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junovrsmp4 · 1 day ago

Text

one of the girls

part 2. the escalation

read part 1. here

Chris Sturniolo was bad news. You knew it, every girl within a 100 mile radius knew it. Your own brother had warned you to stay away from him, despite being his best friend. That didn’t stop you from wanting him though.

pairing: chris x reader

pt.2 summary:

warnings: ABSOLUTE FILTH, very very plot heavy, rough sex, oral, choking, over-stimulation, mild bdsm, p in v, degradation, slight age gap, zero communication, angst

word count: 6.9K (lmao i think this is going to be a thing)

author's note: so, i found out as i was writing this that @worldlxvlys has a fic with a very similar premise because its inspired by the same song, check it out if u havent already, its so fucking good

Sex with Chris became frequent after that night at the party.

It was a rush, like being swept up in a storm, each moment together like a collision between two giant forces. Rough, loud, painful, and so, so satisfying.

You were currently on your knees, face pressed against the coarse carpet that covered the floor of your bedroom and your ass high in the air, being pounded by the guy who had taken up significant space in your life over the years.

Thank the lucky stars you were home alone tonight, because there would have been no doubt about what was happening in your room.

“Fuck, fuck-” Chris groans, and you feel the way he grips your ass and spreads you apart, likely to watch his own dick moving in and out of your stretched-out pussy. “You’re always so fucking tight-” he says, punctuating his words with hard thrusts.

All you can do is moan loudly against the carpet, your mouth agape as you squeeze around his unrelenting thrusts. You can’t even tell how long it goes, only that he makes you cum, over and over, until he eventually chases his own release.

The clean-up that followed the sex was always quick but efficient, always done in silence. And once Chris was done with that, he always left with a quick kiss and pat to the cheek.

Sex with Chris hurt in the best way possible, and left you craving for more. And he never kept you waiting for long. You don’t think too hard about all the other places he must be getting sex, all you focus on is the fact that he always comes to you eventually, even if you don’t call for him.

-------------------------------------

“Chris-” you whine against his mouth as he thrusts up into you, the head of his dick ramming into that spongy bundle of nerves inside you that whites out your vision and has you gasping for air. Your hands find purchase on his shoulders, nails digging into the fabric of his t-shirt, stretching it as you pull, pull, pull, while he pushes, pushes, pushes into you, his lips sliding over your cheek, barely audible groans escaping him as he holds you back against the counter in this random bathroom at this random house party.

The noise outside the bathroom is loud enough to drown out the sounds of Chris fucking you, devouring you, and your head thrums from the bass, the sensation in your body reduced to just that spot inside you, your lower back, where the edge of the counter digs into your skin, likely leaving bruises, and your hips, where Chris’ hands grab and knead at the flesh as he drags you down onto his cock while thrusting up into you, over and over and over.

If anyone noticed how you limped for the rest of the night, no one pointed it out.

-------------------------------------

Another party, another chase. You’d spent a good hour and a half keeping Chris on his toes as you trailed from room to room, flirting with other guys and getting increasingly tipsy. At least, that’s what you’d thought, until you spotted him leaning over some girl, trailing his fingers up her thigh.

You’d decided to just grab the guy closest to you, quickly ask for his name before demanding that you kiss him, and he does, does it with fervor as he runs his hands all over you, trailing them up over the back of your thighs before kneading your ass cheeks over your jeans, pulling you close. Through the corner of your eye, you see Chris, now kissing the girl he had been talking to, except his eyes are locked onto yours.

You watch the corner of his lips lift slightly, and you feel like you keep losing this game you created in your head.

Ten minutes later, Chris has you on your knees on the bathroom floor, the cold tiles digging into your skin as he shoves his dick into your willing, open mouth. He uses you, makes you choke and gag on it, tears streaming down your face and spit trailing down your chin as he thrusts it in and out of you.

Another ten minutes, before he comes down your throat and shoves you off his cock, leaving you gasping for air.

He doesn’t say a word as he extends his leg forward, pressing the toe of his shoe against your clothed cunt, rubbing it against your jeans.

You know what he wants. So you give it to him.

You rut against his shoe, clawing at his leg as you sob and beg for more.

“What was that?” he asks with a mocking tone. “You want to get fucked?”

You nod furiously, forehead pressed against his thigh.

“Go ask that guy you were all over earlier.”

That was the first night you’d kissed a guy that wasn’t Chris, and in front of him too. It was also the first night he’d left you without making you cum.

-------------------------------------

Chris had one hand clamped tightly over your mouth, while the other was trapped between you, furiously stroking over his dick while he rutted against your stomach.

You’d barely had the time to process it at the time, but Chris had climbed into your room through the open window and proceeded to pin you down on your bed and kiss you fiercely.

That was a few hours ago. Since then he had fucked you twice, once on your back, before he’d flipped you over and fucked you on your knees, your face pushed into your duvet and his hand still clamped over your mouth to make sure you didn’t get too loud.

“You’re so good, you always take it so well.”

“Such a good girl for me, you like that don’t you?”

“You’re mine, yeah? Tell me. Only mine.”

“One more, you can take one more right?”

And you did take more, over and over and over again. Because it felt good. Only because it felt so good, despite the growing pang in your chest that became stronger every time Chris left.

-------------------------------------

Chris was…an enigma.

Despite the casual nature of your ‘relationship’, Chris tended to say and do things that confused you. And perhaps that was what got so many girls hooked onto him. The way he treated you like you were all his, all that he wanted, even though his womanizing nature was well-known.

At first, it seemed like a calculated move on his part, like he knew exactly what he was implying with his words and actions, a vague promise for more, even when both he and his girls knew there was no chance of it happening.

The more time you spent with him however, the more clear it became that Chris seemed almost sincere most of the time. Or maybe that was the delusional part of you, hoping he might be?

Is this what all the other girls he’s with go through? A constant spiral of wondering what was real and wasn’t, with their relationship with Chris?

A soft snore pulls you out of your thoughts and back to reality, where Chris, the man who usually doesn’t stay long once he’s done the deed, was now sleeping under your covers, one arm slung across your middle, while you leaned against your pillows.

It was surreal, seeing him like this, looking the most vulnerable you’ve ever seen him. You’d expected him to help clean you up and leave as soon as he’d fucked you, but instead, he’d stayed, waited for you to take a quick shower, before he too snuck into your bathroom to clean up and eventually crawled back under your covers.

It wasn’t the first time he’d stayed, but you still find yourself asking-

“What are you doing?”

“Shh, I’m tired, let’s sleep for a bit,” he mumbles, eyes already closed, one arm hanging off the edge of your bed, while the other pulls you close.

“Isn’t this like, against your rule or something?” you ask, trying to fight back the urge to cuddle up against him and run your fingers through his hair. It looked so soft, fanning against your pillow, the moonlight creating a slight halo around him.

He looked beautiful.

“Do you do this with your other girls?” Another question you’d asked before, the first time he’d slept over.

All he does is hum dismissively in response, just like last time.

You settle down under the covers, relishing in the warmth of Chris’ body, exhaustion from your earlier activities settling into your bones as the fresh scent of your own body wash wafting off of both of your skins sends you off into a dreamless sleep.

Hours later, just before sunrise, you’re startled awake by the sound of a branch hitting your window. It was still dark, but there was the noticeable lack of a body next to you, and the warmth that was quickly fading.

That was the one of the rare nights when Chris had stayed the night. And just like always, he left without a trace, the only reminder of his presence being the soreness between your legs and used condoms and tissues in the waste basket under your desk.

-------------------------------------

You knew this was getting out of hand.

Things were only escalating with Chris. What had started out as an experiment of sorts, a game, one that barely had rules to begin with, was starting to feel like a trap. The way he was attentive and disinterested in equal measure, the way he was so attuned to your pleasure and somehow still came across as a selfish jerk who only cared for his own, the way he always, always made it hurt in just the right way…it was almost degrading how exhilarated it made you feel.

You hadn’t accounted for how addictive Chris would become.

Speaking of addiction, you were currently experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

You pull out your phone and scroll through the last few texts you’d exchanged with Chris.

> Can i come over?

> uh..is everything okay?

> Yeah.

> Why?

> u usually just.. show up lol, why’re u asking this time?

> Heard you were prepping for college apps

> yeah

> Busy?

> kinda? u can still come over if u want..

> it’s been a while

> Have you been counting the days since we last fucked? Lol

> shut up ohmygod

> r u coming over or not?

> Yeah, gimme a few.

> okay

That had been a week ago. Chris had never showed up.

You had tried your best to ignore how hurt you’d felt. You’d instead just focused on your applications, working on your essays and filling out endless forms. You’d even gone out with your friends to take your mind off of everything, attempted to hook up with another older guy at a bar, but he’d turned out to be much older, and married at that, which had put you in an even more sour mood than before. You’d promptly decided to go back home then.

Your shitty mood must have been really obvious, because your brother, who was back home for break from college, showed up at your bedroom door, leaning against the frame as he watched you do your nightly skincare routine. He’d seen the way you’d walked up to your room, scowl so deep with a faraway look in your eyes.

“Did something happen at the bar?” he asked, stepping into your room and closing the door to make sure your parents wouldn’t overhear your conversation.

You pause, watching him through your vanity mirror as he flops onto your bed, displacing your carefully placed pillows and plushies, sending one of them tumbling to the ground.

A deep inhale.

“No, nothing happened,” you say with a deep sigh. “Well, there was this one guy-”

“Fucking hell, what’d he do?” your brother interrupts.

“Relax, nothing happened. He was flirting with me, but turns out he was married. Made me feel icky so I left right after.”

“Oh, okay. What a loser.”

“I know, right?”

You and your brother enjoy the special kind of comfortable silence that only being in each other’s company provided.

“You’ve been kind of off lately,” he finally says. “You wanna, um… you wanna talk about it?”

So much for comfortable silence.

After a few long seconds, you reply. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You’re kind of a shit liar, kid.”

You ignore him, focusing instead on smoothing some oil into your hair before braiding it. Behind you, your brother sighs, shifting on your bed. Incrementally, his sighs get louder, and he rolls back and forth on your bed, rustling up the covers and making an even bigger mess than before.

“Stop that, will you?” you snap at him, glowering at him through your mirror.

“I’m bored.”

“Go be bored anywhere else.”

“Not leaving until you tell me what’s been bothering you.”

“Get out.”

“Nuhuh.”

“You’re so annoying, oh my fucking god- stop messing up my bed!” you yell, chucking your hairbrush at him. You let out a satisfied chuckle when you hear a yelp.

Silence.

“Want to go on a drive? Like we used to?”

You turn to face your brother who is now sitting up on your bed, legs crossed as he picks at one of our plushies. When your don’t answer right away, he looks up at you, giving you a conspiratorial grin.

“Let’s sneak out and get food,” he whispers, eyes wide and eyebrows raised with a wolfish smile.

It makes you laugh, the idea of sneaking out as a fully grown adult with your older adult brother, and you won’t know until much later, but your brother had let out a sigh of relief at seeing you relax a bit.

Abandoning your plans to head to bed, you and your brother quietly make your way downstairs, grab your jackets and head out in his car, and everything felt simple again. The two of you used to do this a lot more often when he was still in school. Every time you seemed stressed, he would suggest an impromptu late night drive around the town, making stops at either a gas station or one of the many restaurants near you to get a late night snack.

You sat, once again in comfortable silence, listening to a song you didn’t recognize softly playing through the car radio, as the two of you dug into the lamb shawarmas you’d decided to get as tonight’s late night snack.

“Oh, this shit’s so fucking good,” your brother groaned through a big, messy bite, making you laugh and gag at the same time, and you shove at his shoulder, exclaiming about how gross he was being, before the two of you just end up shoving at each other and giggling like little kids.

You felt good. Normal.

“You know you can talk to me about anything right,” he says, sauce still smeared across his lip and cheek.

“I know, I know,” you say, as you shove a few napkins into his face.

“Unless it’s about sex. I don’t wanna hear about you fucking some dude. Or girl, I don’t care.”

“Wow, okay.”

“But if what’s got you down- and don’t lie, I know something’s up- has something to do with some guy- or girl, like I said, I don’t care- you’ll tell me if it gets too bad right?”

“Define ‘too bad’…,” you say, picking at the wrapper on your now half-eaten shawarma.

“Don’t want you to get hurt, kid, that’s all.”

You look up at your brother, who is looking straight ahead, still chowing on his food. You feel overwhelmed suddenly, and everything from the past week catches up to you.

The stress from wondering if you’ll get into college, the doubt from figuring out if college was even what you wanted to do, and then there was Chris, and oh, how could you tell your brother about any of that? He would absolutely flip, and you feel so ashamed.

You settle on telling him it’s just the stress of college applications.

“Right,” he says, drawing out the word. “Makes sense, makes sense. You know, if you need help with any of it, just let me know yeah?”

You weren’t going to ask him for help. You nod anyway.

“Oh, by the way,” your brother turns to you, leaning against the car door with an excited gleam in his eyes. “Did you hear? The triplets are going to L.A.!”

“What.”

“Yeah! Apparently, their channel is really hitting it off, so they’re like prepping to move there, ‘cause that’s where all the youtubers and influencers are, right? More opportunities and things like that. Isn’t that cool? I’m excited for ‘em.”

Your brother goes back to blissfully munching on his food, leaving you shell shocked and dazed.

“Yeah…good for them.”

-------------------------------------

The next couple of days went by in a blur. You threw yourself into applications, now extending them into a job search to desperately keep yourself occupied. The initial plan had been to take a gap year after school, which is why you’d been so lax with your college prep. Some of your friends had already heard back from their dream schools and were already preparing to move to different places for the upcoming academic year, some were already working, and you were just, in limbo. And you didn’t mind until now, until you’d realized that you’d end up getting left behind by everyone.

Even…Chris.

That asshole still hadn’t texted or called, and the only time you heard about him was through your brother when he’d vaguely mention about seeing the triplets when he went over to their house. You knew that you could just as well contact him, but pride and your hurt feelings kept you from doing so. Instead, you wallowed in shame and anger at having let this man leave you feeling so disoriented.

This wasn't the plan. The plan had been to hit it and quit it, see what the hype around Chris was all about but he’d managed to crawl under your skin, leave you wanting more.

Just as you’re about to work yourself into another spiral over the man, you hear a series of sharp taps against your bedroom window. You look up, startled, to find exactly the person you didn’t want to see right now.

“Since when do you lock your bedroom window?” you hear Chris ask, voice muffled through the glass.

You remain seated on your bed, leaning against your pillows, frozen, before you slowly pick your phone up from where you’d dropped it beside you, and pretend to mindlessly scroll through it.

“Let me in, babe, c’mon-”

A few more seconds go by, with Chris alternating between tapping your window and texting you to get your attention. Worried that he might end up waking the whole house, you finally make a move to open your window.

“I almost fell off that fucking tree waiting for you to-” Chris starts to say, but one look at your face has him stopping in his tracks.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”

You weren’t sure what he was seeing, but you could feel a knot building up in your throat, a slight tremor in your limbs. The last thing you wanted to do was cry in front of this man.

“What do you want, Chris?” you ask, sitting down on the edge of your bed, refusing to look at him, instead focusing on a loose thread on your sheets, picking at it while trying to get your breathing under control.

You feel him step closer to you, until he’s standing right in front of you, your face now level with his waist. Chris’ hand comes up to grab your chin, lifting your head up with a gentleness that surprises you.

“You mad at me, baby?” he asks with a soft smile, and it throws you off, makes you angry, because why the fuck did he have to go sounding like a boyfriend coming home to a girlfriend who’d gotten upset over something trivial?

You huff, rolling your eyes at him, which makes him grab your chin slightly harder.

“Don’t give me that attitude right now,” he says, voice dropping an octave. “Why wouldn’t you let me in?”

Your attempt at looking passive was failing, and anger takes over, making you glare daggers at him.

“Two weeks, Chris. Almost two weeks of radio silence, and what, you expect me to just be here waiting for with open arms? What the fuck is wrong with you?” you spit out, smacking his arm away from you, making him let you go.

“Oh come on,” he drawls out, body going half limp as he lets his head roll back. “I got busy! Didn’t think you’d be this mad, and- and, hold on- I didn’t expect you to be waiting for me, I just don’t get why you’re mad!”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Well yeah, but you already knew that, didn’t you,” he says with a cocky smile, hands reaching out to grab yours. “Stop being so upset, I’m here now, yeah?”

“You can’t just show up whenever it’s convenient for you and expect me to be okay with that. You made plans that night to come to me and just ghosted me! For weeks!”

He looks puzzled, like he genuinely doesn’t understand why you would be upset and that just makes you even more upset.

You feel like an afterthought to him. To a man who had taken up significant space in your life, you were just…nothing. And you can’t blame anyone but yourself for this situation you’re in because you knew **what you were getting into, you knew this was all it would be and yet…

“When were you going to tell me you were leaving?”

Chris freezes up, his fingers that were running up and down your arms stilling against your elbows.

After a brief pause, he sighs, dropping to his knees in front of you and burrowing his head into your lap, bringing your hands up around his shoulders.

“How’d you find out?” he asks, voice muffled against your t-shirt. “Wait, let me guess. Your big-mouth brother?”

That makes you chuckle. “Yeah, he mentioned it a few nights ago.”

“I wasn’t lying, I’ve been busy preparing to leave. Nick is the one working on the logistics mostly, but yeah…”

“You could’ve said something,” you whisper, hand coming up to hover over Chris’ head. It seems like Chris senses your hesitation, because he grabs your hand and places it on his head, which you take as permission to run your fingers through the soft strands, combing through the slight knots that were close to his nape and gently smoothing it out.

“We weren’t gonna tell anyone until we had everything figured out.”

“So how did my brother find out?”

“Stupid Matt probably mentioned it when he came over.”

In a distant part of your mind, you think about how weird this all is, having Chris like this, soft and vulnerable, so unlike his usual domineering self. You’re still upset with him, but it feels nice, having this Chris.

“I’m still mad at you.”

“I know. I didn’t wanna slip up and end up telling you, which is why I stayed away for a bit.”

“You still could’ve texted, told me something came up.”

“I know,” he whines. “Would you believe me if I said I did mean to text you but every time I thought about it, something else would come up and eventually I just…forgot.”

“Right. You forgot.”

The sharp pain in your chest was starting to feel normal in conjecture with Chris at this point. Of course he just forgot to text you, because that’s how insignificant you were to him.

You pull your hand away from his hair and gently try to move out from under him.

“When are you leaving?” you ask, sitting at your desk to put some physical distance between the two of you, even though your body was screaming to just fall into his arms.

Chris looks at you with an expression you can’t read, before moving to sit on your floor and lean against your bed frame, leaning his elbows over his knees.

“End of the week.”

“That’s two days away.”

He hums, letting his head drop back against your bed.

“Guess your roster of girls are going to have to find a new way to occupy their time, huh?” you say in hopes of lightening the mood.

It undoubtedly does the opposite.

Chris makes a noise that sounds somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. He lifts his head back up and fixes you with a gaze that makes you shiver, his eyes now cold and distant as he smirks up at you.

“One last fuck before I leave? You can find another guy after that, but I doubt anyone here is gonna be anywhere near as good as me,” he says as he runs his fingers through his hair.

And that’s how you find yourself under Chris, wrists caught in his hands and held up above your head as he fucks into you.

It’s different this time.

He watches you intently, and it makes you uncomfortable, his unrelenting gaze, but your focus is split between that and the fact that he’s fucking you with deep, slow drags of his cock against your inner walls. He’d eaten you out right before, worked you up and left you wet and sloppy, close to squirting before pushing into you, eyes locked onto your face as he slowly stretched you out.

You could feel it build up inside you, the pressure to release, but he was going slower than usual, focusing on fewer but deeper thrusts that left you biting into your lip to keep you from crying out loud.

“Tell me, who’s gonna fuck you like this, hm?” Chris asks, his free hand coming up to wrap around your throat. “Tell me.”

You gasp, your pussy clenching around him as he tightens his grip around your throat.

“No one,” you breathe out, voice low and rough from your throat being squeezed. “No one, no one else, please-”

“Yeah? You’re mine, aren’t you?”

You nod against his grip, near sobbing at this point, begging for him to just fuck you harder and let you cum.

“Say it. Say the words”

“I’m yours, I’m yours, please- please fuck me harder, please-”

Chris lets go of your wrists, but you keep them where they were, and he lets out a satisfied hum which has you preening.

Chris sits up, his hands moving to grab your hips, and you brace yourself to be fucked hard, but Chris keeps up with the slow pace still, as he pulls you onto his lap, making you cry out in frustration, a fresh set of pleas falling from your lips in hopes of urging him to just take from you like he usually does.

You watch through blurry, tear-filled vision as Chris runs his hands up your stomach, palming at your breasts while he bucks up into you.

“Chris, please…”

He ignores you, fingers now drawing invisible lines across the planes and curves of your body, thumbs dipping into the crease between your cunt and thighs, feeling you all over while he watches you with his intense blue eyes.

You almost miss it, what with the blood rushing in your ears and your own moans, but you hear Chris whisper, “I’m going to miss this.”

And that’s what sends you over the edge, the prospect of Chris missing you, even though a rational part of you knows it’s probably just the sex, just this, your warm body under his to be used by him.

Still, it makes you cum harder than you ever have before, leaves you sobbing and almost screaming. Chris holds down your body, your hips thrashing wildly as your cunt leaks and squeezes rhythmically around him, which sets him off and makes him come inside you.

Everything after that follows as usual. He rolls off of you, methodically cleans the both of you off, discards the used condoms and tissues, and tells you he’s leaving.

You watch as he makes his way to your window, back tense as he runs his fingers through his mussed up hair.

“Bye,” you whisper, trying to ignore the fact that it will be a while until you see him again in person. Months, maybe a year, instead of just a week and a half.

Chris turns then, and you can’t make out his expression in the dark, with his back lit by the moonlight.

You watch, breath catching in your throat as he makes his way back to you, hesitating for the first few steps.

He leans over you, knees bent awkwardly as he angles himself to your height. His hands come up to rest over your cheeks, thumbs rubbing across them, before he completely takes you by surprise with a final kiss.

It’s not the kiss itself that catches you off-guard, but the gentleness and timing of it. You and Chris have kissed before, in fact, you’d done it every time he’d fucked you, but only during. Always during. Never after.

He nips at your bottom lip, licking into your mouth when you gasp, his fingers carding through your hair as he angles your head to deepen the kiss. Your hands clutch at the front of his shirt, stretching the fabric. The next few moments are just this, soft touches as you break apart and keeping going back in for more, quiet but heavy breathing in your dark room as you drink each other in.

You feel tears building up behind your closed eyelids, melting into his touch, and it’s almost funny how much this feels like you’re bidding farewell to a long-time, steady lover. One who wasn’t just a casual sex partner.

It makes you laugh, a wet sound that barely covers up the sob that follows it, and Chris chuckles too, leaning his forehead against yours.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he asks to no one in particular.

“I don’t know, Chris,” you answer anyway, your fingers playing with the chain on his neck. “You tell me.”

One more kiss, pressed hard against your lips with a sigh, before he stands back up and makes his way back to your window.

“I’ll see you later,” he says without turning back.

And with that, he was gone.

That was the first and last night Chris had kissed you after sex. It was also the last night you’d see him before he left for L.A.

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You hadn't realized how big of a gap Chris would leave in your life.

Things kept changing, time kept moving, albeit slowly, but you were still waiting to catch up with everyone else.

You try to fill the void by hanging out with your friends, getting drunk and high, chasing phantoms of Chris at different parties, finding yourself pressed between bodies that were distinctly not his.

You dated. Like, actually tried. Chris had been in your life since you were sixteen, and you hadn’t sought out anyone for two years after that, but it was high time. You’d stayed loyal to a guy who wasn’t your boyfriend and maybe that had been your mistake. Maybe you should’ve pulled a page out of Chris’ book and just slept around like he did, maybe then you wouldn’t have felt so…lost right now.

But you hadn’t wanted anyone else. Not like you wanted him.

Still, you tried, but it was becoming increasingly clear that you had a pattern. The only guys you ended up actually talking to all happened to be older than you, friends, or friends of friends, of your brother. Subconsciously, you were probably seeking out for a proxy of Chris, some way to replace him in the best way you could.

Elijah had been sweet. He took you out on dates, bought you gifts, and was a real gentleman. Your brother had eventually caught on, and when you’d expected him to be mad, he’d actually approved, told you that Elijah was a good guy and that he trusted him to take care of you. That didn’t stop him from giving Elijah the shovel talk though.

It was good, for a while. Elijah was sweet, maybe too sweet. He was soft with his affection, and it made you feel undeserving.

You felt broken, for being unsatisfied with a man as amazing as him.

The breakup was rough. There were tears, both of you an absolute mess as you tried to explain why you were feeling the way you did without giving away too much, and to his credit, Elijah took it well. He was respectful, didn’t pry, and wished you the best.

“I’ve grown to care for you, a lot,” he’d said, holding your hands in his. “I want you to be happy, and if that’s not with me, I’ll just have to learn to live with it.”

You hadn’t realized how serious it had been for him.

You felt like a bitch.

Jason was…wild. He was loud and obnoxious in a fun way, and reminded you of a certain someone. The two of you had hooked up in the back of his car upon your second meeting at a bar, the first one being at your house when he’d come over with a bunch of other guys to help your brother move out and into his own apartment closer to the city.

It didn’t last long. He was not a good lay, and that was that.

-------------------------------------

Ray was amazing. You started talking to him a little after you’d decided to go to community college to get your life in track. You’d gotten accepted into a few colleges of your choice, but in the end, you still didn’t know what you really wanted to do, when the local community college’s brochure caught your eye, and you found some exciting writing and teaching courses.

Ray was supportive, knew what he wanted and got you thinking about what you wanted too. A great listener, and even greater in bed. He was a little emotionally distant sometimes, but even that he’d patiently talked to you about, explaining how he had a hard time expressing emotions in front of people.

You were still going strong, many months into talking and dating, and he had yet to do anything that put you off. He’d even come over to your house for dinner with your parents and brother, and everything had gone well.

Days were exciting again, especially with an amazing boyfriend who you seemed to match really well with. The two of you were amazing at communicating, especially because Ray was good at it, and he was influencing you in such a positive way. You were also sexually so, so compatible, and it just, worked.

Everything was going well.

Until one night, when you’re getting ready to go on a date with Ray, and you hear voices downstairs, loud excited exchanges. You figure it’s Ray and your brother just chatting it up before you have to leave, so you hurry up, fix your hair and put on your heels, before rushing downstairs to greet your man.

The sight that greets you has you stopping dead in your tracks.

“Oh.”

At the sound of your voice, all heads in the room turn toward you. Nick, Matt, and Chris had come back to visit their family, and had decided to stop by your place to see their best friend. Your parents and your brother were there too, and suddenly everyone is exclaiming about how great you look.

You feel disoriented, trying to keep your reaction normal as you brush off compliments from your parents, Nick and Matt. Your brother just rolls his eyes with an affectionate look, while Chris remains silent, his eyes raking over your figure.

“Well, you’re way too dressed up to just be hanging out with friends,” Matt comments eventually. “Date?”

Your mother answers for you. “Oh, she’s been seeing Ray! He’s such a nice boy.”

Your father grunts, muttering something under his breath but nodding all the same.

To anyone else, besides his brothers perhaps, Chris looked like the picture of impassive, but you’d learned to read his body language over the years.

He was pissed. You could tell.

Thing is, even after Chris had left, the two of you had kept in touch. You’d done your best to avoid watching the triplets’ videos, especially after you’d come across ones that featured Chris with different influencers, the prettiest girls you’d ever seen. You didn’t need to work yourself up over the fact that he was around all these beautiful people now. It didn’t matter anymore.

But avoiding the videos was different from avoiding the man himself. You couldn’t help it, texting him every now and then, asking about life in L.A. He always answered, even if sometimes it was days late. Neither of you brought up what had transpired on the last night he’d spent with you before he left, and neither of you talked about the casual sex that had preceded it.

It was an interesting development, talking to Chris like he was just another friend. He didn’t seem like he way trying too hard to maintain a certain facade, like he was trying to hide parts of him.

The two of you talked a lot more in the almost one year apart than you did in the two years you’d been in each other’s vicinity.

You’d conveniently left out the part about you dating Ray though, or any of the other guys, from all your conversations. You didn’t feel the need to. It’s not like Chris was talking about all the dates he was going on, and you were sure there were plenty of those back in L.A., so in the interest of keeping things friendly and casual and normal, you didn’t talk about your love life.

You announce to the room that you’re going to grab a drink from the kitchen, hoping to escape the chaos and wait for Ray in there.

Your parents retreat back to their room. You hear your brother and the triplets chat for a while before you hear Chris ask if there was any Pepsi in the house. You hear your brother offer to grab him one, but he politely says he’d just get it himself.

A few beats of silence, before you hear soft footsteps that get louder as they get closer to the kitchen.

“How long?” Chris asks, as he appears in the doorway of the kitchen.

“What?” you ask, hands gripping the counter as you watch him move closer to you.

“Ray. How long have you been seeing him?”

He pauses right in front of you, towering over you, as he waits for you to answer.

“It’ll be our six month anniversary in a couple of days,” you answer, looking down and choosing to focus on your own clothes, picking at a hem of your sleeve.

“Funny, you didn’t mention him in any of your texts.”

“Didn’t feel the need to,” you reply, turning your head to the side when you feel his face moving closer to yours. “Besides, it’s not like you were telling me about all the people you were dating back in L.A.”

“I wasn’t dating anyone.”

“Dating, fucking, whatever.”

Chris tenses at that, before stepping closer, hands caging you against the counter, and you catch the faint whiff of weed on his clothes.

“You look good,” he finally says, hand coming up to brush against the fabric of your dress where it was cut against your thigh.

“Thank you,” you mumble, wondering how no one had come in to see what’s taking either of you so long in the kitchen.

Just as you’re about to suggest that you both go back outside to sit with others, before you do something you regret, you hear the doorbell ring, and Ray’s voice calling out for you.

You jump, trying to get past Chris, but his hands stay where they are, palms on the counter as his head drops to your shoulder, mumbling something you couldn’t quite catch.

“What?”

“I missed you, baby. Couldn’t fuck anyone without thinking of you.”

And before you know it, he’s stepping away and backing out of the kitchen, his Pepsi forgotten on the counter.

You stay frozen, trying to process what happened. Ray eventually comes to you in the kitchen, greets you with a smile and a deep kiss, tells you how beautiful you look before whisking you away and into his car for your date.

And the whole time, all you can think about is Chris.

author’s note: idk how i feel about this one, it's plot heavy and angsty and i feel like idk idk if anyone's gonna like it but here (: likes, comments and reblogs r much appreciated <3

taglist 🩵 (comment on my pinned post to be added or removed):

@luverboychris @bigbeefybitch @liz-stxrn @slut4chriss @slut4mattsturnio1o @sturniolosgirl @coochiedestroyer1 @cutiepiess4l @kvtie44 @vschrissturn @hercigaretteblush @fwskullz @m4rriii @anabanana28 @sturniolosange1 @webbersturn @odeezier @johnniesrealwife @freshsturns @marlenafortuna @carolineheartsmatthew @incndescentglow @starniolosposts @urfavgirllyyyyy @mattsturniolosworld @lilyloveschris @sturniozo @lookingformyromeo @heartss4matthewq @lanasturniolo @zina25sworld @ezziewinchester @s-s-842 @sturnlova @whyarefictionalmennotreal @55sturn @cheetahmadi @sturniolowhore @cupidsword @sturnsblog @lovehoneygirll @breeloveschris @littlemisswhore @worldlxvlys @sturniolo04 @sturnioloco @littlemisswhore @pandacake128 @chrizznmetswife @spideylovin @sturnclouds

#junovrs writes #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #chris sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo smut #sturniolo x reader

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some-pers0n · 5 months ago

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Every once in a while I think about the ship I've been obsessed over for close to two years now and feel like I'm ascending to another plane of reality. Like sometimes you just encounter a ship that hits every single mark and is perfect in every regard and you're left stunned how something like that can even exist

#Anyways I'mma put the actual inane ramblings in the tags #Medic and Engie make me so ill every time I think about them for a while I feel like tearing into things and biting people and throwing up #How something like that can exist completely defies me #I don't know how something that perfect can exist #I'm typically a multi-shipper and while I still kinda am I honest to god don't really care to write other ships #Not cause they ain't good (they are pretty damn good) but because Engiemedic is just on another level #Like dammnnn!! that's why I've spent so long writing a fic about them!#I can't fathom it honestly how characters like that can exist #They're like a slightly warped reflection of themselves #They're both intelligent mentally ill lunatics with no morals whatsoever #The only thing is that Engie is marginally better at hiding it #If you go into headcanon territory than WHOO!! OHH DAMNNN #Like what gets me the most about Engiemedic is how they're so similar #They think and exist on the same wavelength #In tune with each other. Their neurons braided like wires #If I start talking about how the machine and the flesh are not opposites but rather one in the same we gonna be here all day #I just can't...believe the ship exists #Like man how does this happen #You want humour? Goofy wacky experiments and silliness of them violating several conventions #You want angst? Hell yeah they've got plenty of it #Fluff? Buddy I start wailing and sobbing if they accidentally brush hands while working on stuff #I could write about them for ages and not get bored they can fit in every circumstance #They make me SICK they make me CRAZY I love them so so much #They would do anything for each other #I look at what they have and I can feel like I understand what love is #I need to write more oneshots and minifics about them they're so flexiable and fun #Can't wait to do parallels with them in these upcoming chapters #Either way GODDDDD I love these two so much I could go on for hours about them #especially if I'm allowed to talk about headcanons #sp-rambles

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kanonavi · 8 months ago

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I am once again tagged by @radellama, thanks a bunch!

Last Song: Song of the Ancients / Fate, by Keiichi Okabe

Currently Watching: Still Trigun (1998), I am unfortunately too busy to watch much else (Though I do sometimes think about how much I want to rewatch TGCF season 2....)

Three Ships: Xiao/Venti, Feng Xin/Mu Qing, Minamoto Kou/Mitsuba Sousuke

Favorite Color: Still cobalt!

Currently Consuming: Nothing at the moment, last thing was some chai tea. Now I'm thinking about grilled cheese again tho...

First Ship: Leo/Takumi from Fire Emblem: Fates

Relationship Status: Unfortunately, no

Last Movie: I genuinely don't remember... It was either Spirited Away or a combined Megamind/How to Train Your Dragon movie night

Currently Working On: A lot of my current angst is actually over the fact that I'm too deep in the schoolwork trenches to actually work on any of my own personal creative projects. But, my other project besides the Genshin Poetry Gala fic that I've been working on for months now is a TGCF essay about how the main couple are representative of the story's main themes. They make my brain explode <3

Tagging: @hollyisanonymous, @rubberbandballqueen, @tempests-bards-and-birds, @sl33pyr3v3ri3, @stardustdiiving, @h4msanta

#tag game #I think I'm gonna just let tag game be its own tag now lol #I haven't actually been listening to much music for the past two days #I've been on more of a talking audio kick if anything at all #As for the ships aside from the obvious I ended up putting feng//qing because I cannot see myself writing hua//lian fic #Cuz the books have everything I need from them lmao #But for those two bozos? There's a reason why my roommate and I have spent hours talking about all the stupid gay shenanigans they could ha #And kou//tsuba is just because I caught up on js//hk recently and they are still destroying my heart (sob)#I can't wait until school is done so I can get back to being creative #That's what will fix me I'm not even joking lmaooo #Thanks for the tag these are always fun!! (even though it was a little similar to the last one with some of the prompts lolol)

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floral-hex · 6 months ago

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Two hours. I got two hours of sleep. I’m so frustrated with myself.

Went to the ER. Everyone was very nice. They gave me an IV bag of fluids (I was dehydrated! Sad cactus!) and a little ativan (teeny dose), which was nice at the time! Just a little amount, but the (mostly) quiet room, fluids, and meds managed to relax me a lot. Could have fallen asleep if the bed was actually comfortable. Then they packed me up, gave me another little Ativan to take home for tonight, and said they’d contact my primary. Cool cool. Got some much needed food on the way home, then took the pill and got comfy. Again, smallest dosage they make, so no feeling too good. Managed to muscle past my anxiety to fall asleep, and… 2 hours. Woke up. Tried to go back to sleep. Too frustrated and anxious and I feel like crap. What should I do? Just eat a whole gummy and hope that knocks me out? For me, that feels like playing roulette. Could work, yeah. Could make me sleepy and pliable. Could also backfire and make me feel sick and extra anxious for another 5 or 6 hours. What do I do? Roll back up to the ER? “Hewwo, I woke up and I need more benzos 👉👈🥺” haha funny, but I’ve seriously been thinking about it 😑

God, I’m miserable. Been sitting outside on the porch for a bit. Not quite an hour. Needed to get out of the apartment, but tbh, nearly 4am outside isn’t doing much for me. I just feel alone. It wouldn’t help with sleeping, per se, but just someone, I dunno, hugging or holding me for a few minutes would honestly save me a little. What a mess. Oh yeah, and apparently my kidneys are going 👎👎👎 down. Bad meat. Not great test results. Not what I’m focusing on tonight. I’m a mess. Anyway, this was my update. Sorry for all the walls of text. Suppose this is mainly for me to look back on in the future, but can’t pretend it’s not at least a little validating to put this all out into the world and knowing that maybe one or two people read this and I didn’t suffer completely without recognition. Yeah…

#this is a lot of text #not really a casual read #ok ok… I can’t sit outside forever #gonna go back inside and I dunno make a hot chocolatey drink. grab some snacks #TRY to feel good even though I don’t #YES will probably get a little high #hoping that the combo of sugar. salt. and thc will give me the sleepy tools to just pass out for awhile #just a few more hours! please!#omg I was so pissed when I woke up and thought I’d slept for awhile but realized I hadn’t #’ what do you mean the last text I sent was only two hours ago? ‘#seriously. I thought I fell asleep around 11 pm but it was closer to 1am.#stupid sexy ativan. messing with my sense of time #it really wasn’t that big of a dose! I was basically a little buzzed for an hour or so each time #but the doctor was nice and straightforward with me. I just dunno tho. I’m a big guy with a history of anxiety. .5mg is weaksauce #god I’m getting anxious just sitting here thinking about trying to sleep again #it’s feeding on itself. I’m trying to rationalize this but it’s just this feedback loop.#is this my life now? I’m outside. I feel so alone. I feel like I could die any moment. in a sword of Damocles way. it’s there and waiting.#ok sitting outside isn’t helping #after 4am and yes I see cars driving by. I hear the occasional siren. but I still feel alone in the world #please tell me life goes on? please tell me we’re not really at the end here.#I always feel like I’m staring at our final days. that we’re all barely here. fucking ghost planet. waiting to die.#there’s war and hate and everything is expensive and I can’t.. I’m not a part of this world. I’m too poor and sickly and so it all seems…#like we’re on our last leg. like the final days of a fire sale. this body feels fit for the grave. this world is the grave.#I’m scared #ok like I said sitting out here isn’t helping. Ian. please stop.#yes. yes. ok. snacks and drinks and distracting tv. let’s try this again.#sorry this is a lot #I spent the last 20 minutes writing these tags and getting progressively more anxious 😬#you can ignore this #text

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a-shakespearean-in-paris · 1 year ago

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I liked the amount of money I received from working at a school but thinking about going back gives me the hives and makes me want to vomit

#teachers def get underpaid but because I live with two cool roomies named mom and dad I did manage to save a lot #even if I spent a crap load on vacation.#with my current job I am not getting a lot of hours currently #come on people bring me a project #some of my kids were such jerks and I shiver when I think about them #I had this one kid I tried to pick up a cell phone from #I would have given it back to him at the end of class but because he said no I had to write him job #*up #then he comes to me and was like wait I didn’t know you were going to do that #well kid you missed your chance #all my pencils were destroyed that I had on tables #🙃#it seriously sucked

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orcelito · 2 years ago

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genuinely tho me jumping right into reading volume 9 of trimax and then volume 10 (and then most of the rest of the manga) on the night before i had a presentation at 9:30 am (that was entirely not prepared) was literally one of the most unhinged decisions ive ever made

this is what a hyperfixation does to a person

#speculation nation #like that experience was transcendent. i will NEVER be repeating it again but it sure was something #crying 5 times in a night chugging my monster perusing the wolfwood tag tearfully as i listen to the same sad song on repeat for an hour #struggling to get myself to work on the presentation but continuously going back to the manga bc it was SOOO GOOOD #me being like 'im gonna need a few days to process and heal' after reading volume 10 but then after an hour just. starting reading more.#gettign only 2 hours of sleep bc i was like 'ok i need to recover from crying Five Times and then i will focus entirely on this'#literally what is wrong with me lmfao. this sure was something.#this was literally just last week. i can hardly believe it.#this happened on tuesday/wednesday. i spent wednesday recovering. then on thursday i was like 'ok time to write'#there was hardly ANY wait time before i jumped into my next writing project #bc i had the idea after volume 10 but waited until i finished the manga to see where would be the best time to implement it #& that shit with the plants was the PERFECT time. i knew as soon as it happened that That was what i was gonna use.#wrote chapter 1 within a day (while working) then chapter 2 within a day (while working)#then chapter 3 within 2 days (while working AND doing family stuff)#guys i havent had a proper day off of work in over a week bc i covered on tuesday and came in on wednesday and covered on sunday #uhm. sunday before yesterday. i think my last day off was actually uh. the thursday before? a week and a half ago.#and im not getting a day off until thursday. two whole goddamned weeks. i am having a fucking time for sure.#and what do you know that coincides with The Time. oh i dont think it was even thursday. when the fuck was my last day off #uhmmm. oh haha it was that tuesday. aka the 18th. i havent had a goddamned day off since the 18th.#head in my hands. i am losing my fucking mind.#literally unhinged. and it makes sooo much sense now lmfao.

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arminsumi · 8 days ago

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tattoartist!suguru losing nonchalance when reader flirts with him?

im down bad for him holy hell

Oh, he's falling to pieces, got it bad for the girl he just met 'n he's gonna make a drunk little bet — y'think he's crazy enough to get your name tattooed on him? Or crazy enough to ink his name into your skin?

ㅤ★ wc; ~3k

ㅤ★ note; continuation of tattoo artist Suguru Geto!

ㅤ★ an; aaa!! you got my brain whirring like a laptop... tysm and i hope this makes u blush and kick ur feet as much as i did while writing!! 🍰✨

ㅤ★ tagz; @ohimsummer 💗@fairiesthrum💗 @heartofjasmina 💗 @kwonan 💗 @ghost-buddies 💗 @madamecorbie 💗 @mima0127 💗 @moggleatlife 💗 @natasaa13 💗 @yemmuishomeforthementallyunwell 💗 @wakashudou 💗 @khaothick 💗 @candy-s72 💗 @creamflix 💗 @starriesworlds

ㅤ★ warnings; sum alcohol/drunkenness

“So, was she joking, or am I your type?” Suguru asks, black eyes staring right into your soul.

“Mm, well…” you hum, giving his form a look-over – god, if only you could feel how hard his heart’s beating when you do this. “Maybe.” You reply teasingly.

“Aw, just ‘maybe’?” he groans, now leaning his hip against the edge of the display case that housed the studs and gauge earrings.

“Yeah, just ‘maybe’ – I’m teasing. No, she wasn’t joking; I’ve always had a thing for the black hair, black nails, bad boy look…”

“The ‘bad boy’ look…?” he questions, recalling what your friend had said earlier about bad boys being just your type.

“Yeah, the ‘bad boy’ look.” You giggle.

His heart beats even harder, muttering a naughty little “Well, lucky me.”

“Nah, not so fast – I’m a smart woman.” You warn.

“Oh, are you?” he clicks his tongue in defeat, “Damn, would you believe that my type is smart women? No, no I’m serious… I’ve got a thing for smart women.”

Your cheeks grow hot, the heat spreading to your ears.

“I can assure you that the ‘bad boy’ look is just an aesthetic; I’m really an artsy dork making a living off doodling on people’s bodies.” He shrugs.

“Hm… maybe, maybe not.”

You rub your lips together. He briefly licks his bottom lip. You look him up and down. He looks you up and down. Body language open and alive with attraction, the both of you stand in this air of electric tension that Shoko spies from the other end of the room.

She watches as the two of you giggle like little flirts, observing how totally absorbed the two of you are in each other’s company. When you catch her eye, Shoko gives you a wink and points at her wrist, mouthing “five more” – fair enough, the two of you have promised to get pizza.

Pizza first, boys later, right?

Five minutes more go by – adding to the total of four hours spent at the tattoo & piercing parlor. But despite her discomfort and need for a change of scenery, Shoko decides to linger around just a little longer so that the two of you can indulge in each other just a little more.

But now you're getting nervous – Suguru has you breathless, holding you in a battle of who can flirt harder? which you're starting to lose.

He's captivated by you. This 6’3, tattooed, goth-grunge, slightly dorky man chuckles and smiles like he hasn’t had this much fun talking flirting with someone in years.

It's going well, then your smile trips him up. I know, it’s always the smile, huh? If you see enough of it, you slip… and that’s exactly what's happened to Suguru. He quickly grows obsessed with the way your cheeks look when you smile – the image burns into his memory without him even realizing it in the moment.

No, in the moment he doesn't realize the magnitude of your effect on him. He's just thinking about himself, about you, about —

“I’ve gotta go,” you say goodbye finally, “I don’t want to keep my friend waiting. But you’ll probably see my face here again… she loves dragging me along for these kinds of things.”

He stutters, “Oh! Oh… yeah – yes. Of course. Looking forward to it… maybe next time, you’ll be the one getting ink in your skin.”

“Yeah right.” You smile.

It’s your French exit that makes his heart throb in need.

No, don’t leave yet… I like you – don’t you ever wonder how many acquaintances in your life have thought this when leaving your company? And you’ll never even know.

Oh, Suguru was thinking so hard about asking you to exchange numbers or to meet up for coffee, but he didn’t want to come off as too forward – no, no… he had to maintain his mysteriousness. Or at least, he had to cling to whatever was left of it after revealing his inner dorkiness to you.

*****

After you leave, he wanders in and out of his studio, has small interactions with his co-workers, and doodles ideas for tattoos down.

Throughout all of these things, your face is at the forefront of his mind. Your voice echoes in his head as he recalls every detail of the conversation you two shared. Then he starts smiling softly as he applauds himself for being so gutsily flirty with you… a stranger, just someone, who he probably won’t see again…

A girl with no name.

God, why was he so slow? He didn’t even ask for your name. Suguru groans.

Yes, he probably won’t see you again… not unless your friend brings you along for her next visit. How long does he have to wait? Weeks? Months? That’s insane.

Suguru stops doodling, stares at the scrap of paper, and then looks up at the wall displaying his works. He rubs his fingers back and forth across his mouth.

I gotta.

He looks over to his phone. He reaches for it, takes it into his veiny hand, unlocks it, and scrolls through his list of contacts.

And then he dials his client’s number. Shoko Ieri.

*****

Now, it’s been just under an hour since you and Shoko left the tattoo parlour. She’s complained three times about the pain because exactly three times she has leaned back on the seat – squishing the fresh ink wound against her chair. You just cruelly laugh at how her eyes twitch in pain and each time.

The two of you sit eating pizza.

“He liked you. Why don’t we go back and you ask him for his number?” she teases.

“No way… he’ll think I’m too forward.” You shake your head.

Then three minutes later, Shoko's phone goes off. She reaches into her backpack. She looks at the caller ID, then at you, then at the caller ID, then –

“… is that him?”

“It’s him.”

“What’s he calling for! Me?”

“Absolutely he’s calling for you – I can bet gold on that.”

It stops ringing. She tells you she’ll text him back but guess what? She doesn’t even need to, because he calls again.

“Relentless.” She giggles. “I’m answering.”

“Pretend I’m not here!”

She winks at you and answers, “Hey, Suguru, what’s up?”

The two of you lean in until the your foreheads press together – it’s still hard to make out every word.

“Yo.” You hear his smooth voice coming from the other side, “Sorry to bother you… (muffled)… your friend (muffled)… so embarrassed, so don’t tell her that I’m calling… (muffled)… what was her name?”

You clap your hand over your mouth when you hear those snippets.

She gives you a devious look before saying, “Oh! Well, she’s right here with me, actually, so you can ask her yourself.”

Mouth full of pizza, you freak out and X your arms to signal a fat NO WAY SHOKO! and fall to pieces all with the taste of pepperoni on your tongue.

But she just hands the phone over to you anyways, then proceeds to silently laugh as you spit out your pizza before talking.

“Hehlooo?”

“H-hey.”

You get right to the point. “My name’s Yn…”

“Oh… I like that… I’m Suguru.”

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

“Suguru. Suguru Geto.” He raises his voice.

Cheek hot against the screen of his phone, Suguru is silently freaking out at the tense silence. He can feel his stomach starting to flip. His mind blanks.

“Anyways! Um, that’s all.”

No. That’s not all. He has a novel’s length worth of things to talk about with you.

At this point, Shoko rolls her eyes at the two of you being so awkward on the phone and decides that she needs to take matters into her own hands.

So she snatches the phone from you.

“ – Suguru? Say, you wouldn’t be free on Saturday, would ya? Yeah, I’m going on a date with this guy… and I’d love to make it a double date with you and Yn if you’d like to –”

You hear him stutter out a yes, absolutely before Shoko can even finish her sentence. She grins.

Suguru can sense that the two of you are smiling and giggling. He can predict that the two of you are probably going to gossip about him being the 'dork from the tattoo parlor that called not once, but twice for the name of a girl he just met' – but he doesn’t care. He’s been presented an opportunity and taken it.

To hell with seeming too eager.

When the call ends, Suguru blows out a breath through his lips. Then he promptly texts his best friend. Dark strands of hair slip out of his sloppy bun as he puts his face over the screen, thumbs swift and eager.

Toru 🤞😜 lol bravo... but i thought u said she was out of ur league??

Sugu i mean... yes. she's way too pretty and smart for me. but i'm not gonna pass up this opportunity

Toru 🤞😜 still can't believe u called ur client just to get her friend’s name... lol

Sugu you would understand if you met her ok

Toru 🤞😜 damn she must be something else

Yes, yes you are something else — Suguru can’t even begin to describe why. Translating his thoughts into words isn’t his thing; he translates them into art.

****

It's later in the day. You're lazing around Shoko's apartment.

She confirms the time and place of the double date, and cackles on her couch while kicking her feet, teasing you for being so crazy about a guy you just met – her tattoo artist.

You just couldn’t stop talking about Geto Suguru.

“Shiiit, should I even let you and a bad boy like him be alone in a room together?”

“I can control myself.” you assure her.

She slowly shakes her head at you.

“Yeah right… but can he? I don't trust neither of you... miss crazy and mister crazy... you might just wake up with his name in your skin.”

You giggle to yourself, biting your thumb. “Maybe…”

“Oh girl…” she groans, causing you to giggle into yourself, “You’re gonna be licking the tail of his dragon tattoo by the end of the date tomorrow.”

“H-h-he has a what? And where?” you stuttered, lashes quivering.

She shakes her head at you. “God, you’re screwed…”

*****

It's Saturday night. The bar's more alive than ever.

You've learned that Geto Suguru does, in fact, have a dragon tattoo inked up his toned arm – and a tight-fitting black tank top that shows it off along with his martial artist’s physique, too.

He’s got a glint of the devil in his black eyes. Softly-delivered dirty jokes ready to roll off his pierced tongue. A habit of tilting his head and looking hungrily at your lips and neck.

“Martial arts, huh?” you ask with stars in your eyes.

“Mhm, I could teach you a few things.” He purrs in reply.

Your stomach starts squeezing and flipping – that’s got to be the flirtiest 'mhm' that you’ve ever heard in your whole life.

“You think so?” you purr back.

Now it’s his turn to feel that squeezy, flippy feeling in his stomach.

Fuckfuckfuck is all he could think when he looks into your eyes.

I’m gonna fall to pieces. You’re gonna be the death of me.

“Uh… do you two need some privacy?” Shoko teases.

Oh. It’s a double date. How could you forget? Shoko is literally sitting beside you at the bar with her date. But for a second there, it really felt like it was just you 'n this deliciously tattooed bad boy.

“Maybe.” Suguru chuckles coyly.

“There’s a hotel just next door…”

“Shoko!” you scold, playfully shoving her arm.

She giggles into herself, sipping down her cocktail innocently as if she didn’t just electrify the air between you and Suguru. His throat’s tensing, foot’s tapping up and down on the bar stool – boy’s got long spider-legs, huh?

Now after that, Suguru grins wider – showing off his pretty canines – his posture assuming something self-soothing; he holds his elbows, arms squished against his ribcage, which just makes his biceps more pronounced. Oh why, why did he have to wear a tank top like that? Surely he’s aware of the effect it has on girls. Or maybe he’s oblivious…

Nah. He's not.

*****

“Did it hurt?” you ask, trying to blink out the tipsiness from your love-drunk eyes but you’ve got three cosmopolitans surging through your veins.

“Not really… I’ve got great pain tolerance.” Suguru replies.

“Oh really?” you blink up at him again and his mind goes blank.

“Look at that...” He murmurs softly, not breaking eye contact with you. Where’s your friend and her date? Who knows. It’s just you and him now – and that’s all he wanted.

“Hm?”

“Not every day I see eyes like that…”

You widen your lips into a smile, “You’re laying it on thick.”

“Am I? Sorry – see, this is what happens after you feed Suguru too much rum. I just can’t keep my mouth shut.”

“That’s terrible… need someone to shut ya up?” you flirt.

He tilts his head at you, loose strands of hair shifting across his cheek. His left brow quirks up – he’s so taken aback by your forwardness but he falls right into it.

You just giggle flirtatiously after making that comment and pull the straw of your drink between your lips, sucking the remnants of a cosmopolitan into your mouth as sensually as you dare to in front of a bad boy who’s got bedroom eyes on you.

“I think I could do with some shutting up…” he admits.

“Mm,” you hum, “y’think by our third date you’re gonna snap and kiss me hard like we’re in a movie?”

Suguru smiles bashfully and looks down into his drink, swirling the melting ice cubes with a straw – slowly, round and round, they clink. Then he draws his gaze back to you, catching you with a sultry side-eye, and now it’s not just the ice cubes that are melting.

“Nah-uh…”

“Nah-uh?” you question.

“… I think it’s you who’s gonna snap first.” He says.

“Wanna bet?” you tease.

“Sure. What’ll be at stake?” he asks.

He keeps his sultry gaze on you as you look off to the side in thought for a moment. Your friend’s joke echoes in your mind.

“… you might just wake up with his name in your skin.”

Then you look back to him – his heart throbs but he’s trying to keep it together here, pulling his straw to his lips to get a sip of whatever rum still exists in his glass.

“Loser gets a regrettable tattoo?” you suggest.

He looks at you with a little bit of disbelief at your boldness.

“How regrettable?” he questions, one eye squinting shut in suspicion. He's wondering just how wild you actually are.

“Like my name on you? Or vice versa.”

He covers his mouth and lets out a chuckle hearing this. “You want me to tattoo my name on ya skin?” he teases. “Sure, I’ll bet on that.”

You can’t believe that he’s matching your crazy.

You stutter, replying only after a lingering moment of hot eye contact, “… there’s no way I’m gonna snap first…” you say boldly, proceeding to pop the cherry of your drink into your mouth and eating it right in front of the poor boy’s eyes. “ ‘m gonna have you walkin’ around with my name on you.”

Eyes glued on your lips, his breath catches in his throat.

“Yeah?”

Ooh, there it was. That feeling. That body singing electric songs feeling… that tummy-tightening, blood-rushing, skin-flushing feeling – it hit him all at once. He knows that if he were standing, his knees would have buckled now for sure, or at least he would have felt the tremor of your words under his feet.

He’s unsteady – smiling uncontrollably, looking dishevelled and softly drunk. Those rouge lips are begging to be kissed.

The bar grows quieter and quieter.

You’re hardly able to call each other anything more than strangers, and yet you’re leaning into him, closing the distance.

The tips of your noses are just inches apart now. You’re in each other’s air. He eyes out your lips, feels your hot, liquor-scented breath tickle his face.

But when you try and close the distance, he raises his hand and presses his thumb against your soft lips, stopping you.

“What happened to that bold statement, huh? Keep it together, baby; the bet’s on.” He feathers against your face.

*****

Tumbling into Shoko’s apartment after a night out drinking, you smile and giggle into the pillows of her bed.

She’s letting her hair down and swapping out her tight dress for jammies when she looks at you in your gleeful state.

“Someone’s in love.” She teases, coming over to tickle you.

“I’m not in love!”

“Oh, quit the act; I saw how the two of you said goodbye – you could barely hold yourself together. Drunk or not, I ain’t seen two adults giggling like that before.”

“Sh!” you swat her, “Not! In! Love!”

She takes a look into your eyes and observes your smile, then shakes her head. You're drowsy, so you make a dive into her bed and fall asleep almost instantly.

Shoko pulls a blanket over you, affectionately ruffling your hair.

“Madly in love, at the very least.”

#suguru #suguru geto #suguru x reader #suguru geto x reader #geto x reader #x reader #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru #jjk #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x you #geto suguru x you #geto x you #suguru x you

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inkedbybarnes · 8 months ago

Text

unclear

bucky barnes x fem!reader

summary: everyone thinks you're dating bucky, except yourself.

word count: 2.4k

warnings: 18+ minors dni. miscommunication (i love this trope, sue me), angst with a happy fluffy ending, quite stubborn reader, implied smut if you squint, usage of petnames such as baby and doll. lowercase for basically everything.

i haven't finished anything in decades, but i suddenly had an idea just now and decided to write it down. surprisingly, i finished it? might have a lot of mistakes and such since i haven't proofread it yet. also, sorry for using lowercase for this, i kinda like how it looks. hope you enjoy this one!

dividers by @cafekitsune!

comments, reblogs, and likes are highly appreciated. thank you! ♡

“you're confusing me. so... you're not dating bucky?”

wanda tilted her head, confusion etched on her face as you spent your weekly girl's night with natasha. it usually consisted of eating food you all desired, drinking until you got wasted, and spilling secrets to one another.

although tonight, you weren't sure if you had any secrets to spill.

"as far as i know, no. we're just friends, teammates. nothing else," you answered with a heavy sigh. "can we talk about something else?"

"hold your horses, young lady! we are not skipping this topic again. you obviously want a label but he isn't giving you one!" wanda protested. she has been constantly asking about you and bucky's relationship for the past weeks, and you always had the same answer. you don't know.

"have you never talked about it with bucky? he looks at you like you'd get lost if he looks away for a second. not a single soul in the tower would think that you're just friends," natasha interjected, taking another sip from the bottle of beer she held. she had a point, as always. "if he's just playing with you, which i highly doubt for barnes, then just end whatever that is. you deserve better than having doubts and confusion, babe."

you've tried asking him multiple times, but every attempt felt like you were stepping on his boundaries. after years of being controlled by hydra, you knew it was possible that he'd hate the feeling of being rushed and entering a relationship that could potentially feel like a cage to him.

but natasha was right. your "relationship" was no longer anything friendly. he sleeps in your bed, claiming he slept better in it, and wakes up beside you to shower you with kisses. none of you even tried to hide it after some time. you always cooked your meals and ate them together, casually feeding one another and stealing kisses in between. you even stopped going on dates and you had no idea if you were exclusive. you deserved to know what your relationship with bucky was, but you were too scared to lose everything once you asked.

"we're not dating. i only see him as a friend, so you can both stop worrying about me." you lied through your teeth, your chest aching as you realised how stupid this was. you sighed and faked a smile, shifting the attention to natasha. "so, tell me about your date with steve! how was the first ever date of captain america since the 40s?"

wanda was distracted by the question, immediately bombarding the now blushing widow with questions. on the other hand, your mind flew away for a minute, finally deciding to get an answer from bucky.

the annual ball that tony stark held for, well, nearly anyone, was nearing. you only had two weeks left, and you haven't even gone out to find something to wear. it was hard to find any motivation to do all that effort when the person you've been waiting to ask you as his date hasn't asked you yet.

although, bucky had a tendency to get shy and hold back. you knew that. so here you were, standing behind the doors to the gym, knowing that bucky would be training at this hour. you still haven't asked him the question you were supposed to ask him, so you decided to do it all at once.

after you've finished your small pep talk, you opened the door to enter the room and your first instinct was to search for bucky.

considering that he was a huge chunk of a man, he was easy to find. however, the sight of him standing in front of a woman that was too close for your comfort wasn't delightful.

he didn't see you entering the room since he was facing the opposite direction, conversing with the agent that happened to be training as well. she had the sweetest and flirtiest smile on her face, bringing her hand up to his arm, slowly caressing it. you didn't mean to easily hear their conversation as you walked closer.

"so, do you happen to have someone for me to have as a date for the ball? i don't want to be lonely on that night, sergeant," the agent said with an extra pout, swaying her hips side to side like a child asking for candy.

"oh, yeah? i think i have someone for you," bucky replied, breaking your heart into pieces with how enthusiastic he was with his answer. "i'm sure you'll—"

you sniffed. unconsciously. not knowing that your tears were already falling, causing your nose to get stuffy. how pathetic, you thought.

your little sniff caught the attention of both the agent and bucky, looking at you in shock. although, the girl was more pleasantly surprised than the opposite. thankfully, you already had your tears wiped before they could see them.

"oh, we didn't see you there!" she greeted you with your name. "we were just talking about our date for this year's ball. who are you bringing?"

"i haven't decided yet, no one's worth it even if i try," you answered bitterly. "so you're going together?"

before bucky could answer, the agent already had her arm wrapped around his, happily smiling at your question. "yeah! amazing, right? i actually thought you two had a thing, but i guess not. glad things worked out in the end."

and that was your last straw. "well, enjoy yourselves. i have to go and find natasha."

you turned to leave, ignoring the loud calls of bucky. you were glad that you never asked him about your relationship and the ball. you were going to be hurt either way.

you spent the next hours stuck in your room, body covered with a thick sheet as you ranted about your frustrations to friday.

it was silly, you knew that, but you refused to call natasha and wanda to remind you of your stupidity and decided to let an ai robot listen to your problems instead.

"and he even flirted back! answering coyly like a teenager. he's 107 years old, fri!" you whined, not noticing the new nickname you've given the alternative intelligence. "ugh, now i have a broken heart and no date in sight. how did it get to this?"

"perhaps you must discuss this matter with sergeant barnes first. your conversation ended quite abruptly with no clear conclusion."

"no, i don't want the truth rubbed on my face," you said, grabbing another piece of tissue to sneeze in. "you restricted him from entering my room, right?"

friday answered with a yes, then you thanked her for listening and decided to get some sleep after tirelessly crying for hours. you knew you had a team meeting with the avengers in a bit, but you couldn't bring yourself to even walk a few steps.

your sleep ended and you were woken up with friday's reminder that it was time for dinner with the team.

with a groan, you pushed yourself off your bed. bucky would be there, but you were too hungry to care. it would be awkward, of course, but you had to face him at some point anyway.

your feet padded towards the door, opening it after trying your hair in a bun.

"ah, fuck."

you jumped at the voice and the body falling to the floor as you opened the door.

"bucky?" you asked, still in shock. "were you sleeping outside of my room?"

you watched bucky stand up, his hand massaging his aching nape as he looked for your eyes. "friday won't let me in. i waited outside instead. i guess i fell asleep during that," he explained, a frown forming on his face. "did you restrict me from entering our room?"

your eyes widened at his choice of words. our room. he considered your room to be his room as well. while that would've made you melt in an instant, you were still hurt to entertain that possibility.

"this is my room, barnes. not yours, not ours. and yes, i had you restricted because i couldn't face you yet. what do you need anyway?"

"i wanted to see you, talk to you." a flash of pain crossed his eyes. "whatever happened at the gym, it's—"

"bucky, you don't have to explain anything to me. we're just friends. it's my fault i assumed we were something. i just need some time to get over it."

"but i thought we were something as well..." he replied, his voice was almost as quiet as a whisper. "i thought we were dating."

"were we?" you asked, genuinely curious. "we never.. you never said anything. i mean, yeah, i wished it meant something, but i thought you wouldn't want to be trapped in a relationship with me, so i just waited. apparently, i was right and i can't blame you for that."

"right about what? the thing that happened in the gym this morning?" he asked. you nodded in response. "i know it sounds like i was flirting back, well i didn't know at the moment, until i asked steve who was clueless but he called nat to help me out and explained that it looked like i was flirting back. i wasn't. i was just going to suggest sam as a date for her. i would never agree to anyone."

oh. so he just wasn't interested in anyone at all.

"besides this one girl who's constantly been in my head. that's if she'd even give me a chance and say yes. i fucked it up badly before i could even ask her properly."

you knew what hoping got you, but you couldn't help but think that he was talking about you. he'd have to be clueless to say all those things in front of you only for it to be someone else.

"i love you, baby. i should've told you that, i should've made it clear sooner. i'm so sorry i let you have doubts when i could've been reassuring you about what i feel for you."

"bucky..."

"i would never feel trapped with you, doll. only you made me feel so much love and freedom. i'd be a fool to let go of that. i'm sorry it took a few hits and harsh words from natasha to make me realise that i wasn't giving you enough when you deserve everything." he held your face in his hands, bringing you closer to him. you felt breathless, tears threatening to fall but this time it was out of joy. "hydra made sure i had no voice to express myself. now, i'll use it to let you know that i love you so fucking much that it hurts when you're not around. i promise to work on it. if anything like this happens again, ask me, baby. demand things from me. i'll give you everything in a heartbeat."

"even if i ask for your arm?"

he laughed, a sound that was music to your ears. "it's yours baby. although, i do like fucking you with my metal—"

"bucky!" you scolded him, hitting him lightly on the chest.

"sorry, baby. couldn't help it. missed my girl so much."

his girl. you loved hearing that.

"it's only been a few hours. don't be silly," you reminded him, but you knew you also felt the same.

"i miss you even when i don't see you for a second." you couldn't help but laugh at his words. "something funny, doll?"

"sorry, natasha said something similar about you a few days ago," you answered. "i'm sorry for assuming so quickly, bucky. you deserved the chance to explain."

"and you did let me explain. i can't blame you for assuming and getting hurt when i never gave you the confirmation to believe otherwise. don't apologise for it, baby."

"i love you," you said, causing him to grin widely.

"yeah? you love me too?" he asked, a hint of pink tinting his cheeks. "this is official now, right? we're dating?"

you nodded happily, giggling as he landed a kiss to your mouth. "so, you wanna go to the ball with me?"

he kissed you again. "don't. i'm supposed to be asking you that. i had an entire thing prepared for you, i even dragged half of the team to help me out days ago. besides wanda and natasha, of course. couldn't let them tell you about it."

your heart swelled, he was already planning to ask you before all of this misunderstanding happened, and it could've been solved with communication. lesson learned, indeed.

"well hurry because i can't wait to say yes," you playfully threatened him, kissing the tip of his nose until the loud rumble of your stomach interrupted your sweet moment. "ah, right. i was on my way to eat dinner when i opened the door."

bucky laughed, his eyes twinkling witth adoration as he kept his eyes on you. "we can't have you starving, that's for sure. come, let's get you something." he held your hand, and dragged you to the kitchen. he turned to look at you with a playful smile. "wanna cook together like the old times?"

you smiled. "like the old times."

in the middle of your cooking session, you heard whistles and claps along with the footsteps that entered the kitchen. you both turned to find the rest of the team with shit eating grins.

"finally! so is this real or do we need to smack your heads?" tony asked, his hand placed on his hip.

"it's always been real, stark," bucky answered, wrapping his arm around your waist. "except this time, i'm making sure my entire world knows it."

"i think everybody knows you have a thing for each other, barnes." clint added.

"i meant my entire world, not everybody." bucky looked at you with awe. "she's my world."

bucky's answer gained various loud reactions from the team, mostly calling him a cheesy old man and fake gags, but there you were, cheeks heating up as you looked back at him with the same amount of love, if not more.

and he did ask you to be his date to the ball the day after, surprising you with his so-called secret plan.

a year later, he surprised you with a ring as he knelt on one knee.

if you have any requests for bucky, send them my way! 💌

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x fem!reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky x reader #mcu #marvel #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fanfiction

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asahicore · 1 month ago

Text

fast forward - pjs

pairing. jay x fem!reader

synopsis. After yet another romantic disappointment in the form of one Jake Sim, you go to the well you’ve always believed to grant wishes and ask for your one and true love to appear. That night, you go to sleep in your bed but wake up in a strange house. When you head downstairs, you find a man washing the dishes and telling you your favorite meal is waiting on the table for you. You’ve spent hours glaring at the back of that head, you could recognize it anywhere—it belongs to none other than Park Jongseong, your high school sworn enemy... and future husband, or so it seems.

genre+warnings. high school au, the type of e2l where they never really hated each other to begin with, they act like they're academic rivals even though they're not particularly academically gifted, jay has a thing about german the language, sunoo and kazuha besties, heeseung is a loser, jake and sunghoon are assholes sorry, ive liz is german, 02z get into a white-boy locker-room fight, attempts at banter etc, they're a little bit silly

word count. 26.6k

a/n. had the idea for this listening to fast forward by somi LAST SUMMER... and only wrote it this summer and only posting it now <3 i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it !!!!! jay is an absolute cutie here pls love him as much as i do.... as always let me know what u think and remember to vote for @zreamy president in the upcoming elections, shes the only one i trust to beta-read and hence to run a country <3 no it doesnt matter that shes scottish put this woman in the white house

There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.

Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.

You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.

Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied.

Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.

There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.

You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade.

“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face.

You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around.

“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”

The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”

One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”

“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson.

You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.

Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.

You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.

“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”

As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.

And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.

“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.

Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.

But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.

You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.

“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.

Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.

For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice.

You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.

But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot.

You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.

“And that’s your business, because…?”

You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”

You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”

He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.”

This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”

You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”

You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”

“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves.

Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue.

Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.

Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.

Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”

So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”

“I don’t-”

“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”

“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.

“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”

“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”

“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.

“What are you-”

“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”

The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”

“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”

You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?

“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”

“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.

Then you see it.

Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.

The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.

Your heart sinks to your stomach.

You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice.

Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone.

“Y/N-”

Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone.

The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.

Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic.

Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.

You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.

But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked.

You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”

Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”

When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.

You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.

For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.

Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers.

The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe.

The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.

It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.

A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.

You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.

Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there?

You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.

Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right?

You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist.

The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie.

Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”

Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.

It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of “Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”

Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.

“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”

Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey.

“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?

“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”

He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.

When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.

You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other.

Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.

You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”

He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”

The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”

You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.”

So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder.

“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.

Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.

Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.

“This is so good,” you mumble.

Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”

You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.

“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”

You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?

But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”

Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else.

“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.

He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.

But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.

As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.

“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.

“Hm?”

He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”

“No. I have… things on my mind.”

He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”

You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you.

You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie.

A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.

“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.

It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.

“...Jong?” you try.

“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.

You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.

“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”

You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.

Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.

They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.

“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.

“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”

“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.

Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”

“Exactly!”

“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”

Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”

You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”

Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.

“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”

“Nowhere. Go on.”

“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”

“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.

“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”

Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.

“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”

“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”

“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.

“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.

“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.

“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.

“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”

You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”

“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.

“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”

Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”

“None taken.”

“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.

“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”

Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”

“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.

You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair.

“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.

“She had a dream that she m—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.

Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.

“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.

“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.

For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.

“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.

“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class.

The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.

It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.

Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.

There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.

Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.

Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.

But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.

Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.

It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.

He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.

He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”

And your friends wondered why you hated him?

“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”

When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile.

“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.

You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”

He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”

“No. Stop.”

“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”

This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.

Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up.

If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.

At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.

Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding.

“Jong, your textbook.”

He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.

“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.

“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.

He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”

Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.

Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?

You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.

He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.

You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.

As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.

Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life.

“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”

You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.

“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom.

“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.

And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.

You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.

“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”

He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you.

So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together.

Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.

He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.

For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”

you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined

kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start

you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that

sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being

you he’s not just another person!

sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings

you i hate u

kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason

you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try

“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”

The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”

“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.

“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.

Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”

You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”

He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.

You frown. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh? That’s a recent development.”

“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.

His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”

“Back to hating.”

“Let’s start the assignment.”

You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.

Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”

“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble.

He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”

“That’s not—”

“Let’s just focus on this.”

His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.

He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”

“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.

“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.

“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.

“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”

“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?”

He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”

“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”

“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.

So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.

But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.

Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.

You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.

He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology.

Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.

“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”

“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”

“Love? I know.”

“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.

“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.

“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.

“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.

“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.

“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.

“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.

“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.

“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.

“I never—When?!”

She shrugs. “The other day.”

You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.

“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.

“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.

In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”

Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”

“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.

You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”

They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.

You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”

Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”

You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.

No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”

“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.

“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.

“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.

“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.

“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.

“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”

“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”

You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”

He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.

You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”

“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.

“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier

kazuha WHAAAAT

you KIM SUNOO.

kazuha WHEN?????

sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol

you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass

kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml

you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED

sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart

you were* and no we weren’t

sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his

kazuha sunoo…?

sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him

you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting

sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it

you …

sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of

kazuha cuuuute

you i resent these accusations.

sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will

kazuha ???

you SUNOO?

sunoo WHAT

Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.

Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.

You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.

Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you.

Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”

Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”

Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”

That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.

The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that.

Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.

He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”

“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.

You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.

He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight.

Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple.

It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them.

He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”

But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”

Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”

You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.

He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”

Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”

“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.

“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”

“Y/N…”

“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.

The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.

jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension

you you idiot what did your parents say?

jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month

you boo-hoo

jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…

you … are you feeling better?

jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)

you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?

jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay

you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up

jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon

you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!

jong :) see you tomorrow pretty

The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.

You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.

His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.

Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.

In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily.

In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?

A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.

College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.

May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.”

Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.

In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.

But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…” you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”

Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”

You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.

As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.

You smile. “Never.”

So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.”

It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.

It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.

But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.

You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.

I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.

“Give me five minutes!” you call back.

You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.

A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.

He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says.

He’s still Jong.

You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside.

It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.

When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.

Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.

He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.

So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.

When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.

In any case, he’s hiding something.

The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.

Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is.

Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely.

It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile.

Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?

Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.

From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.

With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year.

Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.

But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.

I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.

Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.

But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.

Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really.

But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.

Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness?

And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you.

Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.

I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on…

I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.

(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)

Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now?

Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.

Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.

He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.

You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.

The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.

You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement.

In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.

You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.

On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does.

Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.

All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.

Until you didn’t.

It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.

He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.

So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.

Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.

And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley.

Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence.

He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.

You said so yourself.

He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.

Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.

And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.

When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.

But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?

You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore.

So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you.

He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?

It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.

Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.

Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles.

You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.

When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.

“Did you guys sit next to each other?”

You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”

He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”

You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.

When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.

Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”

You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”

“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”

“Now?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”

And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.

“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.

“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.

His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”

He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this?

“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes.

But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”

The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”

“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”

“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.

“Really.”

Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.

Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”

Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks.

“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”

“I think I did, too.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”

Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.

He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”

Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.

Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now.

“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”

“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”

You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”

You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”

He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”

“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.

“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”

“Fifty years, huh?”

He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”

There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.

The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls.

The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.

You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway.

Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.

You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.

“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.

You smile. “I am.”

permanent taglist: @zreamy @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts @moonlighthoon @4imhry @rikisly @loves0ft @iamliacamila @theboingsuckerasseater9000 @chaechae-23 @baekhyuns-lipchain @hyuckslvr @vernonburger @amorbonbon @fluerz @jakeflvrz @enhastolemyheart (ask to be removed/added!)

#enhypen x reader #jay x reader #jongseong x reader #enhypen fluff #jay fluff #enhypen fanfiction #jay fanfiction #enhypen au #enhypen imagines #enhypen scenarios

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myladysapphire · 4 months ago

Text

To Gwayne, with love

tired of being ingored and undervalued, you take your dragon and leave to find the one person who sees you for who you really are; your uncle, Gwayne Hightower

based of this request

word count: 5,086

CW: MDI, 18+, smut, loss of virginity, p in v, fingering, oral (f reciving), incest, angts, love letters (if the title wasnt a hint), fluff, love confessions, not proofread!

Gwayne Hightower x neice!reader

Masterlist

Growing up as the eldest child, and eldest daughter of Alicent and Viserys you had long felt unwanted and overlooked.

Where your twin, Aegon, was seen as a future king, the rightful heir, you were seen as only a daughter, pushed to the side and out of the limelight.

Always looked over, even when it came to marriage. Where it made sense for you to marry Aegon, Heleana married him instead.

You were overlooked, and often forgotten.

Even events held in your honour were overshadowed, be it by your twin or your eldest sister Rhaenrya.

Countless nights tears had filled your eyes as you were pushed aside in favour of another sibling.

It was a funny thing really, you were the eldest daughter and yet were the last to be betrothed, excluding Daeron that was. And yet you had once been dubbed the Realms heart, you had been kind and sweet. But years of neglect, being undervalued and ignored had turned you cold and restless and made you a rebel. Where your uncle Daemon was the rouge prince, you were the defiant princess.

You had stopped waiting by the sidelines, stopped keeping too yourself and your thoughts stopped being quiet. you become outspoken, even more so when your brother was crowned king.

But all that seemed for nought as you were now meet with roll of eyes and the sound of the key locking your chambers from the outside.

You couldn’t say you were surprised, not when your mother seemed to hate you more than Aegon.

She never understood you, only one person had.

Gwayne Hightower, your uncle.

You and he had an understanding that others could only envy, you couldn’t put it into words but ever since you had meet him you felt inexplicitly drawn to him.

And yet you had only meet him thrice.

But those three times amounted into countless letters.

When one was sent two would follow, even on the road Gwayne never failed to write.

Until now.

You were sat in your chambers and an ache in your chest as you read through the last of Gwayne letters. Near two weeks had passed since his last had arrived, and these past two weeks had been when you had needed his letters the most.

dearest niece,

Words cannot describe the joy I felt upon seeing you the other, even if only for a few hours before my departure.

You have grown ever so beautiful, and I envy those who got to watch you became the beauty you are today, though I envy them more for the endless pleasure of your company.

Who knew your wit was even more compelling in person, dear niece?

I sure did not and yet your endless humour is known what I crave as I am stuck of this endless rode with ser Criston as the most interesting of my companions.

And let me tell you he is far duller than you painted. (Not that you painted him to have much of a personality aside form swords and a love for oranges.)

Perhaps it his cockiness or the self-righteousness he has as the new lord hand, which makes his so dull. He seems to love to point out his new station to us all, especially my Hightower knights, as if that will win him any favours.

Though I truly believe he thinks himself funny, though his voice is always far to monotone to decipher what is an attempt at a joke or what is orders and commands.

Gods, I wish I had stolen you away with me, even just to share the looks at Criston ‘jokes’ as he calls them.

Honestly, he is perhaps the dullest man I have ever met, what your mother sees in him I’ll never know.

But I must admit little of my time is spent completing his joke when I cannot stop thinking of you.

Tomorrow, we ride to rook’s rest, he says he has some plan, I do not quite believe it will be a good one, but I shall prey to the seven that we will be victorious, and I may see you again.

Yours, Gwayne.

You had replied far to quickly though being locked n your chamber after yelling you would ride your dragon to meet your uncle would of course leave you with little to do.

To Gwayne,

I am truly sorry you are stuck with such a dreadful man, if I had gone with you I can assure you however there would not have been much time to dwell of Cristons joke attempts, I would steal far to much of your attention, perhaps enough were you were unable to fight in this silly little war.

I do hope your thoughts of me do not distract you too much.

I wish you great luck in at rook’s rest though I fear you may have to face Meleys, and in which case I pray my mother sees sense and allows me to ride out and join the fight on moonfyers, though I Highley doubted.

But from Aegon’s visit to my prison cell (my chamber’s), it seems he is quite egar to fight, though seeing as how the small council so easily sway his mind, I doubt he will, unless he drinks himself into a false sense of courage that is.

But I pray you do not repeat those words, especially to my mother.

I too crave for your presence; it is a misery that despite years of letters we have met thrice! And the third was only days ago.

Perhaps when you go, we can make your visits permanent.

I pray for your victory uncle, and your next letter.

With love, your dearest niece.

You had sent that letter 12 days ago; rooks rest was 10 days ago.

Of course, the journey back must be accounted for, but no one had any news, besides the death of Meleys and the princess Rhaneys, the queen who never was.

You had rather liked her, in fact you hoped to model yourself of her in some way. Though you had no right to morn you suppose, you had never spoken to her bar the common pleasantries.

You stood starting out of the window, craving the day you could smash them down and make your escape. Though where you would go, you did not know. Before the war you had one destination in mind, oldtown. Now there was no one there for you, just as there wasn’t anyone here.

The forgotten daughter. No matter how defiant you became you would only be tolerated and ignored. Your actions simple receive a tolled eye and of course, the action of yet gain being locked in your chamber.

Perhaps if your mind hadn’t been so caught up in your loathing and thoughts of jumping from your window onto the back of moonfyers you would have noticed the door opening and the feel of hands slowly covering your eyes.

You jumped in shock as your eyes were covered, only to calm down when a voice spoke.

“Guess who?” a mans voice teased, though it was the voice you had ingrained into your memory.

“Gwayne” you breathed turning around.

He laughed as you hugged him.

“When did you get back?” you asked, arms still wrapped around him.

“Only moments ago,” he sighed, “did you miss me?” he teased.

Slapping his arm lightly, you stepped back “of course not”.

“Hmm…really?” he tilted his head, clicking his tongue, “I could have sworn your letter said- “

“Stop it!” you said hitting his shoulder again.

“Fine!” he said raising his hands up in mock surrender, “only if you top hitting my arm, your poor uncle has just fought a battle”.

You rolled your eyes “and am I to presume you were victorious uncle?”

“If you could call it that”.

“What do you mean?”

He looked nervous, an expression you had never seen on him before, “your brother Aegon- “

“Aegon went! That fool”

“a fool who got himself injured”.

“what” you asked, voice full of concern. Though an outcast, overshadowed by your twin, you still cared for him greatly, even if he never showed care for you in return.

He explained what had happened and your mind spun, no one had said a thing to you and yet your twin brother lay dying in his rooms.

“I must go see him” you rushed out, heading towards the door, only for Gwayne to grip your arm.

“Go later.” He insisted, “for now stay with me! and here my woeful tales of battle”.

Shaking your head with a laugh you sit back down, listening to tales of Gwanye’s journey and of the battle, and all thoughts of Aegon were forgotten.

You woke up finding yourself wrapped in Gwayne arms on your settee. You didn’t remember falling asleep, only talking and watching the sunset and rise once more.

It must have been past noon and yet no one had knocked or come to see you, not that they had before now.

You looked over at Gwayne, he was tired, even after hours of sleep he still had bags under his yes.

Removing yourself from his arms slowly, you made your way out of your rooms and towards your brothers.

Aegon lay alone. The room dark and empty, bar his aching, unconscious body, half his body covered in bandages, his body deadly slit and his breath shaky.

You moved closer to the bed, coming forward and placing a soft kiss on his brow.

He may be terrible, drunken whoremonger but he was still your brother.

“Aegon” you breathed heavily, taking his unburnt hand in yours, “I- “ the doors opened, and your mother barged in, “get out!” she demanded.

“Mother, I- “you said standing up.

“Get out” she said once more, coming to sit by Aegon’s side.

Standing up and moving towards the door slowly, “he’s my brother, I have every right to be here!”

She looked at you, scoffing “that matters not, now leave and go back to your rooms”.

Rolling your eyes you left and stormed back to your rooms.

“Gwayne” you breathed, seeing him now awake and sitting up, reading a book.

“How Is Aegon” he asked, as you approached.

“a sleep? I do not know my mother sent me out only a few moments after I had entered.”

He kissed his teeth, “your mother has changed much recently”.

“Recently? She has always been liked this, with me at least”

“I know, my darling… I think she- “he stopped himself, looking at you, “I am not sure what she thinks actually, me and her where never close growing up”.

You huffed, looking over at him and realising that the book he was reading was in fact your diary.

“Is that my diary!”

“no” he said dragging out the word as he moved the book out of your reach.

“Where did you- how did you”

“Do not worry how your “beautiful and daring uncle” found it”.

You gasped, crawling over him to try and reach your diary.

He laughed, as you grasped at the book, “give it back” you insisted.

“But Gwayne would be never- “

You reached the book, slapping it out of his hand, “how much of it did you read?”

“Why did you not want me to read of how much you missed me?”

“Gwayne” you sighed, looking at him, you were practically lying on him, your hands leaning on chest as you reached for your diary of the floor.

“darling” he replied, before looking at you sadly, his hand reaching to caress your cheek, “I have to go soon”.

“To your chambers or to oldtown?” you asked sadly.

“Oldtown, I – “

You interrupted him, “when?”

“We leave after dinner, we thought it best to travel at night, out of sight of dragons”.

“I see” you said moving off of him. He reached for you, trying to draw you back towards him.

Everyone always leaves or ignored you. It seemed no matter how close you got you were so easily abandoned, never once had someone stayed.

“I would ask you to come, but your mother would never allow it” he said shaking his head.

Why would she allow it? It would make you happy and the gods know how much your mother craved your misery.

“Do you think there will ever be a time when-when we can spend limitless time together?”

“I hope so, I- “he always stopped himself from saying it, saying the one thing they both craved.

“As do I”

The rest of the day was spent together craving to spend every second that they could together, but in the end, he had to leave. He was bound by duty and honour.

Saying goodbye this time was harder than the few times before it. You both stood in the courtyard, his men stood the side, their own conversations distracting them.

Your mother having said her goodbyes, and had left the courtyard already, leaving you both to say your goodbyes.

“I hope it is not to long before I can see you again” you said looking down to thew ground and kicking at the gravel.

“As do I” Gwayne said grabbing your hand and kissing it gently.

Your eyes shared a look, a look saying everything you both couldn’t.

“I’ll miss you” you breathed heavily, eyes never leaving his.

you both stepped closer, now inches apart.

You moved your lips to kiss his cheek, only for Gwayne to move his head and capture your lips with his, in a soft delicate kiss.

The shadows of the keep kept you had hidden from wandering eyes as you kissed.

It was short but sweet and left you both wanting more as he was forced to step back from you.

He whispered softly “I will think of you, always”.

“As will I” you said, reaching into you hem and pulling out your handkerchief, you had sown the initial of your name and his ono it, and placed it in the palm of his hand.

Closing is hand you softly placed a kiss onto it.

“goodbye” he spoke, before moving to his horse and riding off, sending you a final look before he left.

The days tricked by, blurring together. Aegon’s recovering slow and with little change.

You stayed in your room, much to your mother’s delight.

Letters were exchanged between you and Gwayne. But this time the letters seemed different, this time they were bolder, your feelings no longer hidden.

Dearest,

I left you only moments ago and yet I miss you already.

That kiss was everything and more, I cannot believe it took us so long to do it, even of it happened by a mistake.

I am sorry our reunion was so brief, and I wish I was bound to you and not duty.

I shall write again soon, but in the meantime, I hope the thought of you in my thoughts will tide you over.

Yours, Gwyane.

Dear Gwayne,

You just left my side and yet apart of me left with you.

I hope your thoughts are filled with me as mine are of you.

The walk back to my room was a long one, longer than it had ever taken me as I had to drag myself away from you, away from moonfyers as thoughts of chasing after you filled my mind.

My mind was a mess all night, much to my mother’s disappointment. Though I doubt she noticed my mind was with you and not in the keep.

This morrow I was awoken absurdly early and summoned to the small council!

And before you say anything I am not sure as to why, even after attending it.

I seemed to be there as a way to boost Aemond’s moral? Or should I say the prince regents.

I was simple them to watch plans be made, and to be told of an alliance, a marriage between me and some lords son, I believe some Tully.

I refused and they demanded.

I offered my dragon, they refused, and I demanded.

They claimed a woman in battle would only lead to a loss. Even if moonfyers is bigger than most for her age and even rivals Caraxes.

Anything else was ignored and dismissed and I was quickly ushered to my chambers and forced to plan a wedding.

A wedding I wish was with you.

I do not know what to do, uncle.

Please tell me to come to you, and I will.

Yours always.

My love,

The days are endlessly long, and I find myself craving you by myside more than ever.

You chase my every though both awake and asleep.

And forgive me for beings bold, niece, but I can, no will not hold back what I have longed to crave any longer.

I wished I had placed you upon my horse and ridden of with you into the night, defying your mother and brothers’ commands.

But I want you, more than I need air to breath. And for so long I have defied myself and held back my desires, my love for you.

I beg you, come to me.

Forget their plans and demands, come to me and marry me.

I am set to arrive in old town in two days, leaving you plenty of time to come to me.

With love, Gwyane.

To Gwyane,

I will come to you, it may take a few days, but I cannot stay here. And I will not stay away from you any longer.

With love, your heart.

you sat in your chambers, contemplation how you to leave.

Though there were secret passageways in your room, you had never used them. They were like a labyrinth in truth and the one time you had speed in them you feared you would get lost.

And the guards stationed outside of your door were stationed for the exact reason you were event you were currently planning.

your other would never let you go willingly, not now especially.

But then again you doubted she would notice you were gone, at least for a day or two.

Heleana may notice, but she wouldn’t say a thing.

Aemond had just been given what he always wanted and would flaunt his power as much as he could, meaning he’d keep put of your way, in fear you would ‘act up’, as he called it, and embarrass him.

This meant that the guards were your only issue, and perhaps Larys spy’s. though you cared not for them for what could they do to stop you? Tattle to Larys who would sell the information for the sight of your mother’s feet? Even then you would have a few hours.

Luckly for you however, you knew your guards. And they had a penchant for wine.

“Steffon, Gregor” you whispered opening your door a bottle of Dornish red in hand.

“Princess” they nodded, tuning around to ignore you.

“You must be bored” you started, “perhaps you can join me for a drink?” you said, fluttering your eyelashes.

They turned to face each other unsure of what to do, “oh come on, know one will care. You’ll still be guarding me, won’t you?”

Their eyes wandered to the bottle of wine “is that the only bottle, princess?”

You scoffed, “of course not”.

They smiled and ushered you in to your chamber.

It was funny, you must have done this a dozen time before and they still fell for it every time.

And being such lightweights, they were quick to fall into a drunken sleep, allowing you to grab your bag and make a run for the dragon pit.

Running through the streets of Kingslanding at night were dan, especially in your rich clothes and jewels.

And seeing as you had only walked to the dragon pit once or twice, with the company of a dozen guards, the run was a lot longer than expected.

Getting lost in the never-ending streets of flea bottom was easy, and before you knew it you had somehow ended up on the streets of silk.

“gods” you mumbled, looking around in search of a sign to lead you in the right direction.

You could see the dragon pit, so at least you weren’t too far away, only issue is the brothel with the name ‘Chantaya’s’ seemed to stand in the way of a quick exit.

“sister” you heard someone say, and the sight of Aemond exiting said brothel, through you into a sprint once again.

You were sure you looked like some pick pocket as you ran through the street, Aemond hot on your tale.

And with being such a stranger to kings landing you found yourself meeting an end and Aemond catching up to you.

“Let go of me” you muttered trying to pull yourself free from Aemond’s grasp.

“Who let you out” he sneered.

“Does it matter?” you sneered in return, “what are you even doing here?” you asked, and Aemond face dropped.

“I could ask you the same”.

“I wanted to go to the dragon pit” “the dragon pit” he reiterated, not believing you. “To what? Declare for the usurper?”

“Gods no” you near yelled, “I- “you were hesitant to tell him, having never got on along with him and never having much to say to him at all, this was honestly the most you and he had spoken since the start of the war. “I wish to go to oldtown”.

“why”

“To…to see Gwyane”.

“Our uncle?”

“Do you know of another Gwyane I could possibly wish to see in oldtown?” you said snidely.

He hummed, looking at you with a smirk, “I am your prince regent, I command you know” he said, “one word from me and I could have you locked in the black cells, or I could command you to go to oldtown to gather forces, with Gwayne”

You hated that you looked at him hopeful and hated even more that if he asked you would beg.

“But why, dear sister? Should I command you to oldtown? You are the future lady Tully after all”.

You scoffed, “oh please, we both know the Tullys are hardly loyal now and the second old Grover Tully dies they’ll declare for the black’s”.

“true”

“And why would you want me here anyway? I do not listen, and I defy your every move, sending me a way would better your rule, would it not?”

“Oh sister, you truly have been undervalued. Fine I shall take you to the dragon pit and order you to oldtown.”

Order you? As if there was a single part of you that did not already crave to be there, with him.

The walk to the dragon pit was a quiet and awkward, with Aemond pulling you by the hand, a tight grip as if you would try to escape.

Not a word was exchanged even as you entered, only your words commanding the dragon keepers to fetch you moonfyers and Aemond stood beside you in his usual stance.

He gave you a taunting wave as you took flight, and you never looked back.

It took five hours for you to reach oldtown.

A storm thundered as you entered the reach, rain dowsing your and obstructing your vison. Had it not been for the bright blue scales of your brother’s dragon, Tesserion you were sure you would have flown into the Hightower.

Landing, you were quickly greeted with guards and the face of your brother Daeron.

“Brother” you greeted as you slide of your dragon, “a pleasure to see you!”

“And you, Gwayne said you were coming” he nodded, hand raised to stop rain pouring over his face, “come in, quickly”

The Hightower, was exactly as you envisioned, filled with riches and symbols of the seven. It looked like a museum almost.

You were brough into a room lined with seats and walls filled with books. Painting filled with the faces of old lords and ladies, and tapestry depicting Aegon s landing in oldtown and his coronation.

“niece” you heard a voice breath, causing your inspection to come to a halt as you turned and faced Gwayne,

“uncle” you breathed in return and not a moment later were you running into his arms and your lips meeting once more.

This kiss was different than the one in the courtyard, this one was filled with longing, filled with pure love and desire.

Years of want filling you mouths your lips moved against each other.

“Gwayne” you whispered against his lips, as you both breathed heavily, your heads leant against each others.

He whispered your name in return, “you came” he breathed, not quite believing it.

“of course, you asked…and the prince regent commanded it”

He laughed “what?”

“when I was making my mistake i came across Aemond leaving a brothel” you laughed, “and somehow he decided to command me to oldtown to gather forces”

“oh?” he said, head tilting, “I see…does that mean you now command me?”

“do I not anyway?” you asked tauntingly.

He laughed, grabbing you to him once more and pulling you into another kiss, “I believe we command each other, my love” he said breaking the kiss.

“my love?”

“my love” he agreed, caressing your cheek, “I love you” he finally admitted.

And you smiled. Looking at him as he always looked at you.

He always had seen you, understood you when no one else did.

And the look in his yes, it was pure love and you had never felt more seen than in this moment.

“I love you” you replied, and he smiled.

“come with me” he said taking your hand and leading you up to his room.

His room, though perhaps smaller than others, was still large and full of all things Gwayne. With his own mural and tapestry.

“do you like it?” he asked, taking note of your eyes that had not left the tapestry he had commissioned.

“is that?” you asked, unsure if you were seeing it right.

“Moonfyer and you, yes”

“gods, Gwyane” you said breathlessly, a mural of you riding moonfyers for the first time, your second time meeting Gwyane and the first time you and he realised the bond between you both.

You turned to face him, and kissed him once more.

Unlike before this kiss was heated, passionate and full of lust.

His hands moved to your waist, as you slowly moved towards the bed, your hands reaching and pulling at his clothes, taking them of and leaving him in only his small clothes.

Your dress wet and soaked was quickly torn of you intern, leaving you only in your soaked chemise.

Their lips broke apart as her legs hit the bed. Taking each other in Gwayne moaned at the sight of your breast peeking out through the now sheer chemise.

“can i?” Gwayne breathed, hand coming to toy with the strap of your chemise.

You nodded, allowing your chemise to slip and leaving you bare before him.

“gods” he breathed, “ you are beautiful” he said, before pushing you down on the bed, his lips connecting with yours.

His lips moved from your mouth to your neck, nipping at your skin, causing you to moan softly.

He kissed his way down your body, before he reached your cunt.

“can i?” he asked once more, eager to taste her cunt.

“yes” you said, not quite sure what he intended to do until you felt his nose nudge between your thighs and a slow lick alone the length of your cunt.

groaning at the taste, he quickly went back licking and tasting your cunt, like a man starved. You moaned pleasure, hands moving to tug his hair as he found your clit.

Touching yourself had never felt like this, the sheer pleasure you felt as he sucked your clit into his mouth was better than any orgasm you had brought yourself to before, even more so when you felt his fingers toying with your entrance.

You tensed as his fingers entered you. They were thicker and longer than your own and you started to feel the stretch as he pumped you full of his two fingers.

You moaned, your body moving off the bed as you his fingers pumped in and out.

His hand moved to your waist gripping you down as he continued to fill you, your moans filling the room as his third finger entered you and you soon reached your peak.

He slowly backed away from you, pulling down his small clothes to revel his hard, thick cock.

“oh!” you spoke, at the sight of him.

“oh? Not good enough niece?” he asked teasingly.

“gods, it, yes” you nodded, reaching out to him.

He laughed, before slowly crawling onto the bed, his body covering yours. Taking your lips his, in a passionate and heated kiss, as his legs slowly parted yours as he positioned himself at her entrance.

“Are you sure?” he breathed against your lips, hand holding your waist as his cock teased your entrance.

You nodded, reaching forward to kiss him again, “yes”.

At the word he entered you slowly.

You groaned at the stretch but found no pain as he entered you.

His long cock filling you, a bulge appearing in your stomach as he allowed time for you to adjust.

“gods, you feel amazing” he groaned, moving his head to the nape of your neck “can I move?” he groaned, as your walls wrapped around him.

Nodding, “yes” you breathed. And wasting no time he began to slowly pump in and out of you.

You moaned as he thrusted into you, your hips moving to meet his as he picked up the pace.

He groaned at the feel of you moving against him, has hands gripping your waist as he started to thrust into you faster, he soon found that sweet spot inside you, that quickly turned you into a moaning mess. And soon you were wrapping your arms around him, clawing at his back as you felt your peak it washes over you and the feel if his seed filling you.

Your breath was heavy, his even heavier as he lay on you, his face still in your neck leaving soft kisses as he started to move of you slightly.

“marry me” he said, giving you soft kisses between his words. “this place is filled with septon’s it will be easy to find one to marry us.”

“okay” you said, looking into his yes.

“okay?”

You laughed, “yes, Gwyane I will marry you.”

taglist

@apollonshootafar @flrboyd @theanxietyqueen17 @dark-night-sky-99 @zillahvathek @leavesmealobe @winter-soldier-101 @bunbunbl0gs @ka1afbr @tesha-i-guess @aemondwhoresworld @RAYNE TARGARYEN 2 @littlebirdgot @eddieslut69 @beebeechaos @jennifer0305 @rosedurin @berightback1409 @barnes70stark @cloboboo @aegonswife @nessjo @helo1281917 @ateliefloresdaprimavera @perla434 @lilah102-blog @scorpiosmalfoy @random-human02 @f1wh0recom

to be added to taglist

#house of the dragon #hotd #gwayne hightower x fem!reader #gwayne hightower x reader #gwayne hightower #house hightower #gwayne x niece!reader #gwayne x targaryen!reader #freddie fox #gwayne x reader #ser gwayne #hotd season 2 #hotd spoilers #sacha writes ✍️

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drunk-person · 5 months ago

Text

Leather gloves, jealous and dragons

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x wife!reader

Summary: After the moons pass and Aemond and Lady Y/n's marriage becomes increasingly stronger, there is only one creature capable of keeping the prince away from his wife for more than a few hours, Vhagar. Sometimes Y/n cares, sometimes she doesn't, but if there's one thing she never cares about, it's the thick black gloves that her husband wears when he goes flying.

WARNING: 18+ mdni! Smut, p in v, gloves being used inappropriately (a lot of things have been used inappropriately on this blog lately, I'm talking about you training yard), fingering, clothed sex, dom/sub tones if you squint, no description for reader.

Word cont: 2.900 k

Author's note: Okay, I was just casually scrolling through Aemond's tag when this idea came up, and yes I was writing the bottom half of the fourth chapter of The Gossip, but I HAD to write this story! @peachysunrize I hope you like it, I added some inventions from my head in the middle of it 💕💕. English is not my first language so be kind if you can.

Y/n Arryn was a respectable and well-regarded lady, throughout Westeros there were men fighting for her hand as soon as she was old enough to marry. Proposals came from the North, the Rech and even Dorne, but the one that was of most interest to Lord Arryn was the one that came in a black envelope with red edges sealed with the Targaryen family crest.

The hand of the king had proposed marriage between Y/n and his grandson Prince Aemond Targaryen. The young woman felt her heart come to her mouth as soon as her father told her what he had decided, she would marry Prince Aemond in two moons.

The first time Y/n set foot on Kings Landing she was terrified, the idea of marrying a man she barely knew making her thoughts cloudier than water. And when she met Prince Aemond, this terror increased even more, something she didn't think was possible.

He was as scary and taciturn as they had told her, he barely gave her a look and only said two words of courtesy, other than muttering every now and then while looking down on everyone as if he were from a race superior to mere mortals.

Y/n's fear became even more overwhelming after she met Aegon, Aemond's older brother. Her heart ached as she listened to the gossip around the fortress about how he cheated on his wife, how he was always drunk, and how he spent more time in the brothels than in the fortress. Sadness took over her, and she imagined how terrible life itself would be from now on.

How wrong she was.

Things began to change on the night of the wedding when the prince vehemently denied a bed ceremony. Y/n was so nervous, the fear of the nuptials was already consuming her, combined with the fact that other people would be watching it made her tremble, until Aemond denied the ceremony and ripped that fear out of her.

The remaining fear was quickly extinguished when Aemond gently laid her on the bed and made her cry with pleasure in a way she never thought possible. Her hands tangled in his silver strands of hair as he touched her in places that made her blush with embarrassment as she remembered the other day.

From then on, little by little, she got to know her husband and every day she became more grateful for that. He still had that stoic and arrogant air, but now Y/n could see behind it, she saw the small acts of importance he gave her daily.

How he made a point of having at least one meal a day with her, how he asked how her day had been, how every now and then she would wake up after a passionate night and find an arrangement of beautiful flowers on the table in her room. And each of these things from the smallest to the largest warmed her heart until it was completely melted by her husband, to the point where she couldn't wait to be with him.

Little by little Aemond spent more and more time with her, and when they weren't tangled in the sheets so close together that you didn't know where one began and the other ended, they were sitting in the gardens talking, or reading together in some quiet place, or even just quietly enjoying each other's company. At a certain point, the only one who could receive more attention from Aemond than Y/n was Vhagar since he almost always went on long flights with the dragon.

That afternoon in particular Aemond was taking much longer than usual and Y/n was waiting for him impatiently as she walked around the room. He had promised to arrive before sunset so they would have time to walk around the garden, but now the sun had already set and the maids had even lit the candles.

The loud noise of the door suddenly invaded the room and Y/n promptly got up to wait for her husband, as soon as he entered her field of vision Y/n arched her eyebrows ironically.

-Did you decide to show up, husband? - Moons ago Y/n wouldn't have spoken to him in such a way in her wildest dreams, but now she was so familiar with him that she often didn't have as much politeness when speaking.

-I'm sorry, wife. - He said, removing the belt with the dagger and sword and throwing it on the couch. -Vhagar was a little sensitive this afternoon, she tends to want to fly longer distances when she is like this.

Y/n just made a humming sound with her mouth instead of responding, a habit she had picked up from Aemond without even realizing it. However, Y/n couldn't help biting her lower lip lightly when she saw him still wearing his riding clothes, she had never said anything to him, but seeing him returning from the flight always affected her mood and it was almost automatic so that she got excited.

-Wife… - Aemond murmured, approaching Y/n from behind and holding her firmly by the waist. -Are you by any chance jealous of Vhagar… a dragon?

His voice was incredulous and Y/n burned with embarrassment. Before she could respond Aemond laughed, something that rarely happened, which made her blush even more as she tried tried to free herself from his arms.

-You don't need to be embarrassed, I find it very flattering that you feel such appreciation for me to the point of feeling jealous. - He arched his eyebrow, still smiling. - No matter how unreasonable it may be.

-Husband.. - Y/n complained grumpily looking at her feet.

At that point she was no longer red only from the small misbehavior, but also from the thin, rough texture of her husband's riding gloves against her sensitive, soft skin. That was always a problem, she couldn't help but sigh every time she saw Aemond arrive wearing those damn gloves. And when he ripped them off and threw them haphazardly on the table? She felt a pressure between her legs that made her want to jump on him.

-What is it? Why are you all bristling, wife? - Aemond rubbed his hands against her arms and Y/n shivered even more making him arch his eyebrows again.

-They're your gloves, husband. - She said looking at the floor. – They are rough.

-I can take it off if you want. - He spoke, still gently stroking her arms, but after speaking he noticed that his wife lowered her eyes and didn't respond and then, approaching her lips to her ear, he spoke in a low voice, almost making her sigh. - You don't want me to take it off, do you?

-Do you like rougher things, dear wife? - And with the question he ran his hands down Y/n's body and slowly pulled the fabric of the dress up and accumulated them on her hips, making Y/n gasp as she felt the rough gloves passing over her thighs and squeezing them. slowly. Aemond couldn't help but smile when he noticed his wife's reactions to the roughest touch.

-Come here my dear, I'll show you how much I missed you. - He said, pulling her more and more towards him, sitting in one of the armchairs in the room while he placed her on his lap facing the large mirror and guided his hands to his wife's knees, slowly separating her legs, now being able to see the moisture that had formed in her intimacy.

-I haven't even touched you yet, dear wife, and you're already so wet for me. - His delicious voice sounded in her ear as he slowly moved his hands up her thighs, making her desperate for him to get to where she needed him most. The sight of his gloved fingers running up her legs made her roll her eyes with desire.

Aemond smiled mischievously and Y/n held her breath, not knowing where to look. His smile intensified as he brought his fingers to her cunt and at this point Y/n was barely breathing with desire.

Slowly he guided two fingers to her entrance and rubbed gently, pulling some of the moisture concentrated there and taking it to the pearl, which he began to rub languidly, eliciting sighs and moans from Y/n.

-You look so beautiful when you open your legs for me. - He murmured, brushing his lips gently against the shell of her ear, making her let out a louder moan. - So beautiful making these perfect sounds when I've barely touched you yet.

He then moved his fingers down and with a smooth movement that made Y/n roll her eyes, he penetrated just one gloved finger into her cunt. The sight of his finger disappearing inside her as he admired her with that look of pure adoration made her want to cry with desire.

-Very good beautiful girl. - He sighed as he slowly moved his finger teasing her, knowing very well that she needed more. - You always welcome me so well. How about another one?

He had barely asked and Y/n was already nodding her head practically begging for him.

-Such a needy lady my wife is. - He murmured as he inserted another finger inside her, making her moan his name with praise. - I can't leave our bed for a few hours because it becomes a meaningless mess.

Aemond guided his free hand to the front laces of Y/n's dress and pulled them tightly, loosening her wife's neckline more and more until her breasts were exposed to his pure delight, who guided his gloved hand to her erect nipple. of her gently pinching him as he admired her reflection in the mirror.

Meanwhile he moved his fingers slowly inside her and the feeling of the rough fabric of her husband's gloves against her own soft and wet insides made Y/n see stars and sigh in contentment with the double stimulation. As Aemond fucked her with his fingers he found that spongy spot that took her body out of orbit, and when she moaned uncontrollably he smiled even more mischievously against her neck, leaving kisses and bites there, pinching her nipples even more.

-So good husband. - Y/n sighed, leaning on his shoulder.

-You don't know how much I want to fuck you right now. -He murmured, biting her ear and sucking it while he nuzzled his nose in her hair.

Aemond penetrated her third finger making her whimper, but unlike before where he caressed her gently, he now started to get into a rougher rhythm, still slow but with force. And Y/n in turn just clung to his arms as she threw herself back, leaning against her husband's clothed chest, and moving her hips in search of more friction.

-So desperate my wife, throwing herself against my fingers like a beautiful filthy whore. -He brushed away a few strands of hair that had fallen across her face when he said that, so that Y/n could see herself better in the mirror, and the sight of her made her moan even louder.

His gloved fingers moving in and out of her cunt, his palm firmly massaging her mound, the fabric of the gloves slightly moistened and a white ring forming at the base of the fingers contrasting strongly with the dark color they possessed. The contractions of pleasure of her cunt crushing Aemond's skilled fingers as he smiled and bit her neck working even harder to coax pleasure out of her, he loved the feeling of her silky walls squeezing around him.

The way he curled his fingers and then moved them in and out made every nerve ending in Y/n burn. The roughness of the fabric was driving her crazy and she wanted so much more, she wanted to be set on fire.

-Husband. - She moaned, arching her back and pressing herself even more against him while turning her neck slightly to face him, taking one of her hands to his hair and removing the eye patch in the process. - I'm so close… so close. Please.

-I like it as much as you implore my dear. - He guided his other hand to her chin and squeezed it tightly, forcing her to keep her eyes exclusively on the mirror's reflection, the rough fabric of the glove making her gasp, while the sight of Aemond's now uncovered sapphire eye made her moan. - But I want you to keep your hungry little eyes on your pussy.

-See how wet she is for me, how well she takes my fingers, you are dripping my dear wife. - The movements became faster and stronger and Y/n felt some tears run down her cheeks as she moaned uncontrollably at the sight of Aemond's gloved fingers buried so deeply in her soaked cunt.

And when he accelerated the movements of both his fingers inside Y/n and his palm against her sensitive pearl, Y/n cried and screamed as she came against his hand, shuddering with pleasure.

Aemond was lost at that scene. He couldn't take his eyes off his wife's cunt writhing against his fingers as her juices oozed out between his fingers. Her face full of pleasure as she screamed and begged for his name was another thing that could easily kill him in that instant, he would certainly die happy with that scene.

-Look at the mess you make, my dear. - He said after removing his fingers from her trembling cunt. - Clean up for me like the good wife I know you are.

Aemond guided his hand to Y/n's lips and she lazily sucked on his gloved fingers. The taste of the fabric mixed with her own taste further numbing her mind, still clouded by the orgasm.

And Aemond could no longer contain himself when he saw that expression of contentment on her face as she sucked on his gloved fingers. And he quickly took her off his lap and bent her over the carpet, still facing the mirror, making her gasp from the abrupt movement.

Y/n had barely balanced herself and Aemond had already undid the laces of his own pants and guided his cock to her sensitive pussy. They both moaned senselessly as soon as he penetrated her completely. And he quickly brought his hands to the top of her dress, dragging it down and leaving her breasts completely free for him to massage and squeeze as he pleased.

He fucked her so well, and Y/n lost her breath with each firm thrust from Aemond and panted with pleasure as she whimpered for more with tears in her eyes.

She raised her head, looking towards the mirror again, and the sight of his hand massaging her hips and squeezing her nipples as he fucked her while still wearing those damned riding gloves made her eyes roll with pleasure, and she begged for him with Even more willing looking into his eyes and sighing when finding that blue glow that she had learned to love so much.

-I love that look you have when I'm inside you. - He groaned, rolling his eye with pleasure as he fucked her, and Y/n lowered her face once again. Aemond then guided his hand to her chin, forcing her to look at the mirror again, he wouldn't miss a second of that passionate look that his wife directed just at him and that made Aemond's heart race.

-No my dear, you keep those shining eyes on me while I fuck you like you deserve. - And removing his hand from her chin, Aemond went up to her hair and pulled it back, holding her firmly and keeping her gaze fixed on the mirror.

-Aemond, please. - She whimpered, enchanting him with those eyes that made him lose his head, and once again he guided the tips of his gloved fingers to the top of her thighs and caressed her forcefully, making his wife gasp and moan as she collapsed in front of him, who held her. by her hips as he fucked her with abandon looking for his own climax, which didn't take long to come when he came deep inside her.

The two remained motionless, their bodies pressed together and their breaths labored. Y/n brought her own bare hand to her husband's gloved hand and caressed it with gentle circles still completely lost in fleeting pleasure.

-You look even more beautiful when you're cumming all over my cock. - He murmured, still lost in pleasure against her hair, making his wife smile.

Y/n in turn, faced the mirror and sighed with contentment when she saw their reflection. Aemond behind her still panting with his usually stoic face relaxed in pleasure as he held her against him still holding her thighs firmly to keep her in contact with him as she squeezed lightly every now and then.

-Love you. - She said tiredly, still with her head lying on his shoulder, looking at him through the mirror.

Aemond didn't respond with words, he just mumbled like he always did. But Y/n no longer needed words, she had learned to distinguish every look, every touch and every sigh of her husband to know that he was also in love, especially when he pulled her even closer and left a soft kiss on her neck .

Tag list: @slut-for-m3 @fallout-girl219

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httpsserene · 4 months ago

Note

Jealous sex with Charles 🤩

𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 - 𝐜𝐥. 𝟏𝟔

summary: there’s no reason for charles to be jealous of men who are stupid enough to think they have a chance with you. content warning: 18+ only. mdni. explicit sexual content. jealous sex. tennis. monte carlo masters winner stefanos tsitsipas used as a plot device. porn with a side of plot. mildly possesive!charles leclerc. jealousy. reader’s kindness is misunderstood for flirting. no infidelity. vaginal sex. unprotected sex(don’t do that!). fingering. missionary & cowgirl. rough(ish?) sex. the clothes stay on. uhm, reader gets railed stupid, lowkey. cumplay (i’m so sorry). pairing: charles leclerc x fem!bpoc!reader word count: 2.8k words.

from serene: surprised i finished this when i said i would. to make a long story short, i’m breaking up with my boyfriend 🤪✌🏽ANYWAYS, i listened to the beauty behind the madness and my dear melancholy albums by the weekend to lock in the smexxy vibes. idk if it worked, it took me two days to write less than 3k words 🙂 y’all lmk if you think the wait was worth it, and enjoy reading lovelies x

⌕ join taglist | requests & feedback | table of contents ↻

The car ride home was quiet. You figured it was post-tennis exhaustion keeping your boyfriend quiet; the entire match was viewed with the Monte Carlo sun radiating down on the stands. Secondarily, the silence could’ve been induced by a little social exhaustion even though Charles thrives in crowds—the two of you spent a couple of hours before the match chatting to anyone who approached him, which felt like every person at the event had to have his attention for a brief moment. Then after the match, the two of you spent another hour speaking with the Master’s Winner, Stefanos, and the Prince, before you were able to take your exit.

So, you attributed his low energy to being sun-tired and talked-out. In retrospect, you should’ve known that it was more than fatigue from how Charles failed to put his hand on your thigh as he drove, and how he sat through slow-crawling traffic without ever moving to turn on music or talk. Your weariness prevented you from prodding further when the Monegasque responded with a nearly inaudible hum when asked if he was tired—the lack of presence in his answer felt like confirmation.

Yet, you realize it wasn’t an answer at all when you entered your home.

Your comments and questions about the match and dinner plans were met with one-word answers and off-timed hums of indifference in response. It’s not until the two of you are in your bedroom getting unready that Charles speaks more than a single word.

“Stefanos was nice, wasn’t he?”

You pause in your action of taking off an earring, a puzzled tilt to your brow at the odd tone his words took, eyes examining him in the reflection of your vanity’s mirror. He stares down at his forearm as he unclasps his watch, his expression unreadable from his side profile.

“Yes…he was,” you answer slowly, your confusion growing as you see Charles’ jaw clench, “I didn’t imagine him to be so, normal, I guess? After winning the Monte Carlo Masters, of all things. And, he’s done it three times! I mean, that’s incredible, no? For him to be so friendly and relaxed after was nice, I think.”

You rambled endlessly, the feeling that you’ve talked yourself into a corner flaring at the base of your skull. Charles turned to face you fully, shrugging his suit jacket off and calmly placing it on top of the dresser, rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt before he leaned to rest against the furniture as well.

“Ah,” the hair on the nape of your neck rises at the sound, you continue to remove your necklaces with hesitant fingers, “Did he charm you into being your favorite tennis player today, mon amour?”

A humorous scoff escapes your lips, “You know I’m not a fan of tennis. But, if there happens to be a match playing within my view, and he’s playing, I suppose I would want him to win. I wouldn’t say I was ‘charmed,’ I just think he’s a nice man.”

“I think you were too nice to him.”

You slowly place your diamond-studded, golden tennis chain away before your eyes flicker back to meet Charles’ in the reflection of the mirror. You raise a brow, unsure how to respond to his statement. Intelligently, you’ve deduced that he’s jealous, which is odd—considering he’s Charles Leclerc, the prettiest, sweetest, and kindest man on the face of the Earth, in your humble opinion. Stefanos doesn’t hold a candle compared to your boyfriend. Your fingers struggle to undo the clasp of your final necklace; the gold, diamond-paved, Cartier necklace with Charles’ name carved on the back—it was expensive enough that he refused to tell you the price when he gifted it, only saying that “the cost was nothing compared to the love he has for you,” the smooth-talker.

“Arrête,” he speaks firmly, pushing off the dresser and making his way towards you, his dress shoes clicking on the floor sending your heartbeat racing. He stops mere centimeters behind you, the heat of his body radiating against your back.

“Leave it on,” he murmurs, darkened eyes running over your form in the mirror indulgently.

You do as he says, arms shakily lowering to rest at your sides, fingers tugging at the hem of your sundress as your heart skips and body flushes with heat. The Monegasque reaches around you to center the necklace on your clavicle, the sensation of his fingertips barely ghosting across your brown skin has your mouth parting with an inaudible gasp.

“If only he knew that you wear my name locked around your neck,” the brunette pondered aloud, “Maybe then he would remember that your pretty eyes, sweet giggles, and flirty words are for me—since you seemed to forget.”

“I was not f-flirting with him!” You stutter over the word as if it were an insult.

“You were not,” Charles sounds like he agrees, “But, you know very well that people mistake your kindness as more than that. It’s happened before, no?”

It has happened before. More than you can count. The number of men who mistake politeness and your overall niceness for interest is frightening; you don’t want anybody but Charles.

“What was I supposed to say to Stefanos? Nothing? Should I have just ignored him? And stood at your side quietly like I was just there for decoration?” Your tone peaks with annoyance, heated at the idea of being reduced to an accessory.

“No,” his voice cuts through your train of thought, “You should’ve agreed with me when I mentioned we needed to leave after he said ‘the only thing he’s missing to celebrate is a beautiful woman’ as he stared directly at you—instead of forcing me to stay for another twenty minutes to talk.”

Your mouth drops open disbelievingly, a scoff following a few moments later when you slowly realize that Stefanos wasn’t interested in being set up with one of your friends as he asked. You should’ve known when he asked if you had a twin sister he could meet.

“Okay, in hindsight, I can see that he was flirting,” you clarify, “But, I definitely was not. You know in that entire conversation, I was just being polite—and I made you stay for longer because the Prince wanted to talk to you. Not because I was entertaining a man who doesn’t respect my relationship with you!”

“You were being polite when he kissed your hand?”

“Yes! I thought that was just him laying it on thick?”

“He’s not royalty,” Charles snorts, “The only person allowed to put their lips on you is me.”

“You keep talking about who’s ‘allowed’ to do anything to me and you’ll very quickly find out that I’m ‘allowed’ to reconsider this relationship if you continue speaking about me as if you own me.”

“I don’t own you,” Charles pauses, and a smile spreads across his lips, dimples deepening in his cheeks, nearly forcing you to forget your previous statement as you admire them in the vanity mirror, “But—you own me.”

You turn around quickly at the words, breath stuttering at the lack of space between you two. Tilting your head upwards, you examine your boyfriend’s face with narrowed eyes and cheeks burning so hot the red flush is apparent. His smile has softened to a smirk, his eyebrows laced with a smug undertone, his pupils blown wide enough for you to have to focus to see the green ring around them. You languidly raise a hand to trace a finger across the edge of his jawline, then cupping your hand along the side of his face, gently resting your thumb in the indent of his dimple. Your chest tightens when Charles leans into your palm, slowly shifting to press a kiss on your wrist before nudging you back to holding his face.

Sighing gently, you shake your head, “What do you want from me?”

“Je veux que tu me laisses baiser ma jalousie sur toi, s'il te plaît.”

“S-say it slower please,” you request meekly, “I think I heard you wrong.”

“I want you to let me fuck my jealousy out,” Charles emphasizes each word slowly, his tone becoming teasing as he sees you fluster with each added syllable, “Ple–”

Your lips meet his desperately, your other hand flying upwards to grasp at his shoulder when you feel his laughter through the kiss. You’re sure his amusement is multiplied as you try to dominate the kiss, even as you rise on the tips of your toes and arch your body towards his. Needily, you whine into his mouth as he refuses to meet your rushed rhythm, digging your nails into the meat of his broad shoulders to convey your urgency.

The Monegasques’ hold on your waist turns rough and you pull backward with a gasp when he pinches the skin of your arm. You glower at him in displeasure but it’s quick to fade as he guides you back to his lips with a heavy hand on the nape of your neck. His thumb and pointer finger are weighted from their position at the base of your skull, directing the tilt and movement of your head as he licks into your mouth and bruises your swollen lips further with pressure and stings of teeth.

He walks himself backward, one hand firm on your hip to guide you with him, the other rucking up the skirt of your sundress and sliding underneath to tug your panties down your legs with ease. You kick the fabric off your ankles distractedly, falling to straddle Charles’ lap as soon as he sits on the edge of the bed. His hand slips between the cradle of your thighs, cupping along your warmth and toying within your folds.

“Wet for me already,” he discovers delightedly, breaking the kiss to suck a mark into the sensitive skin behind your left ear and peppering more nips and teases of teeth down the stretch of your neck. Hisses of pleasure slip from your parted lips and you slant your hips forward to guide Charles’ fingers inside. You exhale breathily at the slide of a single finger in your cunt, rolling down onto his hand when you deem his pace too slow.

“Another, please,” you beg, moaning throatily when your boyfriend fulfills your plea without hesitation.

Two fingers turn into three, and three fingers turn into Charles flipping you over and pushing you into the bed so he can hover over you. With rushed hands, you both shove the zipper of his slacks and the hem of his briefs low for him to slip his cock out and press into you. The brunette shudders as he sinks within your depths, falling to his elbows, your moans and gasps of breath spilling into the same pocket of air when his hips rest against the back of your thighs.

“M-move, please, Cha,” you cry, knees pressing into his sides and body rolling upwards to get a glimpse of friction during his stillness.

Charles drops his head to quiet you with a chaste kiss before matching the rhythm of your rocking hips, his rumbling groans quieted by your lips. He holds himself steady on one arm while he uses the other to reach above your head and drag a pillow downwards, tapping your ass briefly to wordlessly command you into rising upwards as he slips the cushion underneath you. As soon as the pillow is properly positioned, Charles’ slow grinds are exchanged for slamming thrusts, sharp flares of pain-dipped pleasure shooting up your spine and tightening the knot in your navel. Your breath is lost quickly and you struggle to recover, eyes screwing shut and exhales of expletives and whimpers of encouragement are all you can offer.

The Monegasque roughly slides his hand down your leg and grasps you by the ankle digging into the small of his back to keep him close, moving it to rest over his shoulder, and letting his hand fall to squeeze at your thigh for purchase as the change of position tightens the fluttering channel of your cunt around him. This angle feels like he’s digging deeper inside you; one of your hands scrambling to drag your nails down his toned back while the other fists in his hair as you shriek high-pitched into the heated air between your bodies.

“All mine,” you can feel the possessive lilt to his tone rumble through the thin skin of your throat as he sucks along the rapid beat of your pulse. Your nails decorate his back with red scores and it has Charles biting out sharp putain’s and rabbiting his cock into you forcefully, yet remaining conscious enough to realign his thrusts as he bullies his way inside of you to pound against your g-spot. His leaned forward position stretches the limits of your comfortable flexibility, but it allows his pelvis to barely scrape against your clit, sending a wave of overstimulating pleasure to your brain, your eyes rolling as the sensation knocks any form of rational thought from your brain.

He pauses to tug the front of your dress down, the hem tucked under the spill of your breasts. His fingers flick teasingly over a pebbled nipple while he folds himself lower to drag his tongue against the other and nip small marks around your areola. You fight against the assault on your chest; arching your back towards and away from him—chasing and running away from the pleasure simultaneously, yet you continue to grind onto his cock.

“Charles, f-fuck, lemme–uhuh—lemme ride ‘ou,” you whine out incoherently, pushing at his shoulder with a closed fist, hoping he’ll understand your slurred words as your tongue begins to feel heavy.

Your boyfriend pulls away from your breasts in question, panting roughly as he stares up at you to see a pure look of want in your dampened eyes, lashes clumped together and brown skin flushing deeper when the eye contact is held unendingly. You know that Charles debated denying your request, or at least thought about making you beg for it, but he decides to kneel and drag you upwards into his lap without a fight. He allows you a brief respite to adjust your legs and anchor your arms over his shoulders, then tightens the hold of his hands on your waist, fingertips sure to leave indents as he assists your first upward motion, before solidly dragging you back down.

The strength you regained in your legs from the short break disappears, knees weakening and body slumping into Charles’ chest, your head drooping to rest in the crook of his neck.

Charles steadies your head and tilts you back gently, checking in, “Is this too much, mon amour? We can stop.”

“No,” you murmur, “You fucked the feeling out of my legs, Cha.”

He laughs warmly, situating his hands on your ass to direct your motions, the tone of his voice light as he coos, “‘s okay, mon coeur—I’ll do all the work.”

You brush your nose along his, moaning softly at the sweetened drag of his cock. Charles chases your bitten lips, groaning lowly as he deepens his thrusts, fingers dipping to circle your clit—always ensuring your release is prioritized. Your thighs begin to shake and his thrusts skip beats as he begins to near the precipice as well. Shuddering, you gasp into his mouth, attempting to alert him to your nearing orgasm but you’re unable to speak the words.

“It’s okay, mon amour,” your boyfriend soothes, “Cum for me—I’ve got you.”

“yesyesyes,” you babble mindlessly, Charles continuing to pound into you, not slowing the search for his release now that you’re orgasm is imminent. A few well-angled jabs of your g-spot and you’re gone; release frying your nerve endings and vision blurring as your boyfriend continues to ride your high to its very end.

The Monegasque pulls out the moment your hips fight his hold, dropping his hand drenched with your pleasure from your clit to grab his cock, and with one stroke, he spills. Charles paints your navel and inner thighs white with whimpering moans, and lilted French. He milks himself into over-sensitivity, only stopping when the orgasmic relief shifts into pain. He kisses you on the cheek as he drags a finger through his cum pooled between your thighs. His hand rises to your mouth and he hums approvingly as your lips part and suckle his spend clean off.

“Hm,” Charles sounds, staring down at the claim he’s spilled, his free hand rubbing his cum along your navel, “All mine.”

#f1 x reader #f1 smut #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x black!reader #f1 x black!reader #charles leclerc smut #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc fic #charles leclerc fanfic #f1 x female reader #charles leclerc x female reader #f1 x you #serene’s chapters.#⋆⭒˚｡⋆. series special: formula 1 #♡ ༘*.ﾟ love interest: cl.

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soaps-mohawk · 10 months ago

Text

Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 2 - Adjustments

Summary: You're struggling a bit in your adjustment to your new life, and you're finding some of them are easier to get along with than others. Luckily you're not in it alone.

Pairing: Poly 141 x reader

Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, military inaccuracies, let's be real this is so unrealistic but it's a/b/o you're not here for accuracy.

Author's Note: I'm so just overwhelmed with the attention this fic has gotten, but not in a bad way I promise! I'm just surprised is all. Thank you everyone that has read and reblogged and commented. I love all of you and so, since I have no self control, here is Chapter 2. Lots more world building and dialogue in this part, but I promise good stuff is coming.

Also I promise Soap will get his time soon. He's just the hardest for me to write, and you'll see why in this chapter.

MASTERLIST | <- Previous | Next ->

“She was lying.”

Price doesn’t bother looking up as a dark figure leans against the wall next to him. He stares out at the empty space between the barracks and the mess hall, not much traffic between the buildings during this time of day.

“About how she got to the institute.”

“Or at least not telling the whole truth.” Price says, turning to look at Simon. “Something tells me she’d talk if we asked.”

“She’s soft.” Simon says, letting his gaze drift off into the distance.

“She’s a civilian.” Price counters. “The CIA did a little training, but she’ll need some work. We can’t leave her completely defenseless...”

Simon turns to face him again. “There’s something else.”

Price pushes himself off the wall, heading back inside. Simon follows, the two of them making their way down the hall to his office. “There’s hundreds of American military bases across the world, thousands of regiments they could have chosen from, and yet, they sent her to us.”

Simon closes the door behind him as Price sinks into his desk chair. “You think it was deliberate?”

Price pulls open one of the drawers, pulling out the file Kate had given him. “Laswell said the CIA has had eyes on her for years.” He slides it across his desk to Simon. “There’s a lot of why's in this situation, and a lot of how’s. Like, if what she’s saying is true, how did a Staff Sergeant get his daughter into FIOT practically overnight?”

Simon glances up at him over the top of the file. “You think there’s something else going on with this Initiative.”

Price nods. “I do. I think there’s more than one experiment being run, and we’re the guinea pigs.”

You stare at your reflection in the mirror as you run a comb through your damp hair. You look tired, the dark circles that have plagued your face for the last few weeks looking even darker now. It’s been a long day, so long it’s hard to believe it’s only been a matter of hours since you boarded the helicopter in London.

Your new pack had made themselves scarce after dinner, leaving you to your own devices. You had been left alone after lunch too, and you had spent that time laying in bed, resting after the overwhelming scenting.

You’d played back the last few hours in your mind. Leaving London in the helicopter, meeting your new Pack Alpha, Laswell leaving, meeting your new pack, the scenting. You had plenty to think about, to stress over, and you had been surprised when the knock came at your door for dinner. You were equally surprised to see Gaz and Soap waiting for you.

You’d been sandwiched between them again as you walked to the mess. It was busier for dinner, and the eyes weren’t quite so quick to look away with the alphas missing. You know they have to be curious, with an omega on base following around two members of a SpecOps team, smelling like them. You know what they were probably thinking of you, what they were thinking your presence means.

You’ve begun to understand Price’s rules a bit more.

Price and Ghost had joined you as Soap said they would, coming in late from whatever they had been busy doing. You had been seated next to Soap, Ghost taking his other side while Price sat next to Gaz. It hadn’t gone unnoticed to you how close Soap and Ghost sat, and you remembered the look in Ghost’s eyes when Soap had approached to scent you. How his defensive stare had turned icy, threatening even, when he’d gotten close to you as if you were capable of hurting Soap. It had been a silent warning. If you tried anything, you’d have him to contend with.

Ghost is territorial, more so than most alphas. You had seen it just a bit in Price, but only because you had been watching for it. Ghost was silent in his claim, but his gaze spoke of his territorialism. As you sat at the table with them, you slowly felt the stares lessen, the curious alphas and betas around you slowly turning away from your table until you were left in peace. You knew it was all thanks to a well-pointed glare from the second alpha at the table.

They’d escorted you back to the barracks before disappearing again, leaving you alone. You’d opted for a shower to try and clear your head, exhaustion weighing heavy in your limbs but your mind was racing too much to really get any rest. You haven’t been told what their normal schedules entail or even what they look like, but you expect an early morning tomorrow. Since Price had said at least one of them needed to escort you around base, that likely meant you were going to be constrained to their schedules.

You know even when they’re not away, their days are probably full of training and briefings, much like yours had been for three months. They’re probably up early, earlier than you’d like to be, and then they go non-stop all day.

You wonder if they ever get a break.

Maybe this is a break for them.

You sit on the edge of the bed after you finish your routine, eyeing the pillows and blankets stacked at the end. They’re military issue, not as soft or as plush as you might have preferred. This is your new normal, though. Comfort isn’t exactly going to be a high priority.

Tears prick your eyes as you run your hand over the comforter. You know it’s the exhaustion, the stress of the day beginning to weigh on you. You’re worn out, and that’s causing a slip in the tight reins you keep on your mood. Omegas and alphas were both prone to being moody, and those who were unrestrained could lose control quickly. Alphas were quick to anger, while omegas could get depressed very easily. Exhaustion drives both to being grumpy, though alphas will descend into irritability and anger, while omegas will get whiny and weepy.

You hate it, how easily you can be driven to cry. How easily you can lose control. It makes you feel weak and helpless, but that’s partially by design. It was supposed to be your pack’s job to fix that, to give you that support and take care of you.

Except you don’t know your pack.

What would they do if you approached them like this, all teary and needy? Would instinct take over and snap them into their roles? Or would they give you an awkward pat on the back and leave you to take care of yourself? Gaz would help you, you think. He had slipped into that role so easily during the scenting. Your fingers twitch on the bedspread, your mind telling you to seek him out, track him down, even if it’s only to catch a whiff of his scent again.

Your phone screen lights up where it’s sitting on the nightstand, drawing your attention from the door. Kate had given you the phone just this morning before you left the hotel. It had her number on it, as well as your pack’s. You’d half expected to find messages already from them when you’d turned it on, but there had been none. They had kept that boundary of meeting in person first.

You pick up the phone, checking the message. It’s from Price.

Breakfast is at 0700. I’ll take you to see the Omega Specialist after.

Seven o’clock. It’s not terribly early. You’d eaten around the same time at the institute. You’ll get to meet the Omega Specialist as well tomorrow. You’ve met plenty of them in your time as an omega, but something about the idea of having someone there who knows, who understands is comforting to you.

You send a reply in acknowledgement for tomorrow’s plan before setting an alarm for tomorrow morning. There’s an uneasy feeling under your skin, a tickling in the back of your mind that you can’t seem to relax. Your eyes are drawn to the desk where the shirts still sit, and before you know it you’re moving to the desk, letting your fingers trail over each one.

You grab Price’s shirt, taking it back to your bed. You curl up with your back facing the door, holding the shirt against your chest, letting the scent of tobacco smoke and whiskey fill your nose. Silent tears slide down your cheeks, your face pressing into the pillow to muffle your sobs.

As you try to muffle your tears, you miss the sound of boots pausing in front of your door, the person on the other side standing there for a moment before continuing down the hall.

You let out a groan as your alarm pulls you from sleep. You had drifted in and out for a few hours before finally managing to get a couple precious hours of sleep. You’d woken when the others got up. You knew they were trying to be quiet but you had heard them shuffling around, talking quietly amongst each other. You’re normally a fairly deep sleeper, but in a new place you always struggle.

A new place surrounded by almost complete strangers.

You turn off your alarm, sitting up and rubbing your eyes. They’re burning a bit, the exhaustion still weighing heavy on your shoulders. You pad to the bathroom, splashing cold water on your face to try and make yourself at least look more alive than you feel. The last thing you need is them getting worried about you. That’s attention you’re not sure you want right now.

You blink sleepily at your closet, trying to decide what to wear. Were you allowed to wear anything? You didn’t have much besides the basics, since the only thing you had been allowed to wear at the institute was its uniform and the clothes they provided. Then when you were with the CIA, they had provided clothes for you to wear as well. The things you have now had been bought by Kate before you left D.C.

Everyone on base wore similar variants of the same uniform. You’re not military, though, so you don’t think those rules apply to you. No one had said anything about your state of dress yesterday. You opt for comfort, knowing you’d likely find out soon if you were going to be forced to dress differently too.

You’re tying your shoes when the knock sounds on your door. You had heard the others moving around, footsteps in the hallway, opening and closing doors, quiet voices talking and Soap laughing at something. You know it’s one of them, yet the nervous tickle at the back of your head is back.

Soap is leaning casually against your doorframe when you open the door. His face lights up in a smile as he sees you. “Morning, bonny. Sleep alright?”

“Yeah.” You shrug. “Tossed and turned for a while.”

“We didne keep ye up did we?” He asks, his smile faltering just a bit.

You shake your head. “No, I never sleep well the first few nights in a new place.”

“Well, our beds are always open if ye need something more comfortable.” He winks at you playfully.

Your face warms at his words, the double meaning not lost on you. You were right, Soap was going to be the one to push your boundaries the most.

Gaz elbows him in the ribs as he passes. “She’s been here a day, mate, don’t go scaring her off now.” He leans on the other side of your doorframe, giving you a smile. “Morning.”

“Morning.” You say, your face still warm from Soap’s teasing.

“You hungry?” Gaz asks.

You nod. You do feel hungry this morning, likely a side effect from your emotional night last night. You step out of your room, the two betas stepping back to give you space as you close the door behind you. Ghost is leaning against the wall next to his door, his eyes watching with the typical cautious disinterest that seemed to be his default setting.

Gaz and Soap sandwich you between them again, close enough their arms brush yours as you walk. It was almost as if they could sense your inner turmoil, the neediness still tugging at the back of your mind. If Ghost hadn’t been trailing the three of you, you might have been tempted to give in and grip their sleeves, or slip your hands into theirs. How would Ghost respond to such a bold move? The mental image of your body flying through the air as he punted you into next week almost makes you laugh.

Price is already seated at a table frowning at his phone over a cup of coffee. Gaz and Soap load up your tray for you, something you’re getting used to rather quickly. It was expected from the alphas, or at least Price, to coddle you a bit, but it seemed the betas were more than happy to get in on it as well.

The thought makes something flutter in your chest.

You’re seated between Gaz and Price again once you reach the table, Price greeting you with a tired smile. “Morning. Sleep alright?”

“Not really.” You say honestly. “New place and all. I’ll settle in eventually.”

“Maybe the Omega Specialist can give you some ideas to help.” He glances at his watch before looking at you as you spoon a heaping spoonful of porridge into your mouth. “Take your time. We have until 8.”

You listen to the conversation at the table as you eat, Gaz and Soap talking about a football game that’s on tonight. You feel eyes on you, your skin prickling a bit. You glance up, half expecting Ghost to be glowering at you again, but his gaze is focused on his eggs. You cast a quick glance around the mess, turning slightly to look behind you.

Three tables over, you find the gaze of some soldier focused on you. You haven’t paid much attention to anyone else on the base, but then again you haven’t had much time or reason to yet. You can’t read the expression on his face as he stares at you, but you feel a shiver run down your spine as your eyes meet his.

He stares at you for a few seconds before his gaze moves slightly past you, quickly dropping back to his plate. You turn around, finding Ghost staring just past your head. His eyes are narrowed, his scent coming off stronger than it had been. You can practically see his hackles raised, the warning clear in the air. You feel the urge to curl in on yourself, the threatening aura radiating from him makes you want to cower.

It doesn't go unnoticed by those at the table either.

“Easy, Ghost.” Price says calmly, Gaz turning to follow his line of sight.

“Bloody wanker.” Ghost grumbles before rising from the table.

You turn back around, but the soldier that had been staring at you is gone.

You nervously pick at your sweatshirt sleeves as you sit in the plastic chair next to Price. You’re still on edge a bit from what happened at breakfast. It wasn’t so much being stared at that bothered you. After now three meals in the mess, you’ve almost come to expect it. It’s Ghost’s reaction that has your mind still reeling.

“I’ve always hated the medical center.” Price says with a sigh as he leans his head back against the wall. “It smells too sterile. Makes my nose burn. Reminds me of too many close calls.”

His words jar you a bit. You hadn’t even thought about that aspect of his job. He’s used to getting shot at, to getting into fights, running head first into danger that would send most running the other way. You wonder how many times he’s been the one with the close call, and how many others he’s had to watch have their own.

You wonder how many times he’s had to make that trip to tell someone’s family.

You’re pulled from your thoughts as the door across from you opens. Price pushes himself to his feet, and you follow as a kind looking woman steps out. You breathe a quiet sigh of relief. You don’t have anything against male Omega Specialists, but you were already surrounded by men. Sure you have Kate, but she’s half a world away.

She’s tall, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Despite being a doctor she’s dressed casually, no white coat or gloves to be seen. Her eyes are light green and crease in the corners when she smiles.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Keller.” She introduces herself, shaking Price’s hand.

American. You think, silently breathing another sigh of relief. Kate really had pulled some strings with this one.

“Captain John Price.” He says.

You introduce yourself when she turns to you, shaking your hand. Her voice is soft and gentle, the scent of beta coming off her in waves.

“Come on in,” She says, leading you into the office. “Sit anywhere you like. Make yourselves comfortable.”

Her office isn’t what you expected either. Instead of the harsh fluorescents, the lighting is softer, warmer. There’s paintings and posters all over the walls, along with several plants. There’s a desk covered in books and paperwork in one corner and a bookshelf with several books packed into it in the other. There’s a couch on one wall, and a couple plush looking chairs on the other.

You move to one of the chairs, sinking down onto it. It envelops you in softness, and you feel as if you might sink into it and never be able to get out. After a day of hard plastic and stiff blankets, it nearly makes you weep.

Price takes the chair next to you, Dr. Keller sitting on the couch across from you. The office smells good, a light, neutral scent in the air aside from the pure almondy scent of beta.

“Alright,” She says, holding a tablet and a stack of files in her lap. “I always like to start by introducing myself and telling you a bit about me, then we’ll get into the important stuff.”

She jumps into telling you about herself. Where she grew up: California. Where she studied: UC Berkeley. What institute she did her residency at: West Coast Training Academy. Where she worked last before Kate called her in: some poor inner city institute in LA.

“Now, on to the more important stuff.” She says, turning on the tablet. “I got your medical records yesterday. You’re quite the healthy girl.”

“Yes ma'am. I have good genes. That’s what my mom used to say.” You respond.

Dr. Keller smiles. “Hardly even been sick. Your heats are all normal, too, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.” You say. “Except for a three month stretch two years ago.”

“Yes, the heat sickness epidemic that hit America.” She says.

You nod. “FIOT locked down completely and everyone was supposed to quarantine, but I heard a rumor that it was one of the beta food workers. She snuck out to see her alpha boyfriend and brought it in with her. We only think it was her because she disappeared not long after the first omega got sick.”

Dr. Keller hums. “I know not everyone was so willing to take it seriously. You made a full recovery, though. No lasting side effects, I’m sure thanks to the state of the art medical facilities that FIOT keeps.”

“Yes, ma’am. We were lucky it was just a mild case.”

“That is lucky.” She flips through something on the tablet. “Your lab results all look phenomenal. I like to do checkups monthly, just to ensure everything is working as it should. I know the CIA gave you quite the cocktail of vaccines while you were with them.” She turns her gaze to Price. “Captain Price, I’ve sent in a request for your team’s vaccination records as well. I’m sure you’ve had everything under the sun, but I’d like to ensure there’s no risk of any accidental exposures.”

“I don’t see a problem with that.” Price says. “If RAMC gives you any trouble, just let me know. I’ll get them for you myself.”

“Thank you, Captain.” She says. “One last bit in this part and then we can move on. I see FIOT issued an implant before you left, as is standard practice.”

You nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. You’ve had more than enough time for it to take effect so we won’t have to worry about any accidental slip ups during your next heat.”

Your cheeks warm at her words a bit. You’ve been trying to avoid thinking about that inevitable side of things.

“And your next heat is roughly six weeks away.” She says, looking at the calendar. “Don't be surprised if it comes a little earlier now that you’re being exposed to alphas again.”

Your stomach twists nervously at that thought. It was common for heats to be triggered early after exposure to alphas, especially after such a prolonged period without exposure to them. It wasn’t likely to start tomorrow, but you knew it could jump a week or two due to the natural pheromones alphas put off, and the instinctual call for the alpha/omega bond.

“You’re planning for the claiming to take place during the heat?” Dr. Keller asks.

“Yes, that’s the plan.” Price says.

“That is the most natural time for it.” Dr. Keller says. “Of course, it is always up to omega preference in the end.”

You don’t miss the way her eyes dart to you for a second.

“Now that that’s over with,” She says, putting the tablet to the side. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to do this next part with just the two of us.”

A beat of silence passes before you realize she’s asking you. Her eyes are on you, and so are Price’s. She’s asking you. She’s asking you what you want.

“I-I guess...yeah.” You stutter over your words, not quite sure how to answer. Is there a wrong answer? Would Price be upset if you said yes? Would Dr. Keller be upset if you said no? Your eyes turn to Price, trying to gauge his reaction.

“It’s up to you.” He says softly. “We’re here for you.”

You sit up a little straighter at his words, nodding your head. “Y-Yes. That’s okay.”

Price pushes himself to stand up. “I’ll be right outside.”

The air inside the room seems to lighten as he leaves, Dr. Keller reclining back on the couch as the door clicks shut. She pulls out a stack of papers and a pen before she looks at you. Your palms are sweating, and you’re starting to think you’d like the chair to swallow you whole.

“This next part can feel a bit personal, but I just want you to know that everything you say in here is as confidential as you’d like it to be. Captain Price is right. I am an Omega Specialist, I’m here for you. I’m not just a doctor, I’m here to help you in all aspects of being an omega. I know FIOT teaches a lot, mainly obedience and compliance. I want to make it clear that you can be honest with me.” She holds up the stack of papers. “No one is going to see these papers but me, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am.” You nod.

“You don’t have to be so formal with me.” She smiles. “You can call me Dr. Keller, or Doc. You could even call me an evil bitch if you want, it won’t phase me any.”

You can’t help the small smile that forms on your face.

“I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask you. They’re a sort of tracker to measure how well you’re settling in and bonding with your new pack. I’d like to meet once a week until your next heat just to see how well you’re settling in. After that we can meet as often as you’d like. Sound good?”

You nod in approval. It sounds like a lot, but you also know you’re going to have a lot of downtime, even with your pack on base.

“Alright, let’s get started. How are you settling in? I know it’s barely been a day, but I want to know how you feel here.”

Your heart begins to pound in your chest. How do you feel here? How do you feel after being pulled from the institute and taken to a training facility where you found out you’d be moving halfway across the world to be a military pack’s omega.

This wasn’t what you had expected when you reached the age where you became an available omega. Most omegas at FIOT came from rich, powerful, important families and your purpose there was to be groomed into the perfect omega to return right back to that world.

You thought you would be chosen quickly. You had expected it. With your scores and your high ratings and your status, you were what most alphas dreamed of. Yet, the years had passed and though there was some interest, nothing had ever come of it. You weren’t alone in it. There were others like you, those who excelled at being an omega, but then seemed to stall in the selection once they came of age.

Of course, now that you look back on it, you can’t help but think it might have been done on purpose. The Omega Initiative was new, you had been told during your first briefing explaining why you were taken to a remote building somewhere outside of D.C. and greeted not by your new pack, but swathes of CIA agents. Military packs were nothing new, but they wanted to utilize the naturally formed packs and make them stronger and more stable by adding in omegas.

Only highly skilled omegas were considered for the program, but of course you had no say in whether you were going to partake or not. They chose the omegas and they decided where you would end up.

It wasn’t that dissimilar from being chosen from an Institute. At FIOT there was a screening process packs had to go through to be determined eligible to have access to omega files. Then the pack would have to send a neutral emissary, usually a beta, to meet the omegas in person and choose on behalf of the alpha. Most institutes don’t have that strenuous of a process, and some don’t have a process at all. In some, alphas themselves could walk in and choose an omega without even so much as a background check.

Omegas never got a say. As soon as you were handed over to an institute, the ability to choose was taken from you. Whoever your caretakers were as a pup signed over their rights to you and the institute became your legal guardian. They dictated your life up until you joined a new pack.

You had hoped it would be someone rich. If nothing else, you’d get to live a cushy life and you’d never have to worry about anything. When they told you what was really going to happen to you, you had almost cried. You did cry, late at night curled up in your bunk after hours of training and briefings.

Kate picked you for this pack specifically because she knew them and she knew you could handle them and their world.

Maybe if you had been worse at being an omega, things would have been better for you.

Or maybe they would have been worse.

“It’s...different.” You finally say, picking at your sleeves again. “But in a lot of ways, it’s similar to The Institute. It always takes me time to settle somewhere new.”

“Me too.” Dr. Keller says, writing some things down. “And with the time change, it’s just so much harder. I feel like I should be in bed right now, but it’s 8 AM. Have you started nesting?”

You shake your head. “No. I don’t even feel the urge to.”

“That’s fine.” She says, writing something else down. “In truth, I’d be more concerned if you were.”

Your eyebrows raise a bit. “Why?”

“During an adjustment period for an omega, especially in a new pack, there can be something that happens called false instincts. The sudden urge to nest, a drive to bond with pack members too soon, false heats. It’s usually brought on by a sudden change in environment, like when omegas are taken from a place where they’ve spent sometimes years with no exposure to alphas and are suddenly thrown into a space with a lot of alphas. It’s more common in larger packs where you have alphas, betas, and other omegas.”

“Could it happen in smaller packs?” You ask.

“It’s possible, though rare. It can cause some serious issues down the line when those instincts are actually supposed to begin to show up, like adjustment sickness. I’d say if you’re starting to feel the urge to nest or bond before the first week is up, then come talk to me, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am.” You nod.

She smiles, turning the page. “How far have you gotten with the bonding process?”

“Just the scenting yesterday.” You answer.

“And how did that go?”

You pick at the loose thread on your sweatshirt. “Fine. It was...overwhelming.”

“They can be.” Dr. Keller says. “The new members of your pack, how are you getting along with them?”

“Fine, I guess.” You shrug. “I like Soap and Gaz. Price, he’s...he’s nice, and Ghost...” You trail off, not sure how to answer. If she’d asked before breakfast you might have said he doesn't like you. He doesn’t want you to be part of his pack, but after what happened at breakfast...

You can’t be sure he did it for you. He could have thought that soldier was staring at Soap or Gaz or even Price. He could have thought the soldier was staring at him and was annoyed with it. He had scared off the stares at every meal you’d eaten together, but how often did they get stared at? You couldn’t know if that was a daily occurrence and he was just growing sick of it.

He could be annoyed with you because you’re drawing in the stares.

“I don’t know what to think about him yet.” You answer.

She writes something else down, going through a few more questions with you. How is your appetite? How are you sleeping? Are you taking care of your needs? Do you have any concerns?

Before you know it the hour has passed and you’re walking out the door into the fluorescent, sterile hallway of the medical center.

“Remember, you have my number. If you need anything, I’m here for you.” Dr. Keller says as you part ways.

You walk with Price out of the medical center, glad to be out in the fresh air. It’s not particularly warm, and the sun is hidden behind a layer of clouds, but it’s better than the medical center.

“What do you think?” Price asks as you follow him back to the barracks.

“I think it went well.” You say, mind still reeling from an eventful morning. You’re beginning to feel your restless night.

“Do you like Dr. Keller?” He asks, probing a bit.

You nod. “Yes, sir. She’s nice.”

“Good.” He says, opening the door to the barracks for you. “I have to leave to oversee training for the next few hours.” He glances at his watch. “One of us will come get you for lunch.”

You nod. Of course you’d find yourself alone again between meals. You’re beginning to notice a pattern. “Yes, sir.”

His hand is warm as it settles on your shoulder, squeezing gently. You’re surprised by the touch, as small as it is. Were they too fighting the urge to get close to you, like you had this morning?

You can still feel the warmth of his hand even after it’s disappeared and he’s gone. You head for the rec room, deciding to avoid the constricting feeling of being shut in your room for the time being.

The TV is on when you enter, but the room is empty, playing some morning talk show. You move to the bookshelf against the wall, letting your eyes scan the titles. There's a surprising lack of military-based books shoved into the packed shelf. Of course there's a handful of old manuals and handbooks, nothing that you're particularly concerned about needing to read. You let out a sigh, standing on your toes to reach a Brandon Sanderson novel.

You look around the room but the remote for the TV seems to be missing, and it’s too high on the wall for you to reach the power button, so you leave it on, curling up on one corner of the couch as you begin to read.

You’re not sure how much time has passed when something moves in your peripheral. The sun has come out briefly, shining in through the windows. You look up from the book, suddenly feeling very small under Ghost’s gaze. His eyes are narrowed as he stares down at you, a thousand things flashing through your mind. Are you in his spot? Is this his book? Had he come to the rec room hoping to be alone and here you are infringing in his space?

“Come on.” He says, his voice rougher than it had been this morning. “Lunch.”

He’s already turned and heading out the door as you scramble up, leaving the book on the coffee table as you hurry to catch up to him. His steps are quick and wide, and you find yourself having to almost speedwalk to keep up with him.

Your thoughts are jumbled as you follow him out of the barracks and off towards the mess. Why would they send him to get you? Was he the only one available? Yesterday they had time before lunch to return to the barracks, or had that only been because of you? Or were they perhaps hoping this might offer a chance for the two of you to bond a bit?

Or were they entirely blind to Ghost’s disinterest in your existence?

Perhaps they were used to it. After so long together, perhaps they just thought it was normal. If you were brave enough to bring it up, would you get a “oh that’s just how he is” in response?

You can’t see the others as you enter the mess, Ghost leading you to the line. He stands behind you like a hulking shadow, his scent covered by the smell of gunpowder and sweat. You fill your own tray for the first time, grabbing things that look appetizing. You’ll have to get used to it eventually, even though the others insisted on doing it for the time being. When they’re not here, you’ll have to do it yourself.

Ghost leads you to an empty table, and you opt to sit across from him. You begin to eat, taking big bites to avoid the need for conversation, not that you really thought Ghost would strike up a conversation with you. Your eyes flicker around the room nervously, glancing over the entrances time and time again, waiting for the others to arrive.

“Stop twitching. They’re on their way.”

The words cut straight through you and you snap your head around to face Ghost. He’s got his mask pulled up to his nose, your eyes immediately drawn to the exposed pale skin. There’s light stubble on his chin. You remember how that had felt on your own skin when he’d scented you. He’s blonde, you think, or at least has light hair judging by the color of the stubble. There’s a scar on his chin, almost hidden by the stubble.

Your face warms as you realize you’ve been caught in your nervous fretting. Of course, you should have known he would take notice. There’s not a lot they don’t notice, you think. Though, when your survival depends on noticing even the smallest detail of anything or anyone...

You jump as a tray is set down next to yours, your eyes snapping up to see Gaz with a smile on his face. You turn back to look at Ghost, his mask pulled back down but you see a slight shake to his shoulders for a second.

Was he...laughing at you?

Your attention is drawn from him as Gaz takes a seat next to you, sitting close enough his arm is almost brushing yours. Price and Soap taking their usual spots as well. You’re beginning to pick up on the patterns that existed around them, and their own patterns. Perhaps that will make it easier for you to fit yourself into their lives. You knew from the start they weren’t going to change to fit you into their lives. They couldn’t. You were going to have to find a way to fit into their lives.

Gaz walks you back to the barracks after lunch, abnormally quiet as he watches you warily. He walks you to your door, leaning on the doorframe as you step inside.

“You alright?” He asks, big brown eyes shining with worry as he looks you over.

“Yeah.” You nod, shifting on your feet. “Just tired. I think I might take a nap.”

He nods, and you’re sure he doesn't quite believe you, but he doesn’t press any. “Alright. Happy napping.”

You close the door as he leaves, sinking down onto the edge of the bed with a sigh. It’s been a long day and it’s only lunch. Between the probing questions from Dr. Keller and the few minutes you had spent alone with Ghost you feel exhausted. It was good to know you weren’t entirely broken in your lack of nesting instincts, and perhaps your turmoil with belonging in this place wasn’t quite as abnormal as you thought.

What to do about Ghost.

He’s said more words to you today than he did in the entirety of the previous day. In fact, you think today might be the first time he’s spoken to you at all. You know he doesn’t approve of you, and you’d go so far as to say he doesn’t like you. You can imagine he fought the hardest against you being added to the pack. They were fine without you. It didn’t take a genius to see that.

You’re an outsider. A civilian. A risk.

An unneeded disruption to their lives.

You pull your phone out of your pocket, staring at the dark screen. You know Ghost might never accept you. He won’t want to claim you, he won’t mate you, but...perhaps you might just get him to tolerate you.

You unlock your phone, sending a quick text to Kate.

“Can you get a book for me?”

You regret your decision momentarily as you step into the rec room. Gaz and Soap are lounged on the couch, beer bottles open on the coffee table. The TV is playing ads, their attention on each other. You almost feel as if you’re infringing upon a private moment as they laugh, half tempted to race back to your room and hide until your hunger draws you out or someone breaks down the door to get to you.

“Hey!” Gaz’s face lights up when he sees you, Soap turning to look at you.

“Hey, bonny!” His face lights up with a smile.

“Do you mind if I join you?” You ask, shifting nervously on your feet.

“Not at all.” Gaz says, patting the empty spot on the couch next to him. “You want a beer?”

You shake your head. “No thank you. Never could get past the taste.”

Soap throws his head back as he laughs, slapping Gaz’s shoulder. “I keep tellin’ ye!”

“Yet you keep drinking it!” Gaz attempts to defend himself.

“Cause it’s th’ only thing we got!” Soap argues, leaning around Gaz to stare at you. “So, ye a football fan, bonny?”

“Well, I watched the World Cup a couple times as a kid.” You say. “My household was more of an American football and baseball household. Two of my older brothers played soccer, though they never were very serious about it. Mostly just did it to fulfill my dad’s physical activity extracurricular requirement.”

“What did you do to fulfill that requirement?” Gaz asks as he takes a sip of his beer.

“Softball. I was...not good at it.” You laugh. “I could catch and throw, but I don’t think I hit the ball a single time I was at bat.”

Both of them chuckle, turning back to the TV as the ad ends. “Don’t worry, we’ll turn you into a proper football fan yet.” Gaz says.

You watch the game with them, and it doesn’t take you long to realize they’re rooting for opposing teams. They explain things to you here and there in between yelling at the TV and each other. Despite how loud they are, you find yourself relaxing further and further, the tension from the last two days easing away, even as the two betas yell at each other over a soccer game.

Gaz tenses for a second as he feels a sudden weight on his shoulder. He turns his head slightly, noticing you’ve fallen asleep, your head drooping onto his shoulder. His lips quirk up in a smile as he gently nudges Soap.

“Wha?” Soap asks, turning to look at him.

He jerks his head to the side, leaning back just slightly so Soap can see. A grin breaks out on the younger man’s face and he pulls out his phone. “Aww, look a’ that. Think we should wake ‘er and get ‘er tae bed?”

“Nah.” Gaz says. “Let her sleep for now. She probably needs it.”

You sleep soundly through overtime, Gaz not moving until the post game is over, letting you sleep as long as possible. He knows you have to be tired, after the last few days and the time difference. You looked tired today, with dark circles and droopy eyes. He hates to wake you, but he knows you can’t sleep on the couch.

He nudges you gently, trying to rouse you. “Hey.” He nudges you again, your head finally lifting off his shoulder.

You blink sleepily, rubbing at your eyes. You make a quiet sound in protest of being awake, eyes drooping closed again.

“Come on, love.” He says, keeping you upright. “It’s time for bed.”

You cover your yawn with your hand, blinking at him sleepily. “Bed?” You murmur sleepily, Gaz smiling softly at how adorable you are in this state.

“Yeah, you’ll be more comfortable in bed.” He pushes himself to stand, hands on your arms to pull you up.

You make another sound in protest, nearly falling against his chest when he gets you on your feet. He wraps an arm around you, letting you lean on him as he guides you back to bed, Soap cleaning up the mess they had made.

You’re more awake once you get to your door, blinking up at him with bleary eyes. “‘S fun.” You murmur, rubbing your eyes. “Should do that more often.”

“You’re always welcome to join us.” He says. “Get some rest. You’ve had a long week.” He leans forward, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Night, love.”

He waits until your door is closed before heading back down the hallway towards the rec room, a small smile on his face.

NEXT ->

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#call of duty #call of duty fanfic #141 x reader #task force 141 x reader #poly 141 #john price x reader #captain john price x reader #captain price x reader #gaz x reader #kyle garrick x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #john mactavish x reader #soap mactavish x reader #soap x reader #ghost x reader #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #a/b/o #alpha beta omega dynamics

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