to pass napkins.

"You smoke?"

The question cuts through the quiet like it’s been waiting there the whole time.

You scoff. "I don't smoke." Neither do you pick up addictions from strange men who talk like their only motive is to distress the already distressed women they corner in alone balconies.

“That’s a shame,” he says, still not retracting the offer. "You look like you need it."

You arch a brow. "I look like I need a way to a slow, tragic death?"

He exhales through his nose — amused. "No. You look like you need a distraction." Takes a pause before adding. "Do you not?"

You glance at the cigarette. Then at his mouth.

Unfortunate, really. That his lips have the audacity to look generous. He holds your gaze too easily for someone who’s done nothing but irritate you with a single smirk and a face blessed by nepotism from the gods. Your jaw ticks and to the degree that you'd like to believe it's from that or the persistence offer, you're sorely knowing of that's its a reaction that is spawned from how tempting it is, the silence that falls after his question. Not the offer itself — smoke never tasted good, no matter how poetic the film girls made it look — but the inaction. His inaction, in particular, that abrades against the raw wall of your morale. You hate that you’re thinking about it. Thinking about it too hard, the same way you think about late-night texts that go unanswered, or how many people have probably touched the door handle before you in a public restroom.

You turn your gaze back to the city. Your hand curls around the railing again. It digs in, sharper this time. Enough that the metal edge presses a whisper of hurt into your palm. Nothing lasts long against the pressure of being watched the way he watches — quietly, without ego, as if he’s already understood what you’re going to do.

Do you need a distraction?

Yes. Obviously.

But admitting is a type of yielding. Humans are never actually normal with such a thing, let alone letting yourself yeild in front of him — this man hewed out of tailored arrogance is a threat to your vanity. You’ve already had one of those tonight, and it ended with you biting down tears in a hallway, handing water bottles to strangers so your friends wouldn’t see your hands shake.

This, withal, would be an indulgence. A petty little rebellion. The kind of thing someone else would do in a story you’d never admit reading. Smoking with Kim Taehyung on a balcony where your relationship ended a quiet death only an hour ago. You want to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. You want to laugh so hard your ribs bruise from the inside.

But coversely, you stand there. Wound up. Too mindful.

And the longer you don’t move, the more you feel him waiting.

You steal a glance again. His arm hasn’t wavered, cigarette still extended, ember glowing low. There’s no impatience in him, and you only ever see that kind in people who already know the outcome. Kim Taehyung is a man who waits, who already lives in your answer and is just killing time in the silence before you catch up. Curious. Present. Patient in a way that suggests he’s memorizing the shape of your hesitation just to store it somewhere for later.

You sigh. A long, tight sound dragged up from the soles of your feet.

You take two steps toward him. The space closes, distance evaporating between you like heat on pavement. And he doesn’t move, doesn’t gloat — decently watches, that same unreadable interest rolling low behind his lashes.

You stop just shy of arm’s reach. With a single curl of your fingers, you take the cigarette from his hand.

His fingers brush yours for half a breath. Warm, dry, real and your dorsum locks up at the contact, pitter patter quick behind your teeth. You pretend it didn’t happen. You pretend very hard. The cigarette tastes bitter at the filter when you lift it to your lips. Not that you care. You’re not here for the flavor. You’re here because the world is ending and strikes as being only your world ending.

You inhale. Lightly.

It’s awful. Burnt and earthy. Makes your throat feel like someone wrung it out like a sponge. You cough once, quietly, turn your head away in ignominy, try to act like it was atmospheric and not your body rebelling against poor choices.

You make out the smile before you see it. It bobs up on the side of your face like a shadow. Bastard.

You exhale through your nose, eyes narrowed. "You're so charming. Does it always lets get you away from this habit of yours?"

"Mhm. What habit?"

He’s watching you, still. Closer now. Still tall, still shrouded in that stupid expensive shiny material. But something’s mutated. He looks less carved from figment and more human in the face — detail where there was once only silhouette. The curve of his mouth. The sleep in his eyes. The line of his jaw you could draw with a knife.

"Of having things your way. Is that not a habit? Do you not always get what you want?" You take another drag.

And maybe you’re imagining it — probably you are — but for once there's not a single trace of beguilement on his face or in his poorly lit stare that simmers. Drops to your mouth where your lips are wrapped around the cancer stick. He sees.

"Not always."

The filter burns a little hotter than it should between your fingers, but you don’t drop it. That would make a sound. You keep it pressed neatly against the edge of your breath and lean into the railing again. This time you don’t grip it. You let your arms rest there, loose, voluntary. It’s easier this way, to gather yourself in the flicker of things you cannot control.

“Not always?” you echo, casually, but it punches from your chest more bitter than intended. “Color me shocked.”

His hum lands soft against the back of your neck, something dulled and sun-warmed, but it still finds a grit. Tilts his chin toward the night like he’s listening to something in the silence that you can’t hear. Not a man in thought; no, that would be too benevolent. A man in leisure.

There’s no wasted effort, no shuffle or twitch. You’ve known performers, fidgeters, people who need to fill silences with breath or comment just to feel present. Taehyung is none of those. You swallow once. Your voice is back in your mouth, restless. He doesn’t match the versions of him that live in tabloids, in the pruned PR clips, in the way Hajoon used to talk about him with the slight awe of someone who’d just walked past a lion that winked. There’s nothing lofty about him. Not even in his smile, the rimple of the skin strecting around his eyes when they drift toward the line where the sky dominates over the buildings, The city’s to offer stars, and you can tell he’s still searching for them. He tilts his face up to the night, slow and unhurried, jaw catching a flicker of sallow from the railing light. There’s no revelation in his expression about what exactly he is looking for.

“It’s a lovely night,” he says finally, in that impromptu manner men do when they’re either lying or about to advance into nonsense. "Clear enough to see the Pleiades, if you know where to look.” his voice summoned.

The what?

You can't deny that there's a keeness he awakes in you, when he says that, speaking a language of his own. But you also can't deny that you have no interest enabling that, some things (Some men) require the right headspace and yours is certainly far from right. You're not some child, and you can do just fine without knowing about astronomical facts, so you don’t even nod along, as though you know what he's talking about and you've already found a pattern in the sky.

At the lack of your reaction, he does what wouldn't have predicted, because what even is your attention worth to a star (that he looks up) like him. He could sent a message to a group chat of people living and dying to keep him happy: hey who's up for some solar system facts? And atleast, four people would turn and listen with their head on their folded hands, whilst looking at him at like he had made the excellent geometries of the sky. You really wouldn't have seen him pressing from a long mile.

"Humor me and ask me what is that."

You are left with two options, one being add up another reason of fuming internally over this highfaluating wanna-be, assuming that you actually don't know what this is, while he does. Okay, he's not wrong on that but where's the graciousness when's it's needed? To save yourself for being any more miserable, you go with the second, suction smoke into your lungs and ask. "What is that?"

He lifts up a finger and starts to move it around randomly, until you notice he's not, he's actually following a cluster of stars with the tip of his index finger. “The Seven Sisters. Stars, technically. They don't always show, so we're lucky we are under the brightest star." You look up too and indeed, it shines bright. You're not sure about the lucky part. "Old story says they only appear on nights where something coffined comes to surface.”

You glance at him sidelong, cigarette perched neatly between your lips. You doubt if thats one of his fanclub astrology facts or he read that off a matchbox.

“It’s just superstition,” he says as if had the ability to read your thoughts. All the holy things above and beyond, you hope not. "When you need a direction on those nights. You can always look up."

The delivery is suspiciously straight-faced. You can’t tell if it’s sincerity dressed up as a joke or the other way around, but it sits in the air between you like something well-planned.

You exhale, slow through your nose. The filter tastes a little more bitter than before, or maybe your mouth does. “Are you fucking with me?”

His eyes don’t move from the sky, but the border of his expression ameliorates with amusement. The skin that was wrinkled, now crinkles up, and that's all. You’re puzzled, left in mystery if his motive was to annoy you. Confused over the decision of whether you should elbow in response too, twist the moment until it gives. But you don’t. Because the truth is, whatever it was, whether it was a myth or a dig or a gentle offering, you understood it. Quite possibly, needed it too. Either way, you don’t ask him to explain.

You resort to the secret third option of saying something you don’t mean to say. Your mouth opens before your sense of judgment can lace its shoes and declare your words thinly veiled as cavalier.

“I know an old superstition too,” you start, flicking ash off the edge of your cigarette, “that if two people share a smoke, they have to share a secret too.”

You don’t know where it comes from. Probably not a saying at all.Maybe something you read on a forum in college or saw scrawled on a dirty napkin in a bar bathroom. Probably from a place full of bullshit. God you are full of bullshit. But it slips out with the careless elegance of someone who isn’t bracing for repercussion.

Taehyung turns his body this time. Slow, one shoulder first, the leather of his jacket catching the light in a blink. His brows lift, just barely. He’s interested, but not performatively so. The barest cock of his head that's sharpened with intrigue makes you doubt. Wonder. You’re not sure why your heart climbs two rungs higher in your throat.

“A secret,” he repeats, as if trying the word on his tongue. “Do people actually do that? Are you fucking with me?" The wind presses his jacket against the lines of his ribs. His fingers tap once, twice, against the railing, deliberate. He smells like silk and smoke and the kind of cologne that’s expensive enough not to brag about itself.

You upraise your head, eyes fixed on a point in the city that doesn’t matter. "Apparently."

You puff out your cheeks and let the smoke linger there a second too long before exhaling through your nose. "And I'm not fucking with you." You say the terminal with an discomposing defensiveness.

The architecture of interest wraps around silence. You wait, not because you're impatient, but because you want to see what silence does to him.

He exhales, long and easy. “Alright,” he says, flicking the slag from his nail like he’s dusting off a layer of thought. “Go ahead.”

You glance over. “What?”

“Share yours.”

Your throat tightens around nothing. “That’s not how it works.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” you say, a little firmer. “The person who offers the cigarette doesn’t get to demand first blood.”

He grins. Oh this real bastard. “Mm. You should’ve thought of that before you lied about the saying.”

“I didn’t lie. I… embellished it up a little.”

His tongue presses briefly into his cheek. “Same thing, my darling."

The term lands heavier than it should. Unrehearsed. Wrong accent for condescension. You don’t bother correcting him. If anything, you portray as if you didn’t even hear him.

He tilts his head again, finally turning to look at you in full now. His expression is maddeningly unreadable. Eyebrows slightly lifted, but not mocking. Just open. He waits in a way that says: I have all night. Go on. Impress me. Surprise me. Burn me, if you want.

You scowl, faintly. The smoke makes your next breath hitch as it burns at the edges.A secret, he said. You shouldn’t have offered the opening. You thought you’d like the power in it, holding something sharp and choosing not to use it. But it only leaves your mouth dry and your head stupidly full.

Your mind claws through options.

Your secret would be too easy, yet too big at the same time. It sits on your tongue, hot and twitching. It thrashes to be named; this ugly thing. You could spit it out between your teeth and watch the whole balcony tilt with it. Splinter the mood and makes everyone start looking for an exit, even if their feet don’t move. It’s a secret with teeth and a jawline. It smells like cheap floral perfume and sounds like a whimper through a half-open storage door.

You could say it. You could torch the air between you both with it. My boyfriend cheated on me tonight. In the storage room. With someone I shook hands with. Maybe even while you were living in a delusion, or shaking hands with people who thought they mattered. And you don’t even know if he'll even care. If none of this would matter to him and it’s just your heart doing its pathetic little dance in a one-woman tragedy.

You could lie. God knows you’ve gotten good at that lately. You could say you hate cucumbers or that you still sleep with the bathroom light on.

But standing next to him, lying feels too pedestrian. You glance over at him, hoping his sufferance will start to look smug enough to punch. But no. He’s too relaxed for that. One wrist draped over the edge of the railing, the other hanging low beside his thigh, fingers marked with the last memory of the cigarette you just burned through together. He’s not even close enough to touch, but you swear if you breathed wrong, he’d hear it shift in your ribs.

Unfair. Unrelenting. Utterly exhausting.

You rake your teeth over your bottom lip and break the silence with something that tastes harmless. It isn’t, really, but it plays that way.

“I’m not your fan.”

His eyes flinch. Like a tick behind his lashes he forgot to tame.

You glance sidelong, watching his profile for the reaction, any reaction. The way someone checks the rearview after running a red light. “That’s my secret. Or one of them. I guess.” It’s barely louder than a whisper, but it lands with the weight of a bottle uncorked too fast. Immediate relief followed by a slow fizz of regret.

The pause that follows is the longest one yet.

You regret it. You don’t. You regret it again.

“I know.”

Huh.

The words are smooth. Soft, but pointed. As if you’ve confirmed something he’s always known but was waiting to see if you’d admit. You don’t know if you were excepting a bite to them, a sleek reveal of a bruised ego but what you were not was that slow, coiled calm that has no business feeling sexy in someone’s mouth.

Was it that obvious? Were you that obvious? You wait for elaboration on that but nothing comes.You watch his profile, the ridiculous slope of his nose, the glint of metal at his ear, you bracket for the assured curve of his lips but then again: nothing. He doesn’t clarify, doesn’t call you out, doesn’t accuse.

You can’t tell if he’s messing with you or if he means it — if he remembered your voice from a year-old phone call, if he recognized your silence tonight, if he sighted your stare in the reflection of the goddamn glass doors.

That sounds unreasonable so you don’t entertain the idea any more. "I'm not saying I hate you or anything." You add after a respite, withstanding, out of sheer principle. "In case you start thinking I'm some undercover journalist who's out to get you by making you slip up some horrible secret and ruin your career." You falter and your pupils dilate in some sort of enlightenment.

"Wait.. that does sound legitimate.." You breathe and he chuckles, chasmic. Straight from the core of his chest. Pretty.

You flush, hand tightening around the cigarette. "What I mean to say is that I mean no offense."

"None taken." That's all he gives you.

Another non-answer that sounds just close enough to a hum to pass for approval. It makes your eye twitch. The bluster in it is staggering. Like he’s heard every variation of insult and adoration and now catalogues them by scent.

“So you’re not bothered?” you ask.

“No.” For a second, the look in his eyes could melt paint from a canvas. “Should I be?”

You hesitate. You don’t know why you hesitate.

"No." You nearly choke on how dishonest it isn’t. You don’t want him to be bothered. You don’t want him to care.

And yet — there’s a morbid thrill in seeing if he will.

You angle yourself slightly toward him, careful not to break whatever tension is braided in the space between your bodies. The heat of him remains, even with a whole arm’s length untouched. You need the tilt of something else. So you pivot, words tumbling faster than thought.

“So,” you say, voice stripped bare. “Your turn.”

His brows lift, slow and unsurprised.

“For the secret,” you add, not giving him the chance to weasel out.

He considers. You can see it — the slight furrow at the edge of his brow, the twitch of his jaw, the progression of thought moving unhurried behind his eyes. The line of his mouth doesn’t change, but the solidity of it shifts.

“I need time,” he says at last, tapping the back of his fingers against the railing like it’s a piano.

“No time,” you counter, before he can wax poetic or poeticize wax or whatever the hell he’s about to do. “Actually, I’ll help. I’ll guess.”

“You’ll guess my secret.”

“Exactly. To speed things up.”

He sighs. Appealed, again, in that maddeningly low-key way that reads more indulgence than exasperation.

You straighten slightly, clear your throat. “You’ve got six toes on one foot.”

Taehyung shifts, and you hear the soft rustle of his jacket as he moves. One hand disappears into his pocket.You wonder if anything he does is ever clumsy. You want to see it. But to all appearances, no.

"You talk to plants. You whisper to them, atleast for the sake of dignity. Apologize when you forget to water them. You have at least one fiddle leaf fig in your apartment that’s seen you cry in a silk robe.”

He says nothing, which is infuriating in its own right. So, to punish him, you keep talking.

You tap your chin. “You cry when you're watching a Pixar movie."

As if to egg you on, he remains mum.

"You secretly hate the fame."

Oof.

“Okay..you’re secretly married to an heiress in Monaco but only out of obligation because her father saved your family from a blood feud—wait, is this why you smoke? To cope?”

You chance a glance at him then.

He’s still quiet, one brow slightly lifted, his mouth doing that thing again — where it thinks about smiling but chooses restraint instead. He hasn’t said a word. Just stands there, gaze unwavering, letting you dig your own grave with a shovel he probably forged.

"That's a hell lot of gusses. Are you sure you're not a fan?" He finally says. Dragged through just enough baritone to sound stuffy without needing help.

Not even close. But you lapse anyway, roll your eyes and resist the urge to melt into the railing beside you. You’ve been standing here too long, you think. Under this particular constellation of stars and scrutiny. Talking too much. Giving too much. Your mouth, again, has outpaced your sense.

"I'll pace myself." You mutter under your breath. His laugh is soft and bothersomely warm that sits like a pat on the head you didn’t ask for.

"Well?” you prompt, arms crossed now. Your cigarette’s been flicked away into the night, but the heat of it lingers at your fingertips. “Are you going to give me a real on--"

He cuts you off and offers. “I’ve been learning French.”

You blink.

That’s it? That’s the secret? You nearly threw your soul onto the balcony floor, and he came back with learning a forigen langauge?

You don’t hide your disbelief. You don’t even try. “That’s your big, mysterious secret?”

He shrugs. One-shoulder, elegant, unconcerned. “You wanted one.”

“French?” you repeat, deadpan. “Oh fuck off. That’s what you went with? That’s what you’re hiding from the world?”

His lip twitches and he whispers in a exaggerated manner. "You're the only one who knows."

Your face torsions into a grimace.

"See? That's why I didn't told anyone." The hand from his pocket slips out and he runs it over his jaw. There’s a ardency in his voice now, stretched and prearranged. “Because of that face you’re making.”

“What face?”

“The one that says I’m pretentious.”

“That’s because you are pretentious,” you say, eyes narrowed. “Learning French for fun?”

“Not for fun,” he corrects. "It's work. For Paris. I’ve got a event there next month.”

You groan in the quiet that returns,balmy and teeming.The metropolis hums below, ignorant of your little corner modeled out of smoke and shared breath.

You glance at him, brows pinched. “Say something in French, then.”

His head tilts, just slightly. “Huh?”

You square your stance, chin lifting, voice dipped in faux detachment. “Prove it, I mean.”

He blinks, slow. “Prove what.”

“That you’re not full of shit, Jesus."

His gaze slides across the space between you. Perhaps he was offened that you asked him to believe his nonsense. And you don’t believe that was anything but. A made up lie about how he has a hairless cat named Nietzsche and that would have charmed you more ‘I’ve been Duolingo-ing French in the dark.’

Then again, he had no reason to say something that would have entertained you. Why would he? You're no one. Not even his dedicated enthusiast that he feels bound to in some way. So, you beyond a shadow a doubt, don't expect him to even attempt.

“Je pense à toi plus souvent que je ne le devrais.”

Let alone say that many of words. They sky in ample, partly because of the tone, the tempo. Partly for the way it leaves his mouth already inflamed with meaning. The vowels roll soft in the back of his throat, mutilated just a little and for a brief, stupid moment, you forget you’ve just spent the last two hours being publicly, privately humiliated.

You blink, slow. “Wow. Okay. You're not lying but..?"

“But what?”

“What did that mean?”

The current tightens. Scarcely from the wind, in no manner from cold, but with pause. A single moment suspended by silence, thick and humming. You expect him to laugh, to shrug it off, to hand you back your question with a lopsided grin and a conveniently vague answer. You excepted a big headed translation of what he said, probably praised how beautiful his sternum is in the language of the romancers.

But the expectation that arrives is staining the moment. It thickens between you like honey slow-dripped over the edge of a knife. Definitely not the kind you can breathe through. You count five seconds. Then seven. Then forget to keep counting because definitely not when he eventunally moves. One slow step forward, a flux that cuts the space between your bodies down to a corruption.

Simply folds himself into your periphery. Doesn’t touch you. Doesn’t need to. The heat of him arrives before the shadow does. You can feel the slope of his body, the broadness of it, the made to measure frame of someone who was never taught to shrink. It sure does makes you do so.

You stand there with your neck craned, still leaning against the railing, still biting the inside of your cheek, still trying to remember what the fuck he just said. You told him to prove it. You hadn’t told him to make a meal out of it. But here you are, jaw locked and throat dry.

You lock eyes with him, by a nose. He’s taller up close — of course he is.He leans in a touch, eyes cutting toward the stub of a cigarette still between your fingers. Or what’s left of it. The lipstick ring, half-smudged, stares back up at you in a little flash of chagrin.

Before you can toss it — he reaches.

Two fingers, unhurried, brushing yours again as he plucks it from your hand. His skin grazes yours and you swear your breath stutters like a faulty wire. It’s warm. Calloused in the way expensive hands aren’t supposed to be.

He lifts the cigarette and turns it slowly, inspecting the end. The smear of your lipstick, the last traces of you still on it.He twirls it once between thumb and forefinger, then glances at you. “You said I have a habit,” he says. His voice is calm, low, threaded with that warm rust he never bothers polishing.

You say nothing. Your throat has turned treacherous.

He tucks it between his lips. Listlessly. Takes his time. Drags in smoke, hollow and full. Then he exhales through his nose.

“I’m starting to think you have one too.”

You narrow your eyes, jaw tight. “What.”

His next words come darker. A commodity less said than laid down in front of you.

“A habit of asking questions you don’t want answers to.”

Your breath hits you crooked. You press your lips together, try to will sensation back into your legs. The silence stretches between you again, full of heat and that despicable prescience that he hasn’t broken it, because he doesn’t need to.Your mouth stays shut. It's not used to being without an opinion. He’s taken that from you too, somehow. The only sound you make is a shaky exhale, quiet enough to be mistaken for wind.

Your gaze follows his to his wrist, where his watch glints faintly beneath the low light, that watch you’d mocked internally for being too shiny, too sumptuous-looking, too aware of its own importance. You don’t know what he reads in the time, but he makes a soft sound, a breath, maybe a sigh, latterly he shrugs. The shoulders of his jacket shift, roll, and then, before your body can react, he’s pulling his arms free.

That black, unbothered thing of a jacket, the one that smelled like amber and ash and subtle conceit. He holds it for a second in his hands, then swings it gently, stupidly, over your shoulders.

Your first instinct is to shove it off, slap his hand away, say something defensive that hides how everything in you is currently rioting.

“What are you doing?” you ask, voice splintered at the ends.

You don’t know what’s more disorienting. The unexpected gesture or the sheer weight of it. The jacket is heavy, still warm from his body, lined with something smooth that smells criminally luxurious, smoke and vetiver and a note you can’t name but feel in your knees. It swallows you instantly, hangs too wide over your frame, sleeves grazing knuckles you didn’t realize were clenched.

You stiffen, hands raised as if the fabric might detonate.

“No—no, I’m fine,” you protest, reaching to return it, but his hand catches your wrist, gently. Not holding you there, just… halting the motion. His fingers barely curve around your skin.

"I'm trying to be a gentleman." he says, eyes soft but voice gravel-edged. "I am a gentleman, actually."

You almost snort, but your throat tightens too fast for it to come out fully. Good thing, you decide. Otherwise, you would’nt have trusted yourself not to speak up on the think pieces, The fan-written fever dreams about how Taehyung held a door open once and that made him the reincarnation of chivalry itself.

Kim Taehyung, the article said, is a gentleman — he's out to get your poor heart because Kim Taehyung is the refined man of our modern times who asks before he touches, and never forgets a name.

You’d rolled your eyes so hard they clicked. You’d said aloud, to no one in particular, yeah, I bet. And yet here you are. Swaddled in the evidence.

Before you can launch into your next indignation, he speaks again — this time with a glint, a grin that blooms crooked at the edges and threatens to bring down whatever composure you’ve reassembled prior to disappearing away back to the glow.

“It was nice finally meeting you, ceo of Mars."

A/N: it does not end here!! tumblrs just shit and got me with its word limit but I will not be stopped and you can keep reading from here <3