#Txt x reader

[hyukascampfire]

LET IT SNOW! ⋅ ´- c.bg

choi beomgyu and you are best at one thing: getting on yeonjun's nerves. going out for a snowball fight on the first winter snow, he has the perfect plan. ‧ׅ ˚

៹ ۪ ´ ㅤㅤ꒰ 🕊️ ꒱ ･ 1.9k

ᰍairings ˒ crush!beomgyu x reader ft. ot5

ᧁ ; fluff

ωarnings ˒ nothing but tooth rotting fluff and friends pining over each other

✎୭ ashlynn's note im so sorry this one came out so late guys omg. i woke up late and had to rewrite some >.< @hmusunoo HERE U GO BABYYY

﹙⋞ ﹚... back to the 𝓂asterlist

The front of the car is a bustle of the boys all trying to speak over each other, their voices twisting up with the Christmas station. Yeonjun grips the wheel white-knuckled—he’s the only one that’d volunteered to drive on the glazed roads. The little park where you head isn’t too far, though, so you think you’ll be fine. 

You hope you will be, anyway. The shouting and chaos that would fall over the car should the wheels lose traction and send you slipping… he’s got the car at the slowest crawl, but you can hear it now.

The moment Soobin had suggested a snowball fight, you all had tugged on puffy layers and two layers of socks. Throwing compacted balls of powdery snow at each other’s faces is worlds more interesting than sitting around and watching the snowfall from the windows, anyway. And, you had the perfect place for it. 

When it came time to file into the car, you offered to climb into the back. The heater blasts right onto you here, and you intend to soak up every last moment of it before the cold bites. You’d tugged your seatbelt out and locked it into place with a click.

Lifting your gaze, your heart did a little flutter to find Beomgyu in the seat beside you. He’s bundled up in a black puffer. Having zipped it all the way up to the collar, it stands stiff and presses into the soft round edge of his cheeks when he turns his head to send you a cheeky smile.

It’s not that you’re uncomfortable or awkward with him. You’re just as close to him as the others. For whatever reason, though, whenever you get little moments like these, where it’s just the two of you… You fluster.

Looking into his soft brown eyes is even hard now, so you opt for watching the snow piles and glistening rooftops pass the windows by. Yesterday there had been nothing there, and now there’s a layer shin-high wherever it hasn’t been plowed off. This is your favorite time of the year—you wish it snowed more often. You suppose, though, that because it doesn’t, the serenity and stillness of days like this are more special. 

Kai and you had been the first up. Just when morning had cracked over the sky, clear and pale and wintry, you’d found each other in the kitchen with sleep-tossed hair and droopy eyes. It didn’t take more than a glance outside to know that the weather apps hadn’t lied—the air on a snowy morning just looks different. It’s silver and as crisp on the eyes as it is on the lungs. His voice had been still thick with sleep when he’d said, “Snowman?”

Of course, you wanted to build a snowman. Still in rumpled pajamas, you two drug yourselves out there, stepping around in the snow a little just to hear it crunch underfoot, and then got to work. The snowman ended up faceless and only garnished with a thick, waxy leaf poking out from the top of his head like an antenna. When you stepped back to look at it, Kai had snorted and said, “If that thing ever gained consciousness, we’d be the first people it kills.”

You fiddle with your woolen gloves, and then decide on just tugging them off. It’s toasty enough in the confines of the car; you’ll just tug them back on when you get out.

A nudge at your side has you looking up to Beomgyu. You raise a curious eyebrow at the look on his face—the corners of his lips pulled up into a sneaky grin and the shine of something playful in his eyes.

He leans toward you, the warm scent of him all woody and vanilla sweet in the car’s hot air. Keeping his voice low, a secret just between the two of you back here, he says, “I have an idea.”

An idea could mean anything, coming from him. Especially with that look in his eye. You take a look over the front of the car. It’s as loud as ever up there. Yeonjun and Soobin in the front talk awfully aggressively about something that doesn’t reach your ears, though you’re sure it’s got something to do with Yeonjun’s driving if Soobin’s wide eyes are a hint. Yeonjun’s eyes meet yours in the rearview mirror with a roll. The middle row isn’t as loud as the front, but Taehyun and Kai still are into their conversation enough to not hear what he has to say. The two of them sit at the window seats, talking over the empty middle seat between them. 

You wonder why Beomgyu took this one, in the cramped back seat where your soft thigh presses against his, rather than that one. The climb out of here is pretty annoying, too. The seats don’t go down, so you have to climb over headrests and duck under the car’s fabric ceiling.

“Hmm?” you say, deciding that his secret is safe enough back here.

His smile turns shit-eating. He leans closer, saying, “Want to piss Yeonjun off?”

You’re always down for that. Beomgyu is, too. If there’s anything Yeonjun fears most in the world, it’s to see the two of you snickering off in the corner and exchanging secret words. Most times, you don’t even have to plan it; all it takes is a sharing of a glance and raise of your brows, and you know you’re thinking the same thing.

“What are you gonna do?” you whisper back. The smile that tugs at your mouth is beyond your control—it comes to you just at the sight of his. 

He sends a glance toward the front of the car. “If the both of us only hit him…”

It’s no different from any other nagging thing you put the poor guy through, but it’ll entertain you every time. “Got it,” you say, nose wrinkling as you try to keep your laugh down.

The car comes to a stop. From your window, the expanse of the field you’ve come to turn into a warzone is brushed over with last night’s snow blast. Opened doors let a frozen, curling air in. You share one last knowing look with Beomgyu before crawling out yourself. If you don’t get out fast enough, you’ll become victim to whoever has gotten out fast enough to smush up a snowball just for you.

Flying straight and purposeful through the air, the first one does not hit you, though. It explodes into white powder and a thousand little crystal snowflakes over Beomgyu’s face, clinging to the wispy bits of the hair that falls over his eyes and all down the front of him. You don’t even know which direction it came from. He blinks it off his lashes and lets his mouth hang open for a few moments, before dropping down to the snow to build one in retaliation.

Everything devolves after that. Snow flies in arcs through the air, crashing over shoulders and into the backs of whoever’s dumb enough to turn their back. Barked laughs and shrieks break the morning’s peace. You dodge and dart, taking an awful hunk of snow to the thigh. Letting out a shrill sound, utterly unconcerned with whoever might be asleep in the houses across the street, you shoot a glare at a proud Soobin. He forms another in between his gloves, but you have a mission. 

Beomgyu’s already landed a few on Yeonjun. You squat to roll a few and come up with one, keeping a few more misshapen chunks of snow that could hardly be called a snowball in the nook of your arm at the ready. The first skims just by the side of his head, but the next crumbles against his chest, and each one after that ends.

Off from another end of the field, made a mess with your footsteps cutting the pristine surface and the piles you’ve left on top of it, Beomgyu folds with a laugh. From your peripherals, a few of the boys shout and the scattering of a snowball tells you that somebody’s been hit hard, but all you can hear is his laugh. All you can see is the pink on his cheeks and the crinkling at the corners of his eyes.

Alliances form and a thousand snowballs are thrown, and only when Beomgyu lands a hit right at the back of Yeonjun’s head just after yours crashes against the fabric of his jacket does he realize.

“What the hell?” he spits, lips tugged down in a frown and his brows shot up to his forehead.

You cover your mouth with a soaked glove, but Beomgyu doesn’t cut his laugh. Your snort comes tumbling past the fabric as Yeonjun shakes his head and points at the two of you, laughing dangerously.

For the rest of that morning, with numb fingers and thighs sore from running, you and Beomgyu’s fates were sealed, dodging Yeonjun’s angry and pointed throws. At some point, you duck behind Beomgyu, using the width of his shoulders to escape a ball in Yeonjun’s hand with your name written on it.

Only when all of you are panting and have to drag your limbs, do you drag yourselves homeward. The car’s heater doesn’t warm up quick enough—when you step into the door, treading snow still stuck on the bottom of your boots through the entrance, the air still prickles and nips at your numbed cheeks. You peel layers of your clothes from your skin, soaked where snow had gotten caught and melted against your body heat. Tugging your shoes off was the worst; you wiggle your toes a few times just to make sure you can still move them.

Stuffing yourselves into clothes so warm that you’ll probably all be changing as soon as your bodies return to their normal temperatures, you all sprawl over the couch. Somebody snatches the remote up and clicks through a collection of Christmas classics, but at Taehyun’s insistence, you land on Christmas Vacation.

The couch is solid and warm against your back, the floor hard against your bottom. You had taken the longest to change and scarf a few candy canes down, and each seat had been occupied when you came to join their lounging. You don’t mind much—from here, you can better look at the Christmas tree and try to narrow your eyes down on which presents beneath it are yours. Kai had insisted that nobody snoops.

Beomgyu slips down beside you before the movie starts. He’s warm up against you; you’re not sure how. You’re just getting feeling back in the tips of your fingers. On his mouth, he plays a soft and easy smile, catching your eyes though you want to flounder under his attention.

Leaning toward you once more, just as he had in the car, he whispers, “Did you see his face?”

You share a quiet giggle with him, pressing your head into the fabric of his knitted sweater on his shoulder. “Yeah,” you say. “He makes it too easy…”

It wasn’t the look on Yeonjun’s face that you remember best, though. Captured in the morning light, all you had seen was the pink of Beomgyu’s cheeks and the mischievous glint there, and all you had felt was the way that it settled over your longing heart like how the fireplace warms you now.

You hope that he had been looking at you, too.

﹙⋞ ﹚... back to the 𝓂asterlist

✎୭ ashlynn's note they're so cute i need them to kiss and cuddle and love each other

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[rmview]

another member likes you, TXT.

featuring — txt members x f!reader ( masterlist )

summary — how the txt boys react when noticing that one of their group members has a crush on you!

contents — slight angst, no warnings.

soo ❣ bin

soobin noticed the way kai looked at you — the lingering glances, the quick smiles. at first, he brushed it off. he’s just being nice and i’m probably overthinking this, he told himself. but the way your name lit up in conversations, how his tone softened when he spoke to you… soobin couldn’t ignore it anymore.

one evening, as the two of you were cuddled on the couch, soobin hesitated before speaking. “i need to ask you something,” he said, his voice quieter than usual.

you sat up slightly, concern written across your face as you turned your attention to him instead of the tv. “what is it?”

he fidgeted with the edge of his sleeve. “do you think… do you think he likes you?”

you blinked, caught off guard. “what? who?”

soobin’s lips pressed into a thin line. “one of the guys. i don’t want to name names to make you uncomfortable, but… i can’t help but feel like he has feelings for you.”

your heart softened at the hesitance in his tone, not really caring about which member felt that way since you viewed them all as friends. “soobin, you’re the only one i care about. even if someone else felt that way, it really doesn’t matter to me.”

though your words reassured him, soobin couldn’t shake off his protective instincts, wanting some clarity. later that night, he approached the member in question. “i need to talk to you,” he said, his usual gentle demeanor replaced by quiet firmness, knowing despite everything, he could be open with kai and resolve the issue calmly.

when the truth came out — that kai indeed had a little crush on you — soobin let out a shaky sigh. “i can’t control how you feel, but i need you to respect what we have,” he said. “she’s important to me, and i won’t let anything come between us.”

yeon ❣ jun

yeonjun was confident in your relationship and trusted both you and his members fully, but even he couldn’t ignore the tension growing whenever you and beomgyu were in the same room. at first, yeonjun chalked it up to friendship. but the way beomgyu seemed to light up around you, the lingering stares… it started to gnaw at him.

one evening, after a group dinner, yeonjun casually threw his arm around your shoulder as the two of you walked home. “so,” he started, his tone light but laced with curiosity, yet wanting to get to the bottom of the situation. “do you ever notice how beomgyu acts around you sometimes?”

you tilted your head, confused at the unusual question. “what do you mean, jun?”

yeonjun chuckled, though his eyes betrayed a flicker of unease. “you don’t think he’s… interested in you or anything, right?”

you laughed softly at his words, shaking your head. “ah, is that what you think? i don’t know, even if he were, it wouldn’t change how i feel about you.”

yeonjun’s confidence returned, satisfied with the reassurance and he pressed a kiss to your hair. “good,” he said. but a few days later when he found himself alone with beomgyu, he couldn’t help but bring up the topic.

“hey,” yeonjun began, leaning casually against the doorframe of the practice room and fidgeting with his bottled water while beomgyu scrolled on his phone. “i want to ask you something, and i need you to be honest, yeah?”

when beomgyu admitted his feelings after some poking and uneasy hesitance, yeonjun’s expression softened slightly. “look, i get it. she’s amazing,” he said. “but she’s with me. i don’t want this to mess up our friendship — or the group. just… be careful, okay?”

beom ❣ gyu

beomgyu noticed the way soobin seemed to seek you out in conversations, laughing a little too hard at your jokes, and lingering in your presence. at first, he found it funny. “well, at least he’s got good taste,” he joked to himself. but the more he noticed it, the more it started to bother him despite his endless trust in you and his leader.

one morning, as you cooked breakfast after staying the night at the dorms with him, beomgyu blurted out when nobody was around, “do you think soobin has a crush on you?”

you blinked in surprise, glancing back at him owlishly with a spatula in hand. “what? no way! why would you think that?”

beomgyu leaned back on the stool, crossing his arms with a slight frown. “because i see the way he looks at you. i mean, i don’t blame him — you’re amazing — but it’s starting to get on my nerves a little.”

you put the spatula down and reached for his hand over the counter, squeezing it gently. “beomgyu, i’m with you. that’s all that matters, and i wouldn’t change it for anything. but also, he cares about you a lot no matter whatever his feelings are, so don’t let it get to you.”

he smiled and nodded, though the worry lingered despite your words making sense and he left the topic alone for the rest of the week. but one day when he caught soobin staring at you from across the room unblinkingly while you played a game with yeonjun, beomgyu couldn’t resist teasing the member in question. “hey,” he said, throwing an arm around soobin’s shoulder. “you’ve got good taste, but you know she’s mine, right?”

when soobin froze and stammered an apology, his ears red, beomgyu chuckled but then grew serious. “i’m not mad,” he said. “but i love her, and as my leader and friend, i need to know you’ll respect that.”

tae ❣ hyun

taehyun was perceptive — too perceptive for his own good. he noticed the smallest details, like how yeonjun seemed to look at your reaction to his jokes and antics or the way his teasing demeanor changed around you. taehyun didn’t say anything at first, but it was clear he was keeping a close eye on the situation.

while you and him were on a quiet walk one night as he took you home, he couldn’t help but breach the topic. “hey, i want to ask you something,” he said, glancing down at you.

“what is it, tae?” you replied, concerned by the serious look in his eyes despite his mask covering most of his face, your hand in his.

“do you think yeonjun likes you?” he asked bluntly, not beating around the bush.

you stared at him in shock for a few moments, before shaking your head. “taehyun, no. why would you think that?”

“because i see the way he acts around you sometimes,” taehyun said, his voice calm but firm. “i’m not jealous or anything — i just don’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”

you stopped walking and turned to face him, grasping both of his hands and smiling softly underneath your mask. “you don’t have to worry about anything, i only care about you.”

relieved at your words but still cautious since it was an itch he couldn’t forget, taehyun approached the topic when he got home that night and bumped into yeonjun directly. “i know how you feel,” he said, his tone respectful but unwavering as he spoke bluntly without thinking. “but i need you to back off. she’s with me, and i won’t let anything come between us.”

kai ❣

huening kai was usually easygoing, but he couldn’t ignore the way taehyun seemed to have a tendency to drift toward you, taking closer seats whenever you were at the dorms or trying to prolong conversations with you. at first, kai tried to brush it off as his own imagination, but as time went on, it became harder to ignore.

“kai, are you okay?” you asked one evening, noticing his unusually quiet demeanor while you were helping him fold some of his clothes in his messy room.

he hesitated mid-fold before blurting out, “do you think taehyun has a little crush on you?”

your eyes widened as you nearly dropped the shirt in surprise, finding it hard to believe since the chatty guy usually came off as friendly. “what? no, i don’t think so, at least. why would you say that?”

kai shrugged, fidgeting nervously. “it’s just… i’ve noticed the way he acts around you. i don’t know — maybe i’m just overthinking it.”

you walked to kai and sat him down, placing a reassuring hand on his thigh. “you have nothing to worry about, whether it’s true or not. i’m with you, and taehyun adores you too much to hurt you, so that’s all that matters.”

though your words comforted him, kai later found himself pulling taehyun aside before practice the next day. “hey,” he said softly but seriously, taehyun equally as owlish. “i don’t want there to be any weird tension between us, but i can’t ignore what i’ve noticed. she’s my girlfriend, and i need to know you’ll respect that.”

taehyun immediately apologized and reassured him that it was superficial and he just found you interesting, kai smiled gently. “it’s okay. i just… i love her, and i don’t want anything to mess that up.”

notes: the txt boys are so cute and this was so much fun to do! (i guess fluffy content isn't cutting it for me anymore xD)

[soobchwe]

𝐭𝐱𝐭 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐬 〰 𝒾

ʚɞ pairing: choi soobin x fem!reader || ʚɞ word count: 0.4k || ʚɞ tags: pregnant!reader, marriage!au, terrified expecting father!soobin || ʚɞ synopsis: A routine checkup with your OB turns to be more than what you or your husband expected in the best way.

"Stop squirming, Binnie, you're making me nervous." You tap your fingers on your rounded stomach. You listen closely to the noise outside your exam room door, waiting for the impending footfall of your OB. Heavy into the second trimester, you've quelled most of your fears regarding pregnancy.

Soobin is always on the defensive for you and your child, however, even when he doesn't need to be.

"Can you blame me? I mean—it's the five-month checkup. It's reasonable to freak out about this." Your husband ruffles his hair for the umpteenth time, pacing around the room like a madman.

You lift your heavy form to waddle over to him, making him stop dead in his tracks. "Hey, you should be sitting down," he softly advises.

"I will once you do," you tease. You take him by the hand to rest back on the couch in the small space.

"Well, I'm not in your condition, bunny." He takes his hand and touches the lower bend of your stomach, your sundress ruffling under his touch. "And lil' bun needs you healthy."

You smile and place your fingers over his. "I'm perfectly fine. You're the one who's still nervous, baby."

Before Soobin can protest, your doctor walks in with a warm smile and her clipboard between her hands. "Everything looks perfect, you two. The little one is growing exactly how they should. But just to be sure, here's the tests' results."

You both look over the papers, and Soobin's eyes go wide immediately at the text near the bottom of the second document. "The baby's sex? You guys can tell that by now and—and it's—"

Your doctor chuckles and looks at Soobin softly. "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Choi. Looks like you're having a baby girl."

You heart stops at her confirmation. Your hands immediately cradle your bump as tears flow rapidly down your cheeks. Soobin's reaction mirrors yours, his eyes suddenly red and puffy.

Your doctor, sensing the emotional moment, quietly excuses herself to schedule the next checkup date. When she leaves the room, you both wrap your arms around each other and cry.

A little girl.

"Our little girl," Soobin whispers, voice hoarse as his words rumble into your neck. He kisses you all over your face, each one laced with profound emotion. "Thank you, thank you for giving me this little girl."

You giggle through your tears. "She's not here yet, Binnie."

Soobin smiles, his tears slipping past his lips. "She will be soon. And she'll be beautiful, just like you."

@yvnempire @hursheys @slytherinshua @sjylouvre @mini-mews @jayparked @heesuncore @yoursjaeyun @sungbeams @jenoslutie @loserlvrss @pars-ley @lovetaroandtaemin @wonwovy @lovetaroandtaemin

𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 ౨ৎ˚₊

@kstrucknet @k-films @kvanity-main @moadiarynet @sweetvenomnet @onedoornet @sayxonet @violetanet @svthub @whipped-kpop-creators

[beomiracles]

𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐄'𝐒; 𝓐𝓓𝓥𝓔𝓝𝓣 𝓒𝓐𝓛𝓔𝓝𝓓𝓐𝓡 NUMBER 20 ; ❝𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐌𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞❞

“All of you”, he says, dragging a hand over your body, stopping only to give your nipple another pinch. — “You’re beautiful.” He groans as he feels you clench around him at the praise, your gaze dropping to his hand between your legs.

pairings — taehyun x fem!reader warnings — fingering, nipple play, lots of praise/somewhat body worshipping but idk, the reader's body isn't physically described but she's insecure, softdom!taehyun, lots of kisses, it's sweet okay

#serene adds ✎.. I like this one tehee, idk I live for softdom tae :3 again these are not proofread at all lol >_<

⸝⸝

“Open it”, Taehyun’s voice is soft yet commanding as he places the small box in your hands. With a coy smile you nod, doing as he says, trembling fingers reaching for the silk bow wrapped loosely around the present. The paper makes a loud ripping noise as you tear it in half. And as it falls to the floor, it reveals a sleek and clean black box. — Before you can act, Taehyun leans forward, gently plucking the lid as he discards it on the side of the bed. 

Your eyes widen a fraction as you glance between Taehyun and the piece of skimpy lingerie inside. Heat rushes to your face, and you resist the urge to hide away behind your hands. Your boyfriend hums as he picks the garment up, presenting it before you with a small smirk. “Perfect, no? You’ll look gorgeous”, he muses, his other hand reaching for your chin as he tilts your head up. 

“I…” The embarrassment on your face is clear as day, but you still give him a small nod. Taehyun’s eyes light up as he places the box aside, pulling you onto his lap without warning, making you yelp in surprise. — “Taehyun..” You shyly murmur when his hands travel down your sides, fingers catching around the hem of your shirt as he tugs it over your head. 

“Hm?” He asks, lips grazing your now bare shoulder as he leaves wet kisses along your exposed skin. Taking note of your shy demeanor, he quickly turns your face to look at him. “You’re absolutely breathtaking”, he exhales, dark eyes locking onto yours with certainty. You want to shake your head, hide away but he stops you as he presses a tender kiss to your lips. 

You sigh against him, your tense body relaxing in his embrace as you let him strip you of the pants you wore. A shiver runs down your spine when he unclasps your bra, the cool air of your bedroom caressing your bare tits, making your nipples harden. — Taehyun is gentle as he drapes the lingerie over your body, hands running over every inch of you as he squeezed at your hips, groped at your tits and pinched your nipples, making you squirm on his lap. 

The small and subtle praise that leaves his quiet lips makes your body warm up even more, a wave of heat washing over you when his attention travels down between your thighs, eager fingers burying themselves against your wet cunt as Taehyun elicits a breathy moan from you. 

“Open your eyes.” 

You do as he says, not even having realized that you’d closed them in the first place. His free hand grabs your chin, gently steering your gaze toward the full sized mirror not far from your bed. “Look at yourself”, he whispers against the shell of your ear, leaning down to press hot kisses against the juncture of your neck. The request embarrassed you, you didn’t want to see yourself like this, but you did as he told you to. 

Your attention fixates on every little detail, from the way the clothes hugged your body to the way his fingers dig into your weeping cunt. You watch as your thighs squeeze around his arm, you watch your hands as they fidget with the hem of the garment. — “Not like that”, Taehyun grunts, making you snap from your thoughts as your gaze locks with his through the glass. 

“All of you”, he says, dragging a hand over your body, stopping only to give your nipple another pinch. — “You’re beautiful.” He groans as he feels you clench around him at the praise, your gaze dropping to his hand between your legs. It still felt so surreal, hearing him say that. But Taehyun is adamant about making you feel good, and he swats your hand away as you attempt to reach for the zipper of his own jeans. 

“Not now”, he’d grunt, thumb pressing even harsher against your clit as he makes you go cross eyed. He seemed completely enticed by you like this, wearing what he’d gotten you. And Taehyun took great pride in only giving you the best, he could spend hours on you, in you, with you in any way possible. 

“Taehyun..” Your small whine makes him smirk against your shoulder, his fingers releasing your nipple as his arm wraps around your waist, pulling your back flush against his chest. His fingers inside your cunt curl, caressing you in a way that makes you cry out, your orgasm crashing against you like waves against shore on a stormy day. 

He relishes in the way you tremble against him, and he holds you  impossibly close as his kisses continue to litter across your neck and shoulder. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen”, he murmurs, the words coming naturally, his thoughts and his love flowing freely around you, because he’d never want it any other way. 

Your body slumps against his, and Taehyun’s hands smooth over the lingerie he’d gotten you, tucking it back into place as he buries his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent with all he has. “Do you really..?” Your question hardly needed an answer but Taehyun fervently nods against your skin. And before you can get another word out, he’s got you flipped onto your back, already working his way between your legs as he presses an open mouthed kiss against your inner thigh. 

“Want me to show you again?”

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[lailols]

Txt as Love Languages <3

Soobin

Giving

Acts of Service

Soobin isn’t good with words :(

he’s such an overthinker and his brain goes a million times faster than his mouth

but he does his very best to show it in other ways

keeping track of your schedule and making sure you’re eating properly

restocking things around the house before you even know they're running out

refilling your body wash/perfume/lotions when they get low

he WILL try to cook for you and it MIGHT be bad but it’s okay cause he tried

he will peel every orange on this earth if it means you don't have to lift a finger when you're around him

he shows his affection in the ‘little ways’ that are often overlooked but has love written all over them

Receiving

Quality Time

PLEASE spend all of your time with him

let him game while you do your own tasks off to the side

just spending time in your presence makes him feel so loved and cared for

you don’t even have to talk :(

you wanna scroll on TikTok while he games? YES do face masks while he’s scrolling on TikTok? PLEASE nap while he’s "reading"? HOP IN THE BED

he just wants to be around you all of the time :(

you’re so comforting to him

Yeonjun

Giving

Physical Affection

ALWAYS has a hand on you

hand in yours while you’re walking

hand on your waist while you’re standing

hand on your thigh while you’re sitting

he just has to be touching you :(

not even in a sexual way

he just wants to make sure you’re by his side at all times

if you go too far at any point in time, he’s searching for you like a lost kitten :(

also, Jun IS a back pocket holder, I fear

Receiving

Words of Affirmation

catch him off guard with your words

say the intrusive compliments as soon as they enter your head

look deeper into him and say you love whatever you find below the surface

he gets so flustered whenever he gets complimented genuinely :(

he’s the most attractive then

he just stops for a bit and flushes

he’s also an overthinker so PLEASE don’t let him fall victim to his thoughts

tell him you love him every second!

make sure he knows he will always be loved when he's with you

remind him that he’s not perfect, but he’s doing his best

just absolutely shower him in praise cause he deserves it

Beomgyu

Giving

Words of Affirmation

gyu IS the real loser loverboy yearner

as soon as he’s in your presence hymns flow from his lips

he's a ten but he HAS to tell you how much you mean to him or he’ll blow up

he feels like he was put on this earth with no other purpose but to cherish you

it’s so random too

you’ll be walking in the freezing cold and he’ll just stop and pour his heart out to you

literally makes you cry in the middle of the street

Receiving

Gift Giving

gift giving in the “this made me think of you” way

send him songs that remind you of him and he’ll cherish them forever :(

make him little trinkets to keep around his room

get matching jewelry for y’all and he’ll never take it off :(

it just makes him feel so seen, so loved :(

he def has a box of all the things that you give to him and he rotates things so nothing feels left out

I kid you not, he has the first gift you gave him all those years ago proudly in the center of his dresser

buy him things that pertain to his interests and he’ll just melt

but DO NOT forget to give him gifts that remind him of you

most of the plushies you gave him are a weird mix of his and your names

Taehyun

Giving

Quality Time

the universal love language imo

can mean a variety of things and still be so special

whether it’s actively doing something together or just existing in the same space

he’s such a comforting person and he just wants to spend time with you

always in your space, but he frames it as if YOU wanted him there (you did, but you didn’t say it)

complains as if HE isn’t holding you tight

cooking together, watching shows together, working out together

anything that may seem like something a person can do along is actually something for TWO PEOPLE

yes, he needs to run to the store with you because what if you can’t carry it alone? (You wanted a bag of chips)

Receiving

Acts of Service

tae is such a reliable person that I think he would want to be taken care of a bit

having someone to look out for him, y'know (if the four men already doing that aren't enough)

not in the 'you can't do it yourself' way but in the 'I love you and want to make your life easier for you'

cooking for him (though you will have to strong-arm him into sitting down and not joining)

massage his (beautiful, hot, sexy) shoulders when he has a bit of pain

just do the little things that show you care and that you listen to him

make sure he’s pampered like the king he is

Kai

Giving

Gift Giving

Kai WILL gift you everything under the sun

it’s just how he shows his love

you ARE coparenting near a hundred plushies

he WILL buy cringy shirts for you guys to wear and YOU BETTER WEAR IT

proudly wears his “I <3 my gf/bf” shirt with your face on it at least once a week and expects the same in return (even better if you’re doing it together)

makes up holidays to give you gifts (it’s NAWT just a random Tuesday, it’s national kitten day, so YES he has to give you a kitten plush, wdym?)

flowers anytime he’s seeing you

no, he does not change

your parents adore him because he never shows up to the house empty handed no matter how long you’ve been dating

almost sobs when you have to stop home for something and he didn’t have anything on hand

literally keeps something in his car now for this purpose :(

Receiving

Physical Affection

PLEASE stick to Kai like glue

he deserves it :(

he’s such a physical person himself that he’d just love it in return

he’s so tactile, molding to fit his body against yours like it was meant to be (it was)

rests his head in your lap when you’re sitting near each other :(

RUB HIS TUMMY :((

give him head pats

forehead kisses PLEASE

cling onto him when you’re out and about

cuddles will follow anything you do

[elllisaaa]

ELI'S WIPS

WON THE GAME - JAKE S. -> continuation of lost the game

-> new bf!jake x fem!reader, college au

SUMMARY : your relationship with jake is still fairly new, and some adjustments need to be made : the way too many guys still try to flirt with you when you go to parties together, or the way jake hasn't tried to initiate anything more than a few kisses since your first time. you might need to start a new game to discover the truth.

WAR OF HEARTS - H. HYUNJIN

-> duke!hyunjin x duchess!reader ft. bff!felix, bridgerton au

SUMMARY : you thought that exchanging letters with your best friend in secret would be smart, but the day someone else starts to answer you, you rethink your life choices. and with your mind already occupied with the bals your mother drags you to, and the way she tries to get you with hyunjin - the duke you can't stand - everything feels way more complicated than it should have been.

NOT SO DUMB - C. BEOMGYU -> continuation of are you dumb, dumb, dumb ?

-> academic rival!beomgyu x fem!reader, college au

SUMMARY : after your "encounter" with beomgyu in the library, you make it your life mission to avoid him. but you cannot run away from your problems for too long, and when beomgyu calls you late at night, wasted, you can't leave him to die in front of a bar. however, you did not expect the way it would change your perception of him.

TOUGH LOVE - L. HEESEUNG

-> bff's brother!heeseung x fem!reader, smau

SUMMARY : you and your brother jay had always been very close to each other, and thus, you knew his best friend heeseung very well too. when you left for college, you didn't keep contact with him, and it made it the perfect opportunity to push away the little crush you always had on him. though, heeseung being the first person you stumble on just after coming back to your hometown for a while after your graduation, it feels like a sign. good or bad, you're yet to find out.

[heechwe]

beam me up | 𝐜𝐬𝐛

୨୧ pairing: choi soobin x fem!reader ୨୧ word count: 3.5k ୨୧ genre: lots of fluff, smidges of comedy, smut ୨୧ tags: parents!au, married!au, established relationship!au, body (mostly chest) worship, pet names (love, bunny, baby, etc), oral (f receiving), fingering, breeding kink, lactation kink, unprotected sex, down bad soobin essentially. ୨୧ synopsis: Going out after having a baby should be a breeze. So what if you don't feel incredibly confident? So what if you both act like awkward teenagers on your first date? It's you and Soobin, and that's all that matters. ➸ bless my pals @lovetaroandtaemin, @xomakara, and @heesuncore for reading this behemoth ilysm

Why am I so nervous? You think to yourself as you swipe the mauve shade in your hand across your bottom lip. Its light pigment prevents staining, yet provides noticeable definition, just enough to stand out. Your hair is in a low bun, two stray bangs falling over your cheeks. With your makeup and floral midi dress, you feel confident enough to step out and leave the house without becoming riddled with anxious thoughts.

The demands of motherhood have been hefty, but you clean up well. And despite all the dirty diapers and staying awake pumping, you’re ready to spend one night simply as Soobin’s wife. Perhaps a night out in town with your husband is exactly what you both need after three months of being parents.

It’s been picture perfect, without question. Minyoung has her father‘s pout when she sleeps, your long eyelashes, and the softness of a human being well beyond her years. But, you can’t deny that you miss the days where it was just you and Soobin in your own bubble.

Perhaps tonight, you can discover a balance where your old and new life blend harmoniously.

You step out into the living room to see Soobin with his mother, your daughter asleep in her grandmother’s arms. Soobin holds a laundry list of instructions in one hand and her car-seat in the other, waving his hands in frantic motions. “She usually naps like this for about two hours, but if she sleeps more, that’s even better. And then—“

Soobin stops short and looks back at you when he senses your presence. Your in-law and husband stare at you in disbelief. The frayed edges of your appearance from a few hours ago are nowhere to be seen.

Soobin looks at you like you hang the moon. His smile is small in the presence of his mother, him trying to maintain some semblance of modesty, but it’s ‌electric. “You look beautiful.” He sets the car-seat down on the floor to free his hand, reaching it out for you to take.

You do it gladly, smiling from ear to ear. Soobin also cleans up well, his button up tucked in his cargo pants. He’s always dressed a bit like a dad in training, and now he fits the bill‌. “You don’t look too bad yourself, Binnie.”

His face turns a shade of pink at the nickname, unable to hide your effect on him. He turns back to his mother and refers to the paper in his hand. “If you need something that isn’t in her diaper bag, please‌—“

“Soobin, I can handle it. Just spend the night with your lovely wife.” His mother winks at you and takes the car seat from him. “I promise to bring her back in the morning in one piece.”

You and Soobin kiss the top of Minyoung’s soft head and say your goodbyes, both of your hearts clenching. It’s the first time you’ve been apart from her for more than an hour or two, so the prospect is daunting, at the very least. “Be good for grandma, lil’ bun,” Soobin whispers to her sleeping figure.

When your mother-in-law leaves, Soobin looks back at you with a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and desire. “Ready to go?”

You nod, sharing the same concoction of emotions. Most importantly, though, you’re relieved to finally have some alone time together. Wherever the night takes you is anyone’s guess. “Definitely.”

You both sit at the table in the restaurant like it’s your first date. Uncertain about what to expect once the meal ends, full of nerves and anticipation.

Soobin finds it hard to make eye contact with you, his eyes moving across the entire room. He can’t help it when you look so beautiful. You always do, but tonight is different. He’s been so stuck in the haze of being a new dad, it’s like he’s seeing you clearly again. Now, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

You’ve been married for half a decade, ‌yet every time he sees you, he falls deeper. It’s the first time for him every second he gets to touch you, kiss you, tell you how much you matter to him.

With a child, his feelings have only amplified. He looks at Minyoung some mornings and sees all the features he loves about you and vice versa in one human, his pride as great as his love.

But, instead of revealing he’s in the throes of intense admiration for you in the small Italian restaurant, he turns his focus back to the menu in his hands and looks over the wine list.

The appetizer you shared a few minutes ago has made him thirsty for some alcohol, it seems. “I know you have water, but do you want some Pinot, too? Oh! They have Moscato! I know that’s your favorite.”

It’s the way his eyes light up and his mouth curves into that signature O that makes you giggle‌, unable to contain it.

“What’s so funny?” Soobin looks up from his menu with mirth.

“Nothing at all, Binnie. I’m just happy.”

Your chest pinches at his soft reaction to your words, him looking over his menu at you with bright eyes.

Soobin has always been a goofball, intentionally or not, but it’s what makes him the best partner, among his many qualities. He knows when to be serious, taking the reins when necessary, but he’s well-versed in lightening the mood when you need it.

It’s surreal sometimes thinking about how you lucked out.

Suddenly, your thoughts cease thanks to the rising discomfort from your breasts. It started as an unnoticeable pinch when you gave your drink and light food order, but now it’s full-on pain erupting in your chest.

Why is it so uncomfortable?

You feel the droplets of milk settling into the fabric of your dress, your question answered in a flash.

The impending concern rises on Soobin’s face when he notices your scrunched-up brows and mouth. Then, he sees the two small wet patches forming on your chest. Immediately, he shucks off his jean jacket to give you. “Here baby, take this.”

A deep blush forms on your cheeks when you cover up with his garment. You’re unsure how to broach the subject or the rest of dinner in this state, immediately self-conscious. “I’m sorry. This is so embarrassing, I—”

“Baby, no. Don’t be sorry, it’s normal.” Soobin says the words with so much empathy, you could cry from that alone. You excuse yourself to use the bathroom and clean yourself up, not listening to the words that leave his lips in rapid succession. You’re a mom. It happens to every mom at some point! I love you!

Soobin feels useless, knowing no words he says will assuage your shame. He decides now is as good of a time as any to check up on Minyoung. It’s been almost three hours since he’s talked to his mother.

When the line rings, Soobin doesn’t let it bother him. Minyoung probably needed a burping or night-time bath. No big deal.

By the second unsuccessful attempt at contact, his heart drops into his stomach. What if something’s wrong? As he tries to call for the third and fourth time, his thoughts spiral further.

What if his mother rushed out with Minyoung and she forgot to bring her cell because it was so serious? He knows babies usually are out of the woods for colic by the third or fourth month, but anything’s possible, right?

Parental anxiety is one thing, a feeling Soobin knows well by now, but his instincts are usually spot-on. And something has to be going on if his mother isn’t getting back to him.

You trot over to the table, tucking Soobin’s jacket tighter around your chest so it doesn’t flap open. The event may have been embarrassing at the moment, but you’re ready to get the night back on track and focus on your husband.

You smile eagerly, not noticing the way Soobin’s face has gone stark white. “I think I got most of it, but—“

“We have to go. Something’s wrong.”

You don’t think twice, practically stealing Soobin’s keys from his pocket when he stands up. The two of you race out of the restaurant and to your little girl, your thoughts newly scrambled in the worst ways.

Soobin tries to knock on his parents’ door without slamming his fist against the wood, but he can’t help it. So many scenarios have built up in his head since his intuition kicked in. He could barely say one word on the drive to his mother’s. The silence was palpable in the air, both of your bodies filled to the brim with fear and regret for leaving her for one second.

Soobin’s mother answers the door with a shocked expression. “Honey, what are you two—“

Soobin barrels past her and into the house. You follow hot on his heels. His pace is quick, his voice loud as he calls out Minyoung’s name like she’s able to answer him back.

Then, you find Minyoung perfectly content. Soobin’s dad has her in his arms at the dinner table, feeding her a bottle of milk. “Hey, kids. Why are you here?”

Soobin stutters when he responds. “M-Mom wasn’t answering and we—“

“Oh, lord.” You hear her deep groan pervade the small kitchen. “You left the restaurant for that?”

“What were we supposed to think?” Your words are full of defense, lighthearted now that you’re not in panic mode. Were your worst thoughts so unexpected? You felt bad enough leaving your daughter alone with people you trusted just for a night of solitude. If something worse had happened, the guilt would’ve been too much to bear.

Soobin rushes over to Minyoung and takes her from his father’s arms. Droplets of milk spill from her lips, but she doesn’t care. She reaches up to touch Soobin, her little nails gliding across his face. “Daddy’s here, Minnie.” He presses his forehead to hers, smiling proudly. “I’m right here.”

You tear up at the image in front of you, relieved to see your baby girl out of harm’s way. Even if the harm was entirely imaginary, you’re calmer nonetheless.

Soobin walks towards you and kisses the crown of your head. “Sorry I pulled a false alarm, baby.”

Although you’ll never tell him, you don’t mind that he did so. He’s an incredible husband and father, always on alert for the two of you and putting his needs to the wayside. You have to remind him every day to also think of himself, and he appreciates you looking out for him in the same fashion.

You shake your head and move Minyoung from Soobin’s arms to yours. You kiss her chubby cheeks and she coos at the attention, the spitting image of her father. “Daddy is gonna be the death of me, isn’t he, baby girl?”

Soobin chuckles into your hair and holds onto one of Minyoung’s fists with his palm. “Not if I can help it.”

“Now that you both have made sure she’s okay, go back to your date night!” Your mother-in-law strides into the dining room to pluck Minyoung from your grip. Minyoung is more than comfortable with it, smiling widely into her grandmother’s neck. “It’s rude enough that you both interrupted your dinner time and ours.” She turns to speak directly to Minyoung. “Right, sweetie? How dare they!”

“It’s officially off, I promise.” Soobin puts his phone in the glove-box once he parks the car in the downtown parking garage, determined to make the rest of the date night go off without a hitch.

You laugh and take his hand in yours, interlacing your fingers. “So much for low-key and relaxing, right?”

“Hey!” He points at you with his other hand. “It’s only 8 PM. The night’s still young.”

“Well, we’re not gonna be able to go back to the restaurant now. Not after I practically gave out my milk for free.” You cover your face with the palm not wrapped in your husband’s, but he takes that one too.

“Stop it,” he chides with a stern pout. “Even if you leaked through your shirt every time we went out, you’d still be more beautiful than every other person on the planet.”

You tease, "You're just saying that."

“I mean it! Do you see how gorgeous and incredible Minyoung is? That’s half your handiwork.”

You roll your eyes, but your body lights from within at his words. “She’s half yours too. You probably didn’t notice, but every waitress was checking you out.”

Soobin blushes hard, suddenly shy. “They were not.”

“Yes, they were. I can’t blame them, though. Parenthood has made you ten times sexier.”

Soobin quirks an eyebrow, the undercurrent of passion in your words unmistakable. He gets closer to you until your faces are barely an inch apart. His lips ghost over yours. “I could say the same about you. I’ve only had eyes for you, but even more so now that you’ve had my baby.”

You gulp, noticing how hard your thighs are clenching in your seat. Soobin notices too, holding one of your knees in his hand with a smirk. “Binnie, I’m not hungry for food anymore.”

He presses his lips to yours slowly. You moan into his mouth from such exquisite pleasure that’s been long overdue. He glides his tongue in between your lips as he palms one of your breasts over his jacket. When he takes his mouth from yours, he’s breathing heavily. “I was gonna say the same thing.”

It’s a clash of teeth and tongue when you make it inside the house. Hands run over curves and skin to take off the restricting clothing, appearances be damned.

You discard Soobin’s button-up somewhere in the hallway as he pulls your hair loose from your bun, clutching the strands at your nape to expose more of your neck. He riddles your skin with love bites before you even make it to the bedroom, but you both love it. How feral and frantic you are for one another, no children or external restrictions holding you back.

By the time your body hits the king-sized bed, all that’s left on you, garments-wise, is your thin bralette and mismatched underwear. Soobin looks over your body with a hunger that’s unshakeable. The poor man’s probably salivating at the mouth by now, just like you. 

Ever since the doctor’s six-week ban on any physically strenuous activity, he couldn’t imagine dry-humping without fear of hurting you. That timeline came and went in a flash, but with the fatigue of daily life, it seemed impossible to find time to be intimate.

Until now, that is.

“How did I get so lucky? You’re angelic.” Soobin spreads his palms out over your chest. His long fingers squeeze your breasts over the confines of your lingerie, making you moan. “I have to take this off, bunny. I need to see you.”

You feel heat pooling at your center from his gaze, his words, his touches on your skin. You unclasp the clips holding your bra together and flick it away, not breaking eye contact the entire time.

He used to be so shy during sex, and now he wastes no time unzipping his pants to touch himself. “Fucking perfect,” he grunts, staring at the pebbling of your nipples and the volume of your tits from lactation. He spreads the pooling pre-cum in his hand to rub his cock earnestly.

You whimper and clench around nothing, the center of your underwear incredibly damp. Why did he get to have all the fun and leave you frustrated? “Binnie, please touch me.”

“Gladly.” He uses the hand not holding his dick to yank your underwear off and throw them in a corner of your room. Once the fabric is gone, he dives in between your legs. His licks start small, kitten-like in their touch, but soon he grows hungrier, more dominant. Eating you out has always been one of his favorite things during sex, like it's the only thing he needs to do to sustain himself.

“You taste amazing. You always do.” He stops jerking himself off to press two fingers inside of you without warning, mixing his essence with yours on his way to your warm and wet walls. His lips and tongue remain attached to your clit as he prods you soft and slow.

“God, it feels so good.” You raise your hips to match the rhythm of his hand inside of you. Despite being eager to keep his mouth between your legs, you reach down for him, wanting to feel his lips on yours again. “I want you up here with me.”

Soobin smiles gently before crawling up the expanse of your body. He looks down at you, unable to hide how strong his desire runs in his veins. But instead of his declarations of love that he’s said a million times before, he greets you with a deep kiss to your lips and pushes his fingers back into your cunt.

You moan into his mouth. “Jesus fuck, babe.” You whimper as he leans his head down to latch his mouth to one of your nipples, still ramming his hand deeper into you. Some milk sinks onto his tongue and dribbles past his chin, but he doesn’t care. If anything, it turns him on more. His cock produces more pre-cum and spreads onto your bedsheets.

“I want you inside of me, Soobin.” You spread your legs wider for him to settle into, and he does.

He rubs the head of his cock across your slit before nestling inside fully, his mouth opening in a large gasp as he fills you. “It always feels like the first time, bunny. Always so tight for me, fuck.”

His pace is reverent, driven by his lust, his love for you, and his desire to make this experience as incredible as it already is for him. He rubs your clit between his fingers, and your face contorts into absolute pleasure after a few minutes like that, privy to every feeling. When you fall apart, your body clenching around him in ecstasy, the moment is too beautiful for Soobin to handle. It’s a picture he wants to tattoo on his heart forever.

You could have done anything in this life, and by his luck and the universe’s grace, you were led straight to him and have given him some of the greatest gifts he could ever ask for. Your love, your hand in marriage, your children.

He would follow you anywhere without question. And he may not always believe it, but he also holds all the same powers over you. Without him, the world would be a lot duller, no color to define the edges and details of the life that you’ve built together. He makes it all worth it.

So when his next words leave his mouth, you can’t help but agree with them, the thought too beautiful in the throes of your desire to say no to. “I want to fill you up, bunny. Have another baby with you, as many as you want. So beautiful like this, but you’re even more beautiful heavy and pregnant, shit,” he moans, eyes screwed shut as he chases his own orgasm.

“Yes, Binnie, fill me up. Come inside of me, give me another. Pretty please?”

Those two words are his undoing, the blade that severs the cord that’s been slowly tightening in his stomach since he saw you in your dress five hours ago. He spills inside of you, your insides hot with his release. He doesn’t let any part of it go to waste, fucking it into you until his hips can’t go for much longer.

He lies beside you, both of your chests heaving. And while the moment was an amalgamation of intense passion, you both look at each other and laugh like teenagers. It takes you back to that first night, the first “I love you,” all the first you’ve shared and the ones that are yet to come.

“You’re my best friend, you know that, right?” He rubs your bare arm as he stares deeply into your eyes, more in love than he was a second ago. “I could not have found anyone better to be my wife and my children’s mother than you.” He kisses you on the forehead, his lips featherlight. “I love you.”

You may be incredibly hormonal, any words that make your heart seize up more than likely to cause a well of tears in your eyes. But these don’t. They make your heart lighter, shoot all your fears down, and quell any insecurities that have sprung to the surface since the two of you have become parents.

“I love you, Binnie. In this lifetime and all the other ones,” you respond. You snuggle into his chest, feeling the tempo of his heartbeat against your ear.

Everyone told you both how hard having kids would be. You know you’re not in the home stretch, not in the slightest, but with Soobin, no mountain you’ll come across is insurmountable.

All because he’s yours and you’re his.

@yvnempire @sjylouvre @mini-mews @jayparked @heesuncore @yoursjaeyun @sungbeams @jenoslutie @loserlvrss @pars-ley @lovetaroandtaemin @wonwovy @hursheys

𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 ౨ৎ˚₊

@kstrucknet @k-films @kvanity-main @moadiarynet @sweetvenomnet @moadiarynet @lapydiaries @onedoornet @sayxonet @violetanet @svthub @whipped-kpop-creators

[minkieater]

happy first birthday to one of my first introductions to kpop, a story that i will always come back to, one of the most beautiful pieces of art on this app. fataegyu you are so special to me, your story is so special to me, it will live with me forever 🫶🏼

i don't have enough words to describe this piece of fucking literature, plum you have made something so special, created people so sickeningly real and relatable (as crazy as that might sound), a story so unique it deserves all of the love and praise in the world.

everyone please wish nmwid a happy birthday and go hangout with my friends for awhile, you will not regret it, it will live with you forever and engrain itself in your subconscious just as it's done to me. cruel summer, jeep wranglers, joints and love triangles will never be the same- will never hit the same as it did here. i wish i could read this for the first time again.

congratulations plum, and happy one year to your babies, your friends, your children, your people. your love for them bled into every word and i will forever be grateful that you shared them with us 🤍

this wasn't supposed to be so long i just feel rlly strongly about them i'm sorry why are there tears in my eyes

no matter what i do ↠ txt

now playing: 0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) • TXT

Two years after an end-all argument with Taehyun, you’re forced to spend Christmas weekend together at your mother’s, and his father’s. Once upon a time he meant the world to you. Now that you’re both married with kids, things are getting messy, and a little blurry. The longer you stick around in the home you both grew up in, the more secrets come out… It’s always been messy, it was always blurry. All you want, all you truly yearn for, is to get back on good terms with Taehyun.

word count↠ 33,944

warnings↠ MDNI. 18+. no graphic depictions of sex but it is heavily implied, drug use, teenage drug use, alcohol abuse, angst amongst taehyun and reader, insinuation that someone will s/a reader (briefly, not described), teenage pregnancy (age nineteen), step-cest before they are officially step siblings (growing up together in same house, not step-sibs until they are full adults), infidelity, not so fabulous parents, neglectful mother, biting at some point if you squint, crying, lots of crying, many many sex insinuations (not graphic)… if i missed anything PLEASE tell me.

a/n↠ i put my BACK into this one, i feel pretty proud of this. this may be extremely taboo to some people. this topic is frowned upon by most. if you don’t like it, simply scroll by, thank you. the idea sparked in my head, and i couldn’t let it go. to those of you intrigued, to those of you who end up reading- thank you. 🫶

posted↠ 12/20/23 ~ 12 a.m. est

White crystal snowflakes whirled through the brisk air, the wind nipping at your cheeks as you struggled with the car seat buckle for the third time this week. The toddler you were strapping in had her hand stretched out of the van door, trying to catch a snowflake filled with wonder as to why she couldn’t hold one in her warm mittens.

“No-flake, Mama,” she mumbled to you. “No-flake!”

“The snowflakes are so pretty, just like you, Mina,” you smiled at her, adjusting the straps over her shoulders, hoping to ease your struggle.

Behind you, the front door to your two story home flung open and slammed shut, the scuffle of snow boots plowing down the porch stairs followed. Equally shrill, loud mouthed shouts filled the quiet winter air.

“Boys, don’t jump in the-“

Glancing over your shoulder, it was too late. Your twin boys, Chan and Sunoo, were knee deep in the snowdrifts on top of the gardens that lined along the porch. Dark hair and matching brown eyes grinned maniacally at you.

“You both need to get in the car, we’re gonna be late!”

Mina shoved a mitten in her mouth, biting down on the fabric with her tiny teeth ripping it off of her hand. While you watched Sunoo and Chan trudge through the snow, each one trying to shove the other to the ground as they raced to the van, your two year old threw her mitten to the ground. And then the other one, with a shriek.

“I’m right here,” you soothed, turning back to your daughter with a sigh. “Meens, it’s cold baby,” you crouched to pick the little pink mittens up off the ground, “you have to wear these.”

“No wear,” she frowned, her eyebrows sinking over the eyes she shared with her father. She puffed out her pouty cheeks, becoming the carbon copy of him. Out of all of your kids, Mina looked the most like him.

“Yes, wear,” you said, reaching for one of her hands that both shot up into the air in an instant. Her bottom lip crinkled, and you withheld the groan you ever so wished to release from the depths of your being.

Christmas was supposed to get easier as the kids got older, not harder. All morning you had been arguing over clothes and trying to contain your chaotic twin five year olds to their bedroom just so you could brush their hair. Mina kicked you in the chin on accident while you were putting on her boots amidst an hour-long meltdown because she had barely slept the night before, which usually meant she was getting sick- another glorious thing to deal with while you traveled for the weekend.

Sunoo wanted to put on his pants himself, getting the fabric stuck in the zipper, and Chan insisted on helping him fix it. By the time you were back in their bedroom after Mina nearly knocked you out, the pants were ripped and Sunoo had to change his entire outfit, which meant the boys weren’t matching anymore. Meltdown number two. From the brother of a boy with ripped pants who’s favorite thing was getting to match with his twin.

Mina was set free to roam around the house, clunking around in her boots looking for her father, and you squeezed Sunoo into his outfit from last Christmas Eve, mentally preparing yourself to hear sly comments from your mother all weekend wondering why he wasn’t in the new clothes she bought him, and ‘those pants are way too short, dear, do you need me to go shopping with you?’.

The one thing, the one amazing, thoughtful thing that took some of the weight off of your shoulders was your husband taking care of the youngest of your crew, Wonwoo. A tiny, calm, beautiful six month old surprise you all only found out about ten months ago. 

Mina had just turned two, the boys were about to graduate Pre-K, and you had run out of bedrooms. With four months to prepare for a new baby, your husband stepped up, with the help of his friend Kai, and converted half of the basement playroom into a bedroom for the twins, one they could grow into throughout the years. Mina moved into the boy's old room, painted purple by her father, and Wonwoo got his own room right next door to his sister.

You would put up with the boys, “Just because we’re twins means we don’t get our own rooms?!”, argument later. That was a problem for future you. Not the current you fighting with your two year old over mittens, dodging snowballs your five year olds were throwing at one another.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my fucking god,” you muttered under your breath, knowing your curses couldn’t be heard over the boys shouts or Mina’s wailing. “Boys, in the car now!” One mitten wrestled onto Mina’s right hand. The twins didn’t hear you, or they ignored you. “Boys!” A snowball hit the ground by your feet. Two mittens on, and one seatbelt successfully buckled.

Ready to hoof it through the snow to put a twin on each hip, they were still small enough to do so, the front door shut followed by the jingling of keys as it was locked making both boys freeze in their boots.

Shooting you a look of reassurance before eyeing the boys, your husband, with a baby carrier in one hand and keys in the other, carefully started down the stairs. His smooth black hair that usually hung over his eyes was parted to the side, resting on top of his thin rimmed glasses that he pushed up his nose with his knuckle. A jean jacket not nearly warm enough for this weather hugged his stretch of a frame, hiding a white button up beneath it, the top two buttons undone with nothing under it.

It was a wonder why Wonwoo was such a surprise, your husband’s been a babe since the day you met. Fatherhood didn’t change him the slightest, if anything it made you want him more.

“Soobin,” you said through your teeth, placing your hands on top of your head. “I’m gonna lose my mind.” 

Speaking quietly as he came closer, you didn’t need your children hearing your moment of despair. They were all being a nuisance, but it was reasonable. The twins were excited, it was Christmas and they were about to spend the weekend with their family they rarely got to see, and Mina was getting sick. Not only that, Mina was two years old and still learning how to properly express the way she was feeling, still learning what emotions even were. Those words were bound to come out of Soobin at some point.

“You’re doing great,” Soobin said, handing you the carrier with your youngest snoozing away inside, bundled up in a bear onesie with ears on the hood, covered up with a fuzzy blanket to keep him warm and to make sure the seat buckles were on him securely. “Put him in his seat, I got tweedledee and tweedledum.” He pressed a quick kiss to your cheek as you giggled.

Since their father had stepped out of the house both Chan and Sunoo were attentive, one eye on Soobin and one eye on each other. They still made snowballs, but were hesitant to throw them. 

Circling around the trunk of the van, taking a peek inside to make sure everyone's bags were there, you watched as Soobin put his hands on his hips, and asked the boys nicely why they weren’t listening to you. The snowballs fell from their gloved fingers and they both shrugged.

“Your mother has been taking care of your sister all morning,” he began, the boys looking up to him with wide eyes. “You know Mina can’t do the things that you can do yet, she still needs a lot of help. I’m so proud of you both for getting dressed on your own and helping each other, but now it’s time to help Mom, okay?” 

Setting Wonwoo in his place, making sure everything was properly locked, twice, you tried to not let the twins' attentiveness to their father get you down. It seemed no matter what you did, no matter how you spoke to them, they chose to always, always, listen to Soobin.

Two tiny heads nodded, and two tiny voices spoke at once. “Okay, dad.”

“You’re excited it’s Christmas?” Soobin asked the boys, and they nodded again, faster this time. “Me too! You’re excited to see your cousins?” The boys smiled and nodded, starting to walk toward the car. “Me too, you know we haven’t seen your Uncle Taehyun in forever.”

Your step brother's name made you fumble, bumping the handle of Wonwoo’s carrier, making him stir. “No, no, no.” You whispered, freezing, saying a silent prayer that he wouldn’t wake.

Chan and Sunoo reached Soobin, both boys reaching up for him, tugging on his clothes in some way. “I can't pick you up right now, you decided to play in the snow and now you’re all wet.” Two pouty five year olds gazed up at him, big, round, sappy eyes. Mina may be his twin, but they all shared the same pouty face. You weren’t sure when the twins mastered it. “You made your decision. Now you have to climb over Mina to get in your seats because your brother is asleep.”

“She will kick us!” Chan nearly shouted, looking up to his father in shock. Sunoo’s glance exchanged between Soobin and his brother, anxious to see what he would say, because you all knew for a fact, that Mina wouldn’t hesitate to kick them.

The toddler had calmed her crying to watch her brothers, gnawing on one of the mittens you stuck back on her hands. Her tear stained cheeks perked up when she heard Soobin say her name. Either that, or she was proud that she already had a reputation at the ripe age of two.

“Mina won’t kick you,” you said, sliding the van door shut on Wonwoo’s side, walking around it to stand beside your husband. Gripping the handle of the passenger door, you raise a brow to Soobin and smirk. “We’re gonna be late, Soob. I’m already dreading seeing my family, I’d like to not pile on to the shit my mother has to say about me.”

“You said a bad word!” Sunoo gasped, pointing at you. Chan started to laugh. Soobin sighed.

“You said a bad word,” he said, completely serious. 

Your husband was a lot of things. For starters he was stunning, he knew how to dress, he was an incredible caring man, an amazing father, and a beast in the sheets. Underneath all the dreamy qualities you were still in shock you secured nine years ago, he was an insufferably proper prude. Not that you’d ever tell him that to his face, though you’ve hinted at it just to tease him. He was a gentleman, and he was raising the boys to be the same. He’d be damned if his boys ended up like half of the jerks he grew up with or encountered in his lifetime. Your husband didn’t curse, he spoke with intention, and always thought through everything carefully, sometimes too much.

Nine years together, five and a half years married, he hasn’t seemed to completely rub off on you yet. The two of you were utter opposites, anyone with eyes could see that. Anyone who knew you nine years ago could tell you that.

You and Soobin? You… With Soobin.

You, the loud mouthed, hot headed, class skipper who had detention every other week, with straight edged, outstanding GPA, respectable Soobin. Opposites attract, you assumed. Though you’d be lying if you said the beginning of your relationship wasn’t an excuse to escape the life you used to live. You were in love, you created a beautiful family, and you lived a happy life… An hour and a half away from the family you used to know.

Turning your attention down to the twins, you smiled. “I’m sorry I said a bad word. I’m a little frustrated.”

“But, that’s not an excuse,” Soobin raised his brows, looking from you to the boys. Taking a deep breath, choking back a sigh, you nodded.

“No. It’s not,” you grit your teeth. “I shouldn’t have said that word. I’m sorry.”

Soobin smiled at you. “Into the car boys, if Mina kicks you I don’t think I blame her.” He flashed you a wink as you got into your seat. Now that was more your parenting style, though you understood and appreciated Soobins. You were raised differently, you were still unlearning a lot of things, and it got a little easier with each child that came out of you.

Once the boys were in their seats and buckled after Mina did try to kick them as they climbed over her, your family was on the road, forty five minutes later than you originally planned. Between Sunoo’s outfit mishap, and now being late, you mentally prepared yourself to be berated by your mother. With Soobin by your side it’d be a little bit easier to take. Your stepfather always had your back too, telling your mother to back off if she ever started to lay it on too thick. The one who always took the brunt of it though, the one who seemed to make it disappear, was Taehyun.

Since the start, since your two families blended together, he’d stick up for you no matter the consequence. When it came to school, the two of you in the same grade, inseparable since middle school, if the two of you were caught in trouble he’d take full blame. Of course that only worked until high school when you started to get into trouble on your own, but even then Taehyun would step in front of you at home, getting the worst of the punishment.

It’d been two years since you’d last seen Taehyun. Two summers ago at his eldest daughter's tenth birthday party in his backyard, an hour and a half away in the opposite direction of you. You were the halfway point between him and your parents.

You were both thirty, you were both married, you had three year old twins and a newborn Mina, and he had his freshly ten year old daughter and seven year old son. 

His wife, Sana, waltzed around the backyard dressed to the nines with a glass of wine in one hand and her cell phone in the other, showing off her assets to anyone who cared to listen. The woman was a year younger than you both. Her hair, black as night, was pin straight down her slender back exposed by the deep purple low cut dress she had chosen to wear. Around her neck was a diamond necklace she would brag about, how grateful she was that her husband worked so hard to buy it for her, along with the gaudy wedding ring sitting on her left finger.

Their daughter, Rosie, a mini Sana, had clearly been dressed by her mother that morning. You can remember how many times Soobin mumbled, “If Mina ever…” angrily to you, offended that his sister-in-law would allow her daughter to dress that way at ten years of age. The second he brought your step brother into the mix, you shut your husband right down.

Taehyun wasn’t seen with Sana the entire party. He was with his boy, Minho, enjoying what seemed like a very expensive day you were certain he dropped every penny for. 

Taking care of Mina while Soobin watched over the twins running around the colorful water sprinklers, you were able to catch Taehyun’s ear only momentarily. A conversation that shoved a knife through your heart, even now if you thought about it for too long.

He was tired, Taehyun. Even though you were the one with a sleeping newborn slung over your shoulder in a dark, quiet hallway of his home. You could see it in his eyes that were once full of life beneath his messy dark hair. He wasn’t the man you knew anymore, and the weighted words you threw at each other when you were twenty came back to haunt you. Both of you.

Twenty was when everything changed. Taehyun got Sana pregnant. To which you begged him to not go through with, knowing what type of girl Sana was, even at nineteen years old. It was an accident, he once called it. Until the accident’s tenth birthday, where he nearly spat at your feet and admitted he did it on purpose.

He knocked Sana up on purpose to get away from you, to erase the past you shared, to which you sneered that that’s the very reason you wound up with Soobin. To get away from him, to erase the past you shared. The hurt that drowned his tired eyes was something you’d never be able to unsee.

Your sharp, hushed, venom laced voices were cut off by your husbands calling up to you from the bottom of Taehyun's carpeted stairs. With two hands on the banisters, Soobin had daggers for eyes, directing them only at Taehyun who you didn’t realize almost had you caged to the wall, the two of you entirely too close considering you had a baby across your chest. Soobin’s baby.

The end played out in your mind, regretting everything that had happened the moment you had collected your boys and gotten into the car. After Taehyun handed over two letters addressed to your twins, you hadn’t spoken since that moment.

Soobin’s hand slid over the soft, flowing fabric of your pants, bringing you back to present time. The twins were babbling away to one another in the third row, Mina was humming to herself, and Wonwoo was still sound asleep. Looking over at your husband, you find him glancing at you ever so often with a soft smile on his lips.

“You alright?” he asked. Grabbing his hand, you laced your fingers together and took a breath.

“Yeah,” you said, half convincing. “Just… tired. Between nursing Wonwoo and Mina fighting sleep last night, I just…”

“Right,” Soobin said, focused on the snowy road ahead. You’ve been on the road for about twenty minutes already. “Why don’t you rest until we get there?” Dragging a thumb over the back of his hand, you shrugged. Much like the needs of your children last night, your racing thoughts and pounding heart weren’t exactly going to soothe you to sleep.

Soobin lowered his brows, along with his voice. “What else is bothering you?” Though he could probably take a wild guess. Hesitating, you made your husband chuckle. “It’s going to be fine. When I talked to your mom she said he was excited to see everyone.”

“He was lying,” you whispered.

“You don’t know that,” Soobin said.

“Yes, I do.”

Pulling up to a red light, Soobin let go of your hand and touched the bottom of your chin, turning you so you would look at him. “It’s been two years. You’re thirty-two, and so is he. He’s your brother, surely you guys can use this weekend to make up and end this sibling tiff.”

The light turned green and he grabbed your hand again, his attention on the street and keeping his family safe on the hazardous roads.

Toying with his fingers, you mumbled, “He’s not my brother,” and ignored Soobin’s eyeroll and the way he pulled his hand away from you to grip the steering wheel.

“I’d also love to go this weekend without any of that,” he said, voice low.

With a heavy exhale, you twisted yourself nearly sideways to face him. “Don’t do that.”

He shot you a glare. “Don’t disappear on me.”

“Soobin.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “There’s four kids back there now, baby- Ugh, babe- Love, Jesus Christ.” Your bottom lip escaped between your teeth. Soobin shook his head. “Maybe since you’re fighting he won’t call you that. One less thing to worry about.”

Your relationship with Taehyun was a rocky path that Soobin somehow understood since day one. At the start of your relationship and up until Rosie’s tenth birthday, Soobin had never been too fond of him, knowing that Taehyun was ‘one of the jerk’s’ he didn’t want his sons becoming. At this point in your life, you’re saddened you’d have to agree.

The house you grew up in was nothing short of spectacular. Two stories high with staircases on each end of the house, it was a classically built home that your mother and step father took excellent care of. Half of the outside of the home was grey stone, while the other half, sunken back a bit, was a wash of sky blue. The driveway was grand and stretched up the blue side of the house to two chestnut brown garage doors, and from the paved driveway a sidewalk lined with gardens wound up the lawn to the front door that matched the garage.

Everything was covered in snow, making the house draped in twinkling white Christmas lights appear like it was on the cover of a magazine. From the bay window on the stone side of the house you could see the Christmas tree all lit up, wrapped in silver garland with an ornament on each branch. Every Christmas was the same. Dazzling lights outside, a show stopping display of a tree, and an anxiety attack that one of your kids would break a decoration around each corner of the house. It was like your mother forgot what it was like to have toddlers, they were worse than cats, they touched anything and everything.

Pulling into the shoveled driveway, the snow was still coming down and had worsened on the drive, both you and Soobin peeked behind you at the quiet car as soon as it was in park. 

Mina, out. Wonwoo, out. Chan, out. Sunoo, sitting with his hands in his lap, smiling at his parents.

“Hi honey,” you cooed. “Thought you were asleep like everyone else.” Soobin laughed.

“What’s up, bud,” he said. “You’ve been pretty quiet. You didn’t want to talk to mom and dad?”

Sunoo shrugged, his smile still puffing out his cheeks. “I was just watching.” The five year old gestured out the window with one hand before slapping it on top of his other one, gazing out at the snow.

You and Soobin shared a look of adoration. “Just watching,” you both said at the same time with a soft laugh.

“Do you wanna wake up Chan, or do you want Daddy to do it?”

Sunoo glanced at his snoozing brother and his crooked neck, then shrugged again. “Will he be cranky if I wake him up?” 

Soobin bit back another laugh. “He’s always cranky,” he mumbled for only you to hear, then said to his son, “Wake him up and tell him he has to help me bring in our things. So do you.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Sunoo said, reaching over as far as he could in his carseat to tap his brother's arm that dangled off the side.

Looking at Soobin, you nodded. “I got the babies. Why don’t you come say hi first, then we can all come back out here for everything else once my mom has hold of Meens?”

“She’s going to pass her off to Jin, you really think she’s going to let Wonwoo stay asleep?” Soobin smirked. He glanced past you out the window and took a breath. “Taehyun’s here, he can hold the baby. He hasn’t met him yet.” 

Peeking out the window, the old, black Jeep Wrangler littered with different stickers made your stomach sink to your knees. He’s driven that thing since he got his license. When you met Soobin’s gaze you could tell he was serious.

“Yeah,” you nodded, taking note of Chan in the back of the van who was rubbing his eyes vigorously. “He can hold him.”

Soobin reached across your seat, touching beneath your chin like he once did about an hour ago. “Listen,” he said softly, dragging a thumb over your cheek. “We’re going to have a good weekend. I promise. It’s Wonwoo’s first Christmas,” he dropped his voice to a whisper for a second, “The boys are getting their first bikes,” you both smiled, “And you and Taehyun… You’re going to make things right. It’s time to make things right. To… move on.”

“Don’t make it sound weird,” you muttered. Soobin perked a brow. “No, come on,” you groaned, squeezing your eyes shut. Your husband laughed, then leaned forward to give you a kiss.

Both Sunoo and Chan shrieked, “EWE!”

“I love you, you weirdo,” Soobin smiled. Mina stirred behind you, catching his attention for a second. Grabbing onto his hand you pressed a kiss to his fingers and sighed.

“I love you too, Soob, so much.”

His smile grew. “I know.”

Within minutes your entire crew was up the winding sidewalk, taking your sweet, sweet time because the kids found the lights so interesting. Mina, curled up into your shoulder, could've stared at the twinkling snowflakes hanging from the trees for hours. The twins led you up the couple of steps to the front door, telling both you and Soobin to be careful because it was slippery. Car seat in hand, Soobin saluted them as a thank you, and then insisted that they were the ones to knock on the door. Their faces lit up, their tiny fists going to town on the chestnut wood, the wreath hanging on it shaking like crazy.

A sing-songy voice could be heard on the other side along with another. Your blood pressure was through the roof. Catching a glimpse of Soobin watching the boys with pride helped ease the nerves, at least you’d be here with him, with all of them, your mini me’s you created with his help. Soobin was right, this was going to be a great weekend, you were here together, and that was enough.

The doorknob to the door rattled, and it swung open in a flash, your heart rate skyrocketing for a millisecond until your mother cheered, throwing her arms around your boys.

“Finally!” Fabulous as always, she wore a champagne colored chiffon dress cut off at her knees with flowing sleeves and matching Loubuittons. Diamonds hung around her neck and dripped from her ears and her wrists. Her hair was curled, and her makeup was pristine. Always the picture of perfection.

“Hi Mom,” you smiled, pressing your lips together, firm. With a twin on each leg, she flipped her hair over her shoulder and shot you an award winning grin.

“Hello my dear,” she crooned. “Hi Soobin, Merry Christmas.” 

“Merry Christmas, Joy,” Soobin smiled.

“Come in! Come in! God, it’s freezing out here,” Joy shuffled herself inside with the boys attached to her, making them giggle like crazy. Exchanging a look with Soobin, you both rolled your eyes.

“Rosie and Minho are in here somewhere,” Joy began, detaching the twins from her. Sunoo and Chan lifted their chins and looked around the house, taking it in as if they had never seen it before. “You’ll find them eventually, they’re not good at hiding.” 

Your mother laughed toward you as if you’d get her joke. You settled for a sympathy laugh regardless, one she didn’t notice. Mouth agape, she tiptoed to your side, sliding a hand over Mina’s back.

“Think we’re coming down with something,” you said, giving your girl a gentle bounce. “She’s gonna be clingy all weekend.”

Joy pouted her silicone filled lips and held open her arms. “Be clingy right here, darling. Come ‘ere, sweetie.”

Kissing the top of Mina’s head you spoke quietly to her. “Go see your grandma, Meens.” You attempted to take her off your hip, but your girl held on tight.

“Oh, Mina,” Joy sang. “Joy has cookies in the kitchen, do you want some cookies?” Mina picked her head up, her heavy eyes blinking a couple of times before she held up a hand.

“Cookie,” she babbled.

“Cookie?” Chan whined. “Cookies? Joy, you have cookies?”

“Can we have cookies too?” Sunoo asked, looking up at you and Soobin. “I want some cookies too, please.”

Joy waited for the parents to answer, giving you eyes as persuasive as your kids.

“Well,” Soobin said, looking at you. “Can’t say no, you already brought it up. You can each have one cookie.”

Joy held her hands up and Mina nearly jumped into them. Wiggling your daughter out of her winter coat and mittens, Soobin took care of the boys and helped you hang everything up in the closet by the door after Joy hurried off to the kitchen with the kids. Sliding a hand around your back, he kissed your cheek and chuckled to himself.

“What?” Smiling up at him, you wrapped your arms around his back. He nuzzled his nose against yours and took a breath.

“Mm, nothing,” he shrugged. “Just thinking about how those kids are going to be glued to your mom all weekend.” His hands slipped lower over your pants, smoothing over the flowing fabric. “They’re going to forget about us, and we can get lost in this big house, and-” A whine slipped out of the carseat a few feet away from you. Soobin waited with baited breath for the baby to make another noise. You couldn’t help but laugh, burying your face into the collar of his jacket.

“Unfortunately that one can smell if I’ve ventured too far away from him,” you said. Soobin, still smiling, shook his head and kissed you much deeper than he had all day.

“Guess she was going to let him sleep,” Soobin said, untangling himself from you. He started for the carseat, greeting his youngest son with the sweetest voice.

“Yeah, I guess,” you furrowed your brows and glanced down the hall toward the kitchen where commotion was evident. “Here.” Turning to your husband who had Wonwoo out of the seat, tucked in the air in a newborn scrunch, you held out your arms to scoop up your little one. “He’s gonna be hungry soon.”

Adjusting the hood on his head while he was cradled in your arms, Soobin cocked his head to the side. “Give him to Joy, he can have a cookie.”

“Stop,” you laughed, shaking your head. Tapping your baby’s bottom, you turn around to peek down the hall again. “Shall we? Surely someone in there with arms will take him. I’ll help you bring in our stuff.”

“The boys will help me,” Soobin said, following you as you started down the long hall lined with galleries of photos of your family, both immediate and distant. There were plenty of you and Taehyun.

“The boys are five, and we have a lot of stuff,” you said. “They’re going to carry two bags and then they’ll hear Joy say something that sparks their interest and like you said, they’ll forget we’re here.”

The hardwood floor clicked beneath your shoes, echoing up into the high ceilings lined with wooden beams. The beige walls in this place seemed to stretch for miles, and just as you expected, there was some sort of Christmas pizzazz on every square inch. Turning into the kitchen that was toasty warm, you find the entire room was brand new. The last time you were here was shortly before Wonwoo was born, so that means in the past six months this kitchen had had another facelift.

The tile was marble, the counters were marble, and the cabinets were a dark forest green. On the end of the house, the ceiling on the kitchen was slanted and adorned with a massive skylight lined with spotlights shining down into the room.

“Mom, what the hell,” you said a little too loud.

“Bad word!” Sunoo pointed at you. 

Joy, at the island counter with Mina sitting on the marble with a cookie in her hand and both boys standing beside her, looked toward you curiously. “What's the matter, honey?”

“This,” you gestured around the kitchen you had to admit was gorgeous. “It’s like the fifth time you’ve redone it.”

Joy frowned. “You don’t sound happy, what is it ugly? What did I miss?” She parroted her head around like she’d find an imperfection somewhere. Mina copied her, glancing around before she spotted you and Soobin and smiled.

“Mama,” she said, waving her cookie toward you.

“Hi Mina,” you nodded, stepping closer to her. “No, Mom, it’s… stunning. Just wish you’d commit to an aesthetic. This shit’s expensive.”

“Bad wooord!” Sunoo and Chan shouted.

“Babe,” Soobin’s tone was flat.

“This shit is very expensive, darling, but my God, it’s gorgeous,” Joy waved a hand around, flicking her diamond bracelet up and down her wrist.

“Joy! Bad word!” Chan pouted, looking up at his grandmother in defeat. Soobin sighed heavily, and you wanted to apologize, but he pulled the boys out of the kitchen before you had the chance to do so.

“We’re going to bring our things inside,” your husband said to you, disappearing with the boys down the hall.

Once he was gone Joy wiggled her brows. “Daddy Soobin still strict as ever, huh?”

“He’s not strict, Mom,” you shook your head. “He’s far from it.”

“Mhm,” she hummed, taking a bite out of a cookie. Mina tried to grab it from her, but she pulled it away. “Sweetie, you’ve got your own, and your military boot camp daddy said only one.”

“One,” Mina smiled, holding up a finger. Joy’s face lit up, making your daughter laugh.

“Good job, Mina,” she cooed. “How’s that baby of yours?” She asked you while she played with Mina.

Looking down at Wonwoo who was gazing up at the skylight, you smiled at him. “He’s perfect.”

“You feeling better about adjusting to four?” Joy snuck a glimpse of you, her eyes written with something you couldn’t quite decipher.

“I am,” you nodded. “Wonwoo’s an angel, so he made it too easy. Makes me feel like we could do five.” Joy thankfully laughed along with your joke.

“Yeah, well, if my husband looked like that I don’t think we’d stop.”

“Mom!” Your eyes went wild as she laughed.

“Come on, I’ve said it since you started dating him, Soobin’s a good one.”

Looking down at your baby again, you smiled. “He is a good one.” The kitchen went quiet for a moment, the only sound coming from Mina as she tried to put a cookie into Joy's mouth, and cheering to herself as she did. Praising her, Joy took a bite of the sugary snack and put it down, meeting your unreadable gaze. 

“What’s the matter? You’re pregnant again, aren’t you.”

“Mom!”

“You have that look on your face,” she circled her finger toward you. Mina grabbed onto it and tried to put it in her mouth. “No, honey, you can’t eat my jewelry… What’s going on?”

With a breath, you shrugged and forced the words out of your mouth, attempting to sound as casual as possible. “Taehyun and Sana here?”

Joy lifted a brow. “Taehyun’s here. No Sana.”

“No?” you questioned in surprise. Joy eyed you curiously.

“Sweetie, they’ve been divorced for almost a year,” she said. Placing her palms flat on the marble counter around your daughter to keep her in a safe space, Joy narrowed her eyes. “You’re telling me you didn’t know that?”

Mouth wide open, you scoffed. “Had no idea. How did this not come up this summer?” 

Joy shrugged. “I dunno, I figured the two of you had talked, and it’s his business, he didn’t need me spreading it around.”

She had a point.

“When was the last time you spoke to your brother?”

The word made your skin crawl.

“He’s not…” you nearly sneered, but stopped yourself before you opened a can of worms. “We haven’t talked… in a long time.”

Joy dodged a Mina kick, but still swam in her laughter, squeezing her cheeks with glee. “Tell me when that was.”

Swallowing hard, you took a deep breath. “Rosie’s tenth birthday party.”

“What!” Joy shouted, startling Mina. “I’m sorry, honey, c’mere.” She popped your daughter on her hip and scrambled out of the kitchen. “Follow me.”

Doing what you were told, you shifted Wonwoo over your shoulder and followed your mother to the other side of her home down the stretch of another hall. On the way you passed by a full bathroom, an office space and a living room with a TV screen as large as one in a movie theater. You ended up at the bottom of a staircase with your heart at the bottom of your stomach.

“Taehyun!” Joy shouted up the wooden dual level stairs.

“Mom, stop, we’ll talk,” you whispered, but your cries for help went unnoticed.

“Kang Taehyun!”

“Tae-yun,” Mina said, observing her grandmother. “Tae-yun!”

“Great,” you mumbled. What a fantastic word for her to learn and bring home with her.

“I’m coming!” His voice sent chills down your spine. “Hang on!” Even muffled by walls it churned your stomach into knots.

“You’re gonna talk now,” Joy shot you a glare over her shoulder. “It is Christmas goddamnit, I won’t have my kids fighting on Christmas.”

All you could give her was a sigh. From the front of the house you heard the door open and close. Poor boys were only on trip number one.

“Mom, I have to help Soobin with the car-”

Her hand cut you off. “Hush, he’s coming.”

Footsteps sounded upstairs, hurried footsteps, ones you would recognize blindfolded. You spent years listening to and memorizing the footsteps of the people you shared this house with.

“Taehyun!” Joy shouted for the last time.

He appeared at the top of the stairs with a grin, and the wind was knocked out of you. Meeting your eyes first he must’ve read your energy, because he blinked a couple of times and retreated down a single step hesitantly. You wanted to greet him somehow, this was no way for you to see somebody for the first time in two years, standing at the bottom of a staircase speechless.

He looked different. His hair was a little lighter, and you wondered if it was done on purpose or if age was already getting to him. Dressed the same as he usually would be, dark ripped jeans and a band tee that finally fit him properly instead of hanging off of his skinny frame. He hated the gym, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d been working out… But, then how would he be filling out the sleeves of the tee the way he was if he wasn’t lifting… something.

There was color in his cheeks and life in his big brown eyes. He looked happy. And it tore your heart apart.

“Hi, Baby,” he shot you a big, toothy grin. “Long time, no see.”

“Yeah,” you breathed. “Long time no see.” Taehyun's gaze dropped to the baby in your arms. You swore his smile faltered before he met your eyes once more.

“Care to explain to me why your sister told me the two of you haven’t spoken in two years?” Joy cut the ever so joyous reunion off, and for once you were grateful for her obliviousness. Taehyun tilted his head to the side to think, but you know he knew damn well why the two of you haven’t spoken. It just wasn’t something you could share in front of Joy.

“Uhm, it’s just… Life, I guess,” Taehyun shrugged twice, looking at you for help. Either that or he was mentally crucifying you for opening your mouth.

Joy popped a hip and clicked her tongue. “You’re a shit liar, just like your father,” she said. “Whatever is going on, you two work it out before dinner please.” Stepping away from the stairs, Mina in her arms, she held up a hand and shouted, “No fighting on Christmas!”

You watched her walk away, and the moment she was out of earshot you pointed your attention up to the top of the stairs. Taehyun’s eyes were wide, and his smile was gone. Both of his hands held onto the wooden railing, like he was ready to prop himself up on it and slide down like he’s done before many times. He tried to teach you how to do it a long, long time ago, but you ended up with stitches in your elbow instead.

“You really said something to her?” Taehyun broke the minute of silence that was beginning to suffocate you both. “I was fully prepared for you to walk in here and we just pretend like everything is okay for a couple days for her sake.”

“I can’t do that,” you whispered.

His jaw tightened. “I need you to do that.” He started down the stairs, his chunky sneakers clunking with every rushed step he took. Brushing past you, his scent was familiar. He still wore the same cologne.

“And what if I can’t?” Your voice made him freeze. He turned around halfway.

“Then, I’m gonna take my kids and we’re gonna leave,” he said, then continued down the hall.

“We’re really not gonna talk about this?” you asked. “We’re not even gonna try to fix it?”

He whirled around, swinging his hands at his sides before he crossed them over his chest. His biceps bulged out of his sleeves. “We’re not,” he gritted his teeth. He took two steps closer to you. “We can’t. There is nothing to fix.”

“It’s Christmas.” Your voice was barely a whisper.

Taehyun glanced down to where Wonwoo laid. “Yeah. It’s Christmas. You keep having babies, and I’m divorced. You’re happily married, playing house with your amazing husband, and keep pulling me back under whenever you come around and wanna talk.” You gulped, he watched you do so. “We’re done. We were a long time ago. Now, we act like everything is fucking perfect, or I’m gonna get called into work tonight and break Joys heart.”

Staring each other down, he didn’t walk away until you nodded. Wonwoo stirred on your shoulder, a small sound slipping out of the boy's mouth. Rubbing his back you watched Taehyun disappear around a corner wrapped in silver garland. Resting your cheek on the hood of Wonwoo’s onesie, you soothed him with a gentle hush, bouncing him ever so gently, turning away from the hall.

An empty cry came out of the infant you cradled, one that made you laugh. “I know, lovie,” you breathed. “I feel the same way.” 

Your eyes landed on a set of photos on the wall in a sleek black frame. Both photos, top and bottom, were from you and Taehyun’s first day of high school. Joy took your picture before you got on the bus in the morning, and then again when you got home. 

In the photo on top you were both dressed nice and your hair was done. Taehyun, as skinny as a rail, was covered in black with a red checkered flannel around his shoulders, and you were in a yellow sundress. You would’ve never worn it if Taehyun didn’t tell you it made you look pretty. Hanging around your bedroom door all morning while you tried to put on a little makeup that Joy had given you, he wouldn’t leave you alone.

At that point, freshman year of high school, your families had been living together for four years. Jin and Joy weren’t married yet, you can still hear the distant jokes they’d make about living in sin.

The bottom photo was hysterical, it honestly made you smile. Standing out front on the sidewalk both you and Taehyun struck funny poses, and on the bus ride home, you’d almost switched outfits. His flannel was tied around your waist, and the two of you tried to switch shoes even though his feet were three sizes bigger than yours. Every piece of jewelry you had put on that morning was given to him, which would mark this as the day that Jin and Joy found out he had pierced his ears himself, without your help, of course. 

Neither your mother nor his father, still to this day, ever found out that sometime that July the two of you went full Parent Trap and stabbed needles through his earlobes in the bathroom you shared. Lindsay Lohan really made it seem entirely too easy, it took three tries to get the needle through his skin. Practice makes perfect though, because when you were eighteen you pierced each other's second and third holes in that bathroom at four in the morning after downing half of Joys Svedka. You made sure to fill it up with water before she and Jin came home from their second cruise of the year.

Low and behold, in true Joy fashion, she never found out.

He had three silver studs in each ear today. Two summers ago he had three silver studs in each ear. You wondered if changing the jewelry gave him the same numb feeling it gave you. He used to wear diamonds, and sometimes he’d wear hoops, or chains that hung from each piercing. Either he didn’t care to switch out the earrings now, in which case he could just take the jewelry out and let the holes close, or he cared too much, and couldn’t touch them. 

Scoffing under your breath at yourself, you shake your head. Thirty-two years old and you were still wallowing in the halls of your mothers home trying to put the puzzle pieces together to figure out if Taehyun cared about you. “Grow up,” you mumbled, spinning around your heels to find your boys. They’d pull you out of this.

“Hope you aren’t talking to me,” Soobin said with a smile, turning the corner just as you were about to sprint out of the hall.

Startled, you huff a laugh and meet him at his side. “No, not you,” you said. “Myself.” Soobin poked one of Wonwoo’s hands, letting the infant latch onto it, squeezing it with might. Only your husband's eyes flickered up to question you.

“Taehyun said you needed me?”

Your face twisted in confusion. “What?”

Thinning his lips into a line, Soobin bobbed his head. “He insisted on helping bring our stuff inside, and when I refused, politely, he told me that you needed me and sent me this way.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“What?” Soobin tilted his head. “I mean- Yeah, but, what happened? Are you okay?”

The sigh you let out ended with a gravely groan. “I’m fine, Soob. I told Joy we haven’t spoken, and she went… All Joy. He’s mad I told her. Said it’s something we can’t work out, ever. Guess he sent you this way ‘cause he thinks I’ll be emotional about it.”

Soobins sparkling eyes studied your being. “Are you?” 

“Do I look like I’m throwing a tantrum?” 

He laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he paused, looking down at his son who was getting more vocal. “I do know you expected things to get back to normal after you saw each other, though. You wanted to talk it out.”

“I did,” you said, averting your gaze to the floor. “As normal as our normal is.”

Soobin rolled his eyes, but not to degrade you. “Yeah, babe, I wanted you guys to work this out.” Snapping your eyes to his, your lips parted in shock. It made him smirk and roll his eyes again. “As much as I… dislike…” he waved his free hand behind him, “Most of this, and what it put you through… He was your best friend. You can’t deny that.”

“You’re my best friend,” you whispered, and Soobin smized before he shook his head.

“That’s sweet,” he smiled. “But, we know that’s not true.” 

Wonwoo broke out into a cry, a real one this time. Shifting him to a cradle you bounced him and hummed.

“Hungry,” you whispered to the baby. Soobin took a step closer, closing the empty space between you. “Imma go upstairs to feed him.”

Soobin smoothed a hand over yours. “Give him to me. He can have a bottle for now.” Meeting his gaze, you purse your lips. “Go make sure Taehyun didn’t let Chan and Sunoo in the snow.”

Following you out into the foyer where there were a plethora of bags and suitcases, you helped Soobin with Wonwoo’s diaper bag, a battered blue thing that had ‘C. & S.’ stitched into the material right beneath the zipper. All four of your babies have used this bag, and you intended to follow through with the tradition no matter how many times Jin and Joy tried to gift you a brand new, brand name expensive one. Neither you or your husband have gotten a glimpse of the tree yet, but you could make a huge assumption that there would be one wrapped up for you beneath those glittering branches.

Kids were messy, and baby’s were no better. Between you and Soobin, you’ve both told them that they didn’t need to give you the high end things with marked up prices that would be ruined in a few days. You were doing perfectly fine with what you had. And Wonwoo is the baby of four! Back home you had a house filled to brim with enough to have you settled for a fifth or even a sixth.

“Everything is in here, right?” Slinging the bag over Soobin’s shoulder that didn’t have an infant over it, your voice was quiet. Moving at about a mile a minute, you popped the bag open to double check your husband would have what he needed, and listened to him as he laughed.

“I packed the bag, darling, everything’s there,” he said. Looking up at him, you blinked a couple of times. “I’ll be in the kitchen feeding him, okay?” You bobbed your head, rubbing Wonwoo’s back. “I’ll also be looking for our daughter, she and Joy are very quiet.” Darting his eyes down the hall, a snicker escaped you both before he leaned down to kiss your forehead. “Come find us when you grab the boys.”

A well-oiled, beautifully communicative team. Soobin truly was the greatest. Coming with so many faults and so much baggage, just look at where you are for the weekend, your husband very rarely, and almost never at all, brings you down for it. Trips like these are always a reminder that you struck gold nine years ago when you decided to take him up on that date night.

Ice cream and a movie. The simplest night, yet one you’ll cherish and remember forever. He picked you up in his used white, two door BMW, from the front porch of this very house. Knocking on the door, Jin was the one to answer. Soobin, in blue jeans and a white t-shirt, stepped up and held out his hand to shake your step-fathers. Back then he wore thick rimmed glasses, nothing like the skinny frames he wears now. They sat on the edge of his nose, and his dark bangs that used to hang in front of his face brushed right over the top of them.

He was totally boy next door, entirely pure, and all the more sweet. A gentleman, he paid for it all, he held your hand during the movie, and when he dropped you off, he walked you to the door and kissed your cheek. It wasn’t anything like you were used to, you had never, ever in your life had a date, yet alone one like Soobin. That one Friday night turned into every Friday night, and four kids later here you were.

Tugging the front door open to fetch your boys, Taehyun seemed to be walking in at the same exact time, bumping directly into you as he fumbled with the door. Nose to nose, you didn’t have a second to even see if the twins were covered in snow as they bolted over the threshold past your legs.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” he muttered. His eyes darted away from yours, watching the boys fly down one of the halls, you weren’t sure which.

Still gripping the door handle, digging your fingertips into the gold, you were certain your knuckles were white. Jaw as tight as can be, you sucked in a breath, his cologne surrounding you both comforting and all the more repulsive. Centimeters between you, you wanted nothing more than to release the door and lay your palm out on the side of his face, preferably at a speed that would knock some sense into him. Though you aren’t sure for what.

Taehyun looked down at you, his round lips pursing slightly as he read your expression. A snarky breath of air came out of him as he rolled his eyes. “Give it up,” he said. There was an insatiable itch lying just beneath your skin.

“Yanno, I would, actually,” you began, your eyebrows plummeting. “But, you listened to me.”

A real smirk graced his lips, flashing you his perfectly straight, pearly white teeth. “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“Sana,” you said. Your entire being filled with glee when his cocky smile fell off his face. “What was it, two years ago? Something like that right?” He rolled his eyes again, his staple. “Someone told me that they were… happy? Was that it? That they were happy, and not exhausting themselves for love? Overworking themselves to get out of their house, to get away from their wife? To get-” “Oh my god, shut up!” Taehyun groaned, dipping his head forward.

The newfound life in his eyes you caught a glimpse of was very much real. The big,  round, chocolatey brown, galaxy filled eyes were back. You hadn’t realized how much you’d missed them. They were set perfectly on his face, the buttery olive color of his skin making them pop right above his sculpted nose and cheekbones. His face was slender, and a little small, but his eyes were oceans, filled with wonder. They always have been.

Boys always got the things girls didn’t, like the eyelashes, and Taehyun had plenty to spare. With each blink they fluttered, the chocolate brown turning into a daydream the longer you gazed up at him. His hardened, annoyed expression softened, and you felt yours do the same. His pink lips parted as if to say something, but nothing came out. Instead, his eyes flickered between yours, slowly, like they were trying to drink up this moment, as if it would never happen again.

Thirty-two looked good, the years were clearly kind to him, and you only hoped he was thinking the same. After four kids and five years of sleepless nights, you weren’t feeling your best. Not only that, you were also six months postpartum, wearing clothes that barely hugged your figure so you’d be comfortable. After those four kids, comfort had become a priority.

Taehyun was single now, he had bulked up, and you figured out in these two minutes that he colored his hair lighter on purpose. He looked good. He looked nice. He looked like himself. His entire fit tumbled you back almost twelve years, before Sana, before kids, before everything went to shit. It left you unsettled, but it also wrapped around you with warmth, and safety. Normal, and happy, and comforting, like home should be.

A pout snuck onto your lips, one that Taehyun shifted his gaze toward. “Tae,” you whispered, feeling a lump form in your throat.

“No, no, no, you’re gonna cry,” he shook his head the slightest. “Don’t cry.”

“But I will,” you pressed your lips together tight after the words left you. “Talk to me. Please. Especially now, please.”

A sharp breath shot through him. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from yours. “I don’t know if I can handle going there again.” His voice was a whisper.

“We don’t have to,” your eyebrows flipped over, pleading with him. Now he looked away, toward the floor between you. “We can start from two years ago, or we can start over, we can be brand new, we can be…” you gulped, “Brother and sister.” 

His shoulders shot back as he stood up straight and plastered the cocky smirk back on his lips. “You really think we can do that?”

Nodding, you tried to smile, but it wouldn’t work. “I do,” you lied to keep him talking. Taehyun shrugged and dropped his smug act that never stood a chance around you, you weren’t even sure why he still tried. “For the sake of our families and our futures, I do.” His eyes melted into yours. The lump lodged in your throat forced a tiny tear out of the corner of your eye. “You were my best friend, Tae.”

“We were codependent and stupid,” he sighed. The words shoved a knife into your gut.

“I don’t disagree,” you said to his surprise. “Codependent and stupid. But, you were my best friend. I miss you.”

Hesitating, Taehyun danced his eyes all around your face, studying you, taking you in. With a breath and a heavy exhale, he nodded, swallowing hard. “I miss you, too.”

“Not lying?”

He shook his head. “Not lying.”

A smile lit up your face. “Joy still has those pictures of us on the wall, the ones from freshman year?”

“The clothes switch?” You both said at the same time and laughed.

“Oh god, they couldn’t take us anywhere,” Taehyun said.

“Menaces, both of us,” you giggled.

Taehyun quirked a brow. “I think I still have those earrings, the ones you had on that day.”

“Now you’re lying, there’s no way you have the-”

“Dangly silver diamonds Joy gave me for our middle school graduation.”

“Dangly silver diamonds Joy gave you for our middle school graduation.”

The both of you screwed your mouths shut and held in a laugh. Taehyun's cheeks turned an endearing shade of pink, and it wasn’t from the open door you were both still standing in. Peeking at the floor like a flustered teenager, he licked his lips and huffed a laugh.

“See,” you said, getting his attention. “We keep talking at the same time, that’s something siblings do, right?”

Taehyun cringed, the physical reaction he had to the words was the same as you.

“That’s…” he began, curling his lip.

“Weird?” you added quietly, and he nodded. “Agreed. I hate it.”

“Friends?” he offered, his voice jumping up at the end, preparing himself for you to hate it. “Is that… less weird?”

“Friends,” you smiled, bouncing your knees once to signify your delight. It was going to have to be something you both worked for, but it was better than nothing. “Thank you.” Reaching between you, you rested your hand on his arm and tried to not express your shock over the muscles that rippled beneath your touch. 

Taehyun glanced at your fingers for a moment, then he smiled and gave his full attention back to you. Lifting a hand, he brushed it over your cheek and tucked some of your hair behind your ear, letting his fingers dance over the earrings you chose to wear. Breath hitching in your throat, your grip tensed on his arm, squeezing accidentally. Time slowed, and for a moment you forgot where you were. A screech from the kitchen from one of your kids brought you back, and both of your hands dropped in an instant. Neither of you had anything to say.

“No wonder it’s freezing!” Joy’s voice carried from around the corner where she appeared from. Whipping yourself around, jumping away from Taehyun, you smiled and took a deep breath. “Shut the damn door!” She was kidless with one arm tucked under the other.

“Sorry,” you said in a hurry, bringing yourself closer to her so that Taehyun could follow orders and push the door shut, clicking the lock into place. Joy took her hands to your shoulders and rubbed your arms, flashing you a curious brow. “We brought the house with us, clearly.” Peeking over your shoulder, you meet Taehyun’s eyes, watching you.

Joy looked from Taehyun, to you, then back to Taehyun. “Did we make up?” She forced her serious tone out of the depths of where she locked away all her parenting skills. Both you and Taehyun gave her a nod.

“All good, Mom,” you said. “Can I help you with dinner? Are we getting anything started yet?”

Joy pressed a hand to your cheek, right where Taehyun’s had been. “Jin’s at the store picking up a couple of last minute things, when he gets back we’ll really get started.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s got my kids,” Taehyun snickered, waltzing past the two of you toward the kitchen.

“Does he?!” Joy shouted. “This whole time I thought they were getting into trouble somewhere up there!” She gestured to the floor above her.

Taehyun paused beside her and grabbed her shoulder. “Joy, be honest, you never knew what happened up there.” 

“I knew enough, okay?” Defending herself, she held up a hand. “You were two teenagers going through everything at the same exact time, I was not going to get in your way! I was a teenager before, okay? I hated when my mother was in my space. When we moved into this house you both got the second floor for a reason!”

“A+ parenting, Joy,” Taehyun nodded, and you did your best to swallow a giggle.

Joy groaned. “Come on you two, I’ve been up there. I wasn’t a neglectful mother! Taehyun, we helped you move out, I saw the walls and the carpets in both your rooms, and the tile in the bathroom. You were kids, you were stupid, but you had your own space and it made you two closer than ever, and as a mother, I couldn’t ask for more.”

Tiny feet running down the hall stole everyone's attention. Chan and Sunoo, at the speed of light, wearing wicked smiles, were flying toward the other end of the hall. As they passed by the three of you, Sunoo latched onto Taehyun's legs, his short arms just making it around them.

“Whoa!” Taehyun shouted, gripping the little one by the back to make sure he wouldn’t fall, his voice signaling to Chan that his brother had stopped shorthand.

“What the heck are you two doing?” You watched Chan turn around and wrap himself around Taehyun's other leg, his arms just barely reaching his brother's shoulders. The twins laughed maniacally, then gazed up at Taehyun.

“We was racing, Mom!” Chan said, sucking down deep breaths.

“We were racing,” Taehyun corrected.

Sunoo’s smile was so wide it almost hid the tired in his eyes. The only one out of four to not have a car nap. “We raced to Uncle Taehyun! I won!”

Joy planted a hand over heart. “How sweet,” she said, giving you a look.

Chan leapt away from his uncle and crossed his arms over his tucked in button down. Dark brows lowered furiously, your five year old scolded his copy. “We was not, Sunoo!” A little performer, Chan stomped a foot. “You said the hallway!”

“We were not, Chan,” Taehyun corrected him again. He crouched down and wrapped an arm around Sunoo, then motioned for Chan to join him in his other one. “Besides, it doesn't matter who won, right?” Sunoo opened his mouth to object, but Taehyun moved right along. “It’s Christmas, and Santa comes tonight.” The boy's eyes shot open wide, and you and Joy laughed quietly.

“He’s so good with them,” Joy said to you under her breath.

“We can’t be mad at each other when Santa’s coming, can we?!” Taehyun asked, and both boys shook their heads. “Right,” he grinned, the sight making your stomach flip. “Now, I say we go upstairs and look for something to do while we wait for Rosie and Minho to come back and play. Sounds good?”

“Good!” Sunoo and Chan shouted.

“Yanno, it’s uncanny,” Joy said as she took a step backward toward the kitchen. You both watched Taehyun take a twin with each hand and start for the stairs on the opposite end of the house. “They share no relation, but those boys have his damn eyes.” Shooting you a smile like she didn’t just send your stomach plummeting for the floor, she turned around for the kitchen and shouted, “Soobin, I want my grandson! Give him up!”

Arms slung around Soobin’s shoulders where he sat at the kitchen table, you rested your chin on the top of his head, watching Joy rock Wonwoo in her arms. The chiffon fabric that hung from her arms brushed over his face occasionally, making him giggle, and in return, making everyone else giggle. Still swaddled in his teddy bear onesie, Wonwoo stared at his grandmother in awe, his stubby fingers trying to reach for her shiny jewelry.

“I love it when they can’t run away,” Joy cooed, nuzzling her nose on Wonwoo’s. “In a couple months he’ll be on the move, then you won’t be able to do this anymore.”

“Ouch, okay, don’t do that to me,” you said, and Soobin agreed.

“That’s our baby,” Soobin frowned. “Please don’t rush it.”

Joy smiled toward you two, nodding to Mina who was cuddled up on Soobins lap. Her thumb was in her mouth and her eyes were halfway shut. She was completely dead weight, Soobin already tried to move her. She wouldn’t budge.

“Least that one’s still cuddly,” she said. Blowing a raspberry, you glanced down at your daughter. “Your only girl… Consider another.” Eyes boggling out of your head, you and Soobin both, you laughed and held each other tighter. Soobin had his hand wrapped around one of your wrists.

“Four seems like quite enough, Joy,” Soobin said. Joy raised her eyebrows, shrugged, and cooed down at Wonwoo. “We didn’t even know that one was coming!”

Joy’s attention shot up. “Exactly,” she smized. “It could happen again!”

You and Soobin shared a quick look. “Mm,” you hummed. “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t be so silly,” Joy said to the baby, directed at you. “Anything can happen, anything is possible… Right, Wonwoo?” Your son cooed at his grandmother. “That’s right, sweetie pie.”

Watching your mother cradle the baby and talk about having more kids as if it were nothing but a past time nauseated you. Here, in a kitchen that’s been redone oodles of times, in a house that was oodles of dollars you cannot even begin to comprehend, with a woman who had one daughter with a man she was married to for not even a year.

Dating men on and off throughout your childhood before she met Jin, you encountered a lot of strange and unusual people who somehow, conveniently, always had money. They would spoil your mother and buy her things she didn’t need that she’d give to you. Plenty of them offered her marriage, but she refused for whatever good reason she had in her materialistic mind.

It wasn’t that she was a bad mother, she didn’t neglect you, or brush you off, or set you aside… It was more of the fact that she was rarely present, and if she was present, she wasn’t paying attention.

Most of the men she dealt with were way older than her and typically kidless. If they did have kids, they were old enough to be out of the picture without having to be around to see their father mess around with a gold digger single mother. You really don’t know how she did it, maintaining multiple relationships at once without them figuring each other out. But, everything changed when she met Jin. Taehyun’s father.

Neither of you liked to say it was your fault they ended up together, but ultimately it was your fault that they ended up together. An elementary school incident that had both of your parents meeting in front of the teachers desk at the end of a long winter's day.

Taehyun had been pulling on your pigtails, and you didn’t like it very much, so you took it upon yourself to push him to the floor. When he fell he knocked over one of the toy bins, and stuffed animals poured out on the floor everywhere, and Taehyun saw an opportunity. He picked one up and threw it at you. Thus beginning a stuffy fight with every first grader in the class.

It took two years for them to start dating, it wasn’t official until you were in third grade and you hadn’t spoken to Taehyun in a while because you had girl friends at that point, and boys had cooties, and besides, Taehyun would always be the boy who used to pull your hair.

Joy and Jin kept a lot of things separate for a while, they didn’t let you or Taehyun see them together, interact, or just simply know if they were going out together. It was some well kept secret, one that was hidden out of sight for about a year and half, until the summer of sixth grade when they decided to buy a house and move everybody in together. Taehyun wasn’t happy. At first, neither of you were. You adjusted a lot faster, loving the big, brand new room where you’d have complete interior design control, and long halls, stretchy walls, and echoey ceilings. A touch of Joy's materialism may have rubbed off on you at some point.

The boy who now lived across the hall from you struggled for almost a year. Joy had found her perfect match, because Jin had no idea. Taehyun would spend too much time in his room blasting loud music, and shortly after living together you found out that he knew how to sneak in and out of his bedroom window, shimmying down a tree that hugged the back edge of the house. Eventually you would learn how to do that, too. And it was painful. But, it was entirely too much fun. You figured out quickly how to get friends into your rooms from that tree.

Joy was half right when she told you she didn’t neglect you, but that didn’t mean she was winning Mother Of The Year. When she held your kids and cuddled them, and kissed their noses, and gave them treats, her intentions were genuine. It healed some part of you deep down inside, while it simultaneously crushed your heart into a trillion pieces. They were getting a side of her you didn’t get.

The moment you found out you were pregnant in the upstairs bathroom of this house, not even knowing it was twins, you vowed to be the mother to them you never had. You would give your kids a beautiful life, one where they’d never have to question whether or not their parents loved them. 

That’s also part of the reason why you married Soobin. He was a good man, he always has been, and he’s proven that he’s an even better father. Soobin became your peace amongst the chaos, your rock. At home, when it’s just the six of you, you’re calm, level headed, and able to think clearly thanks to your husband's guidance that took years for you to adapt to. When you’re here, at home, back in a life you were hardwired to always live, things got a little blurry.

“Do I hear Jin?” Joy glanced to the arched doorway of the kitchen, narrowing her eyes like it would help her hear better. On the opposite side of the house, away from the garage, one would think it’d be impossible to hear the doors open, but like the footsteps around the house, you were conditioned and your ears were trained to hear that sound from a mile away.

“Yeah, he’s back,” you said. Soobin laced his brows together, looking up at you. He didn’t have ears in this house like you. “I’ll go help him.”

Your husband started to stand up, gracefully sliding your daughter into your arms. “She’s about to knock out, I’ll go help him.” Wrapping your arms around Mina, the two year old buried herself in your chest, her arms clinging to the fabric of your sweater. “Baby girl needs her mom,” Soobin whispered, his lips perking up into a small smile. “I’ll have the boys come down too.”

“He’s so good with them, isn’t he, Soobin?” Joy spoke up. Your husband turned to flash your mother a grin. “Taehyun? So good with kids.” “Somebody’s got to be the fun guy, right?” Soobin half laughed, then looked at you with his lips completely flat.

“I talked to him,” you said under your breath, and Soobins eyes narrowed. “Before he took the boys upstairs, we spoke.” Peeking behind him finding Joy invested in Wonwoo, Soobin faced you completely and kissed your cheek.

“It’s going to be okay,” he mumbled, though it sounded more like a question.

Nodding fast, you smiled. “It’s gonna be okay.”

With a gentle squeeze to your shoulder, Soobin left the kitchen, leaving you with your mother and your babies. Taking the seat your husband was just in, you adjusted Mina so she was comfy, and kissed the top of her head. Her forehead was warm and her cheeks were rosy.

“Mom, you have any Tylenol…” Your voice faded as you looked up, finding her staring at you with a studious look. She was focused, eyes pointed at you with an intent you couldn’t seem to read. “What now?”

Joy shook her head, dangly earrings bouncing below her ears. “Just thinking.”

“Uh oh,” you said, and she scoffed. “I’m kidding,” you dipped your chin to apologize, “What’re you thinking about?”

Joy teetered her head side to side, glancing about her thirty thousand dollar kitchen. “I dunno, I’m just so happy to have you and Taehyun here, and your families.”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” you started to frown, and a nervousness settled into your chest, much like how it would when you were a kid and your mother put on her serious face. It was just you and her in the kitchen, there wasn’t a stray Taehyun around to save you.

“No, I am, truly,” she said. “When you both said you’d be here I couldn’t wait to have you both under one roof again, for an entire weekend. You’re both adults, you both are so busy, we haven’t gotten to be a family in a long, long time.” Joy copied your frown, averting her gaze to the table in front of her, then to your baby in her arms. “If I think about it for too long… I wonder if we’ve ever… been a family.”

“Mom,” you sang. She looked up to you and shrugged. “We’ve been a family for such a long time, you know that right? Taehyun and I were twelve when we moved here, that’s… that’s like, holy shit, that’s like twenty years.”

“Twenty years of what?” Joy asked, purely genuine. Her eyes begged yours for help. The nervousness in your chest spread to your stomach, filling your entire being with unease.

“What are you getting at, Joy?” you almost snapped. 

Your mother’s bottom lip crinkled. “You didn’t know he was divorced, you haven’t spoken in two years, what kind of mother have I been? A mother should know this about her kids.”

“Technically he’s not yours,” you joked, hoping she would laugh. She did not.

“He has been for ten years through the law.”

“Yeah, but even then, we were, what? Twenty-two when you and Jin officially got married?”

Joy pressed her lips together, firm. “What do you have against us being a family?” Her voice was quiet, incredibly hushed that not even the baby’s stirred, but her tone was packed full of venom. Eyes going wide, you sat back in the chair and took a shallow breath. For a minute she stared at you. Then, she shook her head and looked down at Wonwoo who dozed off. “Why didn’t you two speak for so long?”

Rolling your eyes you held Mina closer and sighed. You’ve relived the fight you and Taehyun had at his daughter's tenth birthday party so many times, most times with Soobin when it became unbearable to stay in your head. Neither one of your parents cared, until now it seemed, but that’s how it went. Selective parenting, like she was playing make believe.

“I told him…” You weren’t sure how to begin. It might be a whole lot better if you just ripped off the bandaid. “I told him to divorce her.”

Joy's expression went unchanged. “Why would you… How could you even say those words?”

“Mom, do you remember how he used to be? Sure, he looks fantastic now, but two, three years ago? He was miserable!” Your volume had raised, Mina shifted on your lap.

“They were a family.” “She was using him for his money, Mom, come on,” you spat back, feeling your veins fill with fire. “You and this preconceived idea of family. We could all see what she was doing to him, I’m shocked she didn’t force five more fuckin’ kids out of him.”

“He loves those kids.”

Your eyes were ready to roll out of your head, the amount of times they’ve spun already. “Of course he does, he’s a great father. He could have a billion of them and he’d love them all the same. That doesn’t mean he was happy with Sana, though.” Joy’s glare had softened at some point. “I was the only one who cared enough to speak up, to help him realize, wake him up! And it made him hate me.”

Joy nodded, pursing her lips. “Is that the only reason?”

“Yes, Joy, it is,” you said, keeping your eyes locked on hers. Not letting her see through the half lie you forced past your lips.

“Okay,” she said. “But, you guys talked it out.”

“Somewhat.”

A small nod was all she could give you before two bodies strolled into the kitchen, all carrying shopping bags.

“We’re back!” An enthusiastic, young, happy voice filled the air. Turning to the commotion, you gave the young boy who looked back at you a huge smile. Dark hair and round brown eyes, Minho was the spitting image of his father. His smile was a bit like his mothers, smaller and poutier, but the rest of him was straight Taehyun.

Dressing like him too, the eight year old wore black ripped jeans and an oversized grey hoodie with a band you used to know on the front. Converse high tops were laced on his feet and a black beanie covered his head. He looked at you from beneath his bangs that almost covered his eyes. He and Taehyun both needed haircuts.

“Hi, Minho,” you said softly.

The boy gave you a small wave. “Hi. Is that Mina?” He pointed to the baby on your lap, and you frowned.

“It is,” you said. “She’s not feeling good.”

“Don’t let her near me,” a shrill, higher pitched voice said from behind the kitchen island. Shifting your eyes over to the twelve year old in wedged chelsea boots, you flashed her your best smile.

“Don’t worry, Rosie,” you breathed. “It’s just a little cold.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she sneered, walking over to Joy, letting you get a glimpse of what she was wearing for the day. You wanted to gasp in disbelief. “Mom’s taking me to New York City when we leave here, I cannot get sick.”

The twelve year old wore an emerald green silk dress that wrapped around her neck and covered her left arm, leaving the right one exposed to the winter air. The dress stopped above her knees. On her legs she wore shimmering black stockings that went into her, you guessed it right, three inch high black boots that lived at her ankle. Silver bracelets jingled on her right wrist, and diamonds were in her ears. She flashed them to you whenever she swung her shoulder length black hair back and forth.

Rosie leaned against Joy, who wrapped her arm around her back, and looked down at Wonwoo. “Who’s baby?”

Joy laughed, but you wanted to scream.

“Your aunt’s, silly,” Joy said to her. “They had another baby, her and Soobin.”

Rosie was unimpressed. “Do you guys ever stop doing it?” She looked at you with her nose turned up. You could’ve choked on air at her words. If Soobin were in the room he’d be throwing a fit. Joy, no surprise, laughed at her granddaughter.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” Minho asked, stepping closer to you curiously. He went from watching Mina, to watching you, to looking for Wonwoo. Giving him your full attention, turning away from the Sana clone at the other end of the table, you smiled.

“A boy, his name is Wonwoo,” you said. Minho shared your smile and nodded, shoving his hands into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Weird name,” Rosie muttered. “Where’s my dad?”

“Upstairs with Chan and Sunoo, your Uncle Soobin just went looking for them,” Joy said. “Why don’t you go find them and tell them we’re starting dinner.” Rosie groaned, tipping her head backward, and strutted off, boots clacking on the floor with every step.

“I don’t wanna cook. Mom doesn’t make me cook,” her voice faded away as she entered the hall.

Shooting your mother a look she didn’t share with you, you said, “She’s… something.”

“She’s adjusting.” Joy’s whisper was a tad harsh, nicking your skin with a bite.

“Did Mina have to take medicine?” Minho asked, the sweet boy thankfully taking your attention. “My dad makes me drink this gross stuff when I have a cold.” The boy climbed into the chair next to you and watched his sleeping cousin.

“She didn’t yet, I wasn’t sure she’d need any, but now I’m thinking that she does. What gross stuff does he make you drink?” Crinkling your nose, you made him giggle.

“It’s orange, and it says it tastes like honey, but I don’t think it does,” Minho made a face and shook his head. “He calls it-”

“Bee Juice,” you said.

“Yeah!” Minho’s face lit up. “How did you know that?”

“We used to drink that when we were sick,” you said, your smile growing as you watched him settle in to listen to your story. “This one time, we were around Rosies’ age, I was really sick, and I refused to take any kind of medicine to help me feel better. Your dad tried to help me, and he was making all these funny jokes about it. There’s bees on the bottle right?” Minho nodded. “He called it Bee Juice, and for some reason that made me take it, and it made it taste good.”

“That’s funny,” Minho said. “Mina needs Bee Juice. I know my dad has some, he brought it with him.”

Your smile faltered. “He did?”

“Yeah, he says he keeps it just in case. Do you want me to tell him Mina needs it?”

“No, Minho, that’s okay,” you said. “I can ask him later.”

“Ask him now,” Joy said, gesturing to the doorway.

The kitchen filled with shouts, laughter and life. Taehyun barreled through the doorway with Sunoo on his back and three shopping bags in his hands. Chan hurried beside him, holding a quarter gallon of milk in his hands.

“We’ve got it,” Sunoo announced to the room, acquiring a round of laughter. “No one worry.”

Soobin trailed behind him, chatting with Jin who had Rosie attached to his side. Both adults had bags in their hands as well, lifting them onto the island Taehyun sat Sunoo on. Deep in conversation, probably something about work, Jin still made a move to hug you tight as best as he could without disturbing Mina, then went back to Soobin, helping him unload some of the plastic bags.

Rosie wandered to the table with her nose now in a cell phone that had a clear hot pink case with a polaroid photo shoved in the back of some celebrity she probably loved. Her glossed lips were pulled into a frown as she tapped away at the screen furiously.

After sliding the milk onto the counter carefully, Chan came to your side and peeked over your arm to check on his sister. “She is asleep?”

“She is,” you said softly. “Were you worried about her?”

Chan nodded. “She will be okay for Santa, right?”

“Santa!?” Rosie roared from her seat.

You shut her down quickly with a glare, not caring if Sana heard about it, then turned to your son. “She’ll be okay, love, I promise.”

“Okay, mom,” Chan said.

“Did you see Minho? Did you say hi?”

Chan looked to his right and smiled something small, feeling shy beside an unfamiliar face. The last time they saw each other Minho was six, and the twins were three. Minho probably remembered them, but your boys were just becoming aware of their own arms at the time, you weren’t sure they’d remember.

“Are you Chan or Sunoo?” Minho asked, looking between the twin in front of him and the twin crawling on top of the counter in front of his own father.

Chan almost gasped and put his hands on his hips. A smirk found your lips. Drama queen incoming. “I am Chan,” the five year old said loud and clear. “That is Sunoo,” he pointed to his brother. “You can tell us a part, my favorite color is blue, and Sunoo’s favorite color is red.”

Minho laughed, looking to you for a second. “You guys look exactly alike.”

“We are twins!” Chan exclaimed, tossing his arms out to the side. “This is my sister Mina, and that is my brother Wonwoo, he is new.”

“That’s my sister, Rose,” Minho nodded to his sister who didn’t bother to look up. “We call her Rosie.”

“Rosie,” Chan whispered as if he was mentally logging her name.

“She’s mean,” Minho admitted, and Chan gasped. You held yours back, waiting for him to say more.

“Why is she mean?” Chan’s eyebrows dropped low.

Minho shrugged. “She just is. Don’t talk to her.”

Leaning toward the two boys, you whispered, “I second that. Don’t talk to her.” Chan smiled, and Minho laughed, seeming surprised. Winking at him, he tried to give one back, the two of you solidifying some sort of alliance in this moment, though your aversion stemmed from your resentment for Sana.

“Minnie!” Taehyun shouted, rounding the kitchen counters to hurry over to his son. Throwing his arms around the boy's shoulders, he squeezed him tight and shook his side to side, pressing kisses to his cheek. His boy laughed, trying to shy away from him, but it was clear that he loved it. “Were you good for your grandpa?”

“Yeah,” Minho said, looking up at Taehyun.

“‘Course you were,” he grinned, then glanced to his daughter. “Rosie?”

“Hm?” She didn’t take her eyes off her phone screen. Taehyun didn’t lose his smile. He didn’t have to for you to see the disappointment within him.

“Were you good for Grandpa Jin?” he asked her.

Rosie glared at her father, holding eye contact for a few seconds. She didn’t say a word, and she didn’t need to. When she focused back down on her phone, Minho, still in Taehyun’s arms, looked at you.

“See? Mean,” he said.

Taehyun clicked his tongue. “Don’t talk about your sister like that. One day she could be all you have.” Your cheeks flushed as he glanced to you. Pressing a kiss to his son's head, he stood up and attended to your son calling his name from the kitchen counter.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” His silvery hair bounced as he rushed. Gathering Sunoo in his arms he twirled once and set him on the ground. Your five year olds giggle sounded through the kitchen, standing out amongst the other chatter. 

Joy had left her seat, and Wonwoo was in Soobin’s arms now, still snoozing. This ambiance was the same as the one from home, that little boy could sleep through it all. Your husband rocked the baby while he bounced his knees, still deep in conversation with Jin. Those two have gotten along since the very first day Soobin showed up at the front door.

Putting away groceries, Joy had acquired Taehyun’s help, who had recruited Sunoo. The little one puttered around and did his absolute best to follow directions. Chan was asking Minho questions, ones you couldn’t make out over the noise, and Rosie was unbothered, tapping away at her phone.

On your lap Mina moved, her rosy cheeks looking up to find you. A soft, “Mama,” escaped her, and you both pouted.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” you whispered, kissing her head gently. “We brought you here when you don’t feel well, that’s so unfair.” Across the kitchen you caught Soobin’s eye, your husband leaning against the counter. When you met his gaze he gave you a sympathetic smile. Pushing your chair back, you let Chan know where you were going as he turned to look at you, and laughed as he climbed into the vacant chair at lightning speed. Minho grabbed the bottom of it and pulled it closer to him, the two chatting away.

“Those two were fast friends,” Soobin said when you reached his side, nodding at your son and his cousin. Jin joined Joy, Taehyun and Sunoo in the unloading of the groceries and the prep for dinner. Looking back at the kids, Minho had his phone out now and was showing Chan something that had him giggling. “Should I go see what they’re looking at?”

“No,” you said a little too fast for Soobin’s liking. Flashing him a soft gaze, you smiled. “They both tell us everything, you know that. Besides, Chan’s a rule follower. I guarantee you he’ll have parental locks on both those kids’ phones by the end of this weekend.”

Soobin chuckled, shaking his head. “Our kids aren’t getting phones till they're thirty.”

“Agreed,” you said. “I find it a little crazy Minho has one at eight.”

Soobin hummed, then said, “I mean it makes sense.”

“How?” you scoffed.

“Their parents are divorced,” he nearly mumbled, shooting you a look.

You squeezed your eyes shut for a second. “Right. Joy was just blaming me for ruining their lives, how could I forget.”

Though your sarcasm was evident, Soobin’s eyes went wild. “What are you talking about?”

“Rosie’s attitude, toward everyone apparently,” you began, scanning the kitchen. “I’m sure somethings going on with Minho, Taehyun may not be as well as I thought he was, and it’s all my fault, all of it. I told her what I said to him.”

Something of a groan came from Soobins chest. “None of it is your fault, don’t let her do that to you.” His hardened, protective glare was coming out. It made you smile. “He made his choice, he did that to his family. And as for Rosie?” He widened his eyes. “Full blame is on Sana. I feel like she’s here.”

“Hang on! I left it upstairs, gimme a minute, I’ll be right back,” Taehyuns voice echoed to his family as he rushed by you and Soobin into the hall. 

Watching him fly by, you turned to Soobin and said, “Minho told me Taehyun’s got cough medicine.”

“Oh?” Soobin raised a brow.

“Mhm,” you gritted your teeth and widened your eyes. “I’m gonna go see if Mina can take it, and try to find out why he has it.”

Soobin took a breath, appearing like he wanted to tell you not to do it. “For Mina.”

“Yes, for Mina,” you repeated. Your husband tucked his bottom lip between his teeth and nodded slowly. “Soobin,” your tone was flat.

“I’ll have a drink ready for you when you come back, what do you want?” he asked, expertly switching the subject. 

A small smile popped onto your lips, one Soobin returned. “Just a glass of water, please.”

“Of course,” he nodded.

Down the hall and up the stairs you used to run up and down as a teenager, you stared at the stretch of a corridor that had two doors on either side, two bedrooms, and a pushed back bathroom to your right on the other side of the railing. Many, many, many feet across from you was the other staircase that wound down to the first floor near the kitchen. They opened up to the living room where a fireplace and the giant TV lived, right by a little hallway that took you to a sliding glass door and spacious backyard.

The floor was wooden, like the stairs. A deep, chestnut color that matched every door in this place. There wasn’t a single window in the hall, but there was a long one in the bathroom next to the shower, and both bedrooms had three. Your bedroom was to the left. Taehyuns was to the right. Outside of your door sat most of your bags from downstairs, all of them brought up for you. Taking your time toward them in the quiet air, you let your gaze fawn over every mark on the wall, every scuff, every memory that was crammed into every inch of this second floor. It was a lot cleaner now that no one occupied this space. 

Jin and Joy’s bedroom was on the first floor, they rarely had a reason to come up here.

The door to the bathroom was cracked open, the tile on the floor lit up by the sun peeking through the window curtain, illuminating the shadows of a past you seemed to be longing for.

Adjusting Mina on your front, you cradled her head and sighed. This little one was a reminder that your life had turned for the better, that the past was in the past, and that it was something you needed to leave behind, though here in this quiet hall it seemed impossible. You used to laugh until your stomach hurt, the sleepless nights up here were endless. Sneaking your friends in through Taehyun’s window, hiding bottles of drinks you shouldn’t have underneath your bed so your parents wouldn’t find them, getting so stupidly under the influence that led to hookups, and more hookups.

You were young, you were stupid, you were having fun. You weren’t knee deep in diapers, playing peek-a-boo, or worried about bills. Life was exciting, and you were as light as a feather, letting life take you where it wanted to, which most times was through the door Taehyun stepped out of now. Startling each other, you gasped, then let out a soft laugh. He had a phone in his hand and a small smile on his face.

“I didn’t even hear you come up here,” he said, taking a step toward you.

“Guess I still know how to be sneaky,” you smirked. He was enamored by it for all of two seconds, then his smile dropped as he cleared his throat. “Wait, no, I didn’t mean-“

“I know,” he nodded, then attempted another smile. It was quiet for a moment before he said, “Strange up here now.”

“Definitely,” you sighed. Taehyun peeked at his phone that vibrated twice, then looked back up at you.

“I, uh, brought up your stuff,” he gestured to your bags, “You have a lot of shit.” You both laughed.

“I have four kids,” you raised your eyebrows. “My shit has a lot of shit.”

Taehyun flashed his grin. You ignored the cartwheel in your stomach. “Congratulations, by the way,” he said. “He’s beautiful. Wonwoo.”

“Thank you,” you smiled, proud. “He was a perfect little surprise.”

“Joy told me,” he said, nodding his head. 

Your eyes narrowed. “When?”

“This past summer,” his volume dropped. “We celebrated Rosie’s birthday here.”

Your heart sunk to your knees. Shaking your head, you held back a sigh. “We were here this summer, right before Wonwoo was born, I knew nothing about it.”

Taehyun shrugged. “Yeah, well…”

“You have to go past me to come here,” you said, adjusting Mina on your front once more. “Jin or Joy didn’t even tell us?!”

“I told them not to,” he admitted.

Sucking in a sharp breath, you straighten out your back and tighten your jaw.

“Are you really surprised?” Taehyun asked. “We hadn’t seen each other in forever.” He took two more steps toward you, shoving his phone in his back pocket. “The last time we spoke, you were yelling in my face.”

“I distinctly remember you yelling in my face,” you said just above a whisper, taking a step toward him. The anger you used to feel when this topic came up bubbled to the surface, simmering beneath your skin. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“You always want to talk to me,” he said. The two of you had a foot of space between you now, and you could tell you shared the rage you were feeling inside. “It took me a while to realize that you don’t know this, but when people break up they don’t do this.”

Jaw clenched, eyes as wide as the moon, you shook your head. “Do what.”

Taehyun tipped his head back and huffed a laugh, looking elsewhere for a second. “This. Talk to each other, stay involved, unless…”

“Unless what?” your voice trembled, a mere whisper.

Darting his tongue out between his lips, he swallowed hard, and muttered, “Unless they still love each other.”

“That bullshit doesn’t apply here,” you said quickly, and quietly. “This is different, we are different.”

Taehyun lowered his chin. “We are fucked up.”

Taking a long, deep breath, you took a step away from him and spun in a slow circle, collecting your thoughts and your composure.  “Friends, we said we can be friends.” Facing him, his eyes were solemn.

“Yeah, and be honest with me now that shock of seeing each other is gone,” he said. “You really think we can do that?”

A piece of you needed to make it work. Standing up here in this hallway now with him, coming to the full realization that he used to be the only stable thing in your life, you needed to make it work. He was your best friend, your other half, your partner in crime. Home, he was home.

“I said it downstairs, we can work for it,” you said. “I want you in my life, Taehyun. I need you in my life. We’re… family. I want my kids to know you, I want our kids to grow up together. Life feels right when we’re in a good place, when there isn’t so much space between us.”

“And what happens when that space gets too small?” Taehyun was a rock, eyes locked on yours as you spoke.

“It won’t,” you exhaled heavily, letting your knees give a bit. “We can-”

“It will,” Taehyun cut you off, closing the space between you completely. “It always does. It happened six years ago, it will happen again.” His tone was rough, but it didn’t correlate with the way he was gazing down at you. “Maybe you can pretend that we can try to be friends. But… I got a divorce ‘cause a girl I love helped me realize I was killing myself. And she was the only one who cared. For twenty years… you’re the only one who cared. You still are, and it hurts like hell.”

“Taehyun…”

“I told you I didn’t wanna go here,” he snickered, shaking his head. “Stupid of me to think that we could avoid it.” He stepped away from you, heading towards the staircase behind you. The loss of his warmth in front of you was disappointing. Turning around, cradling your daughter, you stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Bee Juice,” you said. He peered over his shoulder with one hand on the railing.

“What?”

“Bee Juice,” you nodded. “Mina’s sick, I didn’t bring anything with me. Do you think Joy has something?” Taehyuns eyes drew up and down your body, ending on the little one latched to your front.

“Um, I dunno,” he said. “I might? Minho was sick a little while ago when he was with Sana, lemme see if I brought anything with me.” When he walked by you he didn’t bother to look at you. Walking straight into his old bedroom, he left the door ajar. Unsure whether or not it was an invitation to follow him, you took a few timid steps into the doorway and felt every joint in your body tighten at the sight of his walls.

Posters, polaroid pictures and flags covered the dark grey paint, the artwork spilling onto the ceiling as well. His king sized bed was shoved into the far left corner, with what looked like a hundred pillows tossed onto the top. The comforter was still black, and fluffy. Your fingers can feel the softness without having to touch it.

A nightstand that once was messy and littered with life, was clean and housed a stack of three books he’d read religiously throughout the year, every year, and a lamp without a shade. There was a drawer on it that was all banged up, and you wondered if it was still full of things it shouldn’t be full of. Plenty of late nights were spent rummaging through the drawer in the dark, the light of the moon guiding you both through your bad decisions.

The dressers on the opposite wall were the same, and the walk in closet still had mirrors for doors. It was as if the years had been preserved, and this was a time capsule of beautiful mistakes you were sentenced for life to remember.

Taehyun rummaged through a suitcase at the end of his bed. He side eyed you as you walked in the door. You didn’t dare take a step closer to him or offer him help, because low and behold, he found what he was looking for, and more. As he pulled the orange bottle of Dayquil out of his bag, a small, round black bottle, one that photographers used for film, rolled out onto the floor and rattled loud. You both looked at it, then you looked at him before he grew the balls to look up too. 

“Taehyun.”

“I don’t take them,” he muttered, looking up with only his eyes. “It’s been years, I swear. Even this,” he held up the bottle of cough medicine, “Nothing.”

Bee Juice was two words you weren’t expecting to hear this weekend. They were two words you hadn’t heard in a long, long time. In fact, the last time you even said them was probably in here in his room, with two other friends who’d join in on figuring out how much of the shit you can drink before you make yourselves sick. It was the type of high you’d never want to experience ever again. Just the thought of it turned your stomach. Taehyun was the only one to stick with it out of the four of you, the rest of you turned to other things, other drugs, or simply drinking, but he’d put that garbage in anything and everything.

Knowing he had the bottle on him made you nervous. Throughout his marriage you knew he wasn’t completely sober, he’d never grown out of that part of his life, he’d use it to cope. With how his marriage began, he was a child having a child, he became incredibly dependent on both bottles that came out of his bag.

“Why do you have it all with you?” you asked softly, hoping he’d talk it out.

Picking the bottle of pills off the floor he tossed them back into his suitcase and rubbed his forehead, his nervous eyes glancing to you a couple of times. “I don’t… I can’t explain it.”

“Try,” you said, taking a step toward him.

“I guess I just… I feel better, knowing it’s here, yanno?” Raking a hand through his hair exposing his forehead, he shrugged. “I don’t take any of it, but it’s here.” He faced you. “I’ve been sober for over a year, since I decided to leave her. I haven’t taken anything, I haven’t had a drink, I haven’t smoked anything.”

“I’m sober too,” you nodded, and watched as relief flooded his being. “It would be… six years.” Taehyun furrowed his brow. “But, it’s two, almost three.” 

After a gulp Taehyun asked, “Don’t tell me… After we…”

“Yup,” you popped the ‘p’ and shot him a sarcastic smile. “It was just a… bottle, maybe.” Taehyun shook his head. “And, yanno, the more I think about it, it should really be nine years, but…”

“Six years ago we were getting fucked up at Beomgyu’s,” he said. One of the old friends you shared. He was at Rosie’s tenth birthday two years ago, but you hadn’t seen him since. The other friend was Yeonjun. He’s been off the grid since you were twenty-one. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

He shrugged again. “All of that was my fault.”

Scoffing, you walked further into his bedroom. “Taehyun, it was my choice to do it. You didn’t put the drugs in me.”

“Sometimes I did.”

“Yeah,” you sighed. “‘Cause I told you to.” Approaching his side slowly, you took the bottle from him and retreated a couple steps. “I’m gonna believe you, but only because you look good, Tae.”

“Thanks, Baby,” he whispered with a smirk.

“If Soobin hears you say that he’ll lose his mind,” you warned.

Throwing his hands out to the side, Taehyun audibly expressed his frustration. “That’s been your name since we were fifteen!”

“Yeah, when we started sleeping in the same bed,” you widened your eyes. Holding up the bottle, you thanked him and sulked into the hall, pausing to process… all of that.

You could hear him zipping up the suitcase, putting it back where he’d found it. Walking across the hall, wanting to avoid him when he left his bedroom, you open your door and quickly shut it behind you, propping yourself up against the wood with a breath. Bare, sage green walls glared at you from all angles. In the center of the room underneath one of the three windows was your bed, also king sized, with four different knitted blankets thrown on top joined by matching pillows. The mattress wasn’t nearly as crowded as Taehyun’s.

Two redwood nightstands were on either side of the bed, both empty. The two dressers on the opposite wall were empty as well, except for the picture frames sitting on top. Three photos. One of you, Taehyun, Yeonjun and Beomgyu at a park across town at some ungodly hour of the morning. The second was you and Taehyun, seventeen years old, with your cheeks squeezed together and your eyes crossed with your lips squished all silly. The third was you and your mother when you were just five years old, the same age as your boys. They may have learned to copy Soobins pout, but those boys were all you, and this photo was proof.

Your room was eerie compared to Taehyun’s, his for some reason had life, while yours was completely still and quiet. Laying Mina down on your bed where you used to sleep, you kiss her cheek and kneel down on the floor beside her, putting the Dayquil on the nightstand. Your two year old lifted her head and whined, holding out her arms for you.

“I’m gonna help you, Meens,” you whispered, unscrewing the top of the bottle. The smell smacked you in the face, almost making you gag. Gripping the bottle with one hand, you went to pour a little bit into the lid, but froze as the alarms went off in your brain. “What the hell,” you sighed, turning the bottle around to read it. “I can’t give you this. What am I doing?” 

Mina found her thumb, shoving it in her mouth, her eyes fluttering shut.

Bringing the bottle to your nose, your eyes watered, and a chill ran down your spine. For a brief second you’re reminded of what it was like… How it used to be. How you’d walk by your parents totally fried, and they’d have no idea. The euphoria was so intense some nights all you could do was lay on Taehyun’s floor with your head in his lap while he and your friends listened to music you could barely make out.

You can feel his fingers running through your hair as your eyes shut, body vibrating at a frequency unknown to most, leaving you with nothing to do then hold onto him for some sort of stability. If you started to come down, when the rest of them were ready for more, you’d let Taehyun hold beneath your chin, coercing your lips apart to give you more to drink, sometimes from between his own lips.

Enchanted by the scent, lost in the memories, you didn’t even hear the bedroom door creak open.

“Babe?” Soobins voice bounced off the judgey walls. Jumping a mile, you whipped yourself around and fell onto your bottom on the floor. With half a smile on his face, you found your husband standing in the doorway holding up a box of children's Tylenol in his hand.

Catching a glimpse of the Dayquil, he took a breath and shut the door behind him, joining you at your side on the floor, tucking his long legs under him. Capping the bottle, you immediately handed it to him.

“Did you give her any of this?” he asked, making sure you were keeping your eyes on him. His tone wasn’t derogatory, but it was strict.

“No, I was just reading the label,” you said. “She can’t have it.”

Soobins nod was slow, and careful. “You know she can’t have this,” he said. “I realized what you had said after you walked away, that’s why I searched for this.” He gave the box a shake. “Jin found it in the back of their medicine cabinet.”

“Good,” you said, taking the Tylenol from him, getting the box open, taking out the bottle and the syringe it came with. “Little Miss needs it.”

Soobin glanced from the bottle in his hand, then to you. “Did you, uh… You didn’t take any of this did you?” His voice was soft, not the slightest bit accusatory.

“No.” Taking out the appropriate amount of medicine for Mina, you avoided Soobins eyes and tended to your daughter. Maneuvering the little ones thumb out of her mouth, and the syringe into it, she screwed her face up and tried to cry. “Oh, it’s gross, I know.”

Soobin put his elbows on the bed and grabbed Mina’s feet, playing with them to distract her. “She’s going to sleep for forever,” he said, then smiled as his daughter noted his presence in the room. “Hi, sweetie, you’re doing so good.” Calm in seconds, Mina focused on her father and swallowed the medicine, throwing her thumb back in her mouth as soon as she was finished. 

“See?” you sneered. “A brat for me, an angel for you.” Thrusting the bottle back in the box, you accidentally tossed it onto Soobins lap. “Our kids hate me.”

“First of all,” Soobin eyed you, laying the box on the bed after he picked it up reluctantly. “She’s sick. She’s going to be a brat, she doesn’t know how to act. Second of all, our kids don’t hate you.” Studying you, you could tell he couldn’t place whether or not your behavior was purely satirical. 

“They don’t listen to me,” you whispered. “They listen to you. I’m there to give them what they need, but they look up to you. You can handle them no matter what decibel they’re at. I can’t.”

After a glance to Mina who had dozed off, Soobin reached for one of your hands. “Where is this coming from?” 

A shrug of your shoulders wasn’t enough to appease him.

“Talk to me.” His voice dropped a couple octaves. Another shrug.

“I just…” Vaguely gesturing around your room, you weren’t sure how to put it into words. How were you supposed to tell your husband that the ghosts of your past plastered in these walls haunted you to your very core?

What were you supposed to tell him? That a piece of you was still yearning to live the life you thought you were supposed to live? That you loved the boy across the hall, but you were both destined to live confined to the chains your mother loved to call family. That if nine years ago, Taehyun hadn’t dropped a lit match on top of your relationship doused in kerosene, everything would be perfect.

“Listen,” Soobin started softly, as if he read your inner turmoil on your forehead. “I know this is hard. I know it’s a lot. You’re doing a great job, being here, dealing with them all. You and Taehyun, you’re speaking, that’s what we wanted.”

“Soob, we’ve said so much,” you whispered, feeling your eyes well up with tears. “And I feel like it hasn’t been enough.”

“Sweetie, I don’t know if it’ll ever be enough.” Dragging his thumb over the back of your hand, Soobin bit his lip. “You guys have years, upon years, and a history so deep I don’t think you and I will ever share.”

“Don’t say that,” you cried, sniffling, crawling into his arms. Sitting in his lap, he wrapped his arms around your middle and placed his chin on your head. “I’m sorry, Soobin.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, still somehow level headed as ever. “I knew exactly what I was getting into when I asked that sleepless, hungover girl out on a date. Walking home with Beomgyu? From…”

“Oh god,” you groaned. “His brother's house.” 

“Mm,” Soobin hummed, the memory a happy one for him, clearly. “You were beautiful. I always thought you were. Smudged mascara and all.” He got you to laugh, and for him that was all he needed. “I knew who you were, I knew what you did, I knew who you did, even though everyone else thought it was just Beomgyu.”

You picked your head up, eyebrows as low as they could be. “That is not when you knew.”

Soobin wiped a finger under one of your eyes, fixing the smudged mascara he apparently loved so much. “That is when I knew,” he nodded, letting a finger drag over your lips. “You get this… look in your eye when you see him. Still do.”

“I love you.” His smile grew from your whisper. 

“I know,” he crooned. “I love you, too. So much. And so do our kids.” Pausing to nibble his lip like he was, he bobbed his head and whispered, “Work through what you’ve got to work through this weekend, but don’t make me look like an idiot.”

“Again,” you added, sensing he wanted to tack the word on to the end of his lament. 

Six years ago, amidst what you called your gap year with Soobin, when the two of you took a break to cool off, to see if this was what you both wanted for yourselves. Soobin wanted to get married. You didn’t feel quite ready yet. Soobin knew where your head was stuck, so he unofficially set you free to sort out your thoughts.

It wasn’t a break up, the two of you didn’t part ways completely, but part of you wishes you had so you could’ve avoided the heartbreak surrounding Soobin when you told him what you ran back to, and where you had been. That winter was fuzzy, one you couldn’t piece together if it weren’t for Soobin’s ingenious memory. A few months later you were engaged, and pregnant, and married a month or so after that. You understood Soobin’s heart and his love for you and your family, but deciding to marry you was one thing he did that you couldn’t understand why.

“I wasn’t even going that far,” Soobin smirked. “But, thanks for letting me know I don’t have to worry about that.”

“You don’t,” you said. “I just want us in a good, decent place where we won’t want to rip each other's heads off. We get under each other's skin too easily.”

Soobin took a deep breath and turned his attention to his sleeping daughter. Her hand had slipped out of her mouth and was laying on her belly, her lips parted with steady breaths.

“K-O,” he joked, kissing your forehead. “Shall we go make sure Wreck It Ralph and Fix It Felix are okay downstairs?” 

A smile pricked your lips. “You talkin’ ‘bout our boys, or Joy and Jin?”

Dinner was ready by six. Taehyun’s kids set the table while your twins followed them around carrying the dishes for them, carefully. Joy had no issue handing your five year olds two stacks of her finest, pure white ceramic dishes with the silverware thrown on top.

Once you and Soobin rejoined the chaos, you found Taehyun had beaten you to the kitchen. While the family hustled around the tile, cooking, putting dishes together, pouring drinks, he didn’t spare you glance. He was attentive to his children and his nephews, getting his hands on Wonwoo once to pass him to Jin so Joy could assist Rosie with her cranberry juice in a wine glass. You and Soobin met eyes and held in a laugh. When Sunoo asked if he could have a fancy glass as well, Soobin placed the boy's metallic blue tumbler full of milk in his hands and told him to find his seat at the table.

A long stretch of pine by the windows on the back end of the kitchen, the table was decorated beautifully already, but with the added pizazz of the dishes, candles and steaming food, you had to admit that Joy outdid herself for another year in a row. The warmth from the oven radiated around the room, wrapping your family in a cozy haze, keeping you snug by the frosted glass of the wide paneled windows. The snow hadn’t let up yet, and the kids were giddy.

Jin took his place at the head of the table, Joy beside him and Rosie across from her. Minho hopped into the seat next to his sister, leaving a seat available for you where Sunoo refused to sit. Chan quickly swiped it from you, wanting to spend more time with his cousin, which meant you got to sit on the end, across from Taehyun.

Soobin found himself next to Joy, Sunoo wanting to sit between his father and his uncle. The grown men couldn’t refuse his offer. Noticing who you were across from, Soobin shot you a soft smile and a mere nod of his head. Truthfully, after four kids the two of you didn’t get to sit next to each other anymore anywhere. The highchair at the other end of the table next to you could attest to that. Mina, feeling a bit more up for food now that she’d taken the medicine, was already reaching for the steamed buttery carrots that sat in front of her.

“Good job everybody,” Joy beamed. “Eat, please, eat.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice!” Minho was smug, diving into one of the bowls nearby. Laughter rolled through the room, and everyone followed suit, filling their plates. It didn’t take long for ample chatter to fill the air, mostly the kids asking questions about Christmas and talking about school or the snow. 

“But, I asked for a Playstation,” Minho said between bites, glancing at Chan. “Do you know what that is?” Your big eyed boy watched him in awe, shaking his head. “I’ll show you. I have almost every version, at least of the new ones. Some of them are so old.”

“You don’t have every version, Minnie,” Taehyun chuckled, sitting back in his chair, folding his arms across his broad chest. At the other end of the table Rosie was chatting away with her grandparents, Soobin listening in without presenting his judgment on his face.

“Yes I do, Dad,” Minho’s eyebrows shot into the sky. “Heeseung found me a PS One on eBay! He bought it for me weeks ago, it’s so cool.” Plopping a small scoop of sweet potatoes onto Mina’s plate, you glance at Taehyun who rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face. “Well, I had no idea.” Chan asked Minho about the Playstation, the two boys were excited and curious. Taehyun drug his glare over toward you and blew a raspberry on his lips. It made Mina giggle.

“Heeseung?” Raising your brow, you smiled when he leaned over to your girl and blew another one, making her laugh even harder.

Taehyun sat back, satisfied his audience was entertained. “Yeah, Heeseung,” he said under his breath. Arms still folded, he shrugged. “Sana’s boyfriend.”

If you had anything in your mouth you would’ve choked, and nearly did on air. “When did that happen?” Dropping your tone to a whisper, you tried your best to keep this conversation between the two of you, unsure of how aware Joy and Jin were of the situation.

“Well, let’s see,” his entire demeanor dropped, a glint of something heavy flashing in his eyes. “They worked together for a few years-” “Sana worked?”

Taehyun smirked. “Focus please.”

“Sorry,” you breathed a laugh, tending to your daughter who whined for her drink.

“They were working together, they both did that buying shit, yanno?” Taehyun started to talk with his hands, waving one around to piece the story together. You both ignored your boys as they informed him he used a bad word. “He was one of her closest work friends, he would be at our house from time to time to hang out, he came to all the kids birthday parties-”

“Oh my god, the stone faced babe with the nose,” you gasped, placing your chin in your hand.

Taehyun waited for you to finish. You felt your cheeks flush after realizing you had cut him off again.

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” he smiled. “Yes, him.”

“I thought he was gay.” You both spoke at once, breaking into crass laughter that triggered the table to look your way.

Joy, chewing away behind a promising grin, with bright eyes said, “See? I knew you two would be fine.”

Jin, focused on his plate, frowned. “Were we not fine?” Looking down to the other end of the table, you and Taehyun sat up straight like you’d been caught. Taehyun’s father waited for an answer, shifting his gaze between his wife and his family. “What’d I miss?”

Soobin lowered his chin and leaned into Sunoo, whispering something to him about his dinner. The five year old pouted, waving away the meat on his plate. Pressing a kiss to his son's head, Soobin took it off his plate and put it on his own.

“You didn’t miss anything,” Taehyun brushed the matter off, picking up his fork to shovel food into his mouth, hoping that’d get you two out of the hot seat. Your mother snickered, using the cloth napkin that was at every setting to wipe the corners of her mouth.

“You two are funny,” she said. Soobins eyes flickered up toward you, then quickly shot back to his son. Rosie was leaning forward, her elbows on the table, enthralled with what was about to ensue. A drama lover, just like her mother. “My love,” Joy said, turning to her husband. “They weren’t speaking for two years. I had just found out today, when the Choi’s arrived.”

“The Choi’s,” you scoffed, shaking your head. Leave it to her to address your family like you were all foreign visitors. “Mom, we can let it go. It’s not a big deal.”

“The hell it isn’t!?” Joy dropped her fork.

“Bad word!” Chan and Sunoo looked to Soobin for help, but all he could do was shake his head and quiet them down.

“Joy, really,” Taehyun added weight to his words.

“Joy this, Mom that,” she appeared ready to leap out of her chair. “Look at us! All of us here. A family.” 

You snuck a glance at Taehyun who had his eyes glued to Joy. He seemed like he was sinking backward into his chair, hoping it would crumble or somehow swallow him whole, anything to get him out of this room. 

“This is how it should be. Always.” Joy whipped her head toward the two of you. “You’re both so far away, I’m grateful we were able to spend this weekend together, aren’t you?” Nods of everyone's heads was enough to encourage her to go on. “I miss this, I miss you both being here, running around upstairs. Hearing you laugh, hearing you talk to each other… It feels like it was.”

Jin reached for his wife’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “We feel whole having you all here.” He made it a point to look at each of you. With another glance to Taehyun you watched him roll his eyes.

“To find out about you not talking, not seeing each other… That hurt,” Joy wore the apparent pain on her face. It made you want to laugh. “You were best friends. Every waking moment was spent together, I can’t imagine anything that would break that up.”

Swapping a glance now, Taehyun finally looking at you, you shared a deep breath.

“What would they do together?” Rosie asked, chiming in to take the attention. Joy and Jin laughed.

“Oh, they’d do everything, Rosie,” Jin smiled. “They went everywhere together, they had the same friends. You know the cabinet full of movies we keep underneath the television?” The twelve year old nodded. “It’s theirs, they collected those together and would watch them all the time.”

“We would wake up some mornings and they’d be fast asleep on the couches together,” Joy smiled at Jin, then turned to her granddaughter. “They would spend weekends in the living room with their friends if they were too bored to stay upstairs.”

Jin laughed to himself, shooting a finger in the air. “I can remember getting up for work one morning, and there were four of them knocked out at the kitchen table. Back when we had the booth seat that wrapped around the circular table?”

“Yes!” Joy clapped her hands together, like the memory was near and dear to heart, like it didn’t have you cringing and wishing they’d both shut up. “I still have that picture! They had to be around nineteen,” Joy looked at Rosie, “Our house was clearly the cool house.”

Taehyun forced air through his lips and shook his head, and you’d agree if you weren’t paralyzed in place. Thankfully your boys were occupied between Soobin and Minho, not letting any of these memories sink in.

Our house was clearly the cool house.

You wanted to scream back in her face that her house was the house with little to no supervision, and that was why you and your friends would come here to get shitfaced again and again. Her cool house taught you how to mix drinks before you were of legal age, pummeling you headfirst into blurry years you can hardly put together. Their cool house and their happy memories of you two asleep in the living room after a night of movies you’d hardly watch, the two of them completely unaware that you and Taehyun would be-

“Oh!” Joy exclaimed, knocking you from your spiraling thoughts. Her earrings swung vigorously at her ears as she bounced around, excited.

“Oh!” Mina copied her. The room was buzzing with energy, Taehyun’s kids wound up from listening to these stories, and your children messing with the food on their plates. Soobin and Taehyun were stiff, as were you, pointed gazes beckoning Joy to shut the fuck up.

“Videos!” Joy cheered, slamming her hands onto the wood edge of the table. She looked up and down the table. “We have videos,” she said, pointing to you and Taehyun, “Of you two!” Turning to Jin she gripped his wrist and shook it around. “We’ll do that thing on the TV, connect your phone to it.” Taehyun shot you a look, brows slightly concerned. Joy’s body whirled back around. “How fun to show the kids! Oh, I’ve always wanted to be this kind of family during the holidays.”

Rosie beamed with Joy, smiling wider than you’ve ever seen. She truly was a beautiful little girl underneath her wanna-be old attitude. “They did this on Fuller House at Christmas.”

Joy's hands clapped together once more, her expression falling smug. “Oh my god,” she said, looking straight at you. “We’re gonna be a Full House family.”

Stomach churning, worried about what was in those videos that probably haven’t been looked at… ever, you sat back in your chair as Joy and Rosie fell into a discussion over the difference between Full House and Fuller House. Chan asked Minho about the band on his hoodie, and Soobin listened to Sunoo talk about Fuller House too, the five year old pretending as if he knew what that was.

Watching them all move on, even Taehyun who helped Minho out with the pronunciation of the band he wore, you crossed your arms and gulped. How developed were five year old brains? Were they about to witness footage of you in your early twenties that would permanently alter how they saw their mother? Would there be something within the videos that was supposed to stay hidden, or in the past? What would it do to Soobin, to watch you at your worst, his wife, the mother of his children?

Underneath the table something tapped your ankle. Glancing to Chan, who probably kicked you, you found the boy sitting on his feet, facing his cousin. Something tapped your ankle again, then two feet encased it, pulling it away from you. Shooting a look at Taehyun, he was focused on his son. No one was paying attention, so you took a peek.

It was Taehyun, his legs quickly wrapping around your own, his smile growing as you looked back up at him. His focus was on his son thankfully, he wouldn’t get to watch your eyes bug out of your head.

“They started in the eighties technically,” Taehyun said to the boys, shamelessly rubbing his legs on yours. “Grohl didn’t join until the nineties.”

“Who is Grohl?” Chan asked, eyes narrowed and focused. Taehyun shifted his legs, crossing one over the other, his foot nudging your thigh shamelessly. “Dave Grohl,” he smiled. “He played the drums for Nirvana. He had long hair down to here,” Taehyun gestured at the length below his shoulders, “And he was so cool.” His foot traveled further up your thigh, you fought away the chill that ran down your spine.

“Wait, he was on your wall upstairs,” Chan said.

“He sure is,” Taehyun nodded. “They all are.”

Chan leaned over the table, little elbows holding him up. “Uncle Taehyun, you're so cool, too. Like Grohl.”

Taehyun flashed his grin, looking at you for a few seconds. “Yeah, I am.”

“On those videos we’ll get to see how cool he really was, right Dad?” Minho was smiling, looking from his cousin to his father, who hadn’t stopped looking at you. His gaze shifted to something of slight concern, both of you knowing what the other was thinking.

Taehyun gave his son a slight shrug. “Maybe we will.” He shot Minho a smile, and when the two cousins started to eat and talk amongst one another, the smile fell and the grip he had around your leg loosened.

“I don’t wanna watch ‘em either,” you mumbled. Taehyun shook his head, a miniscule moment only for you to see before he sighed. And it wasn’t brought up again.

“Cell phones are for big kids.”

Chan wasn’t impressed. Tiny fingers pressing into the marble of the kitchen counter, dangling backward on his heels, the five year old whined and whined. Drying the last dish that Soobin handed to you over his shoulder, he shot a look to his son, one that whipped him into shape.

“You can play with Minho’s for now, okay?” Giving him a smile, you placed the dish in a cabinet and tossed the towel onto the counter by the sink. The little one murmured his agreement, hurrying off to follow the other kids' shouts.

Soobin, after folding the towel you threw, slid his arms around your shoulders from behind, pressing a kiss to your neck, one that sent a chill down your spine. Grabbing onto his hands you peered toward him and smirked.

“Let’s skip the movies,” you whispered in the empty kitchen.

Soobin’s grin widened. “Oh, no, I think I want to see this.” With a groan you spun around in his arms, his hands falling to your waist. Cupping his cheeks, you pouted.

“Trust me, you don’t.”

“Darling, I know,” his tone was soft, gentle. “I already know what to expect. After everything, don’t you think if I had a problem I wouldn’t be standing here?”

Averting your gaze to the floor, you shrugged. “I just don’t know what’s gonna be on them, that’s all. I never really remember them having cameras around.”

Soobin took a finger to your chin, tipping it upward for him to kiss the tip of your nose. “It’s okay. Surely if it was anything too bad Jin or Joy wouldn’t show it. Or, they would’ve said something to you by now.”

“Joy’s been acting weirder than usual,” you said, dragging your thumbs along your husband's cheeks. “She’s always inappropriate, and has no filter, but… I dunno. What if watching this stuff makes her realize her daughter was fucked up almost everyday of her life since, like, high school. What if they caught us doing the dr-”

Feet scurrying in the hall stole your attention, both you and Soobin turning to the doorway in record time.

“Who was that?” You breathed. Soobins grip tightened around your waist. Shooting him a look, a wide eyed, worried look, he returned an unknowing one back. “Shit,” you sighed.

“Bad word,” Soobin whispered. For a few seconds neither of you moved, and then it was all too funny, both of you breaking out into giggles that echoed in the empty air. “Let’s go find some seats, if the little’s didn't take them all. I’ll grab the baby, I’ll meet you there.”

Wonwoo, snug in his carseat, had been snoozing on and off throughout dinner. Soobin tucked his arm beneath the handle and hoisted the carrier up, following you into the living room through an archway that was halfway down the hall toward the opposite staircase.

Inside the glorious room with the giant screen, expensive sound system and cozy grey, velvety couches, the boys had all piled up on the loveseat, the twins on either side of Minho. All three of them had kicked off their shoes, the two pairs of dress shoes flung sporadically amongst Minho’s sneakers.  Rosie was in the armchair that matched the other furniture, her legs crossed delicately while she tapped away at her phone screen. 

A large couch lay between the loveseat and the chair, a couch you had spent many nights on. Out of all rooms to redecorate and change again and again, you really had hopes that Joy would’ve chosen this one. The deep bluish-grey of the walls that reflected the furniture had your stomach rolling. While warm and cozy to others, this room made your blood run cold.

A square glass coffee table was in the center of the room. A vase of Christmas flowers spilled out on top of it, and books and magazines circled the sparkling vase. Crystalized, glass coasters were strategically placed over the top, with matching glasses at the bar behind the sitting area. You didn’t even need to look, you could tell exactly where each bottle of liquor lived. It never changed. For twenty years, it’s been the same. You did glance toward it as you walked in the room, and Soobin took note.

Jin and Joy stood by the television, mumbling to one another, trying to figure out how to connect their phones to the screen. The point of Joy's heels dug into the plushness of the rug beneath her feet that extended throughout the room, all the way to the bar. On her tush, staring up at her grandparents working, sat Mina. She was barefoot as well, teetering around in her socks. When she caught wind you had walked into the room she whined and started to crawl toward you.

“No walkin’, huh?” Soobin laughed from behind you as you scooped her up into your arms. “Medicine must be wearing off,” you said, kissing her cheek. Weaving around the furniture you chose to sit on the edge of the couch, letting Soobin plop down beside you, setting Wonwoo on the floor next to his feet. The infant had just opened his eyes, blinking a few times at his father.

“Hey, Soobin,” Jin began, turning around. He didn’t look up from his phone. “Think you can help me figure this out? I thought I knew how…”

“Of course,” your husband smiled, on his feet in an instant. 

Wonwoo’s face scrunched up like it would before he would cry, and sure enough, he started to cry. Mina expressed her shock on her face, looking at you, then her baby brother. “Baby cry,” she said, pointing toward him. Shifting Mina to the side, you sat her down on the couch cushion she was nearly swallowed up by, then reached forward for Wonwoo.

“Get him, Mama,” Mina said quietly. The two year old was always intrigued when it came to the baby. Curious as ever, her attentive eyes studied you as you carefully placed him in your hands and lifted him out of the carseat, kissing his cheek before cradling him in your arms.

“Shut it up,” Rosie groaned from somewhere in the room you didn’t care to acknowledge, but could feel the heat in Soobin’s eyes as he shot her a glare.

Mina leaned over your arms, holding onto your bicep with all of her might, watching you bounce Wonwoo to calm him down. Her pink cheeks and glassy eyes were full of adoration. “Shhh, baby. Shhh.” Wonwoo sucked in a deep breath, quieting down at the sound of his sister's voice.

“Good job, Meens,” you gasped, smiling at her. “Say it again, tell him he’s okay.”

A wail about to escape the infant was stolen by his sister's caring words. “S’okay, baby. Shhh.” As the crying came to an end, Mina gasped and looked to you for approval. Putting one of your arms around her, you tucked her into your side and kissed her head. “Best big sister,” you said.

“Boooring,” Rosie sang. Looking over at her, she was looking back at you. Her phone was on her lap, and her chin was in her hand. For a second she appeared as her mother, sharp eyes, pursed lips and pointed cheekbones. Since she was born it was hard to believe Taehyun had a part in her procreation. For years you had a quiet, delusional, but harmless joke that Sana made Rose herself to trap Taehyun with her. Anything to ease the pain from the night you found out about her. Milliseconds away from opening your mouth, unsure of what to say to the twelve year old you used to blame for ruining your life, her father hustling into the living room took the heat off of you.

“Did I miss it?” Breathless, he glanced about the room. Finding that nothing had even happened yet, he sighed and trudged his way across the carpet.

“Daddy!” Rosie shouted, throwing her arms into the air. Taehyun beamed, a light pouring out of his heart like it was the first time the child had ever said the word. It made you wonder how often she showed him love. This was the first time today you’ve seen her give him any sort of attention.

Taehyun, holding his own arms out, rushed for his daughter and caught her in his arms as she leapt out of the chair and fell into them. She squeezed him tight, pressing her cheek into his chest with her eyes shut.  The smile on his face made your heart flutter. Holding his firstborn, his little girl, the one who stole his heart the second she was born… The only one he’d love more than any other girl who walked into his life. It made you smile, truly. When Taehyun was with his kids, he was happy. And whenever you witnessed moments like this, it healed something broken within yourself.

Sure, that little girl he held and sat down on his lap in the oversized armchair wrecked everything between you two twelve years ago. No, he didn’t care that it wrecked everything you and him once shared. But, he was happy. And you’d do anything, give up anything, to see him happy. Even if it meant watching him walk away after you begged him not go through with fathering the spawn of Satan.

“Here we go!” Jin cheered as the television flashed and the scene of two kitchen remodel’s ago popped up on the screen. The boys' necks snapped to the TV, excitement buzzing off of them as they bounced around to get even more comfortable. Chan had an arm wrapped around Minho’s. “Okay everybody! Thanks to my amazing son-in-law,” Soobin smirked and shook his head as he hurried to sit down beside you, Mina getting squished between your bodies, “We get to see some home movies.” The kids erupted in cheers. Well, the boy's couch did. Rosie just nibbled one of her nails.

“Oh, I am SO ready,” Joy shook her shoulders. “I’ll get the lights, everyone has a seat?” Your mother scrambled for a remote on top of the shelf below the television, clicking it toward the ceiling to shut off the lights built into the top of the room. “If we’re lucky maybe we’ll get to see some of you guys as babies!” She gestured to all the kids as she worked her way through the room to sit on the other side of Soobin, Jin joining her soon after with his phone in hand.

The boys whispered quiet things to one another, and Rosie said something to Taehyun. Soobin gave you a sideways smile, slipping an arm around your back, over your shoulders.

And the clips, shuffled throughout the years, began.

~ august 18th, 2010 ~

Windows open in the house, a refreshing summer breeze flowing through the white curtains that hung to the floor, everything was perfect. Absolutely perfect. The sun had set about an hour ago, leaving everything washed in a deep orange haze that would linger for another twenty minutes.

Dressed in soft checkered high waisted shorts with a white cropped tee on top, one that you stole from Taehyun and cut in half, your bare feet slammed on the wood of the second floor as you darted from your bedroom toward the stairs to the kitchen. Laughter flooded the air, coming out of you, straight from your heart. Gripping the railing, you’re seconds away from leaping down to the dual level landing, but skinny arms wrap around your waist, yanking you backward, lifting you in the air. Screeching, you curl your knees into your chest and accept defeat, throwing your head backward onto his shoulder.

“Lemme go!” Your cackles were meaningless, and he wouldn’t listen anyway. Stumbling backward into one of the walls you’re certain his elbow almost went through, he laughed and put you down on your feet, making sure you didn’t fall over. “Gyu is here!”

“I don-care,” Taehyun breathed, whirling you around in his arms to press you against the wall, caging you in with his hands planted on the drywall. His smile was wide, bright, and blurry. “How dare you leave m’like this.” Glancing down between the two of you, you followed his eyes and almost snorted, throwing your head back again, this time against the wall.

Heart pounding in your chest, skin ablaze with warmth, veins pumping, extremely intoxicated (both of you), you throw your arms around his shoulders and grip his neck, clawing with your nails, gently. Taehyun sucked a harsh breath between his teeth and let his forehead fall onto yours, his smile still evident on his glistening lips as your hands traveled down his body, over his t-shirt, slipping within the waistband of his sweats where he was bare, wearing nothing beneath them.

“Slut,” you muttered within the shared air, making both of you laugh.

“Mm, mhm, hang on,” he mumbled, sliding a hand beneath your shirt, purposely dragging his fingers lightly up your side to tickle you before he grabs a handful of one of your breasts, where you were bare, wearing nothing beneath the fabric. His smile fell into a smirk when he watched you gasp. “Slut,” he whispered, tone incredulously harsh.

“Stop, Gyu’s here,” you said within a deep breath, feeling your knees buckle.

Taehyun’s brows plummeted. “You know he don’t care. Once he takes what we got he’ll be on another planet, won’t even be able to tell if you’re on top or if he’s takin’ you from the back-”

“M-my moms here.” Your hushed tone and blushed cheeks had his ego blooming with utmost power, and you knew it too. 

“Um,” he chuckled. “Never stopped us before, Baby.”

“You two up there?” Joy’s voice carried up the stairs, making the two of you leap a part, taking your hands back to yourselves. “Beomgyu is here!”

Taehyun looked you up and down, licked his lips and shook his head. “We’ll be right down!” 

With a deep breath you glanced down to his sweats, where he was still hard, eager for you. Shooting him a quick wink, he groaned from his chest, letting out a laugh after you whispered, “Slut,” and hurried down the stairs.

Balancing once your feet hit the floor, you reared to the side and almost knocked into a wall full of pictures, but a pair of strong hands caught your shoulders before you went down. Looking up at the boy almost a foot taller than you, his shoulder length, shaggy dark hair made you grin. Skin pale and cheeks rosy, Beomgyu was stunning, and pure boy, from his smile to his lanky, defined build.

“Start without me?” he grumbled, smoothing out your hair. “Where’s the loser?”

“I can hear you!” Taehyun shouted from upstairs, getting a giggle out of you.

Beomgyu shot you a lazy smile and shook his head. “You guys are so stupid.”

“I’m hungry, actu-lly,” you whispered, leaning into him on your tiptoes, throwing your arms around his shoulders to hug him. 

Beomgyu laughed, wrapping an arm around your back, pressing his hand into your bare skin. Turning around so he could guide you into the kitchen, from over your shoulder he spots Joy, at the counter messing with a new iPhone, holding it up toward the two of you.

Standing on the top of Beomgyu’s shoes, letting him waltz you around the kitchen, you hear your mother laugh and tip your head backward, noticing she was filming you and Beomgyu.

“Mommy!” you shouted into the air, laughing like crazy.

“Oh, you guys are so cute,” Joy smiled, laughing with you, making sure the camera was catching everything. “Where’s Taehyun? He finally let you two spend some time alone?”

Scrunching your face up in disgust, you stood up straight to face Beomgyu, finding him making the same exact face. Laughter corrupted you, going completely limp in his arms. 

Footsteps pounded down the stairs, and Taehyun appeared through the archway, his hair pushed back, his skin alive with what looked like a gleam of sweat. Rushing toward you and Beomgyu, Taehyun grabbed a fistful of his friend's hair and yanked his head back, clamping his teeth on the base of his neck, making the boy yelp. Watching Taehyun as he parted from him, the indentation left on his skin turned your stomach, made you want to drag your tongue over the marks.

“Gyu’s mine, Joy,” Taehyun teased, releasing him. He jabbed a finger into your side, laughing as you shrieked, then approached Joy, putting his face up in the camera. “How do I look? Good, probably.” He winked at the camera and laughed, looking up at Joy who giggled behind the phone.

Adjusting your arms around Beomgyu’s shoulders, you hike your legs up his side and wrap them around his waist, going full koala on his front. He let out a gasp and caught you, his hands gripping the underside of your thighs, fingers digging into your skin as you nuzzled your face into his neck.

“You’re gonna get in trouble,” he whispered to you, still laughing, the camera catching none of his words.

“Um!” You half shouted, taking the attention. “What if Gyu is MINE!”

Meeting Taehyun’s eyes you could see the jealousy that immediately pooled within them. You knew he had to keep his cool in front of Joy, and her camera. Normally you wouldn’t be pulling stunts like this, but you were high. You were high and needy for him, you couldn’t let this opportunity go.

“Uh oh, Taehyun, you’ve got competition,” Joy played right along, fueling the intoxicated fire.

“You have three seconds,” Taehyun said, his hardened glare hitting you right where you wanted it to. “One…” Laying your head on Beomgyu’s shoulder, you hummed and smiled, letting your eyes close.

“Two!” 

Beomgyu bounced you in his arms, laughing, trying to get you to move, but you wouldn’t budge.

“What happens on three!” Joy was ecstatic, beaming behind her phone, her eyes darting between all three of you.

“Yeah, what happens on three,” you teased, shooting Taehyun the calmest smile you could possibly conjure.

“Wouldn’t you love to find out,” he gritted his teeth. “Three!”

A scream came out of you as Taehyun darted toward you and Beomgyu, his arms grabbing your waist, pulling you off of your friend. Beomgyu stumbled back, ready to catch you both if you fell over, his laughter bouncing through the air along with your own. Taehyun put you on your feet, spun you around, then crouched down and threw you over his shoulder.

“Tae!” Reaching your arms out to Beomgyu, you kicked your feet and almost kicked him in the face. “Gyu, help me,” you giggled.

Taehyun turned to him and shot him a wicked grin. “Let’s go.” Looking at Joy, and her camera, he winked again. “See ya, Joy.”

“Bye,” Joy smiled. “Good luck, Beomgyu.” The boy gave her his charming smile, and followed you and Taehyun upstairs, out of the sight of the camera, and your mother.

“What happened on three?” Minho inquired, looking out amongst the group as the video ended.

Unbelievable that was the first video to play. You can vaguely recall what had happened before you walked into the kitchen attached to Beomgyu, and you can barely put anything together as to what happened after. 

You have no idea what happened on three. Taehyun had no idea what happened on three, you were sure of it. After he ran up the stairs with you hanging over his shoulder like a helpless ragdoll, you’re pretty sure the three of you drank until you passed out in your bed. Waking up, you can remember having an arm thrown over Beomgyu’s bare waist where he laid on his back with his arms over his head, upside down on the covers. Taehyun was the only one laying properly, fully clothed, his legs tangled with your own.

“How old were you guys?” Rosie asked, smiling at her father.

“Nineteen,” Taehyun said quietly, his focus on the TV.

Joy and Jin were swiping through the phone, too occupied to pay attention to anything anyone was saying.

“How did you pick up my mom like that?” Sunoo asked Taehyun, eyes wide. His uncle gave him a soft smile.

“I’m pretty strong,” he shrugged.

“Uncle Beomgyu was cute,” Rosie giggled, nibbling on one of her fingernails. Taehyun simply laughed and shook his head. The twelve year old turned to look at you, and you stiffened beneath her curious gaze. “You guys were dating?”

“No,” you answered fast. A little too fast. “He was one of my best friends, one of… our best friends.” Taehyun got the courage to look at you, both of you sharing the smallest, most innocent look just as Joy clicked play on the next video.

~ june 3rd, 2012 ~

 The sun beating down on your bare back was anything but comforting. Standing in your backyard with a crystal champagne glass in your hand on the edge of the commotion, you eyed the guests waltzing about in their dress clothes with a grimace.

Atop the balcony of the porch, pink streamers and pink balloons hung down, keeping the place on theme. Pink plates, pink tablecloths, pink cutlery, pink candy, pink napkins, pink, pink, pink… You were sick of it. All the pink.

Women and men, most you didn’t even know, all paraded around with smiles and witty comments of grace for you and your family and the beautiful home that you have.

Oh, it’s just glorious isn’t it?

Yes, thank you my mother knows how to spend that man's money, that’s for certain. 

He hee! 

Ha ha!

It meant nothing. This whole event, it meant nothing. It felt like some sort of glorified apology. 

We’re so sorry my son knocked up your daughter, here, have a disgustingly expensive baby shower, on us!

Downing the rest of your glass, you placed it on the tray of a waiter who came close to you and took two full ones off of it. Knocking back one of them real quick, you returned it to where it came from and decided to nurse the other.

Messing with one of the thin straps of your dress that dug into your shoulder, a floor length floral thing that Joy picked out for you a couple weeks ago, you groaned and cracked your neck, rubbing the muscle with a sigh. Across the party you spot your mother doting on the guest of honor, Sana, wearing a baby pink strapless gown. Her black hair was pinned up in a bun with a pink ribbon tied around it. 

She was glowing, and you hated it.

Her belly was round as ever, almost one month away from popping. It was the only thing on her to change throughout this pregnancy, not that you were keeping track. She kept her slender figure, her smooth skin, her bright eyes, her luxurious hair… It was wretched. Maybe she was just nineteen, and that was it. You couldn’t believe your family, or hers, was allowing any of this to happen.

Jin hovered around her with his camera, making sure he captured every detail about this momentous day, this memorable occasion. His first grandchild, a baby girl that you knew he would love no matter where she came from. He and Joy were either in shock, or they truly were the ditzy idiots they made themselves out to be.

You didn’t think you’d be able to drink enough champagne to make it through.

Pressing your glossed lips to the rim of your glass, you let the drink spill into you, finishing it quick, actively pursuing another. Hurrying into the house, slamming the sliding door shut, the mouth watering smell of food and baked goods hit you, drawing you toward the kitchen. Heels clicking on the floor, you walked as fast as the torture devices could take you until you were kicking them off, picking them up by the strap, letting them dangle between two fingers. Stepping into the doorway of the kitchen, completely new and redone, everything a sparkling shade of blue, you find, like, eleven women standing around talking with their noses in the air. You didn’t know a soul.

Spinning around on your toes, desperate for an escape, you rushed into the living room where some of the guys were hiding out with a couple of random kids. Beelining for the bar in the back of the room, you drop your heels on top of it, push by two guys standing nearby and bring yourself behind it. Grabbing onto the neck of a tequila bottle, you acquire a shot glass from one of the shelves and fill it up to the top. It went down with ease, you were already filling it up for a second when a hand took the bottle from you, letting some of the alcohol spill onto the bartop.

“Alright,” Beomgyu said, holding the tequila hostage, watching you take the second shot. His gaze lingered on your lips, even after you ran your tongue over them. Once you slammed the glass on the counter and audibly expressed your relief with a happy sigh, he narrowed his eyes. “Do you want me to take you somewhere else? You know Jungkook said you could stay at his house while… this happened.”

Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, your lipgloss smearing across the skin, you rolled your eyes. “Your brother doesn’t care that much.”

Beomgyu nodded profusely. “Yes, he does. You know he does.”

“Stupid, it’s stupid,” you muttered, reaching for the bottle he held away from you. “Lemme have it.”

“If you’re gonna get plastered, that’s stupid,” Beomgyu said. “It won’t make him talk to you.”

A guttural laugh escaped you. “You think I want him to talk to me?!”

The boy with long, shaggy hair that framed his face spectacularly softened his eyes. “Let me take you to Jungkook’s, please.” He planted both hands on the bar, leaving the tequila unattended.

Leaning forward, placing your elbows on the counter, you pretended to debate his offer, then snagged the bottle back instead, taking a swig straight from the bottle. Beomgyu sighed, heavily, then circled the bar to stand beside you. He reached up for his own glass and stole the bottle from you, filling both the shot glasses.

“Not gonna let you do it alone,” he said, handing you your little glass. Holding his in the air, you clinked them together and took the shot, smiling with Beomgyu. “Besides… he’s high, anyway.”

Tilting your head side to side, you laughed. “He’s always high.”

Beomgyu refilled the glasses and watched you knock it back. Picking his up, he studied it, then studied you. Big, beautiful brown eyes took you in, swallowed you whole. “I’m sorry,” he said.

You brushed it off with a shrug. “Sorry for what, Gyu.”

He gulped, shaking his head slightly before he took his shot, placing it down with a knock on the bar. “All of this,” he gestured around at all of the pink. Beomgyu never discussed what went on between you and Taehyun. Ever. It was rare. “I just… I’m sorry.”

Taking a deep breath, you wallowed in his sorrow for a moment. “He’s stupid,” you muttered, looking down at the shot glasses, messing with them to keep your hands busy. Feeling a buzz already, you couldn’t stop the words from coming out, or the tears. “Gyu, why did he do this?”

A heavy breath fell from his lips as he lifted a hand to brush away a tear. “I dunno.”

“I mean, she… she came out of nowhere, and then this happens?!” you waved your arms around, Beomgyu nodding along, encouraging you to keep going. “She’s a kid, he’s a kid, we’re… We’re kids. He’s throwing the rest of his life away, doesn’t he know that?! Sana’s a total bitch, what the hell does he see in her anyway!?”

“You got me there,” he said, pouring two more shots, one he took fast.

“I mean, like, do you see it? What’s the appeal? Do you think she’s hot?” Taking your shot you missed the way he totally checked you out.

“He totally downgraded,” he mumbled, pouring two more shots.

“Please,” you snickered, following suit, drinking the alcohol. A hiccup came out of you, one that made Beomgyu laugh. “Sana’s gorgeous and you know it.”

“Yeah, but she’s not you,” he said, perking a brow. You took a step closer to him, laying an arm on his shoulder, hooking it around his neck.

Narrowing your eyes, you smirked. “You just mean he won’t share her.” 

Beomgyu’s eyes flickered to your lips, his tongue darting out between his. “I’m gonna miss this.” 

“Just ‘cause he and I are done doesn’t mean we have to be,” you whispered, and he shook his head.

“You’re his,” he said. “Always have been, always will be. I don’t wanna get Yeonjun’d, I’ll keep my distance.”

Digging your fingers into his shoulder, you took one last long, good look at him. And he did the same to you. The alcohol held your heart together for the moment, but you knew once it wore off you’d be falling head first into the most debilitating heartbreak you’ve ever felt. No one had a clue what was supposed to happen after this day was over. 

“You’re still my friend, Gyu.”

He raised a hand and placed it on top of yours, giving it a decent squeeze. “Always have been, always will be.”

Raising yourself on your tiptoes, you pressed your lips to his cheek and gave him a swift kiss before you stumbled back out to the backyard, making sure to grab the bottle of tequila first. People were still swarming, how long were baby showers supposed to be? Doing your best to stand up straight, you wandered across the patio without being noticed by a soul, and planted yourself in a seat underneath the shade of the balcony.

Twisting the top off of the bottle you took a long swig, falling back against the cushion with a giggle as you swallowed. You watched eagerly as girls who were clearly friends of Sana, dressed in tight dresses and high strappy heels, talked with one another and sipped on their champagne delicately, showing off their accessories and touching up their makeup as they spoke. They took tiny bites of their food and judged others around them with their eyes, you could feel it.

Another drink from the bottle. You were finally at the point where it felt like nothing mattered. Jin was still parading around with his phone, catching footage of people saying kind words to the baby and the mom to be. Overhearing most of it, it made you laugh, acquiring a judgemental glare from one of Sana’s minions. Not one person had a word to say about Taehyun. It was all Sana, Sana, Sana, and baby, baby, baby.

“Stupid,” you mumbled, sinking down on the cushion.

You were so focused on the others you didn’t recognize the body that approached you, snatching the tequila from you, dropping your heels on your lap. Jumping, startled as they hit your thighs, you sprung up and nearly toppled forward. 

“Hey!” you shouted, looking up at the blurry figure. His dark hair and black button down made you laugh, loud. “No fucking way.”

“Shut up,” he muttered. “Pull yourself together.”

Gasping, you pressed a hand to your chest. “Pull myself together? Last I heard you were poppin’ molly at your own baby shower.” Taehyun groaned, crouching down to level with you. “Yanno, Gyu said this wouldn’t make you talk to me, who’s gonna tell him that he was wrong?”

“Tell him yourself,” Taehyun nodded to Beomgyu walking along the edge of the patio, Sana’s group of friends shamelessly checking him out. He pretended not to see them. It was laughable.

“GYU!” you shouted, catching his attention. He already knew, he sent you the smallest smile. Sana’s friends glared at you again. “He doesn’t want any of you, don’t even try,” you waved towards them, turning back to Taehyun who had buried his head in his hand.

“Baby, please,” he whispered.

“Baby?” you scoffed. “Your girlfriend over there is the one with the baby, Tae. Did you already forget? I know it happened so fast, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Stop,” he spoke through his teeth, looking up at you with a vengeance. “Please, stop. Don’t make this worse than it already is.”

Catching you off guard, you slid back down in the chair and furrowed your brows. “What are you talking about?”

Taehyun, tired, intoxicated, wobbly on his feet, shook his head and sighed. “I dunno what I’m doing,” he said under his breath.

Lifting a hand, you poked his nose. “Then… you shouldn’t have done it.”

He shot to his feet, glaring down at you. Your body reacted, reaching up for him.

“No,” you whispered. “Come back.”

Taehyun scanned the backyard. “No,” he said, taking one more look at you before joining Sana and her parents where they were sitting with Jin and Joy.

A tear slipped down your cheek, you think. Taehyun smiled, or pretended to smile, while he spoke to her parents. He looked like he was saying nice things to Sana, probably asking her if she was alright, showering her with attention. Attention that used to be yours. It was attention he was allowed to give her in front of these people. That attention was never allowed to be yours. It wasn’t ever meant for you. It will never belong to you. It will never, ever be yours.

You were definitely crying now, alone on the porch in the corner while your family and the guests enjoyed this beautiful day and this beautiful celebration. There was another life coming into the world, a life that was half of the boy you loved, a life he decided to have with someone else. It felt like death. It all felt like hell, a burning, god awful hell.

“Come on,” Beomgyu said to you. Turning toward him, all you could do was reach your arms up for him to take, pulling you to your feet, letting your shoes topple to the floor. “We’re going to my brothers.”

“But, they-”

He brought you into the house. “He told me to take you to my brothers.” Facing you, he wiped away your tears and frowned. “You’re too pretty to cry, stop it.” The hallway you were in was quiet, secluded. Sucking in a deep breath, you gazed at him and pouted. 

“You can’t drive, you-”

“Jungkook’s outside,” he breathed.

Nodding, you slowly wrapped your arms around his shoulders and held him close, giving him a real hug, heart to heart. “I love you, Gyu,” you mumbled into his neck.

The boy sighed, and held you tighter. “I love you, too.”

“No way, I was in Mom’s belly!” Rosie almost leapt off of Taehyun’s lap. The entire video came from Jin, he documented the entire day, the entire shower, every gorgeous detail that you now were able to appreciate. A hole in your heart remained, but it was so long ago now that the cut didn’t burn as deep.

Joy shared her excitement with Rosie, and Minho chimed in with some questions, asking who different people were that only his father and grandparents were able to answer.

You thanked the good lord, or whoever was up there, that you were barely in any of the shots. You remembered that day very differently than everyone else. Soobin even whispered to you how insufferable the day must’ve been, and that he was glad you weren’t together yet, or else he would’ve had to put up with that shit. And yes, he said shit.

“You were with Uncle Beomgyu again,” Rosie said to you, twisting on her fathers lap completely.

Glancing at Soobin who focused his eyes on the baby in your arms, you took a breath and looked at your niece. “Yeah, I was.”

Rosie’s face screwed up, confused. “I thought you guys didn’t date.”

“We didn’t,” you shook your head, tone going a bit stern.

The girl grilled you with her eyes. “Sure seems like you did.”

The room fell into a quiet chatter while Joy and Jin searched for another video. Your boys were talking to Minho, asking him questions about his mom that was just in the video, and Rosie whispered things to Taehyun you were dying to hear.

Soobin, as if he could feel your blood beginning to boil, leaned over and kissed your cheek. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” you whispered, avoiding his gaze. “Just wasn’t expecting to have to dodge him either.”

Soobin watched you for a few seconds more, then bobbed his head.

Beomgyu hung around Taehyun more than he hung around with you. He showed up to Taehyun’s kids birthdays, not yours. Beomgyu accepted offers to stay at Taehyun’s for long weekends, or to watch sports games, or to go to concerts, or to just simply hang out in his basement. And Beomgyu reciprocated the invites. You never got a single one.

“Think this hurts more than it should,” you whispered, looking at your husband. Soobin, energy doing a complete one eighty, turned to your parents.

“How many more you guys got?” he asked with persistence. “My baby’s need to get to bed. Wonwoo’s on a schedule.”

Joy shoved Soobin by his shoulder and clicked her tongue. “Strict Soobin, come on.” Soobin smiled. He didn’t mind being the bad guy when it came to you. “Let us just watch one more, and I swear we’ll be done. We’re all having so much fun though, aren’t we?” The boys agreed with her, as did Rosie. Taehyun was silent, and so were you.

“One more,” Soobin said.

~ april 1st, 2009 ~

“Ready!?” Taehyun shouted to the crowd around your kitchen counter, standing in the dark, the only light coming from the candles shoved into the cake in front of you. “Here we go!” Thirty people, or more, sang Happy Birthday to you in the most obnoxious way possible, led by Taehyun himself. Friends, family from both sides, neighbors… Everyone was gathered to sing to you, to celebrate you. Though the lights were shaped like stars and the song was distorted in your ears, you were having the time of your life. Taehyun to your left, Beomgyu to your right, and Yeonjun hovering behind you, you had everything you could ever need, it made you want to cry. As the singing came to an end, you squeezed your eyes shut and blew out your candles, basking in the cheers that followed.

“She’s eighteen!” Your boys shouted, holding you in some way, jumping up and down with you in their arms.

The lights flickered on and the cake was whisked away. Your vision was truly tunneling, all you could see were the boys in front of you, congratulating you. Taehyun hugged you first, holding you tight. The one day he could without it being considered weird. Yeonjun was next, slipping his arms around your waist, bending you in half as you laughed and clung to his shoulders. Turning to Beomgyu, you reached for his cheeks and gave them a squeeze, getting a laugh out of him. He grabbed your hands and yanked you toward him, hugging you tight, pressing one of his cheeks to your own.

“Happy Birthday,” he whispered to you. “Taehyun says when the party starts.” Pulling away, you stumbled backward and bit your bottom lip. Beomgyu was smug, but he was subtle. His attention immediately shifted when he watched your cheeks turn pink.

“Hey,” Yeonjun said, grabbing your wrist, pulling you out into the hallway. The pretty boy got you alone, his black hair parted in the center, hanging over his forehead almost brushed against your own. “I have something for you, but I can’t give it to you right now.”

Your eyes focused on his lips. His full, plump, beautiful lips you’d always been dying to kiss, only while under the influence. “Okay,” you whispered, blinking up at him mindlessly.

“It’ll make you feel even better than this,” he smirked, placing a hand on the wall above your shoulder. “I promise.” 

“Really?” you sighed, falling under his charm. Yeonjun grinned, taking his other hand to your cheek, dragging his fingers over your warm skin.

“Really,” he said, his tone turning sultry. “Taehyun got this for you, right?”

Blinking twice, slowly, you nodded even slower. “Yeah,” you breathed. “Took it hours ago… Dunno what it is, Junie.”

Yeonjun’s expression turned serious. “Oh, no, honey, that’s not too safe is it?”

He began to shake his head, and you followed along. “No,” you whispered.

“No,” he lowered his brows. “It’s not. I can tell you exactly what I got you, it’ll-”

“C’mon, Baby,” Taehyun said, abruptly pulling you away from Yeonjun. The boy tumbled back and shot Taehyun a glare. “We’re outta here. Yeonjun you gotta go.”

Taehyun wrapped an arm around your shoulders, keeping you close under his. With Beomgyu close behind, Taehyun had you in a brisk walk, headed for the front door. “Wait, hold on, Tae,” you said, trying to turn back around.

“No, keep walking,” Taehyun muttered.

“Where the fuck are you guys going?” Yeonjun called after you, throwing his arms out to the side. Taehyun turned toward him for only a moment more.

“Somewhere without you,” he narrowed his eyes. “Till you stop being a shady piece of shit.”

Yeonjun placed his hands on his hips, his gaze shifting between Taehyun and Beomgyu. “You two are the ones being shady pieces of shit, like what even is this?” He gestured toward you. “It’s her party and you’re leaving? And I’m not going with?”

“Why’s he not coming with?” you parroted his words, but Beomgyu shut you up with a glare. “Oh, right.”

Yeonjun clapped his hands together and laughed sarcastically. “Shady shit! You guys suck.” He made it to the front door first. “Happy Birthday,” he said to you, reaching in his pocket, tossing a small bag of powder by your feet. Beomgyu was quick in picking it up and pocketing it, making sure no adult had rounded the corner. By the time the three of you looked back at the door, Yeonjun was gone.

“Did he touch you?” Taehyun asked, his eyes burning into yours. A shake of your head didn’t appease him. “Words, Baby.”

“No,” you said, trying to swallow, but your mouth was suddenly really, really dry. “I need water.” Your voice was hushed.

Taehyun cringed. “Ah, shit, right,” he mumbled, then looked up at Beomgyu. “Jungkook wanna make a pitstop on the way to your house?” Both boys started you for the door once again, your feet almost stumbling over the other.

“Am I supposed to feel more… more dizzy?” you laughed. Beomgyu and Taehyun shared a look, laughing with you.

“We gotta catch up,” Taehyun whispered. You could barely see the boys around you as they spoke, you only heard their voices that were as beautiful and as soothing as a lullaby. “I wanna feel what she’s feeling.”

Beomgyu wrapped an arm around you, helping Taehyun get you out the door. “I wanna feel what she’s feeling while feeling her.” 

You managed to swat a hand at his chest. “Gyu,” you sang. The front door shut behind you, and it was just the three of you on the porch. Grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, you pulled him toward you and pressed your lips to his, feeling like you had no control over anything you were doing. He kissed you back, it was a rough, wet mess. You were just slipping your tongue between his lips when a hand grabbed your hair and pulled you back.

Stumbling into Taehyun's chest, you giggled and spun around, throwing your arms around his shoulders, letting your lips meet more gentle than they did with Beomgyu’s. Taehyuns kiss was careful, and sweet, and full of feeling, and, and…

“Who was that lady with the white hair?” Minho called out as the video ended on a scene of family lounging around the living room.

“That’s your Great-Aunt Jennie,” Jin said to the boy, smiling at him. “That was my favorite one,” he glanced at his wife, “Full of people I haven’t seen in ages.” Joy placed a hand to his thigh and gave it a squeeze. Great-Aunt Jennie passed away two years ago.

Mina had climbed onto Soobins lap at some point during that last one, where your brain was trailing off elsewhere. Your family was watching scenes of your family, but you were on the front porch, getting in the car with Beomgyu’s older brother, driving to their house to spend two nights in a row there. The three of you missed two days of school that week, of your senior year.

“I think I’m all videoed out,” you said a bit too loud, standing to your feet, heading out into the hallway without a look back. With Wonwoo in your arms you took it upon yourself to head upstairs and put the baby in the bassinet you brought with you after changing and nursing him.

Keeping your mind clear, blocking out every and any thought you were having, you got changed yourself, throwing on one of Soobin’s t-shirts and a pair of flowing sweatpants. You didn’t bother to brush your teeth or take off your makeup, instead you curled up in your bed and tried to not let the thoughts consume you while you waited for Soobin to come up.

Coming here for the weekend was one thing. You were already thrown into a torturous mess of family and remembering things, you didn’t know you’d be forced to relive so many different memories you had suppressed for a multitude of reasons. Laying here in the dark, you’re beginning to think this weekend was meant to happen this way to show you exactly how far you’ve drifted from this life. That Soobin and your kids was where you were meant to be, happy and dramaless, safe and growing in positivity and a pureness your children were not going to get from this house.

It was nauseating, and would give you a migraine if you thought about it for too long. In just one day, after yearning for what used to be, you’ve realized it wasn’t what it was. It’s not the same as it was. Whatever you were longing for would not feel the same as it did when you were eighteen, nineteen, even twenty-one. You were at an entirely different aspect of life now. A healthy one.

“Darling?” Soobin whispered, the door opening slowly, light flooding in from the hallway. Sitting up, you watched him shut the bedroom door quietly so as to not wake the baby, then he walked to your side, catching you as you fell into him. “Are you alright?”

“Next Christmas we stay for a day,” you whispered. “Then, we leave and spend it with the kids. Just the kids.”

Soobin drug his hand in a circle around your back, letting it slip beneath the shirt you wore. “You know, I’m not going to say no.”

Looking up at him, you tried to give him a smile. “Thank you.”

“For?” Soobin quirked a brow.

“For being you,” you whispered. “For believing in me, and sticking by me, and supporting me, and treating me nicely, and… loving the kids.”

Soobin held back a smile, his eyes going slightly wide. “That’s a lot of thank you’s.”

“I mean every word,” you said. “I love you so much. I think I’m… content… not having heavy ties here.”

Your husband sucked in a breath, like relief had struck him suddenly. “Moving on.”

You finally smiled, nodding. “Moving on.”

“Thank god,” Soobin groaned, pushing you backward against the pillows to smother you with kisses. His lips were halfway down your neck until you pushed him off.

“Where’s the kids?” you asked.

A soft smile graced his lips. “Taehyun offered up his bedroom for all of them. He got Mina’s little crib set up in there, and the boys snuggled up in his bed with Minho.”

“Rosie?” You raised your brows.

Soobin chuckled. “She’ll be in a sleeping bag on the floor next to Mina.”

“No way.”

“Yes way,” he said. “Now, may I continue?”

Glancing at the baby’s bassinet that was set up in the corner furthest from you, you turned back to your husband with a smile and hummed. “Continue,” you giggled.

It seemed impossible to sleep, and no, it wasn’t Christmas excitement keeping you up. Soobin, sound asleep beside you, had done his best to tire you out, to relax you enough that you’d want to shut your eyes and snooze, but it wasn’t enough.

After Christmas you were heading back home to be a family of six, unsure of when you’d be coming back here to visit your family, unsure of when you’d ever see Taehyun again. Everything was still unclear between the two of you, whether or not your relationship was in good standing. Those videos gave you a decent idea of where you were headed with your decision on making up.

Slipping out of the covers carefully so you didn’t startle Soobin, you checked on Wonwoo who was also sound asleep, then tiptoed out to the hallway. It was dark, and quiet, the only light coming from the stairs, where the Christmas throw up was. Pushing your hair back out of your face, you took yourself down there, the stairs creaking beneath you as snuck down. Peeking into the front room with the tree and the lights, you find mountains of gifts waiting for your kids under the branches. Gifts upon gifts you didn’t even approve of were patiently awaiting their sticky little fingers to tear them open. Two little green bikes were standing by the windows. Your twins were going to lose their minds.

The rest of the house was silent, everyone was clearly asleep. Sneaking down the hallway into the kitchen, a gasp escapes you when you find Taehyun sitting at the kitchen table in the dark with a glass of water sitting in front of him.

“Jesus, Tae,” you whispered.

“Sorry,” he breathed a laugh. “Didn’t wanna cause any commotion.”

Taking a breath to calm your beating heart, you walk over and take a seat next to him, keeping your focus on the table in front of you. “No, you’re good, I just wasn’t expecting anyone to be up.”

Taehyun bobbed his head and twisted his glass on the wood. “Sober sleep is hard.”

“Yeah,” you sighed. “You wake up feeling a lot better though.”

He laughed. “True.”

Silence fell between you, a suffocating silence, like there was so much more to say yet not enough time to say it. Either that or neither of you had the balls to do so.

“Everything that I’ve said today,” Taehyun began, gulping, “I’m sorry.” He looked to you with only his eyes. You did the same. “It wasn’t appropriate of me to let you hear any of it.”

Shifting your body, you turned to face him, pulling your legs up on the chair. “I needed it.”

He looked at you with wild eyes. “Really?” Copying your stance, he twisted to give you his full attention. 

“Yeah,” you shrugged. “We can’t live with all that shit trapped inside of us. That’s what’s made these last twelve years really, really hard. We stopped talking.”

Taehyun rolled his eyes. “I stopped talking.”

“Why did you?” Your voice was a whisper, one that made him recoil with a slight shake of his head. “And don’t say it’s ‘cause of Sana, because I know for a fact that it’s not.”

He stared down at nothing for a few seconds, before a gentle groan came out of him and he gave you a half smile. “Beomgyu.” The name, after those videos, made your stomach turn. In the not fun way.

“What about him?” Your voice was small.

“I don’t even think I need to say it.”

“Taehyun, please.”

He exhaled heavily and squeezed his eyes shut. “You guys… liked each other.”

A breath corrupted your lungs, a lump lodging in your throat as you tore your eyes away from him, looking about the kitchen. Taehyun smiled something of sorrow.

“I was a toy for him to play with,” you mumbled, and he detested immediately.

“That is a lie and you know it,” he said. Meeting his eyes, you felt a tear slip out of one of yours. “You saw those videos, I couldn’t watch anything except for how he looked at you. Shit, Baby, I was there. I could see, I could feel how he felt. And I know how it feels to be loved by you. You loved him too.”

Wiping your hands over your face, letting them sit there for a moment, you sniffled. “Oh, it’s so fucked, Tae.”

“I know,” he whispered. “It’s so fucked.” He went quiet, glancing around the room, watching the snowfall outside. “I don’t blame it for our problems, though. I don’t blame him. He’s still my best friend, he’s still…” You snapped your eyes toward him, begging him to not say the words. A sigh and a head shake was answer enough that he’d keep his mouth shut.

“I had Rosie on purpose,” he decided to tread carefully. “We know this, I… yelled it at you.”

“Sorry for trying to talk you out of it.” Your hushed voice surprised him. “You love her, so much. Both of them. It hurts me that I tried to take that away from you.”

“You didn’t know,” he said, the look in his eye accepting your apology. “We didn’t know we’d be here. We didn’t know Sana would stick with me. No one knew if I’d make it this far, have them with me, have any sort of custody… It’s okay.” He nodded. “You wanted to protect me.”

“That day, at her shower,” you rested your chin on one of your knees, “You wanted to protect me. I remember you telling Gyu to take me to his brothers.”

Taehyun let the memory find him. “I did. He wanted to bring you there anyway, without me telling him to. We both knew you wouldn’t go if I didn’t say something.”

“Where were going with this before?” you asked. “Talking about Rose.”

Taehyun attempted a smile. “I… had her on purpose. Which sounds pretty shitty to say out loud.” The two of you shared a quiet laugh. “But, I got with Sana for more of a reason than to just piss you off.”

“You did piss me off pretty bad,” you giggled, and he rolled his eyes.

“I’m good at that,” he popped his brows once. “I just…” The energy shifted. “There was no life with me,” he whispered, looking at you. “There was no life… with you. You and I, we could never have this.” He gestured around the kitchen.

Raising your brows you sighed. “You and I couldn’t ever afford this.” It made him laugh, thankfully. His hands found his lap, folding together between the sweats he was wearing to bed.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” you said, tone as soft as his.

“I had to do something, something that would force us to stop what we were doing, ‘cause there was little to nothing that would stop us.” He huffed a laugh watching you force back a smile. “As much as it hurt… It hurt so bad. I did it for you.”

“That’s ass backwards,” you muttered. 

“Totally,” he agreed. “I saw you and Gyu. Saw how you were. I thought, if I did this, you two would get together. Eventually.”

Trying to swallow the lump in your throat away, it seemed it was there to stay. Another tear fell. “And how did that plan work out?”

Your whisper just about punched him in the gut. “I didn’t think any of this would happen.”

Wiping your own tears, you took in a shaky deep breath. “You know, you could’ve just said the words, Taehyun. That’s all I ever wanted, was for you to talk to me. A majority of my life was one big secret, I didn’t need anymore from you.”

He took you in, accepting defeat. “I’m sorry. You deserved better.”

A sarcastic laugh came out amongst the tears. “And you thought that was Gyu?” you whispered, sniffling, and laughing. “He literally told me he wouldn’t do anything because I was yours. Always was, always will be.” Taehyun averted his gaze. “If you weren’t involved, I barely heard from him. To this day, I don’t hear from him.” But, you knew he knew that.

“Do you know how lucky I am to have the man that I do upstairs?” you continued on, Taehyuns eyes eventually finding yours again. “Do you know how unbelievable it is that he’s even with me? I already fucked up with him once, with undeniable, living proof that we’ll have for the rest of our lives, and he married me, Taehyun.” You took a second to wipe your tears. “Where was Beomgyu?”

Getting up out of his chair, he paused you for a moment. “Hang on,” he muttered, leaving the kitchen, then reappearing after a minute or two with envelopes in his hands. “I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to give you these.” He sat beside you and placed the long white letter envelopes on the table. “Was worried you wouldn’t come this weekend.”

Jaw tight, you reached for the envelopes and kept a strong face as you picked them up. Your tears betrayed you, as you read the names on the front of the four letters they fell steadily. Two were dated from the boy's fourth birthday, their names written neatly on the front, as well as the other two, from their fifth birthday this year. 

This was how it went. An envelope for each boy with a birthday wish and a hefty amount of cash. Usually these were slipped to you at one of Taehyun’s kids parties, discreetly, like it was hush money and not birthday gifts for your children. Words were never spoken, nor exchanged. The letters were given to you, by Taehyun, and you handed them off to your husband without a second thought.

“Have you ever read them?” he asked, eyeing the envelopes you held.

“No,” you breathed, and he nodded. “Soobin has, though. I might, eventually.”

Nodding again, Taehyun sat quietly, letting you have a minute before he said, “He’s a good man.”

Flickering your eyes up to him you smiled. “He’s a damn good man, Tae.” Holding up the letters, you scoffed. “After this? Taking care of and accepting those boys like they’re his own? I swear… I don’t deserve him.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. “You deserve him and so much more.”

Six years ago, you and Soobin’s gap year, that sounded so superficial at this point, you ran back to the two boys, both Taehyun and Beomgyu. A taste of your old life, one that Soobin was detoxing you from. It scared you, to think you were losing a side of yourself, the only side of yourself you had ever known. You weren’t able to stay at Taehyun’s, and you sure as hell didn’t want to stay back at home, so you settled on living at Beomgyu’s for some time. 

Having his own place by then, not too far from Taehyun’s, the three of you lived like you were twenty again, and it was exhilarating, it was freedom, it was familiar. Thinking about it now you cannot believe that you allowed half of it to happen, Taehyun was a married man with two children, but most of that year, those collective months, was a blurred mess. Neither of the boys tried to talk you out of anything with Soobin, in fact, they barely spoke his name. You led… everything.

At this point it seemed that Beomgyu had somewhat gotten over his, ‘you’re always his’, thing, because most mornings you weren’t waking up in the spare room, you were waking up beside him, with tangled limbs and hungover, naked bodies.

You didn’t know you were pregnant until you made up with Soobin. After months of living in hazy chaos, you had an epiphany, much like the one you had a few hours ago after watching the home movies. It wasn’t a life you wanted. It clearly wasn’t a life Beomgyu wanted either.

Living back here at home, days away from moving in with Soobin, into the first tiny home you shared together, you found out you were expecting. Positively gutted, knowing there was no way in hell that Soobin had fathered the child, you were at a loss. You sat on the tiled floor of the bathroom upstairs, alone, for an hour. There was no Taehyun to rush in to save you, to hold you in his arms and tell you everything was going to be okay. You were completely alone, and you had no other choice but to tell Soobin.

Sure, you could’ve taken the other route and gotten yourself out of the shitty predicament, but something in your heart was begging you to tell him. So, you did. And, you hurt him. He didn’t ignore you, he didn’t push you away, he didn’t postpone your move in, he was there for you, and cared for you.

It was one thing you still couldn’t wrap your mind around. How one day he woke up, and decided it was the day to propose, at your bedside in the early morning when you just peeked open your eyes. He spoke words that, still to this day, had the power to bring you to tears. He accepted you, he promised to love and to care for you. He accepted your boys, before either of you even knew there were two. For six years he’s kept his promise. For six years he’s been the best damn father any child could ask for.

“Taehyun, I know we both said things we still mean,” you spoke carefully, keeping his gaze on yours. “You said that you love me, and I… I love you, too.”

He cringed to himself. “I hope you know I don’t mean it in the, I want you to divorce him, way.”

You nearly leapt out of your seat, reaching forward for his hands. “God, no, Tae,” you sighed. “Listen, part of me came here wondering what was left. Of us.” He listened intently, soaking up every word. “You probably thought I was gonna try to… get you back, or something.” He nodded solemnly, a confession he didn’t want to reveal. “And, maybe part of me wanted to find out, but that stuff isn’t important anymore. We’re two entirely different people now. We’re both sober, we’re both on track to live happy, fulfilling lives… We cannot go backward.”

Watching you, wondering if you had anything else to add, he asked, “Will you ever tell them? The boys?”

Your heart sank. “Soobin and I discussed it. When they’re old enough, we’ll tell them. We’ll give them the letters.” Your eyes burned, the tears coming on fast. “Though I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for them to find out that he didn’t want them. I don’t wanna break their hearts. I don’t want them to have to go through the same pain I did, the realization that your father rejected you, acting like you don’t exist.” Taehyun squeezed your hands. You swore a tear slid down his cheek. “How do I do that to them?”

Taking a deep breath, Taehyun gestured to the letters you threw down on the table. “Read them,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with something you couldn’t place. “Before you tell the boys… read them.”

After a sniffle you nodded, wiping your tears on your shoulder. “I said it earlier, I want my kids to know you.” He drug his fingers over your skin delicately. “Especially the boys, you’re…” a shaky breath shot through you, “You’re the closest thing they have to him.”

It fell quiet once again, the brisk wind and snow outside the only thing to be heard, calming you both. Taehyun gave your hands one last squeeze before he let them go and tucked his back into his lap. “Yanno, Joy was saying some funny stuff.”

“That the boys look like you,” you said quickly, both of you laughing together.

“Yeah,” Taehyun screwed his face up. “It made me think. It made me think some things I shouldn’t think-“

“Tae,” you said gently. “They’re his. Gyu’s their daddy. I promise you.”

He looked at his lap. “Right,” he whispered, lips firmly pressed together. 

Ignoring everything that changed about him in this moment, you kept things moving, picking up the letters off the table. “Thank you for these,” you smiled. “And, thank you for being here. For talking to me.”

He flashed you that grin that made your heart skip a beat. “What are friends for, Baby?”

Glittering wrapping paper littered the floor, more being thrown by the minute. Every child was beaming, showing off each gift they unwrapped to whoever's eye they could catch. The twins, absolutely losing their minds over their bikes, Mina, asking Jin to open up her new baby doll, Minho, reading the back of a vinyl record, and Rosie, counting how many new lip glosses she’s opened. The room was happy, full of life.

Soobin sat on a couch with Wonwoo in his arms, the infant holding onto a teething ring for dear life, chewing on it while he watched his family go crazy over their gifts. He shot you a smile each time one of your kids opened something new, a screech sounding off when they recognized it was something they’d been asking for.

“You boys want Daddy and Uncle Taehyun to teach you how to ride them?” you asked, holding up your phone to take photos of the twins trying to sit on their bikes. Taehyun, on the floor next to the tree, handing out gifts whenever a child asked for another, looked up at your husband, eyes full of hope.

“Oh my god, yes!” Chan shouted, jumping up and down on his feet covered by the fuzzy footed pajamas he wore. Sunoo, matching his brother, threw his arms in the air and cheered. Eyeing Soobin carefully, you sighed as you watched him smile and nod at Taehyun.

“Can we go now?” Sunoo pouted, eyes going wide. Taehyun snickered and looked over at you.

“Sun, look outside,” you pointed to the window. All the kids followed, glancing out to the snow that was probably going to have you stuck here for another night. “Don’t think you’ll be able to ride a bike out there.” Soobin shot you a look, his smile sarcastic, already dreading staying here one more time.

The boys moved onto other gifts, taking their time, scoping the scene, helping their sister and asking Minho what he got. Taehyun moved to the couch next to Soobin, a foot of space separating them, the three men falling into conversation with one another, Jin seeming happy to have them both there with him. Observing the organized chaos, you didn’t notice your mother approaching you, sliding her arm around your back where you stood in the archway.

“Merry Christmas, my love,” she smiled, speaking quietly to you. Giving her a quick smile, you focused back on your husband, who was handing Wonwoo over to Taehyun.

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” you whispered. Taehyun gazed down at your son in awe, the first time he’s actually held him this weekend. The first time he was getting to know one of your kids before they learned how to walk. He didn’t get to do this with Mina. He barely got to do it with the twins. Wonwoo smiled up at him after he whispered something to the baby, and when he did, he looked up at you and the look on his face warmed your heart.

“He’s so…” Joy began.

“Good with the kids,” you finished, giving her a look. “I know, Mom.”

She forced a smile onto her lips, looking back at you like she was in pain. Her eyebrows were flipped and her eyes were glistening. “I’m sorry if those videos were a lot,” she said, and you scoffed, brushing it off. “No, I mean it. It’s clear you’re moved on from then, I think I was just so caught up in the past. It’s lonely here without you.”

Sighing, you turned to face her. “Mom, the videos-”

“I don’t need you to try to reassure me,” she actually smiled, rubbing your forearm. “They were a lot for me, too. Seeing that day,” her eyes widened for a second, her voice dropping back down to a whisper, one that sent a chill down your spine, “I was reminded how grateful I am that it wasn’t you.”

“Mom,” you gasped, clamping your jaw shut. Her eyes flickered toward Taehyun quickly, then back to yours without much else to say.

“I hold onto hope that one day you’ll open up to me,” she said. “I’m here for you. I always have been.” With another gentle rub of your arm she scurried off into the room to celebrate with the kids.

Your skin has flushed, you know it has. Frozen where she left you, you can’t comprehend what had just happened, what she had just told you, what she had literally admitted to you. Nausea washed over you, your throat closing, like the ability to breath was stolen from you.

She knew.

Willing yourself to turn toward the room where the commotion continued, but you heard half of it, you took one look at the men on the couch. Soobin and Taehyun, both looking back at you with concern. Soobin’s was protective, but Taehyun’s was straight worry. You didn’t know what to do, you didn’t know how to process. A secret you were planning to keep from her for the rest of your life, one that you and Taehyun were going to take to the grave, she knew about. She left you without any indication as to when she found out, who she found out from, if she figured it out herself, if Jin knew as well… She knew, and you didn’t know how.

Looking at your boys, your beautiful twin boys showing their grandmother their new books they had unwrapped, you felt your heart rate skyrocket as you realized that as she sat there talking with them, she thought they were Taehyun’s children.

You were crying, and you weren’t totally sure you were breathing either. Shaky hands pushed back your hair and wiped your tears. Shaky legs took you away from the celebration, into another room, the living room, where you fell onto a couch and buried your face in your hands, finally letting out a decent sob you’d been suppressing all weekend.

It wasn’t long until a pair of strong arms wrapped around you, cozying up next to you, pulling you into their lap. Smothering yourself in their chest, you grabbed onto them somehow, and cried. There weren’t any words to say. Looking up at your husband, teary eyed, there wasn’t a thing either of you could say, or do, to make this any better.

“I’ll find a way to get us home tonight,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Okay, maybe there was one thing he could say to make this a little bit better. And you knew damn well, better than anyone, that Soobin kept his promises.

☼ AO3 | wattpad | support | share with me ☼

thank you so much for reading. <3

[gyorouis]

── ✦ true love.

⋆˚ 𝜗𝜚 ˚⋆ synopsis⸝⸝ on the second day of christmas, said you felt like something's missing.

꒰ genre⸝⸝ crack-fluff type of shit, nothing too much going on pairing⸝⸝ socialite!yj x afab!reader wc⸝⸝ 950 warning⸝⸝ uh,, flirting? romantic tension shit, slight jealousy tune in⸝⸝ ariana grande — true love ୨ৎ ꒱

yeonjun always knew how to make an entrance.

at the annual holiday gala hosted by his parents, he strolled in wearing a velvet blazer, flashing his signature smirk to anyone who dared look his way. the room was a blur of champagne flutes and twinkling lights, but yeonjun basked in the attention as if the whole event had been thrown just for him.

“jun, stop hogging the spotlight,” his friend beomgyu muttered, nudging him.

“what can i say? it’s a gift,” yeonjun replied, grinning.

he scanned the crowd, his eyes landing on you standing near the dessert table. unlike everyone else, you weren’t dressed to impress anyone but yourself. your outfit was effortlessly elegant, and you had a look of mild disinterest as you picked at a macaron. it was that nonchalant confidence that caught his attention.

“who’s that?” yeonjun asked, intrigued.

“that’s y/n,” beomgyu said. “don’t bother. they’re not into your type.”

“my type?” yeonjun raised an eyebrow.

“you know,” beomgyu said, gesturing vaguely. “flashy, overconfident, loves to hear himself talk.”

“ouch,” yeonjun said, pretending to be wounded. “guess i’ll just have to prove you wrong.”

with a casual stroll, yeonjun approached the dessert table where you stood. he reached for a macaron, but his attention never left you.

“you look like you’re plotting something,” you said when yeonjun appeared beside you.

“me? never,” he said, all charm. “i was just admiring your choice in macarons. bold move going for the pistachio.”

“you’re either flirting or trying to distract me,” you replied, unimpressed.

“can’t it be both?”

you rolled your eyes but didn’t walk away, which yeonjun took as a small victory.

“so,” he said, leaning casually against the table, “what brings you here? besides the world-class dessert spread, of course.”

“i’m friends with the hosts,” you said, not offering more.

“ah, so you’re in the inner circle,” he teased. “guess that makes us equals.”

“hardly,” you said, a smirk tugging at your lips.

for the next few days, yeonjun couldn’t get you out of his head. he wasn’t used to people brushing him off so easily, and it only made him more determined.

“you’re thinking about macaron girl, aren’t you?” beomgyu asked one evening, catching yeonjun staring into space.

“no,” yeonjun lied.

“just admit it,” beomgyu said. “you’re smitten.”

“i don’t get smitten,” yeonjun said, but the blush creeping up his neck said otherwise.

but his actions says otherwise, let's say.

his first move was inviting you to an ice-skating rink. it was a bold choice, considering he hadn’t skated in years, but he figured it was worth the risk.

“i didn’t peg you for the skating type,” you said when you arrived, eyeing him skeptically.

“i’m full of surprises,” he said, lacing up his skates.

it turned out yeonjun was terrible at skating, which you found endlessly amusing.

“aren’t you supposed to be good at everything?” you teased as he wobbled next to you.

“i’m letting you shine,” he replied, just before nearly toppling over.

you laughed, steadying him. “you’re ridiculous.”

“and yet, you’re still here,” he said, flashing you a grin.

next came tree decorating. yeonjun insisted it was a crucial holiday activity, and you reluctantly agreed.

“this is serious business,” you said as you handed him a strand of lights.

“serious? it’s a christmas tree, not a board meeting,” he joked.

“and yet, you’ve tangled the lights twice already,” you shot back.

“maybe i just like seeing you roll your eyes,” he said, earning another eyeroll.

despite his teasing, yeonjun took the decorating seriously—or at least as seriously as he could. by the end of the evening, the tree sparkled, and you had to admit it looked pretty good.

“not bad,” you said, stepping back to admire your work.

“not bad? it’s a masterpiece,” he said, standing beside you.

“don’t push your luck,” you said, but you were smiling.

as the days went by, yeonjun continued to surprise you. there was hot cocoa at a cozy café, where he insisted on trying every flavor, and a snowball fight that ended with him dramatically falling into a snowbank.

“you’re such a show-off,” you said, laughing as he sprawled out in the snow.

“it’s all part of the charm,” he said, brushing snow off his coat.

then there was a quiet evening watching a holiday movie. yeonjun’s commentary was equal parts amusing and annoying.

“that’s not how snowball physics work,” he said during a particularly cheesy scene.

“it’s a movie, not a documentary,” you replied, throwing a popcorn kernel at him.

he caught it mid-air, grinning. “impressive aim.”

“i’ve had practice,” you said, smirking.

on the twelfth day, yeonjun invited you to a rooftop overlooking the city. the sight took your breath away: a blanket spread out, a thermos of hot chocolate, and a string of lights he’d somehow managed to hang despite the freezing weather.

“what’s all this?” you asked, taking it all in.

“just thought we could end this right,” he said, sitting down and patting the spot next to him.

as you sat beside him, sipping hot chocolate and watching the city lights twinkle, you realized how much he’d grown on you.

“you’re not just full of surprises,” you said softly. “you’re... different.”

“different good or different bad?” he asked, looking at you.

“good,” you said, meeting his gaze.

he smiled, and for once, it wasn’t the confident smirk he usually wore. it was softer, more genuine.

“you’re different too,” he said.

“good different?”

“the best kind,” he said, leaning closer.

and as the first snowflakes of the night began to fall, you found yourself believing in the magic of true love after all.

gyo's note: finally posting after what feels like forever lol! hope you guys are having an awesome holiday season (and yes, i’m gonna keep saying this until the 25th haha). what are your plans for the holidays? 🎄 as for me, i’ll probably be catching up on writing… and definitely catching up on sleep too hehe. oh, and i’ve got this little holiday mini-series lined up for you guys as a gift! hope you’ll love it. thanks a ton for being so patient with me—appreciate you all more than you know! if you made it this far, thank you! (,,>﹏<,,) you will be loved, xoxo!

✮ 2024 gyozies, all rights reserved.

[kumabeom]

mistletoe - beomgyu

summary : beomgyu spends the entirety of yeonjun’s christmas party trying to get you under the mistletoe with him.

warnings : 1.2k words, AGAIN NOT PROOFREAD, beomgyu gets annoyed at yeonjun who is plotting a revenge plan

it was rare for beomgyu to have some sort of annoyance targeted towards yeonjun. typically, it was the other way around, usually, beomgyu was the one who attempted to make yeonjun get riled up. it was never the other way around. in fact, beomgyu woke up feeling rather happy today. he woke up, spent a bit of time to himself, then got ready to attend yeonjun’s christmas party. once he was ready, he went to go pick you up.

when he picked you up, god, he felt his heart drop into his stomach. in fact, he was so ready to drop the whole party thing just to stay in with you. unfortunately it just wasn’t a party that he could sit out. especially if it was his bestfriend’s party, not to mention how you helped pick a gift out for him and now you were so excited to see and hear yeonjuns reaction.

so when the two of you arrived at yeonjun’s house, seeing all the mistletoes placed in doorways, beomgyu had one goal. he needed to get you underneath one of those mistletoes and kiss you. it wasn’t a want, it was a need.

the first time that beomgyu sent a death stare right into yeonjun’s back was the second that he saw you right within the doorframe, beomgyu started to make his way over to you, noticing the way that you seemed to be looking around for him. eyes glistening even brighter than ever when you caught sight of him, excitedly calling him over. but beomgyu took one look above you and watched as yeonjun removed the mistletoe from behind, sticking his tongue out at beomgyu. your excitement still on full display as you missed yeonjun’s devious act. although you noticed beomgyu’s gradual decline in attitude, looking up and noticing that the mistletoe was completely gone. walking over to beomgyu and still placing a kiss on his lip.. the issue lied in the fact that beomgyu wanted to kiss you under the mistletoe.. not just anywhere else, he always had time to kiss you, but a kiss under the mistletoe was special.

the second time that beomgyu got annoyed was when the two of you were finally underneath the mistletoe at the same time, lips about to meet, when yeonjun happened to bump into beomgyu, moving him completely to the side and leaving yeonjun under the mistletoe with you. of course, yeonjun wasn’t that messed up to actually mess around with your relationship. so he just patted your shoulder and kept moving, attending to other guests that he had over. beomgyu felt furious, and to make matters worse, yeonjun removed the mistletoe. again.

the third time was beomgyu’s last and final straw, deciding to grab a mistletoe that yeonjun had hung up, stuffing it into his pocket. and when he felt the time was right, he pulled it out right above the two of you. although, you made a bit of a mistake and you hadn’t realized what he was doing until yeonjun already had a hold of the stolen mistletoe.

this all caused beomgyu to get rather upset, and at this point something in his gut was telling him that you were in on it too! how could it have taken you so long to realize there was a literal mistletoe hanging above the two of you! and when he got pushed out of the way by yeonjun, why didn’t you cling onto his arm so that yeonjun’s small shove wouldn’t have impacted him in the way it did! oh he was just so furious, you noticed his change in demeanor throughout the night. he easily recovered from the first accident, hoping that it was going to be the last one of the night. but as he noticed the reoccurring pattern, he only got more upset.

the two of you were standing there, together, arm in arm as you watched yeonjun and a few of his friends take shots, giving cheers to a merry and jolly christmas. although at this point, beomgyu couldn’t even handle to look at yeonjun in the eyes. he couldn’t even look at you in the eyes and he wasn’t even sure why! maybe he was still conspiring this theory against you, but he just felt so annoyed, it started to blind his rational thinking.

you watched as he suddenly barged out, leaving you stranded by yourself. you truly did feel guilty, especially for the way that you could’ve prevented some of these from happening. you took a look at yeonjun and he nodded as he passed you a mistletoe, one that used to be hanging but he took down due to beomgyu’s attempt to kiss you. you thanked him for it, exiting the loud crowd and finally basking in silence, you found beomgyu sitting on yeonjun’s porch. taking a seat next to him as he let out a sigh.

“all done with your boyfriend.” he commented, you knew he didn’t mean it, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. you truly hadn’t known that beomgyu was going to end up so upset at what yeonjun told you was his plan of revenge for all the annoyance that beomgyu had given him.

“are you gonna dump me..?” you innocently asked, knowing how you were going to approach his previous comment.

“no..” he muttered, picking at the stupid flowers yeonjun had outside of his home. beomgyu wasn’t even sure how he found a random flower when it was the middle of winter.

“then of course i’m not.. i love my boyfriend even when he gets a little mad.. but he makes me the happiest in the world.” you couldn’t help but giggle, a smile finally breaking on beomgyu’s face as he turned over to look at you, only barely realizing that you had no sweater on, the cold hitting you all at once.

“are you insane ! why’d you come out here with no jacket on ! you’re going to get sick !” he quickly removed his own puffer jacket, enveloping you in his warmth. you smiled, placing a kiss on his cheek, as you innocently pointed to your own puffer jacket that was sitting on yeonjun’s lawn chair. you put it there hoping that it would encourage beomgyu to walk over to you, which it did. what he also didn’t notice was the mistletoe hanging over his head. one that you had placed above him right before he had turned to look at you. he watched as you moved the direction of your finger from your jacket to the plant hanging right above the two of you.

placing your hands carefully on his cheeks and pulling him gently into a kiss. which he gladly returned, his hand coming up to caress your cheek, while the other was holding a spot on your waist. he loved this, he loved you.

all he ever wanted was to make a memorable christmas special for you and he really needed to make it happen. it was needless to say that beomgyu was always a romantic person, so obviously he just needed to complete his goal.

“-wanna go inside..?” you asked, removing beomgyu’s jackets and placing it back around his shoulders, grabbing yours off of yeonjun’s chair and placing it around you. you turned to look at beomgyu but he was waving you over, innocent smile on his face. you walked over, knowing exactly what it was that he wanted, pressing one more kiss on his lips as you walked underneath the mistletoe

“i wanna go home and watch a movie with you..”

©️kumabeom

permanent taglist : @run2seob @soobadooba @mrsyawnzzn @matcha-binz @tinyelfperson @strwbrrykthv @bloomngspring

[celli-ohs]

hubba hubba!

part two of accidentally in love! series frat boy!yeonjun x stubborn!reader; college!au, one-sided love to lovers! comedy/crack, fluff, angst, SMUT (softdom!yeonjun x sub!femreader)

ATTENTION: This chapter contains SMUT!!! MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!! (M18+)

WARNINGS: drunk/distracted driving, mentions of drinking, foul language, oral (m&f receiving), masturbation, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, breeding kink, daddy kink, shower sex

author's note: once again, I'm so sorry for how bad I am at writing smut 😭 this is what I get for not reading smut myself sorry y'all I really tried this time! I think I'm getting better though lmao

17. i took her to my penthouse and i freaked it (written chapter 2.5K)

Your skirt is riding up as you lean over, but you don’t seem to notice or care due to all of your attention being on Yeonjun’s cock. “Holy fuck. Slow down baby, I gotta focus.” He whines. His actions betray him though, as you feel his other hand push your head down deeper. The tip of his cock hits the back of your throat, and you gag, choking around him. The man in question lets out a heavenly moan in response. He releases you, and you gasp for air before diving back in, teasing by licking his shaft up and down. God he tasted so good. You’re sure your makeup is ruined, you’ve probably got lipstick all over your face with how you were practically starving for his dick, but that doesn’t seem to bother Yeonjun at all. You can hear him press on the gas, his breath labored as he tried to keep his eyes on the road and not you as you suck his tip like a lollipop. “I wanna ride you so bad Jun,” You whimper, massaging his balls as you kiss his dick. “Almost there baby girl, almost.”

Your night began when Yeonjun knocked on your apartment door. “Coming!” You shout as you speed out of your room, struggling to clip on your earring. You quickly throw open your door, and you’re immediately taken aback. Yeonjun wears nothing but a gray tank top and washed-out jeans. His hair is parted but a little messy, he probably drove with his windows down, a habit you’d learned he had, especially since it was the end of summer. But what takes you out is his eye contact. His eyes are intense, they scan all over you before connecting with your own, and he just smiles. Not his usual one, this smile was different, and you had an idea on why. “Hi,” You cough out, trying to remain calm as you smile. “Hey, wow you look amazing.” Yeonjun licks his lips. You only laugh, stepping to the side to let him in.

“Heeseung already left with the guys, I’m almost ready, I just have to change.” You say as you walk towards your room down the hall. “That’s not your outfit? You look good already,” Yeonjun says as he follows you. You laugh again, you’re wearing nothing but biker shorts and a random t-shirt from high school that was a little too small. “You’re funny. Give me a moment to change, I’ll be right out.” You tell him. “Why can’t I just come with you? I’ll close my eyes.” he sends you a suggestive smirk, one you roll your eyes at. “Yeonjun,” He grins. “I promise!” You shake your head and close the door. “No,I’ll be quick.” You tell him. As you’re searching through your closet, you can hear him humming “Toxic” by Britney Spears on the other side of the wall.

You settle on a two piece set, a matching skirt and halter top combo. You quickly slip it on, having already done your hair and makeup earlier. You’re putting your shoes on when you hear Yeonjun knock. “You ready?” He asks. “Yeah, actually can you come in? I need some help.” You announce, fixing your skirt in the mirror. “Come in? Okay…” He opens the door slowly, peeking his head through. Yeonjun acts as if he’d never been in your room before, when the last time he was here he’d taken a nap on your bed as you sewed the straps on Yujin’s dress. “Over here,” You wave to him, and he finally walks over. He lets out a low whistle as he eyes your figure. “I’m loving the fit,” He says in a low voice. “Thanks, I made it myself.” You wink at him through the mirror.

“Could you tie this for me?” You instruct, and gesture to the two loose straps hanging on your shoulders. Yeonjun jumps at the opportunity, helping you sweep your hair out of the way. His fingers ghost over the back of your neck, and you have to fight yourself from shuddering. Yeonjun takes his time tying the knot, but once he’s finished, he slides his hand gently down your back. You don’t move as he leans down, lips settling right next to your ear. “You’re so beautiful.” You can hear him smirking. You bite your lip, forcing yourself to behave. “T-Thank you.” You cough out, too embarrassed to look at him now. Usually you’d tease him right back, but with how he was looking at you right now, you were having a hard time thinking of a comeback.

As you two drove, Yeonjun’s right hand danced its way over to your thigh. Your bare skin feels as if it’s been lit on fire as his fingers drum to the beat of his radio against your plush leg. “So,” You clear your throat. “You said this was your first party in a while, right?” You try to make conversation, hoping to distract yourself from Yeonjun’s lingering fingers. “Yeah, they convinced me to let them celebrate, but to be honest, I kind of missed getting together like this.” He shrugs, eyes on the road. “I mean, a party every once in a while is nice, don’t know how you guys do it every weekend.” You admit. “It’s an acquired taste,” Yeonjun jokes. “I know a couple of the guys see it as a reward for a long week of school though,” You laugh along, you were pretty sure he was referring to Jake.

Yeonjun swiftly parks the car upon your arrival, running to open your door. “On second thought,” he mumbles as he helps you out, holding your hand. “Maybe I’d rather we head back. You look too divine to be out in public.” You chuckle, swatting him away. “We drove all the way here, let’s socialize a little.” And socialize you two did. Yeonjun practically had himself wrapped around you all night, never leaving your side. Even when his own friends would try to pry him off you, he’d stick to you like gum on a shoe. You enjoyed every minute of it, finding his clinginess not only cute, but insanely hot. “If you ever need anymore models, I’d love to volunteer, I'll even go nude.” Mingi smirks down at you as he leans against the wall for support. You find his childish attempts at flirting with you amusing.

“Fuck off Mingi, that’s my girl.” Yeonjun growls, his grip around your waist getting tighter. “Your girl? I don’t ever remember agreeing to such a thing,” You raise a brow at the man, and he bites his lip. You don’t notice Mingi slink off. “Yeah, well,” Yeonjun’s index finger slips under your chin, tipping your head back. “I was hoping you’d be mine exclusively after tonight,” His words have you shuddering, and before you know it, your beer has been discarded and replaced by Choi Yeonjun’s lips. You always had a suspicion that his lips were soft, seeing him pout almost daily when you’d poke fun at him, but you never expected Yeonjun’s lips to be as soft as a pillow.

You could taste the shots of whiskey he’d had earlier as it mixed with your strawberry lip gloss, a taste you became addicted to. His hands roam your body, pulling you closer and closer, trying to merge one another. Yeonjun suddenly pulls away, your lips trailing after him. “Jun-” “Let’s get outta here,” He’s breathless as you two run out the front door.

By some miracle, you two manage to make it inside his apartment and into his bedroom in one piece. Yeonjun pushes you onto his mattress, you're already spent but you only crave him more. “Take off your clothes.” He orders, standing at the edge of the bed. You comply, too horny to even feel embarrassed as you strip yourself in front of him. Yeonjun’s eyes are glazed over as you lay back down on his bed, completely nude for him to ravish. “God you’re so fucking hot,” He groans, throwing his tank top over his head and fumbling to remove his jeans. “I need you Yeonjun, please-” You begin to whine, playing with yourself as he finally frees himself of his clothes. “Don’t touch yourself,” He commands, and you hold your breath as you remove your hand.

“You said you wanted to ride, show me how you like to ride baby girl,” He teases, kissing you harshly before shoving you aside to lay against his headrest. “I wanna ride you, ride your cock, so good,” You’re babbling, unable to contain yourself as you hover over his erect dick . You’re sopping wet, dripping your essence all over Yeonjun before finally sinking down on his cock. He moans right into your titty, mouth latched onto your perky nipple. You gasp for air, not expecting his dick to stretch your insides so satisfyingly. You begin to move slowly, up and down, rising and falling. Every time your ass slammed against his thighs, you cried out, he was just too big yet you couldn’t get enough. “Too slow,” Yeonjun mumbles against your skin.

He holds you up, allowing him to piston up into you. You’re wailing in pleasure, gripping onto his shoulders for dear life. You cum for the first time that night riding Yeonjun. As your pussy spasms, you collapse on top of him, energy spent as Yeonjun flips you over. “I’m not done yet baby, don’t get tired now,” He smiles, swiping a stray hair from your face as you pant. Now you lay beneath him, legs wide open. “Wanna taste you while you’re still fresh,” Yeonjun murmurs, yet you don’t realize what he’s meant until his head is stuck between your thighs. You might break his skull with how tight you’re squeezing, but luckily Yeonjun finds this an honorable way to go.

Still he pries your legs open, not wanting to waste a drop of you. You claw at his sheets, crying out his name. “Jun- Yeonjun please-!” You just came minutes ago, you could only handle so much. But he’s a determined man, he’s not leaving your legs until you come one more time. His tongue laps against your folds, sucking and rubbing against your clit. You grab his head, fucking yourself against his face, something he never knew he’d love so much. “I’m gonna-“ You don’t even finish your sentence, cumming instantly. Yeonjun drinks you up as your high slowly falls, you’re moaning loudly, hips still rolling.

“One more baby girl.” Yeonjun smiles as you release him from your death grip. You let him flip you around once more, you lay on your stomach. He’s placed a pillow under your abdomen, raising your ass towards him. “That’s it, let daddy take care of you baby.” He groans into your ear as he leans down to push his thick cock into your pussy once more. You whimper as he begins to thrust, taking a steady pace. “You feel so good, tightest little pussy.” Yeonjun begins to kiss your back. “Fuck I can’t get enough of you.” He’s been dying to cum if he were being honest. You just make the prettiest noises, and wrap around his dick oh so perfectly. But he wanted to enjoy you for even longer.

He can tell you’re already close with how you’re panting, your pussy gripping even tighter than before. So he grabs you, standing you up. Your back is to his chest, he forcibly turns your head towards him, giving him access to your lips. He kisses you with so much passion, his dick pumping in and out of you in a fever. You were well over stimulated yet couldn’t even push him away if you wanted to, his hands held both of your wrists. “I’m close baby, gonna cum.” Yeonjun mumbles against your lips. You nod, trembling. “Cum in me.” His eyes light up. “You want me to cum in you, my pretty baby? Wanna become a mommy?” His lips trail down to your neck, his hips never failing to slow down.

“Need you to cum in me, please- I want you cum in me daddy!” You whine, breaths getting more rapid as Yeonjun’s pace speeds up. “Gonna make you feel so good, gonna get you pregnant with my baby.” He begins to ramble, and now he’s coming undone. He lets go of one of your arms, his hand slips down to your clit, and he begins to rub as he pistons into you. You cum almost immediately, your orgasm taking over your entire body. Your moans fill his room, his apartment. You’re convulsing around his cock, he can’t take it any more. “Gonna cum-!” He chokes. “Please please please please please plea-“ You gasp as Yeonjun groans into your ear, filling you up, pump by pump.

Yeonjun lets you down onto the bed gently, your breath ragged as you lay against his sheets. You feel him slip out of you, his cum oozing out of your hole. You’re so out of it, you barely feel Yeonjun kneel down and give your ass a kiss. “So pretty, all for me to see.” He chuckles. You hear him leave the room, a few seconds later he comes back. He’s wiping you down with a towel. “I’m so hot and sticky,” You grimace as you flip around to sit up. “Wanna take a shower? Let me turn it on for you.” Yeonjun says, before caressing your face and pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You are amazing, thank you.” You sigh and smile. You lay back down as he leaves for the bathroom.

Moments later you find yourself under the cool water, covered in sudsy bubbles, and bouncing on top of Yeonjun’s dick again. “You’re an active one.” He jokes as you have your head tucked into the crook of his neck, arms thrown over his shoulders. “Shut up, you started this.” You groan, now embarrassed. “Well baby, what did you expect when I got in with you?” He asks, smirking at you. You glare, and decide to shut him up with a kiss. “Just fuck me.” You threaten. “Love to.” He teases, taking control once more by picking you up, and moving you to his own pace. You throw your head back in pleasure. You feel even tighter, warmer than earlier, sex with you is mind blowing.

Yeonjun doesn’t even warn you when he cums this time, he just does. Pushing you up against the wall, he fiercely kisses you. You can feel his cock throb inside of you as he sets you back down onto your feet. You savor his lips as the two of you wrap your arms around each other under the shower. Suddenly, Yeonjun pulls away, he rubs his thumb across your lips. “I love you.” He suddenly confesses, his eyes pouring his love and soul into you as he stares. You smile and sigh, leaning into his touch. “Let’s wash up, yeah?” Yeonjun gives you a cheesy smile, as if he expected this to be your answer, and nods. In hushed whispers and laughter, you two help each other clean up.

Bonus:

whenever Yeonjun has a girl over, Beomgyu and Kai stay at Taehyun's and Soobin's apartment

they all gather to shit on Yeonjun (bonding moment!)

Yeonjun was so busy eyefucking Y/n at the party, he forgot all about Felix's cake he made for him

Mingi was not joking about the nude modeling

Yeonjun and Y/n were at the party for only 40 minutes before they dipped

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hubba hubba! masterlist

taglist (open): @justandloyal2961 @hoonatic @emosakumas @ancnymcnzjy @gomdoleemyson @yamsinthetaso

[beomiracles]

“what do you want for christmas?”

“You.”

dressing up in a slutty mrs claus lingerie to surprise subby!kai

𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐄'𝐒; 𝓐𝓓𝓥𝓔𝓝𝓣 𝓒𝓐𝓛𝓔𝓝𝓓𝓐𝓡 NUMBER 19 ; ❝𝐌𝐫𝐬 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐬❞

“Have you been good, hm?” — “You know Santa checks his list thoroughly..” Your nails scraping across his jaw sends a shiver down his spine and Kai looks to you with near pleading eyes. His lips part but he can’t seem to get a single word out, his face flushing with color as he recalls all the times he’d been getting off without your permission.

pairings — hueningkai x fem!reader warnings — blowjob, sub!kai, softdom!reader, sensory deprivation, cumming prematurely, cum eating.

#serene adds ✎.. hm I think this one turned out okay!! :3

⸝⸝

“Can I look yet?” Kai whines as he squirms on your shared bed, his eyes tightly screwed shut, creating an adorable crease between his brows. — “Not yet”, you say as you twirl in front of the mirror, flattening out the tiny red skirt and the white fluff on its ends. Your hands push the tight bra against your tits, squeezing them together with pursed lips before you deemed the look worthy. Topping it all off with a christmas hat, you turn to your boyfriend who’s not so patiently waiting for your arrival. 

The floorboards creak under your weight as you approach the king sized bed and Kai’s breath catches in his throat when he feels the mattress dip. Meticulously you make your way over to him, crawling on all fours before finally reaching his spread legs. You’re gentle as you straddle him, hands gliding over his bare shoulder, nails digging into his soft skin. — Kai’s hands twitch by his sides as he refrains from reaching out and touching you. The sight was endearing and you have to swallow back a giggle. 

“Feel me.” Your sigh caresses his face like that of a warm breeze on a summer day, and Kai doesn’t hesitate as his large hands find your waist, his fingers threading through the flimsy material of the costume you wore. “What am I?” You say, an almost teasing edge to your voice as you play with a strand of his hair. Kai shakes his head, his eyes still tightly screwed shut as his lips part; “Fuck, my wildest fantasy?” 

This time you can’t help the quiet laughter that bubbles in your chest. “Bonus point because you’re cute”, you hum, leaning in to press a tender kiss between his furrowed brows. — “Open them.” You part from him just enough to see his lashes twitch as they flutter open, revealing his sparkling and wide eyes to you. 

His sharp intake of air is loud, and Kai’s gaze shamelessly drops to your chest, eyeing the red fabric that squeezed around your tits, your perky nipples visible through the thin lace of the bra you wore. The sound that rips from his throat is something half a whine, half a groan as his greedy hands move over your chest, groping your tits as he tries to pry the lingerie from your body. You swat him away, giving a harsh slap to his eager fingers as you tsk. “Don’t spoil the fun”, you snap as you readjust your tight top. 

Kai’s head falls back against the headboard with a small thud and a displeased look passes his face. However, it’s immediately replaced by one of sheer excitement as you run a teasing hand down his torso, reaching the hem of his sweats as the heel of your hand digs into the curve of his already hard cock through the cotton. He whines as he grabs at you, trying to tug you impossibly close as his hips buck up against your waiting palm. 

“More, please..” He breathes, eyes fluttering at the overwhelming sensation of you just barely touching him. It was almost euphoric, seeing how easily he reacted to you without you having to put any effort. Your mere presence seemed to be enough to get his mind reeling. It gave you a sense of power. — “Oh, I don’t know..” You drawl, leisurely dragging the flat of your hand over his erection, making him bite his lip as his head lolls back. 

“Have you been good, hm?” — “You know Santa checks his list thoroughly..” Your nails scraping across his jaw sends a shiver down his spine and Kai looks to you with near pleading eyes. His lips part but he can’t seem to get a single word out, his face flushing with color as he recalls all the times he’d been getting off without your permission. You smile, feeling the nerves practically radiate off of him as he swallows thickly. “I…I’ve tried..” He shyly murmurs, squirming beneath you as he does. 

“Mhm”, you hum, slipping a hand beneath the fabric of his sweats as your fingers wrap around his leaking cock. “It’s alright”, your tone is soft, comfortingly so, “I don’t check the list as closely as Santa does.” With that you tug his pants down ever so slightly, leaning back until you’re hovering above his red tip. Kai shudders as you give it a small puff, thumb circling his slit before your tongue darts out to taste the salty precum that dribbled down his shaft. 

“P-Please”, he croaks, hands anchoring themselves in the sheets as his feet dig into the mattress, his whole body straining under your own. You’re unable to deny him, not when he looked so cute, all fidgety and flushed pink, fighting the urge to reach out and tug you down on his cock, forcing you to take him as deep as you could. He wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t ever want to displease you, because you were so important to him. 

He cries out when your lips wrap around his tip, tongue pressed flat against his slit as you play with him for a moment, relishing in the adorable little noise he would make as he bit down on his swollen lip. — “Please, please I… Hmngh, I, Please..” He’s uttering a string of incoherent nonsense. None of which you care for as you allow his thick cock to slide down your throat, relaxing your jaw as it tenses in protest to the invasive movement.

“I’m.. G-Gonna– P-Please!”  

You’re surprised that he’s already this close to cumming, you’d barely touched him after all. Suppose it might’ve something to do with the near twenty minutes he’d spent in darkness as he shifted on the mattress whilst waiting for your arrival. — Still, you want to keep him on the edge just a little longer, but before you can pull off to tell him no, he is releasing down your throat with a strangled moan.  

The warm feeling fills your already stuffed mouth, and you gag in surprise as some of it leaks down your chin. — Kai whines as he hides his red face behind his hands, thighs tensing under you as he awaits the punishment he’s bound to receive. 

You merely sit back up, wiping your lips with the back of your hand as you regard him with raised brows. — “And here I was just about to tick you off the naughty list..” You tsk as you sit back on his legs, giving his half hard cock a lazy tug, “But you don’t mind a punishment, do you?”

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[whinysoobin]

Three two devil

Sneak peeks !!

Fem Reader x Yoon Jeonghan, Jeon Wonwoo, Choi Soobin

3 to devil

Not one or two.. But three obsessions.

A game of "who will i end up with"

Nerd! Reader. Fuckboy!soobin&jeonghan stalker!wonwoo&soobin. Ex!jeonghan&wonwoo.

(Ft bestie!natty & Joshua)

Sneak peek(s)'

Devil-

One

★¹ - "What does a guy like him have that a guy like me doesn't ?" He asks, voice thick with venom. You scoff at his question.

"Everything" you respond

"Oh.. I get it. Its ugliness. Yeah I'll pass"

Two

★² - "its not really cheating. She certainly doesn't count." He smirks. Face so close.

"Yeah? So i wont count too? Fuck off" before you could walk away he grabs your wrist.

"Be glad princess.." His hands slightly move and re- adjusts your glasses. "Its me".

Three

★³ - "Please!" You begged. Warm tears rolling out of your eyes.

Why" he asks, not even trying to hide his satisfaction

"I.. Please.. Dont" your head lows down. Tears falling on the ground. One,two, three then four....

"Well iam certainly not deleting this. Its interesting information. Darling"

Ruby's note: hellooo! This will be posted as a long ass fic. So i hope yall enjoy it. A few more to be finished hehe. These are my three biases so see.. I cant choose so why dont i just take em all? Spoiler alert the reader will end up with one person. I wont tell who... Also this fic contains family issues stalking cheating and other stuff so if you dont like then dont read

Requests are open. (Slow). Please be ready for me to take my time.

I cant promise any date, when this will be posted but i hope i get time to finish it soon. :(

Thats all byee and Merry Christmas everyone

[soobchwe]

beam me up —⋆˚࿔ 𝚌𝚜𝚋

SFW version of my fic posted here on @heechwe .ᐟ ୨୧ pairing: choi soobin x fem!reader ୨୧ word count: 1.9k ୨୧ genre: lots of fluff, smidges of comedy ୨୧ tags: parents!au, married!au, established relationship!au, pet names (love, bunny, baby, etc), down bad soobin essentially. ୨୧ synopsis: Going out after having a baby should be a breeze. So what if you don't feel incredibly confident? So what if you both act like awkward teenagers on your first date? It's you and Soobin, and that's all that matters. ➸ bless my pals @lovetaroandtaemin, @xomakara, and @heesuncore for reading this behemoth ilysm

Why am I so nervous? You think to yourself as you swipe the mauve shade in your hand across your bottom lip. Its light pigment prevents staining, yet provides noticeable definition, just enough to stand out. Your hair is in a low bun, two stray bangs falling over your cheeks. With your makeup and floral midi dress, you feel confident enough to step out and leave the house without becoming riddled with anxious thoughts.

The demands of motherhood have been hefty, but you clean up well. And despite all the dirty diapers and staying awake pumping, you’re ready to spend one night simply as Soobin’s wife. Perhaps a night out in town with your husband is exactly what you both need after three months of being parents.

It’s been picture perfect, without question. Minyoung has her father‘s pout when she sleeps, your long eyelashes, and the softness of a human being well beyond her years. But, you can’t deny that you miss the days where it was just you and Soobin in your own bubble.

Perhaps tonight, you can discover a balance where your old and new life blend harmoniously.

You step out into the living room to see Soobin with his mother, your daughter asleep in her grandmother’s arms. Soobin holds a laundry list of instructions in one hand and her car-seat in the other, waving his hands in frantic motions. “She usually naps like this for about two hours, but if she sleeps more, that’s even better. And then—“

Soobin stops short and looks back at you when he senses your presence. Your in-law and husband stare at you in disbelief. The frayed edges of your appearance from a few hours ago are nowhere to be seen.

Soobin looks at you like you hang the moon. His smile is small in the presence of his mother, him trying to maintain some semblance of modesty, but it’s ‌electric. “You look beautiful.” He sets the car-seat down on the floor to free his hand, reaching it out for you to take.

You do it gladly, smiling from ear to ear. Soobin also cleans up well, his button up tucked in his cargo pants. He’s always dressed a bit like a dad in training, and now he fits the bill‌. “You don’t look too bad yourself, Binnie.”

His face turns a shade of pink at the nickname, unable to hide your effect on him. He turns back to his mother and refers to the paper in his hand. “If you need something that isn’t in her diaper bag, please‌—“

“Soobin, I can handle it. Just spend the night with your lovely wife.” His mother winks at you and takes the car seat from him. “I promise to bring her back in the morning in one piece.”

You and Soobin kiss the top of Minyoung’s soft head and say your goodbyes, both of your hearts clenching. It’s the first time you’ve been apart from her for more than an hour or two, so the prospect is daunting, at the very least. “Be good for grandma, lil’ bun,” Soobin whispers to her sleeping figure.

When your mother-in-law leaves, Soobin looks back at you with a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and desire. “Ready to go?”

You nod, sharing the same concoction of emotions. Most importantly, though, you’re relieved to finally have some alone time together. Wherever the night takes you is anyone’s guess. “Definitely.”

You both sit at the table in the restaurant like it’s your first date. Uncertain about what to expect once the meal ends, full of nerves and anticipation.

Soobin finds it hard to make eye contact with you, his eyes moving across the entire room. He can’t help it when you look so beautiful. You always do, but tonight is different. He’s been so stuck in the haze of being a new dad, it’s like he’s seeing you clearly again. Now, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

You’ve been married for half a decade, ‌yet every time he sees you, he falls deeper. It’s the first time for him every second he gets to touch you, kiss you, tell you how much you matter to him.

With a child, his feelings have only amplified. He looks at Minyoung some mornings and sees all the features he loves about you and vice versa in one human, his pride as great as his love.

But, instead of revealing he’s in the throes of intense admiration for you in the small Italian restaurant, he turns his focus back to the menu in his hands and looks over the wine list.

The appetizer you shared a few minutes ago has made him thirsty for some alcohol, it seems. “I know you have water, but do you want some Pinot, too? Oh! They have Moscato! I know that’s your favorite.”

It’s the way his eyes light up and his mouth curves into that signature O that makes you giggle‌, unable to contain it.

“What’s so funny?” Soobin looks up from his menu with mirth.

“Nothing at all, Binnie. I’m just happy.”

Your chest pinches at his soft reaction to your words, him looking over his menu at you with bright eyes.

Soobin has always been a goofball, intentionally or not, but it’s what makes him the best partner, among his many qualities. He knows when to be serious, taking the reins when necessary, but he’s well-versed in lightening the mood when you need it.

It’s surreal sometimes thinking about how you lucked out.

Suddenly, your thoughts cease thanks to the rising discomfort from your breasts. It started as an unnoticeable pinch when you gave your drink and light food order, but now it’s full-on pain erupting in your chest.

Why is it so uncomfortable?

You feel the droplets of milk settling into the fabric of your dress, your question answered in a flash.

The impending concern rises on Soobin’s face when he notices your scrunched-up brows and mouth. Then, he sees the two small wet patches forming on your chest. Immediately, he shucks off his jean jacket to give you. “Here baby, take this.”

A deep blush forms on your cheeks when you cover up with his garment. You’re unsure how to broach the subject or the rest of dinner in this state, immediately self-conscious. “I’m sorry. This is so embarrassing, I—”

“Baby, no. Don’t be sorry, it’s normal.” Soobin says the words with so much empathy, you could cry from that alone. You excuse yourself to use the bathroom and clean yourself up, not listening to the words that leave his lips in rapid succession. You’re a mom. It happens to every mom at some point! I love you!

Soobin feels useless, knowing no words he says will assuage your shame. He decides now is as good of a time as any to check up on Minyoung. It’s been almost three hours since he’s talked to his mother.

When the line rings, Soobin doesn’t let it bother him. Minyoung probably needed a burping or night-time bath. No big deal.

By the second unsuccessful attempt at contact, his heart drops into his stomach. What if something’s wrong? As he tries to call for the third and fourth time, his thoughts spiral further.

What if his mother rushed out with Minyoung and she forgot to bring her cell because it was so serious? He knows babies usually are out of the woods for colic by the third or fourth month, but anything’s possible, right?

Parental anxiety is one thing, a feeling Soobin knows well by now, but his instincts are usually spot-on. And something has to be going on if his mother isn’t getting back to him.

You trot over to the table, tucking Soobin’s jacket tighter around your chest so it doesn’t flap open. The event may have been embarrassing at the moment, but you’re ready to get the night back on track and focus on your husband.

You smile eagerly, not noticing the way Soobin’s face has gone stark white. “I think I got most of it, but—“

“We have to go. Something’s wrong.”

You don’t think twice, practically stealing Soobin’s keys from his pocket when he stands up. The two of you race out of the restaurant and to your little girl, your thoughts newly scrambled in the worst ways.

Soobin tries to knock on his parents’ door without slamming his fist against the wood, but he can’t help it. So many scenarios have built up in his head since his intuition kicked in. He could barely say one word on the drive to his mother’s. The silence was palpable in the air, both of your bodies filled to the brim with fear and regret for leaving her for one second.

Soobin’s mother answers the door with a shocked expression. “Honey, what are you two—“

Soobin barrels past her and into the house. You follow hot on his heels. His pace is quick, his voice loud as he calls out Minyoung’s name like she’s able to answer him back.

Then, you find Minyoung perfectly content. Soobin’s dad has her in his arms at the dinner table, feeding her a bottle of milk. “Hey, kids. Why are you here?”

Soobin stutters when he responds. “M-Mom wasn’t answering and we—“

“Oh, lord.” You hear her deep groan pervade the small kitchen. “You left the restaurant for that?”

“What were we supposed to think?” Your words are full of defense, lighthearted now that you’re not in panic mode. Were your worst thoughts so unexpected? You felt bad enough leaving your daughter alone with people you trusted just for a night of solitude. If something worse had happened, the guilt would’ve been too much to bear.

Soobin rushes over to Minyoung and takes her from his father’s arms. Droplets of milk spill from her lips, but she doesn’t care. She reaches up to touch Soobin, her little nails gliding across his face. “Daddy’s here, Minnie.” He presses his forehead to hers, smiling proudly. “I’m right here.”

You tear up at the image in front of you, relieved to see your baby girl out of harm’s way. Even if the harm was entirely imaginary, you’re calmer nonetheless.

Soobin walks towards you and kisses the crown of your head. “Sorry I pulled a false alarm, baby.”

Although you’ll never tell him, you don’t mind that he did so. He’s an incredible husband and father, always on alert for the two of you and putting his needs to the wayside. You have to remind him every day to also think of himself, and he appreciates you looking out for him in the same fashion.

You shake your head and move Minyoung from Soobin’s arms to yours. You kiss her chubby cheeks and she coos at the attention, the spitting image of her father. “Daddy is gonna be the death of me, isn’t he, baby girl?”

Soobin chuckles into your hair and holds onto one of Minyoung’s fists with his palm. “Not if I can help it.”

“Now that you both have made sure she’s okay, go back to your date night!” Your mother-in-law strides into the dining room to pluck Minyoung from your grip. Minyoung is more than comfortable with it, smiling widely into her grandmother’s neck. “It’s rude enough that you both interrupted your dinner time and ours.” She turns to speak directly to Minyoung. “Right, sweetie? How dare they!”

You share another laugh with Soobin, tucking your face into his neck. Parenthood may not be the breeziest role, but with Soobin at your side, you believe with all of your heart that it’s one of the best adventures you’ll ever go on together.

@yvnempire @sjylouvre @mini-mews @jayparked @heesuncore @yoursjaeyun @sungbeams @jenoslutie @loserlvrss @pars-ley @lovetaroandtaemin @wonwovy

𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 ౨ৎ˚₊

@kstrucknet @k-films @kvanity-main @moadiarynet @sweetvenomnet @onedoornet @lapydiaries @sayxonet @violetanet @svthub @whipped-kpop-creators

[xylatox]

oh my god this was so insane and so good I love it. Yandere done right I fear, you ate thus piece up most definitely

IT WIŁŁ COME BAC₭ ⠀,, k.th

it’s a small world. you knew this, but you came to really believe it when you ran into an old classmate at the grocery store on a snowy vacation. how strange is that? even more so when he shows up once more at the door of your cabin, frozen from the cold and needing your help. ִֶָ. ´-

⸺ listen to the playlist

ㅤㅤ៶ㅤ ( 🗝️ ) ･ 6.9k

𝖕airings ˒ yandere!taehyun 𝑥 reader

ℊ ; smut ˒ thriller ˒ yandere

𝖜arnings ˒ dubcon!!, baby trapping, dark & yandere themes, taehyun has a warped view of the world, doggy, rough sex, mentions of breeding, stalking, he’s slightly off putting, possessiveness & jealousy… duh!, hard dom!taehyun, nasty freaky stuff, corruption but like not conventionally?, unprotected sex, mentions of not taking birth control, creampie, biting and hickeys, obsession, DDNE please read these and decide for yourself if you’re comfortable reading! let me know if i’ve missed any tags.

✎୭ ashlynn's note this one is a delicious gift from 🍵 anon!!! i’ve never gone this dark. IM KINDA NERVOUS. i really hope you like it!! please let me know if i miss any tags!

﹙⋞ ﹚... back to the 𝓂asterlist

“Taehyun?”

The man turns around, brow pinched and eyes searching for who’d said his name. When those sharp, intelligent eyes land on you, familiarity passes over them. In the black, there’s a shine, and the shape of them softens into something else; something you’re more used to, on him.

“Hey,” he says. His arms are full of supplies and groceries. Knitting his strong brows together, he says, “What are you doing out here?”

You toss the chips you’d been grabbing before you noticed him into your cart. It falls with a crinkle down onto the mountain of other snacks just like it. You should probably pick up some real food, too. The others shouldn’t have made food your job. If it was up to you, the cabinets would be stuffed with an array of quick snacks. Cooking isn’t really your strong suit. 

“I’m gonna spend a few nights at a cabin here with some friends. We wanted to find some snow, since it never snows back home,” you say, and then you laugh at the absurdity of finding someone from your hometown all the way out here. What are the odds of that? Especially since everybody graduated and scattered out into their own moving lives. “What are you doing out here?”

He reaches up to push his glasses up his nose, an easy smile on his lips. The sight of it brings back memories.

Taehyun and you had not been the closest in high school. You were in different crowds, and he kept to his own anyway. But the few times you two did interact, by some assigned group project or an incidental brief exchanging of words, he was nice enough. 

He changed a lot, though. If someone were to ask you yesterday if you remember him from school, the image you would’ve imagined is at stark odds with the man standing  in front of you now. Where the long, lanky limbs and unsure demeanor of a boy once was, there is now all the confidence of a man. The angles of him are sharper, more defined and chiseled. And, his shoulders… He’s gotten broader, too. The butterflies in your belly are strange; It’s strange feeling like this over a man you might not have looked twice at years ago. He wasn’t ugly by any means, back then. You just… had an eye out for other things. Your palate was different.

He answers, “Touché.” Stepping back, he lets another customer push their cart through the gap between you. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. What have you been up to? Back home for break? It seems like everybody from school moved on. It’s nice seeing someone from our class.”

It’s not an answer to your question, but the snow gear and thick jackets in his arms tell you enough. He’s seeking snow, too. Snow birding is really the only way that you might see snow, here. Snow really only ever comes to the mountain peaks. Speaking up over some storewide announcement that makes the bustle around you impossibly louder, you say, “Oh my god, right? That’s what I was just thinking.” You make your tone light—the kind of saturated sweetness that comes with small talk, all manufactured and stilted. It’s not necessarily awkward; you just are clumsy with this kind of conversation. You just ramble to fill the space. “I… Just have been working. Never went to school. Did I tell you that you look good? What have you been up to?”

For a moment, you think you see a glimpse of something… strange pass over his eyes. Something that makes you feel weird��one of those hair-rising feelings that you cannot explain, but feel innately to your core. A primal hunger being fed, a twitching of his lips, as though vindicated. It’s gone in nothing more than a blink of an eye, and barely even was there in the first place. You’ve got a mushy brain from driving all day, anyway. What a strange thing for your mind to make up, though.

“Nothing much. Work for me, too,” he says, shrugging. “Finally got the chance to get away from it, and decided to come out here.”

Another shopper comes shoving themselves between you. Clearly, your catching up is an obstruction on their very important, very urgent shopping trip. Taking the hint, you tell Taehyun, “I get it, believe me. But…” You gesture at your groceries. “I’ve gotta finish up shopping before everybody gets here. It was nice seeing you! I wish I could linger, really.”

He offers you an easy smile, letting his crossed arms fall away from his chest and shaking his head. “No big deal. I’ve got some stuff to pick up, too. Have a nice one, yeah? Don’t get caught in the blizzard, or anything.”

Snorting, you dip your head  goodbye and say, “I’ll try not to.”

❅

The hardwood floors creak beneath your flustered pacing. “Are you serious? How long is it gonna be?”

“I’m sorry? I didn’t expect someone to slash our fucking tires?” Your friend’s voice cuts in and out through the speakers, one of the few hollow sounds in the cabin. Aside from you and the decor, it’s empty. “I’m sorry that you’re stuck out there, but there’s nothing we can do. You’re going to have to wait it out for a few days. At least until we can get there.”

Gritting your teeth, you give her a tactful Okay, bye, and thumb the big red button. The sound of the call ending echoes, too. Curling your arms around yourself, the whole place feels big and haunting. The howling of whipping wind and snow against the windows doesn’t help.

Someone had slashed their tires, and now you’re going to be here alone. For days. If being alone wasn’t already making knots of your belly, that was. It’s startling: going out of your way to slash someone's tires, but making no attempts at stealing the car or anything in it. Either it’s personal, or somebody just wanted to ruin somebody else’s day. Both leave a sour taste in your mouth.

Your every limb goes rigid at a thump, and in the corner of your eye, there’s movement. When you whip your head to look fully in that direction, all that moves in the window is snow like haze and the trees bending in the same violent wind. Nothing but night and the storm.

Beside yourself, you inch toward the window to look closer. Tugging a thick, willowy curtain to one side, you do a scan.

Sat in the snow, dusting over with heavy white flakes as you look, are a pair of glasses. You are not stupid enough to go out and get a closer look. 

❅

With the fireplace roaring, the place doesn’t feel so empty. 

You waited all day for the snow to stop coming down so hard. If you’re going to be alone here for days, you want to go out and spend the daylight away around other people.

Really, you just don’t want to be in this cabin all by yourself. You have a bad feeling. It;s unfounded, maybe. But you do.

The snow does not stop falling, and the wind does not stop blowing it into thick piles. It’s everywhere: the whole entire yard is coating thick with it, and so is your car. Could you even drive away in this, if you needed to? Maybe after thirty minutes of plowing snow. You’ve at least kicked enough of it away from the porch to open the door.

At some point, hope for doing anything but toiling around in here dwindled away. With what embers of excitement for vacation you have left, you tugged on some knitted socks and played Christmas classics off your phone.

You’re still playing them as you decide to cook something up. You’re not the best cook, but what do you have to lose? It’ll only be you eating it. If it goes awry, you’ve still got snacks to make into a meal. 

The kitchen comes alive while you work. You tug out all the pots and pans that the cabin owners provide, clicking the stove on while you dance and hum along to the songs that you’d seemingly come out of the womb knowing. Pulling the fridge open to the song of Silver Bells, you decide on something ambitious and set ingredients out over the counters. 

You don’t even get to slicing before there’s a knock at the door. Three very solid, very resounding knocks. The knife makes a clattering sound as you let it drop to the cutting board.

There shouldn’t be anybody out here. Maybe your friends got the car up and running, and forgot to let you know. Your heart thrums a wild, crashing beat, as you swipe your phone up to shoot a quick text.

At the top of a screen, a text comes in from an unknown number. Your belly does a frantic swoop, a thousand different thoughts swarming and shoving to be the one at the forefront of your mind. 

+1 [678-999-8212]

Hey, it’s Taehyun.

+1 [678-999-8212]

I’m sorry if this is weird, but I’m the one who just knocked at your door. I wanted to hike up to my cabin but I’m lost as hell right now, and recognized your car outside

+1 [678-999-8212]

Thought it would be better to ask you for help instead of a random.

You take a moment to blink at the glow of the screen. Taehyun was the one knocking on your door? That both settles you and kicks up more questions. What are the odds that you both rented out cabins from the same people? The world is small; you’re reminded that a lot, these days. 

Sliding your phone into your back pocket, you head for the door. He’s got to be freezing. It’s coming down hard out there.

The door swings open to Taehyun’s face just as frost-glazed as you expected. His jaw chatters and his nose and cheeks are a deep, winter-pink. Despite it, his mouth pulls into a friendly smile—the kind that illustrates in the humorous corners that he is aware of the absurdity of his situation, as well. He keeps his hands tucked into his pockets, a thick winter jacket zipped up to the top dusted at the shoulders with fat snowflakes just the same as on top of his coal-black hair.

“Oh my god,” you say. A laugh seeps through the cracks. “I’ve got the fireplace going hot. Do you wanna come in? How long have you been out there?” Stepping to one side, you offer him entry into your home. Temporary home, that is. 

He tries to rein in the shivers, you can see it in the smile he’s got plastered on his face and the way he buzzes and trembles around the edges like the bitter cold is trying to push against his skin and escape him. “If it doesn’t bother you,” he says, stepping in past you. When he passes, thick in the air, he smells like smoke and the dark woods—it’s musky and familiar, but also haunting in the way that the wilder edges of a forest could be. 

He smells nice. Really nice. The kind of blend of manly musk and cologne that makes a woman look twice. It makes you look twice as he passes, at least.

Him standing there now, eyes roving over the cabin’s wood walls and the knitted blankets and the fire whispering from the living room, you realize how strange it is to be here with an old classmate that you haven’t seen for at least three years. How awkward it is. 

“It doesn’t bother me at all. You did scare me a bit, though,” you say, shooing the wispy chill away with a close of the door. “I’d rather you not freeze to death out there. It’s, like, ten degrees.” You tuck your arms across your chest. “What made you go hiking in this? It’s been nasty today. I haven’t even been able to leave.”

His cheek twitches with a dimple. Even back in school, you noticed that. Then, it’d fit right into his face. Now, it’s a delicious contrast against his angled face. “Sorry I scared you. I knew it’d be weird, but… Yeah, I was freezing out there. I seriously thought I was going to die.” Hair brushes over his eyes, their cunning and sharpness something that draws you in. Like two swirling, black pools of swirling water, they beckon you in a way that you can’t quite digest. “It wasn’t too bad down by the car, and I didn’t know there was a whole damn trail up here, so I… yeah. It got bad.”

Snorting, you nod. “I bet.” You’re not sure what else to say; your mind freezes over in an impermeable frost. You tap around with a pick to try and find words, but there’s no getting through it. You hardly know him. What do you talk about? What are you going to talk about, considering the fact that he’s no doubt going to be here for some time? Until it stops blizzarding so hard outside, at least. 

Charging through the tense moment with a brassiness that you do not remember him carrying back then, Taehyun nods a gesture toward the kitchen and the dinner you’d been in the middle of making. “Making something?” he says. The low, warm light of the cabin washes over him and make his face something cozier than it’d been standing frozen at your front door. It also makes a show of the angles of his cheek as it turns, and the tall line of his nose. Something on him is missing. You can’t capture the notion or put your finger on it, but somewhere in the depths of memory, you feel like there was something there that isn’t here with him now. Maybe it’s a different styling of his hair from the last time you saw him, wind-swept as it is now. Or maybe you’re just stir-crazy. 

“Yeah.” You nod, watching in place as he ventures into the kitchen. Narrowing your eyes down, you try to pinpoint the thought. Is it something small? A pair of earrings? “I was gonna cook up something warm for dinner, but I’m not the best cook. I don’t burn anything, but… it’s never great, you know?”

Taehyun tugs his jacket off his arms, and you confirm that it’s not a certain jacket or something. “I’ll help,” he says, discarding the heavy thing. “Make myself useful.”

“Oh!” you say, bringing your hands together in realization. “Are you not wearing your glasses? Holy shit, I’ve been staring at you thinking something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell what it was.” 

He furrows his brows, corners of his mouth twitching. The look passes over his face in nothing more than a split-second, before something else plasters over it. He crinkles his nose and says, “Huh. I didn’t even notice…” The knife you’d left to let him in glints as he picks it up to assume where you’d left off. “Didn’t you say that you were here with some friends? Is everybody asleep already?”

You trace the lines of his face where those brown glasses had rested the last time you’d seen him. He must’ve forgotten them in his cabin this morning, or something, before he went out. You grab a pot and fill it over the sink for noodles. “Actually, they all got caught up back home. It’s literally just me here for days. I’ve been so bored.” Over your shoulder, you add, “I’m just making some fettuccine and chicken.”

“Caught up?” he says, voice casual and occupied. The sound of the knife against the cutting board as he slices follow his words.

“Yeah. Someone messed their car up bad… Like, knife to the tires and the windows were smashed in all over the seats. It was fucking terrifying.” Clicking the stove on, you set the pot to boil. 

Taehyun doesn’t answer for a few minutes. You look over your shoulder and find him working in the chicken still. He answers, his eyes dragging up to you for a quick moment before making sure he doesn’t cut a finger off, “Did they steal anything?”

Turning to him fully as you wait for the water to bubble and turn over, you say, “That’s the weird thing. They didn’t steal or anything, they just fucked it up and… left.”

“Huh,” he says, furrowing his strong brow down at his working hands. “Yeah, that’s weird. That’s some personal shit. Maybe someone had a shit day.” The end comes out around a breathy laugh.

“Yeah, maybe.” You crack open the cardboard flaps and pour the noodles into the pot. “Still… scary.”

Taehyun takes over the cooking, and you’re happy to entrust dinner to him. He works diligently, and the sight of his back as he stirs and chops and seasons—it’s mouth-watering. This way, you can fully admire him as he does. You’re not much help, anyway. Instead, you just start the gentle hum of Christmas music once more and stay out of his way. The sound of 

It’s nice to have somebody here. The howling of the wind and the echoing of your own movements back to you has started to become haunting. Maybe having Taehyun here is a bit unconventional, and it really should be your friends here with you, but having him here is the better outcome than some creep being the one knocking at your door. It’s nice to have him here in case that does happen, too.

It’s not like he’s bad company, or anything, either.

When the entirety of the cabin is full with the smell of warm dinner and your conversation, you swoop back in to offer help with something you can manage. Stepping beside him, indulging in his rich scent once more, you plate the dinner he’d made for you. Steam dances up from it and beckons your tastebuds. “You’re, like, a Michelin chef. What the hell? Thank you.”

He doesn’t answer, and in the corner of your eye, you catch his knuckles going white around the counter’s edge where he leans his weight into the arm. Frowning, you go to look up at him.

It leaves his face when you catch it, but you find him looking down at you… different again. Darker, as though the pupils at the center have grown hungry and eaten up the chocolate there. You think you see his jaw tightening and a hard swallow bobbing in his throat, too. His face is so close like this, you can see the plush turn to his lips and the darkness beneath his eyes, and even the chap of his lips.

Flustering, you take a step back and do your work there. You’d stepped way too close to him. Does he think you’re weird? You’ve always been the type with a scarce personal bubble; you forget that others don’t work the same.

“It’s nothing much,” he finally says. It’s cool and collected once more. “I make this all the time. It’s one of my favorites.”

Handing him his plateful, the chicken glistening with glaze and the noodles a swirl of cream and garnish, you say, “You’ll have to write down the recipe for me, or something. I totally want to make it for myself.”

Accepting it with another easy grin, he says, “Yeah, sure.” He forks a bit of chicken off the plate.

The smile does not reach his eyes.

❅

The longer you look at it, the worse the feeling gets.  Black and scrawled in wobbling lines, jagged and dark in places where he’d gone over a line a few times, you just… feel like you’ve seen it all before. It’s a smokey, tainted memory, far-off and obscured no matter how you squint your eyes.

Why do you remember it? Why does the sight of it crawl like dread under your skin and wilt? Sure, you went to school with Taehyun, but you don’t really think recognizing his handwriting should feel like this. Who even pays attention to the handwriting of somebody you interacted with once or twice, anyway?

God. You are dramatic. You kick your legs out of the comforter, swelteringly thick and quilted with a gaudy winter pattern of reds and browns and whites, and fold up the paper to place it on the darkwood bedside table.

The click of you flicking the white switch on echoes off the bathroom’s tiled walls. You reach for your toothbrush on the counter, and then the world goes dark around you.

You freeze, eyes frantically blinking and straining against the blackness to adjust. The power had gone out. There’s a few beats of you stricken in place, toothbrush in hand, thrown for a loop.

Then, the whole cabin goes out as the power to the heater dies, too. You swear. 

Your journey down the hallway is a stumbling of legs and the grooves of the wood-paneled walls against your fingertips. It’s the pitch black of night out here, too. The only thing you can see is the static that fills up the gaps when it’s dark. “Taehyun?” you say. Is he asleep already? You don’t even know where the room he’d taken for the night is, relative to where you are now.

Nothing answers you for a few moments, and then from an opening door, light floods like a miracle. The shape of him, the light from his phone’s flashlight just enough to dimly illuminate his features, comforts you. His hair is ruffled, like he’d just drug himself from bed.

“Power went out,” he says. It’s awfully loud, now that you two are the only sounds in here. 

“Yeah, I think I just had a little heart attack. I was up brushing my teeth.” Why hadn’t you thought to use your phone’s light? “The heater… We’re gonna freeze to death. Do you think they have a generator, or something? The fireplace doesn’t really do much…”

He features glow in as he moves the phone. “Mine didn’t. It’s fine, my room’s got a fireplace in it. We can close the door and get it warm in there.”

“Better than nothing,” you say, shrugging and following him in.

You plop on his bed, the surface of it cold and plush, while he works on kindling a fire. “This is, like, nowhere near where I thought I’d be for vacation.”

He readjusts the logs, dry and perfect for burning, into a point. Poking and prodding, Taehyun says, “Not having fun?”

You snort at the dry and flat delivery. “Friends haven’t even gotten back to me, I’m snowed in, and I’m locked in here with a total stranger.” You draw out the last word as a joke, your smile painting the tone playful, but it’s the truth. You don’t know Taehyun one bit. It’s just as strange and unpredictable as the other things on the list of things that have gone awry. “I guess I had a good dinner, so I can’t be complaining too much.”

Curling up to his full height, he takes a knee and settles into the bed beside you. “Make some room for this stranger, won’t you? We should probably try to use our body heat.”

Laughing, you go to say something to rift off his joke. It dies in your throat when he doesn’t join you. In an awkward sort of panic, you wince and say, “Yeah, it’s cold as hell. We’re gonna freeze to death in our sleep.”

And, ridiculously, you crawl under the covers. You don’t know why you do it; maybe it’s because he’s completely serious and watching you, or maybe because it’s true that you might actually get so cold in your sleep that you die if you don’t. Either way, you do. You don’t know which way to settle: facing him or with your back turned to him. Both are strange, but which is stranger?

Facing him, you decide that turning your back to him just doesn’t settle in your soul right.

“Weird night,” he says, sliding himself under the blanket’s covering. The same blanket that you lay in. “But…” he says, eyes flickering over you laid there. He looks as though he’s going to say something else, but he decides against it. “Good night.”

He does you a favor and turns his back to you.

❅

Night still holds the world in its claws when your eyes flutter open.

You shift to try and find that perfect position that’ll lull you back into sleep, slipping your legs over the sheets and shifting your cheek against your arm and wiggling your hips against the solid pressure behind you.

The pressure behind you. Stilling, your eyes fly open.

The weight of Taehyun behind you, his chest rising and falling, and the warmth of him, pierce through sleep’s haze like a white-hot knife. You’re all the way on his side of the bed, pressing your bottom into him. Shame creeps its wicked way from your chest and then out through your skin, blazing the skin of your cheeks. You push up on an elbow to scoot back to your side of the bed as slow and covertly as you can manage.

Fingers like teeth, biting the skin of your waist, stop you. Your heart jumps.

“Don’t move.” Taehyun’s breath and words curl out over the juncture of your neck like a chill. He lets you sit in that for a moment, your heart thumping like a frightened bird in a cage, before he says, “It’s weird. Weird that when I suggested you sleep in my bed, you looked so nervous. But, look where you are now.”

Your voice comes out strangled. “I’m sorry.”

When his palm slides down from your waist to brush over your belly, you begin to think that it’s not an apology that he wants. Your stomach does untamed dips and rolls. It’d been the cold that you were afraid of, but now it’s the blistering heat that blooms where his touch goes that grips you. 

“That didn’t take very long.”  Like a trail of growing, raging fire, he takes that hand and brings it down the lengths of your body. Over your hip, and then down the supple curve of your ass, and then down the back of your thighs, where he toys with the notion of slipping it between the seam there. “It never did take much for you to give those men your body. Give them what was mine. Don’t worry, I’ll make it right. I’ll make you right.”

Your mind turns over itself, a thousand stray, blinding thoughts bursting at the seams and all asking for your attention. You don’t know which to start with; you don’t have the slightest clue what he means. Asking any of them out loud seems absurd, and the notion crumbles to dust when he brings his arm down your front to cup your heat.

“Face in the bed, ass up.” He commands it in your ear like ice: absolute and biting. “It’s how you like it, isn’t it?”

Doggy is how you like it. You don’t know how Taehyun would know that. What you do know, though, is the way the simple words kindle hungry fire in your cunt. Dragging yourself from the heat of the mattress in a bleary, glazed-over mess of limbs, you paint yourself into an obscene picture: your cheek presses into the mattress, blazing with disbelief, your eyes wide and gone and the mess of your hair obscuring them, and your back the delicate arch of sex and sinfulness as you display your ass high in the air for him.

When you look at him to see how he likes it, you don’t find the man that you saw in the grocery store, nor the man that you let into your cabin. The look you find, vacant and overflowing with an untamed hunger, raises the hair on your skin. It’s off. 

“Taehyun,” you say. It’s really just to speak—you don’t have words. 

He runs a hand down the curve of your back. His voice comes from behind you, now. “This should’ve been just mine. But you never did look my way, did you?” Your body jumps when his hands find your hips and the fabric in the way of your skin there. Hooking his thumbs under both the waistband of your bottoms and your panties, he drags them down your thighs in a slow crawl. Each inch of blazing skin bared to the air tingles against the cold and under his gaze as you feel his eyes eat it up. 

That’s what his eyes do: they eat and they eat, taking up the space around them like ever-hungry blackholes until there is nothing but their absence of light and their heaviness. That was the pull you remember in the store—a force like gravity beckoning a perverse finger at you and leaving you nowhere to go but toward him.

He pulls the fabric until it’s bunched at your knees. Prodding a finger, just the very end of it, at your hole. You flutter around it, belly turning. “Why didn’t you look my way?” he asks. The rustling of him working on his pants has you twitching and shifting hot against the covers. 

“I don’t know what you mean.” You’re only able to choke out the words, heart jumping up into your throat as he takes his hand up your back, pins and needles following his path and pushes your head into the mattress by the back of the neck.

Breath hot over your cheek, he says, “Is this what you want? To be fucked like an animal?” You know he means the position. Your mouth goes dry. “You’re better than that. But, if it’s what you like, I’ll fuck you like it.”

You have a thought. It’s fleeting and fuzzy like the rest of your mind, but you catch it just long enough to turn it over once. When you’d seen Taehyun, you were struck by how he looked more like the kind of guy you might go after than the lanky, off-putting one you remember. And, now he’s set on how you like to get fucked.

The tip of his cock at your entrance sends the thought to smoke and the aftermath clogs your cognitive function. Your mouth falls open as he presses some inches in, slow and enriching. But then he pulls the slight length out to collect some slick and tap his cockhead to your clit. You jolt against the sheets.

When he slides back in this time, he makes sure to brush your hair out of your face to watch every last inch of you taking him reflected in the furrowing of your brows and the glassiness of your eyes and the pink of your cheeks.

He stills when he reaches the hilt, his hips flush to your ass, his shadow falling over you as he leans to bring his ear to your mouth. “You should’ve looked my way. Things could’ve been so different. It’s okay—I’ll make you realize. I know who you really are. I’ll wash this all away and clean you up and make you good again.”

He doesn’t leave space for words or thought. Not enough for you to taste the rust like rot over his iron words. Planting his heels on the bed and shoving your face further into the bed, he starts his hips in a rhythm that has your breaths stuttering and achy wines clawing out from the prison of your chest. He does not move precisely, nor is the bucking of his hips pointed, but it’s a crashing sort of ruin. It doesn’t matter if he finds that spot inside of you. He’s going to consume your every sense: he steals the taste in your mouth and replaces it with himself, steals your hearing with his pants and grunts, steals your sight as his cock twists your insides up, and steals your ability to feel anything but him. He steals your breath, too. Just as a wicked little souvenir. 

“Hhh—fuck, Taehyun, holy shit,” you say. A procession of crude and mewled cries come tumbling out your mouth after your words. No matter now you filter your sounds to try and maintain your decency, he just drags them from you anyway. 

Bringing his hand up to splay his hand over the entirety of the back of your head rather than the delicate back of your neck, he grits out, “Filthy-fucking-mouth.” He punctuates the words with a hollow smack of his skin against your ass. It’s the sound of sex incarnate—your skin burns hearing it clashing against the rest of your debased sounds. “And it’s just for me, now. Isn’t that fucking great? None of those vile pigs are gonna touch what’s mine again. Not after this. You—” His voice tightens when a certain spot he nudges in your cunt sends it clinging to him and sucking him back in at every return. “You were really testing the limits to my patience. Do you know that?” He drags his hand over your face, smearing obscenity over you with just his tainted touch. “Of course you fucking don’t. You don’t notice shit. It’s why you let this world walk all over you. It’s why you need me.”

As hard and fast as he fucks you, he doesn’t exchange full strokes for it. He pulls completely out of you each time he snaps his hips back, and then meets your ass in burning collisions when he slips his cock right back into you. You struggle for breath, trying to feed your oxygen-starved brain to contend with his snarled preaching. Never once do you catch a full chest of air, though. It turns your thoughts liquid, stupid and simple. “Taehyun—Taehyun,” you say, throat tight. The sheets are stifling against your clammy skin, and the hair around your neck is damp. You take fistfuls of the bunches fabric and his other hand on your hip to ground yourself. 

You are beyond grounding. All that floats in your head, one bare thought, is the beginnings of terrifying tightness in your lower belly. Only the sharpest things shove through the shadow permeating your mind. Nip. Bite. He drags his teeth over the soft curves of your shoulders and the expanse of your back. Anywhere he can reach, really. His mouth paints you in aching splotches—the kind that will speak of him should anybody other see your body. The kind that speaks already of who they belong to. You eyes and throat burn.

Taehyun brings that hand he’d been molding into the fat of your hip and curls the muscle-corder forearm across both of your hip bones. A bar. A cage. His solid chest works similarly as he blankets himself over you, speaking into your wild tousle of hair. “Fuck–Gonna cum now.” The friction of his cock against your walls becomes something more unpredictable. The tightening of that knot, just on the verge of a snap that might reverberate through you and crush you into nothing more than bitten flesh and eroded virtue, sits on the horizon. It’s a terrifying thing to be rushing toward. “A—and then they’ll realize that you’re mine. They’ll never put their goddamn hands on you again. Not when your body will have me written all over it.” You can hear the tightness of his gritted jaw, the words seething like black, festering corruption. They fall over your skin and taint you, too. No longer do you shake and tremble against him with innocent little squeaks. Gilt with his words as he speaks them, your body stiffens and your cries go hoarse and pitiful. You try not to think about how you sound. “Isn’t it so good? We’re perfect together. You’re perfect underneath me. Do you know how many—how many times I fucked my fist thinking about you like this? All I ever wanted was for you to realize that we are so much better than the rest of them. It’s always meant to be us. Why did you let them touch you? Dirty your skin?”

All you manage is a heaved cry. He pins you to the mattress and begins fucking you into it. In the black of your eyelids, you watch purity go to dust.

“Take my load, baby. Stay still,” he says. His voice goes soft, like whispers. Like he’s gotten everything he’s wanted, now. 

You squirm beneath the weight of him, hips reining against the arm he holds you there by the hips with. Alarm bells ring, booming and thunderous, but in this state of mind, they sound like the music of climax. To the beat of the bells and his hips, blazing through your reddened bottom and your utter inability to breathe, you go tumbling toward that terrifying release. 

Taehyun’s steadfast pace stutters. “It’s okay,” he tells you, clearing your clammy face of hair once more. His face is right in yours, his eyes heavy and consumptive. “Just let it happen. I’m gonna breed you up, and then it’ll be forever. We’ll be forever. Can’t let you get away again. Not when I’ve got you now. I need you to take it. Can you do that for me?”

Managing one last mhm, all your sounds catch in your throat. You stop meeting halfway, muscles twisting and turning and raging against the profound, terrible wash of it. Eyes flying open, your cunt clings to him, insides fluttering and rippling in a way that begins delightfully, but toes the line of dreadful as his cock continues to tighten them further. Lightning strikes from your core, crawling and crackling from it. It moves your thighs, convulsing them in tandem with the same release wreaking havoc in your stomach.

Cursing low in your ear, he fucks you frantically, fingers planted on your hips. His cock twitches against you a few times, and then the arm he’s supporting himself on collapses down to the elbow and he’s pinning you and shooting white-hot cum right into you. Your shoulder takes the imprint of his cheek as he nips the shoulder he hangs over. His hips twitch, rolling to ride out his high with deep, chesty groans, and then jumping up to spurt a little bit more into you. His panted breaths fall against your skin like fire. 

You blink bleariness away from your eyes. For a few long minutes, that’s all you do. Your chest races so much so that you feel the pulse in your neck and the thumping of it where it rests. Your insides are liquid and intangible, blood slow just as slow as your thoughts.

When reality seeps back through your veins, though, Taehyun’s tugging his chest from your sweaty meeting of bodies. His fingers dig right into the reddened skin where his hips had abused your bottom to hold you open. To view you, and the slow oozing of his seed from your hole. The weight of his gaze sends you fluttering. With the movement of your hole, more of the hot and thickness comes seeping out, slow like molten passion down the shape of your slit and then over your clit and then dripping down onto the bed from you.

The feel of it has you swallowing hard. Holy shit, you are stupid. So painfully stupid. So, you’re just letting men cum inside while you’re not on birth control, now? Ones that you haven’t seen since school? Ones that talk like… that?

Tapping your thigh and pressing a hot kiss to your outer hip, Taehyun says, “I’m gonna go check the breakers. You take it easy here for a second.”

Whiplashed, you nod. There goes that pristine, normal mask again. You watch him go, heaving yourself up from the nasty bedding to be greeted by the musk of sex humid in the air. You think a thousand little thoughts, watching the wall as you go far away in your mind.

Everything that he said… That was not just a little weird, or a little kinky. It was bone-chilling. The taste in your mouth, still tainted by him, sours.

You pull out your phone. Pressing it to your ear, your blood runs sluggish still. 

The cabin owner’s voice comes staticky through the speakers, asking you what you need help with. You ask about the power outage and where the breaker might be, debriefing him on Taehyun ending up here because he wasn’t able to make it to his own cabin, and how you think that the storm outside might be why the power’s gone out.

The cabin owner’s answer makes you pale.

It’s not a crashing realization. Not a thundering storm reaching its climax, nor a firework plasma and explosive at its center but flashy as it sparkles, nor a searing knife to the gut. It’s a slow, dreadful feeling, sinking to the depths of the ocean with a weight around your ankle and the realization that there is no getting back to the surface. It is drowning with water in your lungs, knowing that you swallowed that water down. 

You know why you recognize that hand writing, and you know why Taehyun was missing his glasses, and you know why he had your number even though you have no connections, and you know why he was able to find your cabin by your car despite never having seen it, and you know why your friends never made it here. He, long and spindly legged, the spider, did not even panic when you grazed by the hints toward what he really was. You were all ready in his web, anyway. All he had to do was wait it out and watch you, caught, oblivious, squirm. And, squirm you did.

“What other cabin?” 

﹙⋞ ﹚... back to the 𝓂asterlist

✎୭ ashlynn's note AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! i’m sorry this one came out later, i had to make that ending tie up well.

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NUMBER ONE GIRL

29. we're friends

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notes:

YN was jealous about being alone with minho bc she didn't want him to bring up yeonjun and have another argument with him

yeonjun was 100% giggling and smiling like a lovesick fool

minho was indeed jealous

taglist: (33/50)

@estella-novella @poetryforthesad @lisaswifey @angelzforu @ihrtlix @gloriousqueenking @domfikeluva @circus-of-thoughts @conwunder @miniature-tragedy @jeonginplsholdmyhand @sh0dor1 @yourenzoo @tkshairband @realrintaro @castingjinx @amara-mars