#The actual chokehold they have on me currently
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pinkydoggy83 · 7 days ago
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🔧🦴 — Biggest fibber ever
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royaltea000 · 3 months ago
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YO! Being a drawing, what’s there to be afraid of!
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burritowitch · 2 years ago
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you ever get bored and make slideshows about why your blorbos should not be removed from each other. neither do i haha
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disdaidal · 1 year ago
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Two days ago, complains that she can't get anything written down, despite having multiple headcanons and fic ideas.
This afternoon (or well, yesterday here) she starts randomly going through different writing prompts on a writing blog and miraculously ends up finding a prompt that fuels the fire and inspires to start writing.
Tells herself firmly: don't stress it, it can be just a short piece, even a drabble. Doesn't need to be longer than that.
The situation right now: has already written 8 pages (3149 words) of making out, eventually leading to smut if the gods are on her side and the stars are aligned just right (fingers crossed).
The bottom line: doesn't know how to write short stuff, still. Rambling on and on seems to be the thing she keeps getting tangled into. But oh well, writing's still sailing smoothly and I intend to finish it (even if it takes me all night, which it just might). But I don't trust my short attention span to last long enough to continue it again tomorrow, so... sacrifices must be made.
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seagreenstardust · 10 months ago
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Literally all I want to do rn is write bkdk. I’ve had the skeleton of a hospital fix-it fic rattling around in my head for months that I never got around to and turns out today is the day it decided to hold the brain cell hostage
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yuhenglesbian · 2 years ago
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some mornings i wake up and my first thought of the day is
“All the monsters have been taken away. I'm the only one left. Can you lock me up in your house?”
and i just. really have to sit down for the rest of the day because of the sheer agony of it all.
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thevaudevillescene · 1 year ago
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Kirby is sooooo…her process to figure out the last question? Hello? Kevin Williamson said, “I’m going to create a character that’s SO neurodivergent.”
Sidney taking a more active role in this scene compared to how it played out in the movie is super interesting because she’s said more than once that she doesn’t watch scary movies, but she immediately calls out the trick questions.
And Charlie? Die.
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zeawesomebirdie · 1 year ago
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Nine days and about a million words of superbat fic later, I think we're finally back to our regularly scheduled program here on the ZeAwesomeBirdie blog! :)
#vent post#not actually a vent lmao but thats the tag#(wow i havent used those tags in a *while* i had to go back and check what they were)#but im at that stage of quote unquote recovery where while i *do* still feel like ive been hit by a truck#(several trucks. actually.)#i am very well aware i do *not* have the capability to do much else *besides* read#even though im getting antsy#im waiting for one of my parents to get the various b@tman movies ive requested from the library for me#because i am low key still testing positive (and im not actually 100% on this but i think i might have/end up with long covid)#so im still under quarantine for the foreseeable future#but this is fine cause like#i promised myself id finish my current season of gunsmoke before i got too invested in any new TV/movies#since its so rare for me to do TV/movies in the first place#so thats what we'll be doing today!#at least until my fixation grabs me in a chokehold and forces me back to fic (affectionate)#id actually really like to be writing because heaven knows my writer's brain *never* shuts up#but actually this is the first time ive been too sick to write in.... literal years#i wasnt even too sick to write when i was bleeding to death yknow?#but im too antsy for fic. so.#finishing Gunsmoke it is#lucky for me Chester is such a pretty guy 👀#anyway yeah we're back to our regularly scheduled programming here now :)#ill make a pinned post if (when) i do another liveblog once i get the movies#love yall hope yall are having a good timezone!#also fuck my brainfog for making a typo in my own url ???????#like bro#(this is a huge part of why i cant currently write lmao)
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arolesbianism · 4 months ago
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I have obtained a new oc and in the process I've already signed myself up for needing to make at least 3 new ocs for his story which he now has despite me initially Intending for him to be a side character for a different side character to hang out with. My townhouse has over 200 characters on it.
#rat rambles#oc posting#he doesn't have an official name yet but he is my silly billy and I love him#also take every him with an asterisk again he's like super new (I just got him today)#although several elements of his story so far have been things Ive been wanting to do for a while so thats a part of why I have so many#ideas for him already since its some stuff I've been wanting to play around with for a while#the real reason he has a chokehold on me rn is that I tripped and made him my 500 thousanth character with identity issues#I <3 characters with a fucked up relationship with their sense of self and what it even means to be themself#oh hes also a magic cat world character because thats what like 90% of my ocs are from at this point lol#and another goop related guy but this time not directly related to every other goop guy#he doesnt interact with any of them or even know most of them exist#long story short hes a robot who used to not be a robot but remembers nothing abt his life before he turned himself into a robot#all he has as reference is a mostly ruined journal his past self kept that is almost entirely unreadable due to it getting soaked in goop#he knows that this was self inflicted and his approximate age but that's abt it in terms of useful information#early story is mostly just him traveling alone trying to see if anyone nearby knows who he is but after going through like 5 or so towns he#starts to get more worried and upset about the whole situation and starts trying to look into some different missing person reports in#hopes that he can find one of himself#he runs out of the savings he had on him pretty quickly though so he had to figure out how to stay afloat while doing his research#'luckily' he meets a man while looking into one case he found who was willing to let him stick around at his place while looking into it#this guy had some investment in these dissapearances because he suspected that they related to his father and hoped to find any sort of#window in what he was up to since he hadnt seen him since he ran away at around 17#spoilers his dad is cake this is still connected to cake nonsense because everything in this world fucking does but the main boy himself#actually has no ties to cake or his activities so thats smth at least#but yeah long story short things get. real bad for my boy after the first few months of staying at this guy's place.#yknow how risa in the future was often used as a weapon of war using some unstable chemicals? yeah guess where that started.#mr daddy issue haver over here may understand that his dad is a bad person but evidently that doesnt stop him from being not much better#currently Im planning on having main boy escape eventually and get stuck in the non magic world where he meets april but that could change#it depends on if I want him to interact with the other stories going on at all or not#I probably wont but I would like to leave myself some wiggle room to let him meet more side characters#like (looks with big sad wet eyes) ginger maybe? please? please april? let me see your sister? that you havent seen in years? please?
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bunny-jpeg · 3 months ago
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the redbull princess
max verstappen
tags: smut/pwp, driver!reader, mad!max, rough sex, chokehold, jealousy, jealous!max, slutty!reader, threats of baby trapping, dirty talk/degrading language, bruises & bites
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everyone adored you. the angel, the dove, the princess of redbull. beloved by fans, drivers, even the british press had a soft spot for the princess. you even made the likes of toto wolff feel soft with your sweet smiles and positive demeanor.
max had the (mis)fortune of being your teammate, after checo's retirement you were scooped from alpine and given the sought after seat. you were magnetic, charming in ways that made you a darling, even when you failed to win a race. but, you were a winner. a princess in her chariot passing all the others on the track.
max just simply thought that a princess deserved her prince.
"maxie." you pouted as you leaned up against your teammate, "whatcha doing?"
max looked up at you. he was currently on his knees as he tried to set up his sim-racing for the weekend. he asked, "how did you get into my room?"
you shrugged, "don't think about it too hard. i wanted to see what you were doing! you didn't to lunch, so i got... worried." you gave a small laugh. there was a look in your eyes. you weren't here to check on max. not when you were dressed in a tank top, shorts with that thin gold chain around your neck. you played with it between your fingers, "you look like you need a break."
there it was. max chuckled as got up from being almost under the desk. when he stood up, he eventually had to look a little down at you. red bull's princess wasn't the angelic virgin that many assumed. you had a dark streak to you.
you had most of the paddock wrapped around your fingers. charles, george, alex, even horner. and especially max. a simple look got you everything you wanted. a laugh had many men a little flustered. so of course max couldn't help but wrap his arms around your middle and pulling you closer to him. he looked at you, his eyes were so blue.
you licked your lips, "what do you say, maxie... let's have a little fun before our weekend begins.' then leaned in to give his a kiss square on the lips.
the kiss didn't last long before max pulled away and held you by the back of the head. he looked at you, something jealous crossed his expression, "i know what you're trying to do. you think that you can get out of this with a few thrusts of your hips...it's cute honestly, thinking that you're so much smarter than you actually are."
you swallowed and realized that you were playing with fire at that moment. you felt your pulse quicken when he put an hand around your throat. not enough to choke you, but enough to get you looking at him. he smiled and you wondered what he had planned.
you really shouldn't have flirted with max's secondary rival. you shouldn't have been smiles and giggles with lando days prior. you whispered things into the brit's ear and giggled when you pulled away. you didn't get too far, he pulled you in and in a quiet privacy, he kissed you on the lips.
max could've killed lando over that.
you pouted a little more, "i said it was sorry, max. you can't be mad at me forever!" and max crowded your space a little more and looked down at you with something in his eyes that spelled danger.
he said, "no, i can't. but i can try." he took you by the hair, "so i guess you'll just have to make it up to me." and soon you ended face first on the bed. red bull's prince was often possessive of it's princess as he got into bed with you and pulled down your shorts. he pressed his weight up against you to keep you pinned down to the bed.
you moaned, "fuck, max. i'm sorry! i mean it! i mean it!" you tried to squirm out from under him as he got your shorts off of you and near ripped your panties off of you.
max frowned as he got his shirt off over his head, "sorry isn't going to cut it. you are such a whore, you like having all these drivers' eyes on you. i bet you've fucked top to bottom the grid." he raked his nails down your sides and watched you try to get out from his touch.
you whimpered, "no! no!" you knew that was a lie. if max wasn't going to fuck you tonight. you had a few other keycards in your back pocket. you were that charming. max was just lucky to be your first pick.
and you knew that he wouldn't give up the chance to sink into your poor cunt tonight. give you something to scream about. he stripped you of your clothes, tossed them off the bed before he was fully nude as well. he bit into your shoulder roughly as he sank his teeth in your shoulder and pressed himself further against you.
the indents of his teeth promised a bruise come morning. and he held onto you tightly as he moved at a quick pace. his voice in your ear with his chest against your back. there was no escaping max verstappen, "you know you can be a good girl, right? i know it's in you. the press think you're so perfect princess and you could be that if you just stop being a goddamn whore. i see right through the act, i know after a race you want this cunt stuffed. you want to squirm on my cock, you want it to hurt. because you are a glutton for pain. a disgrace to all women in the sport. you set them back by being a stupid, cock hungry slut." his words burned in your brain and you felt the heat pool in your gut.
you gasped into the covers and said, "please, max. holy shit. ah!" you knew that max was the best fuck in the grid. at least to you. most gave you the princess treatment or were worried about being too rough. you found them boring unless you were in a bit of a pinch.
but not max. the current world champion fucked you until there were sparks in your vision. he left your pussy soaked and your brain empty. he made all his degrading words ring true, you were nothing more than a soft cunt for max to fuck. that was why you always came back to him. he had that effect on you.
he was your favourite. not that you'd let him know that. as he thrusted up into you and left you feeling the pleasurable heat in the back of your head and down your shoulders. it was the buzz that left you shaking. it was the heated want that left you panting into the covers.
you were the princess, but max knew better than that. the smiles were all part of your little performance. if you had it your way, you'd be doing interviews with runny mascara and cock down your throat. but, you were still very capable on the track. one of the best they ever had, you just enjoyed having your world flipped inside out and upside down due to orgasm after orgasm. that max was more than happy to provide.
"please, max. fuck, please max!" you gasped loudly. your back arched, but you didn't get too far. you were rather stuck under max as he fucked up into you. the headboard rocked against the white wall of the room.
"you don't deserve the princess treatment they give you. the press give you. you don't deserve any of it! you deserve whatever you can get it. you let men much more powerful than you do terrible things to you." he wrapped his arm around your throat and continued to fuck up into you. the bed moved every more as he jackhammered his cock inside of you. your body bounced with each of his movements.
you felt stupid as he fucked you. your tongue hung out of your mouth a little as his cock hit against all against the right areas. he knew exactly how to make you crazy. how to make you feel so much dumber with strokes of his hips.
"but you're mine." he said, "in the end your mine. i let you play your silly little games, be the charming little flirt i know you are." he tensed up his arm around your throat as he continued to slam his cock in and out of you. the pace was brutal and the movements made your heartbeat hammer in your ears. he could feel every inch of you as he fucked you with a fierce fever.
you tried to say something, but the words died in your throat.
he chuckled and kissed the side of your face. then he pushed your face further into the covers. he still held you in a choke-hold as he fucked you roughly. he said quietly as the bed squeaked under you, "i'm not stupid, princess. you think i'm some idiot, but i'm not... maybe tonight's the night we end these little games. what do you say? maybe tonight you and i should make a baby... end these games and finally make you all mine."
you whined and tried to get out of his grasp. but he was simply much stronger. he chuckled and kissed you on the face once more as he quickened his pace. it left you feeling on cloud nine as he really worked himself inside of you.
the princess was at his mercy. such a shame.
with a few more heavy thrusts, you came around his cock. your noise was a high pitched as you clawed at the covers. you panted heavily and felt so pathetic under him. and he loved the sight of you, you looked beautiful. angelic. he had you all to himself.
"see, you can be a good! make such a good mother to my children. that'll fix you right now." he buried his face in your neck as he continued to fuck you roughly. he didn't last much longer, a few more heavy thrusts of his hips and he was finishing inside of you with a hot groan in your ear.
he kept his arm around you, a hold to keep you still while he fucked his spent cock inside of you to push all the cum further inside of you. the over stimulation let you feeling dizzy. and when max finally let go of you, you laid out on the bed like a dumb little toy.
he slapped your ass before he panted heavily beside you. you curled up next to him, there was a reason why he was your favourite fuck of them all. he took you by the jaw and you looked back at him.
"going to behave now?"
"yes, maxie."
-
max heard your giggled nearby and his head whipped around.
you looked at max out of the corner of your eye before you went back to kissing lando deeply. you smiled against the kiss before you said to lando, "why don't you come visit me tonight, we could have some before the weekend?' and winked at the other driver.
max clenched his fists and exhaled deeply. like hell lando was going to your room tonight. because by the time he got there, max would already be keeping those greedy holes of your filled.
he knew the last thing you wanted was the princess treatment. <3
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simplyholl · 9 months ago
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The Interview
Summary: After a talk show interview where secrets are revealed, things get heated in your dressing room.
Pairing: Rockstar Bucky x F. Reader
Warnings: Smut. 18+ Only. Minors DNI. Rockstar AU.
See My Masterlist Here
A/N: Sebastian Stan as Tommy Lee has me in a chokehold. So this was born from my tatted, horny daydreams.
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"Who is your celebrity crush?" The host of the Midnight Show, Chet Smith asked you. Your newest movie was a box office hit, so you had to do every talk show to promote it. To say you were exhausted is an understatement. Luckily, this was your last stop for today. This show was the most fun because Chet brought out all the celebrity guests together. At least you weren't by yourself answering awkward questions.
The other guests were Red Star, the hottest rock band at the moment. They went viral while playing at their local bar. An audience member threw a bottle at their lead singer, Loki and the whole band jumped off stage to fight. They were offered a record deal the same week.
They are known for their wild videos on TikTok. Women everywhere love them. Currently, they are squeezed on the small sofa with you for the interview. Bucky Barnes, their drummer sat on one side of you, his tattoos drew you in like a moth to a flame. You were doing your best to not stare at him the whole time.
The Odinson brothers, Thor and Loki were on the other side. Loki is the lead singer, his long, dark curls and piercing stare made men and women weak in the knees. Thor plays guitar and he is the band's himbo. He's a charmer, flirting with you the whole interview. Steve Rogers is their bassist, an All-American guy to balance the others out. He plays the part well, flashing his megawatt smile at the live audience. But you can tell there is a darker side to him lurking under the surface.
You consider Chet's question; your PR team warned you about questions like this. "Well, I don't really have one." You shrug your shoulders, as the audience begs for a real answer. "Come on, darling. I know you're lying." Loki smirks, reaching his hand over Thor to rub your thigh.
"If I go first, will that help?" Steve asks, being the helpful guy that he is. You nod smiling shyly at him. "Okay, but when it's your turn you have to be honest." He winks at you, and the audience goes wild. He answers one of your costars. You promise to hook them up later. You feel your cheeks heating up, suddenly embarrassed that you have to answer now.
Chet repeats the question, and you bite your lip, pointing beside you to Bucky. "My celebrity crush is actually this guy." Bucky looks ecstatic, high fiving his band members as they congratulate him as if he has won an award. Thor's answer is a pretty pop star who he had been spotted out with twice already.
Loki's celebrity crush is a famous author whose upcoming book features a main male character who looks suspiciously like him. Dating rumors swirled even though there was no proof, except for a few flirty comments between them on Instagram. When it's Bucky's turn he says you, draping his heavily tattooed arm around you. You smile, grateful that he lied to save you from public humiliation. You were sure he was going to say someone who didn't look anything like you.
You're already dreading what the headlines tomorrow had in store. You and Bucky cuddled up on this sofa would no doubt be on every website. You should have lied, you tell yourself. People will start shipping you, his fans would be saying horrible things about you. You should have said anyone else.
Red Star took the stage to close the show. They were playing their latest number one hit. The audience was on their feet, some girls were crying as Loki's sultry voice came over the speakers. You watched Bucky closely. He played the drums like it was his life's purpose. He tossed the drumsticks in the air, pointing to you and winking as he caught them. It was the sexiest thing you had ever seen.
When their set was over, Bucky walked toward the dressing rooms with you, stopping outside yours. "Thanks for saying I was your celebrity crush back there. I would have been so embarrassed if you would have said somebody else." He flips his hair out of his eyes. "You don't have to thank me. It was the truth." You tell him goodbye, feeling awkward about the whole thing. You turn to go inside your dressing room to change into comfy clothes before you go back to the hotel.
Thick fingers catch your wrist, pulling you back toward him. "I wasn't ready to tell you bye." Bucky's lips curl, the light shines on his nose ring, bringing attention to his face. When you look into his shining blue eyes, you realize you don't want him to leave either. You grab the sides of his leather jacket, pulling him toward you. His mouth is on yours instantly. He presses you against your dressing room door, his large body covering yours.
You tangle your fingers in his long locks, needing him closer. Bucky hungrily kisses down your neck, while one hand travels under your dress. He rubs his thumb against your soaked panties. "All this for me?" You whine when he rubs harder, your clit making contact with the silky fabric. You move your hips, lost in the moment.
Voices echo down the hallway, bringing you out of your horny haze. "Bucky" You whisper, trying to warn him so he has time to stop before they see you. "Shh. I got you." He moves his body, so he is blocking you from view. His fingers are relentless, dipping inside your panties. His rough thumb rolls over your clit, you bury your face into his chest.
"Oh my God, It's Bucky! We are huge fans!" A woman's voice comes from behind him. You aren't brave enough to look, so you keep your face hidden. "Thanks guys. I love meeting fans. So, what's your favorite song?" You try to pinch him so he will get rid of them, but he continues talking about the world tour they are about to go on.
He enters you with two fingers, curling them as you moan out loud. The women look around him, finally noticing you. "Is she okay?" The second one asks. "Yeah, she's fine. She just ate too much so she has a stomachache." His fingers caress your inner walls, thumb rubbing in small circles. The band in your belly snaps, arousal flooding his hand as you come apart. Your legs shake, and you hold onto his arm to steady yourself. You clench your teeth to keep from making noise.
"You better get her inside; she can barely stand." One of the women says. They tell you both goodbye, as Bucky leads you inside your dressing room. "You did so good for me, but I need more." You look at him incredulously. He just made you cum the hardest you ever had in your life in front of two strangers and that wasn't enough.
Your legs are still trembling as he lifts you onto the vanity. Your back hits the cool mirror as Bucky slides your panties down your legs. His hot breath tickles your thighs as he lowers his face, pressing kisses to your inner thighs. He takes his time, nipping your sensitive skin. He licks a lazy stripe up your center, avoiding where you need him most. His tongue sinks inside you, firm nose pressing against your clit.
You cry out, head falling back, knocking into the mirror behind you. It bangs against the wall, hard enough to rattle the pictures hung there. Bucky drinks every drop of you, moaning as you writhe against his face. His plump lips fasten around your swollen nub, sucking and tugging like he can't get enough.
Your shaking legs close around his head, trapping him as you ride out your high. You cry his name, not caring who hears you. Bucky lifts you, slamming you against the wall. He holds you with one arm, the other works quickly to bring his pants down. His cock springs free, pink tip leaking. You swallow hard, intimidated by his size. "You're so big." You shiver, anticipation putting you on edge. He holds you, lining your bodies up.
"You can take it." He snaps his hips up, slamming into you. You try to adjust as he stretches you, wiggling around to see if the stinging will go away. When it starts feeling good, your arms wrap around his neck, holding on as he pulls out, leaving the tip in. He thrusts back into you, bottoming out. You have never felt so full, he fills every inch of you. He sets a steady rhythm, every part of him feels like it was made for you. You pulse around him, your back hitting against the wall as he sinks impossibly deeper.
Bucky bunches your dress around your hips, thick fingers digging into your skin as he fucks you. You try to meet his thrusts, but you're too weak from the explosive orgasms he already gave you. You hold onto him as he uses your body, his ragged breath on your neck brings forth the familiar pressure in your lower stomach.
"You're doing so good. Fuck! You take me so well." He praises, moving your thigh higher up his torso. He holds it in place, tilting his hips. The new angle makes your vision blur as he deliciously drags against a place you were sure was a myth until this very moment. Your nails dig into the back of his neck as you shatter around him.
Bucky's thrusts grow brutal, taking what he needs from you. "Oh fuck" He moans as he spills inside you. For a moment, you just look at each other, trying to catch your breaths. Thankfully, he knows you can't stand on your own, so he carries you to the sofa. Your dress is still around your waist, arm over your eyes. You can already feel a dull ache in your stomach where he had been just moments ago.
"Do you mind?" Bucky asks, pointing his phone toward you. You narrow your eyes, not understanding. "You're just so fuckin' hot and I wanna remember this." He says, his meaning finally dawning on you. You nod, almost too tired to speak. He angles his phone camera toward you. "Fucking perfect." He examines the photo he just took before showing you.
Your hair is disheveled, giving you the appearance of being caught in a windstorm. Your cheeks are flushed, eyes blown wide with lust. The top of your dress barely contains your breasts. The bottom is by your hips, your exposed cunt glistening with his cum. Bucky set the picture as his phone's background. You protested because you looked like a mess. Bucky stopped your arguing with a kiss. "You know what you look like?" He asks, smiling wide as he turned his phone screen toward you. "What?" You cross your arms over your chest, suddenly feeling insecure. "Mine."
Tags
@cindylynn @wheredafandomat @multifandom-worlds @loz-3 @megharat-barnes-reid @kats72 @crimson25 @mochie85 @cakesandtom @lokidokieokie @theallknown213 @alexakeyloveloki @tmilover1993 @yeaiamme2 @pigeonmama @yeehawbrothers @lokischambermaid @fictive-sl0th @nomajdetective @goblingirlsarah @foxherder @weirdothatwritess @silver-tongue-taken-to-bed @freegardenbanananeck @lamentis-10 @jainaeatsstars @queenshu @justsebstan @kcd15
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lucyandthepen · 1 year ago
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sweet cream, cold brew | lmh ( m )
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something about mark lee keeps you up at night, and you’re pretty sure that it isn’t the lingering smell of espresso on his shirt.
alternatively: mark is shy until he isn’t.
read the second part here!
pairing: nerd!barista!mark x reader verse: college au rating: r ( minors, do not interact! ) warnings&tags: unprotected sex, oral (f!receiving), fingering, slightly possessive/jealous dialogue, mark has a thing for tummy bulges because why not, implicitly that also means he has a big dick, a slight???? exhibitionism kink (not actually something that happens, only talked about), johnny exists in this simply to trigger something vaguely feral in mark, reader is a little bit assertive and schemes to get mark's attention, jaehyun is a nosy lil eavesdropper, i think that should be it?? word count: 26.4k
a/n: hello so this was a mess and honestly not a fic i would say showcases my best plot-wise but… what can I say apart from booty wurk mark has me in a chokehold and I needed to release some thoughts and feelings !!! please do not expect too much from the development of the story; i fear it’s quite long and choppy because my ideas were all over the place and i was wringing my hands and brain constantly and i was eager to get to the spicy parts !! this is also not beta’d/proofread, it’s currently almost 1am, and i’ve been writing this on and off for a full week with very few breaks so it honestly felt like a fever dream for me LMAO please forgive any oversights and mistakes; i’ll try to go back on them another day and fix them little by little! finally and …most importantly belated happy birthday, my beloved morkly!
p.s. this will probably be flagged as ‘mature’ by tumblr, which means there’s a high likelihood it won’t appear in tags or searches. please consider reblogging to boost the fic, if you feel so inclined!
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You’ve heard tell of how caffeine has inherently addictive properties. 
The more of it you have in your lifetime, the more likely you are to experience symptoms of withdrawal whenever you try to have orange juice for breakfast in its stead. It sounds bad, actually, considering most addictive substances are, but you suppose that its benefits somehow outweigh its milder drawbacks. You’re not much of a coffee connoisseur the way some people — see: your best friends, Yeji and Jisu — are, trying one cafe after the other in pursuit of being able to nominate the winning beans of 2023 (an annual heated debate they participate in for no better reason than their own slow and useless entertainment during their six-hour long breaks), but you do know you’ve only ever experienced good things from having a cup every so often: better energy, a more focused approach to mental activities, and the ability to drive through fifty percent of a road trip without needing pop punk music blasting out of your speakers to keep yourself alert. 
The three of you are generally particular about the coffee you drink, only in different ways. While your friends have a tendency to demand only the best from any establishment — lest the staff hear fiery commentary about the flatness of the brew or the evident coarseness of the grind — you, on the other hand, are a singular individual of rather simple tastes. All you need to survive long days is a glass of vanilla sweet cream cold brew. No modifications to the sugar level or fancy new milk types are necessary; you’ll drink it as it’s served in a grande cup (or a venti, when things prove particularly grueling). 
Of course, you’re strict about other things in the experience of consumption —  like where it’s served and, more importantly, who serves it to you. 
While Yeji and Jisu have rated the Liberal Arts building’s on-campus Starbucks branch as a five with the strict label of POEO — ‘passable on emergencies only’ — branding the menu as “nothing revolutionary” and criticizing most baristas for subpar brewery, you happen to be extremely drawn to the place. Initially, you may have argued that this has to do with the fact that it’s walking distance from most of your classes, confined to the same general compound on campus, so you can always grab a quick recharger whenever needed, no matter how short the timeframe to do so is. Sometime later on, you may have found yourself asserting that the layout of the cafe, albeit small, is very convenient, considering that every table is situated next to an electrical outlet, so you’re never out of battery (important to other students for their laptops and powerpoint presentations, important to you because you have an unhealthy obsession with passing time on TikTok, scrolling past video after video of ASMR girls clicking their twenty-inch long acrylics with their crazy candyland designs), and this makes you feel at ease. 
A month ago, you finally came clean to yourself and, soon after, to your friends, and they came to understand, albeit begrudgingly and with no small amount of amusement, what made this Starbucks unbeatable in your eyes; it had one thing no other coffee shop could lay claim to.
What you know of Mark Lee is accrued from two major sources: long, surreptitious glances in the Modern World History class you share, and irritatingly brief interactions when you place your order from the other side of the counter behind which he stands, long fingers always poised to punch in your order at the speed of light. Sometimes, those encounters get cut even shorter when irate upperclassmen start prattling their orders out before you can even say anything past your own, except even this has its own consolation prize — an apologetic smile at you that seems only for you, although you’re not sure how much of this assumption is true. You’ll just believe it as you feel it. 
And what you’ve learned about Mark Lee has funneled down into two key points for you: first, he is single, a fact you were clued into when a group of his friends came to the coffee shop and sat around the table next to you. You hadn’t been eavesdropping; they’d just been pretty loud, but you’d also perked your ears the moment the one everyone seemed to call “Hyuck” — you aren’t sure if it’s his full name or a nickname, and you don’t particularly care — had leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper about having a vague master plan to set Mark up with an old high school friend’s younger sister that he was just waiting to spring on said Mark, busy slaving away on their six impossible orders near the espresso machine. 
You don’t really know what became of that plan, nor if anyone had telepathically been on your side to outright call it crazy (someone should have had a better reason than you, anyway) since the next moment, Hyuck’s voice becomes significantly louder when it orders the one named Jisung to collect the completed coffee and snacks waiting for them on the counter. However, you feel safe in the assumption that even if it had happened, no repercussions had followed, seeing as Mark still presently comes and goes from his shifts alone and in no clear hurry to meet any cute girls that are sisters of high school friends of his friends. Or, maybe you’re just ignoring what could be truth, but that’s whatever. 
Second, you’ve learned that Mark Lee should not actually be your type — at least, in theory. 
Saying you’re out of his league would be a bit juvenile, but if you had only so many words to describe the situation, you’d say so under duress. It isn’t so much that he’s beneath you in any way, but your interests and general social circles run different routes. Yours tend to be more classically patterned after constantly changing trends, and the people you interact with all seem to have similar goals; you like to call it ‘vibe networking,’ which, from experience, involves connecting with both groups and individuals that are equally aware that they will benefit in some way from any resulting acquaintanceship — whether it be by climbing the social ladder a couple of rungs or being able to call in a quick, off-the-charts favor for something very important and/or very exclusive down the road. You and your friends spend a significant amount of time in a year watching your style and image, something quite a lot of kids in the first couple of years of college tend to do, which means that while you don’t particularly like to spend your time following your grade trajectory, you do have quite a lot of pseudo-friends that all seem to offer something entertaining or helpful to you. 
Mark, on the contrast, prefers to keep his circle very close to his heart, it seems — that which acts as a receptacle for all his interests. You can tell that he likes to be up to date less with trending movies and more with comic books, a separate beast of a world that’s rather unknown to you. More than once, you’ve overheard him chat with his friends about Spider-man Issue Number Whatever-It-Is or engage in somewhat lively (sometimes rowdy, thanks to the Hyuck fellow) discussions about some webtoon you’ve come to understand is called Solo Leveling, which seems to have to do with monsters and hunters — two things you know next to nothing about. You’ve also never seen Mark holding anything remotely close to a magazine; his hands are always filled with either a freshly opened comic or a beat-up textbook. Maybe once or twice, you’ve seen him on his phone, but when you peeked over (surreptitiously, of course) on those occasions, you were met only with brightly colored panels and a singular word: BAM. 
In conclusion — you and Mark Lee live very different lives, likely never truly meant to intersect. 
And yet, you want him — not even in a way that speaks only to your curiosity, but in a manner that feels slightly delusional. More than once, you’ve found yourself having to shut your jaw close after realizing you’ve been watching him steam milk with your mouth slightly agape. Maybe it’s his side profile, which gives you a great view of the way his jaw tenses every time he puts whipped cream on someone’s frappuccino. Maybe it’s his eyes, which always seem to twinkle like he’s harboring some special secret every time someone in line asks for his recommendation on how to spice their order up. Maybe it’s his hands, steady and agile, with just the right showing of veins through the skin to tell you they’ve probably got significant strength to them too. Or maybe it’s just his mind — that thing he always manages to show off in class, working faster than lightning even when the rest of you are in your natural eight-in-the-morning stupor.
Whatever the reason for your interest, Mark Lee makes sure the Liberal Arts building’s Starbucks has you as a regular customer. 
You’re fully aware that this is the twenty-first century, which is why you could, as Yeji and Jisu have so kindly made known, simply ask him out. Under normal circumstances, you would have.
Unfortunately, in this particular area of your life, separate from all others, you’re something of a traditionalist. 
Actually, you just want to know what Mark asking you out would look like. Curiosity has fully gotten the better of you — how can it not, with how he breaks eye contact with you the moment it happens by accident in class, or with how pleasantly and shyly he smiles when you say ‘hey’ to him once you’re about to order? You’d like to see, first-hand, as a recipient of the experience itself, what he would look like taking control of a particular situation like that — something someone like him, so mild-mannered and laid-back, never really seemed to do upfront. 
You’d like to think you’ve given him clear signs. There’s a reason you always come in during his shift times, and it’s the same reason for why you have the same damn drink from the menu over and over again despite not even caring too much about coffee in the first place (something he admittedly doesn’t know and probably wouldn’t puzzle out, given how often you’re in that Starbucks, anyway). It’s that you want him to remember you.
Selfishly, it’s that you want him to think just a little bit more about you every single day. 
But if he does, Mark has never made it very clearly known; apart from taking your order in his genial customer service demeanor or letting a look of brief recognition pass his face over when you cross paths in the hallways, he’s never really shown heightened inquisitiveness about you. For all your differences, only you seem to actually care.
Frankly, that frustrates you, because if you have to think about him unhealthily, it would only be right for him to do that for your sake too. Still, you’ll shrug that hit on your pride off for as long as you can get his attention one way or another.
All you really need is for your plan to pan out as well as you think — and hope — it will. 
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The thing is, you’re not even that bad at math. You’ve never really excelled at it, of course, but you wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re in dire need of help from anyone — the kind of help that feels like babysitting, at least.
However, Mark Lee doesn’t know that, and you’re not compelled to make that fact known to him when you notice that he’s leaning on the counter with his elbows, shoulders rolled forward and head bent down. He’s twirling his ballpoint in hand, wrist hovering over a worksheet, and you’re briefly distracted by the rapidly moving shadow underneath it.
His head snaps up when you gently knock on the counter, and the rest of his body follows suit, straightening as he shoves the paper away, one edge crumpling in on itself as it meets resistance in the form of the pastry display glass.
“Hey — hi, _________.” He knows your name, says it easily, and while you’d like to believe it’s because of his unprecedented interest in you, you know that it’s just because you’re always here and always having him write your name on the side of your cup. “Can I get you the usual?”
There’s no particular reason you order what you do; maybe it’s just rooted in the fact that when you first asked Mark for a recommendation, he said that the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew was pretty good, and you were inclined to believe him (while pointedly ignoring the fact that it was, at the time, a new item all of the baristas were required to push to indecisive, slightly moony-eyed customers such as yourself). Whatever the case, you found the drink generally palatable, and you were also able to score the first of many smiles that fed into your two-semester-long infatuation with him, so it was basically a win-win scenario for all. He even got to do his job by getting some rube (see: you) into trying a new product.
“Hey, Mark.” You’ve long since given up pretending that you don’t know his name and have to check the tag on his cute green apron (why is it cute? You don’t know. It’s the same, standard, Starbucks green, but Mark makes it look homely and natural, somehow). You’ve been here way too many times over the last academic year for a nonchalant, were you talking to me? approach to work, anyway. “That, plus a lemon loaf, if you don’t mind. What’ve you got there?”
His eyes follow the trail of yours over to his wrinkled worksheet. “Oh — no, sorry. It’s nothing.”
“Is it secret?” Your bottom lip juts out, and you see his Adam’s apple bob dangerously, a small telltale sign of minute nervousness before he lets out a short laugh. “Didn’t know we kept stuff from each other.”
You don’t know what makes you say that so naturally. The both of you don’t do much beyond exchanging pleasantries.
“We — uh, well, it’s just a worksheet. For Park Hyosung’s class. College algebra?”
“I’m in Kim Junghwa’s. Can I have a look? I want to know if you’re suffering just as much as I am.”
He pauses, considering your request for a moment, likely wondering if there’s any harm in it before he smooths the paper out and turns it towards you. His handwriting’s a little messy, but his solutions are extremely neat. You see, like, one erasure, max. You also don’t see anything that interests you — except the name written at the top. Still, you can see at a general glance that more than half of his answers are correct; the logic of his organization is way too elegant and his writing’s too sure to be anything else. You whistle low, and his eyebrows shoot up.
“Something wrong?”
“Pretty much the opposite. How is it that you’re doing this without breaking a sweat?”
“Oh, well — it’s not…” He doesn’t even know how to brag. Yet another item in the perpetually growing list of things you find cute about Mark Lee. “I mean, anyone… can?”
“I must not be anyone then.” You meet his quizzical look with a wry smile. “Either you guys are leaps and bounds ahead, or I’m really not going to make it through this semester.”
Another silence passes, just for a fraction of a second — short enough to be passable to others, but long enough for you to wonder if your humor code isn’t up to par with the rest of the world’s — before Mark’s chuckling lowly. His large palm comes down, covering a majority of his answers in the process.
“You’re kidding. I’m sure you’re doing just fine.”
“Mark, look at this face.” You gesture to your evidently dumbfounded, blank expression. “Does this look like the face of someone that’s doing just fine?”
You’re pleased to hear another laugh from him; you don’t know if he really finds you funny or if he’s just the type to be easily amused. You don’t want to know, anyway; assuming is better than actually finding out.
“That bad, huh?” He slides the worksheet away again, like he’s afraid his correct answers are going to offend you into leaving the cafe. Instead, his hands start working on your order, grabbing a cup and scrawling the shorthand of the drink on one of the little boxes. “Ever think about getting a tutor, maybe? If you really feel like you’re drowning, that is.”
“A tutor? I guess that depends. Are you free on weeknights?”
The marker makes a soft screeching sound as he drags it down with too much force, ruining the penmanship of your name. Mark takes a moment to stare at the mistake on the plastic before he looks at you, pointing the rim of the cup towards himself. “Sorry — am I free—?”
“You said I should get a tutor, right?”
“I thought — no, sorry, I was thinking more like one of those department-assigned tutors you can ask the faculty for, or something.”
“Oh. Are you not one of them?” You sigh, albeit a little over dramatically. Thankfully, he doesn’t really cotton onto your acting, too caught up in befuddlement at the turn of the conversation. “That’s a bummer. I was kinda hoping that if I was going to ask for help, I’d get an actual genius. You know — someone like you?”
You can tell by Mark’s expression that he’s torn between denying your compliment again and responding to your actual question; he looks both relieved and miffed when the student behind you clears her throat.
“Sorry, but— you know that there’s a line, right?”
You both apologize, Mark’s much more sincere than your own, and you step aside. His gaze follows you for a moment before it snaps back to the next customer, his voice abandoning that bemused uncertainty it had taken up with you. You don’t really mind; as far as you’re concerned, any dent in his barista persona when he talks to you is a step in the right direction.
You hang around the pick-up area, receipt in hand, watching Mark clear the line before moving to the actual stations near the kitchen area. There’s a concentration on his face that you find all the more attractive; he has a habit of chewing on his bottom lip when he’s trying to focus on getting the drizzle just right inside the cup’s cylinder.
He tends to try his best at everything, you figure. Not an unattractive quality — not by a long shot.
Mark finishes your drink first; the milk’s still only seeping, cloudy, into the coffee when he brings it over. He doesn’t even have to call your queue number, opting to meet your eye — albeit slightly nervously — instead. You reach out to hold the cup, a calculated move that allows you to brush hands against his without him being able to pull back on instinct. He doesn’t, nor does he really seem to want to, but his jaw tightens as a flush creeps along the curve of his ears.
“You really won’t help me?”
Your question’s abrupt, almost a little demanding, even if your voice is sweet. You’re not above asking this much, anyway, even if you technically want him to make the first move. The redness sinks down to his earlobes.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t really say anything,” you tease. The cup’s on the counter now, so he can easily relinquish it to you at this point, but he still hesitates, only one hand slipping out from under the heat of your palm. He uses it to rub the back of his neck, chuckling softly, and you take this as a green light. “What time does your shift end?”
“Five-thirty. You sure you wouldn’t want someone better?”
You pull your cup slowly to yourself, and his hand, still lightly trapped by your own, follows for a few inches before he’s withdrawing, the counter between the two of you forcing the distance. A smile follows the shaking of your head, and you take a small sip of the drink before you respond simply.
“There’s no one better than you.”
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Mark is a prompt kind of person; you learn this when, at five-thirty, he comes over to your table, tugging his apron off over his head. Of course, you might attribute that to his overall personality, but the fact that you spend the remaining two hours of his shift casting him glances from the left side of the coffee shop might have also been a contributing factor. The looks you give him aren’t even furtive; they’re deliberately long, so you never miss whenever he looks over to you from time to time.
He doesn’t hold eye contact for very long (he does it well enough when he’s talking to customers, but it’s not like you’re ordering another cold brew from across the room at that point), but you can read snippets of his thoughts through the fleeting gaze exchanges. He’s curious as to why you’re asking for help, now, of all times, when the semester’s more than halfway over. He’s surprised that you asked him, of all people, because he just can’t conceive of a world that isn’t within a television show where this kind of abrupt, overt request makes sense. He’s flattered that you even asked him out of the blue. He’s equal parts anxious and eager to know what’s meant to happen after his shift, once he starts fulfilling your request.
Most of all, he’s unsure if he’s reading you right — if what it feels like you’re doing is something he’s attaching too deep a meaning to. If he’s right in reading your signs.
You don’t really mind it; you like knowing that Mark somehow wears his heart on his sleeve, even if he tries to remain neutral for the sake of appearances. You also bask quietly in the fact that he’s looking at you twice as much as he ever has in the time you’ve loosely known each other. Still, his bubbling confusion and inquisitiveness seem to be interfering with the rest of his work, especially when you notice that he’s been wiping down the surface of a table two down from where you are for more than seven minutes.
In the hopes of easing whatever tension might be in his heart, you offer him a small smile, but that’s only met with his eyes immediately glazing over and inching a couple of centimeters above your forehead, where the story of Starbucks’ origins is drawn out in a faux-manga style. He pretends to find it interesting, as if he hasn’t seen it a million times from coming into this establishment day after day — you know it well enough, and you don’t even have to, considering you don’t work here — and you can’t do anything but hold back your laughter.
A small part of you says you should just give him the affirmative answer to his biggest question, but every other cell in your body says that it’s no fun if he doesn’t ascertain it for himself.
He has his school bag and textbook in tow when he approaches, taking the seat across from you. There’s a steely resolution on his face, like he’s been emotionally preparing himself for such a daunting task, but it eases up the moment you laugh lightly.
“You don’t have to act like I’m going to eat you.”
“I’m still not sure why you’re suddenly asking me to help you,” he admits. He’s also very honest, you note. Again, not an unattractive trait. “I’m not complaining. I just didn’t think you even had an opinion of me.”
“Why’s that?” You’re genuinely surprised. Mark drums his fingers on the front of his textbook, thoughtful — less for the sake of thinking what to say and more for the sake of considering how to say it. It’s clear he wants to avoid calling attention to the fact that before now, you two have had no reason to run the same track, let alone sit together and talk at a coffee shop, as if you’ve always been the best of friends.
“Genuinely just thought I was the guy who gave you your afternoon coffee every day,” he finally settles. Your eyes widen, and another laugh escapes you — a little louder this time, enough to call the attention of a couple of jumpy freshmen nearby.
“Well — let me put it this way.” You lean over slightly, cupping your chin in your palm. “Was I just the girl you made coffee for every day until now?”
There are clear cogs turning in his head; his eyes unfocus slightly as he thinks of the possibilities. His silence suddenly makes you somewhat nervous; your tone had been confident, and you’d only said that to prove a point, to push him in the right direction, but you realize that you hadn’t previously factored in the possibility that he might simply say yes — or, worse, say no just to avoid hurting your feelings.
You watch his lower lip curl in; he uses his tongue to smooth out the skin that’s slightly dried from work fatigue. You would much rather it peeked out, so you could imagine it against your own. His response is mumbled in a lower register, but you catch some key syllables — didn’t… not … stranger — pretty … you?
“Sorry?” You ask patiently, but the fact that he turns red and laughs again — something you realize is not only a trademark of his personality but also downright delicious of him to be doing — is all the answer you need to let the apprehension seep from your shoulders. “I didn’t catch that.”
Mark clears his throat. “No, I… didn’t think of you that way. I mean… you’re my classmate.”
“Sure,” your tone’s breezy, but the somewhat sloppy confirmation of interest in you makes your heart soar. He just needs more of a push. “And we’re basically friends, right?”
“Yeah.” His voice is unsure at first, like he can’t seem to wrap his head around the concept. You can tell that Mark’s notion of friendship is likely based on shared interests, of which you admittedly have none. Technically, if you were his friend, you’d spend less time just telling him the exact same order every single day and more time sitting around a table trying to learn how to play Magic: The Gathering with him. Still, he takes one long look at your grin and suddenly gains confidence in his next words, as if it somehow convinces him that the briefness of your old conversations had been a mutually agreed-upon thing and not the product of social distance between the two of you. “Yeah. We’re friends.”
“Right. Friends help friends, don’t they? I’d definitely feel more comfortable having a friend teach me than some stuffy upperclassman I don’t know.”
You see Mark’s lips move slightly, in such small movements you could have imagined it as breathing if you didn’t care too much (which you do). He mouths, to himself — friends help friends. For some reason, that boosts his conviction even further, and he nods.
“Makes sense. Well — for as long as you don’t mind me, then.”
“Mind? I asked you, so I should be saying that.”
“I’d never mind — I mean, of course I don’t mind.” He’s quick to correct himself, and you have to stop your own hand from reaching out to try to satisfy your curiosity, the desire to know just how hot his cheeks get when he blushes. “More than happy to help, actually.”
“And I’m more than happy to be here.” You beam at him, and he mirrors your smile. You don’t know what it is about the look on his face — the brightness in his eyes, or the slight lift of his eyebrows, maybe — but it gives you the impression that he might be feeling at least a fraction of what you are: the feeling of your heart lifting off a few inches from your rib cage. “Since we’re on the same page, I hope — should we get to it?”
From the moment that Mark opens his textbook to a chapter on inverted parabolas, he assumes a personality you feel you haven’t seen from him before. You realize that you really do know him in only two limited capacities — his classroom persona that seems to really only view himself and the material, focused on the board and the professor’s words (even up until the useless anecdotes) to absorb as much information as possible, and his more genial customer service form, always happy to assist in the trained, easygoing way you’ve come to meet so often.
Right now, he’s a blend of both, yet somehow neither all at once. He’s quick to catch the parabolas you draw, either wrongly or downright poorly. Despite initial hesitation, he always manages to say something; there’s already a pattern to how he does it, from his slightly awkward, “Ah, sorry, actually —” to the way his finger traces over what you’ve written, outlining the right curve. You find his interruptions so endearing that you start drawing them wrong purposefully — not enough for him to realize your schemes in their entirety, but enough to cast you a few amused glances, like he can’t imagine why you’d map out such an absurd graph. You get the feeling he wants to actually laugh at how ridiculous you’re acting, but he can’t tell if you’re seriously struggling or not, so he settles for a smile he thinks he does well in keeping to himself, but that you catch anyway. He’s patient, even when you have to rip out pages from the back of his notebook because of your ‘mistakes,’ like he’s still catering to your request for an extra pump of syrup for your coffee on sleepy days.
But there’s also that side to him that comes out when he suddenly remembers the distance between you that, before today, had felt unlikely to be closed. It peaks at odd moments, like when you’re borrowing his pen because yours is currently holding your slowly unraveling bun up, and your fingers brush against his. It surfaces abruptly when you lean in to watch what he’s drawing until he realizes how close you are, arm lightly grazing his, and his pen freezes, ink blotting on the paper for a second. It’s in those times that you can almost hear his brain churning out questions — like he’s wondering if you’re just oblivious or if you’re doing something on purpose that he can’t quite believe. Like he wants to ask you what’s on your mind, but he just doesn’t know how.
If he asked, you would reply without missing a beat. The answer, after all, is simple (him). But Mark never raises the question, only does something without fully acknowledging what he’s doing — the adjustment of his glasses on the bridge of his nose, the ruffling of his hair as though to shake off his thoughts, the clearing of his throat to normalize his tone before he explains something you’ve just asked about. There’s always that light tinge of pink to his face that makes him look even more endearing, and it fades and returns every so often for the better part of two hours.
By the time he rubs oncoming fatigue out of his eyes, the sun has already set; there are far fewer people around you at this time, and for as much as you like spending time with him and breathing in the scent of his shirt — always a tinge of Downy, barely cutting through the much more overpowering scent of espresso and sugar — your back has begun hurting from your front-heavy posture and determination to have your face as close as rationally possible to Mark’s. Still, you don’t miss out on the fact that the act of him cracking his neck to relieve tension makes your lips curl inward, trying to stifle an inappropriate noise in reaction to the view.
“I feel like I talked your ear off,” he pipes up, sounding a bit sheepish. “Sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop once you’ve gotten started. I’m just hoping I didn’t bore you to death.”
“Meanwhile, I’m here hoping you aren’t sick of my questions already.” You smile, closing your notebook and hanging the clip of your pen on the spiral. Your arms stretch up first, followed by your back, a light twist to relax your posture into normalcy again. Mark’s breathing falls quiet, like he’d been preparing to say something in response but had let it die in the back of his throat instead. You let your eyes drop, expecting to see him looking at you, as he mostly has been — on and off — since his shift ended, but his eyes are far lower than yours, the telltale redness now growing in evident splotches across his cheeks.
The hem of your shirt has ridden up; while there’s nothing outrageous about it, there’s a short expanse of skin that it reveals, for a brief moment. His eyes are slightly glossy, brow furrowed like he’s trying to find a solution to something he can’t fully understand. You’re not even sure about what he could really be looking at, or if there’s something he’s just thinking of that caught his attention while his eyes focused on a rather unfortunate spot. To test your theory, you suck in your stomach slightly alongside an inhale.
It should be objectively funny to watch Mark blink unevenly, left eye going first before his right tries to catch up, but you manage to stifle your laughter — poorly, though, because you end up coughing a little and breaking him out of his strange trance. You avert your eyes quickly enough for him to look vaguely relieved that you hadn’t caught him looking. So he thinks, at least.
“Anyway.” You feel bad that you have to tear his mind away from whatever faraway land it must be trying to burrow a hole in; the dazed expression on his face dims into hastily hidden embarrassment. You don’t want him to feel awkward, so you just busy yourself with packing up, making an unnecessary show of stuffing your notebook back into your bag as if it isn’t half-empty at this point. “I really appreciate you taking the time to help me.”
“Any time.” His first attempt is a little raspy, maybe from overuse of his voice today, so he clears his throat and tries again. A slow smile builds on your lips. “Any time, really. I’m glad that this is actually helping you; you pick things up surprisingly fast.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah. Give it a couple of weeks, and you’ll probably be ready to tackle it on your own again, I’m sure.”
He smiles reassuringly, but all you can think about is how that’s not good. You should pretend to be a little dumber next time, or this will end much too prematurely.
The next five minutes pass in silence; you don’t expect to be knee-deep in conversation anyway since, as much as you try to convince him, you aren’t actually anywhere close to being those kinds of friends yet. There’s an unspoken rule to the give and take of things, where he pauses for you to get an item off the table and push it into your bag before he does the same with his own belongings. Neither of you really intersect paths, save for the moment you both grab your phones and stand at the same time.
His jaw falls open like he’s preparing to say something, then shuts as if he’s better decided against it. You decide to take the initiative to say what you’re assuming he wants to. “Same time, same table?”
“Oh — uh, yeah, for sure.”
You want to ask him to walk out with you. You want to lace your fingers with his, tug him out, and kiss him under the green and white glow of the sign outside. You want to know if kissing his collarbone means you’ll taste a hint of coffee. You think about doing it all somehow, especially since he’s fighting back a slight smile at the promise of tomorrow.
But it just isn’t the right time.
Instead, you place a hand on his shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. The slow movement of his throat — yet another hard swallow — isn’t lost on you, and his eyes land on where the two of you connect. With a grateful smile, you bid him a soft goodbye, taking your leave first.
You don’t look back — at least, not until you’re fully in the cover of the darkness outside. On the gravel path, just out of reach of the lamplight, you chance one last glance back into the store. Mark is still rooted to the same spot, his backpack slung over one shoulder, staring at the table like he’s dissociating from what just happened — like he can’t believe the last couple of hours.
Your smile grows when you see his own, and his hand comes around to the back of his neck, rubbing it lightly like it gives him small comfort to let him know that it was real.
Baby steps, you remind yourself. You’ve already got one foot in the door, after all.
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As the days trickle by, you fall into a more comfortable standing with Mark; there’s a routine to your meetings that seems to eliminate the initial and abrupt awkwardness of that first day. You come into that Starbucks at four, greet Mark, who doesn’t ever have to ask for your order, and spend the next hour and a half slowly sipping on it until the ice has thinned and watered down your drink substantially. In that time, you allow yourself to do whatever you want (as if you’ve ever done otherwise anyway), and what you usually want the most is a good view of him. You therefore use most of the minutes you have on hand to regard him from different angles — from the side when he’s frothing milk, upfront when he turns to leave cups on the pick-up counter, from the back when he’s clearing tables — interspersed with moments of checking your TikTok feed, clearing group chat messages, and sometimes re-curling your bangs with a portable iron from the school’s co-op center, a relatively new purchase you tote around these days. You do essentially anything in between to avoid acting too suspicious while he works.
Sometimes, you catch Mark’s eye too; the more your meetings increase in number over the course of a few weeks, the more deliberately he looks over at you, and the longer it lasts. You feel like you’ve made significant progress when your gazes lock and he smiles slightly, albeit a bit unsurely, instead of turning away like he used to. The other day, he’d even passed by while apologizing for how long you always waited for him — not that you ever minded, something you made a point to clarify with him before he walked away, carrying a couple of chairs from the back room with him to replace rickety ones.
That he’s able to transport them easily, as if he’s lugging a bag of apples from the grocery, does not escape your watchful eye.
What you like the most is that you start to learn more about him in a way that isn’t fueled only by your expectations and, therefore, limited by your imagination. You find out that he’s from a close-knit family with a rather cushy background, and this barista job is just for interest funding and experience, in that exact order. Most of his earnings are funneled into the things he collects, which apparently isn’t limited to comic books and special edition blu-rays with director’s cut but also a rather stupendous amount of PopMart blind box figurines. Apparently, he particularly likes the Skullpanda series even if he hasn’t completed it yet; your last session together had adjourned thirty minutes earlier than usual so that he could catch a pre-rush hour inner circle train to Hongdae, where the flagship store was set to open on that day. He’d promised to show you his pulls (as long as they weren’t embarrassing dupes). You learn that he likes to listen to loud music when he studies to stimulate his mind, and he has a playlist that’s just a jumble of songs from Punk Goes Pop volumes that makes him feel empowered for some absurd reason, like he’s going against the grain. You don’t really get it, but you do like that spiced-up rendition of Ariana Grande’s Problem that he let you listen to once.
Of course, there are things that you find out not through conversation but through continued, closer observation. You notice that he likes to put on chapstick even if his lips aren’t particularly dry, but he does worry on them often, most especially when he’s thinking hard about something. He has a habit of saying honestly… at the start of every other sentence, as if he’s concerned you won’t take his word on anything, even though he’s just talking about how unnaturally hot it was at noon despite it still being spring. He has long eyelashes that you’re equal parts attracted to and jealous of, and he bites the inside of his cheek whenever he wants to pep himself up after grueling shifts. He plays beats you’re not even sure he knows he’s creating against his knee with his fingers, so enthusiastic and consistent in this habit that you want to offer your thigh instead. His shoulders always go first before he laughs, and he does this thing where he raises his hand to cover his mouth at the start of it, which is a shame, because you’d do anything to keep seeing him smile like that — or, better yet, to be the reason for it.
Then there are those things you notice he tries to hide. He always turns his face halfway to the side when he blushes, something he seems to do without fail every time you smile at him. He has to temper the intensity of his grin when you take the time to compliment him on how cool his shirt is, or how nice his hair looks today, or how smart he is, like he doesn’t want you to know how good it makes him feel even if you want him to feel good about it, around you, because of you. Sometimes he denies it for the sake of responding, and his voice always lilts on the first syllable in his refusal to accept what you say, even though he knows you won’t take it for an answer.
And after a couple more careful experiments, you notice that Mark, out of the many things he’s interested in, seems to have a particular thing for your stomach.
You don’t know if it has anything to do with him not really seeing much of it in real life in his own time or if he just has his own kind of fixation on it, but you start to cotton on by the fourth time you meet. An hour of being hunched over a table that’s not at the greatest height in relation to your neck and torso has you stiff, and you’d leaned back in your chair, arms pulling to the air, hoping your spine might feel like realigning if you exerted enough tension pressure that way. Your shirt hadn’t ridden up this time, considering it had been tucked into your jeans, and it was because of this that you’d caught a flicker of something new in his face that you hadn’t seen before.
You could have sworn it looked like disappointment.
Of course, he hides it quickly, as he does with most of his emotional candor, but it’s enough to make you suspicious — enough to make you wonder if Mark is also just keeping something to himself. Or maybe you’re just projecting your own presently secretive nature onto him. Regardless, you think it’s odd that whenever you stand up or stretch, his eyes almost immediately fall to your midriff, like he wants to challenge your clothing into a staring contest before he thinks better of it.
You don’t mind, anyway. He can look as much as he likes. Maybe when the weather’s warmer, you’ll even cater to that interest and wear a crop top. Hopefully, that’ll be the push he needs to act on human instinct and ask you out or, like… bend you over. Maybe.
You’re often plagued with these kinds of thoughts in between the ones you try to keep as family-friendly as possible — now, more so than ever.
Sometimes, it’s easier, especially when you’re caught up in talks with him; despite the fact that he doesn’t seem like much of a conversationalist when it comes to generic matters, when either he or you are enthusiastic about a particular topic, he has a tendency to get carried away. There’s nothing impure about how his eyes light up when you remember to ask him about the movie he saw with his friends over the weekend or the way he hums old Nickelodeon cartoon theme songs under his breath whenever he’s looking for a page in the textbook. It’s more of a situation where you’ll observe something and immediately run with it despite it being an objectively normal action.
Like right now, as you’re watching him turn his pen between his fingers. Now, while he’s shaking his knee in mild impatience, as if he’s trying to will the answer to the worksheets you’ve both been trying to get through for the better part of the day faster. You’d made copies of the problems your professors had assigned and exchanged them under the premise of being able to practice more intensely.
However, whereas Mark is actually focused on solving, you’re just watching him out of the corner of your eye, wondering if he’s ever been told that his fingers are fuck-worthy on a singular, unique level or if it’d feel good for you to ride the thigh he’s currently moving, jeans and all. You consider the feeling of his warm palms on your bare waist as you do it, and you end up wondering if that’s what crosses his mind whenever he sneaks glances at you, too.
You’d know the answer to all those things if he’d fucking ask you out. Maybe you could do it after all. Maybe you should, instead of relying on slowly increasing the probability over such a long period of time. Maybe if you asked nicely, Mark might pull the shades down on the storefront windows and rail you against the glass.
You’re so lost in thought that it genuinely startles you when he plops his textbook over the worksheet, rattling your eraser dangerously close to the edge of the table. You’re still clutching your heart while he rubs his eyes a little too violently.
“Can’t,” he groans, and his neck gives into the weight of his head, allowing it to loll backward. “I feel like the numbers are just melting into each other. I swear, I thought I could read words out of them.”
“Maybe we were a little too ambitious with the double worksheet agenda,” you admit, even though you’ve barely gotten past half of yours and certainly haven’t touched a single item on his. “Should we call it a day for now?”
“Yeah,” he agrees, although he still takes the time to encircle his final answers before clapping his palms to his cheeks (an act that has your mind dangerously close to wandering off inappropriately again) to wake himself up. “Woah. I didn’t even notice how dark it is already. I’d say time flies when you’re having fun, but I’m not too sure about the ‘fun’ part of it…”
You trace his gaze towards the glass; the moon’s already out, surrounded by a smattering of low-light stars. You hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, probably because your mind had been on R-18 mode for most of the afternoon. Also, the days are getting generally shorter, but that fact doesn’t make you feel as embarrassed, at least.
“You got a ride?”
The question once again shocks you out of your small trance, and you turn back to him with wide eyes. “Well — no. Wait, I didn’t know you had a car. Why’d you take the subway, then?”
“Oh — no, sorry, I… don’t.” He looks suddenly sheepish, eyes dropping to the shiny surface of the table for a moment before they snap back up, as if he’s actually actively reminding himself to look at you. “I was wondering if you wanted me to — actually, more than that, are you going home already? Not that you need to stay; it’s not that important, but…”
You try to gloss over the fact that he had just been about to initiate another huge step in the right direction (i.e. offering to walk you home) by beaming at him, maybe a little too widely, if only to mask your disappointment at the sudden shift in conversation. “I have nothing waiting at home for me but a sandwich dinner and Singles Inferno, so hit me with whatever it is.”
“Oh, cool.” His lips turn up, and the corners shake, this show of happiness once again tamped down by his own inexplicable desire to maintain a safe distance. How are you supposed to tell him you’re desperate to bridge that gap without using those exact words? “I came from the flagship store yesterday — the one in Hongdae that I told you about?” He allows the smile to widen slightly when you nod in genuine understanding. “Got the last six boxes of the collection I’ve been trying to finish.”
You whistle appreciatively. “Can I ask you for a loan on my next phone bill? You know, once I’ve upgraded to something pricier.”
“Nah — just itching to complete the set,” he laughs. You wonder if he’s been doing that more often because he knows its crippling effect on you, though you doubt he’s that sly. Again, maybe you’re just projecting too much of your own motivations onto him. “This was probably about two months of saving up combined.”
“No new Iron Man issues to look out for, then?” Your voice is warm even though it takes on a teasing tone; Mark’s hand rubs the back of his neck, and his expression is a little sheepish, but you’re happy that the times he used to go completely quiet, opting only to blush at your attempts to act more familiar with him are pretty much gone now.
“Maybe next month.” You also like that he doesn’t really treat his hobbies as secrets, neither out of shame nor snobbishness. He explains these things to you the same way he does the topics you study — with an air of contentedness, like he’s happy someone listens to him without interrupting. On your end, you have no qualms with listening to his voice for hours, wondering when he’ll stop using it to greet you when you come through the door and when he’ll start saying your name in a way that makes you feel like you’re the only one he sees whenever you’re near. It’s a win-win situation (sort of). “I was actually debating between this collection and a really rare copy of Spi— well, never mind that. I just thought — since you were asking me a bit about blind boxes last time. You know, if you wanted to. With… me.”
As much as he’s become comfortable talking to you about things that don’t involve coffee orders and school, you can’t say that you aren’t doing your fair share of the work in connecting the dots; the demand for your efforts is exponentially higher in moments like this, when you think he’s trying to ask you something but can’t seem to find less-than-eager words to avoid what he thinks might spook you.
Luckily, he augments his fragments with action; reaching into his backpack — which you notice seems to be bulkier than usual — he starts extracting small brown boxes, all with the same design; it seems, for lack of better words, aesthetically gothic, and you reach out to pick one up, turning it over and examining the print on each side with vague interest. Mark starts laying them out on top of each other until there’s a small, somewhat unstable pyramid in front of him, then shifts his attention fully to you, just as you’re putting the box in your hand atop all the rest.
“I’d love to.” You beam as he does, and there’s a wondrous relief in his eyes that tells you he’s glad you manage to catch onto his words — or lack, thereof — surprisingly well. “For as long as you don’t blame me for any bad draws.”
“The contents have already been decided by my own hand — sort of,” he chuckles. “Point is, I would never do that to you. But I won’t lie; I kind of want to rely on your luck a little more.”
“What makes you think I’d have any of that running through my system?”
“Not sure — beginner’s luck, maybe? You just kind of look like one of those kinds of people to me — like… you’re just made of good things.”
You don’t know how to take this compliment; on the one hand, it’s easily one of the sweetest things Mark has ever said to you that doesn’t involve anything with actual sugar content. On the other, you know you’re not as lucky as he makes it sound, considering you’re still striking out on getting past the borderline of friendship with him. All you can do is smile, nodding and making to move closer to him by sliding into the next seat.
It’s hard to ignore the sight of him stiffening; something like surprise mingled with both fear and interest flashes strong across his face, but you don’t do anything to acknowledge the slight change in atmosphere, choosing to settle down comfortably and clap your hands. “So. What are the rules? What can I do, and what can’t I?”
“Uh.” His throat constricts at the right moment, the syllable getting caught and causing him to clear his throat. You know that this is the nearest you’ve ever been to him, the sleeve of your shirt tickling his arm. Upon closer, albeit brief inspection, you note that he’s also rather veiny. That doesn’t do your impurity any favors. “Not… really rules, or anything like that. Just — these are the ones I’ve been looking for. Not that you can really control it, but in case you were curious about that.”
You squint intently at the scaled-down images he points out. There’s one that looks like a penguin caught in an oil spill; another that seems to be in a polar bear costume, dozing; and — “What’s… halo? Halo…bios?”
“It just means marine life,” he answers quickly, like the thought means close to nothing to him to know something that obscure. Whoever said that smart is the new sexy wasn’t joking. “Like… all things that live in the ocean, that kind of thing.”
“And you know this because?”
He pauses, looking thoughtful. “I’m not sure. I guess I must have just learned it when I was curious about what it meant some time ago. Isn’t that how we all learn things?”
You shake your head incredulously, and he smiles a little apologetically. “You never cease to amaze me.” Your nail drums against the silhouette of one with a question mark on it. “What’s this supposed to be? Can you draw your own figurine, or something?”
“No.” He’s clearly amused, but his expression’s still patronizing enough for you to not feel too bad about saying something idiotic. “It’s a secret design — a money drainer, basically. You could buy a full set of this and still not get it. Some people will open hundreds without any luck, so it’s really rare.”
“You don’t want it?”
“I try not to get too caught up in the secret thing,” he admits. “Otherwise…”
“No rare print comic books for the rest of your life, basically?”
He taps his nose, and you both share another laugh. It’s nice, you think, to have come this far — to be someone Mark can share his interests and thoughts with. You may have been stretching the word to its limit when you first punched your way into his social life and called yourself his friend, but it feels more real now, more natural to think about and say. Even if he still sometimes seems to be hyperaware of the gap between the both of you, there’s no denying, at least, that it’s been significantly reduced, and this much is a testament to that.
“Well, leave it up to me. I’ll let all of this beginner’s luck rub off on you,” you announce with overflowing albeit unfounded confidence.
You both decide to open a box each at the same time; Mark suddenly panics and asks you not to unseal the foil bag right away without looking at the card inside first, earning him one slightly alarmed look followed by a burst of laughter at his pained expression when you pretend to rip open the packaging. Comparing pulls, you identify them using the set chart — your luck doesn’t seem to be operating at full capacity yet because you can only offer him the card of one that looks like a floppy pigeon, which he responds to with a slightly apologetic grimace before saying he’s already pulled that thrice in the past. He, on the other hand, is turning the card of the polar bear over in his palm, trying not to make you feel bad for your duplicate pull by slipping it under his textbook when your eyes land on it.
The second round isn’t much better; both of you manage to pull something he’s already added to his collection, and as you’re ripping the seal to your third box, he pauses and watches you. You think it’s because he’s concerned about the obvious shit luck you’ve had thus far and wants to snatch it from you before your negative energy transfigures whatever’s inside into something he doesn’t want, and you’re just about to offer the half-opened package to him before he pushes the one on his end to you.
“No way, Mark.” Your eyes are wide, a palm up to reject it. “If that turns out to be another dupe by my hand, I’m literally going to walk into oncoming traffic.”
He has to control his amusement at your words so that it doesn’t completely shake his voice into incoherence. “I picked all of these while I was there, so if anything, you’re only riding off my bad luck. Besides, this is your first time doing this. I want you to have fun.”
“But,” your voice is pained. “Your money.”
“It’s not a big deal. With how few I need to complete them, I was definitely bound to run into more repeats than new ones.” He taps the front of the textbook — or, at least, the part of it not buried under the figurines and sealing tapes yet. “Probability mathematics.”
“I thought we already ended the study part of the day,” you grumble but concede, putting aside the one you half-opened to tear the top of his. You’re careful when you shake out the foil packaging, making sure to place it upright on the table before extracting the card. Both of your faces fall — yours more than his — when you see it’s a repeat of the polar bear.
“Almost. It would’ve been a pretty lucky pull earlier, so it’s technically not bad,” he tries to reassure you, but you childishly feel like you’ve been the sole source of his disappointment thus far. “Try the last one.”
It’s irrational, but you’re suddenly anxious about it. For some reason, you’re worried that this will topple the carefully constructed ladder you’ve propped up against Mark’s tower of social defense. Even if he’s being genial about your rotten pulls, you don’t know how much of it is just resignation to dismay on his part.
You say a small prayer, then fully rip off the seal; you don’t even take out the packaged figuring anymore. You just shimmy the card out of the box, turning it over when you notice it’s upside down.
For a moment, your shoulders deflate. It’s closest to this pastel purple figurine in the middle of the line-up, its stupid puckered lips almost taunting you. He hadn’t even mentioned it as something he’s looking for, so you almost feel like this has come to a horrible full circle. But then he grabs the box, checks the list, and looks back at your card again. He looks shell-shocked, and you’re not sure if it’s the strong air conditioning directed towards the two of you or if it’s just his hands, but the image he’s holding is shivering slightly.
You look more closely at it, and something just doesn’t feel right. Color palette aside, there are notable differences — different colored lips, a more intricate ear design, and closed eyes. It’s…
“Dream eater,” Mark’s voice is hushed, almost reverent, and very, very close to your ear. “It’s the secret one. You’re… incredible.”
“What are you talking about,” your words are just as raspy; you’re not sure if you’re actually choked up with emotion or something — over a figurine, you have to remind yourself. “You picked all of this. I just ripped open the box.”
The hush that falls over the both of you feels very concrete, weighty on your shoulders. His fingers creep towards the foil packet — the only one he actually opens because there’s no way he’s not keeping it. The shiny purple head gleams under the fluorescent, the glitter around the star and moon designs catching the light as he turns it left to right, like he’s worried it’s a fake. You can tell why people want these things so much; there’s a thrill in you that lingers, makes you feel warm and alert. It’s anticipation, despair, excitement, and triumph all in one sitting.
You’re stroking the smooth curve of the design by the ears lightly when Mark speaks up again and says the most outrageous thing.
“I want you to have it.”
“What?” You actually have to pop your ear canal in front of him with your pinky to make sure he knows how ludicrous he sounds. “This is… you said it was crazy rare.”
“Yeah. And you pulled it, with your magic. That’s like… unimaginable luck. Even more than beginner’s luck.”
“Like I said, I literally just opened the box.”
“No — you have like… the golden touch.”
“Please,” you hiss, a genuine testiness to your voice. “Do not. I was just here for the ride — the experience, and all.”
“Seriously, take it.”
“Absolutely not—”
It’s a chaotic moment of him trying to hand you the figurine and you outright rejecting it, with both your palms working hard to push it back to him. Instead of nudging the plastic back, though, you end up placing the full force of your hands against his fingers.
There’s no actual spark when you touch, but your reactions make it feel like there might as well have been; you even lock eyes in startled unison, like you can’t believe that just happened, before you pull away quickly, Mark drawing the figuring back to his torso while looking away towards the counter, where a lowerclassman is wiping down the stains. You want to scream at your warped reflection in the window. You barely initiate contact with him, but you imagine that if you ever did, you would prefer to not be saying something as abjectly negative as absolutely not while doing so.
Your mind flails in an attempt to mitigate the issue and water down the embarrassment, and clearly he’s struggling to figure it out too, because he pipes up before you can piece your thoughts together.
“No, really.” His tone is a lot milder and, consequently, a lot more persuasive this way. “You should take it. I want you to.”
“It’s not mine. This is your thing — your hobby.”
“That’s why I’m giving it to you. I swear — I want you to keep it.”
“Why?”
He lapses into silence again, but his face is much redder than earlier. His mouth opens in an attempt to say something, but he just manages to uh his way back into a state of quiet, which gives you a chance to speak instead.
“We can… share it,” you suggest. “Shared custody…. ish.”
His eyebrow cocks involuntarily, and his jaw falls again, but all he does in actual response is nod — slowly at first, then with more sureness to the act.
“Yeah. We can share it. I’d… like that.”
You’re glad that the bulk of the awkwardness has fizzled out fairly easily, and when you think about it, this feels like a pretty good course of action; you like that it’s this little link between the two of you now — something you share that no one else can touch.
Mark, you notice, is smiling as well — more to himself than towards you, it seems. His thumb grazes across the face of the figurine, slow across the lips, and you’re once again falling into a pit of nonsense by wondering when he’d do that to you.
“Thanks for staying with me, _________,” he finally says, and your heart jolts and melts all at once. “And for… doing this. For chatting with me. And giving me your luck, and all that. Great way to end the day… with you.”
You say no problem, but you instantly regret it when you realize you could have just said it didn’t have to end just yet.
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“__________? Hello? Come back down to Earth?”
“Shut up,” you sigh at the guy seated across you — Seo Youngho, an upperclassman, your Gender Studies classmate, and current project partner, waves in front of your face. You shoo his hand away, which only joins his other one as he throws them in defeat above his head. “Stop moving. Be quiet. Don’t talk.”
“That’s the same thing as shut up and be quiet. What’s up with you?” He demands. “Fifteen minutes ago, you were full of ideas. Now I feel like I’m talking to a wax figure.”
You’d been engrossed in your report for the last hour and a half, and the subject matter is admittedly something you enjoy — the role of gender in Twenty-First Century Korean marketing and advertisement, a title Youngho had taken more than ten minutes to type into the Google Docs header because he was pissed off at how the numbers looked like in the fonts he chose. He’s an enthusiastic classmate and someone you’ve come to be friendly with, not only because he’s genuinely approachable but also because he has fits of nosiness and talkativeness at the strangest moments, so a chunk of your relationship is mostly based on social terrorism on his part. You like him well enough most of the time — save for the last fifteen minutes of this hour.
Because Mark had just come in for his shift fifteen minutes ago, and suddenly Youngho is much too noisy for your taste, and his head is honestly way too big to the point that it gets in the way of your opportunities to see Mark behind the counter. You even resent him for choosing a booth instead of your usual table all of a sudden, because your view of the central barista’s area is much more limited from this angle, especially since the huge espresso machine is in the of your field of vision.
You’re also (currently and abruptly) mad at Youngho because you remember that he’s the reason you’ve had to skip out on a couple of sessions with Mark. Like, it technically isn’t his fault that you have a lot of research to do for the literature review section of the paper, nor is it his fault that this is your final requirement that comprises a whopping forty percent of your grade, but like… you’ll blame him anyway. So you’re much more irritable, and you’ve definitely been missing Mark’s presence. In fact, you kind of just want to shove Youngho’s balloon head away and call Mark over to sit with you, but you’re not that much of an animal to actually do that.
Probably.
There had been inquisitiveness across Mark’s face when he’d come in; his eyes had trailed to the table at which you usually sat, surprised to find two guys hunched over a single phone there instead of the usual you, waiting for him with your eyes bright and your smile wide. You’d like to think it’s because he’s gotten as used to seeing you as you’re used to waiting to see him — like he just expects you to be there.
You hadn’t really known how to call his attention to where you were, especially since Youngho was prattling very matter-of-factly about the academic journal he’d unearthed yesterday and how he thought it would be useful in reshaping the methodology of your paper (whatever). There was a moment in which you briefly considered ordering another cup of coffee just to get in line to talk to him, but your hands were already shaking from the venti you’d had to keep yourself from passing out in front of your partner.
So you’re more than relieved when, half an hour into his shift, Mark finally steps out from behind the huge machine, a mug of water for himself in hand, and turns away from the front of the store to drink it — only for your eyes to lock as he twists his torso in your general direction.
The mug stops just inches from his lips, but you could swear he smiles at you briefly when he recognizes you, so you return the favor. Youngho’s face contorts into abject befuddlement, turning around to see what you’re grinning at.
“Oh, you poor sap,” he snorts, finally letting the puzzle pieces fall into place.
“What?” You’re still distracted even if Mark has taken a gulp of water and is now attending to a gaggle of girls still in the throes of discussing what to order.
“What what? You gonna spend the rest of the day eyefucking Mark Lee from over here? At least let me get a different table.”
“Shut up,” you repeat sullenly, coming back down to his level and finally — albeit reluctantly — meeting his eye (just because Mark isn’t looking your way). “What were you saying about the sample size?”
“That it’s much too large to be feasible, a point we closed twenty fucking minutes ago,” he says pointedly. “Is it a thing for baristas or a thing for smart guys?”
“It’s a thing for Mark Lee,” you sigh, following Youngho’s suit and shutting your laptop close. You’re at least glad he’s not annoyed that you’re delaying work for a crush, or maybe he’s also just equally lazy at this point. “You ever look at someone and think you would give it all up for a chance to hit that?”
“No, because this isn’t a porn movie, and I’m clearly not the main character in whatever’s going on in there.” He jabs at your forehead; you swat his hand away again.
“Well, I would.”
He rolls his eyes. “So do it, dumbass.” He says this so simply, like he can’t imagine why you’d be holding yourself back, which is a valid thing to feel, except it’s not really any of his business.
“Can’t.”
“Because?”
“Because it doesn’t fit into my elegant master plan. Also because I want him to ask me out. I just want that victory.”
“Oh yeah, there it is.” Youngho leans over, wiggling his fingers at your ears like he’s greeting a next-door neighbor. “Hey, delusion. Good to see you. Do you even understand how crazy it is that you’re taking a Gender Studies class while waiting for your dick-in-shining-armor like a damsel in distress?”
“Asshole,” you grumble, violently opening your laptop monitor again. “Get back on Google Drive.”
Thankfully, Youngho complies, and the next two hours pass in relative silence and productivity, with you hammering out a vague references list that he promises to format in your stead so you can ‘spend more time dreaming about Mark Lee between your legs.’ You want to strangle him, but there are far too many people in the cafe for you to get away with it. Also, aforementioned Mark Lee would only be a witness to your criminal record, and while you think there’s something romantic in killing for love, or whatever, you’re not sure it’d make the best impression on him.
“Next week’s my birthday,” Youngho announces as he stands to tug on his jacket.
“Congratulations,” you say wryly, peeking over his bulletin board torso to see Mark tugging off his apron and picking up his school bag. Your heart hammers in your chest as he looks over at you briefly, and something like embarrassment passes over his face before he busies himself with neatly folding the fabric. “Go away.”
“Usually people look uncomfortable for not knowing and then start thinking about what gifts to get the celebrant, but I always felt you were kind of a revolutionary.” He snaps his fingers right in front of your eyes, and you look up at him, a little offended. “I’m having a get-together — and by get-together, I mean it’s gonna be a rager. You should come.”
“When?”
“Next Thursday.”
“Can’t,” you chew on your lip, wondering if Mark is leaving. His movements seem particularly slow, but you wonder if he’s just taking his sweet time because he has nothing better to do. Of course, he would have something better to do if Youngho stopped fucking obscuring you from him and vice versa. “Busy. School… whatever.” Not completely untrue. Most of what you do with Mark has to do with school.
“This moony-eyed thing is just not for you, I fear.”
“Are you going to be here all day?”
“Are you? Why don’t you just fucking ask him out, you lunatic?” You can’t imagine why he sounds so exasperated. It’s not like this is his problem — or his business, for that matter. “Maybe if you did, you could fuck him and move on with your life and be an actual contributor to society’s development.”
“Has anyone ever told you how nosy you are?”
“Constantly.” He brings his palms down on the table, the thud shaking you out of another oncoming stupor. “Think about it. Maybe it’ll make you stop making that stupid face.”
“You’ve got a stupid face,” you mumble, sulking as he pinches your cheek as a goodbye before heading out of the shop.
At least you finally get to see Mark in full, glorious view — and you get to watch him come closer, although his stride is somewhat cautious.
“Hey.” Even his voice sounds unsure — almost like the way he used to sound earlier in your friendship. “I didn’t want to interrupt you and… your friend?”
“Oh. Well, you wouldn’t have been interrupting,” you inform him, completely genuine. “He was spouting a lot of nonsense.”
“You guys seemed pretty close.”
“I guess it’s a proximity thing,” you sigh, and Mark raises his eyebrows slightly in question. “We’re partners.”
“Oh.” The way he draws out the syllable is slow. “That definitely makes sense.”
The silence stretches out between the two of you again, with Mark checking his shoelaces. You almost grab your head; it hadn’t occurred to you until now how damaging missing meetings with him would be to your friendship. You feel like you’re slowly being dragged back to square one, and you want to give him an explanation.
“He’s actually… I haven’t been able to see you because I’ve been working on something with him.” you offer, trying to answer a question he didn’t even ask. “Sorry about that. I swear I’ll be back on track tomorrow.”
“No, no — I completely understand.” He pauses thoughtfully. “Thank you… for telling me, though. I— uh, appreciate that.”
“I’d love to see you tomorrow, though.” You try injecting more pep into your voice. “I’ve really been behind on my algebra. I’ve definitely been drowning without you.”
“Oh, yeah.” A small smile graces his lips, but you can’t tell if the reluctance behind it is from fatigue or something that looks oddly like sadness. “I’m down for tomorrow. Same time, same table, right?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Cool. See you, _________.”
You watch him turn on his heel, walking to the front door, and something like fear mingled with desperation clutches your heart. Fuck the traditional route, you think. You don’t know what it is about how he’s acting now, but it’s making you feel like he’s slipping through your fingers. All that hard work — there’s no way you’re letting him go.
“Mark, wait.”
You’re at his side, fingers curled into the sleeve of his jacket before you can figure out exactly what you want to say. You feel as surprised as he looks at your sudden liveliness in action, and his gaze trails from your clenched fist to your face slowly, like he’s trying to memorize this whole position.
Your exhale’s shaky, but even still, you try not to sound overtly self-conscious when you ask, “Do you like Chinese food?”
Something in the furrowing of his brows tells you he can’t seem to see where this conversation is headed, and that slightly bothers him. “I like it well enough. Why?”
“There’s this really good dim sum buffet near my mom’s office. We tried it before — the Xiaolongbao is awesome.”
“Hey, that sounds pretty cool. I love Xiaolongbao. I’ll definitely have to check it out then.”
You want to tear your hair out. “How about — you know, checking it out with me? Tonight? You know… together. With me.” You already fucking said that.
You’ve never seen Mark blink this rapidly; he looks like he’s trying to crunch large numbers in his head. A small part of you actually worries that he’s malfunctioning, but just when you think he’s going to glitch out completely, he clears his throat. It bothers you how uncomfortable he looks. “Tonight? Oh man… it’s my cousin’s birthday tonight. I can’t… reschedule. Well, obviously. Maybe some other… time?”
Your ‘oh, yeah’ is small, and so is the ghost of Mark’s smile. You can’t help but feel like he’s pitying you a little, although he doesn’t seem like the type, but the thought of it alone makes you want to puke. He makes no motion to move, and you think he’s extending this awkward moment out on purpose until you realize you’re still hanging onto him and he has no way of telling you to let go nicely.
Fingers unfurling from his sleeve, you take a careful step back, but when he walks away, it feels like you’ve gone much, much further away.
The worst part is that you can’t even figure out why.
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Luckily, the next few times you see Mark, you manage to rebuild a rather shaky bridge back to where you had been. You even manage to strong-arm him into sharing an apple fritter one afternoon, and you know it’s a bit sad to think about it a particular, untrue way, but you can’t help but pattern what you’re doing into some kind of pseudo-date. Pathetic isn’t a word you normally associate yourself with, but you’ve been borderline desperate for progress where there seems to be none, so you take small victories where you can get them.
Unfortunately, you haven’t been able to revisit your stupid dim sum plan; sometimes, he says he has somewhere important to be, but most of the time, it’s actually your fault. No — it’s Youngho’s fault, because he keeps bothering you to finish the project. You’re aware that he can’t do it himself, but since he’s informed of your current plight, he could at least stand to be more sympathetic.
And you hate the way Mark looks every time you splutter out that you have to take a rain check for that reason; it’s not even disappointment, or something, which would be much more understandable. It’s this mysterious kind of faraway look, where his eyes glaze over a bit and he seems suddenly very lost in thought — or completely dissociated. He never strays away from his normal response of “next time, then,” but that ‘next time’ fades into the weekend and into the start of next week, and you have to spend every other evening with an annoying Seo fucking Youngho on a Google Meets call instead of eating soup dumplings loveshot style with Mark Lee.
Thursday night rolls around, and the former performs the most irritating stunt yet: blowing up your phone with so many KakaoTalk messages that it almost buzzes off the table during your session with Mark. Luckily, he seems to have learned a thing or two from his comic books, catching it before it hits the floor.
“You sure you don’t want to answer it?” He asks, gingerly handing the phone to you like he’s afraid it’s going to explode from all the pinging.
“Without the shadow of a doubt,” you sigh, flipping the screen downwards. Buzz.
“It kind of seems important. Or, like… urgent.”
“He’ll live. Unfortunately.”
Mark falls silent, fiddling with the page he’s on. He’s neatly highlighted the formulas on the page with blue ink, and his finger keeps scratching at the slightly wet paper. Buzz.
“Didn’t you say you two were partners?”
“Yes. Also unfortunately.” Youngho is actually a great person, but you kind of hate how Mark’s paying more attention to his texts than to you right now. “What did you get for number ten?” Buzz.
“A hundred and twe— are you really just going to let it keep ringing like that? What if he’s… I don’t know. In trouble? Like, he needs you?”
You smack your phone on its back, hoping that the punishment reaches Youngho because he absolutely is in trouble — only with you. “He’s just making a racket because it’s his birthday and he probably wants a bunch of people to trash his parents’ house, or something.”
“Sounds like fun.” The dubious tone in Mark’s voice indicates that his idea of fun definitely isn’t that. Buzz.
“Not really, but I assume he’ll only pipe down if he manages to get his way.”
“He must really want you there.”
There it is again — that weird, distant expression that makes you feel like he’s trying to free himself from the tethers of the earth. You close your textbook in defeat; it wasn’t even like you got the answer to number ten correct anyway. Buzz.
“He just wants everyone there, I bet. But I probably should show up so he shuts up.”
“Oh — yeah, okay. We’ll call it a day, then?” He’s avoiding your eye as he starts packing his things, which is actually impressive because you have practically nothing but your book to keep in comparison to his pencils and protractor, so you just stare, willing him to look at you.
You want to know what’s going on in his head. You want to know what’s going on in his heart — what he thinks of you, why he seems warm one second then almost like a stranger the next. You want to know if he knows you like him and if him not doing anything even if he knows is a sign that he doesn’t like you back. You want to know if he’d let you kiss him, if he’d kiss you first, if you can meet not because of sweet cream cold brews or algebra but because you just want to be together.
You just don’t know how to ask. For as much as you like him, for as much as you want him, you haven’t figured out the most basic part of this — if you mean anything more than a two hour talk to him at all.
“Mark.” This feels awfully like the dim sum conversation, only somehow ten times more disastrous. “Come with me.”
“Sorry?” The appalled look on his face makes you squirm in your seat.
“I don’t really want to go, but maybe if we go together… we can just hang out a bit and leave once it’s boring… I think it’d be fun,” you explain lamely, deciding at the last second to drop the with you that had originally come with your sentiment.
“I don’t think your… partner will like someone uninvited showing up.”
“I’m inviting you.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”
“You’d be, like, my saving grace or something — my excuse to scram. We’ll say we came right from a study session; we only popped in halfway through for the sake of greeting him a happy birthday. Then we can just go. We can say — uh, we’ve got more work to do.” You’re practically begging him at this point, and you don’t even get why. You just don’t want him to leave looking the way he does — confused and a little detached. You want the Mark that had smiled at you while giving you your coffee — the one that had kindly pointed out an arithmetic mistake in the most gentle way possible. You want to open blind boxes with him, whine about your rotten luck, and part ways with his warmth still against your coat sleeve.
You don’t know what comes over you then, but you pluck up the courage and initiative to slip your hand in his. He stiffens a little, but you don’t care; your fingers squeeze his in urging.
Something in his expression breaks — cracks first, then falls away, before he’s nodding, still looking vaguely thoughtful.
“If you think it’ll help you, then… okay.”
The bus ride to Youngho’s neighborhood is uneventful because it’s quiet. You stand close to Mark at all times, but you barely touch, save for the times your knuckles accidentally brush his when you lurch forward slightly as the vehicle comes to a dangerously abrupt stop. He doesn’t ask anything about the party or the company that’ll populate it, which is just as well, because you don’t have a clue.
You know it’s the right house because the door’s wide open and there’s music coming from inside; you can’t make out much more than the deep bass pumping through the concrete, but you’re pretty sure it’s making your heart jump in your chest even more than it already is. There are quite a few people you vaguely recognize on the lawn, and even more that you absolutely don’t; a good number of them glance at you and Mark as you step through the threshold then look away, probably deciding you’re of no real consequence or harm to their moods.
Youngho’s easily spottable because of his massive height; he towers over the rest of his guests, and the red plastic cup in his hand calls even more attention because he’s lifted it over everyone else’s heads. You throw Mark an apologetic glance that he responds to with a short nod before you dive into the crowd alone, trying to weave your way to where you’d last seen Youngho.
“Bro, finally!” Youngho greets you, pretty much shouting over the music. “Where’s the gift? Did you leave it on the table?”
“Happy birthday, Youngho. Do you know how close you were to being blocked?”
“I see you brought mister espresso with you,” he ignores your comment completely, nodding to Mark. When you turn back to see him, you notice he’s squishing his arms closer to his sides, trying to minimize the space he takes up. “So what? Y’all get to hook up already?”
“No. I brought him here because we were in the middle of something and someone,” you stop, offering him a pointed look that’s also ignored. “Wouldn’t stop texting.”
“Cockblock,” the guy next to Youngho, who you now realize has been eavesdropping, singsongs. “Oh, sorry. You looked angry when you stomped through the crowd, so I wanted the juicy details. Name’s Jaehyun.”
You take the hand he offers you briefly, introducing yourself. When you say your name, realization dawns on his face, and he jabs his forefinger at you.
“Oh, dude. You’re that girl — the Starbucks Showstopper.”
“The what?”
“That’s what his friends call you.” He scratches his ear, seemingly racking his brain for more information. “I’m with Mark and a couple of his friends — Lee Donghyuck and Na Jaemin — in College Algebra.”
You completely gloss over the fact that you’ve finally found out the real government identity of the mysterious figure named ‘Hyuck.’ “They… talk about me?”
“From time to time. Not really. Once or twice. Donghyuck only calls you that because Mark apparently keeps blowing them off to hang out with you.”
“How do you know this?”
“I have ears. It’s not hard when they talk like no one’s around.”
You shush Youngho’s exclamation of and you’re saying I’m nosy?, your heart hammering hard in your ears, practically drowning out the music. “What… what else did they talk about?”
“Not sure. Something about not seeing you that often these days. Jaemin teasing Mark about getting dropped now that you don’t need his help anymore. Donghyuck piling on and saying you’ve got a boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.” Jaehyun still inches away from you when your voice rises in pitch and decibel. Some people around you start, then move away as well, as if scared you’re going to incinerate them. “They were just teasing him that you probably ditched him after you started dating someone. Your partner in some project, or what.”
“Oh gross.” The realization hits you like a speeding truck. Youngho’s expression is affronted.
“First of all, you bitch. Second of all, as if I would date someone who didn’t even buy me a gift. Or want to come. Or yelled at me after coming. Wow — now that I think about it, you’re terrible, _________.”
“Oh, shit; that someone was you?” The only person that isn’t tense in this conversation is Jaehyun, who laughs point blank at Youngho’s sour face. “I think they were offering to put you into one of their Death Note notebooks. Sucks for you, hotshot.”
“What a smudge on my good name,” Youngho sighs mournfully. “On my special day, too.”
“I desperately need you two to be quiet for one second. I have to — where’s Mark?”
Even when you stand on your tiptoes, you’re not nearly as tall as the two of them; it’s Youngho, with his freakish height, who manages to spot Mark by the bowl of nachos, looking as though he’s trying to decide if they’re safe for consumption. You hardly excuse yourself; actually, all you say is a distracted “later” that dismisses Jaehyun’s cooing that something’s going down and you should clue him into all the mess later as a thank you. Your appreciation of his sudden and somewhat short-lived presence in your life is still up in the air.
Mark’s busy making a sour face at the sip of punch he’d just taken; he only straightens up when you’re right in front of him, putting his cup down next to the nachos. “Hey. Did you get to find… um…”
“That’s not important.” Your hand bunches the fabric of his jacket in a death grip, something he barely has time to register, let alone question, before you’re tugging him through the throng of people. You want somewhere quiet, somewhere private, and you initially consider the lawn, except you know it’s strewn with cups and has stragglers debating whether to go home or not. You can’t risk any of them being expert eavesdroppers like Jaehyun, so you make a beeline for the stairs instead.
“We’re not leaving yet?” He has to shout over the music, but there’s no resistance in his stride; he follows you up and waits patiently, although a little perplexed, as you check the doors on the second floor. Two are locked, one is a bathroom, and the other is a messy, musk aftershave-scented place you can only presume is Youngho’s room. Talking in front of a sink and a toilet doesn’t feel like it’ll be very productive, so you just drag Mark into the bedroom, kicking aside the crumpled shirt on the floor — which you could’ve sworn you’d seen Youngho wear for class yesterday. “_________, what’s going on?”
“Mark Lee,” you burst out, ignoring the fact that his eyes widen slightly at your tone. “What’s your fucking deal?”
You don’t think you’ve ever sworn in front of him before; that much is evident when he continues to gawk silently, unable to find words to respond to your question. Or maybe it’s just the volume and force with which you demand an answer. The problem is that you don’t even know what kind of reply you want. A small part of you nags that this is uncalled for, especially at this level, with you practically caging him into an unknown room. In fact, even now, you’re still embarrassed at your behavior, wondering if you’ve gone too far and stepped over a line between you.
But the source of all your frustrations is, in fact, that line — one so strangely drawn, clear at some points and almost invisible at others. Sometimes, he seems simply content with the barest minimum of friendship: talking to you, helping you, politely laughing at your (terrible) jokes. But there are also times he blushes too hard for it to not mean anything, times that he makes you feel like you could mean a little something more to him too.
Yet, from there, he wavers, stepping back so as not to get entangled in something you don’t understand — like when he grows distant every time you mention Youngho to him. You don’t understand why he would unless he echoed, even just a little, the longing in you. But you also don’t get why he stays and builds more walls around himself, like he’s determined to ignore all the other signs — like he doesn’t want to know if it’s really true and will just accept the assumption that it is. You hate not knowing where you stand with him, and while you could easily ask, you know you don’t want to.
And for a long time, you’ve convinced yourself that it’s because you want to see Mark step out of his comfort zone and initiate something, but the ugly truth is staring at you: it’s simply just that you can’t stand the idea of seeing him come to the conclusion that you can’t be anything more to him than someone he makes a sweet cream cold brew for every so often.
There’s a moment of tense silence between you two, where you’re just staring at each other — him, perplexed, and you, agitated — and the only sound that passes is the faint but unmistakable voice of Youngho going who has the cake cutting knife? from somewhere down below. You try not to get caught up in the fact that Mark still looks cute when he’s dumbfounded.
“Sorry?”
“What,” you repeat pointedly. “Is your deal? Why have you been acting so weirdly around me these days? I thought — I thought we were… getting closer. I thought… we…”
You’ve confirmed it now; you’re the epitome of cowardliness. You can’t even say I thought we liked each other — because you know that you do, but you still can’t honestly, assuredly tell if he does. Maybe you just read too deeply into the smallest things — smiles before he asks for your order, glances at you when he thinks you’re not looking, sharing the dream eater figurine — to fuel your own emotions without really checking the depth of his.
“I thought we were cool,” you reroute your words, and they come out flat and lame. “But just when I think you’re warming up to me, you suddenly pull away. Like… you’re afraid of me. Or you don’t like me. I don’t know.”
“It’s not — I don’t — I’m not afraid of you,” he stumbles over his words, and even in the darkness of this space, you see his face turn bright red, very quickly. His feet shuffle, not because he’s lost his balance but because he seems to want to get rid of a sudden restlessness. “I do like you. We are — we were getting — we’re close. We — we’re friends. You said that, and we are.”
“Is it only because I say we are that you agree?”
“What? No, I—” His hand passes over his face, slowing at the curve of his chin. “I really like being friends with you. I like being around you.”
“Then why do you act so weird these days? Like — you’ll be fine one moment, then you’ll back off, like you suddenly remembered you don’t want to be around me.”
“It’s not like that. I’m — I don’t get…” He takes a deep inhale, recalibrating himself for a moment before his voice comes out again, less strained this time. “I just don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me.”
“How could I?” There’s something more than confusion coloring your voice; there’s hurt, too, and he looks as surprised as you feel at hearing it. “I wanted to be your friend. I was the one that asked you to hang out. I was the one who wanted you to talk to me, to help me, to go to a goddamn dim sum place with me. Why would I feel uncomfortable? Or are you just using this as some roundabout way to say you feel uncomfortable?”
Mark falls silent, and you don’t know why this speaks volumes all of a sudden. His eyes are trained to the tips of his sneakers, which are rising in soft bumps every few seconds; he’s curling his toes inside them. You feel like you’ve gotten the worst answer possible, and something grows cold in your chest.
“You feel uncomfortable around me.” You rehash, but it’s no longer a question. “You don’t know how to get rid of me.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“You think I’m only using you.”
“No.”
“Then what?” Your voice breaks, no longer out of anger, but a desperate sadness. The moment your eyes feel hot and prickly, you decide you want to end the conversation. It’s embarrassing, you think, for someone like Mark Lee — whom you like, who only ever sees you as a friend — to see you get choked up at a fucking birthday party at someone else’s house.
A beat later, you’re mumbling a half-hearted forget it, and you detest overdramatics, but you hate the idea of being in a room with someone who’ll never return your feelings even more right now; you push past him, already on the thought of calling a cab home instead of taking the bus so that no half-drunk businessmen coming from their company dinners see you crying.
But something warm wraps around your wrist, then closes over your hand, and you’re unable to move, Mark’s palm pressed against the back of yours. When you look back, you notice he’s still not looking at you, but his ears are practically on fire with how red they are, and you feel his fingers tighten slightly, tremble slightly against yours.
“It’s not that. I didn’t ever want you to think — I heard about you two. That you were dating someone. Seo Youngho.”
“What does that matter?” Your words come out a little more bitterly than you expect, and you have to remind yourself to reel it in. “That doesn’t explain your discomfort.”
“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he repeats, still evidently careful in choosing his words. “Because you wanted to be friends.”
“I don’t understand,” you state bluntly. In the back of your mind, you note that Mark’s grip keeps tightening and loosening, unsure of whether to keep holding on or let go. But there’s something else, too — the soft graze of skin against yours, his thumb gliding over your knuckles.
“That was all you said you wanted to be, right?” He waits for a response, but when you don’t give him one, he lets out a shaky breath and continues. “You kept saying — we were friends. You wanted us to be close like that. I just wanted to respect it, even if…”
“Respect what?”
“That you didn’t want… anything else.”
The music downstairs is a bit tamer now; you hear the door opening and closing every so often, signaling guests leaving here and there, but there are still enough footsteps downstairs for you to know that there’s a crowd Youngho hasn’t gotten rid of and therefore has to attend to. That much is good; you’d get slapped with a homicide charge if he came up here all of a sudden.
“You were jealous.”
Mark’s fingers pinch the bridge of his nose for a moment. “I tried to stop. I don’t have a lot of practice with — well, I didn’t know how to approach the situation. I thought I was still acting normally; I didn’t think… I didn’t want you to feel weird and stop hanging out with me just because… I couldn’t fix it.”
“Your friends are assholes,” you mumble, and he finally meets your eye, equal parts startled and amused. “We aren’t. Weren’t. We never were dating.”
“Even without that, I thought… it was a bit embarrassing. Liking someone like you — someone as pretty as you, as nice as you — I thought it would make you feel weird. Then you’d start avoiding me too. Or, worse, you’d keep doing it just because… you… felt bad for me.”
You don’t know what you find more ridiculous — that you hadn’t seen figured it out or that you could have avoided all of this if you’d just been a little more honest with him too. Mark’s hand starts loosening around yours, a little too much, and you turn your palm and grip his hand before he can escape. He stiffens again, just like earlier, but you now understand better why he does.
“I just wanted to keep hanging out with you as much as I could. I thought… It’d be fine, just spending time with you, and I’d be able to like you for a while, on my own, then…” He looks a little pained. “Then just let you go. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry you couldn’t let go?” You sigh softly, your palm guiding his until they connect, face to face, and you can finally lace your fingers into his. There’s no resistance, but his hand trembles slightly in yours still. “If there’s anything you should be apologizing for, it’s that you ever thought of doing it.”
Something clears in the air, lightens in his expression, and he chuckles, albeit a little shyly still. “It’s because I never thought someone like you would like someone like me.”
“I like you.” And it feels right to say it now, not at all out of the blue, never in fear of an answer he’s already given. “I like you when you smile at me every time you ask for my order. I like that you never get impatient when I’m getting my answers wrong. I like seeing you excited when you talk about a new series you’re looking forward to — something new you really want to collect. When you blush, when you laugh loudly, when you spin your pen in your hand — I like you in all those times.”
“Even when I’m jealous?”
“Especially when you are.” Your free hand comes up to cup his jaw, and you’re reminded of the fact that you’ve wanted to feel the strength of the angle under your palm for ages now. It’s not at all a disappointment, and your heart flutters irregularly in knowing you could’ve done this a long time ago, but it doesn’t matter because you’re doing it now, and fuck if Mark Lee doesn’t look good this close to you. “So be jealous — because now, you know you can be.”
Kissing him is better than you imagined, and you’ve imagined a little too much to be embarrassed at this point; there’s a heat to his lips that matches the one across his face, an upturn to them that makes you smile too. The setting’s not at all an expected one, but you’ll take it, not because it’s dark or because it’s private but because Mark’s in here with you, and you would have kissed him in a brightly lit football field full of people for as long as he’d let you.
You’d like to think he’s flushed for a reason other than shyness when you pull away, even if his laugh is quiet and breathy. In fact, when you murmur not enough, he’s the one that closes the gap this time, offering freely what you ask for with such little eloquence. The natural trepidation in his mouth relaxes, gives way to a curiosity that keeps you locked for so long that you forget you need to breathe, much more intent on finding out if Mark’s tongue tastes as good as you’ve imagined for so long.
It doesn’t; it tastes even better.
It’s still not enough, not by a long shot, but you have to resurface before you pass out like this, and even he looks a little dazed when you pull away — not in a bad way, with a grin on his face that you can only classify as endearingly goofy: slightly lopsided and a little shy, but with an unmistakable air of satisfaction.
“Months,” he mumbles, his lips still dangerously close to yours. Your eyebrows rise in questioning, and he laughs in that infectious way that makes you want to join in without even knowing what the punchline is. “I’ve been thinking of kissing you for months.”
And you do share the laughter this time, not out of amusement but of a happiness that spills without restraint. “But you’re suddenly holding back now?”
“Just letting myself bask in the moment, I guess. Letting it sink in so I remember everything.”
The two of you stand there quietly, still trying to fully parse the progression of events, and a small part of your mind registers that Mark’s thumb is still drawing circles on your skin. It’s also not enough — this touch, this closeness. You know now that he’s been thinking of you for months, and it reminds you that you spent that time dreaming of him too. And you remember you’ve always wanted to be even more familiar with him, and suddenly the desire is overwhelming; he’s right here, and you don’t ever want him out of your grasp again.
“Where are you going?” He’s only curious for the sake of it; there’s no alarm in the question because you keep your fingers tightly woven in his, tugging him along as you walk past him to the door. He’s still staring in wonder after the lock clicks shut. “What’s… happening now?”
“You waited months to kiss me, right?” He nods in response at your question. “I’ve been waiting just as long to have you too.”
His mouth falls open, but he doesn’t manage to say anything; his jaw tightens just as quickly when he feels your free hand trail down his chest, feather-light and asking for a green light. Your index finger stops just above his navel and draws back slowly, but not before you feel the shiver that runs down his torso.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” you murmur, giving his hand a little squeeze. “But I just want you to know — I want to. I want you.”
A thoughtfulness settles on his face, and his eyes graze over yours, trying to read your seriousness. You don’t know how honest you look, but your words hold enough truth in them. A silence stretches over the next minute, but to you, it feels like an eternity, and you lose the test of patience somewhat, smiling softly at him.
“You don’t want to?”
“I—” His tongue peeks out, running over his bottom lip. “I do. It’s not that I don’t want to, but…”
“You seem worried.”
A hesitant nod. “I’ve never — well, no, I have, but not — with someone like you.”
“What’s someone like me?” You laugh airily.
“Someone pretty like you — I don’t know. Someone who seems to know exactly what they want. Someone who seems like… they could do better than me.”
“Mark.” You can’t keep the incredulity out of your voice. “I do know exactly what I want. I want you. The rest — I don’t care about. As long as it’s you, I want it.”
He cracks a smile, half of relief, half of disbelief. You don’t miss his hand coming up to press, warm, against your waist. “For real?”
Your fingers curl into the front of his shirt — an anchor to bring you closer, until the tips of your noses are brushing. “For real.”
The third time you kiss is slow, almost careful; there’s lingering worry in the line of his mouth that your lips try to ease until his slightly part under the movements of yours. You feel the tension leave his form in waves — first in his shoulders, then in his arms, until you’re able to press yourself closer and feel the slight give of his frame against your smaller one. He’s radiating an immense amount of body heat that’s pricking your skin and keeping you alert, and you’re hyperaware of the smallest things — the weak tremble in his mouth, the slight roughness of his teeth under your tongue, the ridges of his palate above it.
He tastes nothing like what he smells, you learn. Instead of the air of earthy coffee stuck to clean linen, you inhale a combination of spearmint and mild saltiness that’s made slightly sharper by the lingering splash of alcohol from his accidental sip of punch earlier. You decide then and there that this disparity is important to you; it makes you feel like you’re the only one who can have this experience — that everyone else can know his scent, but now, only you can know what Mark Lee tastes like.
You have to keep your wits about you to avoid this addictive stimulation of your senses; you let go of his hand only to lock your fingers around his neck, and there’s a show of trust in how he lets you lead him backwards, until his knees are hitting the edge of the unmade bed. The kiss breaks as he’s forced to settle on the mattress, and he looks up at you in what can only be described as a quiet kind of awe. He doesn’t complain when you place your hands, heavy, on his shoulders, using his sturdy form to keep you stable as you move to straddle his lap.
“I feel like,” his voice is hoarse as he speaks up. “We should have picked a different location. Someone… could walk in.”
“I locked the door,” you remind him, a light reassurance in your voice. He doesn’t say anything immediately, but it’s clear there are cogs turning in his head, and you think it’s unfair that he’s thinking way too hard about something else that isn’t you, right now, in this position. In a bid to rectify this, your face presses into the side of his neck, breathing in that familiar scent and leaving a light kiss on his skin right after. Your lips mark the moment he swallows hard at the contact. “Besides, would you really be that unhappy if someone did?”
His hands tighten against your waist, prompting you to leave another kiss against his collarbone. “What — what do you mean?”
“You wouldn’t like it if someone — say, Youngho — walked in to see me on your lap like this?”
The silence that follows your words is tense, and you can tell that Mark’s breathing has become shallower. Again, you can feel his throat constricting slightly, and you can’t help but laugh breathily as you nip at his skin, just under his Adam’s apple. He’s surprisingly easy to tease, you realize — quick to turn speechless and prone to hanging onto your words.
To say that you wouldn’t want to use that to your advantage would be a downright lie.
“Tell me,” you urge, your tone deceptively gentle. “You wouldn’t want him to see you kissing me like this? To see me wrapped around you, begging for more, saying your name over and over? You don’t want him to watch you take me — so he knows you’re the only one that can?”
A strangled groan punctuates your words, but it comes from him; his fingers dig hard into your side with barely constructed restraint. “What do you want from me, _________?”
“I want to know if kissing me was the only thing you wanted for months.”
You pull your head away, nudging his chin with the tip of your nose. Another groan escapes him, and his head tilts back slightly, almost like he’s praying. But when his gaze comes down to meet yours at your level again, you see a firm resolution in his eyes that stirs your heart — which takes off the moment he shakes his head, slowly but surely.
“Then,” you whisper. “What do you want from me?”
He doesn’t say so much as shows; he takes from you your breath, steals another kiss that’s now firmer and more openly demanding. Suddenly, his mouth can’t seem to stay still, trapping your lower lip in between his, drawing out your taste until it mixes with his against his teeth. You feel your head growing light again, and you’re pleasantly surprised that it’s suddenly become difficult to keep up with his lips, asking more from you without restraint. A hum of need sounds in the back of his throat, vaguely dissatisfied, and he’s telling you wordlessly that it isn’t enough right before he attaches his lips to the base of your neck, just above your collar. You think he’s just about to return the favor, but a laugh leaves you when you realize he’s taken it a step further, his teeth grazing your skin lightly, soft nips signaling how eager he is to sink his teeth in with only his slowly weakening self-control stopping him from doing it. Mark’s breathing is slightly labored when he pulls his lips away, warm breath fanning over your chest.
“It’s crazy — and stupid,” he croaks out, voice slightly raspy. “But I want it, and I don’t.”
“What do you mean?” Your fingers drag into his hair, combing it upward messily from his nape. He leans in for a quick kiss that’s somewhat misplaced, landing on the corner of your mouth instead of squarely atop it.
“I want them — him to see us. To see me with you, kissing you — fucking you, too. I want everyone to know we’re like this.”
You’ve never heard Mark say anything so forwardly before; a sweet, warm flush builds in your face, pleased at how comfortably he manages to say it — pleased that he’s saying it to you. “Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t want him to see you.” There’s a bluntness to his words, but hiding behind them is an undertone of pleading — a serious request. “I don’t want him to see how pretty you look. I don’t want him to see you when you’re bare, or how you look when I’m inside you. I don’t want him to see—”
His voice wavers and dies, and you wonder if he’s embarrassed, but when you read his expression, you see an unyielding longing. A smile tugs at your lips, and your hand comes around to cup his chin, thumb extending upwards to drag his lower lip down.
“You don’t want him to see what’s only yours.”
He swallows hard again, but he doesn’t wait long to nod. Understanding passes between the both of you, silently but completely, and Mark presses his face to your throat, feeling the hum resonate as he places another long, firm kiss there.
“You’re mine,” he whispers, in a way that almost feels like he wants to convince himself of something impossible to believe. He doesn’t even wait for your affirmation, prefers to read it in the way you shiver lightly once his lips travel further down. His kisses trail past the collar of your shirt, and his hands are unabashed in how they seek skin, pushing the fabric upward so he can settle the palms of his hands, warm against your waist. Oddly, they don’t travel upwards; they only brush against the dip, down slightly over the upward rise of your hips, then upwards again, almost soothingly. It’s almost like he wants his mouth to meet them, but he stops halfway, sidetracked by the curve of your breasts.
He barely pulls away, only does for a moment, enough to meet your eyes.
“You’re only mine,” he repeats, his voice softer now. You realize he’s still waiting for some confirmation, and when you do, you’re quick to give it to him — quick to erase any doubt.
“I’m yours,” you affirm in the same tone, in the same careful volume. “Only yours, Mark.”
Whatever else he wanted to ask for, he knows you’ve given assent; that much is clear when he buries his face between your tits, inhaling your scent. You briefly wonder if he might feel just as intoxicated around you as you do around him, if your pleasant dizziness in being this close to him, in tasting and smelling him is something he experiences too, but you don’t get much time to dwell on it the moment you feel his lips part, a slight wetness seeping through the fabric. He’s kissing your chest, teeth grazing just above the cup of your bra, nipping without any real objective other than to feel the pad’s slight resistance to his mouth.
You almost miss what he says as he shifts his head, lips brushing over the curve of your breast — another breathless ‘mine’ that isn’t ever punctuated; his lips still stay parted, mouthing at the cloth, like he’s desperate to feel what’s underneath through it. There’s pressure where his tongue presses flush against the shape of your tit, tightness whenever he chooses to nip, attempting to take the flesh and all that’s between you and him between his teeth.
Not enough, you think, even when a whimper of need bubbles out of you; you want to be closer, your thighs pressing against the sides of his. You’re close in almost every way, but you still inch yourself further forward, enough to feel the taut hardness in his jeans. Your hips settle right there, letting fabric ride against fabric as you center yourself.
No sooner do you press yourself flush against him do you gasp; the light sting sends a jolt up your spine when his teeth close around your nipple through your bra, and when you look down at him, you see the corners of his mouth pulled up in evident satisfaction. He’s quick to atone, his tongue dragging your shirt slightly upwards in his attempt to soothe, and for some reason, the push of fabric and the barely-there feeling of motion leaves you tingling.
“Mark.” Your voice comes out in a whine, but in the haze you’re in, you don’t really have a clear idea of what you’re asking for. All you know is that you want more of him, and for as much as he’s already given you in kisses and words, you aren’t even halfway down the list of everything else you wish you could demand from him. You say the only thing that comes to mind — the only thing that really encompasses what you feel. “Mark, I want you. I want more of you.”
His hands on your waist are replaced by the significant tightness of his arms, locked around your torso; you don’t even have the time to take in your awe at the fact that he can easily carry you, turn you over until you’re on your back, until he’s already eased one knee between your legs.
The way he looks down at you is a mixture of hesitation and desire, but the former’s erased when you reach out for him, murmuring another ‘more’ so you can pull him in. With one palm pressed against the mattress, he lets his free hand graze against your side again, bolder in its movements, and his fingers trace a path up to your breast, squeezing the soft flesh through layers. Your back arches upwards in response, eager for more contact, for touch that’s almost there but not quite, and he smiles when you make a noise of frustration from his fingers tweaking the soft nub of your nipple.
“Mark, please—”
“Would you really let him see you like this?” His thumb’s still idly grazing over your breast, following the rise and fall of its curve. You swallow hard, trying to keep your voice level despite the growing want that threatens to break through it. “Would you really let him watch you… get fucked?”
You shake your head, and his brow furrows.
“I’d let him watch you fuck me,” you correct him, and the confusion in his face gives way to pure satisfaction the moment you make this nuance clear. “It has to be only you.”
His grip tightens briefly against your breast again, and he leans down, pressing a surprisingly chaste and brief kiss to your lips.
“Then I’ll unlock the door next time and give him a show.”
You don’t know if it’s what he says or what he does after — his hands bunching your shirt upward until the hem’s just below your neckline — that makes your breath hitch, but you decide it doesn’t matter when you realize you’d much rather be focusing on the journey his lips take, slick against your stomach as he presses languid kisses down to your navel. His fingers hook into the waistband of your jeans, the weight naturally pulling them down, and you see his muscles tighten for a moment as he stops himself from tugging them off completely.
Mark’s mouth is unparalleled in its attentiveness, seemingly intent on making sure he’s covered every inch of your stomach in warm kisses, but you only realize he’s somehow stalling when he starts the cycle again, his nails digging into the taut elastic of your jeans as though to remind himself to curb his desire.
You take the initiative instead, raising your hips slightly to signal your want, acutely aware of the fact that you brush lightly against his thigh when you do so. His eyes lift first, followed by the rest of his face, and he’s watching you quietly. You might have thought he was unsure of what to do all of a sudden again, but his knee pressing closer, an unmistakable pressure against you, is enough to tell you that he’s only curious to know what else you’ll do.
The second time you grind against his thigh, his hands catch your hips, keeping them aloft just long enough for him to tug the band of your jeans downward; he peels them off you with surprising ease, returning to the same position between your legs, hands still firm on your waist. With that done, he only has the thin garter of your panties left to curl his fingers into, bunching it into his fists when you roll your hips up one more time. You manage a shaky noise when you feel the stark difference — the roughness of the denim against you, the stick and drag of flimsy cloth. Mark lets out a low but unmistakable hiss.
“I can’t believe—” his idea is cut short by the movement of your hips again, and his grip tightens, knuckles pressing into your skin. “Can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“What am I supposed to do,” you breathe out, the sound momentarily getting stuck in your throat. “So that you know it’s real?”
His fingers relax their hold, palms now pressed against your thighs; they travel between your hips and your knees, a soothing and thoughtful motion. “God — I don’t know. I just want — I just want you so badly. Like… I’m going to go crazy if I don’t have you now.”
You lean up, your weight resting on your elbow, and your other hand reaches out; Mark meets you halfway, bending just a little lower to press his cheek against your palm. There’s something intimate, something so giving about the way he turns his face to your fingers, pressing a fluttering kiss just under your thumb. The tips of your fingers trace the shape of his lips, even when they pucker again under your digits.
“Take me,” you murmur quietly. “Right now — from now on, every part of me is all for you.”
His exhale is shaky, but his fingers have a sureness to them; they slip under your thighs, cradling the backs of your knees, and lifting until they’re folded over your chest. You don’t even have the time to wonder if you should feel exposed all of a sudden; his breath warms the inside of your thigh as he presses his lips there — not a kiss, just a touch as he speaks.
“I want to taste you,” he mumbles, partly distracted with the act of inhaling the mild scent off of your skin. “Every inch of you — I want to know just how sweet you are.”
He lets his hold on your thighs relax, letting them fall apart; he busies his hands with your panties instead, hooking a finger into the strip of cloth just covering you. It’s clear you’re both aware that the fabric sticks light to your skin, poorly masking your wetness, and interest mingled with hunger flashes across his face as he pulls it aside.
“You’re so pretty,” he says, sounding like it’s a comment more for himself than anything else. His gaze flickers to you for a moment before it moves back to your pussy. “The prettiest fucking girl in the world.”
The pressure of his thumb between your folds causes you to forget what you wanted to say, and you know Mark had been nervous, but you realize that it doesn’t mean he’s supremely inexperienced by any means; there’s a quiet, understated confidence in the way he rubs slow, thorough circles, moving upward towards your clit. Your face, your neck, your whole torso feels flushed, but you power through the instinct to tilt your head back so that you can keep watching him — the minute changes in his expression, the slowly building strength in his touch.
“I want to taste you,” he repeats, looking up at you. “I want to know what you taste like when you cum against my mouth.”
You’re not sure if you’re gawking because you can hardly believe Mark Lee — your eternally blushing, mild mannered campus crush — had said all those words strung together into such a lewd sentence, but you’re sure as hell not going to deny him. Your hand travels down your torso, and he watches, curious at first, then awestruck when your index and forefinger settle against either side of your folds, pulling them apart in offering.
His eyes end up transfixed on your pussy again, observing how your fingers ease your folds further apart the more he massages his thumb against your slit. His mouth is slightly agape, intent on drinking in the sight, unaware that you’re trying to memorize this view of him too — Mark Lee, touching you, wanting you, eager to take you fully.
“I’ve always wanted to see what it’d look like with your face between my legs,” you say in a hushed tone, but he catches it anyway, briefly looking up at you again. “I’ve always wanted to know what your tongue would feel like against my pussy.”
Your index finger bumps against the tip of his thumb, and he stops its motions, allowing you to move his digit down until the pad of it hovers just in front of your tiny hole. You can see one cheek tucked between his teeth, bitten to muffle the groan you wish you’d heard louder.
“Won’t you show me?”
You think you hear him rasp out a ‘fuck yes’ before he bends down, pressing his half-open mouth against your pussy. The squeal of delight that leaves you is half-strangled as his thumb curls, hooking into your entrance. It starts a shallow, distracted motion, with his attention funneled much more clearly into keeping his tongue working. Flush against your slit, it drags up, and he releases a guttural noise at your taste, lips pursing slightly on the way back down — like he can’t stand not trapping every drop of wetness with his mouth.
The intensity of his tongue, the idle thrusting of his thumb — you’re not sure what you want to focus on more, and the result is you whimpering incoherently at the starkly contrasting combination of the two. Mark moves his mouth like he’s never tasted anything as good in his life; the sounds between your thighs are wet, sloppy — almost embarrassingly so — but you don’t have the presence of mind to dwell on that because Mark Lee is eating you out and that’s really all that you can think of.
The tip of his tongue suddenly flicks upwards; you keen, long and low, when it starts to circle your clit in that same intense, circular movement his thumb had gotten you used to. Your sensitivity skyrockets, and you’re completely unable to control the upward bucking of your hips, but Mark stays supremely unperturbed, his free arm winding under your thigh to keep the both of you steady. Your noises are growing embarrassingly loud, and you realize just how needy you’ve become when you vaguely notice that there’s a pattern in what you’re saying — his name, over and over again.
“Did you do that too?” He asks softly, his words slightly muffled against you. “Say my name, I mean — when you thought of me.”
“God, yes.” Your voice comes out strained, teetering on the edge of slurring. “So many times — every single fucking time.”
“Promise me something.” He lifts his head, and you see a fieriness in his gaze.
You nod — at this rate, whatever he’d ask you to do, you would without question. “Anything.”
His thumb presses in deeper, up to his knuckle and you reflexively tighten around his digit, but he keeps it anchored there, pushing down against your walls. He drinks in your gasp, the widening of your eyes, the way you chew on your lip with a singular kind of contentment on his face.
“Promise me — from now on, you’ll make sure I’m always there to hear it.”
The only kind of assent you’re able to make is a moan as he dives down again, mouth buried in your warmth, his nose pressed tight against your clit. His tongue moves in strong strokes, broad swipes that push your folds apart further, and his thumb, while not moving, increases in pressure to the point that you feel a heaviness adding to the growing pleasure. Your hands fly down, seeking some kind of sense and reason, and you thread your fingers into his hair, grip tightening as your climax builds in stride.
“Mark, I’m—” close, you want to say, embarrassingly so, but the moment he hears his name, his lips attach to your clit, and there’s suddenly so much more pressure as he sucks, almost like he��s desperate to draw out your orgasm. He chooses this of all time to start moving his thumb again, and this time, his movements are anything but slow and idle; they’re filled with the intent to drive you over the edge. “Fuck me, oh my god—”
“I want to,” he murmurs, pausing for just a moment to drag the tip of his tongue around the nub. “God, I want to. Let me see you cum first; let me taste how sweet you are.”
His thumb stops, buries deep into your pussy, and you’re not sure why this, of all things, is what pushes you beyond control; you’re only half-sure you say his name when your orgasm hits, the rest of your consciousness much too clouded by pleasure. He doesn’t stop, revels in the way you squirm under him as he hums low and keeps his tongue working against your clit. His licks become longer, more thorough as you come down from your high, your cries softening into whimpers as his tongue both attempts to clean you up and makes you messier in the process. His arm is still curled around your thigh, keeping you from inching away from him, even if instinct and stimulation are telling you to.
You’re barely lucid when you sit up, and Mark inches back, somewhat startled; you grab the front of his shirt, and the sight of his mouth, slick and glistening from your wetness, only makes you more curious to know what you taste like on him. You find out how tangy it is, how rich the two of you are together on his lips, and you’re able to fully appreciate the skill of the mouth that kisses you deeply, leaving traces of you against your tongue and teeth.
“Please — fuck me.” It’s the only thing you can say at this rate, only half-coherent and still trembling with desire, but Mark doesn’t seem to care that you’re stuttering over such a simple request. His thumb wipes traces of saliva off the corner of your mouth, kisses it clean for good measure, then straightens up, his hands working at his belt. You almost miss the fact that his hands are shaking slightly as he undoes the buckle and tugs it out from the loops.
You want to help — it’s the least you can do, after all, and your fingers push the button of his jeans out through the hole, his hands working in tandem to tug the zipper down. However, your movements falter when you hear a noise from just outside the room — the sound of the doorknob being jangled, the thud of a body gently hitting the door, as though worried it’s stuck. You glance up at Mark, ready to reassure him, but he either hadn’t heard or doesn’t care because he’s too busy stepping out from the pool of denim at his ankles, and you get completely sidetracked by the bulge straining against his boxers.
You almost ignore Youngho’s voice grumbling ‘Jesus Christ, now of all times? from behind the door, but you leverage it instead.
“Should we let him in?” You ask, tone innocent despite the evident deviousness in your words. It pays off, though; Mark’s cock twitches unmistakably under thin fabric, and he actually looks like he’s considering it. “You’re just about to fuck me, after all. Weren’t we going to — what did you say? Put on a show?”
He worries on his bottom lip, like he’s unsure if you’re serious, but in the end, he shakes his head, reaching out to smooth your hair away from your face and ushering you to lay back down. The lips that meet your forehead are gentle, almost apologetic.
“Not now,” he murmurs against your skin. “Right now, you’re all mine.”
You laugh lightly, nodding, and he chuckles too, but the sound of it slowly dies down when your finger hooks into the garter of his boxers. You can feel his breathing hitch as you tug it down, the elastic catching when it meets the shape of his cock, but you don’t make any move to free it just yet — for some reason, you want to see him do it.
“Show me.”
He complies without hesitation, one hand dragging the elastic down over his thighs, the other curling around the base of his length, and your face flushes as satisfaction works through your system at the bare sight of him.
Mark Lee is big — not monstrously so, but enough for you to make a pleased noise as your hand joins his, fingers barely wrapping around his girth. You give his shaft a gentle squeeze, and his exhale stutters, watching you stroke him, long and thorough in your movements. Your palm swipes over the tip, leaking precum, allowing it to slick up your hand enough to keep your movements smooth. You’re fixated on the tension in his lips, the throb of his cock against your palm, and the way his gaze never leaves your face, like a small, amazed part of him still can’t believe what you’re doing, even if you’re both half-naked already.
“I want to suck you off,” you plead, grip tightening slightly. He grits his teeth, stifling another groan, but he shakes his head clearly enough for you to slow your movements in mild surprise.
“Can’t — not now. I need to be in you so badly.” His breathing’s sharp and heavy, like he’s trying to keep himself in check. “You don’t even know — how long I’ve wanted to feel you.”
Your hold relaxes, and you let him maneuver you, his renewed hold on your hips dragging you closer to the edge of the bed. In this position, he can spread your thighs further, and you angle yourself optimally — enough for him to get a full view of your pussy, wet and still aching from your last orgasm.
“You don’t know how badly I’ve wanted to know how tight you are,” he continues, and there’s a faraway look in his eyes that makes you think he might be entrenched in fantasy. “How much I would have killed to see you — have you like this. I’m not gonna be able to wait anymore.”
His fingers dig into your sides, thumbs stroking your stomach in a weak pattern. The underside of his shaft presses against your folds, still half obscured by your panties, in a way that’s heavy enough to make you mewl, your hips reacting before your mind can, and he hisses softly as he feels his length glide along your slit before you relax your stance again.
“I can’t wait,” he reiterates, a breaking in his voice that sounds almost tortured. You don’t want him to either, want to see him buried to the hilt inside you, and you raise your hips again in need. “I want you so much it’s driving me crazy.”
“Then take me.”
And you’re not sure if it’s a demand or a plea, but he no longer stops himself; his hand fists his cock a few times, coating the slick of precum along his length before he lines the tip up with your entrance. His other hand’s flush against the inside of your thigh, a light pressure ensuring he always has enough space to fit himself between your legs — enough space to bottom out completely.
Mark’s considerate in his pace — maybe he knows he’s big, or maybe he’s just naturally careful, but he allows you the time to adjust to the stretch. Your nails almost puncture holes into the sheets, your grip so tight you wonder if it’s just to brace yourself or to hang onto the last threads of your sanity. He’s only halfway in, but you’re pushing fullness already, and he stops when his cock meets slight resistance, looking up at you in concern.
“You’re not—?”
“It doesn’t hurt,” you reassure him softly, and it’s true; the adjustment brings about slight discomfort, but it’s almost nothing to you — not compared to how much more you want. “Give me everything; I want all of you inside me.”
He pauses still, trying to read your expression for any lies, but when he can’t find any, he nods, his jaw tensing as he presses both palms against your thighs, keeping you open as much as possible to accommodate him. He doesn’t even stop when you whimper, feeling a tightening twitch in your pussy that also causes him to groan, until inch by inch, you’ve taken him, his hips flush against yours.
He doesn’t move — not yet, his eyes trained to where you’re connected like he’s once again unable to believe what he’s doing. You hear him mumble something to himself that you want to hear too; you squirm slightly, and he hisses through his teeth, looking up at you and finding the questioning in your face. He offers you a small smile, albeit somewhat strained.
“You’re tighter than I thought.”
“You’re bigger than I thought,” you hum, and neither of you is really to blame; the tight fit, the slight breathlessness it leaves you with, is perfect, you think — just what the both of you need. “Did you often think about fucking me?”
“Probably just as often as you’re making it sound like you thought about having me fuck you, I think.”
“Don’t get cocky,” you warn, but there’s no real heat in your voice.
“I won’t. But it makes me feel good — knowing you wanted me just as bad.”
“I still do.” Your gaze is lazy, a little hazy, even if you’re anticipating so much. Even just the feeling of Mark, throbbing inside you, is already slowly building the pleasure in your stomach again; you wonder if you could cum like this, given enough time, given enough patience. “I’m still waiting for you to fuck me. God, Mark— please.”
He chuckles good-naturedly, but even that’s drowned out by the long moan that leaves you once he draws his hips back; your body’s mildly shocked into a new adjustment, feeling a sudden emptiness that’s quickly mitigated by him filling you back up again. The pace is slow, almost torturous, although you know he isn’t doing it to get a rise out of you. He wants to ease you into speed, careful to help you adjust fully; his restraint in his movements is all the more evident on his face, in the furrowing of his brow and the determination in his gaze. Even with that, he can’t help what he says, so intent on controlling everything else he does that he lets his words spill out over your noises.
“Pretty,” he grunts out, and when your walls twitch around him, he accidentally thrusts sharper — just enough for you to whimper a little more loudly, and he has to reel his strength back again. “God, you’re beautiful. I should’ve told you sooner how much I wanted you. All those times I had to imagine you wrapped around me like this, wondering how much tighter you’d get once you came on my cock. All those times you drove me crazy while I was alone, when I could have been in you— I could have found out how good you felt. How pretty you’d look under me. And you’re still even prettier, even better than I ever dreamed.”
There’s an erratic melody of moans under his words, spilling from your mouth, and the fact that he riles himself up enough to increase his speed slightly doesn’t escape you. He’s a little less careful now, seemingly entranced by the view he gets, watching his shaft disappear into you only to come out glistening, and a part of you hates the idea of snapping out of his reverie, but the majority of your thoughts now lean towards wondering how much more you can get him to break free of his own self-imposed restrictions.
“I wanted to ask you so many times.” His eyes snap up, coming back into focus as he takes in the sight of you, flushed, hair tousled, gaze darkened. “Almost every day — I sat there, thinking about how all I could do was go home and fuck myself, frustrated you weren’t doing it for me. I should have taken you home with me right then and there — should have let you watch me touch myself thinking of you, should have let you touch me into cumming on your fingers.”
His breathing staggers as he leans in, eager to see you clearer, to hear your words, slowly becoming airier as they come out. For a moment, his gaze falls, torn between watching him move into you and meeting your eyes, but he ultimately chooses the latter once you speak up again, your tone even more hushed than before — like it’s meant to be a secret between just you and him.
“But there were times I wanted you even more than that, to the point that I almost felt like I couldn’t wait.” His eyes widen slightly, a few precious seconds of wondering if he understands what you mean, right before you confirm what he thinks. “I thought about making a move right then — I should have kissed you. I should have asked you.”
“Asked me what?” His voice is gruff with the effort to keep himself in check despite the fact that it’s clear to the both of you that it won’t last.
Your lazy smile’s illusionary; it hides the triumph swelling in your chest at knowing that he asked exactly what you hoped him to.
“I should have asked you to fuck me in front of everyone there.”
“God,” his eyes squeeze shut, his grip tightening. “Please. I can’t—”
“I should have bent over for you there, begged you to stretch me out right after our session,” you continue, bordering on merciless. “Mark, you don’t know — how badly I wanted to be on your lap, your cock in me, with everyone watching. How much I wanted you to fold me over that table, have people watch you pound me, have them listen to how good you make me feel. No one would ever even wonder; everyone would know I’m yours.”
You pause, allowing his eyes to fly open once again, and there’s a pleading in them that’s begging for release. Your eyes soften along with your voice, but you’re this far gone; you should at least see it through.
“And everyone would know you’re mine too.”
“Fuck,” he growls, and his hips stutter before new resolve fills him, his hips driving into you with the force of a strength you didn’t even know he had in him; your thighs tremble at the intensity, at the renewed impact, and feeling him drive his cock deeper into you has you crying out somewhere between a moan and a sob. “Fuck, _________. If I had known you’d thought about me like that — God.”
It’s your turn to shut your eyes for a while, allowing yourself to focus on his movements, breaching your tightness even faster now. You feel his hands skim up your sides again, fingers digging into the fabric of your bra and pulling them down until your bare tits are cupped in his hands. You shiver as his thumbs pass over your nipples, toying them into firm nubs.
“One day,” he hums out, his voice giving way to a slight hoarseness again. “I’ll do it. I’ll fuck you in front of him — in front of Youngho, in front of everyone. I’ll let them wonder how tight you are, how fucking warm you are, and I’ll let them leave knowing no one can know but me.”
It’ll never happen, you both know, but something about agreeing to something so absurd is what has your body almost shaking in longing, and it’s what causes him to press in deeper, folding your legs closer to your torso. Your hands do what little they can to help, keeping your thighs apart so as not to obstruct his view. You can tell it’s somehow not enough, not really all of what he wants when his brow furrows, and he shifts his weight, pushing into you at a new angle.
The stark difference has you gasping before you can control it. Immediately, Mark stops, and you’re already shaking your head before you even hear him say anything, presuming he’s paused out of concern. But before you can say you’re fine, his hushed voice cuts through the silence.
“Do that again.”
“What?”
“Do it again,” he mumbles, sounding distant. “Breathe in. Suck in your stomach.”
You’re not one to complain at such a simple request, albeit a little odd, so you comply, inhaling enough to tighten your torso. You’re surprised when you feel his cock twitch inside you, and you blow out the air alongside your question. “Mark, what are you—”
“I can see it,” he says in utter disbelief. “When you’re like this, I can — I can see my cock inside you. Just a bit.”
Your eyes follow his gaze, fixed just below your navel. From this angle, without any movement, you can’t see a thing, but you assume he’s not one to abandon fucking you so intently without good reason, so you press your palm against your stomach, just above your pelvis. Nothing really feels significantly out of place — up until the point when Mark draws his hips back again, and you feel the backward slide of his cock.
Your throat tightens, and you don’t really understand the feeling that spreads in you — a unique kind of arousal, knowing how deep he is inside you and how you’re taking all of him in despite the fit, because of the fit. Your hand falls away, allowing Mark’s to take its place, and he exerts just a little more pressure against your stomach in an attempt to get the most out of the experience when he thrusts back in. He groans, feeling the bulge push back up, and he quickly picks up the same pace, renewed in intensity so he can experience the rapid rise and fall he creates under his palm.
The faster he goes, the harder he presses, and you’re not sure if he knows it, but the onslaught of friction is what’s making you whine and squirm even more; you’re trapped, in the best way possible, in his hold, your hands back to clinging to the backs of your knees like a lifeline. Pressure from the outside builds on the slowly growing pressure inside, a knot in your pelvis that’s coiling so tightly you feel like you can’t breathe. If Mark notices how close you are, he doesn’t make it known; he’s busy feeling the outline of his cock against your stomach, and when he looks up at you again, his eyes are hazy.
“I would fuck you every single day, every single hour if I could feel this every time,” he whispers in a way that’s almost reverent. “Let me — I want to keep seeing you like this. I want to feel how deep I am inside you, too. Let me fuck you all the time.”
You nod, and your first attempt to say something is just another choked sob. When you do manage to get something out, it’s broken in tearful stutters. “M-Mark, I’m s— I’m so close… I’m — fuck—”
“Do it.” It’s not a harsh command but an urging made on short breath; through your misty vision, you see tension in Mark’s face and shoulders, like he’s bracing himself for something too. You barely register the ping in the back of your mind, too focused on the way he’s pressing his palm harder on your stomach, the way his hips quicken their pace — he’s close too. “Let me feel you — want to feel you cum all over my cock.”
You inhale, not to speak but to let out a loud whimper; your teeth dig into your lower lip as you try to stifle the moans that threaten to follow, but in the end, you whine out his name. Your thighs threaten to close, trembling as you finally reach your climax, an impossible explosion of pleasure, and you have to squeeze your eyes shut so that you don’t get dizzy from the stars that burst around your vision.
“Fuck.” Mark’s voice is strained, his one hand still firm against your stomach, the other sliding against the inside of your thigh. “You get even tighter — you feel even better when you cum.”
“Mark,” you hiccup, unable to do anything but flutter around him as he pistons harder into you. You don’t even know what you’re asking for when you say ‘please,’ but he somehow seems to, and you trust that your body’s saying something you can’t fully detect in this state, with your mind floating in the aftermath of ecstasy.
“I know,” his tone is soothing in contrast to the intensity of his thrusts. “I’ve got you. Just a little more — where do you want—?”
You blink slowly, his words sinking in at too leisurely a pace; his hips stutter dangerously before you’re able to respond. You barely even do that, your hand gently brushing over the one against your stomach, but he catches onto the meaning quickly enough.
You’ve never heard your name said in such a beautiful way; hearing him moaning it lowly is enough to make you whine again, and that noise is drawn out when he shifts and slips out of you fully. Your brain’s fuzzy, but your senses are at least sharp enough to drink in the perfect sight of him cumming — the way he leans his head back, jaw taut and eyes shut, as he pumps his cock and the heat of his release against your skin, pooling against your stomach once he finally cums. You see a shiver run through him, and then he’s still for a while in this position, the both of you basking in the afterglow of your highs.
You’re still weak and sensitive when Mark finally comes back down, a lucidity you don’t have right now coming back into his gaze. All you can do is smile when he leans in, catching your lips in another kiss — one that’s surprisingly soft and slow in comparison to everything else, but still leaves you breathless when he pulls away.
“Let me clean you up,” he murmurs, and you hum in agreement, your body limp as you watch him move off the bed and pull a handful of tissues from a box on the desk on the opposite wall. Even his hands are gentle when he scoops you up, shifting you until your head can lean against the pillows. They carry a scent you’re not used to, and your nose scrunches, rejecting the change, but that’s quickly overpowered by Mark’s familiar coffee-and-linen one when he presses next to you, careful as he wipes his cum off your stomach and thoroughly cleans between your thighs. From somewhere down below, you still hear hushed voices, and the front door slams shut again. People are still in the middle of leaving, but you know Youngho will likely run out of guests soon, and this makes you feel like the timing’s suddenly become urgent.
“I want to date you properly,” you start, slightly slurred but unmistakably blunt. Mark’s gaze snaps to yours, slightly amused, as he balls the tissues up in his fist. “You never asked me, so I’m asking you.”
He looks perplexed. “I just never thought you wanted me to, so I didn’t try.”
You reach up, locking your fingers into his hair and using your grip to pull him down. Your kiss is a little demanding, with a tinge of excess frustration, and he pulls away laughing lightly.
“Do you still think I don’t want you to?”
Mark hums thoughtfully. “I think you made a lot of things clear tonight. On my end, I was happy enough to be near you.” He smiles down at you, and in the faint light, you can see the flush slowly return to his cheeks. “Having you like this — dating you… there’s no way I’d say no.”
Your shoulders relax, satisfied with his answer, and you beam up at him — an act he easily returns, breathtaking and endearing all at once.
Moments later, you feel his arm wind around your waist; he allows you to lean into his side, his other hand crossing over his lap to stroke your thigh. His face turns, pressing a kiss to your hair, and you feel his lips move, hear the quick rush of a whisper. You tilt your head, eyes slightly wide in questioning. “What was that?”
He shakes his head at first, trying to pass it off as nothing. But when it’s clear your curiosity won’t abate, he chuckles softly, his hand gently cupping your chin so that you can only look at him. His thumb strokes your bottom lip gently, as if trying to coax the same words out of your mouth before he murmurs them to you one more time — and this time, he sounds fully convinced of them.
“You’re all mine.”
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thefandomthings · 6 months ago
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Okay HEAR ME OUT BUTTTT what about zuko betrayal part 2 with the prompt “you own my heart” 👀
Betrayal
Fluff Prompt #30: "You own my heart."
Pairing: Zuko x F/Gn!reader
Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Terrible writing, happy ending? ¡¡SPOILERS!!, Takes place in Book 3. Ep. 11. It doesn't follow the script in the episode.
Notes: I'm so sorry I haven't been writing, I work in agriculture and summer and fall are my busiest times of the year and I lost motivation in the process 😭. But, hopefully I'm back. Thank you for your patience.
Part 1 Part 2 Prompt Event
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Who knew betrayal could hurt so much. Chest heavy, heart heavier. Why did he do it? Does he think everything will be okay once he got back? Maybe Azula manipulated him? No. He did it willingly.
It's been weeks since the incident, a few months actually. You dont know what to do with yourself. Everything has been so emotionally hard. The long term depression grasping you in a chokehold.
The gaang has been there for you. Aang suffering from his own mid childhood crisis, the weight of the world literally on his shoulders. Katara tires to help as much as she could, but she is also dealing with things of her own. Sokka....was just Sokka.
After the invasion, you retreated to the western air temple. It was definitely a sight for sore eyes. The architecture was incredible. The Air Nation really outdid themselves.
"Y/n? Why don't you come eat dinner with us?" Katara leaned against the door frame of the room you are currently residing in. You look over at her gave her a small smile, one that didn't quite reach your eyes.
Katara didn't exactly like Zuko, having felt being betrayed as well. She has a lot of not nice things to say about the young prince, but for the sake of your ears she kept them to herself.
She grabs your arm pulling you up from your bed. You reluctantly follow her, head resting on her shoulder.
Today was a rough day. It Started out with a dream of you and him dancing in the temple. Oh so in love. Hands intertwined with each others. Whispering small nothings, butterflies occupying your chest and tummy. You woke up as if it was a nightmare, your brain toying with you like a yoyo.
Katara holds you gently, her hand laying on your head as if you were a child. At this moment you felt as if you were. Needing someone to comfort your aching heart.
"What are you doing here?!"
"Please just hear me out..." You immediately recognize that voice. It was him.
Zuko.
"Why should we? Huh?!" Sokka crosses his arms defensively. Katara flicks the lid on the water pouch on her hip, bending the water out.
You heart is hammering against your chest. His eyes immediately are drawn towards you. Zuko feels himself choke up. The sight of you made his chest hurt. The dullness you held in your eyes was unbearable to look at.
"Y/n...."
"She doesn't want to talk to you." Katara says, she moved to stand in front of you. Her body is blocking his sight of you. Zuko wants to reach for you, to grovel at your feet, to beg for forgiveness. Even if it hurts his pride, or his reputation. Which wasn't much good anyway. He had to make it right with you.
You are his everything.
"It's okay Katara." You give her a reassuring smile, it wasn't very convincing to anyone who knew you.
"What're you doing here?" You inquire and step next to Katara. Your eyes boring into his, he looked...Sad. Regret swimming in his honey irises.
"I've changed-" You feel yourself moving on its own. You hold your hand up, and he stopped talking.
"That's what you said under Ba Sing Se, then you left. Betraying everyone who cared about you. Especially Uncle Iroh."
That struck a nerve, his face hardens and he looks away slightly, eyebrows furrowed. His tongue darts out and wets his dry and cracked lips, his golden eyes looking back up at you. He steps closer, his hands clenching and unclenching by his side.
Zuko wants to hold you...Needs to feel you against him. To kiss you, to be with you. He needs you like he needs air, without you he's nothing, just a shell of the man he was before he lost you.
"Y/n, please...I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Zukos voice cracks slightly.
You purse your lips together tightly.
It's so very tempting to close the gap between the two of you, forgiving him just felt right. Maybe it was just the your heart talking over logic. Your headspace is messed up severely, the wound is still fresh in your brain and heart.
"Zuko-"
Katara stops you, stepping in front of you.
"Leave. You've done enough, you are not welcome here."
"Y/n...please." It was strange seeing him so weak for once, pleading you. Practically on his knees for forgiveness.
"You own my heart."
It hurt you to watch him get treated so badly. He deserved it, mostly. Everyone has the right to be angry with him. Chasing Aang across the globe, trying to kill you then after everything at Ba sing se. It was almost unforgivable. Almost.
•°•°•°•
Taglist: @etherjen @xlatinaaxx @youngladysakura @m4rlvky @kitt38 @monysakura @kenqki @rdpiano @mikemakesartt @thigh-o-saur @chi-ara @kookiegirl444 @snixx2088 @zacatecanaaaa
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ozzgin · 1 year ago
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I can't get your yakuza headcanons out of my mind, Daitou's got me in a chokehold and I'm not complaining, like--
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in regards to that doodle you made to show height difference between reader and the boys [I love your art btw (●♡∀♡)] - I can't picture myself in reader's style, I'm currently going through my goth phase in my 20s lmao; picture a big bitch with tattoos and messy hair who's listening to nothing but 2000s hits and screamo bands - so I'd like to request a headcanon of how Daitou would react to a gender-neutral reader like this :D I also like to incorporate the idea of them once being in a famous band that he's a fan of! (sorry if this seems like a lot, I have a huge imagination hehe)
but if he's more into the cute and helpless type, I'll just walk my ass out the door and yeehaw my way into another yandere's arms ✌😔
That's on me for not drawing the reader inserts as cartoonish cinder blocks :') In truth I'm a little bit embarrassed seeing how many likes that doodle has gotten, it was something I put together in a hurry and the clothing was meant to be baggy, shapeless, with not too many folds for the sake of simplicity. I myself am more of a pilgrim goth, just to emphasize the randomness of the choice.
Drawing reader inserts always leaves me a little anxious. If I use a light shade of gray, will people think I'm excluding poc? Will plus sized readers feel like they've been disregarded? What about masculine readers? As someone who's demiromantic I always struggle taking appearance or gender into consideration, because to me it has no influence whatsoever. Which is hard to express when you want to offer blank slate visuals as an extra to the story.
What I'm trying to say is that all of my characters would like you for who you are. Sure, they find your looks cute, but it's not the defining reason. Maybe you have similar traits to them, maybe you're the complete opposite and they find it intriguing. You could be a buff man and Daitou would be just as grateful to have someone who isn't afraid of him. I usually stick to a female reader for bigger stories to avoid messing it up long term, but in the grand scheme of things it makes no difference. I always imagine reader to be a shapeless blob that provides the dialogue I need for the story mood. There's no concrete preference or type for any of my OCs. I mean, ideally you'd like them back and not hang them upside down above a BBQ pit but I feel these are sensible requirements (?).
And now for the actual headcanons since my ramble is over.
First encounter is comically awkward but for reasons you’re unaware of yet. You’re obviously used to people staring at you (more so in a country like Japan), so you were expecting the curious glance every now and then. On the other hand, being under scrutiny, from a man even more unusual looking than you at that, is odd. Mildly uncomfortable. You’re shifting yourself from one leg to another, hoping to be done with the introductions soon.
On his end, Daitou is anxiously fidgeting and trying his best to focus. He’s seen this face before and he can’t shake off the familiar feeling. Where the hell…He obviously can’t downright gawk at you, and he isn’t sure how to politely formulate a question. After several sheepish peeks, it finally dawns on him: weren’t you part of that band he really likes? No, what would the chances be? Then again, how many people out there would look exactly like you? Is it rude to ask? He has no idea. He resumes his mumbled description of the apartment and hands you the papers to be signed.
Back at his place, he finally digs through his merch and sprawls out the available clues. “I didn’t know you were into this kind of music”, Kazuya comments as he looks over the man’s shoulder. He’d come over to ask about the new tenant. “I’m pretty sure it’s them.” He concludes, confidently placing his index over a CD cover. “Huh? Who? The tenant?” Kazuya holds back his chuckle. “Why would a celebrity show up for a shady apartment offer? You’re tripping, man.”
“I’m sorry, this is getting ridiculous.” You finally exclaim, annoyed by the persistent stares of the now two men facing you. You’re standing in front of the apartment building, arms crossed, huffing at the tall scarred man and his blonde friend. “No, I’m sure of it. Even the tattoo is the same.” Daitou turns to whisper to Kazuya, oblivious to your complaints. In turn, Kazuya lightly elbows him, mouthing something about being rude. “Just ask them, man.” He adds, this time louder. “Ask me what??” You groan. “W-were you…um…in this band by any chance?” Daitou manages to blurt out, searching his pocket for the CD case and ceremoniously laying it under your eyes.
Ah. It finally clicks and you exhale, relieved. You confirm their suspicions and show them some backstage photos to solidify your claim. You ask Daitou if he wants an autograph or something, then swiftly scribble your signature on a piece of paper and hand it out to him. He holds it with a wide, childish grin. “You’re a weird one, you know? You could’ve just asked. I guess I didn’t expect to find a fan in the wild, especially here.” Daitou carefully folds the souvenir, eyes lidded with nostalgia. “Oh yes, it’s great. Drowns out the screams.”
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eightmakesonebraincell · 1 year ago
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i have a little request! what happens with mafia mingi & yn? do they ever meet again? if so, how?
same with wooyoung! do they still meet at the convenience store every night? did he bring the others over to introduce reader to them?
oh im curious yeahhhhh
ateez as mafia members pt 2
original post here
pairing: mafia!mingi x reader, mafia!wooyoung x reader, mentions of ot8!mafia
genre: fluff, crack, a continuation of the mafia tropes brainrot-fest
length: 2.1k
c/w: explicit language, violence, weapons, mentions of alcohol, unedited
a/n: thank you anon for requesting (and special thanks @sorryimananti-romantic for validating my writing 🫶) this was only meant to be like a five dot-point thing explaining what happens, but obviously mafia!ateez has me in their chokehold. mafia!ateez in my brain: it's free real estate
mingi
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it takes a few days for you to reopen your bar after your fateful meeting with ccg
ccg as in cute coat guy
because quite frankly, that night shook you up a little
mingi most definitely notices your absence
but it's not like he can just check up on how you're doing
not when your bar is closed and he has no real excuse to show up apart from "i was worried about you"
after he reports back to base and rejoins ateez, hongjoong's girlfriend offers to hack into the database and find out what your phone number is
("it'll literally take me like, two seconds")
mingi refuses though because he wants to do things the right way
at least...when it comes to things concerning you
after you reassure yourself that the thugs chasing after cute coat guy aren't going to kill you by association, you feel safe enough to open up the mist again
his leather coat usually sits draped over your chair behind the countertop
originally, you think about washing it before returning it to him
...whenever he shows up you suppose
but then you kind of like the smokey smell of gunpowder with an underlying hint of his cologne that is on the coat
so you leave it as it is
in fact, you might have actually worn it a couple of times
you like how the end of the coat brushes against your calves, how the sleeves fall past your fingertips, how it engulfs your entire frame like an embrace
but mostly, you like how it reminds you of the handsome stranger; who claims he is a good bad guy; who you still do not know the name of
you wonder if he made it back safely that night
you're wearing the coat as you're closing up for the night - it's already well past midnight
you're just about to reach for the last glass on one of the tables when you hear the door to your bar opening
"sorry, i’m closed for the nigh- oh," you pause
it’s ccg
who currently has one leg and arm halfway through the threshold of your door, now frozen mid-step at your words
“if now’s not a good time, i can come back another day?” he starts out hesitantly
“now’s great! good. yes,” you chuckle nervously and try not to be too enthusiastic at his appearance. “now’s good, come in”
you catch his eyes briefly flicker down for a moment before they return to your eyes
then he gives you a soft look and greets you gently, “hi”
“hi,” you return, brain shutting down on you
“you look cute in that,” he jerks his chin down slightly to motion at what he was looking at just moments ago
his leather coat
that you are currently wearing
you squeak in embarrassment, hands fumbling to take it off while you vomit out explanations as to why you’re wearing it
your fingers get caught up in the sleeves
but then he is stepping closer slowly so as not to alarm you, before he grasps the ends of the sleeves and helps tug them off your arms
mingi can’t help but use the opportunity to tenderly hold one of your hands
he’s missed the way your smaller hands fit snugly in his
“did you come back for your coat?” you try to break the silence, because otherwise you are afraid he will hear the heartbeats coming from inside your chest
he nods, “wanted to make sure you were okay, too”
there is a third reason that he does not say
that he just wanted to see you
“i’m okay now,” you reassure him
because he’s back now and he’s safe
he folds the leather coat and places it on the countertop before he says, “i don’t think i ever got your name?”
you tell him then ask him for his
“mingi”
“mingi,” you repeat
he repeats your name in return
“mingi,” you say yet again
“y/n”
you both laugh at the ridiculousness of the whole conversation
“mingi, want to help me close the bar?”
and so you find yourself in his company as you give him easy tasks to do
closing up has always been a tedious job, especially when your body and mind are groggy with fatigue
but with mingi around, an accidental brush whenever you shuffle past each other, a conversation easily flowing between you both, you are awake as ever
even long after all the tables and shot glasses have been cleaned and polished, floors swept, bottles of alcohol reorganised, mingi still has not left
and at some point during the night once you two sit at the countertop to rest your legs, both of you have subconsciously inched closer together in your seats, bodies seeking the warmth and proximity of the other
you are unsure how long you two talk for
but just like that first, fateful meeting with mingi, he stands up to take his leave all too soon
“goodnight, mingi”
mingi buffers for a minute before he decides to do it
he reaches out for your hand, clasping it gently to bring it up to his lips as he presses a light kiss against the back of your hand
and with a goodbye of his own, he turns for the door
except he lingers in the doorway, asking, “will i see you again?”
a smile graces your lips at the irony of the situation and you tell him it's not like you'll be going anywhere; he's free to come visit any time
but you also feel your stomach flutter
because last time, you were the one tugging on mingi’s vest, timidly wondering if that was going to be the last you saw of him
tonight, he is the one unwilling to part ways
not to say that you aren’t either
“i’ll see you around, then,” he says with finality, voice still soft-spoken
and then he leaves
but just mere seconds later you spot it
his leather coat
still folded on your counter where he had placed it earlier
"wait, your coat!" you rush outside with it
mingi is only a few feet away
he could very easily turn around and take it from you
but then he just winks, gives you a tip of his hat and says, "next time," before he's walking away again
you chew on the inside of your cheek to stop the silly grin from blooming across your face
because something tells you that you're going to be hanging on to mingi's coat for him for a while
even after next time
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wooyoung
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it feels like deja vu
a whole gang of mafia members sauntering into your convenience store like a scene straight out of a movie
admittedly, they are much more pleasing to the eye than the group that was chasing after wooyoung weeks ago
but still
these are several muscular men in tank tops, leather jackets and heavy chained necklaces
your hand itches for the comforting weight of the pepper spray in your purse that wooyoung had gotten you just last week
you haven't had a reason to need it since wooyoung basically lives in your store now
and he always walks you home after your shift
but now seems like a more than good enough time to use it
"you usually work the night shift here?"
a voice causes your eyes to snap up
the man at the head of the group addresses you with a quirk of his brow - it's pierced, you notice
"...yeah," you answer
you wonder if this is your last shift at work and at life
and then just like a repeat of last time, you spot wooyoung's frantic bounce of curls appear from across the street of your store
you pray to the heavens above that he isn't being chased by anyone else this time
because the thought of two gangs crossing paths inside your modest store?
you don't think it's going to look like a store after their fight is through
you see the way wooyoung's eyes widen when he spots the thugs just mere feet away from you and you see a curse form on his lips
you just need to hold out until he gets here
wooyoung will keep you safe
wooyoung will-
"then you must know," the man leans in a little closer to grab your attention, "where i can find-"
wooyoung bursts through the door
"-the super sour gummy worms?" the man finishes
you physically cannot help the words that blurt out of you in disbelief, "the fuck you just say?" 
"hongjoong!" wooyoung's piercing shout interrupts you both
wooyoung worms his way through the gang and you stare incredulously at him before you say, "the fuck did you just say?"
he ignores you in favour of pressing his hands against the chest of the man - hongjoong? - and trying to push him towards the doors of your store
quite unsuccessfully, you must add
"the fuck are you guys doing here?" wooyoung yells
"what the fuck is going on?" you demand
"holy fuck, not even hongjoong swears this much"
"fuck yeah, potty mouth!"
"stop swearing you fucktards!"
one of the men who has been lingering on the edge of the group sidles up to the counter, looking at you with an apologetic grimace
"sorry you have to deal with...this," he shakes his head just as another man comes to join you both, "i'm jongho, by the way"
"seonghwa," the other man introduces himself with a gentle voice
these mafia men are surprisingly kind
and normal
except, you suppose, anyone in comparison to wooyoung would be normal
"are you all wooyoung's, uhh, friends?" you don't know whether they know you know
they chuckle, "yeah, we're his friends. his brothers, too, you could say"
you realise the rest of the men have started to settle down and are standing in a rough semi-circle around your counter
wooyoung is currently grumbling and muttering indignantly under his breath with someone's arm thrown over his shoulders, though it looks more like he's a child being scolded by his father than it looks a friendly gesture
"so to what do i owe the pleasure of a visit from all of you?" you ask them, now that there is no swearing being thrown across the room and you realise they aren’t going to shoot you through the head
"had to see for ourselves who was making our wooyoung all smitten. always sneaking out at night like a tween"
"yunho!" wooyoung hisses and elbows said man in the ribs
except with the height difference, it's more like his hips
it's amusing to see how everyone has the upper hand over wooyoung's brattiness
"am i meeting the in-laws already?" you smirk at wooyoung, "you like me or something, jung wooyoung?"
he flushes bright red and you're quite positive that if you made him take his socks off, you would find him blushing straight down to his toes
"that's it!" he hollers, arms flailing and shooing everyone, "out! out! out!"
you know they can easily resist his pushy hands, but they simply snicker and let themselves be herded towards the doors
"bye, darling!" someone jumps up and down to catch your gaze over the heads of everyone else
"shut up, san!"
yunho, you think you recall his name being, flutters his fingers at you cheekily, "we'll be back soon!"
and then he lets out an indignant yelp when wooyoung slaps his back with a screech, "no, you guys won't!"
you're laughing heartily by this point, unrestrained and very much enjoying their antics
"bye, everyone," you wave them off and then blow wooyoung an exaggerated kiss, "see you later, wooyoungie!"
everyone cackles with glee at the sight of him trying to dig himself into the ground
the sound of their ruckus finally dies down as they exit and walk further away from your store
and then you hear a distant wail
"i didn't get my gummy worms!"
you shake your head with a fond smile and take a seat at the register, but not before setting aside a pack of those ‘super sour gummy worms’ for hongjoong
and then, like always, you look at the clock and count the seconds as they tick past
counting down the seconds until wooyoung comes back to see you
again
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dreamsofbroflovski · 2 months ago
Text
Kenny McCormick x Reader - i luv your girl
Also available on ao3!
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Summary: Being stood up when you have the absolutely perfect anniversary date planned would be enough to send anyone spiraling and make them question if anything is even worth it at this point. Luckily for you, the perfect loverboy is willing to sweep you off your feet and show you a good time to help you make a decision.
Warnings: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content (everyone involved is above the age of consent), Cunnilingus, Face-Sitting, Penis In Vagina Sex, Cowgirl Position, Semi-Public Sex, Cheating/Infidelity
A/N: Ugh, I am so fucking sorry. I had this thing like, 75% done on my Docs, and then something else on my life took complete chokehold on me and I couldn't make any progress on it at all for several days. I promise I'll try to write quicker and post more often in the future. Next up on the chopping block (I'm not actually chopping him up, though he deserves it) is Kyley-B, for a request (I'm taking those now) (Also sorry to the follower for taking so long to get to it I am a disgrace)
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“Come on… Come on… Pick it up, will you…”
Clutching my phone in my hands firmly, close to my face as I stared at it with my eyes drifting between the ‘Call’ screen and the battery icon, I paced back and forth on the sidewalk. The sun shined bright and beautiful in the sky, still my mood was anything but - the nerves were exponentially starting to get to me, and I was on my last line.
It was supposed to be my two-year dating anniversary with my current boyfriend, and I had the whole day planned to perfection. Taking advantage of the fact that the weather forecast was announcing a very warm and sunny day - which is rare for our town -, I planned to spend the whole day with my man, starting off with a whole picnic in the park around the local pond. I was wearing my prettiest floral sundress and had a whole basket full of goodies to be enjoyed under the sunlight. Had made sure to arrive early and wait in a place that was of easy access for both me and my partner so we could walk to our destination together. It was all perfect.
Perfect, except for the absence of my other half.
For three hours now I had been waiting, sitting on a bench near a local restaurant that I usually frequent for lunch on workdays, looking around all the time for any signs of him, and he had not arrived. I called and called with my phone but they all went to voicemail, sent a bunch of texts that stayed on delivered - and worse, my battery was now close to dying out, since I forgot to charge it before I left, not thinking it was important since I didn’t plan on spending so much time on my phone anyway. It was currently running at 4% as I tried to call him as many times as possible before it died out and I had to think of another plan.
My heart skipped a beat as the call was answered.
“Baby? Baby! Where are you?” I exclaimed as I put my phone to my ear, my agitation clear on my voice.
*“Mmmmm… Hey, babe… What’s up…” *An extremely groggy version of my boyfriend’s voice came through the phone’s speakers, not nearly close to matching my anxiety.
“What do you mean, what’s up? Where are you?” My mind already had a faint idea of the answer, but I had a sliver of hope in my heart that it might be wrong.
“Huh… In bed.” 
Of fucking course. “In bed? How? It's almost 2pm! We were supposed to meet three hours ago!” It was not my intention to scold him, but in my exasperation it sounded exactly like that.
A few seconds of silence from the other side of the call as my partner seemingly processed the information. *“Damn… Sorry, babe. I stayed up late gaming with the boys and slept through the alarm.” *He sounded slightly less groggy now, like my revelation was a shock to his brain, but not by much.
“I called you so many times, though!” I countered, “Why didn’t you pick those up?”
*“Yeah, sorry about that. I thought it was telemarketing or something.” *His voice didn’t carry a hint of remorse.
I took a deep breath, trying not to scream or make a scene right there on the street. The day was so beautiful, I just didn’t wanna waste it arguing. “Well, you’re still coming, right?” I asked, trying my best to sound patient and less accusatory. “Can you give me an ETA or something?”
“Babe, let’s just… Let’s just take a rain check, alright? It’s late already.” *He sounded as nonchalant as could be as he said that, as if the thing he was cancelling wasn’t our literal anniversary date. *“I promise I’ll make it up to you some other time.”
“It’s our anniversary, baby! I’m already here! What do you-”
With a jolly ringtone, the call was cut short. I put my phone in front of my eyes just in time to see the animation of it turning off on the screen, my battery breathing its last before the device died completely.
And then there was just me.
In small, shaky steps, I made my way to a street bench nearby and sat down, setting my picnic basket to my side and watching with glazed eyes as the cars went by on the street, still clutching my phone in my hand. After waiting for so long, making excuses for my boyfriend’s tardiness on what was supposed to be a date to celebrate the day our relationship started, a date I planned from beginning to end and made sure was completely flawless, it all went to shit in the span of one phone call that didn’t even get to end because I ran out of battery before it could. I was left alone, heartbroken, stressed and with no way of going back home except on foot.
Allowing myself to have at least one thing I wanted, I lowered my face, hiding it with my hands, and let the tears roll fast and plentiful. My whole body shook as I sobbed, all the nerves of the day taking physical form in the salty droplets running from my eyes, as I recalled not just how much of a bad current situation I was in, but all the previous disappointments in my relationship that I swept under the rug because of love. And, deep down, I knew I was likely to let the broom of my self-neglect swipe this one, too.
For what felt like forever, this was all that I had. One of the prettiest outfits of my life, a basket full of food, painful memories running through my mind, tears that didn’t seem to be able to stop running down my cheeks. Until I got something else.
“Hey… Ma’am? Miss?” A gentle male voice called near me, seemingly out of nowhere, bringing me back to the world of the living, so to speak. “Can I help you? Do you need anything?”
I shook my head, still not looking to the source of the sound, now feeling deeply ashamed of myself. Engrossed in my own feelings, I forgot this was still public space and someone was bound to question me at any time, considering how nosy people in this small town tend to be. “I’m fine,” my voice cracked a bit as I said it.
“I am pretty sure you aren’t,” The voice responded, with a sliver of irony, but still gentle, like he wanted to make sure I knew he wasn’t laughing at me. I felt a hand on my bare shoulder - calloused fingers shook it with just as much kindness as I heard in the voice behind them.
“It’s alright, sir,” I sniffled while trying to steady my voice, hoping my fake reassurance would be enough to make this unknown person leave already. “I’ll be leaving soon, don’t worry about it.”
“‘Sir’ is my dad,” He chuckled, “My name is Kenny. At least to all the pretty girls. So call me Kenny.”
His response took a small giggle out of me, even if my whole mind found it inappropriate to do so considering the circumstances. Whoever it was that tried to talk to me was actually making an effort to make things better, not just ask questions out of obligation or curiosity. Slowly, I wiped my tears away with my hands, answered him with my own name and lifted my face up, trying to put an image to ‘Kenny’. And put an image to it I did.
It was almost like the head and body of two different action figures smashed into one. From the neck down, it was simple and rather elegant. The man wore all black, as was common for that restaurant’s waiters; The usual dress shirt with the restaurant’s logo had its first two or three buttons open, making it just slightly more stylish. The charcoal gray apron wrapped around his hips was perfectly spotless like it had never been worn before, and he wore a pair of dress shoes that seemed to have been recently shined.
Once my eyes went up, though, everything seemed to change. His blond hair was styled in some sort of shaggy mullet. The very visible dark circles under his eyes came as a stark contrast to his laid-back posture and the youthful energy I just felt emanating from his body. On the matter of his eyes, I couldn’t pinpoint their color for the life of me; Some trick of the sunlight was clearly at play in them, because in some angles they were blue and in others I could’ve sworn they were lavender. Some tiny reddish nicks speckled his jawline and chin, likely from shaving and not doing a very good job at it. When his mouth was open, I could see that his teeth were slightly crooked, and he had a bit of a gap between the front two on the top row.
The things that were the most startling about his appearance, though, were the scars and piercings on his face, and those he had several of. I could count two eyebrow piercings, a nose ring, a single earring on his right ear and an industrial bar on the other that seemed to still be healing. On the matter of scars, all of them were healed and faded, but screamed gruesome stories; One on his upper lip that went up to end at the side of his nostril, another one on his temple, and a third, the biggest, started on the right side of his jaw and went all the way down to the start of his neck.
To be honest, I liked the look of the top part more than the bottom.
As he saw me looking up at him, the corners of his lips curved into a smile, a genuine one filled with kindness. “Wanna talk to someone about it?” He asked as he pushed my picnic basket on the bench away and sat to my side, leaning forwards with his face towards me.
“Ugh… No, I just…” My fingers ran through my hair in stress as I threw my head back, feeling my eyes burn with tears again and trying to chase them away so I could at least leave this situation and go home without further questions.
“Let me guess… boy troubles?”
It was a rather sexist guess on his part, but I wasn’t about to fight it, because he happened to be right. “How do you…?”
I turned my face to look at him and he pointed to my hand on my hair, where on my ring finger rested a thin silver band with my boyfriend’s name engraved on the inside. “You’ve got a ring.” Turns out he wasn’t being misogynistic at all. He was just too attentive, something I’m not used to.
With a sigh, I slouched forwards with my face down again.
“Now I’m curious,” Kenny admitted as he leaned back on the seat of the bench, resting his arms on top of it, “What kind of monster made a goddess like you cry like that?”
I shook my head again and pointed to his shirt, specifically to the restaurant’s logo embroidered on the uniform. “Don’t you have somewhere to be right now?”
“Don’t worry about it. The place’s practically empty right now. Most people are at the mall or at Stark’s Pond anyway.” He shrugged. “And besides… I shouldn’t tell you this, but my boss is acting kinda crazy thinking you’re scouting the place to rob. So me being here probably puts his mind at ease because now he has a witness.”
Great. Just lovely. Now, on top of my whole shitty life situation, I’ll also have to find all the workers at that place looking at me funny whenever I go in for lunch. “So you told him you’d come here to teach the possible thief a lesson?”
“No. I told him there was no way in Hell someone as adorable as you was up to no good.” It was the third compliment on my appearance in less than five minutes of interaction. Apparently he was the type of man to not be deterred by something as ‘insignificant’ as a woman’s boyfriend, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Well, your boss can rest assured,” I said, “I was just waiting here to go on a date. No robbery plans.”
“That’s what I thought.” He nodded slowly. “But I saw you while I was working. You’ve been here quite a while. What happened?”
“Well…” I took a deep breath, trying to put it all into words without bawling immediately - it still didn’t stop some tears from falling and my voice from cracking as I finally spoke again, “Apparently, my boyfriend slept past his alarm and forgot our anniversary date.”
Sudden movement to my side had me startled and I looked up again. Kenny was on his feet, an exasperated expression on his face. “What a bastard! YOU’RE sitting here, looking like a fucking snack for him, and your stupid ass boyfriend is at his place sleeping when he could be ravaging you?”
This man sounded genuinely indignant, even if extremely crude - in a twisted way, it only served to fill my brain up with more thoughts that maybe I wasn’t being treated as decently as I deserved, because I found myself not wanting to dispute him or make excuses for my boyfriend’s behaviour, either. “Don’t put it like that…”
“I always put it in in many ways,” Kenny sat back down next to me on the bench, the double entendre he spat definitely understood and ignored by me when I tried my best not to laugh, “And the only thing your boyfriend there seems to be putting is stress on your shoulders.”
He put his hand on my back and rubbed it gently slowly, as if trying to physically remove this figurative weight he mentioned - and, surprisingly, I felt it working even if just a little bit. My facial expression probably gave my enjoyment away, because he didn’t remove his hand even after he stopped moving it, and I let him keep it like that.
“I mean, it’s not that bad…” I avoided Kenny’s gaze as I uttered those words, and immediately the pain he had soothed came crashing down again. “”It’s just one date. I’m sure it’s-”
“Don’t you start this on me now,” Kenny interrupted before I could continue my poor attempt at a dispute, “You know it is that bad. It’s your anniversary. Fuck, if I had a chick willing to do all that for me, I’d stick to her like bubblegum on a shoe,” he chuckled nervously as he ran his fingers through his hair, the thought of having someone who cared about him that much apparently making his brain run amok - he was probably the type of person to try to get things done for people instead of the other way around.
“And I’ll say more,” he took a deep breath and continued as he took note of my silence, “Even if it was just a date, you should still be pissed. You agreed on something and he fucked it up. And now you’re here, looking sad and hot. If this happened to any of your girl friends, you’d tell them to send the garbage dick to the gutters, wouldn’t you?”
I tried opening my mouth to argue further, try to defend my man’s behaviour or justify it, but found myself running dry of the excuses I usually had on hand. It was like something inside of me had snapped, and if there was one goddamn day of my relationship where I would allow myself to be angry and expect reparations, it would be this one.
“Thanks, Kenny,” I murmured, nodding slowly and letting my gratitude shine through my eyes as well when I gazed into his, “Means a lot.”
“Don’t mention it,” he shook his head, making his shaggy hair flow beautifully and frame his face even better, “Consider this my first real attempt at becoming employee of the month.”
In a weird way, Kenny’s presence and his charisma were starting to make me feel better. I felt drawn to continue talking to him, if just to hear his voice more.
“Are you a new hire?” I asked, signaling with my head towards the restaurant where he worked at, “I come here often and I’ve never seen you there before.”
“Oh, no no no, I’ve been there a couple of months now,” Kenny was quick to answer, waving his hand in front of him to emphasize the negative, “But I usually just do cleaning duty and help in the kitchen. They don’t want me waiting tables because I ain’t exactly got a face for customer service.”
I didn’t argue with his comment, but it wasn’t for a lack of wanting to. The man sitting next to me was absolutely handsome. Every single one of his features displayed intense personality and charm, and the words in his voice always sounded extremely seductive no matter the subject. Kenny had a natural magnetism to him that most men could never have no matter how hard they tried. However, he was nonetheless a bit rough around the edges, and the piercings and scars probably were a red flag when it came to employment. Not his fault and there was nothing wrong with him, the only one to blame was our current society.
“Anyway, today I’m actually covering for a friend of mine,” Kenny continued, “Got in some sort of trouble and couldn’t be here, so he asked me to cover for him and it was the least I could do.”
Using my amassed knowledge of the restaurant’s usual waiters, I went through my mental images of all of their faces to try and guess who his friend could be. There was this other young man, about our age… “Is it the other blond guy? Also with the… You know, over his eye?” I moved my finger in front of my left eye, tracing a scar I remembered the other man having. Were facial scars an integral part of the restaurant’s uniform?
“Butters. That’s him.” Kenny nodded with a smile. “Really nice dude. Reliable. He’s covered my ass a couple of times, vouched for me to get this job too. I gotta check on him later to see if everything’s alright, he never misses a workday.”
The sincerity in Kenny’s voice and the way he beamed about his colleague made my heart feel warmer. There was obviously more to their friendship than just being work buddies, and I was sure this ‘Butters’ guy was very near and dear to him. Maybe next time I went in there for lunch we could strike a conversation or something.
But all good things must come to an end. With a stinging reminder that I still had a phone with zero battery on me and a whole walk to my house ahead, which would set me back on my ‘not think of my life’ objective a lot, I decided I should just cut that umbilical cord and let my new buddy go back to living his own.
“Well, Kenny… I think I really need to go. Don’t wanna take up any more of your time.” I run my hands over my eyes one more time, even though the tears have already all spilled by now and are basically dry. “Thanks for everything. All the best to you.”
I get up from the bench and wave him a goodbye, but feel him grab my wrist and tug at it as I try to leave. When I turn to him again, he’s holding up my picnic basket in his hand. “You forgot your… your thing here.”
He pushes it toward me, but I don’t pick it up, instead just making a dismissing motion with my free hand. “Keep it.” I shook my head. “I’m not hungry anyway. Think of it as a token of appreciation for keeping me company.”
“You’re not hungry? That’s bullshit!” He gets on his feet as well and tries giving me the basket again, more insistently this time. “You were waiting here for hours without eating. You must be starving.”
Kenny wasn’t wrong. During our whole conversation, I could feel the familiar pangs of hunger in my belly, my body’s painful way of begging me for sustenance. However, just thinking of coming back home all alone and having to eat all the food I prepared for me and my boyfriend, knowing full well that it was supposed to be for a special occasion and I had instead been bailed on like it was nothing, was enough to make my eyes burn again with the threat of another crying session. I wouldn’t be able to do it.
To keep myself from crying again, I just let out a downcast sigh. “It’s alright. There’s too much for just me anyway, I don’t want it to go bad. If you keep it you can at least share with your buddies or something.”
“Well, I’m still not taking what’s yours, that’d be fucked up. But…” His eyes darted to the side, looking towards his workplace, then back to the basket his holding and then finally to me again.
“But?”
“Well, as it turns out, I haven’t had my lunch break yet.” His hand releases its grasp on my wrist and he picks up his phone in the pocket of his apron briefly to check the time, putting it right back after he does. “So I think you can still have that picnic.”
It was unbelievable. “You’d… Do that for me?”
“It would be a real mistake to let such a perfectly prepared meal go to waste.” He made a gesture with his hand, towards my picnic basket - a gesture that I could’ve sworn encompassed me as well, theory only made stronger by the mischievous glint I definitely saw in his eyes.
His boldness had me flabbergasted. In any other situation, I’d be nothing short of horrified at the thought of an unknown man inviting himself to my business like that and basically taking over my day - but Kenny had been so kind, helping me with nothing but caring words as I bawled my eyes out, taking time away from his work to make sure an unknown woman was safe and okay while asking for absolutely nothing in return. And he seemed so genuine about it, too - even if he had made some playful passes, I wasn’t the slightest bit uncomfortable around him. He was being extremely nice about all of it and I found myself not ready to go back home and face the music of my terrible life just yet; Maybe Kenny and I really could have a great time together, even if it wasn’t what I originally planned.
“If you really want to…” I give him a gentle smile. “Let’s go, then.”
His eyes light up like a child’s as he hears my acceptance, and he hands me my basket to hold before starting to walk with purpose past me, leaving me confused. “Just stay here for a bit, okay? Don’t go nowhere.” He calls out to me, but as he sees my eyes widening and a little sadness flash behind them - I hadn’t considered that I’d had to wait even more for Kenny now, and my whole experience with today had me a little paranoid -, he’s quick to add: “I swear I’ll be quick, it’s just to warn the other folk! Be back in a flash!”
With a deep breath, I decide to trust him on this one. “Go, go!” I yell with urgency, turning my attention to other parts of my surroundings while he goes do what needs to be done.
Luckily I didn’t have to wait long. After just a couple minutes my ears picked up rushed footsteps coming in my direction - Kenny was now straight up running to meet me. He looked mostly the same, with a few key differences; He had ditched his apron completely and was now wearing a big orange parka with brown details on the hoodie. It looked cheap , old and beat-up, with a bunch of very visible stitching on the seams, like it had ripped off and been sewn back together multiple times before. It also had a couple dried dark stains splattered around it, but I wasn’t about to ask what they were.
“Feeling cold?” I pointed at the new addition to his outfit.
Kenny shook his head and shrugged, the jacket making a very characteristic plastic-like sound with his movement. “Just thought I might need it.”
You’re gonna sweat in that was my immediate thought, but the judgement that followed was to not to waste any time debating his decision, he’s a grown adult and must have his reasons. I adjusted the basket on my forearm as I began to walk, but Kenny quickly moved to my side and pulled it away from me, locking his right arm with my left one and holding the basket with his other hand. I turned to him with a confused look, but he said nothing about it, instead choosing to go on about something entirely unrelated as we made our way to our destination.
༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚
The trip to Stark’s Pond was quite short, but filled with fun and laughter all the way nonetheless. Kenny was making progress on his objective of keeping me distracted from my current situation, telling me lots of jokes and sneaking compliments every other sentence like it was second nature for him to say them, which it might as well be. I had no doubt that, for anyone who went past us on the street and didn’t know who we were, the only thing they saw was one extremely happy couple.
I ended up learning lots of stuff about him, too. He opened up like a library book, probably to compensate for the fact that he saw me so vulnerable earlier. I found out that he was an extremely hardworking man, needing money not only for his daily expenses but also to help his little sister pay her university tuition - between that and his treatment of me, a person he barely knew, I had no doubt he truly had a heart of gold.
Besides the daily shifts at the restaurant and some odd jobs here and there whenever he got some free time, he was regularly busy during weekend nights, working as a bartender at a club in Main Street. I knew the place like the back of my hand. It was my old stomping ground - I had spent many a crazy Friday and Saturday night there, and it was also where I had met my current boyfriend, a drunk hookup that became a bigger thing. Ironically enough, once we made it official, he began to get bothered whenever I talked of going there and would give me the silent treatment if I did, so I eventually just abandoned it altogether to keep the peace.
“Well, if you ever feel like coming back,” Kenny said after I commented on the coincidence, “Then keep me company at the bar. Drinks on me. And not that overpriced stuff full of ice we usually make. Real alcohol.”
I told him he was full of shit and waved him off, but made a mental note of what he said… Just in case.
When we arrived at the lake, it was immediately verified that Kenny’s predictions about what the people in town were doing for the sunny day were correct. The park surrounding the pond was peppered with couples in love whispering sweet nothings to each other while watching the clouds, families with children throwing frisbees to their dogs, and groups of teenagers being as loud as they usually are and causing stress to everyone around them. My eyes scanned the space around me, looking for a decent open spot to sit down - meanwhile, Kenny just kept walking like he already knew where he wanted to go, and I absentmindedly followed him.
The realization that we had deviated a little from the main path only comes to me when the sound beneath my feet goes from soft grass to crunching twigs. We were breaching the forest nearby, Kenny bringing me swiftly around the trees like his legs had their positions down pat. I knew for a fact that there was a trail of beaten dirt through this same forest for those who wished to take a stroll in it, but we weren’t following that path. As I shoot an inquisitive glance and a frown towards my new friend, he just smiles, acknowledging my confusion but not missing pace over it.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, I have the perfect spot,” He turned to me, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “Unless you wanna go back and we can go sit next to those highschoolers with the speakers blasting 6ix9ine.”
I shook my head quickly and emphatically, immediately getting a pep in my step. “Oh no, I trust you on this one.”
Our little unexpected promenade didn’t last for much longer. Soon the trees started to spread more distant from each other, and we arrived at a small open area, a random glade I had never seen before. The tree canopies bunched together didn’t create their patchy roof over our heads any longer, so the sun was free to shine and warm up my skin. The branches fallen on the ground were few and far between, and the grass was decently smooth and level, perfect for relaxing on it. No animals were to be seen, probably scattered away much earlier after hearing our noises, but I could hear birds singing in the distance and catch one or two flying high above our heads.
“This is a nice place, Kenny!” I exclaimed, turning to him with a smile. “How much roaming around the forest did you do to find it?”
“I guess I’ve known about it for a while. Me and my bros come here all the time to have a smo- Think. We come here to think.” I laughed after hearing Kenny immediately try to correct himself, his sudden interest in a tiny pebble on the grass not going unnoticed either.
“You don’t have to hide it from me, I’m not a prude.” I shrugged. “Think anyone else might get the same idea today?”
“Nah, I don’t think so. And if they do, trust me, they’re gonna leave.”
Deciding once again to not question Kenny’s words or his methods, I opened up the basket in my arm and picked up a yellow and white checkered picnic blanket, opening it up and stretching it over the grass. My unexpected companion immediately started to help me spread the contents of the basket neatly on top of it, making all our food options easily visible.
And there were many of them. I had been quite proud of myself beforehand for managing to prepare a decent amount of stuff for my date, but it dawned on me that if I hadn’t had Kenny by my side it would have taken me a couple of days to get through it all on my own at home. Me and my improbable new friend talked a bunch more while we made quick work of the small club sandwiches, homemade chicken pie, carrot cake, some assorted snacks and drinks from the grocery store, and…
“Chocolate-covered strawberries? Seriously?” Kenny held up the small red box, shaking it slightly. “The big expensive ones too. You really went all out for this.”
“Hey, I forgot I had that! These are the best!” I let out a small squeal of surprise, the memory of having picked up the sweet treat earlier at the candy store having gotten lost in my head over all the stress I went through. I reach my arm towards Kenny, the tiny box too far away for me to get to it naturally. ”Can you pass me one, please?”
After I finished my request, my ears picked up some particularly close chirping, and I quickly turned my head around to look for any sign of a small bird that could be producing it, my hand still extended towards Kenny with my fingers wiggling as I waited for him to give me one of the sweet treats. I heard the characteristic noise of the box being opened, and something being shuffled inside of it, but nothing ever made its way to me. When I turned to see what was taking Kenny so long, I realized why - Kenny was staying put with one of the strawberries held between his teeth with half of it sticking out of his mouth. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes held the message of what he wanted me to do next.
I had to admit, I considered it for a brief moment. It was a simple act of play, but so sensual as well - I hadn’t been able to do this kind of silly stuff in quite a while, and it ignited something in me that had been dormant for a while now. I felt wanted. However, my moral compass was still blaring its sirens loudly in my brain, and I didn’t want to lead my whole life astray just because one guy I just met was giving me all the attention I needed. “Oh, come on, give me that!” I feigned annoyance and reached over to try and pick the fruit out from between Kenny’s teeth, but he quickly just gets all of it inside of his mouth and starts chewing.
“Had to at least try.” He chuckled, with his mouth still full, before picking out another strawberry from the box and handing it over to me properly this time.
“Do you try this with every girl who offers you food?” I inquired with irony in my voice as I plucked the small leaves off the top of the fruit, “The whole loverboy act?”
He swallows before answering this time. “Only when they’re as cute as you are,” He replied, “Which means I’ve never done it before in my entire life.”
If my eyes could roll back further into my head, they’d dislodge from it. “Like I said, Kenny, you’re full of shit,” I retorted right before popping the whole strawberry in my mouth, closing my eyes to savor its taste. My next words came slightly messed up, as I spoke with my mouth full, covering it with my hand. “I bet the girls are all over you with that.”
While I chewed on the fruit, Kenny stayed totally silent, his eyes scanning the plaid pattern of the picnic blanket under him. “What if it’s not an act, though?”
The sudden seriousness in his tone made my eyes shoot open immediately, and I flinched a bit, a frown creasing my forehead.
Kenny started scooting closer and wrapped his arms around me, suddenly pulling my body in one quick motion so I was seated between his legs while he hugged me tightly from behind. I tensed up completely in his arms, and didn’t dare make a movement even when his heavy breathing on my shoulder made the fine hairs behind my neck stand up. “Ken… I…” My uttering was almost non-audible, voice still strained from the surprise.
He grinned against the crook of my neck. “Ken, huh?” Kenny’s murmurs came out slightly muffled by my skin, “I can be that today, if you need me to. Just say it.”
“What are we doing, Ken?” My voice slowly started coming back to me, and I looked down towards the grass, seeing Kenny’s leg stretched right next to mine, barely touching it. He was too close now for me to be able to shake off his advances or pretend they’re just jokes; There was nowhere to go but right through them. “I shouldn’t be here…”
“What you *should *be is with someone who values you.” He cut my sentence with a firm and decided tone in his voice, getting a tighter hold of me between his arms. “A real man, not that sucker you’re dating right now. Someone who treats you right.”
I wanted to argue with him, ask him who he thinks he is to assume things about a woman he barely knows - but I knew his words to be true, there’s no point I can try to make that will make them not so.
Seeing that I was both not moving from my position and not disputing his claims, my guess is that he had newfound energy to get his point across, because he continued talking. “Do you know what I would do if I had a woman like you by my side, huh?” Kenny rhetorically asked, his voice almost a growl. “I’d wake up at the crack of dawn every day to provide for her. I’d make love to her every single night. I’d be the one planning dates and showing her a good time. I wouldn’t leave you alone to cry in the middle of the fucking street, I’d be too busy making you happy instead.”
“You said ‘you’ right now.” I immediately pointed out, even though it’s unnecessary. “Not ‘her’. ‘You.’”
“And I fucking meant it.”
With that, one of his arms loosened its wrap on my body and reached far for the tiny box containing the chocolate strawberries, and he picked one up in his hands, bringing it close to our faces. This one had a different design from all the others - instead of the usual white chocolate lines over the milk chocolate covering, this one’s got small red hearts as well. It’s more detailed, a tiny touch of romance to what is usually a very sexy treat in nature. Kenny cleaned the leaves out of the strawberry and took a bite out of it, holding the other half close to my lips. My nostrils immediately took in the sweet scent of the fruit, but I didn't open my mouth just yet.
“Look, I won’t force you to do anything you don’t wanna do. But if you let me, I’ll make you feel real good. Promise.” He murmured, digging his left hand’s fingers on the soft side of my belly one last time. The ball was fully on my court, but I could still feel the hints of his desperation for my body as he waited patiently for my answer.
Slowly and nervously, I parted my lips and let Kenny put the small piece of strawberry inside of my mouth himself, hearing him sigh in relief behind me as he did so. Once he withdrew his fingers from my mouth, that’s when I finally bit down on the small treat. This one isn’t as sweet as the others; It might not have been as perfectly ripe, so it had a tiny tinge of sourness mixed up in the fruit’s flavor. The milk chocolate around the fruit almost masked it up completely, though - the whole combination tasted absolutely heavenly, not just for the fruit, but also for the implications of it. I was in deep now.
Kenny almost doesn’t wait for me to swallow what’s in my mouth before turning my face to his and kissing me fiercely, his left hand getting tangled with the hair in the back of my head. I kissed him back with the same amount of fervor almost immediately, and all of my worries over this whole situation dissipated from my head like dry ice; Fuck what needed to happen for us to get to this point, fuck my problems and how I’d sort them out, fuck morals and especially fuck the outside world. This tiny little section of the forest was our own personal bubble, and I’d live in it for as long as I could.
When the tip of Kenny’s tongue brushed my bottom lip and I opened my mouth to grant it access, I realized I hadn’t accounted for one more piercing of his. The tiny little ball sitting in the middle of his tongue didn’t feel as cold as I thought it would, so it was more the sudden change in hardness and texture that threw me off a bit. I kept my cool, though, as I put my hands on both sides of his face and pulled it even closer to mine. I decided to try something out and touched his piercing with the tip of my tongue, flicking it ever so gently - I immediately felt Kenny’s hard-on twitch inside of his pants against my lower back.
As our tongues slid around each other and explored our connected mouths, his right hand slowly made its way up my thigh, sneaking under my clothes, ghosting over my bare pussy. I had been having so much fun with this man today, I’d completely forgotten I wasn’t wearing anything under my dress. Just this slight contact was enough to make my breath hitch and Kenny broke the kiss, his hand freezing in place.
When I opened my eyes, he was unapologetically staring at me. Mouth agape in surprise, pupils wide, it almost seemed like the whole galaxy was behind his eyes with the way they shined. Kenny looked like what someone would if you told them all of their dreams had come true at the same time.
“What a lucky son of a bitch.” He uttered almost non-audibly, the corners of his mouth slowly curving upwards into a delighted smile. For a moment, I wondered if he was talking about my actual partner or about himself. I wasn’t able to ask, though - Kenny’s left hand immediately grabbed my chin and tilted my head up, holding my face, ear and neck in perfect positions for him to start kissing, sucking and biting them voraciously.
The middle and index fingers on his right hand went back to gliding up and down my folds, picking up the building slick from my entrance and spreading it all over before settling over my clit and drawing quick tight circles over the bundle of nerves. Before I knew it, I was putty in Kenny’s hands, squirming and arching my back as much as I could in his grasp, my moans filling his ears and working as fuel for his ministrations.
Eliciting a whine of annoyance from my mouth when he did, Kenny took his hands away from me, not without planting one last wet kiss to my jaw. While I cooled down, steadying my breath, he brought his fingers over to his mouth, sucking on them and licking slowly. Then he sighed. “Fuck, no. This won’t do at all. Need you on my face, baby.”
I didn’t even have time to register what he said or the implications of it before he let go of my body and started moving behind me, stretching his legs under mine. When I quickly turned back to see what was up, he was already fully laid down with his head on the blanket, hands pulling at my thighs like he wanted to bring me closer to his upper body.
“Wait, what?” I tried to get up at my feet, but his pulling made me lose balance and I quickly sat back down as gently as I could, my knees now at both sides of his abdomen.
“Come on, over here,” he called, still trying to drag me over his body towards his face, “Or do you want me to beg? Because I’ll do it.”
Somehow the idea of Kenny begging for something like this made a blush spread quickly across my cheeks and ears, which probably burned bright like a beacon. How to explain to this man that I had never done what he wanted me to do?
My question was answered almost immediately - like everything else in my interactions with Kenny, I didn’t have to tell him, he knew straight away. “That fucking asshole,” he let out a disgruntled huff, rubbing his face with his hand as if completely stressed.
“Excuse me?”
“Your damn boyfriend,” he immediately responded, huffing again as if the mere thought of that man made him angry, “Can’t even eat out his own fucking lady properly.”
“I never said…” Once again with all my damn defenses, but this time it was aimed at myself. I’d feel awkward admitting to Kenny that even though I was fairly experienced, what with the long-term relationship, I still knew very little about my own pleasure.
“It’s written all over your face, baby,” he said, gesturing towards my beet red features, his expression softening. “But it’s alright. You take a seat and enjoy the show. This is my shift.”
He then started playing with the hem of my dress, twirling it between his fingers, waiting for my next move. Slowly, but surely, I started scooting on my knees towards his face, turning my face away as I got closer to his mouth. As I finally got to it, my bare cunt hovering above his face, his arms wrapped around my thighs and started pulling me down as if he wanted me to fall on him - was this guy trying to have his neck broken? To stop him from actually succeeding in this endeavor, I lowered myself steadily to where my folds were touching his lips.
And he got to work right away. His tongue started by licking tentative stripes through my slit, capturing on it my already plentiful arousal - I could hear Kenny’s satisfied groans as he tasted it, but the front of my dress falling over his head shielded me from any facial expressions.
His fingers splayed on the soft flesh of my thigh tightened their grasp as he started licking and sucking faster, and I leaned forward, putting my hands on the floor near Kenny’s head for stability.
“Yes, Ken! More! Aaah!” I called out once his tongue picked up speed, tugging fistfuls of my own picnic blanket as my fingers tried to dig into the floor. Seemingly content with my feedback, he mumbled something against my pussy, as if trying to speak, but the only thing that was definitely caught by my senses were the vibrations against my folds, all the way to my core.
Then and there I realized that Kenny might be an actual genius. Whenever his tongue would lap at my clit, or make its way to fuck my cunt again, I’d feel the tiny piercing on top of it - and it increased my pleasure tenfold. The extra stimulation of the hard metal ball with his soft tongue had me seeing blank before my eyes with every quick successive movement, and he knew it too, because I could hear him groan as he’d purposefully lap and flick and curl with his tongue mercilessly.
Before I could catch myself, I was rocking my hips against Kenny’s face, trying to get more contact, more of anything he could give me. His jaw and tongue followed my movements perfectly, like he was well prepared for this exact reaction. My thighs were quivering from the pleasure he was giving me as well as the strain of the position while I tried not to completely fall on his mouth. It didn’t take much long for me to figuratively do exactly that, though; With a loud cry that probably scared every single animal in a radius across the forest, I came on his mouth, my hands grabbing a fistful of the grass under them while I rocked shamelessly against Kenny’s face, riding it through my release. I could feel his nails digging at the flesh of my ass, but he never made a movement to pull me away, eating me up like a man starved.
Once I started coming to my senses again and brought back enough strength to my thighs, I lifted myself up away from Kenny’s face slowly and hiked up the front of my dress, looking down to be able to see his face at that moment. He looked back at me through half-lidded eyes, his cheeks and nose sporting a reddish flush that definitely didn’t exist before. My juices are splattered all around his mouth and he has this massive stupid grin on his face, showing almost all of his teeth.
“Gorgeous.” He uttered once he saw me staring back, his voice raspy and lazy. I merely chuckled, going backwards on my knees until I was close to his hips, where I finally settled, lowering myself back down to sit right on top of the generous tent formed in his pants.
Kenny lifted his upper body up on his elbows once he felt me positioned against his still clothed cock. “Oh, aren’t we eager now?” He teased, patting the ground next to him. “Lay down here, baby. Let me sort that out for you.”
I shook my head with a smirk. “I don’t think I will. This is my shift now.”
His eyes widened, astounded, as I put both my hands on his chest and pushed him back down with full force of my arms. His head was still lifted as his back hit the ground, and I made sure to maintain our gazes connected as my hands drifted to his pants, unbuckling and unzipping them with dexterity.
“Are you sure?” Kenny inquired, his eyebrows arched, but I was positive I could see the faintest hint of a smile on the corners of his lips. “I mean, I’m all for it, but aren’t you tired?”
“I’m fine. I wanna do this.” I tug down his pants and boxers just enough to free his cock, rolling my hips a couple times over it just to see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “Besides, it’s good thigh workout.”
“Not that you need it.” Kenny’s hands ran over my legs, giving my thighs a light squeeze. Once he saw my hand going towards his dick again as I prepared to take him inside of me, however, his grip released and his arm reached over somewhere. “Wait, wait, wait! Time out!”
I glanced confused to the side and saw Kenny dragging closer to us his parka, which had long been discarded to one end of our blanket, and he stuffed his hand inside of one of the pockets. “What is it?” I tried to ask, but he just rummaged around in it for two or three seconds more before bringing out a blue foil package.
So that’s why he needed to bring the damn jacket. “Someone’s well prepared.”
“I mean… Better be safe than sorry.” Kenny replied, handing me the tiny square. “Come on, I was about to hang out alone with the hottest chick in town. A guy can dream, you know?”
I twisted the wrapping between my fingers, analyzing the information in it. Average size - though that tells me next to nothing about what I’m really working with - and of the ‘Ultra Thin’ variety. This fucking guy. “You’re clean, right?”
“Oh yeah, absolutely!” He answered at record speed, nodding for extra emphasis. “But I mean… It’s for your best, right?”
I placed the condom right back on top of his parka. “I’m on the pill,” I reassured him as his face sported a totally confused expression, “So, if you’ll let me… I want to feel you, Ken. Really feel you.”
He swallowed hard again, his dick twitching with more precum leaking out of the tip as he took in my words. Still pleasantly surprised by my decision, he slowly nodded, closing his eyes and seemingly letting himself relax - though I could almost see all the little cogs in his brain moving wildly with all the lewd thoughts he had of me, and it made for great fuel to my ego.
My hand wrapped around Kenny’s cock again and I lifted my hips up to get in perfect position on top of it, moving the tip around my entrance teasingly, spreading his pre over it and getting it mixed with my own slick. When I finally slipped about an inch fully inside and my cunt gave one small initial clench around it, Kenny’s eyes shot open and he grabbed my thighs again, like he was fighting the temptation of pulling me down immediately.
“Tight… So fucking tight…” He grunted between gritted teeth, his dick twitching once again. His words like fire on my lower abdomen, I steadied myself over him before slamming my hips fully down and burying him to the hilt in one motion, both of us letting out loud groans as he stretched my walls with little preparation. Kenny’s nails dug at my thighs with this, leaving the tiniest crescent marks on them.
After a few seconds to adjust to his size - the longest seconds of my life - I lifted myself up agonizingly slowly before sinking back down again, trying to keep a slow and teasing pace, but failing miserably as I quickly began picking up speed and riding him in earnest. His enthusiasm matched mine, his hands on my thighs moving to my ass, feeling every jiggle and bounce of my flesh.
And that wasn’t the only thing of mine that bounced that he seemed interested in. Now that Kenny’s eyes were open, he basically zeroed in on the movement of my breasts, pupils glazed over with hunger. Determined to give him the show he was so interested in, I quickly removed the straps of my sundress from my shoulders and pulled down the neckline, so that my tits were on full display for him. That same stupid grin he had exhibited earlier showed up yet again.
“Mmmm… Like what you see, Ken?” I teased, brushing a wild strand of hair off his face with one of my hands, my soft touch lingering.
“Fuck yes,” one of his hands left my behind to knead at one of the perky mounds, “You’re perfect. Your boyfriend is a fucking-” I silenced him immediately with a particularly hard crash of my cunt on him. I needed not hear further from his mouth except for grunts or praise.
With every roll of my hips and slap of my skin against his, I wondered more why I took so long to surrender to him. My decision to let him hit it raw might have been irrational, but I didn’t regret it one single bit; He filled me up so perfectly, his length like the perfect massager to my inner walls, bringing me bliss like I hadn’t felt in quite a while. My hands grabbed and tugged at his shirt while I moaned with the full force of my throat, throwing my head back as his cock hit that sweet spot inside of me with every movement I made.
“Ken… Ken… Aaaah…” His nickname left my mouth like the chorus of an earworm song, ever present, the only thing I could think about in life. And I continued to say it over and over, making sure that it would permanently stick to his brain as well, my voice his only true companion even with the deafening music of the club he worked nights at.
“Hell yeah, baby,” he groaned between gritted teeth, “Let it out… You keep saying my name like that and I’m gonna lose my fucking mind here…”
Even if he said it like something that was yet to happen, lowering my gaze to Kenny’s face told me that he was already absolutely going* through it*. His eyes were tight shut and his eyebrows were furrowed, almost in a manner of deep concentration; He was trying his hardest to not finish before I did, and it was awkwardly endearing.
The pace of my hips slowed briefly as I lowered my upper body down towards Kenny’s chest, keeping balance by holding myself on my elbows bent to the sides of him. Once he’s not as overwhelmed with pleasure and felt the tip of my nose ghosting against his, he dared open his eyes to meet my caring gaze and soft smile. He immediately wrapped his arms around me and lifted his head from the ground just barely, his lips chasing mine, yearning for their velvety touch - which I granted them gladly, taking him in a luscious kiss as my hips slowly regained their previous momentum.
“Beautiful… Like a damn angel… Heaven’s got nothing on you…” Kenny whispered against my lips as soon as they parted from his, and those words on his voice made my heart skip a beat yet again - it was like he knew all the buttons to press to make me melt for him, even though we barely knew each other - but I knew that after all this I was definitely keeping him in my personal circle.
Our slight experiment with real affection didn’t last long, though. In my new position, my clit was making contact with Kenny’s skin and being stimulated with every movement I made; Soon I had to take my face away from Kenny’s to bury it in the crook of his neck as I moaned, feeling my orgasm fast approaching again from the combined effort on my pleasure spots.
My thrusts became shorter and even quicker as I felt my muscles tightening again, the upcoming climax threatening to consume me, with my thighs also trembling and burning from the straining ‘workout’. I continued grinding on him with wild abandon until I came on his dick with a shuddering cry of his nickname; the sun in the sky feeling almost cold in comparison to the electric warmth that coursed through every inch of my body, sparks of pleasure jolting through my muscles, making my cunt contract wildly around that man’s dick as if trying to make him a whole part of me.
As a tough roar reached my ears, the motion of my hips was abruptly interrupted by Kenny’s hands grabbing the sides of them and holding me firmly in place; He replaced my movement with his, bucking upwards in an intense burst of stamina as he now allowed himself to chase his own release. Given how long he had been holding back and how quick and powerful each of his thrusts were now, it doesn’t take long to catch up to him - soon his hips jerk up one last time and stay firmly in place, and I feel his cock twitching as it fills me up with jet after jet of his warm seed.
He stayed put like this for a while, with his hips raised to meet mine, the sounds of our heavy breathing the only thing audible in the little clearing at that moment. When I decided to make the first move and get up, Kenny’s softening dick sliding off of me and allowing his cum to start dripping down my legs, his arms fell to his side and he stretched his legs, letting out a deep sigh of contentment.
“Someone’s happy,” I commented with a smile as I laid down beside him, watching the sunlight hit his golden hair just right.
“Ya think?” Kenny responded with a rough chuckle, immediately wrapping his arm around me and pulling me closer so I’m resting on his chest with my legs draped over his. “Damn, baby… I’m never letting you go now.”
Coming down from my high, I expected all of the usual occurrences associated with descriptions of cheating you see in fiction to wash over me: Regret, sadness, anger at myself - or, if I was a narcissist, at this man for indulging me -, despair, maybe I’d even start running some excuses in my head. Absolutely none of these thoughts came to pass. Instead, as I laid on top of the picnic blanket soaking in the warm sun with a peaceful Kenny lazily petting my hair, I felt a sense of absolute bliss; After so many things that seemed wrong in my life for the past two years, I was finally having a moment where I’m certain something is right, and the definitive decision was made in my heart to never let it be otherwise again.
༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚𓆩♡𓆪༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚༝༚
We unfortunately didn’t make it back to the restaurant before Kenny’s lunch break ended, which meant he’d probably get a scolding from his manager for being unpunctual. When I apologized for making him late, though, he didn’t seem the slightest bit worried about it - his boyish grin stayed on his face the whole time, and he was actually acting more mad about having to leave me and go back to waiting tables.
He did bring me inside of the restaurant through a door in the back and led me to the employee’s break room, where one of his colleagues had a charger I could borrow. I used it just enough to be able to call an Uber and have battery for the ride home, not wanting to overstay my welcome when Kenny was already on thin ice because of our escapade. Before I left, though, he still made sure to put his number on my contact list, under the pretext of ‘me sending him an album I mentioned earlier that he might like’; However, as he winked and blew me a kiss before being called over by one of the cooks to pick up an order that was ready, I knew music would not be one of our top 10 subjects in conversation.
Only two text messages were sent from my phone that night. One very long paragraph to my now ex-boyfriend, listing all the problems I had with our relationship with several examples and telling him to disappear from my life before blocking his number - not wanting to give him even the slightest chance to manipulate me - and deleting it for good. Another much shorter message, to a contact just named ‘🧡’, containing detailed information about my favorite drink in the whole world and telling him to have it ready by 10pm.
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