#You ever wonder if you are good you are//

[ranboolivesaysstuff]

If you ever wonder where your sub money goes, dont worry. It all goes to good causes

[evilmenenjoyer]

Gratitude

Pairing: The Salesman x fem!Reader

SEQUEL to City of Love. Probably not a good fic to read as a stand-alone; read City of Love first for context.

Word count: 5.5k

Warnings: smut (minors dni), dubious consent, rough sex after a fight, degradation, dom/sub dynamics, bruising, marking, pain play/sadomasochism, mirror sex, manhandling, hurt/comfort (but mostly hurt), lots of angst.

Tags: @apookalypse @thecutiepieishere / I do not have an official taglist yet, but I'd be willing to make one if people were interested. If you'd like to be tagged in my fics, or in any additions to this story, let me know somehow!

–––

It's three days later when you see him again, just when you were convinced he left Paris for good.

You knew it would take a lot longer for the reminders of him to leave your mind as well as your body. He's in the marks his hands left on your hips, in the scrapes and faint bruises along your back from when he tossed and squeezed you against the brick wall, in the ghost of his lips on your skin. You can still feel them every time you close your eyes, hear his voice whisper your name against your neck as he came.

It shouldn't surprise you, after everything, to have him knock on your door right as you’re getting ready to have a night out. It still nearly takes your breath away to see him, looking as impeccable as usual in his dark gray suit, smiling as if his mere presence doesn't rock your world upside down a third time.

“What part of ‘don’t ever contact me again’ did you not understand?” you ask, though right away you can tell you don't sound nearly as firm and assertive as you’d like. You wonder if he can tell you hoped, against every rational thought in your brain, that he would come back.

Judging by his smile, you’d bet he can.

“I couldn't help myself,” he responds, raising his hands slightly in mock surrender. “Can I come in?”

That part of you that still clings to rationality, that can tell a good idea apart from a horrible one, lights up like a loud siren in your brain. There's nothing good that could possibly come out of this. Hasn't he toyed with you enough already? With his weird twisted games, tracking you down all the way to a foreign country, sending you off to those horrific games?

Still, you find yourself stepping aside, leaving a gap for him to come through. You’ve never been good at controlling your impulses, after all.

The apartment you’ve been renting for the time being stands in the heart of Paris. It looks exactly what you pictured a typical, glamorous Parisian apartment to look like – high walls, hardwood floors, large arched windows with a stunning view of the city and the Eiffel Tower. It's furnished with all the essentials, and nothing more. You didn't see the need to bring in new furniture or decorations when you didn't even know for how long you’d be staying in the city. At this point, you’re already considering moving on to somewhere else.

“Make yourself at home,” you say. “But I’m going out soon.”

“I see that.” His eyes run over you as he sits at the arm of the couch, shamelessly lingering on the black dress that hugs all your curves at the right spots. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

You turn your back to him, looking for the earrings you had put down somewhere when you heard the knock on the door. You feel his body heat approach you from behind, his fingertips brushing against a red spot on your shoulder blade that the spaghetti straps of the dress fail to cover.

“Did I do this to you?”

His voice doesn't sound remorseful or apologetic at all. If only, there's a hint of pride to his tone, a small smile at the corner of his lip that you can tell is there without even looking at him. It should upset you, thinking of how roughly he pushed you against that wall, but it has goosebumps blooming all over your skin around the spot he touches.

“Who else would it be?” Your voice shakes ever so slightly against your will, and you clear your throat to get rid of it.

You expect him to pull back, but instead he inches even closer. He has to lean down to mold his chest to your back, his lips brushing the delicate skin of your neck when he speaks. “I can make it up to you.”

“Oh, really?” You turn your head just enough to chase after his lips. Screw the night out. He lets you capture them, indulging you in only a quick kiss before pulling away.

“I’m serious. I have something for you.”

“Oh.” You frown at the loss of contact, turning to face him. “What is it?”

“Close your eyes.”

Your frown deepens, and he raises his eyebrows at you. “Don't you trust me yet?” he asks.

No. Absolutely not. Still, what's the worst that can happen? What would he do while you have your eyes closed that he can't do right now; that he couldn't have done three nights ago at that bar, when you gave yourself to him so willingly?

You close your eyes, with a small sigh as if letting him know it's a nuisance. There's no real heat to it, and you both know it.

The Salesman’s hands find their way to your arms, guiding you further into the apartment. You follow his lead slowly, careful not to bump into any furniture or clutter you left around the place while picking an outfit and getting ready.

“You didn't have to give me a gift,” you say, still confused about what this is about. He stops walking the two of you, leaving you in an unknown part of the apartment. Your heart beats slightly faster than normal; distrustful, but excited. No man has ever bought you a gift before. Gifts are for girlfriends, for women they're trying to impress. Somehow, in all your years on this Earth, you’d missed out on being that woman to anyone.

“I was feeling romantic,” he explains. You feel something cold land over the exposed skin of your neck and chest, and he fiddles with a clasp at the nape of your neck. “Blame it on Paris. You can open your eyes.”

You do so, finding yourself standing in your bedroom, right in front of the large mirror resting against the wall. The necklace stands out against your skin – thin white gold chain and gemstones shining so bright you can immediately tell they're real, a ruby and a sapphire encrusted by tiny crystals. The color choice is an odd one for a necklace, prompting you to take a closer look. That's when any hints of a smile vanish from your face.

The gemstones are placed beside each other, the shapes and markings in them identical to those of the ddakji tiles you and the Salesman had played together in the subway station.

“I had it custom-made for you,” he says. Standing behind you, his reflection on the mirror takes up almost the entire background, but you don't pay him any mind. Your eyes are all but glued to the red and deep blue stones hanging from your neck, hoping against hope that you had seen it all wrong, that this was just a figment of your imagination and the real necklace will reveal itself if you just look hard enough.

It never does.

Reality hits you then. This isn’t some fun new fling, or the beginning of a Paris romance. This is the man who lured you into a horribly traumatic experience when you were at your most vulnerable, who came all the way from Seoul just to rub in your face that you didn't deserve to make it out of there alive. And now here he is. Prying his way into your apartment, your body, your mind. And you just let him.

Horror floods you, nearly pushing you to your knees right here. You touch the pendant with shaky fingers, and it takes everything in you not to grab the chain and yank it off your neck. Finally, your eyes meet the Salesman’s in the mirror.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He blinks innocently. “You don't like it?”

“Why would you do this?” you ask, unsure of whether you want to burst into tears or slap him in the face.

His fingers join yours where they rest on the necklace, only grazing your skin on their way to touching the pendant. “I thought you'd like a reminder.”

That makes you spring into action, pulling away from him and pushing his hand away with a ferocity you didn't know you still had, not since the Squid Games.

“A reminder? What makes you think I want to remember that shit?” You raise your voice; something to make up for how small you feel, by the way you need to tilt your head to look him in the eye. “If I could erase that night from my memory for the rest of my life, I would.”

“I find that hard to believe. Would you erase our night together at the bar as well?” His eyes leave yours only to look back to the mirror behind you. “Look at you. Wearing those bruises so proudly.”

For a moment all you can do is stare at him, unable to believe the sheer audacity he has to stand in your house and say these things. The worst of it all is you can’t fully deny it – you picked the dress deliberately knowing it left the upper part of your back exposed, happy to catch glimpses of the bruises he left you with if you happened to stumble upon a mirror or reflective surface throughout the night.

“I would,” you insist. “What the fuck makes you think I’d want to remember the night that ruined my life?”

A laugh comes out of him; a short, but cruel sound. “I ruined your life, is that what you're saying?”

You scoff. “Don't act like you don't know you did.”

He steps even closer to you. You refuse to step back, even when it feels like his chest is about to bump into your forehead. “Your life,” he says, “was already shit way before I came around. Debt, an awful job, an even worse home, no future prospects, no friends. What exactly was there about your life that was good enough to be ruined?”

Rage consumes you to hear him talk like that about your old life. Things were bad, yes, but there was a positivity about you that's been lost ever since you stepped foot in those games. You could barely make ends meet, and your shifts were long and exhausting, but you had hopes of going to school, of turning your life around. Your home was a tiny, shitty house in an even shittier neighborhood, but you still took the effort to decorate it and try to make it feel more like a home. Where did that go? Now, you have all the money you could ever wish for, and all you do is spend it on clothes and expensive trips you don't even have the motivation to enjoy, your only goal being getting far away from Seoul.

“At least I felt like a fucking person! Do you even know what that’s like? Feeling human?” you all but yell, grateful for the language barrier in case any neighbors happen to be listening. “I’d never killed anyone. I’d never wanted to kill anyone! I didn't have nightmares, and I didn't wake up every day wondering if I deserve to be alive after everything I did to survive!”

“You had nothing,” he reminds you, his voice cold as the winter outside. “Not even your dignity. Or did you forget how we met? How you asked me to play ddakji with you, willing to get hit in the face repeatedly not for money, but just to have my attention?”

You hold back a sob, shaking your head furiously, but it's of no use. The words sting hard enough to bring tears to your eyes; it stings even more to know they're true. 

“Get out of my apartment,” you demand. You wish you'd never let him in. You wish you'd never met him at all.

“Things are different now,” he says, ignoring your order completely. “You’re rich, and you’ve matured. You’ll never struggle again in your life, if you're smart.”

“I said GET THE FUCK OUT!”

Finally at your breaking point, you push him, shoving at his chest as hard as you have the strength to. He barely budges. It's only then that you notice how cornered he’s got you, your back about to bump into the mirror.

He brings his hand towards your face, cupping your chin and forcing you to look higher up at him. You thrash and claw at his wrist, trying to push it away from you, but he only tightens his grip until it's almost painful. There’s a darkness in his eyes that’s unlike any expression you’ve ever seen on him.

“I made you stronger. You're a millionaire now because of me,” he says. “How about a little gratitude?”

Even from your position, you still manage an incredulous scoff at him. “Gratitude?”

“Yes.” A grin stretches the corner of his lips, not a trace of warmth of friendliness behind it. “You should be thankful I pulled you out of your misery.”

He moves faster than you’re ready to, grabbing you by the waist and tossing you down. You brace yourself for the impact of your head hitting the floor, gasping in surprise when your back bounces over the soft mattress instead. He hovers above you, using his heavier body to pin yours down before you even have the chance to start struggling against his grip.

“Get off me!”

“Calm down.” He holds both your wrists together with one hand, while the other manages to somehow pull your panties off your body, using your kicking legs as leverage. Your eyes widen in shock. “I’m just giving you another reminder.”

“W-what?” Your voice wavers with fear. All that fury is slowly but surely being replaced with it, or with a mixture of both feelings that leaves you heaving for breath.

He doesn't have to pull your dress up – your own struggle does it by itself, leaving the fabric rumpled up at your hips and your bottom exposed. You stop kicking him in an attempt to cover yourself, and he takes advantage of that fraction of a second to stick his knee on the spot on the mattress between your legs, stopping you from shutting them. You gasp, the heavy pressure on your core cutting off all your thoughts for a moment. You can think of nothing to do other than to yell for help.

As if reading your thoughts, his free hand covers your mouth.

You voice your displeasure through a muffled grunt. You keep on struggling, trying to kick him off you, but each movement unintentionally rubs your bare clit over his thigh that pins you down. He applies even more pressure and you cry out, mortified to feel heat pooling between your legs.

“Christ, you're wet. I can feel it.”

You can feel it too, the fabric of his pants damp and hot where it connects with you. You're torn on whether to keep fighting and essentially humping his leg or giving up, if only to have a few instants of relief.

“If you scream, I’ll slit your throat,” he warns in a hoarse whisper. “Do you understand?”

Out of options, you nod.

He releases your mouth, then your wrists. It occurs to you to scream anyway, but you force yourself to remember who you're dealing with. He wouldn’t give you empty threats. Anyone involved in bringing people into those games has no qualms about slitting your throat open and leaving you to bleed out on your silk sheets.

The Salesman makes his way down your body, now holding onto your legs with his hands.

“What the fuck are you doing?” you manage to ask, the answer rather obvious but it had all happened so fast, leaving you dazed and confused.

“Giving you yet another reason to be thankful to me.”

The sudden, damp feel of his tongue on your entrance overcomes your senses, and you wouldn't be able to hold back a shout if you tried.

Fortunately, he forgives you for it. You squirm under the sensations, but he holds your hips down against the mattress in a firm grip, immobilizing them completely and prying you open all at once. You hoist yourself up over your elbows only to be met with your own reflection on the mirror across the room, your hair a mess already and your face contorted in fear and pleasure and indignation all at once. You can’t bear to watch yourself like this, mortification entrenched into every muscle of your body that reacts to his touch as he continues to penetrate you with his tongue. You fall back towards the mattress with a broken moan.

“God– Y-you can’t–” Whatever you were about to say dies out in your throat as his lips rise to your clit, enveloping you so expertly in the wet heat of his mouth. You clench your whole body, eyelids all the way down to your toes, and for a moment you’re grateful for the hands that hold your legs open just so you don’t have to face the shame of spreading them wider.

Your hands, perfectly capable of putting up a fight once they’d been released, twist into the sheets beneath you, holding on like your life depends on it. You curse yourself for not trying harder to push him off, for not really wanting to; for always being so unwilling to say no to him. Moans leave your lips like they’re being ripped out of you, growing in volume like you just can’t help it. It makes you wish one of the pillows were within reach so you could bury it against your face and muffle them, or simply to hide yourself from how incredibly good it feels to be at his mercy.

It doesn’t take long at all. Say whatever you want about the Salesman, but this is a man who knows what he’s doing with his tongue. In only a few minutes he reduces you to whimpers and pleading, your orgasm hitting you like a wave crashing full-force over the shore. Your back arches off the bed, mouth open in a long moan, and he continues to dine on you like a starving man until the moment you fall backwards, spent.

When you come back to yourself, you’re covering your face with your hands as he presses kisses to the line of your inner thigh. You feel him make his way up your body, feel his hands on your wrists, gently moving them out of the way and exposing your face, the deep flush that has colored your cheeks.

Looking into his eyes, you’re overcome with a rush of emotions you’re not sure how to name. How can a person make you feel so many things at once? How can you still want him – ardently, desperately, profoundly want him – after everything? How can he be so addictive, leaving you already hooked from the scraps of attention he’s given you? You tilt your head just a tiny bit towards him, a silent invitation, and he leans in the rest of the way to take your lips in his.

He kisses you deeply, hungrily, holding you through the shudders that run through your body from the aftershocks of your orgasm until they subside. Kisses you like you’re more than just a hookup, tempting you to believe there must be something about you that’s special. Kisses you for long enough to get you drunk in it, like he’s happy to do nothing but this for the rest of his life.

The next time he pulls back, he removes his suit jacket and tie. You somehow manage to help him unbutton his white shirt, motivated by the promise of feeling his bare skin on yours. You nearly forget his pants are still on, letting him work on that as you press kisses to down his neck. Of course his body is as perfect as his face. He makes an approving sound that you can feel on his throat, and you follow the vibrations of his vocal chords until his pulse point, pleased to find his heartbeats as fast as yours. You can’t resist taking the skin there between your teeth.

He growls, hands tightening on your hips and flipping you on the bed so you’re facing the other side, your back to him. You hold onto the bed frame to steady yourself, body half-bent forward.

You expect him to thrust into you without warning, just as he had the last time. Before that, he brings a hand underneath your chin, tilting your head upwards, your sight landing squarely on your joined reflection on the mirror.

“Keep your eyes right there.” Now he enters you, and you watch your eyes widen at the sudden intrusion. “Watch yourself get fucked on my cock.”

The sheer filth in his voice prompts you to obey, to look. Your knuckles turn white on the bedframe and your body rocks forward with each of his thrusts; slow at first, but steadily gaining power and speed. He reaches down to rub your clit in circles, and it makes your body jerk to feel it and see it at the same time, to watch your reactions in real time. The sight of the necklace still hanging from your neck prompts you to look away, a confirmation of what’s actually happening to you that you’re not prepared to stare in the face.

His hand leaves your clit to wrap itself into your hair, yanking it back. Your body arches to follow it, your reflection on the glass confronting you once again.

“I said look,” he says into your ear. “Don’t you wanna see what a pretty mess you are for me?”

You shake your head, although his death grip on your hair makes it difficult to move. That’s precisely the issue: seeing the mess that he made you into, seeing yourself so overwhelmed and dirty and ashamed, the sounds leaving you suggesting nothing other than aching, raw need. It’s too much. It doesn’t stop you from pushing your hips back to meet his, trying to match his rhythm. 

He angles his thrusts to hit a spot inside of you that makes you see stars. “Oh God,” you croak, feeling the heaviness of tears behind your eyes and another orgasm fast approaching.

Just when you’re close, impossibly close to your release, he stops. You watch him on the mirror, panting just for a moment before he pulls out of you and releases your hair. You’re about to protest, or maybe plead for mercy, but he pushes you to lay on your back on the bed again, back inside of you before you can even think of a sentence.

“How about that thank you now?” He pounds into you, somehow even deeper from this position.  “Say it.”

“Shut up,” you say instead. The pause, brief as it was, only served to make you more desperate to come, and the last thing you need right now is to hear this. “Please just shut up.”

The necklace gleams over your chest, catching his attention. The Salesman runs a thumb over the sapphire, as if contemplating something, before he presses down on the pendant hard, digging it into your skin.

You gasp, throwing your head back. He’s moving fast enough that the bed rocks underneath you, the headboard slamming into the wall, his fingers still on the necklace like he wants to imprint it into your chest. It fucking hurts, the sharp metal edges unrelenting, digging in hard enough to leave a bruise. It makes your body sing, awakes the deeply-hidden, fucked up parts of you that crave this kind of pain.

“Every time you wake up,” the Salesman says, slightly out of breath himself, but much more composed than you, “and you look out of the window and see Paris, or anywhere that’s not the gutter in Seoul, you thank me for saving you.” He punctuates his words with a particularly hard thrust. “Say it.”

You don’t want to say it. Saying it makes you feel like it’s true, like you should give in and believe what he’s saying. That you are a piece of trash who got lucky, after all, and you should thank him for anything close to success that you achieve from now on. But your orgasm is so close you can feel the force of it numb your ears, your wrists; and in this moment, you would say anything, do anything, so long as he keeps you feeling this good.

“Thank you,” the words are just barely above a whisper, like you wish you could keep them to yourself as a shameful secret.

“For what?”

He gives you another hard thrust, almost painful if only the lines between pain and pleasure hadn’t been blurred a long time ago. You push your chest into an arch, the pendant digging even deeper into you until it breaks skin and the pain turns into agony.

“F-for saving me.”

“Good girl.”

You come then, thinking about the mark that the necklace will leave on you, thinking about how you’re going to feel it for days, how you’re going to remember it every time you feel it or see it. That there will be evidence on your body that he touched you this passionately. It feels like you’re floating, rising to the sky as you clench and unclench around him, as sound after humiliating sound leaves you.

You collapse back against the mattress when your orgasm finally lets you go, boneless and spent. You didn’t see or hear him come – in another situation, it might’ve upset you to miss it, if you weren’t still riding the aftershocks of that incredible high –, but he’s still against you, breathing hard into your neck. His release leaks from between your legs. He stays like that for a long time, slowly softening inside of you, before he finally pulls out and away from you.

You stay right where you are, unmoving. Somewhere far away, you think you can hear him searching for his clothes and dressing himself. You don’t want it to upset you, but it does; because of course he would come here, humiliate you, give you the best fuck of your life and then immediately leave, without so much as a word to you. Your head falls to the side, and even that small movement feels incredibly difficult, like your entire body is a limb that has fallen asleep. Your vision is blurry, far-away, until it finally focuses on the large window that overlooks the city. Tiny snowflakes flutter over the city lights and the dark night sky.

“It’s snowing.”

That pulls his attention to you. He’s got his pants and shirt on, the first few buttons undone, his once perfectly-styled hair a mess. He follows the line of your gaze to the window. “Were you looking forward to it?” he asks.

“Yeah.” It feels like forever ago since the last time you even thought about it. The Salesman was right; the city is beautiful at this time of the year.

You expect him to return to his clothes then head out the door. Instead, he reaches for the covers over the bed and wraps your naked body up in them like a baby. “Ow,” you hiss when he moves you, pain exploding on your chest where the necklace was pressed against you. A few drops of blood dry on your skin from when the skin had split. You feel the Salesman lift you bridal-style, much to your surprise, but you’re still too dazed to find it in you to question it.

He sits you both on the thick windowsill, him behind you and you leaning against his chest, framed by his legs. It’s gentle, somehow more intimate than you’ve ever been with him even after sleeping with him twice. You watch the snowfall outside, mesmerized, letting the steady rise-and-fall of his chest behind you soothe your aching muscles.

It’s the closest to safe you’ve felt in what feels like forever, and you’re crying before you even realize it.

Once it starts, it’s impossible to stop it. Your body trembles with the force of your sobs, tears flowing from your eyes like they haven’t since you were a little kid, at least not this openly. He wraps his arms around you from behind, pulling you flush against himself and pressing a kiss to the top of your head.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, keeping his lips right there against your scalp. He rocks you ever so slightly, shushing your cries, the sound as soothing as a soft lullaby. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” you sob. You think about the snow in Seoul, about how the first snowfall always made you excited, even when it happened every year. You can feel your tears rolling down your cheeks and into your neck, your collarbones. “I want to go home.”

“Then go home,” he says, like it’s simple.

“I can’t.” How can you walk the same streets you always did, as if your life wasn’t completely changed? As if the price you paid for this change wasn’t much, much greater than you could deal with? “You’re right. I have nothing. No one.”

“You had nothing. You can have anything you want now.” You want to tell him there are things money can’t buy, but you’re so tired, so exhausted. You can’t muster the willpower for much other than wallowing in your own misery, weeping in his arms like a child. “And you have me.”

That only makes you cry harder, shaking your head. “Don’t say shit you don’t mean.”

“Look at me.” He nudges you to turn to him, the angle awkward but it’s so worth it the second he cups your face in both hands, brushing your tears away with his thumbs. “I mean it. Come back to Seoul.” He kisses the corner of your mouth, then your heavy eyelids. “You just need to see things from a different perspective. I can help you.”

He coaxes you to lay back against him, and you do so without protest, burying your face into his chest. For a moment you actually consider it. Dropping the plans you had for a next trip and following him to Seoul, letting him finish corrupting you with whatever twisted worldview he has. Maybe it would be blissful, you think, to see all that violence and bloodshed as a blessing, as something that saved you rather than ruined you. It has to be a trap, or another one of his games. But it doesn’t hurt to dream about it, just a little bit.

Little by little your crying subsides, your breaths returning to normal. He holds you through it all, stroking your hair in a way that’s so tender, so soft, like you’re fragile. Like he cares about you, or even loves you.

You silently wonder if he can love anyone at all, much less someone as broken as you.

With his fingers drawing circles on your scalp, you drift off into a dreamless sleep.

–––

You wake up alone. You’re still naked but on the bed, tucked into your blankets. There’s no confusion over what happened last night, no delusions that your brain would come up with a dream like that. There’s only memories hitting you like a truck, one after the other, and it’s too fucking early for this.

You pull yourself into a sitting position, and you jump at the sight of yourself on the mirror. You barely notice the smudged makeup from last night, your eyes going straight to the star of the show: the angry red spot right on the center of your chest, already turning into a deep purple at the center. You flinch before you even touch it, your hand hanging in the air halfway through like you’ve changed your mind. The necklace finishes it off like the cherry on top of the cake, the pair of precious stones right next to each other like eyes watching you, mocking you.

You button your coat all the way up before you leave the house.

It’s still early enough that the sun has just begun rising, coloring the sky in a bright blue that bleeds into the buildings and streets. There’s probably nothing open right now, but you could really use some coffee. Or a drink. Probably a drink.

You find him at Pont Neuf, watching the river below. There’s no one else around, the city in a rare moment of quiet and peace. He hasn’t spotted you yet, seemingly lost in thought, and it occurs to you that you could sneak up behind him, push him over the edge and just keep on walking. Sever your ties to him forever, and simply keep going like nothing ever happened, bury it along with all the other memories you try so hard to forget.

You don’t do it, but knowing you could brings you a bit of comfort. You lower your head and keep walking in the opposite direction, not sparing him another glance.

[anhedoniawrites]

it’s not a date, we just kinda fuck around.

gif by @reidgif

june baby - victoria canal

Spencer Reid x Fem!BAU Reader.

summary: the two youngest BAU agents go on a first date

genre: fluff💌

word count: 8.5k

warnings: no use of y/n, proofread, none! (this is all foreplay for the smut that’s coming)

masterlist!

You never thought Spencer Reid would actually work up the courage to ask you out. Yet here you were, standing in your apartment with only ten minutes to spare, staring at your closet like it held the answer to life itself. Nothing seemed good enough, and you still had no idea what to wear. If you’d had even the slightest inkling that this day would come, you would have pre-planned outfits for every possible scenario—a casual coffee shop, a romantic dinner, even an impromptu museum date. But you hadn’t, because as much as you’d daydreamed about it, you never thought it would happen.

Spencer Reid had always been a harmless work crush. Brilliant, kind, and charming in his uniquely awkward way, he was the type of man you admired from a distance, assuming he was far too shy—or uninterested—to make a move. Yet somehow, against all odds, you were, nervously getting ready to go on a date with him.

The memory of how it all unfolded still made you smile. You’d been in the work kitchen, fixing your usual afternoon coffee, when Spencer had wandered in with his signature blend of distracted focus and nervous energy. You glanced up as he approached, expecting nothing more than a quick hello and maybe some small talk about the latest case. Instead, he surprised you.

“Hi,” he said, his voice softer than usual, almost hesitant. He stood a little too close to the coffee pot, fiddling with the lid as if it held the courage he needed.

“Hey, Spencer,” you replied, smiling warmly.

They chatted about nothing in particular—books, coffee, the endless intricacies of caffeine preferences—until, without warning, he blurted out the question.

“Would you, um… would you ever want to get coffee together? Like, outside of work?”

Your heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t a grand gesture or a sweeping declaration, but it was undeniably Spencer—quiet, earnest, and completely endearing. You’d barely managed to contain your excitement as you said yes, feeling like a teenager with a crush all over again.

Now, standing in your room, you glanced at the clock. Seven minutes. You grabbed a dress—something simple yet flattering—and slipped it on, your mind racing. You’d been waiting for this moment since the day you joined the team, and now that it was yours, you couldn’t help but wonder how the evening would go. Would he be his usual awkward self? Would he surprise you again with something bold and unexpected?

Whatever happened, you knew one thing: Spencer Reid had already managed to surprise you once.

Seven agonising minutes—each second stretched out like an eternity. The silence was suffocating, gnawing at you from the inside out, until the sudden knock at the door broke the tension. Your heart leapt in your chest. He was here. Spencer was finally here, and your nerves threatened to spill over.

You took a deep breath, trying to steady yourself, before opening the door with a forced smile. The sight of him standing there, his hands fidgeting nervously, only made your own anxiety rise. He looked just as uneasy, maybe even more so. His usually confident posture was slightly hunched, his eyes darting to the floor, avoiding yours for a moment before he met your gaze.

“Hey, Spence,” you greeted, your voice trembling slightly despite your best efforts to sound calm.

“Hey, I- um…” Spencer hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His voice was soft, uncertain. He stepped forward, pulling a bouquet of lilies from behind his figure. The delicate white flowers were a perfect match for your taste, and you couldn’t help but smile, your nerves easing just a little. “These are for you.”

You felt a flutter in your chest, your smile widening. “Spence, you shouldn’t have,” you said, reaching out to take the bouquet, feeling a warmth in your fingertips as you touched the smooth, delicate petals. The scent of the lilies was intoxicating, and for a moment, you were lost in the fragrance.

He shifted awkwardly, his eyes darting around as if searching for something to say. “I, uh… I thought you’d like them.”

You stepped aside, gesturing for him to come in. “You thought right. Come in, Spence.”

He followed you into your apartment, his presence oddly comforting despite the tension still hanging between them. You quickly moved toward the kitchen, trying to focus on something, anything, to distract yourself from the storm of emotions churning inside you.

As you walked, you couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed. The apartment was far from pristine. The cluttered coffee table, the dishes piled up in the sink—it wasn’t the welcoming space you’d imagined showing him. “I’m so sorry the place is a mess,” you said, your cheeks warming with self-consciousness. You carefully set the lilies down on the counter, your hands trembling slightly as you arranged them.

Spencer’s eyes softened as he glanced around, a small, understanding smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “It’s fine,” he reassured you, his voice gentle. “You should see my place.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle, the sound soft and nervous. As you filled a vase with water, you thought back to the little things he had taught you, like how to properly cut the stems of flowers to help them last longer. You carefully angled the scissors and snipped each stem at a diagonal, the sound of the cut echoing in the quiet kitchen. You remembered him telling you that the angled cut would help the flowers drink better, and you did it now without thinking. The thought of him lingered in your mind as you worked, a smile playing on your lips.

The bouquet was finally settled in the vase, its elegant white petals standing out against the cool glass. You stepped back, admiring the flowers, but it was Spencer’s presence in the room that made everything feel just a little bit brighter.

“Much better. Thank you, Spence,” you said, your voice soft with appreciation as you glanced at the flowers on the kitchen counter. Their vibrant white petals stood out against the cool, clear glass of the vase, the room suddenly feeling a little warmer, a little brighter. You grabbed your bag from the chair, the familiar weight of it grounding you. You turned to face him, your nerves still fluttering, but your excitement growing as the moment approached.

“You ready?” you asked, your voice light but with an undercurrent of anticipation.

Spencer hesitated, his gaze flickering to the floor for a split second. He wasn’t sure if he was ever truly ready, especially not when it came to dates. His stomach twisted in knots, but that nervous energy was overshadowed by the excitement of being with you, of sharing a moment like this.

“Yeah, absolutely,” he replied, a nervous but genuine smile tugging at his lips.

With that, they were out the door, stepping into the crisp air of Washington. The city felt alive around them, the hum of the streets, the distant chatter of people, the soft rustling of leaves in the wind. They strolled side by side, both holding their coffee cups, yours an iced concoction with a splash of cream, his steaming hot with a swirl of cinnamon. He wasn’t usually one for aimless wandering, but as he looked over at you, he realized that this moment was worth it.

Your face, illuminated by the golden afternoon sun, was pure contentment. Your eyes sparkled as they took in the world around you, lighting up at every little thing. Whether it was a street performer, a stray cat lazily sunning itself, or the way the city skyline framed the horizon, you had a way of making the mundane seem magical. And he, well, he would do anything to keep seeing that smile on your face, to be the reason your eyes shone with that infectious joy.

As they passed a little street corner, your gaze drifted across the road, and your eyes lit up once again. There, nestled between a café and a bookstore, was a small record store with a neon sign flashing softly in the window.

“Can we go in?” you asked, your voice filled with excitement, your fingers already tugging gently at his sleeve.

Spencer followed your gaze, his heart doing a little flip at the eagerness in your voice. You had that effect on him—the way you made even the simplest moments feel special. “Of course,” he said with a smile, his voice soft but sincere. “Lead the way.”

And just like that, they crossed the street together, the world outside fading into the background as they stepped into the warmth of the record store. The air smelled faintly of old vinyl and coffee, and the soft hum of music played in the background, creating the perfect atmosphere for them to lose themselves in.

“Smell that?” you asked, your nose lifting to the air as you inhaled deeply, a mischievous grin tugging at your lips. “That’s the smell of the best way to listen to music.” The scent of aged vinyl, dust, and nostalgia filled the space, wrapping around them like a cozy blanket. You laughed at yourself, a light, airy sound that seemed to match the atmosphere of the record store perfectly. Spencer couldn’t help but join in, his laugh a little quieter but no less genuine, his eyes softening as he watched you.

“You spend too much time with Rossi,” Spencer teased, his fingers flicking through the rows of records, his gaze scanning the colourful covers. He was looking for something—anything—that caught his attention, but his mind was more on the way you lit up in places like this, surrounded by things you loved.

You raised an eyebrow, feigning offence as you met his gaze, your hand pausing mid-air over a stack of albums. “I am offended by your words, Dr. Reid,” you replied, your tone playful, your eyes sparkling with a teasing edge.

Spencer smiled, the edges of his mouth curling up into something warmer as he continued flipping through the records, pretending to be serious. “You should be. That’s a direct quote from Rossi himself,” he said, holding up a record sleeve and giving it a quick glance before setting it back down.

Your laugh filled the space again, bright and free. You pulled another record from the shelf, this one with a faded cover you recognised from years ago. “Well, if I spend too much time with Rossi, then I guess I’m doomed to become a vinyl snob,” you joked, flipping the record over to check the tracklist. You ran your fingers over the edges of the sleeve, feeling the familiar grooves of the cover, the little imperfections that only came with time.

You glanced over at Spencer, watching him for a moment as he flipped through his own stack. There was something so easy about being with him here, in this small, dimly lit shop filled with memories and melodies. “I mean, how else are you supposed to listen to music?” you asked, raising an eyebrow dramatically as you glanced down at the album in your hands. Then, with a theatrical flair, you placed your free hand on your hip and tilted your head back, doing your best (and rather exaggerated) impersonation of Rossi. “It’s the only way to really appreciate it. The crackle, the warmth… it’s like you can feel the music,” you said, making a show of puffing out an imaginary cigar and letting the smoke trail into the air.

Spencer’s laughter was immediate, loud, and genuine, as he looked over at you, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Oh my God,” he chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. “You are way too good at that.”

You grinned, clearly pleased with yourself. “I’ve been practicing,” you said, striking a mock pose, your hand still poised as if holding the cigar, before you finally broke into another fit of laughter. Spencer couldn’t help but join you, his smile wide and full of affection. “Rossi would be proud,” he teased, his voice light, but there was a fondness in the way he looked at you.

You winked, a mischievous glint in your eyes. “Well, if I’m ever in need of a new career, I think I’ve got this down.”

By the time you reached the end of your long search through the endless rows of records, you had carefully chosen a couple you were willing to splurge on. Cradling the records against your chest, you joined the line at the register, the buzz of the store humming around you.

When your turn came, you placed the records on the counter, chatting casually with the cashier as you fied through your bag for your wallet. Your voice was light, a touch distracted as your fingers rifled through your belongings.

Unbeknownst to you, Spencer had stepped closer, the faintest hint of a mischievous smile on his lips. Without a word, he slipped his card onto the reader. The machine beeped, signalling the completed transaction just as you finally found your wallet and looked up.

Confused, your gaze darted between the cashier and Spencer, who was already sliding his card back into his wallet with an air of nonchalance.

“Spencer!” you gasped, stepping out of line with him as they headed toward the exit. You gave him that look—the one that said he didn’t have to do what he just did. Your lips parted to speak, but he beat you to it.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you said softly, your voice laced with both gratitude and protest. Your hazel eyes darted to the floor for a moment before flicking back to him, catching the warm, self-assured look in his own. You didn’t like people spending money on you when you had plenty of your own. The records weren’t cheap, either.

Spencer, however, shrugged it off with a quiet confidence that surprised even himself. “I wanted to,” he replied simply. His voice was calm but firm, the corners of his mouth quirking up into a gentle smile. “I asked you to come out with me, didn’t I?”

You sighed, your protest melting into a small, affectionate smile as they stepped out into the crisp air. It was such a Spencer thing to do—thoughtful and kind, but completely unnecessary. Yet, as they walked side by side, you couldn’t deny the warmth his gesture left in your chest.

You glanced up at him, your eyes twinkling with a playful edge as you broke the silence. “You’re lucky I agreed,” you teased, a grin tugging at your lips.

Spencer chuckled softly, glancing down at you. “Oh, I know,” he said, his voice low but filled with humor. “Trust me, I’m very lucky.”

They continued to walk aimlessly, the crisp evening air brushing against their faces as they strolled. Spencer was mid-thought, caught up in some internal musing when your voice broke through.

“Oh my God, Chinatown, Spencer!” you exclaimed, your voice brimming with excitement, like a child spotting a candy store.

Your eyes lit up as they landed on the colourful archway marking the entrance to Chinatown. You couldn’t quite explain it, but Chinatowns had always been your favourite places to visit. Maybe it was the vibrant atmosphere, the intricate details of the buildings, or the way everyone seemed to know one another, creating a sense of community that felt warm and welcoming. You loved every bit of it.

Without realizing it, you grabbed Spencer’s hand and tugged him along with you, your excitement bubbling over. Your grip was firm but warm, and Spencer—despite the suddenness—didn’t resist. In fact, he found himself smiling as you led him toward the bustling street.

Your face glowed brighter than he’d ever seen as you took in the sight of the ornately decorated gate ahead, its vivid reds and golds shining under the string lights that crisscrossed above the street. He didn’t know if it was your enthusiasm or the way your joy seemed to radiate outward, but he was utterly mesmerized, trailing behind you like he was under a spell.

“We should get noodles—if you’re okay with that?” you asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.

Spencer blinked, realizing he’d been staring at you with a soft, almost dreamy expression. The way you looked at him then—like he was the best person in the world just for being here with you—made his heart skip.

“Yeah, of course,” he replied, his voice steady but his heart racing. Without thinking, he gave your hand a gentle squeeze.

Your cheeks flushed at the small gesture, and Spencer caught the faintest flicker of a smile as they continued walking hand in hand. The streets were alive with energy, from the scent of freshly steamed buns wafting from carts to the hum of chatter in the air.

Eventually, they stumbled upon a quaint bakery that led to an underground noodle bar tucked just below it. The combination was irresistible. As they waited for a table, your eyes lit up when you spotted cheese-filled mooncakes in the bakery display.

“I have to try one of these,” you said eagerly, placing your order while Spencer watched you with quiet amusement.

Moments later, you held the warm pastry in your hands, your face glowing with anticipation. “This is going to be the best cheese pull you’ve ever seen,” you declared, laughing with a childlike excitement that made Spencer’s chest tighten.

You took a bite, and as you pulled back, the melted cheese stretched from your mouth to the mooncake, just as you had promised. Your eyes widened with delight, and your laughter rang out, light and contagious.

Spencer couldn’t help but laugh too, shaking his head in amazement. You were like a child in the best possible way, unguarded and full of joy.

“You were right,” he said, still chuckling. “That’s definitely the best cheese pull I’ve ever seen.”

Your grin widened, and for a moment, Spencer forgot about the bustling streets around them. All he could see was your—glowing, carefree, and absolutely captivating.

The waiter called out, “Sī bīn sài Ruì dé?” his tone polite and slightly accented as he scanned the small crowd in the restaurant’s waiting area. Spencer Reid’s head lifted, recognizing the sound of his name rendered in Mandarin. He gave a small, sheepish smile, adjusting his scarf as he turned to look at you.

You arched an amused brow, gesturing toward the waiter with a tilt of your head. “That’s you, Dr. Reid.”

Spencer nodded, his hand lightly brushing against your lower back as he led the way down the narrow staircase into the cozy, warmly lit restaurant below. The rich scent of soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil wafted through the air, mingling with the quiet murmur of diners enjoying their meals.

The waiter guided them to a private booth tucked into the corner of the room, its dark wooden walls offering a sense of intimacy. Spencer gestured for you to slide in first, always the gentleman, before settling across from you.

The two opened their menus, the glossy pages filled with enticing photos and descriptions of diyous written in both Mandarin and English. Spencer scanned the list with the precision of someone cataloging data, while you took a more casual approach, letting your eyes linger on the pictures.

“What are you thinking of getting?” Spencer asked, glancing up at you. His hazel eyes held a mix of curiosity and hesitation, likely calculating the probabilities of making the wrong choice in an unfamiliar culinary landscape.

You smiled, leaning slightly over the menu to point at the dishes you had your eye on. “I was thinking Beef Noodle Soup and maybe a fried rice platter. If you wanted to share?”

Your suggestion was casual, but you knew Spencer well enough to recognise that sharing food might not be his first choice. The germaphobic tendencies you’d seen surface in the past made your offer feel like a gamble. If he declined, you’d simply adjust your order—no harm, no foul.

Spencer’s brow furrowed slightly, his fingers drumming lightly against the edge of the menu. “Sharing…” he began, his tone thoughtful. “It’s not usually my preference, but—” He paused, studying your face as though weighing the pros and cons of stepping out of his comfort zone. “I think I could make an exception. Just… no double-dipping,” he added with a faint smile, his attempt at humour not lost on you.

You chuckled softly, your shoulders relaxing. “Deal. I’ll even promise to use the serving spoon if it helps.”

His smile widened, the corners of his mouth quirking upward in a way that made your heart skip a beat. “That would be appreciated.”

As the waiter returned to take their order, Spencer let you take the lead, quietly observing your interactions. The way you spoke with ease, your smile lighting up the space between them, was something he never grew tired of.

After the waiter left, the two settled into conversation, the hum of the restaurant serving as a comforting backdrop. You caught him glancing at you from time to time, his expression soft and unguarded.

“Two Beef Noodle Soup and fried rice,” he mused after a moment. “Good choices. Did you know Beef Noodle Soup is considered a national dish in Taiwan? There’s even an annual festival where chefs compete to create the best version of it.”

Your eyes sparkled with interest. “I didn’t know that. How do you even know things like that off the top of your head?”

Spencer shrugged, a faint blush creeping up his neck. “I read a lot.”

You laughed, leaning forward slightly. “Of course you do. But that’s one of the things I love about you, you know. You always have the most random, fascinating facts tucked away in that big brain of yours.”

His blush deepened, and he ducked his head slightly, fiddling with the edge of his napkin. “I’m glad you think so,” he murmured.

Their food arrived not long after, the diyous steaming and fragrant, the aroma instantly making your stomach rumble. You reached for your chopsticks, but before you could start serving yourself, Spencer gently took the plate from your side.

“Allow me,” he said, his tone soft but resolute, as though he had been planning this move.

You blinked in surprise, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips. “Wow, chivalry isn’t dead after all. I was starting to wonder.”

Spencer shot you a mock-offended look as he carefully portioned out some of the sizzling stir-fry onto your plate. “Hey, I can be chivalrous. I just… don’t get much practice. Sharing food isn’t exactly in my top five skills.”

You laughed, nudging his arm. “You don’t say. Should I feel honoured or concerned?”

“Definitely honoured,” he replied, finishing your plate with an exaggerated flourish. “This is a rare occurrence. Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“Oh, I’m definitely documenting this,” you teased, pulling out your phone and snapping a quick photo of him mid-serve. “The great Dr. Spencer Reid, putting others first. What’s next, you’re going to offer me the last bite?”

Spencer smirked as he served himself. “Let’s not get carried away.”

As they began eating, you picked up a particularly long noodle with your chopsticks and dangled it in front of your face. “Do you think this could double as a jump rope for ants?”

Spencer nearly choked on his bite of rice, laughing. “That is… an incredibly specific visual. Why ants? Why not, I don’t know, mice?”

“Too predictable,” you replied, twirling the noodle like you were considering its durability. “Ants have more finesse. They’d appreciate the artistry.”

“Ah, yes, the ant gymnast community,” Spencer said, adjusting his glasses and leaning forward as though about to deliver a lecture. “You know, ants can actually carry up to fifty times their body weight, so a noodle would be the perfect workout tool.”

You grinned, using your chopsticks to make the noodles “jump” across your plate. “You’re making my case for me. Ant Olympics, here we come.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Thank you,” you said brightly, slurping the noodle up with a playful flourish.

Spencer raised an eyebrow and then, without a word, picked up a dumpling with his chopsticks and held it in front of his mouth. He narrowed his eyes, suddenly serious. “If I were an ant, this would be like carrying a wrecking ball.”

You burst out laughing, nearly dropping your chopsticks. “You’re so weird!”

“Only because you bring it out of me,” he replied, popping the dumpling into his mouth with a small, triumphant smile.

They continued their meal, each taking turns to make the other laugh with increasingly absurd food-related jokes. Spencer even attempted to balance a broccoli floret on his nose, which ended with you snorting and him losing the floret mid-laugh.

By the time they finished, your sides ached from laughing, and Spencer looked more relaxed than you’d seen him in weeks. As he reached for the bill, you caught his hand and grinned.

“See? Sharing isn’t so bad,” you teased.

He smiled back, his eyes warm. “Only with you.”

Once they left Chinatown, the streets of Washington, D.C. buzzed with life, but Spencer and you were lost in their own little world, laughing uncontrollably over the events of the day. Every inside joke and playful jab sent them spiraling into fits of laughter, their shared energy a bright spot in the bustling city. For Spencer, the date had already been perfect, but he wasn’t ready for it to end just yet. He had one last plan to cap off the evening, though it wouldn’t come into play for hours. Until then, he just needed to keep you distracted.

You nudged him playfully as they strolled along. “Alright, something you never got to do as a kid but always wanted to,” you said, your tone suddenly serious despite the twinkle of curiosity in your eyes.

Spencer hesitated, the question catching him off guard. He rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish smile creeping across his face. “I don’t know,” he began, his voice soft. “I’ve always liked reading books and spending time with my mom.” He glanced at you, embarrassed by how ordinary his answer sounded.

You gave his hand a gentle squeeze, grounding him. “That’s sweet, Spence,” you said softly. “But come on, there’s gotta be something.”

He exhaled a small laugh, his gaze shifting to the pavement as he admitted, “Well, I always wanted to play Laser Tag.”

You stopped in your tracks, your hazel eyes wide with disbelief. “Wait. You’ve never played Laser Tag?”

Spencer shrugged, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. “I mean, no, not really. It just never came up.”

You were already shaking your head in mock horror. “That’s unacceptable. We’re fixing this right now.”

“It’s fine. We don’t have to—”

But you were already tugging him along with determined speed. “Nope. This is happening. You’re about to experience the childhood you missed out on, and it’s going to be amazing.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at your enthusiasm, your energy was contagious. Before he knew it, they were standing at the counter of a nearby arcade, you grinning ear to ear as you requested two tickets for Laser Tag.

Spencer tried one last time to protest. “Really, you don’t have to do this—”

“Consider it my treat,” you interrupted, handing over your card to the cashier. “A thank-you for the best day I’ve had in a long time.”

The sincerity in your voice silenced his objections, and he felt his heart swell. As the cashier handed them their gear, you turned to him with a mischievous glint in your eye.

“Alright, Dr. Reid,” you teased, strapping on your vest. “Let’s see if all that genius-level intellect helps you out on the battlefield.”

Spencer laughed, shaking his head. “You’re going to regret this. I may not have played before, but I’m pretty sure I’m about to win.”

“Bold of you to assume,” you shot back with a smirk, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the arena.

As they stepped into the dimly lit room filled with neon lights and fog machines, Spencer felt an unexpected rush of excitement. You turned to him, your face illuminated by the glowing lights, and he couldn’t help but smile. Maybe he’d been missing out, but with you by his side, he was more than ready to make up for lost time.

The neon lights flickered, casting an otherworldly glow over the Laser Tag arena. Fog swirled around Spencer and you as they ducked behind barriers and navigated the maze-like layout. The sound of distant footsteps and laser beams zipping through the air made it feel like they’d stepped into a sci-fi movie.

Spencer crouched low, trying to strategize his next move, but your sudden battle cry made him jump. You darted out from behind a glowing pillar, your laughter echoing through the arena as you fired your laser, landing a direct hit on his vest.

“Gotcha!” you shouted triumphantly, your grin wide and uncontainable.

Spencer stumbled back in mock defeat, his hands raised. “Okay, okay, truce! I’m still learning!”

You rolled your eyes, playfully wagging a finger at him. “No mercy, Reid. You’re my bitch now.”

You turned to sprint away, but Spencer surprised you by diving behind a barrier and quickly firing back. The red lights on your vest lit up, signalling a hit.

“Ha! Who’s the genius now?” he teased, standing up with a victorious smirk.

You clutched your chest dramatically, pretending to be mortally wounded. “Betrayed… by my own date!” you gasped, collapsing onto a nearby barrier.

Spencer burst into laughter, his usually reserved demeanor completely melting away. “You’re ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head as he helped your back up.

“And you love it,” you quipped, sticking your tongue out before taking off into the maze again.

The game continued, a back-and-forth of sneak attacks, exaggerated reactions, and endless laughter. Every hit was met with playful banter, and every moment felt like peeling back the layers of their guarded hearts. Spencer, who had always been so serious and calculated, found himself letting go, caught up in the pure, childlike joy of the moment.

At one point, they both ended up crouched behind the same barrier, breathless and laughing so hard their sides hurt. You leaned your head against his shoulder, your face flushed from running. “Okay, I admit it,” you said between giggles. “You’re pretty good for a first-timer.”

Spencer glanced at you, his hazel eyes sparkling in the dim light. “I had a good teacher,” he replied softly.

For a moment, the chaos around them faded. They were just two people, sitting side by side, finding solace in each other’s company.

You nudged him gently. “See? Childhood dream fulfilled. What’s next on your list?”

He chuckled, his gaze dropping to the glowing floor. “Honestly? I think this might be enough for one night.”

“Enough?” you teased. “We’ve barely scratched the surface! Next time, we’re doing bumper cars.”

Spencer laughed, the sound light and genuine. “I think I’m going to need a lot of next times with you,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper.

Your expression softened, and you reached out to take his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Then we’ll make that happen,” you promised.

As the game timer buzzed, signalling the end of their session, Spencer and you made their way out of the arena, still laughing and teasing each other. A leaderboard lit up on the screen near the exit, and Spencer froze, his eyes widening.

“No way,” he murmured, stepping closer to the display.

You leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the screen. Your jaw dropped when you saw his name at the top of the list. “You won?!” you exclaimed, grabbing his arm and shaking it excitedly. “Spencer Reid, first-time Laser Tag champion! I’m so proud of you!”

He turned to you, his grin almost bashful but undeniably proud. “Beginner’s luck, maybe?”

“Absolutely not,” you said, your face lighting up with genuine excitement. “You crushed it out there! I mean, I’m a little salty that you beat me, but still—you’re officially a Laser Tag legend.”

Spencer laughed, the sound bubbling out of him with pure joy. “A legend, huh? I’ll take it.”

You playfully bumped your shoulder against his. “You better. This is a big deal! You’ve got bragging rights now.”

As they stepped out of the arcade into the cool night air, you looped your arm through his, your energy still electric. “Okay, next time we’re teaming up. Imagine what we could do together!”

Spencer looked down at you, his heart warm and full. “I think we’d be unstoppable,” he said, his voice soft but confident.

As they walked down the busy streets, still laughing and recounting the best moments of the game, Spencer couldn’t help but feel like he’d won more than just Laser Tag. With you by his side, he’d found something he hadn’t even realized he’d been missing—a piece of joy, of freedom, of connection that made him feel whole again.

As they continued down the lively streets of D.C., Spencer’s smile lingered, a quiet sense of contentment radiating from him. You were still buzzing from the Laser Tag victory, your hand resting comfortably in his as they walked.

“Alright, Dr. Reid,” you said playfully, looking up at him. “What’s next on this magical mystery tour of a date? Because if it’s as fun as Laser Tag, I might actually burst from happiness.”

Spencer chuckled, his hazel eyes glinting with mischief. “Well,” he began, his voice soft but teasing, “I do have one more thing planned. But it’s a surprise.”

Your eyes widened with curiosity. “A surprise? Spencer Reid, you’re full of secrets tonight. What is it?”

He shook his head, his lips curving into a sly smile. “You’ll see. Just trust me.”

“Always,” you said with a grin, letting him guide you down a quieter street.

The hum of the city faded as they walked, replaced by a peaceful stillness. You tilted your head, trying to guess where he was taking you, but Spencer kept quiet, his excitement barely contained. Finally, they rounded a corner, and your breath caught as the grand façade of the National Gallery of Art came into view, illuminated beautifully against the night sky.

“Spencer,” you whispered, awe in your voice. “The art museum? It’s closed right now.”

He smiled, his fingers lacing tighter with yours. “Not for us.”

As if on cue, a side door to the museum opened, and a man in his mid-thirties stepped out, waving at Spencer.

“Dr. Reid!” the man called warmly. “Right on time.”

“Thanks, Jacob,” Spencer said, his voice full of gratitude. He turned to you, his expression soft. “Jacob’s a curator here. He agreed to stay late and let us in. Just us.”

Your jaw dropped as you looked between Spencer and Jacob. “You’re kidding. We get the whole museum to ourselves?”

Spencer nodded, his heart fluttering at the pure joy on your face. “I thought you might like it. I know how much you love art, and, well… I wanted to do something special for you.”

You blinked back a sudden wave of emotion, your chest tightening with affection. “Spencer, this is… this is incredible. Thank you.”

He smiled, a little shyly. “You’re worth it.”

Jacob opened the door wider, gesturing them inside. “Enjoy yourselves. I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”

As they stepped into the museum, the quiet echoed around them, amplifying the beauty of the vast, empty halls. The dim lighting highlighted the paintings and sculptures, making it feel like they’d stepped into another world.

You turned to Spencer, your eyes shining. “This is the most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

He ducked his head, his cheeks tinged pink. “I just wanted to give you something memorable. Something… magical.”

You reached out, taking his hand in yours. “You’ve done more than that, Spence. This is perfect.”

He smiled, his heart swelling at your words. “Come on,” he said softly, leading you toward the first exhibit. “Let’s explore.”

And together, hand in hand, they wandered through the museum, the art and the quiet intimacy of the moment weaving a memory neither of them would ever forget.

The museum was humour, the kind of quiet that invited reverence and reflection. Their footsteps echoed faintly as they moved through the halls, pausing here and there to admire a painting or sculpture. Spencer’s hand lingered at your lower back, a subtle gesture to guide you but also to stay close, as if the intimacy of the space demanded it.

They came to a room filled with sculptures, the soft lighting casting long shadows that danced on the walls. Your attention was immediately drawn to a particular piece—a sculpture of two women, one older, one younger, the younger standing on the shoulders of the older as if reaching for something just out of sight.

You stopped in your tracks, your breath catching slightly. Spencer noticed your stillness and took a step back, letting your take in the piece without interruption. Your expression shifted, your usual brightness giving way to something quieter, deeper.

After a few moments, he couldn’t help but break the silence, his voice soft so as not to disturb the moment. “How does it make you feel?”

You didn’t turn to him right away. Your eyes remained fixed on the sculpture, your hands loosely clasped in front of you. When you finally spoke, your voice was low but steady, carrying the weight of your thoughts.

“Seen,” you said simply, then paused as if to find the right words. “In a weird way. I don’t think I’d be who I am without my mother, and this piece proves it in a way. It makes me feel less alone too, like I’m not the only one who sees myself this way.”

Spencer tilted his head, his gaze flickering between you and the sculpture. He could see it now—the younger woman’s outstretched hands, the older one’s steadying stance. The balance between them spoke volumes about trust, sacrifice, and love.

“You feel like you’re standing on your shoulders,” he said softly, almost to himself.

You nodded, finally glancing at him. “Yeah. Every step I’ve taken has been because you let me stand on your foundation. Even when things weren’t perfect, you were still there, holding me up.” You smiled faintly, a bittersweet curve of your lips. “It’s nice to see it represented like this, you know? It’s like… someone else understands.”

Spencer took a small step closer, his voice gentle. “You’d be proud of you. I don’t think anyone could look at what you’ve built for yourself and feel anything less.”

You turned fully to face him now, your hazel eyes soft but shining. “Thank you, Spence. That means a lot.”

He gave you a small smile, his hands in his pockets as he glanced back at the sculpture. “It’s beautiful. Just like the way you see the world.”

You laughed softly, shaking your head. “You’re such a charmer, you know that?”

“Not really,” he admitted with a small chuckle, “but I mean it.”

For a while longer, they stayed there, side by side, letting the sculpture’s quiet power wash over them. In that moment, it wasn’t just art—it was a connection, a shared understanding that went deeper.

The weight of the moment lifted as they moved on, wandering into another section of the museum. The air between them felt lighter now, a quiet understanding still lingering but giving way to the playful energy they always seemed to share.

It started with a chuckle from you, your hand covering your mouth as you stopped in front of a sculpture of a stern-looking man with an exaggeratedly large nose. “Okay, tell me that doesn’t look like Hotch when he’s annoyed,” you whispered, your eyes sparkling mischievously.

Spencer glanced at the sculpture and bit back a laugh. “It’s the eyebrows,” he said, nodding in agreement.

You gasped, pointing. “The eyebrows! Yes! It’s like he’s about to say, ‘Reid, stop overexplaining.’"

Spencer laughed, his face lighting up in a way that made your heart skip. “Okay, okay, but look at this one,” he said, leading you to a nearby bust of a man whose face was frozen in a hilariously exaggerated scowl. “Tell me that’s not Rossi after someone forgets to bring him coffee.”

You burst out laughing, clapping a hand over your mouth to muffle the sound. “Oh my God, it’s perfect!” you managed between giggles.

They moved from sculpture to sculpture, pointing out ridiculous expressions and coming up with stories for each one. Spencer, ever the genius, concocted elaborate backstories for the pieces, each one more absurd than the last.

“This one,” he said, gesturing to a marble figure of a man dramatically clutching his chest, “was probably just told that his favorite gelato shop ran out of pistachio.”

You doubled over laughing, your cheeks aching from smiling so much. “Stop, you’re going to get us kicked out!” you said, though your laughter made it clear you didn’t mean it.

“You’re the one who started it,” he teased, his grin wide and unrestrained.

They rounded a corner and found themselves in front of a statue of a cherub with a particularly mischievous expression. Spencer tilted his head. “This one’s definitely plotting something. Probably planning to steal cookies from the other cherubs.”

You wiped a tear from your eyes, still laughing. “You’re too good at this. Have you been secretly practicing?”

He shrugged, a playful glint in his eye. “What can I say? I’m a natural.”

As they continued exploring, their laughter echoed softly through the empty halls, their joy filling the quiet space. For a little while, they let themselves be kids again—carefree, silly, and completely immersed in the moment.

Spencer, usually so reserved and composed, felt freer than he had in years. And you, watching him let loose, felt your heart swell with happiness. It wasn’t just about the art or the laughter—it was about being together, sharing a moment that was uniquely theirs.

When they finally paused to catch their breath, leaning against a wall in between fits of giggles, Spencer looked at you with a soft smile. “This might be the most fun I’ve ever had in a museum.”

You grinned, your eyes shining. “I told you, you just needed the right partner in crime.”

He nodded, his expression warm. “I think I found them.”

And with that, they set off again, hand in hand, ready to see what other treasures—and laughs—the museum had to offer.

As they wandered back toward the grand central hall of the museum, the playful energy between them began to settle into something softer, quieter. The warm lighting of the space casts a golden glow over the room, highlighting the details of the sculptures and paintings around them. You paused by a large marble statue of a couple intertwined in an eternal embrace, your gaze lingering on the delicate way the sculptor had captured the curve of their hands and the tilt of their heads.

Spencer stopped beside you, his eyes following yours to the statue. He said nothing, but the air between them shifted, heavy with unspoken thoughts. The laughter from earlier seemed to hang in the distance, replaced by a gentle stillness.

You turned your head to look at him, your expression soft, your lips parted slightly as if you wanted to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. Spencer’s gaze flickered from the statue to you, his heart stuttering as he caught the way the golden light played on your features.

Neityour of them spoke. They didn’t need to.

Spencer’s hand reached out, slow and hesitant, his fingertips brushing against yours. The touch was featyour-light, but it sent a ripple through both of them, grounding them in the moment.

Your eyes searched his, questioning, yet trusting. He took a step closer, the space between them shrinking until it was almost nonexistent.

Your breath hitched, your heart racing as his face hovered close to yours. The world around them seemed to blur, the art and the quiet fading into the background as the only thing that mattered was him—his eyes, his presence, the warmth of him so close.

Spencer hesitated, his gaze flicking to your lips and back to your eyes, as if silently asking for permission. You gave him the faintest nod, your lips curving into a soft, encouraging smile.

It was painfully slow, the kind of moment that stretched on forever, but neither of them rushed it. Their foreheads brushed first, a tentative, intimate touch that sent shivers down your spine. His nose bumped yours lightly, their breaths mingling in the small space between them.

And then, finally, achingly, his lips met yours.

The kiss was soft, and unhurried, a perfect balance of tenderness and curiosity. His hand cupped your cheek gently, his thumb brushing your skin as if you were something fragile, something to be cherished You leaned into him, your fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt to steady yourself as your heart soared.

Time seemed to stop entirely. There was no overthinking, no second-guessing—just the quiet certainty that this was exactly where they were meant to be.

When they finally pulled back, their faces still close, neither of them spoke right away. Spencer’s eyes searched yours, his expression a mix of wonder and disbelief, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

You smiled softly, your thumb brushing over the back of his hand. “That felt… right,” you whispered, your voice barely audible.

Spencer nodded, his lips curving into the faintest smile. “It did,” he agreed, his voice equally quiet.

And as they stood there, bathed in the golden light of the museum, they both knew they’d just shared a moment they’d carry with them forever.

Hand in hand, they made their way back toward the main entrance of the museum, their fingers still entwined as they shared quiet smiles and the lingering warmth of the kiss. The halls, now empty of their playful laughter, seemed to hum with the remnants of the night’s magic, a soft kind of peace wrapping around them.

When they reached the front, they were met by Jacob, who was standing by the gift shop, a welcoming grin on his face.

“Did you two enjoy the private tour?” he asked, clearly amused by the soft glow in their expressions.

“It was perfect,” You replied, your voice light with contentment. “We couldn’t have asked for a better night.”

Spencer gave Jacob a small nod of thanks, and they made their way toward the gift shop. Of course, you, ever the curious soul, immediately started scanning the shelves, your eyes lighting up as you spotted a section of artist books and unique prints.

Spencer stood back a little, letting you take it all in. It was clear from the way you were absorbed in the display that you were in your element. Your fingers traced the spines of the books, your eyes lingering on the vibrant art, the words, and the stories behind them. It was a rare thing to see you so lost in admiration, and he couldn’t help but smile as he watched you, appreciating the way you connected with the world through art.

You picked up one of the books, flipping it open to the first page. “Spence,” you called softly, turning to him with a gentle smile. “Which artist was it who made that sculpture of the two women?”

Spencer walked over to you, his gaze following yours to the shelf where the artist’s work was displayed. He didn’t need to think twice. “Julie Rrap,” he replied.

You nodded, your fingers brushing the cover of the book titled Body Double. You seemed almost hesitant at first, as if deciding whether or not to pick it up. But then, with a quiet sense of reverence, you carefully opened the book and placed it in your hands, holding it close to your chest for a moment before glancing back at Spencer.

“Thank you,” you said softly, your voice filled with gratitude. There was something in your eyes—something that said this moment meant more to you than you could express.

Spencer smiled warmly, his heart swelling a little. “I’m glad you like it.”

You ran your thumb along the edges of the book, your gaze still soft as you flipped through the pages, your eyes drinking in the art and the words. It was as if the world had slowed down again, and they were both wrapped in the quiet, intimate moment of shared appreciation.

“I think I’m going to get this,” you said, your voice thoughtful, almost to yourself. “It’s… I don’t know. It feels important.”

Spencer nodded, his gaze still on you as you carefully placed the book in your arms, a soft smile tugging at his lips. “It’s yours. You deserve it.”

Spencer reached into his pocket as they approached the counter, his hand finding yours once more, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He placed the book and a few other items you had picked out onto the counter. Jacob, who had been standing nearby, gave them both a knowing smile as he rang up the items.

“You two seem like you had a good time,” Jacob said, his tone light and friendly.

Spencer smiled, pulling out his wallet. “It was a perfect night, thanks to you.”

You turned to Jacob with a grateful expression, your eyes bright. “Thank you for letting us stay after hours. It really made the evening special.”

Jacob nodded, giving you a small wink. “Anytime. Glad you enjoyed it. You two have a good rest of the night.”

After Spencer finished paying, he gathered the items and handed them to you, who accepted them with a soft smile. “Thanks again,” you said, your voice warm.

With a final wave to Jacob, they left the gift shop and stepped into the cool night air. The city was quieter now, the streets bathed in the soft glow of streetlights. As they walked toward Spencer’s apartment, the evening felt like a perfect bookend to a day full of laughter, art, and unexpected moments of connection.

Spencer, his arm casually draped over your shoulder, pulled you closer as they walked. “So, what do you think? A quiet night in to wrap things up?” he asked, a playful note in his voice.

You smiled, your eyes glinting with excitement. “Sounds perfect.”

They continued down the sidewalk, their footsteps in sync, the world around them fading away as they looked forward to whatever came next—together.

thank you for reading!

please like & reblog if you enjoyed!

part two!

masterlist!

[jinhyun]

—in your hands.

pairing: hwang hyunjin x reader

genre: fluff, best friend’s little brother au, friends to lovers

word count: 7.2k

summary: after a love confession and a few kisses took place the night before, it was finally time for you and Hyunjin to calmly talk things out and figure out where you were currently standing.

author’s note: here she is!! there is a lotttttt of talking and dialogue in this part, i feel like i should apologise lol. but anyway, the lovebirds needed to talk and, oh boy, talk they did. as always i hope you guys enjoy! if you do, please let me know by leaving an ask or a comment<3

You’d woken up next to Hyunjin once before in your life; a little over a month before, when the two of you passed out on your couch on New Year’s and ended up cuddling through the night somehow.

You remembered opening your eyes and panicking when you realised your face was resting on his chest and his arms were loosely wrapped around you.

You didn’t want to move away and wake him up back then, but, at the same time, you didn’t want him to potentially feel uncomfortable if he woke up and found out the current position you were in. So, in the end, after some careful consideration, you did what seemed like the right thing to do: pull away from him and sit up on the couch, which inevitably resulted in him waking up as well and understanding what was going on right away.

This time, it was different.

Yes, you were once again met by his chest as soon as you opened your eyes, and his arms were one more time around you — although tightly this time, keeping you from pulling away from him through the night. However, this time you didn’t panic, but smiled instead.

Managing to pull away from him just enough to be on his eye level, you stared at his relaxed, beautiful features. From his thick eyebrows and closed eyelids, to his round nose, to those plump lips of his you’d got to kiss the night before.

You felt your cheeks burn at the still fresh memory. Although flustered by it, you couldn’t help but reminisce how good his mouth felt on yours, how hard your heart was pounding against your chest, and how you wished he’d kissed you for a little longer.

Freeing one of your arms from his hold, you reached your hand up to tenderly remove a strand of hair that was covering his eyes and tickling the bridge of his nose — then just leaving your hand there for a little longer, as your fingertips faintly traced his skin while you quietly admired him.

A part of you couldn’t believe he had been there for you all this time and you were only now noticing him. He was without a doubt the most beautiful man you had ever laid your eyes on, but you didn’t feel any sort of attraction to him up until this year. And now that you did, now that you got to feel his lips on yours and see a side of him you never thought you would, you wondered how come it took you this long to see him in a different light.

Pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead —and smiling to yourself when you watched the corners of his mouth curve up at the lingering contact—, you somehow went out of your way to remove his arms from your figure without waking him up.

You weren’t expecting him to come over last night, and you most definitely weren’t expecting him to spend the night; therefore, you had not restocked your groceries and were left with nothing to offer him for breakfast.

You made sure he was truly not waking up any time soon before you got off the bed and chose a rather cozy outfit for the day, so you could go to the bathroom and get ready to go to the grocery store around the corner while he got some more sleep.

You should’ve known better than to actually believe he would get another hour or two of sleep after you left his side, because not even two minutes into the store, your phone was buzzing in your pocket and his contact was showing up on the screen.

“Hey, you’re up” you greeted sweetly after taking the call.

“I didn’t take you for the kiss and dip type” he hoarsely called you out, regardless of the smile you could hear curving up his lips.

“No hello?” You joked. “How are you?”

“You’re the one who abandoned me, you don’t get to call me out”.

You chuckled at his over dramatic ways. “You’re literally at my place, it doesn’t work like that”.

“Well, you’re not in bed with me, so…”

“I thought of staying in bed for a while, but then I realised I was out of food” you explained. “I came to the grocery store around the corner, won���t take long”.

He whined. “We could’ve gone together later”.

“You looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to wake you up” you pouted. “Besides, I didn’t think you’d wake up before I came back. I’ll be there in ten, okay?”

“Okay…” he mumbled, and you heard him shift in your bed. “Or better yet, make it five”.

“I’m still missing half of the things I need to get” you amusedly informed him, going over to check a pack of eggs. “Is there anything you’d like for breakfast?”

“You”.

You stopped in your tracks the moment that simple yet bold answer abandoned his lips, being too stunned to come up with a witty answer like you usually would.

You were still getting used to his newfound boldness, but you would lie to yourself if you said you didn’t enjoy the butterflies flying around your stomach whenever he said something like that.

A breathy laugh of his was heard on the other side of the line the next second, when you remained silent and it hit him just how flustered he’d make you.

“Are you still drunk?” You were unable to hide both your amusement and disbelief.

“No,” he chuckled. “I didn’t mean it like that”.

He did.

“You didn’t now?” You cocked an eyebrow.

“Can you come back already?” He changed the topic, earning a light laugh from you. “I just wanna be with you, I’m not even hungry”.

“You still need to eat something, though” you argued. “Like I said, I’ll be there in ten”.

“Too long” he let out a heavy sigh.

“You can go back to sleep in the meantime” you suggested. “Or make yourself some coffee, you know where everything is”.

“Yeah, that sounds good” he hummed. “I'll freshen up a bit first”.

“There are towels on the upper shelf of my closet, in case you’d like to take a shower” you let him know. “There should also be a spare toothbrush you can use in the second drawer of my bathroom”.

He laughed lightly, rather dreamily, but ultimately said nothing.

“What…”

“Nothing, you’re cute” he said softly. “Come back here already”.

“I would go back faster if we stopped talking, honestly” you chuckled. “You’re kinda keeping me distracted right now”.

“Okay, I’m hanging up then. Don’t take too long”.

Looking at your screen when you heard him hang up on you, you rolled your eyes in amusement, laughing to yourself over how silly he was before you shoved your phone into your pocket and focused back on the eggs you’d been previously checking out.

The faster you got everything on your list, the faster you’d be back at yours with Hyunjin.

-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-♡

Being driven by seeing him again, you were entering your place again not even ten minutes later, carrying the groceries you had rushed to get.

You didn’t even have to announce that you were back, for Hyunjin came out of your bedroom right as you began to change into your slippers by the door.

You were greatly surprised by the sight of him in sweatpants and a black tank top that let you appreciate his toned arms, unlike the matching sweatshirt he’d worn last night. You guessed the tank top had been underneath it all along, and you were only now lucky enough to see it thanks to the hot shower he must’ve taken not long ago, since he was drying his hair with one of your towels right then.

“Hey…” you greeted him, feeling your cheeks burn when his eyes locked with yours; as you were once again invaded with memories of his pretty lips on yours the night before.

“Hey,” he smiled sweetly, visibly lighting up at the sight of you.

Without another word, he hung the towel on the back of your couch and went up to you, so he could pull you to his chest and feel you close like he had been craving since the moment he woke up and realised you weren’t next to him.

A loving sigh abandoned your lips when you felt his arms securely wrap around you, being hit with the realisation that you had also missed him those few minutes you’d been away from him.

Carefully dropping the bags you were holding on the floor, you wrapped your arms around him as well, feeling him relax under your touch and then lower his head so he could nuzzle the crook of your neck.

You jumped at the contact of his wet hair against your skin, earning light laughs from both of you.

“How’d you sleep?” You asked him softly.

Although you couldn’t see him, you could feel the way he smiled against you. “Better than ever”.

You chuckled, pulling him away by his shoulders and taking a careful look at him before you tenderly ran a hand through his damp locks. “No hangover?”

“Nope,” he shook his head. “Just thirsty”.

His remark got a laugh from you. “I figured you would be, so I brought you some isotonic water… as well as some medicine, just in case”.

He smiled brightly, not even needing to say ‘thank you’ for you to get the memo. Although he did say it anyway, in the softest of tones, that only you got to hear coming from him.

He swore to God he felt like marrying you right then and there every single time you looked after him like that.

“Are you hungry?” You interrupted his sudden fantasy, but still all he could focus on was the way your hand travelled down from his hair to his nape. “I’ll go make us some breakfast now”.

“I’ll help you” he offered, leaning down to pick up the bags you had left on the floor a minute ago.

“It’s okay, you can go rest a bit more” you followed him into your kitchen.

“No, I want to be with you” he said truthfully, placing the bags on the counter.

You let out an over dramatic sigh as you went to the cabinet to grab a pan, in order to get started with breakfast,. “I made sure to be extra quiet this morning so you’d sleep until breakfast was ready…”

He chuckled, going over to you and hugging you from behind. “If you wanted me to get some more sleep, then you shouldn’t have left me all alone to freeze in your ice cold bed”.

“My bed is not cold at all, you drama queen” you called him out.

“Okay, maybe I overdid it a little,” he admitted, resting his chin on your shoulder and looking up at you. “Next time just stay in bed with me, hm? I’ll take you out for breakfast after cuddling for a little longer”.

“Next time?” You cocked an eyebrow, looking down at him like you weren’t just melting at his way with words.

“Well, I already have my own toothbrush in your bathroom, so…”

“Oh, yeah, that certainly grants you free will to stay over whenever you want” you amusedly rolled your eyes.

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind holding you all night long again”.

You bit your lip, feeling your heart squeeze in your chest and silently looking down for a moment before you turned around, having his hands go right back to your waist as your eyes locked with his.

Since he’d brought the previous night up, it felt like the opening you needed to talk about the things that were left unsaid.

“What happened last night…” you fidgeted with the paws of your sweater, catching his attention while you looked for the right words and earned enough courage to look up at him. “You meant it?”

“I meant everything I said, Y/N” he answered in a heartbeat. “I meant kissing you as well, I thought I made it very clear?”

“No, yeah, you did” you agreed, nervously looking down once again. “It’s just that you had been drinking and you did say once that you tend to get quite touchy when you’re like that, so… I guess I just wanted to hear it again now that you’re sober”.

“Well, I’m telling you again now, Y/N,” he gently tilted your head up, making you look at him again. “I love you”.

Just like the night before, your heart skipped a beat.

“I know you might not want to hear that right now, but I do. And, like I told you, kissing you meant the world to me. The alcohol only helped me to finally let out what I’d been bottling up for ages, so… I really did mean everything last night”.

You believed him when he said it the first time last night, but hearing him say that now, staring into your eyes when you knew he was in all his senses, could only make your heart hurt in the best of ways.

“Did you mean what happened last night?” It was his turn to ask.

He sounded almost scared of your possible answer, but you nodded the next second, and he felt like he could breathe again.

“I like you, Hyunjin. As in, I do feel something for you” you confessed, unaware of what your words had just done to his heart. “But, like I said, I’m not ready—I just… I only very recently realised it, so I’m still trying to figure out the extent of my feelings for you. Honestly, had it not been for Chan, I probably still wouldn’t have realised any of it until your confession”.

“Chan?” He asked.

“Mhm…” you nodded. “He kinda opened my eyes after your parents invited us for lunch the other week, I was convinced you were only being friendly until then”.

“So I really owe him a big one, huh?” He laughed under his breath, stealing a small laugh from you as well. “I was flirting so hard with you, Y/N, I still don’t get how you didn’t notice”.

“I don’t know, I just… I wasn’t looking for romance anywhere; and you have always been so lovely with me, only that now you were getting bolder, but… other than that there wasn’t much difference, I thought you were being friendly”.

“There’s a reason why I’ve always been so lovely to you, though” he pointed out. “You’re the only one I treat like that, it was never me just being friendly…”

“What do you mean?” You frowned.

“You know what I mean” he smiled timidly.

You remained silent for a moment, staring at him in an attempt to confirm what you were thinking. “How long have you…”

“Over six years now?” He tilted his head, understanding what you meant even when you didn’t finish your sentence. “Going on seven”.

“Hyunie, that’s…”

“Insane?” He completed for you with a nervous chuckle. “Yeah…”

You shook your head no, having trouble taking this new bit of information in. “I was in a relationship for four of those years…”

“I know,” he nodded. “Hurt like hell”.

You fell silent, taking in this new piece of information and being hit with all the times Mingyu complained about Hyunjin and how clearly in love he was with you.

You always brushed it off and told him to open his eyes, for Hyunjin was only Yeji’s little brother and, therefore, he saw you as a sister figure as well. You were now discovering that the one who needed to open her eyes were you.

You never suspected a thing. When you recently met, you thought he was shy around everyone. Then when you were comfortable enough around each other, you thought he was that kind to everyone. You thought he cared about everyone, he wanted to help everyone, he was friendly to everyone.

Turned out neither did he treat everyone like that, nor was he being friendly with you all along. It just came off like that to you, because you never expected him to have feelings for you.

However, looking back to all those times now, you were still unable to see the signs. You were unable to pinpoint when it all had started, as the only change in his behavior —and in your relationship as a whole— you perceived had been this year. He had always acted the same around you ever since you met, and you couldn’t help but wonder if you had at some point done something for him to get the wrong idea and change the way he saw you.

“Hyunie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know” you apologised. “When did you even—Did I mislead you at some point?”

“You didn’t. It was all on me, trust me” he smiled bittersweetly.

“Honestly?” You pushed it.

“Mhm… honestly” he reassured you, holding your hands in his and rubbing his thumbs on the back of them, as if wanting to comfort you over what he was about to say. “Remember when you stayed with us that weekend when something went down at your dorm?”

“The time we met?” You asked.

He nodded. “That’s when I fell for you. I just saw you enter the room and that was it for me”.

There it was, the reason why you never felt a switch in the way he acted around you; why you couldn’t tell the difference between his kindness and his romantic interest towards you.

He had fallen for you the first time he saw you, and you had gotten that version of him since the beginning — when he was too young for you to look at him with other eyes, and even for you to ever suspect he felt anything other than simple platonic affection for you.

You hurt for him. He had loved you all these years and you had not once given the way he treated you a second thought until last month. How could you have been so blind?

“You’re serious?” You murmured.

“I’m always serious when it comes to you” he gently caressed your chin.

“I’m so sorry, Hyunie. I had no idea, I feel awful…”

“Don’t,” he stopped you. “It’s not your fault, Y/N. All you did was show up and I took it from there”.

“Still, if only I had known…”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything. I was a minor back then; and when I wasn’t anymore, although we did grow closer for a while there, you fell in love with Mingyu”.

You felt like crying. You knew what it was for the person you loved to fall for someone else, and you couldn’t believe you were the one to make him experience that sort of heartbreak.

“I’m so sorry…” you apologised one more time.

No matter how many times you said it, it didn’t feel like enough.

“Baby, it wasn’t your fault” he reassured you once more — the pet name he’d called you last night slipping through his tongue yet again, and somehow managing to put your heart at ease whilst simultaneously making it go wild.

“When we got close back in your first year of uni, like you just mentioned… you were…” your sentence was left unfinished, but he nodded, understanding what you were trying to ask. You closed your eyes to compose yourself at his silent confirmation. “And then I started dating Mingyu and distanced myself from you…”

“What else were you supposed to do?” He tried to comfort you, and you couldn’t help but internally laugh at the irony of it. He was trying to comfort you over breaking his heart back then. You could truly cry right then. “You didn’t see me like that and fell for him, it wasn’t something you could control”.

“I would’ve been more lowkey about my relationship with him, though…” you mumbled. “Wouldn’t have mentioned him in your presence. Definitely wouldn’t have brought him along the times I knew you’d be there”.

“Now that would’ve brought you so much trouble with him…” he smiled softly. “He wasn’t precisely my biggest fan, was he?”

“Yeah… you’re right” you mumbled. It wouldn’t have been an easy situation to handle. “Still, I would’ve been more mindful about it”.

“You’re so cute” he appreciated the sentiment. “You wouldn’t have been able to keep it going on forever, though. I mean, it’s been over six years and I was nowhere near getting over you when you guys broke up”.

“You had two girlfriends, though…”

“And there’s a reason it didn’t work out with any of them” he shamefully pointed out.

“I don’t know what to say…” you shook your head. “I don’t wanna hurt you anymore, Hyunjin”.

“Why would you hurt me now?”

“My feelings for you are so recent, I don’t want us to… rush into something while I haven’t figured out the extent to them. Then there’s also the whole thing with Mingyu, because although I like to believe I’ve moved on, it did still sting when I saw him kiss Hayun only a couple of weeks ago… and I told you so” you suddenly felt guilty; had you known he had feelings for you back then, you would never have bothered him with your ‘ex boyfriend drama’. “I don’t know if it stung because of him or because the situation is just shitty, so I don’t know if I’m fully over him yet, and when you and I are together I want to be one hundred percent devoted to you”.

Hyunjin smiled.

‘When you and I are together’.

‘Devoted to you’.

That sentence alone was enough for him not to dwell on your residual feelings for your ex.

Even if it was unconsciously, the way you had phrased it let him know you wanted to be with him at some point.

He couldn’t wait for that day to come, when you were as devoted to him as he was to you.

“And now there’s the situation with Dahye as well…”

“I thought we cleared that up last night?” He questioningly tilted his head.

“We did, but that’s not the point…”

“What’s the point then?”

“I was left with a lot of trust issues to deal with…” you explained. “I know you’re not like him, but I can’t help but be paranoid when it comes to other girls or to you simply getting tired of me at some point”.

“Y/N, I would never do any of those things” he reassured you. “I would never do anything to hurt you”.

You smiled weakly. You believed him, you really did; but that was what he said now given what he felt for you in the present. Nothing could assure you that he would always love you, and so you would have to just take the risk and leave your heart in his hands if you wanted to be with him. That was what terrified you.

“I want to be with you, Hyunie, but I’m just too scared of love and romance right now…” you timidly admitted. “And when Dahye told me all those lies, although it did sound very off to me, a part of me couldn’t help but be scared that maybe she wasn’t lying”.

“So a part of you believed her…”

“I’m sorry…” you apologised. “The way she described you didn’t sound like you, not the way I see you, at least. And it didn’t match what you told me about your relationship with her, but I thought… we weren’t together, so you didn’t really have to tell me the truth, or even the whole story… you were free t—you are free to be with whoever you want and don’t owe me any explanations, so…”

“I only want to be with you, though” he cupped your face, telling you exactly what you needed so badly to hear. “And I guess you could say I don’t owe you explanations, but I want to give them to you. I like to believe we’d both explain something that’s bothering the other”.

You weakly nodded. “I’d like to believe that, too”.

Hyunjin smiled, pressing a lingering kiss to your forehead before his hands were firmly placed on your waist and he lifted you up with ease.

“Okay now,” he sat you down on the kitchen counter, pulling you closer to the edge of it and resting his hands on your waist. “What exactly did she tell you?”

“It didn’t make much sense,” you fidgeted with the necklace falling over his chest. “But it was pretty much that I should stay away from you because you guys had this ‘fuck buddies’ relationship going on for years now, and that even if you got in a relationship with someone else, you’d go back to her every time”.

Hyunjin sighed, growing visibly angry at both Dahye and the situation itself.

He told her not to mess with you, and she did exactly that. Still, he didn’t believe she would go as far as to come up with a whole fantasy of them being sexually —and emotionally?— involved in order to keep you away from him.

He didn’t know what else she was capable of after this, and he most certainly didn’t want to find out, nor did he want to even give her the chance to mess around with your relationship one more time.

“What are you doing?” You asked when he dug his hand in his pocket and took out his phone.

“Blocking her” he simply replied as he unlocked it.

“Hyunjin, you don’t have to—”

“I told her I would block her if she messed with you,” he let you know, locking his determined eyes with yours. “And that’s what she did, so…”

Eyes going back down to his mobile, he went to their Twitter chat and then pressed on her profile — blocking her right before your eyes without even giving it a second thought.

Maybe he should’ve given her a piece of his mind before cutting her off, and a part of him really wanted to tell her a thing or two, but at this point he just couldn’t give a fuck.

He was tired.

He could’ve lost you because of her, and he was never forgiving her for it.

If hanging out with his friends became awkward after this or he straight up had to turn them down not to run into her, then so be it. They were his friends, not hers; and God knows he was tired of having to deal with her whenever he wanted to spend some time with them.

“I already told you last night, but she lied. She made it all up” he repeated what he’d already let you know. “There isn’t much more to the story than what I’ve told you. We kissed at a party like two years ago, I was drunk, didn’t remember, told her it meant nothing, and she hasn’t left me alone since. That’s literally all there is to it” his genuine words were enough to put both your heart and mind at ease. “We’re were never even friends, the only reason I put up with her for so long was not to make it awkward for my friends. We were never fuck buddies either; I’ve never had that kind of dynamic with anyone, actually. And me going back to her is ridiculous, the only person I’d keep going back to over and over is you, which is kinda what happened both times I tried to move on with someone else, as shitty of me as it was”.

With that said, he handed you his phone.

Looking down at it, you realised he had opened back his chat with Dahye, which was now showing a message at the bottom that let you know her contact had successfully been blocked.

“What is it?” You asked regardless, hesitant to take a look and let alone to hold his phone in your hands.

“Our chat. She doesn’t even have my phone number, Y/N. That’s how close we are” his sarcasm managed to get a smile out of you. “You can read our texts if you want. The last conversation is the most important one, but you can go through all of them if you want”.

Taking one look at his phone in his hand, you refused his offer. “It’s okay, Hyunie. I trust you”.

And for you to say that when you had just let him know how hard it was for you to put your trust in someone else again a minute ago, meant the world to him.

“This isn’t a matter of whether you trust me or not, though. If it helps your mind feel more at peace then I have no problem showing it to you”.

“Your chats are private, I shouldn’t—”

“There’s nothing private between me and Dahye” he clarified in a heartbeat, speaking clear enough to make sure his words got through your head. “The last time we talked she found out I was in love with you and threatened me with telling you. That’s why I misunderstood everything last night”.

“That’s why you thought I was turning you down?” Your heart hurt for him once more, as it seemed to be usual for you to unintentionally break his heart.

He nodded, leaving his phone next to you on the counter. “I thought she told you about my feelings for you, and that you were distancing yourself from me because you didn’t feel the same and were thinking of the right way to let me down easily. And then when you said you wouldn’t be able to let yourself fall for me if what she said was true, I just…”

He shrugged, looking elsewhere as he remembered how unbearable the pain in his heart had been last night.

Catching on his hurt, you pulled him to your chest, feeling him relax inside your arms before he tightly wrapped his own around you as well.

“I took some distance because I didn’t want to jump into conclusions and needed some time to think…” you clarified.

“I know that now, baby” he hummed.

You smiled softly, holding him tighter and planting a small kiss on the crown of his head.

“I’m sorry I put you through so much”.

“It’s okay” he kissed your shoulder, going back to your eye level. “Anyway, if you change your mind later on, my password is my birthday as well”.

“Oh, so you’re just as basic as me” you smiled widely, allowing a small giggle to escape your mouth when he rolled his eyes at you.

“I don’t have it as the passcode to my place though, now that’s just unsafe as hell” he taunted you, pulling you closer to him and nuzzling your neck. “Although I might change it to yesterday’s date now”.

“The day you got drunk and disrupted my very peaceful sleep?” You teased him.

“Oh, absolutely” he played along, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “Which also happened to be the night we first kissed, so…”

He could feel your cheek burn against his hand, and how your eyes had naturally fixed on his mouth at the sound of that, just like his eyes had been going back to your lips throughout your entire conversation.

He was dying to kiss you again, and he could only curse the promise he made last night not to kiss you again starting this morning. At least not until you decided you were ready to kiss him without feeling like you were leading him on.

“You’re making it really hard for me not to fall for you…” you whispered against his lips, only then having him snap out of it and realise how close he had unconsciously leaned in.

Fuck, you were making it so hard for him not to kiss you.

“That’s good, because I want to make you fall for me” he smiled, tracing your bottom lip with his thumb, in a poor attempt to put some distance in between your mouths. “Will you let me?”

“Let you what?”

“Make you fall for me?” He asked, locking eyes with you. “I know you need to figure things out, and I’m giving you all the time you need, but in the meantime can I just try and make you fall for me?”

You hesitated. “I don’t want to lead you on, Hyunie…”

“I wouldn’t mind it, though…”

“Hyun…” you sighed.

“We kissed last night, Y/N, and now you’re telling me you do feel something for me. How would that be considered leading me on when there is an actual chance of you falling in love with me, too?”

“I thought your feelings for me were kinda recent too, and that we were both figuring it out, but now that I know you’re in love with me it feels cruel to keep flirting with you and treating you the way I did…” you went back to fidgeting with his necklace. “We’re not on the same level yet. I’m still scared to love someone again and to be in a relationship… there’s still a mess in my head and dragging you with me while I try to figure it out is just…”

“My heart is already in your hands, Y/N. It’s up to you what you choose to do with it and I’ll respect your final decision regardless of what it is” he promised. “Whether we’re together or not, I already got dragged into this. All I’m asking for is a chance. Just one chance to show you that you can trust me and that love doesn’t always have to end in heartbreak” the softness of his voice could make you cave in right then and there. “I can love you right, Y/N. You won’t owe me anything and will have all the time you want to figure your feelings out, but please, just don’t let us lose how far we’ve come. I can’t pretend nothing happened between us and stay away from you while you figure your heart out”.

“Hyunie…”

“Please?” He whispered, resting his forehead on yours and tenderly rubbing his thumbs on your sides. “Was today supposed to be some kind of farewell to the way we’ve been acting so far then?”

You pouted, realising then how selfish you were being by acting so lovey dovey with him when you were claiming not to want to lead him on.

Truth was, you were finding it hard to control yourself around him anymore. You wanted to take it slow and make things right with him — you owed him that much. But then again, and most importantly, you wanted to be with him. Even though your feelings were recent, they were taking over your entire being faster than you’d expected.

You wanted to be with him. Whether you were a couple or not, whether you were on the same level when it came to your feelings or not, you wanted to show him how much he meant to you and you wanted to feel how much you meant to him; and it was getting harder and harder for you to hold back when you were together.

Your heart and your mind were at conflict, for the first was telling you to risk it all while the latter warned you to be careful and not to rush into anything.

And in the end, although you wished it wasn’t like that and you knew it was selfish of you, you were already in too deep to take a step back from him while you figured everything out.

When you wouldn’t reply, being too immersed in your internal conflict, Hyunjin faintly brushed his nose with yours, unable to keep his eyes from going down to your mouth before they travelled back to your eyes. “Are we really supposed not to be like this anymore?”

“Now how can’t I give in when you look at me like that and say all those things?” You spoke quietly, sounding almost ashamed you’d given in that easily — and, to some extent, you were.

His lips parted into a beaming smile that turned his eyes into crescent moons. “Is that a yes then?”

“Yes,” you smiled as well, faintly tilting your head to lovingly bump his nose with yours. “We can take it slow, maybe? If you’re up for it…”

“We can take it however you want,” he was quick to reply, earning a light laugh from you. “Although I would appreciate a definition of ‘taking it slow’, so I know what I can and can’t do…”

“I don’t know, I feel like we could keep being the way we were before this whole misunderstanding? You know, test the waters… see what works the best for us and take it from there?”

“Sounds good enough for me” he agreed with a smile. “Can I keep shamelessly flirting with you then?”

You chuckled. “Yes”.

“Can I come over whenever I feel like seeing you?”

“You did that before as well, so yes”.

“Hold your hand? Send you your coffee order and pick you up from work? Cuddle you?” He asked all in a row, and this time you threw your head back as you laughed loudly at his silly antics.

“Yes, Hyunjin. Those were all things you used to do before as well”.

“So what I’m hearing is the only things I can’t do from now on are kissing you and getting too handsy”.

“Yah, Hwang Hyunjin…” you called him out with burning cheeks.

“What?” He chuckled.

“Where did the ‘getting too handsy’ part even come from?”

“Well, I probably would’ve at some point last night if you didn’t stop me…”

Too stunned to speak as you felt some kind of electricity run through your body, you fixed your eyes on the door to your right, avoiding his amused eyes while you miserably tried your best to hold back the smile that was already curving up the corners of your mouth.

With a small chuckle, he cupped your cheek and forced you to look at him. “Have I told you before that you’re adorable?”

“Shut up” you playfully pushed his hand away.

Hyunjin laughed loudly, going right back to hold your face, only now with both hands. “So those are the conditions then?”

“I think?”

“Can I take you out on dates?” He asked one last time.

Now, that was kind of a grey zone, for it depended on whether you considered your previous outings and hangouts as dates, so the new ones he was proposing wouldn’t go against the boundaries you had just set when it came to taking it slow.

Nevertheless, even if it meant breaking your own rules, you couldn’t deny that you would die to go on a proper date with him.

“We’ll see” you smiled sweetly, making him smile as well while he tenderly caressed your cheeks. “Since we won’t be taking any distance, though, and we already had a misunderstanding that left us both hurting because of someone else, maybe we could…”

“Not go out with anyone else?” He quietly finished your sentence, when you struggled to come up with the right words.

“Is that too selfish of me to ask?” You asked with a tilt of your head. “I know I’m the one asking for time here, but…”

“No, no. I was going to ask for the same if you didn’t mention it, I’m glad you brought it up” a shy chuckle escaped his lips. “I’m probably the selfish one here because I wasn’t going to anyone else anyway, but I really needed to know you wouldn’t either”.

“You’re quite literally the only guy I’ve looked at with other eyes since I went back to being single, Hyunjin” you confessed, oblivious to how bad his heartbeat was racing because of you. “You really made me go against my wishes to stay away from romance for a good while; I wasn’t going to anyone else anyway either”.

“You mean that?” He mumbled, eyes sparkling as he looked for any sort of amusement in yours.

“Of course I mean it,” you cupped his face with one of your hands, tenderly running your thumb up and down his cheek.

He let out a heavy sigh, letting his face fall to your shoulder. “God, I would’ve died if you fell for someone else”.

“I won’t, Hyunie” you reassured him, running your fingertips up and down his back. “So there’s nothing for you to worry about”.

Choosing to say nothing, he buried his face in the crook of your neck, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you so close to him you could feel the way his body was faintly trembling.

“You’re shaking…” you whispered in concern, tightening your arms around him and resting your chin on his shoulder.

“I can’t believ—I was so scared you’d push me away for good” his voice was muffled against your skin.

“You’re really underestimating how fast you’ve made your way up in my heart” you said softly, making him go back to your eye level and look at you. “I’ll do my best to work on myself so I can give you the love you deserve, hm?”

Hearing you say those words to him so genuinely, left him speechless.

Hearing it coming from your very lips that you wanted to love him right, he could only feel on Cloud Nine, as he was now the closest he’d ever been to being with you the way he had always dreamed of.

All he could do right then was to press a loving kiss to your forehead and then pull you to his chest, securely wrapping his arms around you and resting his chin on your head as he whispered how much he loved you.

He knew you weren’t able to say it back just yet, at least not the way he meant it, but he didn’t mind saying it out loud for you to know. He didn’t mind loving you for longer, and he definitely didn’t mind loving you more. You wanted to get there at some point, and as long as you loved him back in the end, he could take being the one who loved harder in your relationship.

After all, he had left his heart in your hands and had you welcomed it, with the promise to do your best to return the same kind of love he felt for you once you were able to overcome your current fears.

Even if it meant he would have to wait a little longer, the way you smiled against his chest right then, along with the way you held him closer to you as well and ran your fingers up and down his back in the loveliest of ways, were enough to make his heart feel at ease, as he could tell right then that you would be gentle with it and wouldn’t let it break again now that you knew how much love it held for you.

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[no-144444]

soft launching (hard) -d.riccardo

summary: you and daniel decide it's time the world know about you

pairing: daniel riccardo x fem! illman! mechanic! reader

(for context, kym illman is an f1 photographer from australia)

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

You were livid. You wanted to scream, to sob, to shout, everything. It wasn’t fair. You were exhausted, hours and hours of practice, hours and hours of expertise, and yet, Daniel had just crashed the car into the wall. You were usually quite good at turning off the ‘mechanic’ side of you to turn into the ‘girlfriend’ but it was hard today. You’d worked overnight. You’d worked until you were practically falling asleep at the side of the car. 

And he crashed it. Again. 

You knew it wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t his fault. 

You kept repeating that in your head. The looks on the faces of the other mechanics were… unwelcoming to say the least. You didn’t want Daniel to see them, or you. You walked on, ready to hide in the bathroom until Daniel got into his room. 

Then he saw you. Daniel had a certain way he liked to calm down after races. Shower, relax in bed for an hour with you, then back to the hotel for some food. 

You couldn’t do it. You knew you’d blow up on him. You knew you’d freak out. 

“Baby-” he started, running up to you and wrapping his arms around you. “I’m sorry.”

Your heart stopped. ‘Mechanic’ you, was gone. Replaced whole-heartedly by the need to comfort him and make sure he was alright. Yes, you still felt bad for the other mechanics and yourself, thinking about how you’d have to put it all back together in Milton Keynes. But Daniel needed you. 

“It’s alright,” you whispered, holding him close. “You’re alright baby.”

He nodded, his eyes wet with tears. He knew if he’d talk he’d break. 

“Does it hurt anywhere?” you asked, pulling him into his driver’s room. He shook his head. “Did you get checked out?”

He nodded. You sat him down on the bed. 

“It’s alright darling,” you whispered. “It’s Lance’s fucking fault anyway-”

“I don’t want to lose you if I lose this,” he responded bluntly, his hazel eyes filled with tears. “I know I can be better, I just… it feels like a classic case of old dog, new tricks, and I just can’t get the hang of it. If I could just get one shot at the RedBull seat, I know I could do it. I just… it feels like shit battling it out at the back for one point. I used to stand at the top of podiums, and now I’m… this,” he sighed, discouraged. 

“You won’t lose me,” you assured him, running your hands through his hair and he leaned his head against your stomach. He loved sitting like this, his head on your stomach as you stood in front of him. “I’m not going to let you go, don’t ever worry about that.” 

“I do,” he admitted. 

“Then talk to me about it,” you told him, pulling his chin up so he had to look at you. “I am here for you no matter what. Always and forever, Dan.”

“You swear?” he asked. 

"I swear."

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ You were there when he got the call. He sobbed for hours. You were both there, just laying in your bed, holding him as he cried. For the first week, it was rough. He barely got up. You helped him. You made him food, made him get up and walk, made him shower. He was grateful to have you there, because he didn’t know what he would’ve done without you. He probably would’ve sulked for months. But you, you brought him out, brought him home, brought him to see Josh and Hailee. You even bought him a hat (his new favourite) that says ‘retired!’. You made him happy again. Yes, there were still down days, and yes, he still looked at his trophies longingly. But he had other things in mind too. He wondered a lot about how you’d look in a wedding dress, or how you’d both look with a baby in your arms. He was finally thinking about the future for once, and he felt like slowing down, for the first time in his life, was just as exciting as going fast.

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ

Being in F1 when Danny wasn't was hard. He was your boyfriend, and it meant you didn't get to see him all the time anymore. You still adored your job, so you weren't going to quit, just... step back a bit. The season came to an end, you were 7th in the constructors, and off you went skiing with half the grid.

The funny thing about the fact that you were a mechanic, was the fact that your father was one of the main photographers in F1. You'd picked up that skill from him, and you usually jsut took photos of your friends, but to cut costs RedBull had asked you to be their on-track photographer as well, and you'd gained quite the reputation.

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ

ynillman

liked by pierregasly, jackdoohan, landonorris and 4,987,736 others

ynillman: 2024 is over and done with! I cannot wait to have a regular sleep schedule for three months!

comments

kymillman legendary photos this year! see you at christmas, and enjoy skiing! liked by yourusername

landonorris PLZZ LET US BORROW YOU NEXT YEAR -> ynillman maybe... but even I can't make papaya look good 🤷

lancestroll time to hit the slopes! -> ynillman bro i broke my fucking arm last time wtf -> lancestroll let's hope you break both of them this time! maybe then you won't capture another video of me falling!

oscrapiastri thank u for your service, lily is very happy with our couples photos! -> ynillman anything for lily! so happy for the two of you! -> user89 did we miss something...? ->user829: oscar did say he'd rather get married than get a tattoo...

user88: when's the next yt video queen??? -> ynillman tomorrow!

nicohulkenberg amazing work this year!

olliebearman thanks for the great photos this year!

jackdoohan thank you for making me not chop all my hair off again! (oh, and the photos were cool as well ig) liked by ynillman

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ynillman

liked by pierregasy, charlesleclerc, danielriccardo, and 8,098,364 others

ynillman didn't break an arm this year, only my ego!

comments

user8 lance serving boyfriend in this so hard

user99 hear me out, lance and y/n... -> user7 yes officer, it's this one -> user882 me when i'm clinically insane -> lancestroll prolly not.... -> ynillman please guys I have some standards

oscarpiastri i swear i was so surprised you didn't kill yourself

landonorris you're genuinely a danger to society on a snowboard -> ynillman because of my skills? -> landonorris because you can't fucking use one. I have the bruises to prove it

user83 lando, lance, oscar, and y/n????? what the fuck is this multiverse of madness

user0 still serving with the photos OMG QUEEN

estebanocon remind me to never go skiing with you again -> user82 estie bestie!!!!!!

mickschumacher who tf let her out of her cage? -> jackdoohan you did. you gave her the vodka.

user9: jack, mick, esteban, lance, lando, oscar, and yn? who else??? -> charlesleclerc i was there too -> alexalbon same -> carlosainz same -> francocolapinto me too! -> danielriccardo same... -> user9: and all of their wags were there too! what a cool friend group!

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lilymunihe

liked by alexalbon, ynillman, alexandrastmleux and 890,876 others

lilymunihe guess who took these photos? @.ynillman

comments

landonorris that's actually a normal sized bear in Alex's hands -> alexalbon so you're calling me tall? thanks??? -> landonorris fuck no, i meant a regular sized teddy bear

read more...

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ynillman

liked by robertirwin, pierregasly, francocolapinto and 9,987,625 others

ynillman new video out with robbie! (my sleep schedule is still fucked someone save me) (i love australia(ns))

comments

danielriccardo what a group of legends -> ynillman aka you're jealous i didn't invite you? -> user8239 y/ndaniel CRUMBS !!!!!

read more...

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danielriccardo

liked by ynillman, francocolapinto, fernandoalonso and 987,253 others

danielriccardo she's looking beautiful these days. missed home :)

comments

user8240 yall know who else is in australia this week... -> user247 i am picking up what you're putting down... delusion!

read more...

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ

danielriccardo

caption: you think she likes the bay?

dms

landornorris SOFT LAUNCH?

oscarpiastri taking the soft launch approach?

alexalbon BOO HARD LAUNCH YOU'VE BEEN TOGETHER FOREVER

lewishamilton mate if you don't hard launch her i'll do it wtf is this bullshit

yukistunoda bro... try harder.

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ

Daniel had decided something, which was almost always a dangerous idea. It was the off-season, you were in Australia to see the sights, see family, and catch some waves. He'd made his mind up about something days ago, and you'd been trying to figure out what, but he wouldn't budge. He was secretive and giddy, and slightly more childish than usual, so naturally, you started to panic.

That all changed when he brought you down to the beach. There were candles set up everywhere, he was smiling, and you were crying already.

"Y/n, you have made me the happiest man in the past four years," he smiled, despite the way his voice cracked with emotion. "You've been with me through everything. You've held me on the nights I've been my weakest, and championed me on the days I've been my best. I never asked you to love me, but you do it like it's breathing. You make the ups and downs feel like goosebumps on my arm, instead of mountainous waves. You make me smile. You make me laugh. You make me feel so fucking stupid when you start explaining something to do with engineering, and I realise I couldn't do that. The way you dedicate yourself to things is incredible. The way you treat others with kindness and respect even when they don't deserve it, is commendable. I love you with every bone, every nerve, and every cell in my body. I love everything about you, inside and out. I can't wait to get to sit in a front porch someday when we're old and wrinkly, and still get to tell people that you're my wife. So, Y/n, will you marry me?"

You nodded through tears,. pulling him up off one knee and kissing him harshly, only pulling back to look at the ring.

"I love you too," you smiled through tears. "I love you so much."

"I love you so much more," he smiled, elated that you'd said yes. "You saved me."

And that was that. You were were engaged.

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ

danielriccardo

liked by landonorris, ynillman, liamlawson, and 893,273 others

danielriccardo she was there for me through thick and thin, and she still likes me years later. you swore you wouldn't get rid of me, so i'm here to stay! love you more than anything, my love, my life, my (future) wife!

comments

landonorris HARD LAUNCH

robertirwin So happy for you guys!

oscarpiastri must come and visit you two oldies

maxverstappen man had been stolen... kidding! (not) Very happy for you two! (not).

read more...

୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ⋅୨ৎ

navigation for my blog :)

redbull and vcarb masterlist

[seungfl0wer]

*𝑩𝒊𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝑷𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔*

Pairing: Bangchan x Reader (Fem)

Genre: Fluffy Smut

Warnings: Daddy!Chan, Face sitting, Oral (F), Slight choking, Slight ass/pussy slap, Creampie, Unprotected sex. Sorry for any mistakes or missing warnings!

A/N: made this for my beloved’s birthday today! Love yooou and hope you’re having a great day! @hyunjins-orange-slice-too

-🌸

Today was your birthday, you had the whole weekend off for it! Chan had taken the same time off so he could spend it with you. He had let you sleep in this morning waking you up with your favorite breakfast in bed. He curled up in bed with you watching your favorite movie as you both ate.

He had a whole day planned for the two of you. Talking you to your favorite restaurant, then to the arcade you like, and ending it with a fort in the living room. He had picked out cute matching outfits for the both of you. Giving you your present along with it. A little necklace with a heart, the back of the heart had his handwriting on it. Etched into it was yours and his initials that said “to the moon and back”.

God he really was trying to make you cry. He ways looked at you with such love but today he just couldn’t take his eyes off of you. Telling you “today’s the day the love of my life was born”.

He showered you with so much love today, as he always did anyways just up a notch. Holding you close as you walked through some shops before dinner. He saw your eye light up at a cute little stuffie but not saying anything. “You want it princess?” He asked sweetly.

“It’s okay daddy, you’re already doing so much for me today.” You’d say smiling up at him. But you knew he wasn’t having it.

“Pick the color and I’m getting it” he said.

It was never a use of arguing with him, anything you could ever want that man was happy to provide for you.

Stuffie in hand, you headed to the restaurant having your favorite meal. He told you over and over how much he loved you. “My beautiful angel, I don’t know how I got so lucky to have such an amazing person as mine. I love you so much. You’re like the stars in my sky, always shining so brightly. So pretty”.

After eating your headed to the arcade. Where Chan single handedly won everything you wanted. He was really good at claw games and even if he wasn’t he wasn’t gonna not get it for you. You left the arcade with 7 additional stuffies amongst other things he had won.

He had the fort built so fast too, since it was something he loved doing with you. He had everything under the fort. Snacks, drinks and a small cake of course your favorite flavor. You always wondered how he’d remembered everything. “Before we get in I think we are missing something” he said with a sweet smile. He pulled out a box with matching PJs, the backs saying daddy and daddy’s princess on them. Something you had saved in your Amazon.

You both got all dressed, devouring the cake as you watched a movie. Chan had you lying on his chest rubbing your back. “Happy birthday princess, I love you so so much” he purred.

“Thank you daddy, it was the best” you said smiling up at him.

“You get everything you wanted?” He asked

“Mostly” you said with a little grin.

“Oh yeah? What is it missing?” He asked cocking his head to the side.

“I didn’t get you” you said with a little giggle.

“Hmm. But you got me Princess”

“That’s not what I mean” you pouted.

“Use your big girl words then, tell daddy exactly what you want.” He cood.

“I want you. Want- want you to- ugh” you sighed “I want you to fuck me” you said softly.

“That’s what my baby wants?” He said a smirk growing on his face.

“Please daddy” you said puppy eyes at max.

“How can I tell my pretty girl no? Especially on her birthday.” He said pulling you to him kissing you ever so lovingly.

He pulled your body on top of his, cradling you in his arms. His hands slowly made their way up and down your body pulling you deeper into the kiss. His pretty hands gripped at your ass before pushing his hips up into you. Both of you groaning into the kiss. “Princess tell me exactly what you want”

“I want you, want daddy to- to take care of me” you said with puppy eyes. He grinned before moving his body underneath of you. He kissed down your body pulling your PJ bottoms. He let out a low groan seeing how wet your panties were. He licked a long strip up them making you moan softly. He pulled down your panties slowly before kissing your thighs. He peppered them with little kisses and nibbles before his arms gripped your thighs.

He slowly licked up your folds his hands pulling your cunt apart. He pushed his tongue into you before groaning. “Baby sit your whole body down on me. Sit like a good girl” You did as you were asked making him grin against your body. He buried his face into you lapping at everything you offered. “Good girl, now- can you touch your pretty clit for me?” He asked.

“Mhm” you moaned out your hand roaming down your body, rubbing against your clit softly. “Now use me baby, use my tongue. Make a mess.” He purred. And you did. You moved your hips against his mouth body starting to shake from pleasure.

“D-daddy close” you moaned head falling backwards.

“Cum for me princess, fuck- make a mess on daddies face” he said slapping your ass softly.

His tongue was so deep inside you licking fast. Your legs started to shake as you came hard. Hard against his tongue trying to pull away from to lay down from how hard you came you were only met with Chans strong hands keeping you in place. “Gotta clean you baby- fuck can’t waste any of it” he said lapping everything up.

When he was satisfied how clean you were he layed your body down. His lips slamming against yours. He couldn’t hold back anymore stripping himself of his close before rubbing his cock up and down your folds. “You remember to use your words if you need to stop.” He said sternly. When you nodded he let a soft smack to your tits “words. I need to hear you.”

“Yes daddy. I know the- the word” you whimpered.

With that he pushed into you. He wanted to go slow he really did but fuck you were already sucking him in so well. His was fucking you hard, his hand slinking up to your neck. Applying pressure as he made you look at him. “Such a good girl, taking me so fucking well” he groaned. “My pretty girl. Fuck I love you.”

“Love you too daddy, s’much” you managed to get out. His hand let go of your neck, pushing your legs forward as he fucked into you deeper. You could feel his balls smacking against your ass his cock already twitching inside of you. “Daddy- daddy! Close!” You almost screamed.

“Give me your hands Princess.” He said reaching out interlocking your fingers together. “Want daddy to cum with you?” He said his eyes soft as he stared down at you lovingly.

“Yes- please- together-“ you stuttered out head spinning. He leaned down kissing you lovingly as he moved. His cock hitting deep against your cervix. You were seeing stars at this point you wrapped your legs around his back pulling him somehow deeper. “Daddy!” You almost screamed.

“Cum with me baby- fuck- cum with me!” He moaned. Both of you came hard. His cock twitching inside of you filling your pretty cunt full as you came around his cock.

He pulled you close to him holding you tightly as you both came down from your intense orgasms. “You ok princess? Here take a sip of water” he said grabbing the bottle beside you. “I didn’t go too hard on you did I?” He asked moving a piece of hair from your face.

“It was just as perfect as you daddy” you giggled. He smiled kissing your forehead “i love you princess. Happy birthday.”

“I love you too daddy! So very much.”

The rest of the night was filled with cuddles and a long warm bath with soft music and candles. Both of you tangled together in the water.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

💙 If you’d like to read more of my stuff you can find it Here: Master List . Thank you for reading and if requests are open or you just wanna talk feel free to send me something🩵

Taglist: @satosugu4l @do-you-remember-summer-127 @xines16 @minh0scat @troublemaker02 @tr-mha-fan @lunearta @velvetmoonlght @minghaosimp @ldysmfrst @felixleftchickennugget @0omillo0 @jellymochii @stilltrynafuckingtumble @catlove83 @delulkpopstan143

[shybluebirdninja]

Bite-Sized Betrayal

Summary: When Logan realizes your blowjob is too good to be a “first-timer” move, he launches a full-blown “detective mission,” trying to uncover the truth of your “so-called innocence.”

Pairing            : Logan Howlett x Gf!Human-reader

Note                : Fluff, suggestive themes

Logan’s jealousy is always kinda… cute. For a guy who’s survived literal wars, he’s got no clue how to handle feelings that aren’t anger or fighting. And now? Oh, you had him in a real mood.

It all started when you decided to surprise him with a little something extra. Y’know, testing out that thing you read about online. A blowjob. Logan being your first—and let’s be real, only—boyfriend, you thought you were doing okay. More than okay, apparently, because halfway through, he completely froze.

“Whoa, whoa, babe,” Logan said, pulling back with a hand on your shoulder, eyes narrowed. “That was a little too good.”

You sat there, blinking up at him, wondering what the hell he was talking about. “Uh… thanks?”

But he wasn’t letting it go. The Wolverine squinted at you like he was analyzing every moment of your past life. “No way you’re that good at this without practice.”

Now, let’s be real here—you know Logan. He’s got this whole rough-and-tough exterior, but the second something doesn’t fit into his perfectly controlled world, he turns into a paranoid mess. And today? That paranoia was locked and loaded.

“Logan…” You started to say, but the man was already up, pacing like he was solving some kinda murder mystery. He ran his hands through his wild hair, muttering something under his breath.

“Who was it?” he suddenly growled, turning to face you like you had just admitted to world domination.

“Who was what?” You blinked, trying so hard not to laugh.

“The guy,” he said, jabbing a finger in your direction. “Who taught ya? Some douchebag in college? Or maybe that asshole at the bar last month—you did talk to him for a bit.”

Now, it’s one thing to have your tough boyfriend jealous, but this? This was next-level ridiculous. You sat back, biting your lip to stop yourself from bursting into laughter. “Logan, babe, what are you talking about? You’re literally my first.”

He narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying it. “Don’t gimme that, darlin’. No one’s that good the first time.” He crossed his arms like he was about to grill you with hard evidence. “I’ve been around the block, ya know.”

You couldn’t hold it in anymore. The laughter came out before you could stop it, making Logan scowl even harder.

“This isn’t funny,” he snapped, pacing again. “I’m serious. I’m startin’ to think you’re hidin’ somethin’.”

“Logan, for the love of—” You wiped away the tears of laughter, finally getting up to stand in front of him. “I’m not hiding anything! You’re my first boyfriend. You know that.”

“Yeah, but that move—” He pointed vaguely toward the couch, still frowning. “That was some professional-level shit.”

You couldn’t stop giggling, and it only made him more irritated. He ran his hand down his face and groaned. “Alright, tell me the truth. You’ve been Googlin’ this stuff, haven’t ya?”

You almost doubled over. “You think I Googled how to give you a blowjob?!”

“Well, I don’t know!” Logan growled, frustration dripping from his voice. “Maybe you did. I’m just sayin’… that was too good to be natural.”

“Logan,” you said through fits of giggles, “I’m not some secret blowjob expert, okay? Maybe I’m just, I don’t know, naturally talented?”

He raised an eyebrow, clearly still unconvinced. “Nah. Somethin’ doesn’t add up here.”

You threw your hands up, finally losing your patience. “Okay, so what are you gonna do, Sherlock? You gonna interrogate every guy I’ve ever spoken to? ‘Hey, did she happen to give you a blowjob once upon a time?’”

Logan actually looked like he was considering it for a second, and you lost it all over again. This man, this absolute idiot, was serious.

He huffed, crossing his arms again like he’d already decided on his next move. “Look, babe, I just don’t like not knowin’ things, alright?”

“Oh my God, you’re jealous because I’m good at blowjobs. That’s what this is about.”

Logan’s cheeks actually flushed. He muttered something about it “not being like that,” but you knew better. This was the same guy who once picked a fight with someone for glancing at you in a diner. Of course, he was jealous.

Finally, after what felt like forever, Logan sighed. “Alright, fine. Maybe I’m a little jealous. I just… don’t want anyone else takin’ credit for somethin’ we’re supposed to figure out together.”

You couldn’t help but grin. “You mean you don’t want anyone else getting the benefits of my natural talent?”

Logan shot you a look but didn’t say anything, clearly trying to figure out how to navigate this weird conversation. Finally, he huffed again. “Alright, fine. But for the record… there’s a right way to do it, and I could show ya.”

You raised an eyebrow, biting back more laughter. “Oh, you’re gonna give me a lesson now?”

He nodded, dead serious. “Damn straight. Been around long enough to know what works and what don’t. Consider it… proper education.”

[jihyoruri]

❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ 𓍢 LOVE SONG (youtube series)sophia laforteza x reader

💌★ ͘ ⴰ ever since dream academy the general public took notice of the tension between sophia and yn and not the good kind, it was obvious the two weren’t the biggest fans of each other and even more obvious when people watched pop star academy, so it leaves people wondering how they went from not even hiding their dislike for each other to being the most shipped in the group?

a series that shows youtube videos made by the very eyekon that made yn and sophia the ship they are today.

PARING — sophia laforteza x 7th member!reader

★ ͘ ⴰ genre + warnings : smau, various youtube videos, fluff, slight angst

last | masterlist | next

★ ͘ ⴰ VIDEO#1 yn and sophia being the ultimate enemies to lovers 80k views

— BEFORE DEBUT

➩ INTRO… 📼(when almost everyone in dream academy had sophia in their lineup… and then there’s yn)

yn tilted her head in thought, tapping her fingers against her chin as if solving a world shattering puzzle. “okay, definitely lara,” she began confidently, nodding as if solidifying her decision. “then daniela... megan... lexie…” she paused, a sheepish laugh escaping her lips. “wait, am I just naming all the powerhouses right now?” (the audacity bffr yn.)

“nayoung, for sure… uh…” she trailed off, her brow furrowing before she suddenly snapped her fingers, her face lighting up. “oh! and manon. my girl, obviously.”

➩ INTRO… 2 📼(the infamous “maybe you’re just early every time”)

sophia and yn are standing side by side during practice, reviewing choreography. Sophia’s expression is calm but clearly exasperated. “yn, you’re late on the turn every time,” she says, her voice cutting but controlled.

yn nodded her head and turned around to get back in position before muttering “maybe you’re just early every time,” as quietly as possible but camera still picked up on it.

➩ INTRO… 3 📼(yn leaving sophia on read)

[screenshot of a group chat shared during a pop star academy episode ]

lara: hey guys, can we finalize vocals by tonight?

yn: yup!

sophia: sure, I just sent the arrangement notes to yn. yn let me know if it works.

lara: yn?

➩ INTRO… 3 📼(when they both showed up late…)

everyone was warming up when sophia walked in first, looking frazzled. moments later, yn strolled in casually, earning a sharp glare from Sophia.

“you’re late,” sophia pointed out.

“so are you,” yn countered, raising an eyebrow.

— AFTER DEBUT

➩ CLIP #1 PLAYING… 📼 (sophia and yn during rehearsal 🤭)

the camera zooms in as the members are stretching and warming up for their upcoming choreography session.

in the background, yn and sophia are standing close by, both practicing their formations.

yn reaches up to adjust her hair, and in that moment, her hand brushes against sophia’s. at first, sophia pulls back sharply, her gaze flicking towards yn with a flicker of surprise. but yn doesn’t make a big deal of it, instead casually continuing to adjust her position.

sophia hesitates for a moment, then subtly places her hand back on yn’s lower back to guide her into position.

➩ CLIP #2 PLAYING… 📼 (when sophia looked for yn after their first show)

the clip cuts to backstage where the members are all celebrating their first successful performance. Sophia walks past the members of the group, clearly scanning the area.

“has anyone seen yn?” she asks, her tone just a little softer than usual.

lara and daniela exchange a glance before lara shrugs. “she was just with megan, I think. why?”

sophia shrugs before she walks off in the direction they pointed. the camera follows her for a moment, and as she turns the corner, she finds yn sitting quietly, already taking off her stage makeup.

“hey,” Sophia says, her voice softer now. yn looks up, surprised but not annoyed.

“you okay?” Sophia asks again, sitting down beside her.

yn nods slowly, her eyes meeting sophia’s “yeah I’m just tired.” she mumbled before looking at the camera, “I can’t wait to nap in the car.” she says to it.

sophia watches her for a moment, “okay well, hurry up so you can sleep.”

➩ CLIP #3 PLAYING… 📼 (when yn got sophia extremely flustered)

the camera stilled on katseye as the girls stood together at a festival, watching the performance unfolding in front of them. the energy was electric, but yn’s attention shifted slightly to sophia, who was sitting beside her, intently watching the stage.

yn leaned in, her lips dangerously close to sophia ear as she whispered something. sophia barely registered at first, distracted by the booming music around them. she turned her head slightly, her face now directly in line with yn’s, and was startled at how close yn’s face had gotten.

sophia flinched back, her cheeks instantly flushing, and covered her face with her hand, the camera couldn’t pick up on what sophia was saying but they could tell she definitely said something along the lines of “what the hell, yn?” 

yn, laughing softly, leaned her head onto sophia’s shoulder, her cheek brushing against it as she continued to chuckle at the flustered girl beside her.

➩ CLIP #4 PLAYING… 📼 (no words just this moment)

after a performance, the girls were walking out of the venue, chatting and laughing as they made their way to the van. sophia casually draped her arm around yn’s shoulder, she looked at yn and whispered something.

before yn could respond, megan suddenly pulled her away, waving enthusiastically at a fan and dragged her towards the van.

💌★ ͘ ⴰ TAGLIST @jaythegirlkisser @gtfoiydlyj @goofymickeyr @mandumandy @falling-intoo-deep @cassiespoiler @arihiu @fruityg0rl @sunshinez4 @kristalag

[conkreetmonkey]

Fun story: My last job was at a restaurant. They hired me among many other workers all at once. This is because the kitchen had recently burnt down, thankfully after hours and without hurting anyone, so they had to temporarily close and rebuild; can't very well run a restaurant with no kitchen, after all. Presumably they'd laid everyone off and were completely restocking their labour pool in like a week. My first day was wonderful. People were patient about training me, the manager was sweet and made sure everyone was staying hydrated, and she even personally brought me a glass of water while I was on my break. Like any person would have, I took this as a good sign. Then, over the next few months, things began to devolve. There's like 5 stories in there about the extortion, ER visits, second-degree burns, and explosive stress diarrhea, but basically that once sweet manager slowly became a demon, and my once fun and kind coworkers began doing things like threatening to harm my work bestie unless I performed unsafe work that was guaranteed to burn me due to inadequate PPE, or yelling obscenities at me for asking perfectly reasonable questions. It went from heaven to hell over the span of a single damp, mild autumn. So, as you can guess, I came to resent the place. But there's another element to it:

in my time working there, I would come to learn that the fire that destroyed the place was entirely preventable; there was a known gas leak in one of the deep fryers, and management knew, but refused to shell out the $15 to patch the line (just like they refused to give us PPE, or generally fix anything ever). Quite a long time after they found out and after many staff reports of this gas leak, one night, it somehow finally ignited, and a $15 expense suddenly turned into tens of thousands of dollars. One night, while I was manning the fryers, I noticed one of them was producing bubbles of opaque white smoke from under the oil. My coworkers assured me it was "normal" and "just some food stuck under there." I've worked many a deep fryer, and had been working those particular ones for months, and never seen such a thing before. It was pretty easy for me to put two and two together on that one. The lifers weren't having it and insisted I ignore it and get back to work. A few weeks later, I quit on the spot after getting cussed out over asking if anybody had put an order in the oven yet. My work bestie was fired shortly afterwards, for what she claims was written down as "disobeying orders." She was very allergic to the fryer oil we used, it made her break out in painful, swollen hives, but the lifers kept insisting on making her clean the fryers, so it was probably that, I imagine. Who knows, though? There came a point where it was never enough, no amount of speed or cleanliness or quality. We were always understaffed, and now they'd fired one of their best workers. I met another one of the coworkers I'd bonded with working elsewhere. It was retail, under a notorious asshole boss, but at least it wasn't there. Her arms were covered in deep burn scars the day she'd walked in, so I imagine she's used to it. I hope she'd okay. I should probably try to check in on her, actually. I never asked if she left or was fired. I know they never patched the leak. They didn't the first time. Of course they didn't learn their lesson, the whole place was just a number in the bloated investment portfolio of some silver spoon fatcat from Toronto, he didn't give a fuck. None of us ever even met him, or learned his name. Fully hands off. We'd pull like $15,000 or even $20,000 some nights, but all made minimum wage, and were always one call-in away from total collapse. They kept cutting hours. They would send people home in the middle of dinner rushes because "we're spending too much money on labour." Schedules became mere suggestions. We were never given end times to begin with. 11 or 12 hour shifts weren't uncommon on my end, but sometimes I'd only get 3. It was a coin flip every night. My point is, the place was managed, on all levels, by people who'd drown if it rained. Thinking about how perfect the place could have been still makes my heart rate increase. It filled a niche with absolutely no local competition. Our profit margins were absurd. And yet the dullards filling the office chairs didn't understand that you need cooks to produce food, and the place began creaking under their weight. I left before something gave. I suppose me leaving was something giving though, in a way. I worked my ass off for that place. I made them thousands, IN PROFIT, every night. I feel like maybe that triggered the exodus that followed, idk. Don't want to aggrandize myself too much. As far as I know, the second burning hasn't happened yet. But it will. It's all but guaranteed to. I hope that, just like last time, nobody's there when it happens. But I also hope that, unlike the first time, this time the entire place completely, unsalvageably burns down to ash, reduced to a concrete foundation. I hope there's nothing left to rebuild. I hope the cycle finally ends. I pretty much never got to take my legally mandated break again after that first shift, btw. Should have seen it as a sign, but it was just one shift right? They needed me, they said. They needed me.

[telephoniii]

Malleus copes with you leaving.

Malleus knows this is best for you.

It was your decision to make and yours alone. Lilia sat him down and thoroughly lectured him on it. He couldn't hold you back from happiness. Yet the heartache he felt only grew.

What was the point of all the late nights spent with you? The secrets whispered in the winds? The kisses shared past midnight?

Why would you provide him with such memories only to leave?

The second you stepped through that mirror, disappearing from his sight, Malleus felt sick. His whole world had been changed. He foolishly placed all his love and more onto you. Now that you’re gone, he’s directionless.

Malleus feels Lilia pat him on the shoulder. His voice isn't as playful as it usually is but still carries a chipper tone. “You’ve got centuries to find another!… Learn to let go.”

Let go?

Was this how relationships worked? You put in your all just to inevitably let go? How cruel.

He secluded himself from all of Diasomnia for a week, including his bodyguards and Lilia.

Malleus felt your absence everywhere. The starry nights are more silent than ever. Ramshackle reverted to an old, dusty dorm. He wonders what happened to your cat companion once you left.

The Gargoyle Research Club is canceled until further notice. Not that anyone else attended. Without your smile to invade the room, Malleus felt no desire to ramble about the complex history of his favorite subject.

Everything felt dull. And he despised it.

One night, he made his way into the abandoned dorm of Ramshackle.

He found your old room, your old mirror. Malleus thinks he’s going crazy. He swears he saw your reflection in the dinky glass.

It's amusing in a way. How one human had impacted his life so much.

Malleus wonders how you’re doing without him. Is it better? Living in a world where you could never see his face again?

He remembers you talking to him about your real family, reminiscing on bad and good memories. That was the first time he felt compelled to hold you. To comfort you. To make all the pain go away.

He would've never guessed you would soon be the source of his pain.

Malleus resents how easy it was to lose you; how easy it was for you to let him go. But another, louder part of himself knows that he could never hate you. When you left, you took a part of him permanently.

He longs to see you again.

For you to prance by his side at his club. For you to text him silly messages throughout the day on his tiny device. For you to come to him asking for help in finding Grim.

Malleus is unbearably lonely without you.

Then he hears a thud. It seems as though the wind had knocked an item in your room over. A journal. Malleus can’t help but observe the little notebook.

Your name was written on the cover. He immediately opens to page one.

The date at the top was the exact day he remembers first meeting you. You write about a handsome stranger you met at night. Based on your words, you felt as though you had intruded on his space.

Malleus soon finds himself spiraling, reading page after page of you describing your time at NRC; the people you met, the memories you created, and the fae you fell in love with.

He feels a surge of disappointment as he quickly reads through it all, soon reaching the end. His eyes widen as he turns to the last page. A mere two sentences were written in ink.

“You’ll always be my love. Even if we’re dimensions apart, Tsunotaro.”

Malleus’s grip on the leather cover tightened. You knew he’d find this. He’s partly amused. You are always full of surprises.

He rips out that last page addressed to him, letting the notebook fall to the floor as he does.

Malleus transforms the torn paper into a delicate, green rose. That flower will now always hold a piece of his magic.

The fae places it in front of the mirror in which he stares at his reflection.

~

“I, Malleus Draconia, vow to never love another like I did you, my dearest child of man.”

[elikajinnie]

HI!!! can you do the enhypen prompt 16 and 17 with jay?? thank yoouu

P: Boyfriend!Jay X Fem Reader

Warnings: Suggestive Content, Whipped!Jay, we love a man who begs

note: i had time.. so yeah :) This for all my ladies who wear lacey underwear underneath the baggy clothes ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

16. "Do you want me to beg? Because I will." 17. "One more taste, and I swear I’ll lose control."

Jay absolutely loved seeing you, no matter the occasion or what you decided to wear. It didn’t matter if it was a casual hoodie and jeans, a simple summer dress, or the formal gown you once claimed didn’t suit you—it all reminded him of how breathtakingly beautiful you were. And to Jay, there was no arguing against that fact.

He could never understand why you sometimes doubted yourself, saying things like, “I don’t feel pretty today” or “This outfit doesn’t look good on me.” To him, those words simply didn’t make sense. He saw you through a lens tinted with love and admiration, one that made every aspect of you seem flawless. Your beauty wasn’t just about how you looked; it was in the way you carried yourself, the way you laughed, the way you treated others with kindness even when you didn’t have to.

In Jay’s mind, no other woman in the world could ever compare to you. Sure, there were plenty of beautiful women out there, but they weren’t you. You were the one who made him smile just by walking into a room. You were the one who knew him better than he knew himself sometimes, who made him feel safe, valued, and loved. You were the one he’d chosen, and to him, that made you irreplaceable.

There was also a quiet possessiveness about the way he adored you. Not in a controlling or overbearing way, but in the way he took pride in calling you his girlfriend. When he introduced you to his friends or casually mentioned you in conversation, there was always a flicker of pride in his voice. Jay loved showing you off, not because he wanted others to envy him (though, secretly, he didn’t mind if they did), but because he couldn’t help being proud of the fact that you were his.

And in his heart, Jay already knew he wanted you to be more than his girlfriend one day. He often imagined the moment he would ask you to marry him, rehearsing it in his mind and wondering how you might react. He didn’t want to rush you—he’d wait for as long as it took for you to be ready to take that step. But until then, he was more than happy to call you his girlfriend. To him, the title meant everything because it meant you were his, and he was yours.

Every day spent with you was a reminder of how lucky he was, and Jay never wanted you to forget how much he cherished you. In his eyes, you weren’t just beautiful; you were the kind of special that made him believe in soulmates.

He wanted you to be his forever. The thought of waking up next to you every morning, seeing you smile at him as the sunlight filtered through the curtains, was a dream he was determined to make a reality. Jay had no secrets when it came to you. He was like an open book, willingly laying himself bare in front of you, no matter how vulnerable it made him feel.

He trusted you with every corner of his soul, even the parts of himself he once thought were too messy or complicated to share with anyone. With you, there was no hesitation. If something was weighing on his mind, he told you. If he had a silly thought or a random idea, you were the first to hear it. If he made a mistake, he admitted it without shame, knowing you would never judge him harshly.

This honesty, though, also meant that his feelings for you spilled out in the most unfiltered ways. He would often find himself confessing just how much he loved you, even in the smallest, most casual moments. You could be doing something as mundane as scrolling through your phone, and Jay would blurt out, “I love you.” He couldn’t help himself really. His emotions for you were always bubbling just beneath the surface, waiting for the slightest excuse to overflow.

But there was more to his honesty than just his love—there was his desire, too. Jay wasn’t shy about how much he was drawn to you, how you had this effortless ability to captivate him in ways no one else ever could. It was in the way his eyes lingered on you a little too long when you weren’t looking, or the way he would lean in just a little closer than necessary when you spoke.

Sometimes, his words would betray just how deeply he craved you. It wasn’t always something he could control, especially when the thought of you consumed him in the best of ways. You could feel it in the way his hands would gently brush against yours, as if he was trying to be close to you without seeming too eager, but you both knew better.

“I can’t get you out of my head,” he’d admit sometimes. It wasn’t an exaggeration. He often found himself lost in thoughts of you, even when he should have been focused on other things. He would catch himself daydreaming, imagining the soft curve of your smile or the way you looked when you were nestled against him, your head resting on his chest.

Jay was always ready to voice what was on his mind, he wasn’t one to hide his thoughts, especially when it came to you. He didn’t even try to filter his reactions, which made everything he said feel honest.

You had just finished drying your hair after stepping out of the shower, the warmth of the dryer against your skin leaving a pleasant feeling while the bathroom smelled of the shampoo you liked. You stood in your simple, comfortable clothes, the fabric of your loose clothes falling over your skin, paired with a pair of lace underwear that you had bought on your birthday months ago.

It had been tucked away in the back of your closet, forgotten until now. You had never gotten the chance to wear it before, so when you found it still in its bag, the tag untouched, you decided today was the day. You had ripped the tag off without hesitation, and slipped it on, and now you found yourself rediscovering exactly why you had bought it. The way it felt against your skin, the way it hugged your curves, and the way it made you feel undeniably feminine—it was all so perfect.

You stood there for a moment, lost in your own thoughts, admiring the way it made you feel. But you were quickly pulled from your thoughts by the sudden knock on the bathroom door. “Are you finished in there?” Jay’s voice called out.

You quickly turned off the blow dryer and put it away, brushing a few stray strands of hair out of your face as you made your way to the door. You opened it to find Jay standing there with a laundry basket in his arms, his usual smile gracing his face. But when his eyes met yours, they flickered down for a brief second and up. Then, in a split second, they darted downwards again, clearly noticing the lace peeking out from under your clothes.

For a split second, he didn’t react—his eyes widened, and you could see him processing the sight in front of him, almost as if his brain couldn’t quite catch up with his eyes. His gaze lingered for a moment too long, and it was impossible not to notice the way his expression shifted slowly. His lips parted slightly, his breath catching as his eyes darted back up to yours, now a little more intense.

“Is that... lace?” he asked, his voice low, almost a whisper, like the question wasn’t one of curiosity, but more of surprise.

You could see his mind working, his thoughts clearly running wild as he took in the sight of you standing there. He swallowed hard, and for a moment, you both just stood there.

It wasn’t often that you saw Jay lose a bit of his usual composure, but now, his hands tightened around the laundry basket, his knuckles white as he tried to remain cool.

“You know,” he finally spoke again, his voice slightly more strained than before, “I was going to help with laundry, but I think I need a moment.” He was trying to regain some composure, but the way his eyes never left you made it clear that the sight of you had ignited something he couldn’t easily ignore.

Jay placed the laundry basket down slowly, the sound of it hitting the floor almost too loud in the silence that hung between you both. His eyes never left you, and his body seemed to move on its own, drawn to you like a magnet.

Without a word, his hands found their way to your waist, pulling you closer until his body was pressed against yours. The sudden closeness made your breath hitch, as his hands trailed around your waist, fingers grazing the fabric of the lace, the sensation sending a wave of warmth across your skin.

“God…” Jay groaned, the sound low and strained as his fingers gently ran along the edge of the lace, tracing the delicate pattern against your skin. His touch was tender and slow, as if he wanted to savor every second of feeling the lace beneath his fingertips.

You could see the struggle in his eyes, the way he fought to hold back, but there was no mistaking the desire that pulsed in him. “You’re killing me right now,” he murmured, his voice thick with longing. The words came out almost like a confession, so unfiltered, as if he couldn’t hide what he was feeling any longer. His breath was warm against your ear as he leaned in closer, his lips brushing against the side of your neck, the feeling sending a shiver down your spine.

His hands moved down, caressing the lace at your hips before pulling you even closer. The way his body responded to the touch, the way his groan escaped him, it all showed just how much he wanted you. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, his voice barely above a breath.

Unable to resist, Jay leaned down, his lips capturing yours in a kiss that was gentle at first, testing, exploring. But it didn’t stay gentle for long. The kiss deepened as he lost a bit of his composure, his hands gripping you more firmly, pulling you closer to him. The heat between you both surged, and you kissed him back just as eagerly, matching his intensity.

Jay guided you across the bedroom, your bodies moving together in sync. He broke the kiss for just a moment, his breath ragged as he led you toward the full-length mirror at the foot of the bed. As he spun you around, the sudden shift in perspective made your heart flutter. Now, you were facing the mirror, your reflection staring back at you, and Jay stood behind you, holding you close, his chest pressed against your back.

For a moment, you both just stood there, breathing in sync, before Jay’s lips found your shoulder, kissing it softly while his hands slid to your waist, holding you tight as he whispered sweet compliments in your ear. “You’re perfect,” he murmured, his lips brushing your skin as he continued to kiss along your neck. “So incredible... everything about you…”

You tried to glance away from the mirror, feeling suddenly self-conscious, but Jay wasn’t having it. His fingers gently but firmly grabbed your jaw, guiding your face back so that your eyes met your reflection once more. You could feel the intensity of his gaze as he held you there, making you face yourself again.

“Look at yourself,” he whispered, “don’t look away.” His words were like a command that made it impossible to do anything but meet your own gaze. His hand remained firm on your jaw, gently guiding you while his other arm stayed wrapped around your waist, holding you securely against him. “You see what I see?” he muttered, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear, his breath warm. “Do you see how beautiful you are?”

Your reflection stared back at you, and though you felt shy under his attention, there was something about the way he held you that made you feel secure. The way his hands moved—one tracing lazy, gentle patterns at your waist while the other stayed steady at your jaw—was grounding.

He dipped his head again, pressing his lips to your neck, just below your ear, lingering there as though savoring the moment. The sensation sent a shiver down your spine, and his grip on you tightened slightly. “Every part of you,” he whispered, his voice filled with affection, “is perfect.”

You swallowed hard, your breath hitching as you tried to process his words, his touch, and the way his gaze flicked up to meet yours in the mirror.

Jay’s breathing grew heavier, his chest rising and falling against your back as his lips trailed along your neck. The delicate lace seemed to have an almost visceral effect on him, his hands roaming your waist and hips. His fingers brushed against the lace, as if he couldn’t stop himself from feeling it again, marveling at the way it clung to your skin.

“This…” he murmured, his voice rough, nearly a growl, as his hand traced the hemline of the fabric. “You have no idea what this is doing to me.” He paused to take a deep, shuddering breath, his lips brushing against your ear. “You look so—God, I can’t even think straight.”

You couldn’t help but let a soft laugh escape you, the sound teasing in its lightness. “You really like lace that much?” you asked playfully, though you knew full well by the way he was reacting.

Jay groaned, his hand tightening slightly at your waist as he pressed a kiss to the curve of your shoulder. “Like is an understatement,” he said, his tone low and almost desperate. His lips hovered near your ear again, his voice barely above a whisper but filled with so much intensity that it made your heart skip a beat. “You have to wear more of it. All the time. For me.”

His bluntness made you smile, and you couldn’t resist teasing him further. “Oh? Are you saying I should go shopping for more lace?” you asked, turning your head slightly to glance at him, your tone light and filled with playful mischief.

Jay groaned again, his head dropping against your shoulder for a moment as if your teasing was physically affecting him. “Don’t play with me,” he muttered, his voice strained. “Do you want me to beg?” His voice was shaky now, his desperation seeping into every word. He pressed another kiss to your neck before continuing, his voice barely above a growl. “Because I will. I’ll beg if that’s what it takes. Just—please, wear more of this, want more of it.”

You couldn’t help the way your smile widened at his reaction, the teasing in your expression making his jaw tighten. “Jay,” you said, feigning an innocent tone, “you’re really going to beg for me to wear more lace?”

His breath hitched, and his hands moved to grip your hips more firmly. “Don’t tempt me,” he warned, though there was no real bite to his words. His forehead pressed against the back of your head for a moment before he groaned once more, almost as if he was fighting to keep control.

“I’ll do it,” he muttered, his voice low but filled with conviction. “If it means I get to see you like this every day, I’ll fill your closet with lace. Every color, every design—you’ll have so much, you’ll never wear anything else.”

You turned slightly, your smile softening as you reached up to touch his cheek, your fingers brushing against his skin. His eyes met yours in the mirror, filled with so much love that it almost overwhelmed you.

“I don’t think you’re ready for that much lace,” you said, but your tone was softer now, playful without being dismissive.

“Try me,” he challenged you, “I’ll prove it. I’ll make it happen. Just say the word.”

Jay would do anything to show you just how much he adored you, and if it meant filling your wardrobe with lace to see you smile—and to indulge his newfound obsession—he would gladly do it, no hesitation.

.....

And he did do it. After that day, it was as though a switch had flipped in Jay. He started bringing home lace in every imaginable color and design—soft pastels, bold blacks, rich jewel tones, delicate florals. Every type he could find was soon tucked away in your closet. It was thoughtful, sweet even, a little peek into how deeply he cared about you. But his reaction every time you wore it? That was something else entirely.

You weren’t used to seeing him like this, so utterly undone, so out of touch with his usual composed demeanor. But you couldn’t deny how much you loved it. You loved the way he folded for you, how a single glimpse of white lace beneath your clothes could derail him completely. Oh, you had him hooked. So much so that every time you wore it, his eyes would darken, his breaths would hitch, and whatever train of thought he had? Gone, like it had never existed.

Lace was his weakness, yes. But lace on you? He was gone—reduced to a pleading man, desperate for just one look, just one touch. And when you finally gave him permission, the transformation was instant. His hands would tremble slightly as they reached for you, his lips brushing reverently over the fabric like it was sacred.

“One more taste,” he’d whisper, his voice rough with need, “and I swear I’ll lose control.”

But the truth? He’d already lost control. The moment his fingers skimmed the lace against your skin, he was a goner. You saw it in the way he looked at you, like nothing else in the world mattered but you in that moment. His touches grew hungrier, his kisses turned sloppy and uncoordinated. And the marks? Oh, you had plenty. They were proof of just how completely he surrendered himself to you, his passion for you spilling over in ways he could hardly contain. Jay never held back when it came to you, and the lace only seemed to amplify that desire.

It wasn’t just about how beautiful you looked in it, though that played a part. No, it was the way you made it look—how effortlessly you wore it, how it became a part of your natural allure. He was mesmerized by you, completely at your mercy, and he didn’t care one bit.

“You have no idea what you do to me,” he’d groan, his voice shaky as he traced the edges of the fabric with his fingertips. And maybe you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t realize just how thoroughly you owned him. But every time he dropped to his knees for you, every time he lost himself completely in the feel of you, the sight of you, the essence of you—you were reminded of just how deep his devotion ran.

Jay was yours in every way, and he wasn’t ashamed to show it. Especially when you wore lace.

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[velvetvexations]

Chiming in on the whole "do tmascs/the transandrophobia community actually harass tfems on the scale that is claimed" thing, I've been wondering that for a while too, especially since back when [Popular Trans Blogger] was dealing with The Most Normal CEO Ever I saw literally EVERY SINGLE major voice in transandrophobia circles immediately drop everything, put aside all the harassment and hate they had faced, make it clear that trans people being harmed by cishet society comes before discussing deeper theory, and basically non-stop post about how she didn't deserve that and openly critique tumblr's transphobia and how it hurts tfems despite the fact that that user and her followers had been consistently vile to transmascs. Like they all jumped up to add their voices against the banning, it was so fucking clear they were able to prioritize protecting trans people no matter what, and no one ever really talks about it because they also don't gloat about putting the swords down for the greater good. It's just something they know needs to be done and they won't paint themselves as heroes or martyr for it.

On the other hand, I've never in my entire life seen a big TRF or anyone who travels in those circles ever stick their neck out when tmascs are experiencing harassment and transphobia, not once. Not even when it leads to the same unjust bans that tfems face(which do happen, at similar rates to tfem bloggers like the idea that the trans bans are a tfem only thing is simply not true). Like I've blogs that are constantly posting about how "if you never post anything about supporting trans women then you're probably a secret transmisognist" turn around and respond to people pointing out that they never post anything even vaguely supportive of tmascs(not even talking about discourse just the usual "trans men are valid and deserve support" positivity stuff that goes around) who are on their "side" by saying "um I'm a trans woman and this is my personal blog so I don't have to say nice things about trans men ever and it says absolutely nothing about me that I never have anything kind or nice to say about even the transmascs that are on my side/valid in my opinion and actually it's bigoted for you to demand I say nice things about other trans people fuck you kthxbye" and I just. What??

I know that there have been some cases of tmasc/transandrophobia bloggers harassing a trans woman, but like. It's pretty rare and usually only a couple of people. And that's still bad ofc but the scale is different for sure. In terms of big, influential tumblr users I swear every single time a popular tfem gets deactivated all the transandrophobia bloggers jump to their defense, meanwhile TRFs just gleefully go around attacking every trans guy who so much as breathes in their direction and calls you a transmisognist if you point out that it's fucked of them to have a double standard about trans rights. Or acts like "I said something bigoted and other members of my community got mad" is harassment. Like [Popular Tfem Musician] was def getting Harassed but I watched the whole thing unfold and while there were a few shitty tmascs chiming in, overall the harassment was led by an entirely different group who was mad about something unrelated, they just happened at the same time so everyone figured ALL the harassment was coming from tmascs when it very much was not.

(Also tmasc/transandrophobia bloggers are also constantly adding "if you're a follower and I see you bothering the person I'm talking about I'll report and block you myself" they like care a lot about all trans people and will show tf up for even ones they disagree with or who have directly harmed them when push comes to shove. [Popular MLP Tfem Artist] is still getting accused of harassing other trans women despite her constantly instructing her audience to leave everyone alone. And I have def seen way more transandrophobia bloggers call out any tmascs or other trans people on "their" side get ignored and deplatformed if they prove to be bad actors. I don't see TRFs doing that like. Ever. Like they go "take our the trash in your community" to tmascs but pretend they can't read when someone asks them to denounce people who openly harasses tmascs. Or just makes excuses for them because surely we can't actually harm a trans man, it doesn't count.)

But yeah I fully assume the reason TRFs say no one ever harasses tmascs but that they harass tfems all the time is because they simply do not think harassing trans people is wrong so long as it's directed at the correct target. I mean why would the "trans men don't have real problems" crowd ever actually say anything nice about them or help them when they're being harassed or tell their followers to leave them alone? It's just really sad to watch, big tmasc bloggers are not harassing people the way the TRFs want everyone to think, and they certainly don't harass other trans people the way TRFs do, but they get burdened with the harassment accusations and no one thinks to even check if that's actually what's happening.

10/10, I have nothing to add.

[ozzgin]

Ozzgin more than ever I really need a hacker yandere out to fight injustice done against me. Because why was my bank account hacked and someone tried it ed to steal 500$ bucks from me. Luckily I was able to lock my card and my bank is sending me a new one but I'm so so anxious at this point 😭

Yandere hacker would never let some twerps swindle me for my money like this(I'm sure they're a bunch of kids since the person tried to buy cs go ). He cares deeply for my digital footprints.

Oof, sorry it happened to you, pookie. Though I doubt a yandere would help you out of the goodness of his heart... content: gender neutral reader, obsessive behavior, manipulation, stalking

Yandere!Hacker always makes sure that your digital presence remains untouched. Through some sheer luck or unknown forces, you've never had to deal with any kind of online misfortune. You'll offer your friends a sympathetic smile whenever they bemoan the persistence of some internet pervert, but you've been spared of such predatory approaches.

You'd almost be tempted to believe that these said malicious attacks are mere myths meant to scare the unseasoned traveler. You've never been hacked, never been scammed, never had your data or photos stolen from anywhere. Maybe you're just particularly careful, you tell yourself.

In reality, you've been under the watchful gaze of your online stalker. He dutifully keeps track of every move and every click you make. If someone were to save one of your photos for later purposes, for example, he'd immediately track them down and make sure they can never access a computer again.

Yandere!Hacker doesn't protect you out of pure, selfless intentions, however. When it comes to invading your privacy, he's a meticulous sleuth constantly outdoing himself. It's just, you see, no one else should have this kind of control over you. From the moment he stumbled upon your profile, he knew you'd be his. Thus, he can't allow anyone else to interfere with his grand adoration.

Your dating apps always fail to show you any matches, your flirty messages from suitors never arrive. He'll watch through the webcam he's hacked into as you sigh, disappointed, from yet another case of being ghosted. Oh, sweet, darling (Y/N), give him a little more time.

Yandere!Hacker isn't quite satisfied with watching you from afar. While it certainly is endearing to observe you in your raw, innocent obliviousness, while he frequently touches himself to the exhilaration of voyeurism, being a passive bystander can become exceptionally boring. He often wonders if your skin is as soft as it looks, or if you smell as sweet as he likes to imagine.

"This can't be..."

Tears well in your eyes as you stare, helpless, at the notification: your bank account has been drained. Someone must've emptied it, and - as a consequence - you are now utterly penniless. Just as another sob escapes your mouth, your screen lights up with a new message. An acquaintance you don't remember too well.

"Is everything alright with you, (Y/N)? I just wanted to remind you that you can always count on me for anything. I mean it."

He leans back in his chair with a grin. Now he waits. You're desperate enough that it shouldn't require much convincing for you to move in with him. Of course you can have his spare room. No, he truly doesn't need anything in return. You're his dear friend, and he's at your service.

You can always rely on him.

[More Yandere Stories]

[wuahae]

hiii hehe :3 first off i'm SOO sorry it took me this long to get around to it omg i really wanted to go into this with a #Fresh mindset and also school Just started and already is pummeling me into the ground but . it's saturday Monday. and i am Here now and i just cracked open a cold one (ginger ale) and i am Ready to get into it!!!!

Here, in the dark, there is just you. 

banger first line btw its so telling... also i remember workshopping this first scene with you and i'm so glad this is what you decided on! it sets the mood perfectlyyyy it fits the perfect amount of humor (SHAKIRA WAITS FOR NO ONE!!!) and ambiance and the ENERGYYY of it is so good like Yeah this is an opening scene of a 2010s romcom! its likeee yeah even though you're in this club at fuckass o'clock the ghost of your mother and all your expectations still digs into you... you can never run away you can only face the things you must!!!! also another thing i wanna say is that its kinda crazy how short this scene is but there's so many things that it establishes like Man... That's good writing... yn who is forced to be everything she isn't and as a result she cannonballs herself into everything she Shouldn't be... just so she can have the feeling of being nothing at all.... yeah!!! oh to be young and wild and free . But what does it all mean for the future...

They stand tall in their planters, majestic and hairy with French lavender. Today you notice that the rightmost one's nose has been pruned off by accident, and he stands, snoutless, staring at his green brothers and sisters. 

picture perfect palace hosting a picture perfect family but if you look close enough you see signs of the suffocation.. the overbearing preening.... WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!! also the part about y/n noticing the little details about the number of terracotta stones... its like Yeah it's probably bc she's been in this palace all her life but also its like. no one would pay attention to those things if some ounce of her didn't care. used to. etc.

Your father paces near the window, either wondering why you can't be softer, more pliable, like your older brother Jeonghan, or, alternatively, why one of the lions is missing a nose.

only the real ones know who jeonghan used to be... YOU WILL BE MISSED 😭😭😭😭😭

"We have arranged for you to marry someone."  And all at once, it seems as though all the air has been sucked out of the room. There's a sharp pain lodged somewhere between your chest, your stomach, and your unhappy liver. The larks sing emptily in the garden. 

the pacing is sooo good here like yeah... top 10 announcements you won't believe! also the detail of the larks is so good it places you back into the palace setting and also it makes the palace seem so like. big. empty. just a bunch of air and space.

"Why?" you ask. Your voice wobbles, treading over that childlike waver you never learned to control. "Is this to punish me?"  / She's right. She's always been right. Maybe not about the swimsuit, but you haven’t exactly been the PR princess your family needed you to be. If anything, you would think it made Jeonghan look better by comparison, but you know that your parents would prefer you to make appearances in something other than Deuxmoi’s Sunday Spotted. But the royal charade never fit you well either; it clings and sticks and bunches up at the seams like a cheap Halloween costume. 

this makes me sooo like. MY BABYYYYY.... the emphasis on like. you might be an adult but whenever you're dealing with your parents or anything royal it just feels like you're a Child all over again (childlike waver / cheap halloween costume)... i have nothing else to say that doesn't involve my own convoluted parental trauma but just know i #GetHer

You were so sore the next day, you were bed-bound–truly a punishment worse than death, if not for another reminder that everything you do ends up hurting you a little. 

OWIE.....

Past August, you don't think you ever got your brother back.

i loooove this relationship with jeonghan btw idk if i ever said this to you but its like. vulnerabilities in yn that show she isn't just being disobedient to Be disobedient and like. she cares!!!! she just copes bad and has no one around to help her... not anymore :( also this scene in general is just really good backstory without being too monologue-y which is something i am Always impressed by... Good worldbuilding. good dynamic.

Without thinking, you quickly push out the first excuse you have. "I apologize, I was—" 

also i think its so interesting how like. before you know it's jihoon at the door you default to your more proper princess "I apologize" smth that like. Fits your position more even though on the surface level you've long given up on being proper or whatever impossible thing your mother expects you to be.... yeah. Trying is still somehow ingrained in your being

"You forgot your jacket," Jihoon replies. 

unfortunately for both of us i endlessly need him. also reliable best friend jihoon meeowwww I NEEED YOOUUUUU. also yn's imposter syndrome and guilt complex is making me soooo sad....

You wish she was human for a moment so you could show her the crater-sized hole that "prince joshua google images" left in your browser history. 

THIS IS SOOOFDMLDFK me searching up Joshua Hong boyfriend on pinterest to the same effect

The mental image of Joshua Hong being struck down by the first ten seconds of Throat Goat makes you laugh, but you still don't feel far away enough from the truth.

#foreshadowing

You knew you should have done better for your brother, but he didn’t even feel like your brother anymore. 

nooo..... fuck. also me reading this knowing full well What happened that day.... rocking back and forth chanting My Shaylaa....

So you press your heart to Astrid's mane, the pale moon high over the both of you, and you ride. 

astrid who represents the last bit of your childhood and yourself and your Brother, all of which you wonder if you can even bring with you to acros, pressing your heart to her and all that she encompasses... Yeah

You choose to let it slide—you have no choice, really. At least you have an ass. 

#smallblessings

"Didn't know you had a choice."

ooohhhh he's soo.... ITS SO ARC WORDS!!! of course he would say that....

"I mean, I read an insane amount of Dan Brown," you reply. "Not many of us can say we've solved the Davinci code, you know." 

this is actually the worst im clawing at my neck rn MDSFJSDFML is there any greater humiliation than someone not laughing at your jokes...... LAUGH WITH MEEEEE oh my god.... josh being hot and boring. the 10th circle of hell.

You glance to your right to catch a glimpse of Joshua. He smiles, a dutiful press of the lips, and you watch it ripple.

heol........... the first crack in his mask. hah... tfw you're so annoying u make resident stick-in-ass regret his princely duties

He's out of words, so he bends down to awkwardly pat you on the head, which, in all your years of knowing him, is the most affection he can muster. This is why you prefer horses to Jihoon for therapy, although you appreciate the effort. 

he is SOOOOO..... I NEED HIM 😭😭😭😭😭

You still keep your pillow pet on your bed (a horse named Robert).

i tried thinking of a horse pun with robert pattinson for a joke and the best i could come up with was cobert pattinson... robert trottinson... me when rob is destined to have bat puns no matter what . but anyway i love that yn is consistently a horse girl its so cute HSDFJLSFDKM

He's got a copy of Anna Karenina under his arm, probably to weigh the pros and cons of cheating on you. You don't blame him—in fact, maybe it would make your doomed marriage exciting enough to be tolerable. 

THIS IS SOOOODSFMSDFLKJ aaron taylor johnson Where are you!!!

"Oh right, because this is where happiness goes to die, huh?" You snatch it back from him, feeling the knot of anger in your gut flare. 

Oh that's not...... 😬 well Yes actually!

You sink into your side of the bed, a damask-woven vat of quicksand, and watch the spears of light dance on the ceiling.

imagery that fucks immensely..

The prince of Acros owning a book with the words "juicy", "mewling", and "best friend's brother" in the first fifty pages are enough to tide you over for the night. Probably the next week, to be honest.

prince joshua hong caught reading ICEBREAKER?!

"Is it too bright for you?" Joshua's voice, now tempered by the stillness of the evening, pulls you out of your thoughts. "I can turn the lamp off."  / Joshua smiles, and this time, you think it's a real one. 

also one thing to mention is that i love how after the truce is settled they're quick to act like. civilly/almost kind to each other like. they're both not Bad or intentionally hard-to-stand people it's just they're both put in impossible situations . a thin line between hate and kinship and love... etc etc etc. speaking of hate u are an expert at writing e2l banter the tension is palpable

"Any minute now," bitches Jihoon from the other side of the door. 

HE IS SOOOSDFMDSFLK my favorite animal is jihoon being forced to do anything for the royal family. also you calling yourself a HARLOT is so funny. next up the list is calling yourself a reddit-approved hussy

Outside, there is a lone photographer. The sun, morning-ripe, reflects off his camera lens like a third eye. The lawn, freakishly green, sprawls out around you, and the blue spruce frames the scene, perfect by design. 

your descriptions are SOOOO good like theyre so Telling without being too wordy or needlessly purple-y like just a few sentences from you and i am #In it

You can see why people dote on him so much—his cheeks get round, and his eyes magically gain the sparkles that people pay for on Facetune. God really seems to have wasted a perfect face on him.

the thought of being fake-married to him is making me rock back and forth like actually Oh my god.... i unhinge my jaw and swallow him whole with my 8 rows of teeth.

He's just like anyone else, you tell yourself. You're at the club. They're playing Everytime We Touch by Cascada. 

CASCADA MENTION HELL YEAHHHH 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

“Shut the fuck up. Wait, is he actually coming?”  ”Dunno. Wouldn’t be very Mr. Worldwide of him to flake, though.” 

u are actually the funniest person alive. also i think its soooo like. even though you came back home to have semblance of your Old life back your thoughts inevitably drift to joshua again... trying to fit him into the familiar memory of your old life even though you know it's a little funny to imagine him with anything less than 100 year old wine in his hand... and when somi asks if she should invite him you say No even though you were clearly thinking about it . What does it all mean. the dichotomy of having a hot boring HOT fake husband... oh the terrors....

but you couldn’t let him walk away from that conversation thinking wet dirt was a normal, socially acceptable, scent for a bedroom. (—It said moss on the label! —So, dirt. —Moss is not dirt. Maybe you need to go back to school.) 

GWHMASFDLFSDK the parentheses format is so funny i'm stealing that /hj. also im soooo glad you added in this scene about seeing him half naked its so romcom-y... so shenanigans-filled.... pornhub title: HOT PRINCE WITH HUGE TITS CAUGHT NAKED!

Later, on the walk to the library, you reach for your lip gloss. Instead, you pull out q-tip number five and get mad all over again. 

like she's so funnyydfmdflk she's sooo me.

"I just have to know—how did you guys meet?" 

this entire exchange is so funny JSDFMLASDFK like i love when they're bickering and being annoying to each other i feel like they match each other so well also the little digs to each other to ruin each other's reputation... yn raccoon era. joshua stalker era.

Joshua doesn’t reply. Out of the corner of your eye, you see his gaze has shifted. You feel it land somewhere near you, but you’re too engrossed in the race to investigate further. Perhaps he’s admitted defeat preemptively, wisely so.  “You know your stuff,” he murmurs, the clamor of the audience almost burying him. 

oh man...... an ounce of sincerity is all it takes.... me when josh sees the girl underneath the Act.... starts howling.

You turn to Joshua and clasp his hands between yours, somehow less wooden now, and so, so human. The crowd cheers; they come alive. 

OOOUUUUUUUUUGGGHHHH WOLF TEARING OFF HIS SHIRT JPEG.

also next scene with josh and his damn HORSE PUNS HES SOOOO ANNOYINGJFDMLDF but also this is the first time we're really seeing him not be prickly and testy and being Lame so its like. you show me your cards ill show you mine... etc. he's just trying to make you comfortable cause you really are a Team rn... oh man. OH MAN.

You’re not asking for love—just a little bit of like. and, right now, you think you like Joshua Hong. 

rubs hands together like a little fly... all according to plan. also theyre just soooo cute oh my god...

“Do you want to keep this?” Jihoon holds up a choker that resembles a jock strap. “When did you even wear this? It looks like a cat toy.” 

NOOOOOOO

“Right,” says Joshua, and when he gets up from the bench, he doesn’t look back. 

i have a lot of things to say about this scene and All of them are good... i remember the first time you brought up Piano as a scene and i was like. Wrinkles nose. at it because of my own personal experiences with piano being used as a cheesy plot device But i told you this then and im telling you this again Now i think its so well done... the dynamic between josh and yn is so well done like. they're just starting to blindly feel around how to interact with one another now that they're not Enemies but theyre still forced-to-marry but also like. they're also starting to be friends, even if josh was being a tad insufferable After the derby. like i love that they're both fumbling around at the piano and for Once in this palace yn is leading josh on how to do something right... yn teasing him all in good nature ("buddy, left hand goes here.") and josh giving himself the leniency to be a bit of casual when no one is watching ("aw, what?" he whines. "see, i told you i was no good. give me a second.") like its all just so cute. like watching two puzzle pieces spin themselves around trying to click. Pajama joshua is better than prince joshua... but even pajama joshua is thinking of duty... duty the knife and the wound... and Of Course josh brings it up when they're having a cute moment like OF COURSE!!! rubs my temples. yn trying to change the topic again. josh opening up again about wanting to play guitar because this is Pajama Joshua who doesn't know how to read the ledger lines and makes silly puns and not Prince Joshua who looks at you with a firm press in his brow... like everyone else with a crown... Man.

“That's not really fair.” You absentmindedly play a few keys, all disjointed. “Taking guitar lessons doesn’t make you a problem child.”  “It's not about that, though,” Joshua says. He's avoiding your eyes. “It's everything, together. I couldn't just pick up a guitar and be someone else.”  [...] “Yeah, and you think I don’t think about that every day? How, maybe, if I had done something different, then we wouldn’t be here?”  You feel stung. You don’t know how to tell him that you’ve been trying to figure out the same thing your whole life. If you were a better daughter, you’d have spared everyone the trouble. Unfortunately, you’d gotten it wrong so many times, you stopped trying.

FUCK!!! like this whole exchange is such masterful character building . joshua who doesn't know How to give himself leeway and does whatever mommy and daddy tell him because if he disobeys one thing then its like a slippery slope and all of a sudden he'll let himself think he can be someone other than a prince. vs yn who doesn't see the big deal because what's one misstep when her entire life is just one purposeful fuck-up.... but it doesn't even matter!! because even if josh was rebellious and learned how to play guitar and not piano and if yn was the good little princess her parents wanted her to be they would still be here!!! both at opposite ends of the spectrum. DUTY THE KNIFE AND THE WOUND!

like the whole scene is just so push-pull... conflicting coping mechanisms... they see each other but do they really. they see but do they understand... things to consider....... anyway this is my favorite scene. i love character building.

“You ready to get stuffed?” 

GHWMAFSMLSDKVSLDFKSDVMLSDFK

“Yeah, although on second thought, maybe it’s a bad idea to bring the girl who’s gonna puke everything up anyway.” 

Just like me...

“Nope.” You pop open your compact. “I have to change, and I desperately need to locate a coffee. I will suck a fucking bean off if i need to.”  “I'm hanging up on you,” Somi whines. “It's too early for you to be gross and late.”   “As if you weren’t talking about getting stuffed.” 

THEY ARE SOOO FUNNY like somi really is the star of the show... if this was in the 2000s she'd be played by judy greer

“Don’t give me any ideas,” he replies. Under the bluebird sky of late morning, lips upturned and eyes bright, Joshua may be a sight you could get used to. Someday. “Brought you a coffee. I can’t have you sucking off a bean—the reporters would go crazy.” 

i love how his humor slowly gets more crude as the fic goes on HSDFJLSDFK like him laughing at you being the #top in the piano scene... JOSHUA HONG I KNWO WHAT YOU ARE. I KNOW THE PERSONALITY YOU'RE HIDING. also it's actually a skill to casually describe joshua in a way that is injected with so much Need but what else would i expect from husbandjoshi...

Instead, you circle each other in an unsure, clumsy dance. You can’t quite get it right. It's all the same now. The bite of a horse saddle not made for your body, the glow of your heirloom ring, now cheapened by your graceless hand, Joshua’s lonely, reaching palm as he disappears in the rearview mirror. 

aw man... i always feel so bad for her like she's always trying... all she does is try 😭😭😭 like that thing about the jeonghan play too... she tries and its not good enough and so it gets discarded anyway because what good is trying when its not good enough... better to pretend to be perfect than to try and be yourself. and whatnot. my shayla........ what a sad notion... to be perfect and lonely...

You also learn that you, paradoxically, might not know how to love Joshua Hong, but you sure do know how to kiss him. 

oh meow.............. MEEEEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.............. you don't need me to tell you how good you are at writing intimate scenes you already know.... i also don't have much to say btw you look in my brain and its like tv static and the rainbow bars bzzzzzt bzzzztttt bzzzzzzzzzt

ok. obviously i have more to say. I will see you on the next part.

title: royally screwed [m]

pairing: joshua x f!reader

wc: 30.8k in total; part 1: 15.4k, part 2: 15.4k summary: between remembering last night’s party and pleasing your unrelenting family, you think being a princess is hard enough. then you’re thrust into an arranged marriage to royal darling joshua hong—straight-laced, infuriatingly obedient, and everything you’re not. pretending to be the perfect couple? impossible.   notes: romcom + smut (part 2), modern royalty!au in which yn is the princess of cotria/joshua the prince of acros (both fictional), enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, quarterlife crisis/coming of age, very very slow burn. lots of swearing, lots of alcohol, lots of feelings. very special thanks to @meiozis for all their help with worldbuilding and @wuahae for bearing with me through the endless drafts, scene changes, second guessing, horrible word choices, etc. you are the only reason this got done, and i love you to the moon and back <3 [read part 2 here!]

Here, in the dark, there is just you. 

The strobe lights press into your skin with all the brilliance of the sun, there's half a Modelo running down your leg, and you think you kissed the stranger behind you last week, but if you close your eyes, it's just you. No rules, no five second curtseys, no talk about the throne or whoever's ass happens to be keeping it warm at the moment. 

Here, you're nobody, and it's perfect. 

"I'm getting more champagne," Somi says, her voice careening over the music. "You sure Jihoon doesn't want any?" 

You glance back at him. He's flattened up against the back wall, holding your purse, like a raccoon caught going through the trash. This is one of the many trials he's forced to endure for your entertainment, but it's his job–not as your closest friend, but as your legally employed bodyguard. 

"No, he's on duty." 

"Right," she slurs. "Sometimes I forget you're a literal princess." 

If only it were that easy. Five drinks in and you think you can still feel your mother's vice grip on your arm and all the little white crescents of her french manicure. 

You love this song–at least, you think you do. You're too drunk to tell, but it doesn't matter. The dance floor is muggy, sardine-packed with one warm body after another, and it's heaven. The crowd moves, and you move with them. Shakira waits for no one. 

Somi must have secured another bottle of Cristal already. Soonyoung, your other partner-in-crime, hands you a flute and you take it, the glittery foam already bubbling over the lip. 

"Cheers." Out of his too-drunk mouth, it sounds like a new word altogether, but you bring your glass to his anyway. 

Tomorrow, you have a meeting with your parents. This, unlike all of your other involvements, is actually important, they said, and their voices had wound around you like a snare. 

When it gets late, Jihoon will sling your arm over his shoulders and haul you back to the palace, still tipsy and holding your stilettos to your chest like a shield. Tomorrow will come, and it's then when you'll have to try to be good. It's a useless, stupid affair, but you'll go through the motions anyway. 

But tonight, there is you and the music and the wonderful laughter of your friends, and you don't have to be anything at all. 

"Cheers," you tell Soonyoung, and you drink. 

--

There are four large topiaries in the palace garden: all lions. They stand tall in their planters, majestic and hairy with French lavender. Today you notice that the rightmost one's nose has been pruned off by accident, and he stands, snoutless, staring at his green brothers and sisters. 

You know this because this is the view from the study, and it has never changed. There is only one study in the east wing, and it is small and useless and the perfect room for your parents to sit you down and remind you that you do not, in fact, own a single thing about your own life. 

There is nothing new about this ritual. Even as a child, when you were more desperate to please, you could never be the right kind of daughter to your parents or princess to your country. Again and again, you landed yourself here, in trouble once more. 

So you stopped trying–you would find these four walls anyway, no matter what you did. Why not enjoy your Fridays instead?

By now, you’ve memorized the carvings on the armrest of the chair you’re in (a knobby column, then underneath, the whorl of a seashell). There are thirty-four terracotta stones on the way to the fountain, all spaced perfectly apart, sanded down to the millimeter. 

The scene remains unchanged. Your mother now stares down at you over the bridge of her nose, with that tight-lipped frown you've gotten so used to. Your father paces near the window, either wondering why you can't be softer, more pliable, like your older brother Jeonghan, or, alternatively, why one of the lions is missing a nose. Maybe both.

"Enjoy yourself yesterday?" your mother asks. 

"Yes," you reply, out of other answers.

"Wonderful. Then our early morning briefing with PR was good for something. You should be grateful last night's pictures won't make it out of the darkroom." 

Her voice, bitter and incisive, makes the hangover bubble up in your stomach. You and the tabloids weren't exactly on good terms, but it wasn't your fault so many people seemed to care about what you were wearing or who you were out with. 

"What did you want to meet about?" you ask, hoping to change the subject. 

You can't put your finger on it, but there's a cloying, heavy energy hanging on you. You feel as though you're on the precipice of something, although that could just be the consequences of all that Cristal ready to reintroduce themselves to your digestive system. 

Your mother clears her throat. 

"We have arranged for you to marry someone." 

And all at once, it seems as though all the air has been sucked out of the room. There's a sharp pain lodged somewhere between your chest, your stomach, and your unhappy liver. The larks sing emptily in the garden. 

"What?" Your voice sounds like it's unraveling somewhere in your throat. Quickly, frantically, you grasp at the faraway possibility that it can't possibly mean what you think it does. Marry? You can’t even remember the last time you thought of going on a second date with someone. Now you might actually throw up. 

"Prince Joshua, of the Hong family. The crown prince of–" 

"Acros. I know," you interrupt, the words jumping out of you in shock and anger. 

Of course you know who Joshua Hong is–Acros is a tiny, unremarkable country nestled into the border of your much bigger one, and Joshua their crown jewel. If you were the nation's problem, he was their darling. A bland thing to coo at when life got boring, the walking embodiment of a media training session. Smile and nod, smile and nod. He might as well be AI generated.

You wouldn't last a day with him. Not with your impatience, your opinions, or that loud mouth your parents always scold you for. Your mind swims with the mental image of the two of you on a gaudy parade float, doing that stupidly slow wave everyone seemed to insist on.

"Wonderful. So you'll pack a bag? The Hong family will be thrilled to meet you tomorrow," says your father.

"Why?" you ask. Your voice wobbles, treading over that childlike waver you never learned to control. "Is this to punish me?" 

"My dear, your brother will be ascending to the throne soon," your mother answers, looking you dead in the eyes. "It’s his face that needs to be on the front page, not you in another abomination of a swimsuit. The Hongs will keep enough of an eye on you.” 

She's right. She's always been right. Maybe not about the swimsuit, but you haven’t exactly been the PR princess your family needed you to be. If anything, you would think it made Jeonghan look better by comparison, but you know that your parents would prefer you to make appearances in something other than Deuxmoi’s Sunday Spotted. But the royal charade never fit you well either; it clings and sticks and bunches up at the seams like a cheap Halloween costume. 

"The Hongs thought their country would benefit from our money. It was an easy decision, really," your mother finishes, as if that makes you feel any less like a silly, bikini-clad pawn in a game of chess you never asked to play. 

"Does Jeonghan know?" 

"He sees its purpose,” your father says simply, like that was all that mattered. “You will too, in due time.”

He nods solemnly, which is how he closes every conversation–just another turn of the silent knife. As your parents turn to leave, their silken garbs trail behind them like ink in still water. Business as always, especially with you. 

"Your brother will be coming home from his press tour this week," your mother says on her way out. "You mustn't ruin this for him. The car leaves for Acros in the morning." 

There's a mean, barbed feeling in your heart. You don't know whether to scream or to cry, so you do what your mother taught you to do. You sit, stilled by a feeling of hopelessness, and let yourself be emptied. 

--

When you were thirteen, you learned how to ride a horse. 

Not the impractical, side-saddle way drilled into you when you were a little girl, with your skirt billowing over the fender and catching in the stirrups, but how to really ride a horse. 

It was on a night much like tonight–indigo and starless. Your brother had climbed up the marble trellis, his teenage, noodle body a perfect fit for scaling the lattice, and threw a stone at your window, just like you had seen in the movies. Jeonghan was still young, then, rebellious and unchanged by the throne. 

It was him who laced up your riding boots, hoisted you on your first horse, and pressed the reins into your palms. You remember the unforgiving hold of the leather saddle, not yet broken in. You were so sore the next day, you were bed-bound–truly a punishment worse than death, if not for another reminder that everything you do ends up hurting you a little. 

"It's great," Jeonghan had told you, breathless and haloed by the moonlight. "You can just ride. nowhere to go and no one to answer to." 

You had spent the summer this way. Every night, you learned the sound of the forest at twilight, chasing Jeonghan's mud-splattered palomino. In the mornings, breakfast consisted of rubbing the sleep out of your eyes and whispering about whatever misadventure you had found yourselves tangled in the night before. 

That was before he had come of age. Before your father gave him the Throne Talk, and before he was whisked away into endless meetings and etiquette lessons and parliaments. Your inside jokes became foul, overripe in his newly coached mouth. He even learned to play golf, and he hated golf. 

Past August, you don't think you ever got your brother back.

You slide the oaken doors of the stables open, feeling your arms squeeze underneath your riding shirt. Here, it’s always quiet after sundown.

It hasn't changed since the day you first snuck in with Jeonghan. You let the green scent of the hay fill your lungs, the sleep-stir of the horses like music to your ears. Dokyeom has left the tack room open by "accident" once more, likely to avoid catching you picking the lock with a bobby pin like he had a few months ago. 

"Hey, you," you whisper, coming to the stall of your own horse. Astrid, a bay thoroughbred, was Jeonghan's gift to you on your 18th birthday, a wistful reminder of a summer now past its prime. "No surprise here, but I had a really, really bad day." 

Astrid, oblivious, noses at your palm in search of a nonexistent sugar cube. Somehow, this brings the anxious chatter of your mind to a crescendo—would Astrid come with you to Acros? When would that happen? More importantly, when were you moving? You think of a too-warm summer morning, the ridiculous, oversized brim of one of your mother's sunhats, and a moving truck. That, and a country ready to delete you from its ranks. 

It's now, with the bridle in your fists, that you hear the wheedling groan of the stable door as it slides open. Without thinking, you quickly push out the first excuse you have. "I apologize, I was—" 

"It's me." 

Jihoon. 

You would tease him about his fear of ponies—perhaps it's because he is quite literally the same size as them—but you think hearing another person tell you off would officially push you over the edge. You don't want to be dramatic, but you don't even know if Acros even had horses. 

That, and somehow he's both the first and the last person you want to see. The guilt feels a bit heavier when you know his life is about to change too, in no small part due to your own failings.

"Jihoon, I…" you start. There’s an apology that’s been sitting on your tongue, one you haven’t quite learned to spit up yet. You don’t know who it’s for—yourself, or everyone else—but Jihoon interrupts you before you can finish your thought. 

"You forgot your jacket," Jihoon replies. 

For once, you can't read him. You wonder if he's thinking about if he'd get along with the other bodyguards, but, more likely, he's probably pitying you. You're the last person in the world that should be in an arranged marriage, and even someone who kills people for a living could tell. 

"I'll be in the foyer." 

You don't exchange any more words. Jihoon knows that there is nothing he can say that will erase what's about to happen, and like always, he is right.

After you saddle up, Astrid takes you to the forest like usual. Honestly, you've lost count of the times you've come out here to cry, usually about a boy you don’t even like, or, worse, Jeonghan declining your weekly Facetime session again. But now, you think you both know this time is very different. 

"Astrid," you groan. "Joshua looks like a Ken doll from hell. He probably pronounces tomato like tomahto and has a closet dedicated to his tweed collection. I can't marry him." 

Astrid is none the wiser. You wish she was human for a moment so you could show her the crater-sized hole that "prince joshua google images" left in your browser history. 

"Do you think he only listens to classical music? I think a Kim Petras song would kill him instantaneously." 

The mental image of Joshua Hong being struck down by the first ten seconds of Throat Goat makes you laugh, but you still don't feel far away enough from the truth.

You remember your 21st birthday, a balmy spring Friday. Jeonghan had been helping out at the local youth theater, and the opening night of their production was coincidentally the same day. Jeonghan had never been one for theater (last time, he had fallen asleep during Mamma Mia, of all musicals). You knew the press turnout was expected to be huge, but the whole thing felt like one big charade to you. 

So you had planned your big birthday bash—you only get one 21st, after all—that day. The paparazzi fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Unsurprisingly, drunk, hot girls made for a better story than Greek theater. 

You remember the raw, stinging look Jeonghan had in his eyes the next morning. He didn't even have to say anything, but you knew. The memory carves out an abyss in your chest. You knew you should have done better for your brother, but he didn’t even feel like your brother anymore. 

Still, actions have consequences, and this was a hell of a consequence. Even out here, the inconvenient reality of it seems closer than ever. but you're out of time. The night fades fast, especially ones like these. 

So you press your heart to Astrid's mane, the pale moon high over the both of you, and you ride. 

--

Late spring is kind to Acros. 

The tulips push their bright heads out of the dirt, winking and blazing in the daylight, and the green fields stretch so far they look like water. 

You had spent the car ride with your nose pressed to the window, watching all the sun-bleached buildings zip by. You mustn't ruin this for Jeonghan. It spins around in your head like an old pair of shoes in a washing machine. 

Now you stand in the grand foyer, your parents on either side of you. Jihoon hovers behind, holding the overstuffed duffel bag you had rushed to pack this morning. 

A hushed arrival such as this was unbecoming of your family, but it was necessary. your parents had stressed that the arranged part of the deal was not meant to be public knowledge because it was bad for optics. To you, the arrangement was actually the entire deal. That, and you and optics never exactly got along. 

Waiting for Joshua and his parents gives you a moment to observe what could be your new home, although you’re still waiting for the miraculous plot twist that will save you from your fate. 

That being said: you’ve set foot in plenty of nice places, but if HGTV ran segments for castles, this would certainly be the blueprint. It’s smaller than the palace in Cotria, but you like that—it’s cozier, less cold-seeming. 

The filigreed ceilings vault dizzyingly high, and the chandelier above the muraled walls is set afire with the noontime sun. the blushing azaleas cascade from their pots, and they line the hallways with joyous pops of white and pink. breaking the spell is the distant staccato of several sets of footsteps on marble, and you straighten your back, as if by divine command. 

Three figures approach you: Joshua and his parents. Even from a distance, you can see the trained walk of royalty, their shoulders straight enough to hold water. You’ll give credit where credit is due—they look even less thrilled to meet you than you are to meet them.

Unfortunately, up close, Joshua is more handsome than the cameras would betray. He's taller than you had imagined, too. without trying, it looks like he jumped out of a shitty Disney movie, one where the prince says two words and still gets the girl. More than that, you notice how his face is like glass—unwavering, cruelly still. One wrong move, and you'd break him. 

"Your highnesses," you say, lowering your head in a pronounced curtesy. 

Joshua bows in response, like clockwork. He reaches for your hand, then brings it to his lips to kiss the back of it. 

At once, you feel your hackles jump up, even though many a man has done far nastier to you. You can’t tell what pisses you off more: a, the fact that he smells like a hotel lobby, or b, that he managed to get his mouth on you in less than five seconds. 

"I'm elated we have the privilege of welcoming your daughter into our home," Joshua's mother says. Like him, she is staggeringly elegant and even harder to read. "She's beautiful." 

Fortunately, she has picked the one compliment that your parents can agree on without lying through their teeth. You watch them laugh and titter amongst themselves, and it's now that you notice Joshua has been looking at you this whole time.

You think look is too kind of a word, though. It's something colder than that, more clinical, and you really don't like it. Your stylist had spent upwards of two hours today in front of your vanity this morning, mostly in a losing battle with a pair of fake lashes, and you wonder if one of them is crooked. That, or Joshua is similarly wondering just how he will endure a life wedded to you. 

"Joshua, please," his mother chides, and you watch him almost immediately pivot towards her, like he’s on wheels. "Where are your manners? You should show the princess around. Get to know each other a bit before press tomorrow." 

Press. Of course. Your least favorite word. You vaguely remember your parents mentioning it in the car this morning, but it must have gotten lost among all the other terrible things they'd told you. 

Your head starts to hurt. Joshua keeps smiling at you, empty, doll-like.

"Yes, I'd love that," you say, feeling like a deflating balloon. You were hoping his company will be better than watching four grown adults fall all over each other, but you're starting to doubt that. 

Joshua offers you his arm, and you take it anyway. 

"We'll be off then," he chirps before bowing once more. His freakishly shiny shoe nudges yours to remind you to do the same. Begrudgingly, you listen, watching your shellacked, angry expression in the patina of his loafers. 

Not a good start, but what did you expect?

You tamp down your irritation and let him lead you into the Great Hall. It's a shiny, golden tunnel, studded with glossy oil paintings of his parents, his grandparents, then the next set of old people before them. Their eyes stare at you, pools of hazy paint in their moon faces. You briefly imagine your painting up there, with Joshua's hand hovering meekly over your waist, unused to being more than two feet away from a woman his age.

"It's nice to finally meet you," Joshua says. "I think I've only seen you in pictures." 

He's referencing the one of many “encounters” you've had with the paparazzi, a la yesterday night. They take trashy photos, overexposed and grainy from the camera flash, with your ass most likely in the frame. 

You choose to let it slide—you have no choice, really. At least you have an ass. 

"The pleasure is mine," you reply. "I believe you were at the cricket championships a few months ago, right?" 

"Correct. Do you watch? I don't believe I saw you." 

"No, but my brother was there." Your footsteps echo against the marbled walls. "Just trying to think of your last public appearance," you offer unhelpfully, since you and he both know those are few and far between. 

"That's right. He mentioned you were busy," Joshua replies. "Glastonbury was that weekend, was it not?" 

He's right. It was, but you don't like the insinuation he's making. You weren't at Glastonbury anyway—your parents wouldn't let you attend, and Jihoon was unwilling to come up with a cover story for you. Because you would rather watch paint dry than attend another cricket game, you instead spent it with takeout and reruns of Rupaul's Drag Race. 

"Can't recall," you answer. "Doesn't matter. I'm not one for cricket, anyway."

"Didn't know you had a choice."

You watch Joshua halfheartedly gesture to the Great Hall. The seemingly mile-long dinner table is empty now, save for a gratuitously piled fruit bowl. 

Your country frequently hosts guests, but the Hongs are notoriously insular. You imagine the four of you, crammed together at one end of the table, making horrendous small talk every morning over wilted danishes and raspberry preserves. Somehow, your mood worsens even more than you thought possible.

"Can I see the library?" you ask in an attempt to pivot. 

"Of course. Do you enjoy reading?" 

"A normal amount." You pass by another set of windows and take note of the rose garden outside, verdant with the May sunshine. Astrid has a bit of a penchant for eating roses, which would definitely complicate your plan to smuggle her in. No matter—you’ve done worse. "I studied political science at university, so I got a healthy dose of it." 

"Didn't we all?" Joshua chuckles.

He pushes the door open to the library, which is just as lavish as the rest of the palace. You wonder how well-worn it is, how many spines have creases in them, how many dedications were speckled with a funny annotation or two. But judging by first impressions, you wouldn't be surprised if all the books still had their dust jacket on. 

"I mean, I read an insane amount of Dan Brown," you reply. "Not many of us can say we've solved the Davinci code, you know." 

You hoped this would crack a laugh out of him, but his grin is thinner than an eyebrow from the 2000s. Truthfully, you would compare this conversation to a death by a thousand papercuts, but somehow that feels preferable to the guillotine of discussing the terms and conditions of your rapidly impending marriage. You feel as though that would be violating some rule you aren't yet aware of, and you're unwilling to endure the patent leather consequences of another faux pas. 

"I've heard of it," says Joshua after much thought. "My parents were shuttling me between meetings and private lessons, so, unlike some, I was quite busy during university." 

You're not about to explain that you were equally as busy as him. Something tells you that he'd be too prideful to believe you anyway. 

"How difficult. Surely you were able to have some fun," you say, your voice betraying your distaste. "Or were you too good for that?" 

Too far. 

"I did what my position allowed," is Joshua's terse reply, and you know you've crossed a line. Still, it dazes you that the man standing next to you may have never done anything for himself in his life. Even Jeonghan did, before your parents really tightened the reins. 

The air buzzes with a silence sharp enough to make you bleed. You wish literally anyone else was standing next to you, but you realize there are no more horses or emergency cabs or Jihoons to rescue you from this one. 

"How about I take you to our room? I hope you'll find it comfortable." 

You glance to your right to catch a glimpse of Joshua. He smiles, a dutiful press of the lips, and you watch it ripple.

--

"Jihoon, it is so much worse than I thought." 

You sit on the plush carpeting of your bedroom floor, amongst your small disaster of things. Jihoon examines you, one eyebrow raised, as he leans against the bedroom door. 

"He's not around, right?" 

Jihoon shakes his head.

"I don't get it," you sigh. "I go out. I get drunk. I have a little fun on the weekends. I don't see how any of this makes me a bad person." 

"You know how traditional your families are." Jihoon bends down to pick up a hair bow that jumped ship from the vanity. "It's just how it is." 

"He treats me like some high school delinquent. I tried, but he has no sense of humor. No joi de vivre. I think he would actually explode if he knew I went out two days ago." 

"Give it time," Jihoon supplies unhelpfully. "I don't know French, but he can't be that bad. You just met him." 

“Yeah. Usually that’s a good thing. I’ve fucked people i know less about.” 

Jihoon shakes his head and laughs, one of those little cackly ones he reserves for your company. 

"Well, you have been with worse," he tuts. "Definitely worse." 

"Jihoon, be serious. This is the rest of my life we're talking about." 

“I know." He draws his lips into a line, likely searching for the right thing to say. "This sucks. I wouldn't be good at this either." 

"You're talking to me. I don't think there's a single royal thing I can do right."

He's out of words, so he bends down to awkwardly pat you on the head, which, in all your years of knowing him, is the most affection he can muster. This is why you prefer horses to Jihoon for therapy, although you appreciate the effort. 

"I'd stay, but they want me to go to some meeting," he says, jerking his thumb towards the door. "I'll see you tomorrow." 

So he leaves you, desolate and linen-covered. Back to square one. 

The room seems to echo with how empty it feels. The bare walls are painted champagne, a rich, indifferent color. They soar to an arched ceiling lined with baroque crown moulding. There's a large window facing the garden, framed by deep green velvet. Atop the vanity cradled to the wall, the ivy of the wrought mirror curls at the edges, as if escaping. The chandelier hangs low, fat and pear-shaped, and its crystals douse the room in gauzy lamplight.

At least the canopy bed looks comfortable. It's the one thing keeping you from calling this place a veritable jail cell, which still seems like an understatement. For once, you miss your own bedroom. Granted, it didn’t look much different on the surface. but despite all the paneling and the heavy velvet, you still like to think it had some personality. You still keep your pillow pet on your bed (a horse named Robert). The back wall is chipped from a Gossip Girl poster your mom made you take down.  

Before you’re able to get too sentimental, the unwelcome sight of your future husband steals you from your thoughts. 

"Evening," Joshua says, stepping into the room. He's so quiet, it takes you aback. "Still unpacking?" 

"Sorry." You gesture around you. "I underestimated my ability to overpack."

"You should have told the staff," he says, surveying the damage. "Do you need help?" 

"No," you insist. Somehow the prospect of him getting on the ground to sort out all of your things upsets you, even more than him touching all of your unmentionables. "No. Please. Just ignore me."

"Alright." 

Joshua seems to take no issue with that, gratefully. He takes a seat on the chaise at the foot of the bed. He's got a copy of Anna Karenina under his arm, probably to weigh the pros and cons of cheating on you. You don't blame him—in fact, maybe it would make your doomed marriage exciting enough to be tolerable. 

"PR event tomorrow," you start, folding up a nightdress. "Bet you're excited for that." 

“As excited as one can be before announcing their arranged marriage," he replies dryly. "But surely you have enough experience with the press for the both of us." 

So that’s how he wanted to play. Fine. You wouldn’t let him walk all over you a second time. 

"Well, I'd hope all those classes you took would be good for something."

"That's rich, coming from the case study on bad media training." 

"Oh, please," you snap. "At least I know how to have a good time." 

"I was having a great time before I was informed this was happening." 

"Forgive me. I had no idea you were so invested in my personal life." You huff as you heave an oversized armful of clothes to the closet. “Think TMZ has any job openings?” 

"Very funny," he retorts. Joshua holds up a skimpy black dress that's fallen from your pile, one well acquainted with the midnight grease of one too many nightclubs. "You dropped this, by the way. I don't really think the nightlife here will be quite to your taste, though." 

"Oh right, because this is where happiness goes to die, huh?" You snatch it back from him, feeling the knot of anger in your gut flare. 

The room seems to pulse with an uncomfortable silence, red-hot with unsaid words. You recognize the all too familiar way Joshua sets his jaw back, and you're transported all the way to the study in the east wing, snoutless lion, terracotta steps, and all. He’s not any different from anyone else, so you’re not sure why you expected anything else. 

You do the only thing you can do—bite your tongue. 

"Look," you finally say, gathering the wherewithal to call for a truce. "I know that we didn't ask for this." 

Joshua laughs. Actually, it's the first time you've heard it since you've met, and it would be an otherwise tolerable, even nice, sound if it wasn't directed right at you.

"Right, because who doesn't want to have to babysit someone for the rest of their life?" 

You take a hard swallow.  You've both done enough damage for tonight, although you'd love to see his expression when you call him the live-action version of Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Maybe another time. 

Instead you think of Jeonghan, stuck in his meetings and sunk into this new, starched form of himself that you find difficult to recognize. Still, he's your brother, and you'd hate to see him suffer for it. 

"Stop. I'll be good," you say. "I promise. I know there's a lot at stake for the both of us." 

You can hear Joshua's long, drawn exhale. The furrow dug between his brows flattens out, and he seems to be reminded of everything they taught you both in Conflict Resolution 101. 

"I apologize. I got out of line," he says. You watch the cogs turn on that unfortunately pretty face of his. You hope he finally reveals that he has a much better, kinder personality that he was waiting to debut, but he doesn't. Instead he picks up yet another fallen item from your stash and hands it to you (this time, a much more presentable blouse). 

"I know we don't like each other—" You hold up a hand to interrupt him from lying to you. “—but we can do our best for the cameras. Because that matters. Hate me all you want in private." 

"Okay." He gives you a defeated look, which is all you suppose you'll get out of him today. "Deal." 

That night, there are no more backhanded compliments, quips, or mean-spirited attempts at sarcasm. 

You sink into your side of the bed, a damask-woven vat of quicksand, and watch the spears of light dance on the ceiling. If you had known your last outing was the one a few days ago, maybe you would have drank a little more, stayed out later. Maybe you wouldn't have even gone home. 

Joshua has been reading on the other side of the bed, which seems like oceans apart. The metronomic turn of his pages would have put you to sleep if it wasn't for this new fear, a black, trembling one, that's now taken residence in your chest. It feels like you are further from yourself than you've ever been, and you don't know how to get back. 

"Is it too bright for you?" Joshua's voice, now tempered by the stillness of the evening, pulls you out of your thoughts. "I can turn the lamp off." 

"It's ok," you groan. "Can't really sleep. Don't worry about it." 

He doesn't say anything. Instead you hear the oiled pull of the bedside nightstand before he places something on the bed beside you.

It's a book. Specifically, one of those trashy romances that they only sell at the airport because no one would be brave enough to read them anywhere else.

"It's no Dan Brown," he says. "Hopefully still to your liking." 

You sit up against the headboard and flip through the pages. The prince of Acros owning a book with the words "juicy", "mewling", and "best friend's brother" in the first fifty pages are enough to tide you over for the night. Probably the next week, to be honest.

"Yes, indeed, your highness. Of the raunchy summer fling." 

Joshua smiles, and this time, you think it's a real one. 

--

You hate mornings. 

You thought this one would be different, probably due to the fact that you would soon be standing in front of a few too many cameras to announce your tragic fate to the entire world. Unfortunately, it's like all your other mornings—rushed, nauseous, and now with all the added anxiety of a semi-non consensual public appearance. 

"Five minutes!" you holler as best you can, a hair pin wiggling in the corner of your mouth. Rule number one of a hard launch: don't be caught looking complacent. Even if the other half of the launch would rather be with anyone other than you. 

Joshua's in the attached bathroom doing his hair. Like everything else he does, it is painfully calculated. He might be the only person in the world who takes "pea-sized" seriously as a measurement tool. 

But even as he so carefully measures his pomade, pump by pump, you don't miss the way his eyes skim over your figure as you lean over the vanity chair to apply your lipstick. Maybe it's because your ass is practically vacuum sealed into your sundress, or maybe he's just looking for another fight to pick. Either way, there's a small part of you that takes pride in this, even if just a little. 

"Ready?" Joshua asks, switching off the bathroom light. You hate to admit it, but he looks good in a sports jacket. You remind yourself that you had to literally rock-paper-scissors this morning to use the vanity mirror because you fogged the bathroom up after your shower. "It's not a pageant." 

"Shush. You are so rude. Never interrupt a girl when she's getting ready." 

In the mirror, you watch Joshua huff behind you. Then he procures a little black box from his pocket, and a crazy sort of feeling washes over you before you remind yourself to be normal. Ten-year-old you would have cried and threatened arson if she knew this is how you would eventually be proposed to, but you have no choice. 

You're sure Joshua feels the same. He was probably hoping for something classic with all the works, and instead he's got a pissed-off Jihoon and you, internationally renowned harlot. Funny how things turn out.

"Any minute now," bitches Jihoon from the other side of the door. 

You close your compact and turn around to face Joshua, who's still fumbling with the box.

"I'm sure this is not what you anticipated," he says, finally cracking it open. “But—" 

"No speech. Just put it on." You stick your left hand out, still glittery from last week’s manicure. "Not like it means much anyway." 

"Yeah."

And just like that, it is done. You feel the shock of Joshua's huge hands over yours, then the unceremonious bite of the cold band. He doesn't linger. 

You hold your newly engaged hand in front of you. The ring must have looked better in the box—on you, it seems out of place, gaudy, yet another thing you can't quite fit into. It squeezes your finger a bit, but it'll do. 

"Ready?" he asks. 

"Let's get this over with."

If romance wasn’t already dead, then it died here, today, in your prison cell bedroom. 

You have no time to lament this, as Joshua’s already half out the door. Quickly, he seems to shed his foul, argumentative inside personality and slip into a second-skin, one that is more poised, gracious, and luminous.

Today's objective is supposed to be simple: friendly, premarital pictures to accompany a written statement to the public announcing your engagement. No paparazzi, no journalists. Still, you're starting to see why your parents decided it was a good idea to stick you with this guy. 

In the foyer, your families await you. It's as if their gaze can slow time—at least four people approved your outfit, and still, the weight of their eyes on you, ever appraising, is crushing. Immediately, your mother starts rearranging the strands of hair on the top of your head and fiddling with the sleeves of your dress, like you're some sort of doll. 

"Come, come," a member of the PR team urges. "Everything is set up. We'll be quick." 

There's a frenetic, tense energy over the palace. It's clear that this marriage is a gambit no one is happy with, and today would make it very, very real. 

Outside, there is a lone photographer. The sun, morning-ripe, reflects off his camera lens like a third eye. The lawn, freakishly green, sprawls out around you, and the blue spruce frames the scene, perfect by design. 

"I just need you to stand next to each other and smile," he says. "That's all, right?" he directs this towards your PR team, about seven too many for a task like this. One of them whispers something in his ear. Your parents watch from the shaded doorstep like wax figures in a museum. 

You and Joshua stand shoulder to shoulder, yearbook photo style. 

"Bit closer," the photographer calls out, and you smush yourself against his arm, close enough that you can appreciate he's got some muscle on him. "Alright. Hold still." 

Click. You've always hated the flash, but you root yourself obediently to the concrete. Your cheeks hurt from smiling. Click. 

Your mother interrupts her conversation with a staff member—likely haggling over the minutia of the statement—and says, "Look happier," as if you're in some dystopian advertisement for a new car. 

"She's talking to you," Joshua says through the grit of his fake, pink smile. 

"Right, because you're such a peach." 

You just want to go back inside and have breakfast. 

You place a tentative hand on Joshua's bicep and turn to him, beaming like you would at a hot bartender when there are five other people waiting for a drink. 

There's a glimmer of surprise in his expression before he matches you. You can see why people dote on him so much—his cheeks get round, and his eyes magically gain the sparkles that people pay for on Facetune. God really seems to have wasted a perfect face on him. 

"Move your hand up so we can see the ring." You obey, feeling the firm cord of his arm underneath you, and you wonder where the gym is in the palace. Joshua was certainly gatekeeping it from you. "Perfect." 

You stand there, living your America's Next Top Model nightmare, before the photographer hits you with, "A kiss for the camera, yeah?" 

All the blood drains from your face. You think you actually say Huh? aloud. Joshua opts to turn to his parents to intervene, which would be funny in literally any other scenario except this one. 

"You heard him," his father replies. "Act like you're actually engaged." 

Honestly, it was a fair request. No one wanted to take any chances. Plausible rumors of an arranged marriage would backfire spectacularly. Jeonghan wouldn't see the front cover of anything ever again, and the entirety of Acros would wonder just how deep in the shitter they were that Joshua was forced to marry you. 

Your parents were already so far into the conspiracy, you overheard them talking about using unpublished paparazzi pictures and rebranding them as times you snuck off to see your unfortunate lover. Point taken. 

"Okay, okay," you laugh nervously. "Of course." 

You face Joshua, steeling yourself, and lean in. The world seems to fall away, but not how you like—it feels as though you've been sucked out of your own body and dropped into a new one that doesn't know what a kiss is or how to do it. 

He's just like anyone else, you tell yourself. You're at the club. They're playing Everytime We Touch by Cascada. 

Soon all you know is the heat of your cheeks, the shaking flat of your palm over Joshua's shoulder, and the wet pressure of what feels like a pair of lips, soft but also very unwilling. 

Click. Click. Then it's over. Everyone huddles around the camera, like animals to a watering hole. Shame, hot and heavy, seems to drape itself over you. 

"Can we get one more?" the photographer asks.

Fuck. Your stomach drops. You can't even glare at Joshua. 

"Sure thing," Joshua says easily, unaware he was the reason it went so badly in the first place. 

You take a deep breath. You imagine a good Kylie Minogue song and a tall stranger with pecs that could fit into a bra, and your eyes flutter shut. 

You decide to go for it this time. Unfortunately, you and your inept partner are on entirely opposite pages again, and you almost miss each other by a mile. When you do get it right, it's messy, two teenagers fumbling in a closet with the lights off. 

Once everyone sees this massacre, it seems they resign themselves to the same conclusion you had long ago. Someone throws a thumbs up above their head, and everyone clears out so fast, it's like nothing ever happened. 

Soon, it's just you, Joshua, and your mother with a red pen and the manuscript. Your heart is still buzzing in your chest, even though you and Joshua are now standing at a distance that makes you believe in the cheese touch again. 

"Now that wasn’t so bad," she says, before escorting the two of you back inside. Perhaps lying cushions the blow of a bad decision, but you're already in too deep. The script, the cameras, even your mother's glossy words—your life is starting to feel like a permanent movie set, and you don't know how to clock out. 

The first thing you do is take off the ring. It's starting to look more and more like costume jewelry on your untrained, bumbling hand. Even still, you can still feel its ghost on your finger, see the glare of the camera flash in the laser-cut facets. 

Worse, you watch Joshua shrug off his sport jacket, likely wondering how exactly that went so wrong, and you can feel that same sensation, still warm, right over your lips.

--

"Save me, red wine, save me." 

Home, sweet home. You're back in Cotria for the rest of the week. This morning's stint was the only thing you had on the schedule, and you told Joshua you had some business to attend to at home. 

Said business was a Niçoise salad and half a bottle of wine, but no one had to know that part. Your struggle meals were your own business, and you think you will actually disintegrate on the spot if you have to sit through another conversation about World War II with Joshua's dad. The one you had at dinner last night was plenty. 

The restaurant you’re at is a familiar haunt, but not too familiar. The ass-kissers and the groupies have gotten good at keeping their heads on a swivel, and you’re not exactly planning on another encounter with a camera. But here, the crowd is quiet enough, the food good enough, the service fast enough. It’s enough, which you’ve come to prefer. 

That's the other thing about Cotria—there’s an overabundance of everything. Department stores, parlors, dog cafes, polished bars with overpriced cocktails. It’s almost a rarity to find a place like this, quiet enough to actually talk. 

"You must be in the fucking trenches," Somi says, shaking her head. "When's the press release getting published?"

"Next week," you groan. "The good news is that they want us to go to the derby afterward."

"Okay, miss horse girl," Somi says, clinking her wine glass against yours. "You betting this year?" 

"No, I shouldn't." You shovel another forkful of leaves into your mouth. "But I really hope I get to watch it instead of pretending to like a guy the whole time." 

"I didn't see you pretending in uni," Somi says, cocking an eyebrow up at you. "And those guys are ugly. This guy isn't." 

"Okay, wait," you protest. "Ugly cute. Don't get it twisted. And they don't act like sentient wet paint. This guy sucks." 

You're reminded of the moment before you left the palace this morning. Joshua saw that same black dress that he used against you make its way into your bag, and he gave you the dirtiest stink eye you'd ever seen. 

I'm not above tattling. They were the first words he'd said to you after The Incident. 

Good thing you won't have to, you replied. He didn't even see you out because no one was standing around to clap him on the back for being a good fake fiancé. 

"Whatever." Somi picks a tomato off your plate in exchange for some of her fries. "I wouldn't mind it, is what I'm saying." 

"You slept with the bouncer to get into Annabel’s." 

"Fuck off. He was actually really good. Club entry was just a bonus," she laughs. "That reminds me—you're coming to my birthday, right? Or do you have wifely duties now?" 

"Of course I'm coming!" you insist, feeling the word duty hit like an actual bullet to your chest. "I wouldn't miss it for the world." 

"Just making sure! You know I gotta have my people around." 

You had known Somi since you were in diapers. She's the cousin twice removed of a baron, or a count, or maybe even a viscount–you never were good at keeping track of those kinds of things. Even though you had seen her at countless brunches, coronations, and garden parties, you don't think you actually became friends until you ran into her at a college party in Mykonos. She sidled up to you, smelling like strawberries and the bleachy sting of hair dye, and handed you a cucumber margarita. 

The beer here sucks, she had whisper-shouted to you, right over the shell of your ear. Wanna dance? You were inseparable ever since. 

"It's going to be huge. There are, like, 200 people on the guest list right now. Soonyoung rented a villa, There's gonna be a champagne tower, and the music won't suck. Guaranteed." 

"That sounds perfect," you sigh. "Please tell me there's gonna be a pool. I need to show off my new swimsuit." 

"Duh." Somi rolls her eyes, glittery under her extensions. "The perfect opportunity to show the world that their hottest bachelorette is a bachelorette no longer. Also, we invited Pitbull.” 

“Shut the fuck up. Wait, is he actually coming?” 

”Dunno. Wouldn’t be very Mr. Worldwide of him to flake, though.” 

Pitbull or not, you think of the heat of the strobe lights, the electric trill of the too-loud speakers. You're dancing in a dress that looks like a chunk of the moon, with the little neon ties of your bikini top peeking out the sides. There's a peach highball in your hands and no one is telling you what to do, how to do it, or that you're doing it wrong. 

Then you think of Joshua. Maybe he'd loosen up after a few drinks. Maybe he'd dance with you, put those hands to use on your hips and kiss you like he should have earlier today. Maybe he'd even be good at it. The thought makes your cheeks sting.

“Should I invite Joshua?” Somi says, wrinkling her nose at how you immediately grimace. “What if he’s actually a blast?” 

"No! No. Absolutely not." 

“What if he’s—” Then she drops her singsong voice to a whisper. “Hung? Don’t tell me you haven’t seen those pictures of him in the Galapagos.” 

Unfortunately, you have. A lurid, glassy image of your soon-to-be-husband in a sleazy pair of swim trunks comes into vision. You push past the smile, the unfair pecs, and remind yourself of that horrible, self-righteous twist of the lips that he always has. 

Yes, that’s right. That’s the Joshua you know. 

You grab the wine from her and drink it right from the bottle. 

–

Of course it had to be the one time you’re not late to an event that you forget you had swapped everything in all your purses around. You double check your bag—empty. 

You’re already down by half of your worldly possessions (still at home, your real home), and you probably left the other half on Joshua’s bathroom counter. Yesterday, you got derailed mid-task by Joshua lighting the grossest candle ever. You never thought you’d ever fight over candles of all things, but you couldn’t let him walk away from that conversation thinking wet dirt was a normal, socially acceptable, scent for a bedroom. (—It said moss on the label! —So, dirt. —Moss is not dirt. Maybe you need to go back to school.) 

You fling open the bathroom door, still checking the pockets of your handbag, before you collide into a big, sopping wet wall. 

“What the—?” You look up. The wall is not a wall. No, in fact, it is your fiancé, bare fucking naked. 

Your heart jumps up to your throat. It feels like you walked right into a porno, and you can hear Somi’s self-satisfied, witch cackle right in your ear. His dark hair seems to fall into his eyes just right, a nice change from how he normally gels it up, and you watch the beads of water from the shower, torturously glittery, run down his jaw, the hollow of his neck, right onto his chest. 

Men should not be allowed to have bigger boobs than you, at least, not dowdy Joshua Hong, who normally has the sex appeal of an eraser. And God forbid your eyes travel downward and confirm Somi’s sick and twisted hypothesis, past the washboard abs, the v-line, the trail down his— 

“Sorry, did you need something?” You blink again and Joshua suddenly has a towel wrapped around his waist. And he’s eyeing you like you ate a million cloves of garlic and then proceeded to spit on him. “Or are you just going to stand here and ogle me?” 

“I wasn't—no!” You start snatching things off the counter, anything really, and throwing them into your bag. “I just needed to grab stuff for my… my thing. You’re in the way.” 

“Right, because you need four q-tips and my razor to read a children’s book,” Joshua replies, plucking the offending items out of your purse. “It's almost 12:30, by the way.” 

“Shit. Fuck,” you stammer. You can’t glare at him anymore because you know where your eyes will end up and it is not on his face. “Stop distracting me. Whatever.” 

“Have fun,” is the last thing Joshua tells you before you close the bathroom door, that portal to hell, right back up. 

What you can’t do is return the image of what you saw back to where it came from, the wicked, glistening form of Joshua and his B cup tits. He looked so good, it makes you angry. 

Later, on the walk to the library, you reach for your lip gloss. Instead, you pull out q-tip number five and get mad all over again. 

��

The car ride to the derby feels like your own personal Saw trap, if Jigsaw wore a ridiculous hat and was actually your mother. 

Your engagement was announced to the public just a few days ago. It came with no fanfare, no warning. You were sitting on your bed, making your way through the smut Joshua called a novel, when the news app on your phone kindly notified you that you were now a taken woman. 

To some degree, the media uproar fascinated you. The idea that people with actual journalism degrees were writing headcanons about your honeymoon when you hadn’t even seen Joshua since The Bathroom Incident was surely entertaining, to say the least. But, like everything, the unsaid pressure of being a perfect princess, now part of an even more perfect couple, hangs heavy over you. 

You remind yourself this is supposed to be fun. A real couple would be pawing at each other in the backseat, perhaps pregaming with champagne or fan-casting their pick for Spirit the horse. Instead, you’re stuck rehearsing your pitch to the reporters when they inevitably ask you about how the hell this happened. You wish you could tell them you’re not quite sure either. 

Silently, you look at Joshua. Joshua looks out the window. The world rumbles under you. 

[10:15 am, race 1]

The air seizes, swirls with clay-colored dust in the morning sun. The clubhouse is already heady with the low buzz of conversation—you watch the freckled sunhats and oily toupees bob up and down in the swell of the crowd, deep in the morning’s small talk. You wonder how many of them are talking about you, given how recently the news hit. You’re used to people ignoring your media appearances, not celebrating them. 

Someone, tipping their head down to greet you, hands you a program. Joshua elects to tuck his in his back pocket. People don’t come to the derby to watch the races. Instead, it’s an excuse to gossip, day drink, and gamble, which would ordinarily be a good time for you if you weren’t overly invested in the racing circuit. 

All the way from the entrance to your seats, you were met with a tidal wave of camera flashes, all hungry for a glimpse of your first public appearance as a couple. Alongside this, a decidedly worse flurry of congratulations paired with an overly familiar touch to the shoulder or a limp handshake. Joshua is quick to respond with either a smile or some trite platitude. Your least favorite: We couldn’t be happier. Now he’s just lying for sport. 

“We should find the reporters doing interviews,” Joshua says the second his ass touches the chair, unfazed by the onslaught of perhaps a million different people. “The Sun probably wants to talk to us.” 

You’re not listening—you can’t let on that this whole ordeal is mildly terrifying for you. He has enough reasons to dislike you, and stage fright wouldn’t exactly be a good addition to the list. 

The racehorses have lined up at the track, their manes catching the daylight like holy fire. You like the one on the end. He looks like Peanut, Jeonghan’s stubborn palomino. 

Joshua says your name insistently, curdled with the annoyance that you’ve now become acquainted with, and you catch a stray camera flash from the stands. You have an audience, and the audience demands a show, even if they’re second-rate journalists like the scum from The Sun.  

“Darling,” you reply flatly. “Relax. Let's enjoy the races.” 

The horses stretch their long legs, anxious for the thunderclap of the starter’s pistol. Joshua raises a tired eyebrow before the same realization dawns on him. 

“Absolutely.” He clears his throat. “Darling.” 

You wrap a hand around his arm—somehow he makes hand-holding seem like third base—and watch his shoulders sink with a sigh, like you just popped him. 

Likewise, your highness. Likewise. 

A shot crackles through the air, and you’re off to the races. 

[12:43 pm, race 2.]

"I just have to know—how did you guys meet?" 

You know the duchess of Pemarlia to be beautiful and unashamedly nosy, and she has yet to prove you wrong on either account. 

The last time you saw her was on the beach at Lake Como last year, where she spent the entirety of your conversation asking if Jeonghan was single (and peeking into your bag to see what brand of lipstick you were wearing). Like everyone, she always seems to have a look of appraisal on her face. What makes her different is that she never really bothers to hide it; instead, she wears it like an en-vogue accessory. 

She eyes you with an intensity, sizing up your dress, your tawdry sunhat, your ring. You wonder if she’d agree that marriage didn’t look good on you, but any shorter of a dress, your mother would call you a stripper. And God forbid you leave the house hat-less. 

Now she’s no minotaur. This shouldn’t be much of a problem, save for one very small issue: you actually hadn’t planned your answer to this. You had quibbled over it briefly in the car, but you were too focused on your interview pitch to worry about minor gossip. 

"Well," Joshua starts. Through his smile, you can hear the warning edge of his voice. “It was quite ordinary.” 

"Actually," you cut him off. Not only would his version of this story be boring, it would also be horribly out-of-character for you. You did not come this far for your cover to be blown by Joshua’s lack of imagination. "Josh's parents hosted a—" 

"Brunch," Joshua finishes. Whether his teeth are gritted because he's grinning or frustrated is none of your business. “It was Easter brunch, wasn’t it, sweet pea? Four years ago?” 

The pet name makes you want to puke. Now he’s just trying to piss you off, but you know this is his attempt to play along. He's annoying, not dumb. 

"Yes, we sat across from each other.” You playfully dig your elbow into Joshua’s rock-hard side. “He was giving me the eyes the whole time.” 

You watch your hapless victim giggle, her spidery lashes wide with intrigue. Joshua is a little less pleased. 

“If you could call it that,” he replies. “I think you had chocolate on your nose.”

“Which you so kindly wiped off for me, dear.” You try to peek around the flaxen billows of the duchess’s blowout to watch the horses behind her, but to no avail. “After a morning of staring, we had to do an Easter egg hunt, planned by Joshie himself. I had no idea he loved silly little games like that.” 

“It's because people like the princess get so competitive,” Joshua says, with his laser beam grin boring into your eye sockets. “I believe I found you rummaging through the trash for eggs, like some kind of animal.” 

“Oh my goodness,” the duchess laughs. “How...charming.”  

You feel your eyebrow twitch. Only you’re allowed to ruin your own reputation, but you suppose that’s just another thing your horrible fake fiance gets to take from you. 

“Not as embarrassing as seeing Joshua leer at me from behind the corner,” you retort. “He was so enamored that when I invited him to join me, he got right down on his knees to look through the trash together.” 

“Well, did you find anything?” 

“Yes—”

“No—”

“Well—”

Fuck. Luckily, the duchess is either stupid or wildly entertained by the clown show playing out before her. Maybe both. 

“Cute,” she coos. “You must have been too smitten to notice.” 

“Absolutely,” Joshua says, as if there is a gun held to his pretty head. “Among all the garbage and the girl next to me, I suppose nothing else really mattered.” 

“If that isn’t love, what is?” she asks blithely. 

If only she knew. 

[3:45 pm, race 3]

The sun descends on the stadium, swollen and yellow with the afternoon. 

Last year, you and your friends had a betting ring set up during the racing circuit. Obviously, you had won—not too hard when your competition included Soonyoung, who only bet on horses named after food (sadly, it was not Tater Tot’s year). Somi was no better, and your brother thought every horse deserved a participation award.

This time around, things aren’t so simple. But you’d hate to say that you spent a whole day at the track and didn’t bet on a single race. Life could afford you at least one win for today. 

Again, the horses take their positions at the starting line, wound up like a line of rubber bands. The air heaves with bated breath. 

“Joshua,” you say, folding your hands in your lap as you find your target. “I'd like to propose a bet.” 

“You must be a glutton for punishment.” 

You bite back a laugh as you watch your favorite horse, the palomino, ripple in place. Fans would call her a charity case, but you know better. 

“Pick a horse. Mine is number Three, in the blue.” 

“And if mine wins? What’s in it for me?” he asks. Still, he leans forward, corded forearms on his thighs. You watch him squint as he surveys the field with renewed interest. 

“You pick,” you reply. “Choose wisely. I personally cannot wait to call in a favor from you.” 

“The chestnut one. Number Nine.” So he is competitive. “And likewise. Perhaps I'll hold it over your head until the wedding.” 

Before you can reply, you hear the starting pistol rip clean into the air. The racehorses surge forward, as if a silken ribbon through air. 

“Nine makes sense for you,” you say, eyes fixed before you. “He's flashy, the crowd favorite. Spotless pedigree.” 

“I'm picking your punishment already.” 

“I didn't say he would win.” You feel the lilt of your voice rocking upward, the tremulous beat of your heart against your ribs. “You see, Three’s had a rough season. There she is, passing Four right now.” 

“Nine is still first, though.” 

“It’s not about that,” you reply. “She does this, she starts all the way out back and then flies up. No one suspects anything—it’s like she likes proving people wrong. The first couple races of the season, she was just stretching her legs; they were small, small fry. It’s this one that matters.” 

The saddles are just blurs on the track now. To the march of the hoofbeats, Three lunges past Five, Six. The crowd roars. 

“This will be her first win. I'm counting on it. She’s come really close before.” 

Joshua doesn’t reply. Out of the corner of your eye, you see his gaze has shifted. You feel it land somewhere near you, but you’re too engrossed in the race to investigate further. Perhaps he’s admitted defeat preemptively, wisely so. 

“You know your stuff,” he murmurs, the clamor of the audience almost burying him. 

“How can I not?” Three coasts past One and Ten like she’s flying, until it’s just her and unlucky number Nine. “Oh my god. Go, go, go!” 

You and Joshua rise to your feet, as if drawn by a string, now wholly invested in the race. 

“Still beating you, you know.” 

“Not for long! Come on!” 

You watch your darling number Three, against all odds, pull past Joshua’s number Nine, burning a trail past the inevitable finish line. 

From somewhere inside you emerges a joy that you hadn’t felt since this whole ordeal started. You turn to Joshua and clasp his hands between yours, somehow less wooden now, and so, so human. The crowd cheers; they come alive. 

[4:50 pm, races 4 and 5. mainly, the reporter from the sun.] 

The smaller races take place shortly after the headliner, for better or for worse. This forces you to finally face the music—the music being a dull-eyed, greasy journalist ready to sink his teeth into the public’s new favorite topic. 

Joshua is a good sport about it, or at least, he’s good at pretending to be one. 

“It was great,” is his answer to a question you didn’t hear. You’re busy going over the parts of the script that you remember. Your media team spent the better part of the morning repeating it back to you, which was helpful until it wasn’t. You weren’t sure how to tell them you’ve actually never been good at speaking to the press, since you had spent the better half of your life doing the exact opposite. 

“And what did the princess think? It’s not often we catch you for an interview, you know.” 

The eye of the camera seems to pierce through you. You can see your shellacked figure, long and distorted, in the reflection. 

“I—um,” you swallow hard. God. Pull it together. You can already hear the lecture you’re going to get on the way home today. “Yeah, big day today.”

“She’s had to really rein in her excitement, you know,” Joshua adds, chuckling. 

Briefly, you feel his hand brush against yours. Ordinarily, you’d pass it off as a fluke, but you feel the steady, insistent warmth of his palm again, first, to the inside of your wrist, then lower still. Before you’re able to really process what’s happening, he then takes your hand in his all at once, as if to say, I’ve got this. I’ve got you. 

You figure he’s cashing in his favor early–he’d much rather leave you out to dry, let you flounder a bit so you learn to read the PR memorandums the night before. I told you so, he’d say. That’s what everyone else would say, anyway. 

“The races are sure exciting, but I'm sure you’re even more excited about your upcoming wedding.” The reporter grins at you, as if he smells your fear. His hair looks like it’s glued to the top of his shiny head. “If I'm going to be honest, you were one of the last people we’d expect to tie the knot this year. We are all dying to hear more.” 

What? You force yourself to breathe, feel the air fill your lungs, to avoid making an expression you’ll regret. 

“Well, yeah, I'm sure it looks like it all happened quickly,” you answer, feeling your tongue trip over the words. Mostly because it did, in fact, happen quickly, but you can’t let them know that. “But Josh and I feel strongly about, uh, this whole thing, and—”

“Please, don’t spare us the details.” 

Telepathically, Joshua squeezes your hand. This, you understand. He’s telling you to lean on him, and you trust that. 

“Hold your horses,” he cuts in, almost too quickly, which makes the corners of your mouth twitch upward. He was definitely looking for an opening, but you, bizarrely, don’t mind at all. He turns to you and smiles. “What's the fun without a little mystery? It's been a wild ride, but I'm loving every second of it.” 

It’s this one, the lamest and most embarrassing dad joke of them all, that gets you. 

You laugh: a real one, big, loud, and unafraid. It's here, caught in the glare of the camera flash, where you find yourself hoping, even just a little, that this wasn’t just a favor, that this was a sign you could actually survive this arrangement. 

You’re not asking for love—just a little bit of like. and, right now, you think you like Joshua Hong. 

—

In the evening, you find yourself in the oaken parlor nestled away in the back halls of the Acrosian palace. 

There's a piano there, gathering dust. It's a Steinway, spindly and chestnut, almost identical to the one you have at the palace in Cotria. 

You and Jihoon had been unpacking your hodgepodge of things (unsorted, since the act of sorting would have forced you to stomach the fact that you were actually moving), when he had found your old lesson books. 

You should break in that piano, he had said. Either that, or wait for your fiance to find you. He seemed ok at the derby today. 

I guess. 

What Jihoon hadn’t seen was all the photographs you had to take after your interview with The Sun, where Joshua decided to remind you that you were supposed to hate him. By that, you mean that he managed to make every single one unbearable. (A tap of the foot: Stand up straight. A careful brush of the elbow: Let’s link arms. A discerning, tactful glance at your chest: Pull up your dress. That, or he was no better than the average man.) 

You and he hadn’t talked much after that. Hopefully, he’s fled to your cold, dark dungeon of a room to read, so he can finally leave you alone.

“Remember when your parents invited all their friends over and asked you to play?” Jihoon says, perched on the loveseat while he sorts through an old jewelry box. 

“Yeah, and I literally forgot everything?” you laugh. “Freaking Jeonghan had to check on me because I locked myself in my room for 24 hours straight. And then he had the nerve to laugh at me.” 

You thumb through the fattest book of the pile. The binding is soft; the pages now yellow and fuzzed over by time. 

On page 5, Chopin's Waltz in A-flat major. three four time or whatever, you had scrawled in defiant red ink. Page 37, a thick black line through Debussy's name on Arabesque No. 1. This is because you would always laugh at it during lessons, and you wanted to save yourself the trouble. 

“Do you want to keep this?” Jihoon holds up a choker that resembles a jock strap. “When did you even wear this? It looks like a cat toy.” 

You ignore him and start to play. You were never excellent—competent would be a better word. Still, it was enough for you. Soonyoung would ask you to play during drunk karaoke, and you could still keep up with Jeonghan when he played one of his overcomplicated duets. 

Your hands remember the velvet thud of the keys, the glide of the pedal. When you turn the page, there’s a scrawled in BITCH! next to a heavily circled allegro. Piano was one of the only things that your parents forced you to do that you actually liked. The kicker was that it didn’t even do you any good. You weren’t as talented as your parents would like you to be, meaning that, to them, you weren’t talented at all. 

It’s then that your fingers slip, and you miss a chord. In your defense, you have a fresh manicure. Always blame the nails. Your mom hated when you kept them long, even more than your hardass tutor.  

“The prince is helping with the theater production this year, right?” Jihoon holds a single earring up to the light. You think you lost the other one in Ibiza last year. “You gonna help out again?” 

“Maybe.” Another wrong note. You’re losing steam trying to read all the ledger lines and your smeared, illegible writing next to them. “I don't know. He probably won’t even want me to. I'm choosing a different piece, by the way. Bored of this one.” 

The truth about your 21st birthday was that you did actually intend to spend it at the youth theater. It was your idea before it was Jeonghan’s idea, but, at the time, you both still were a package deal.

You were on piano; Jeonghan was on whatever else he pleased. He'd always been indecisive like that. At the bench, you’d hoist the little ones on your knee and regale them with the classical version of the opening song from paw patrol. Jeonghan stole prop masks from the back, mostly to hide behind the curtains and scare people, you included. You’d both stay up late, paint spackled on your palms, trying to Michelangelo a backdrop with the combined artistic talent of a TI-84. 

The production became your thing, just you and him, no cameras, no press releases, no parents. But like everything else, neither you, Jeonghan, nor anyone else was able to keep those inevitable truths apart. The set pieces were repainted in Italy, the finger-painted fields turned luminescent with varnish; the pins and needles in the costumes swapped with mother-of-pearl; and, finally, you, replaced by a classically trained pianist from Juilliard. At least he was hot. 

Everyone knows the rest of the story—the red carpet, the empty seats, and the puffy pink balloons outside the mansion in Saint Tropez. 

“Oh please,” Jihoon wheedles. “You and I both know he wanted you there.” 

“Then maybe he should have fought harder.” You flip to a random page, this one marked up in pink gel pen. You remember it bled through all the pages behind it, making it a pain to read but awfully funny during lessons. “It doesn't matter. There’s probably wedding stuff i gotta deal with.” 

Jihoon lets you play this next piece uninterrupted. It’s not that it’s a sensitive subject for you—there were plenty of other things that filled the wedge between you and your brother—but it certainly didn’t help. 

You let your fingers wander over the stubborn keys. It feels good to play, even if you’re almost unforgivably rusty. You reach for the page, when you hear Jihoon again: “You know, you’re allowed to come in, your highness.” 

Immediately, your hands freeze. Like a scolded child, you become aware of how your fingers teeter over the keys, the stumbling, awkward clacking of your nails, the one or two missed quarter notes from the last measure. 

You turn to face the door, where Joshua stands, leaning against the frame like a sleazy model from an Abercrombie catalog. He probably came from the gym. Seeing him dressed down is still very weird, mostly because you can’t decide if it’s because he looks good or if it’s because it reminds of seeing your teacher at the grocery store. 

“Anyone teach you manners?” you ask, unsure if your hackles should be raised. 

“No, I was raised in a barn, just like those horses you like so much,” he laughs. “I didn’t want to interrupt. You’re not bad, you know.” 

“Thanks.” You eye him skeptically. “Thought you were gonna comment on the nails.” 

“Do you want me to?” 

“Preferably not, but it’s not like you‘d listen to me anyway.” You look for Jihoon’s reaction, but he seems to have conveniently disappeared. “Let’s play a duet. I’m cashing in my favor.” 

“Sure,” Joshua replies. “I'm no good, though. Might be more of a punishment for you.” 

You slide over on the bench, and he sidles up next to you. He smells like Le Labo and sweat, the sting citrusy and bright, close enough to linger. 

“No good?” You pick up another fat book from the stack atop the lid: The Joy of Duets. “Me neither.” 

“You have no idea,” he chuckles. “And trust me, I tried.”  

“I’ll do top?” you announce. 

Joshua snickers, and you kick him under the bench (really, just a tap of your foot). 

You spend the next two minutes tripping over a Schubert piece. Terribly, this is endearing to you. You make somewhat of a couple—you, with your horrible form, and Joshua, now squinting at the key signature like it’ll make it easier to read.

“Buddy,” you exclaim. “Left hand goes here.” Laughing, you reposition his hand mid-chord to an octave below. You feel it tense beneath you before yielding to proper technique. 

“Aw, what?” he whines. “See, I told you I was no good. Give me a second.” 

You watch him puzzle over the next few lines, pretty brow furrowed. You conclude that Pajama Joshua is decidedly better than Prince Joshua. He’s funnier, kinder, warmer. Even his hands feel softer. 

“Also, about earlier today,” you start. The words are starting to dry up on your tongue, but you figure Pajama Joshua is an easier target than usual. “I didn't know they trained you in stand-up comedy.” 

“We laugh in this country too, you know.” When Joshua says this, he grins, bumping into your shoulder like you’d been friends for a long time. For once, it feels easy, natural. 

“Well, thanks anyway.” 

“I couldn't leave my fiancée out to dry.” The word must sound ridiculous even to him, because he laughs just the same as he did when he unloaded his ridiculous puns onto the unassuming world. “No really. We’re in this together, unfortunately. It’s my duty.” 

Duty, both the knife and the wound. You can’t say you’re surprised he’s only nice to you out of obligation. So is everyone else, and you don’t know why you thought it’d be any different, especially coming from him. It’s not like you’re wearing your ring now either; you suppose you’re just as guilty. 

“You cross over here,” you tell him, changing the topic. You slide your hand over his, and it bends to you. “Thumb under. Sorry, I couldn't help but notice.” 

“It's ok,” Joshua replies. “I only learned piano because I had to. When I stopped going to lessons, I forgot everything. Now I feel like I put this piano to shame.” 

“Really? Not to stroke your ego, but you strike me as the type to be good at everything.” 

“No,” he chuckles. “Only when I have to be. I actually wanted to learn how to play guitar.” 

“No way.” 

“Yes way. I wanted to have one of those woven guitar straps, get a little pick collection going, be able to play any song from the Beatles discography. All the cliche stuff.” 

“Well, why can’t you?” you ask. “Minus the Beatles thing. Pick better music.” 

“Back then, it never occurred to me. We all learn piano.” 

“That's silly,” you blurt out. “Who cares?” 

“That's a little rich coming from you.” 

You frown, feeling all the usual unpleasantries bubble up through your skin. 

“That's not really fair.” You absentmindedly play a few keys, all disjointed. “Taking guitar lessons doesn’t make you a problem child.” 

“It's not about that, though,” Joshua says. He's avoiding your eyes. “It's everything, together. I couldn't just pick up a guitar and be someone else.” 

“Someone else? You mean you? The real you?” 

“Yes,” Joshua presses. “That's the point. I can't just do whatever I want. Sometimes the real you is more trouble than it’s worth.” 

“Someone’s dramatic. If you do everything the same, nothing will change. Maybe getting into a little trouble isn’t such a bad thing.” 

“Forgive me,” he says, mid-chuckle. “You wouldn’t call this trouble?” 

He’s got you there. Childishly, all your pride hardens to a lump in your throat, one you’ve never learned to swallow. 

“Your family needed our help too, remember?” 

“Yeah, and you think I don’t think about that every day? How, maybe, if I had done something different, then we wouldn’t be here?” 

You feel stung. You don’t know how to tell him that you’ve been trying to figure out the same thing your whole life. If you were a better daughter, you’d have spared everyone the trouble. Unfortunately, you’d gotten it wrong so many times, you stopped trying.

What's worse is that he doesn’t even sound mad—you watch his fingertips ghost over the keys of a C-scale, rhythmically, methodically. Piano scales, this marriage, everything: just things to do on his never-ending list. 

A hesitant knock at the door interrupts any possibility of you coming up with anywhere close to the right thing to say. 

“Prince Joshua, the king and queen need to speak to you.” It’s an aide, probably sweating bullets deciding when and how they should intrude on this wonderful conversation of yours.

“Right,” says Joshua, and when he gets up from the bench, he doesn’t look back. 

—

“You ready to get stuffed?” 

Good fucking morning to you—Somi’s voice, fluorescent through your phone speakers, seems to be enough of an alarm clock for you. Joshua, in the doorway dual wielding a coffee cup and the morning paper, raises a tired eyebrow.

After the events of last night, you’d wondered if he would somehow disappear at nighttime in an effort to avoid his eventual fate (you). Instead, you found him on his usual side of the bed, drinking his usual mug of chamomile tea, in his usual silence. 

You've heard that couples shouldn’t go to bed angry, but no one said anything about indifferent. Then again, you and Joshua are hardly a couple. 

“Ew,” you laugh. “No. Maybe? Should I be scared?” 

“Absolutely. You’re eating your weight in food today because I need your opinion on catering.” 

Smushing your phone between your cheek and your shoulder, you watch the mirror as your wavering reflection puts on a layer of mascara. 

“For your party?” 

“Yeah, although on second thought, maybe it’s a bad idea to bring the girl who’s gonna puke everything up anyway.” 

“My IBS is none of your business. Besides, the real food critic is Jihoon,” you reply. “Sometimes I feel like that’s the only reason he still works here.” 

“You’re coming in an hour, right?” 

You check the clock. No, you are not. You’re only halfway through a full beat and if you don’t get any caffeine inside you within the hour, you will commit a crime. 

“Nope.” You pop open your compact. “I have to change, and I desperately need to locate a coffee. I will suck a fucking bean off if i need to.” 

“I'm hanging up on you,” Somi whines. “It's too early for you to be gross and late.”  

“As if you weren’t talking about getting stuffed.” 

“Whatever.” Click.

At this point, you feel like Somi’s party is both the proverbial and literal light at the end of the tunnel. No expectations, no rules, and no semi-arguments between you and your doomed fiance. 

Then you notice that Joshua’s disappeared from the room—he probably couldn’t stand listening to your end of the conversation. Briefly, you wonder where he is. Off running an errand for his dear parents, perhaps, or maybe at the gym you still haven’t discovered yet. Even from the hefty distance he keeps you at, you can still appreciate a man who looks like he’s touched a dumbbell. 

It's only when you’re halfway out the door, almost an hour later, juggling your purse and your phone and the distinct absence of a caffeinated beverage, that you find him. 

“Come to ruin my day?” you ask, maybe three-fourths joking. 

“Don’t give me any ideas,” he replies. Under the bluebird sky of late morning, lips upturned and eyes bright, Joshua may be a sight you could get used to. Someday. “Brought you a coffee. I can’t have you sucking off a bean—the reporters would go crazy.” 

Jihoon, hovering by the car, chokes on his water. 

“Oh!” The surprise knocks the sound out of you. “Thank you. Really.” 

“Gladly,” he says, and he sounds like he means it.

He holds all your stuff as you clamber into the car, before handing it back to close the door for you. You’ll admit it’s nice, but as Jihoon starts to drive, you feel a familiar twist in your chest.

“Interesting,” he remarks. “Didn’t know you were on a coffee order basis.” 

“We’re not,” you answer. You pop the lid open. It's a cappuccino, made the classic way, milk foam bubbling out the top. Not your favorite, but it’ll do. 

More than that, it’s an olive branch. Yesterday did get weird, but you’re getting the impression that it’ll always get weird. Undoubtedly, there is someone out there who’ll get Joshua. His schedules, his straight-backed obligation, the polished photo ops and the cappuccinos made to a perfect one to one to one ratio. You know this because this is the world you came from, one that should be home to you. 

Instead, you circle each other in an unsure, clumsy dance. You can’t quite get it right. It's all the same now. The bite of a horse saddle not made for your body, the glow of your heirloom ring, now cheapened by your graceless hand, Joshua’s lonely, reaching palm as he disappears in the rearview mirror. 

—

On your arrival home in the evening, you return with two things: a few extra kilos and an absolutely horrendous copy of the Daily Mail, courtesy of Somi, who saw it at the grocery. 

"Great showing from the couple of the year," you say, shucking your copy at Joshua. "It looks like we're in Shark Tale." 

Even from a distance, the cheap ink-spackled cover shows more than enough. LIP LOCK FLOP!, it reads, although you wouldn’t really call it a lip lock. 

It was at the derby—Quick, they’re looking at us, you had said. Then what you would call a nun’s version of a kiss: you, already halfway out the door, and him, lips hesitant and pursed, as if he was asked to smooch his withering, dusty great-grandmother. 

"I'm not even going to ask what you mean by that," Joshua answers, voice level. "It's not that bad." 

He puts his book down to pick the magazine up, holding it at a distance like the image will jump out of the page and bite him. You see his expression flicker, and that's all you need to confirm your suspicions. 

"Ok, it's a little bad." He places it on the nightstand next to him face-down. "It'll be alright. It's not like the wedding will be called off over one bad picture." 

"You know that's not the issue." You sit on your side of the bed, about a full meter away from him. You kind of want to look again just to see how bad it is, but you're sure it'll be inescapable by the morning. 

"Since when did you care what the press thought of you?" 

"Since it mattered." You stare at your lap, eyes fixed on the too-new, wiggly hem of your pajamas instead of him. You can tell he's still looking at you, though–you think those big, watery eyes have some sort of flashlights in them, and you don't like it. "It seems wrong if our mistakes take up space." 

You hear him make a small noise of agreement. Joshua still won't admit that you're right, but you suppose you like that a little. At least he'll be stubborn about something, even if it's about clearly not liking you. 

"What do you suggest?" he asks, putting his book down. “We didn't choose each other, so I'm not surprised there's no attraction." 

"Ouch." He's right, but you'd rather be the one saying it. "I'm a good kisser. You aren't." 

"I'm just not good at kissing you," he retorts. 

"Evidently." You shimmy towards his side of the bed, where the sheets are cooler under your thighs, the pillows still neatly arranged on the headboard. "What I'm saying is that we should at least try to look more realistic. Like–" 

"Are you saying we should practice?" Joshua looks at you over the frames of his glasses, incredulous. 

"Yeah," you say, now too far in it to back out. "Like exposure therapy. For unwilling couples." 

The room gets quiet, as if it wasn't unbearably so before. You watch Joshua pick up his book again. He puts the bookmark in, two-thirds from the spine of the book so as to not ruin the binding, and places it over the doomed tabloid. 

"Okay." To your surprise, he turns to face you. The lamplight catches the lens of his glasses and makes his eyes look warmer than they truly are. "How should we do this?" 

The way Joshua's gaze settles on you makes you feel like you're being evaluated. An exam in Kissing 101, except the test would rather not have anything to do with you at all. For the first time in your life, you let your eyes wander to his lips, rosy and full, and you feel the pit of anxiety in your belly grow wider. Somehow he's managed to take all the fun out of one of your favorite activities, but you'll be damned if he walks away from this thinking it's you who's the problem. 

"Just...let me lead," you say quietly, now leaning closer to him. You have to ease yourself into it. You let your body respond, feel the skip of your heart, a heady flush wash over your cheeks. He smells like spearmint and clover. 

You've kissed a lot of people. None of this should feel new to you. His eyelashes skim against your cheek, and you can hear the breath he takes, quivering, gentle.

Despite all this, the first kiss is no better than any of the other ones. his lips meet yours, hesitant before they start moving. He's shy, and it would almost endear him to you if he wasn't so annoying. But then the charade is over. His nose clocks yours and it startles you both enough to draw away, ever so slightly. 

"Not my fault," you murmur. You're so close, you can see your reflection in his pupils, glassy and dark. 

"Thought this was practice," responds Joshua, unfazed. 

So you lean in again, giving it another go. Two is better—sweet and succinct. a first date type of kiss. You can taste the berry of your lip balm on him. 

Then again, except this time it's him who goes in, chases your lips. 

The scary thing is that you thought this would be much harder. You had stood in the bathroom, looked yourself in the mirror, and psyched yourself up to do the impossible. 

But the moment you meet him, now so close there's no room to breathe, you feel an impenetrable, unshakable desire crawling up your bones. Your palm finds the flat of his chest. Even under the silk of his ridiculous pajama top, you feel the heat of his skin, the restless quick of his heartbeat, and your stomach flips. 

Four, five. You're losing count. Joshua's hand trails up your arm to cup your cheek, and you'd be lying if you said you didn't feel your breath catch in your chest. 

He's warm, so warm. When your other hand finds the back of his neck, he makes a small sound in his throat and you like it.

It's at this point you realize there is no point in pretending. Maybe you don't want to kiss Joshua at any other moment during any other day, but you do now. You really do. 

When your tongue meets the seam of his lips, it feels all too natural. At first, predictably, he buffers a bit. For a split second, you envision him pulling away and saying you've gotten more than a lifetime's worth of practice in. 

But he doesn't. Instead, an arm winds around your waist and that's all it takes for your body to stop listening to you altogether. Lips still connected, you lift yourself to straddle his lap, right over the folded up covers, and his hands, devastatingly strong, find your hips to keep you rooted there. 

You're starting to think he isn't such a bad kisser after all—maybe he really was holding out on you, but there's something weirdly rewarding about him waiting until he liked you just a little more. Whatever that means. 

You learn that his hair is soft, really soft, at the base of his neck. You learn that he likes when you bite his lips and you learn that his spearmint mouthwash does, in fact, taste as good as it smells. 

You also learn that you, paradoxically, might not know how to love Joshua Hong, but you sure do know how to kiss him. 

--end of part 1--

[part 2 -> ]

[lay-z]

tw: fem!Reader; penetrative sex; oral; cussing; edging; explicit GIF

John MacTavish makes it his sacred mission to make you cum on his dick.

There is no secret between you and him. You'd laid your cards open from the beginning, even before you started dating: "Hey, I can't come with penetrative sex, so don't feel bad when I don't climax like that, okay? I'll still enjoy having sex with you, Johnny."

Sure, Johnny eats you out like a rabid dog, fingerfucks your cunt until your essence dribbles down his hairy wrist, until he's made you orgasm several times, turning you all dumb and pliant, but still

There's an itch in the back of his brain; poking his male pride and agitating his competitive side.

He wants to make you cum on his cock, wants to feel your pussy walls squeeze and flutter around him, milking his balls dry. However, it's more than a want, it's a need. The urgent need to make you feel good, make you his, and his only.

And, Steamin' Jesus, if he can defuse a bloody bomb, he can defuse you!

So, he goes on to study you like some mad scientist, your mind, your body; learns it better than you know yourself, and figures out what turns you on, what off. When are you horniest? What position that he manhandles you in unravels you the most?

He almost becomes obsessed with it, the need to get you off with his cock, and you notice, of course you do. Johnny isn't subtle about it, and goes as far as trying to coax your pussy, tries to talk her through it.

"C'mon, m'bonnie cunt," he coos against your clit before dragging his flat tongue over it, two thick fingers stretching your hole open, pumping lazily. "Fairest of 'em all... ye gonna cum f'me tonight, eh?" He peppers kisses along your slick, glistening folds while you breathe harder, unable to squirm on the mattress in his tight grip.

"Gonna be a good girl and take my cock, let him make ye feel s'good, aye? S'ye 'n him."

"Johnny "

"Shhh, hen," he hushes you gently, glancing up from between your thighs. "Think am finally makin' progress here."

Meanwhile, your legs are shaking, your mind spinning with pleasure and arousal while Johnny continues to edge you for another hour before finally sinking his fat cock inside your sensitive cunt.

He keeps you in missionary. Your legs hiked high up around his waist while he grinds his hips slowly and deeply, building up the pleasure in your core as he talks you through it this time, making sure you're relaxed and focused on him and the feeling of his cock massaging your sopping, gummy walls.

And when he does manage to make you come on his cock, buried deep inside your cunt like two pieces of an unique puzzle, he's sure it's the most beautiful sight and the most wonderful sounds he's ever witnessed, and now it just needs to become a new routine for him.

"Alrighty, hen," he pants against your neck, biting down at your pulse point briefly and tasting your sweat; rough hands roaming over your heated skin while you shudder and mewl underneath him. "Now ye gonna give me one more, aye?"

[puddinrin]

LADY BOSS! > Team Thanos x F!Reader

summary: being thanos and nam gyu's bestie since high school

pairings: abit of semi x f!reader (wlw because we all semi dick riders in the club + will write more about her in the next posts), platonic! thanos, nam gyu, min su & gyeong su x f!reader

warnings: talks of drugs, rehab, yk how it goes

a/n: semi semi semi semi semi semi semi i need to make out with her so bad. (name) is a fashion designer (i'm projecting hehehaha)

yk how even the most notorious gangster has a person they respect the most - yea that's what you are to thanos and nam gyu.

people wonder what did you do to get them to respect you like that

easy that's because you knew them ever since high school

it all started with a group project where your teacher purposely paired you up with both of them, in hopes you'll guide them since they were quote a "lost cause"

you wanted to pull your hair out.

but since you were a cool, demure and nonchalant like that, you decided to do what you could to get them to cooperate for the project.

"tsk, this is a waste of time." nam gyu sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. you three were sat around your table when it was time to break into the groups you were paired into. thanos, who was still just choi su bong back then, leaned back against his chair staring into space.

you pursed your lips, before speaking. "well, let's get it done as soon as possible then. any ideas on what to do for this assignment?" the task of this assignment was to create some sort of advertisement for a product of your choice.

"no" "nope." they both replied in sync, uninterested to commit to this project at all.

"i'm a woman of patience. i'm a woman of patience" you said in your head like a mantra, trying hard not to leap across the desk and jump both of them and your teacher for pairing you up with them.

an idea then came up on your head. as cringy as it might sound but it might get thanos and nam gyu to participate in working with you to complete this project. "what about we create a rap music video for this?"

thanos and nam gyu sat up straight at the sound of that. "what do you have in mind, girl."

you got their attention now.

surprise or not. you three got full scores for this assignment

thanos came up with the lyrics, nam gyu produced the music beat while you directed the music video

"congrats, you two. how does it feel to get full scores for the first time in your life? i knew putting (name) in your group was a good idea." your teacher grinned rather smugly.

"no, sir. su bong and nam gyu were amazing themselves. they came up and produced the entire music video themselves. i just supervised from the sidelines." you said with a proud smile, patting their arm as you stood in the middle of them.

both of them looked at you, mouth slightly agape. for the first time in forever, they didn't need anything in their system to feel warmth in their heart.

you wouldn't have ever thought you would have fun spending time with the two troublemakers of your batch but you did

they did too.

when almost the entire school and everyone in their lives made them feel like a failure, you brought them a chance to shine.

"it doesn't matter if others look down on you. as long as you don't look down on yourself, you always have a chance to prove them wrong and slap them in the face." you told them, rather casually as you slurped on the bowl of udon.

you were treating them dinner that you promised if you guys got a good score for the assignment. damn, were you trying to make them all soft for you because it's working.

they're now part of the (name) protection squad.

thanos jokingly once called you their lady boss and they've been calling you that ever since

they would walk you back home after school, making sure you were safe especially when school ended late

would carry your bag for you too because their lady boss shouldn't have to do that!!

guys confessing to you? they have to go through them first

#brother you are scaring the hoes away

to more serious stuff such as them being addicts, they tried to hide the fact that they were until you found out after seeing the bruise on nam gyu's arm.

you tried your hardest, helping them to overcome their addiction

yes it wasn't easy, but they were trying too

overtime, they managed to stop after you convinced them to go for rehabilitation

after that their respect and love for you sky rocketed.

time skip to where you guys are in your twenties

they hate all your situationships/exes

they don't have to know what they did

#their lady boss can never do wrong

but if they have wronged you in any way they're on thanos' and nam gyu's hit list.

they've formed a band called 'black stones' (hehe) with their new friends they met in uni: semi, gyeong su and min su.

you unlocked the door to your two idiots' apartment, a plastic of take out food you bought for them and their bandmates you were going to meet for the first time.

"who are you?! don't just come in without knocking" the man who you later learned was gyeong su, pointed a finger at you.

while you just stood there like🧍🏻‍♀️holding the key in one hand and the bag of food in the other. like hello? i kinda live here in my free time too?

nam gyu knocked his head with his knuckle, scowling "don't disrespect our lady boss like that, you fuck!"

thanos skipped towards you, like a kid running towards his mom after spending his day at daycare. "aigoo, my highness, you should've gave me a call that you're here. i would've personally brought you up."

"i did. you didn't pick up."

he froze, before smiling sheepishly, taking the bag from your hand, settling it down on the counter. "well, now that you are here. we can introduce you to the others."

he then swung his arm across your shoulders, leading you to stand in front of the tv where the others were sitting around the coffee table.

your eyes drifted to the lady with short hair and piercings. the way she carried herself and that charming smile on her lips. damn, she's so your type.

"gyeong su, my boy. you gotta apologise to our lady boss, (last name) (name). no her, no me, no nam gyu. no me, no nam gyu, no black stones." thanos said, wriggling his finger at the said man who nodded before giving you a full 90 degree bow.

"i apologise for the disrespect, lady boss (name)!" gyeong su yelled, showing he was sincerely sorry. you couldn't help but cackle at that, waving your hands at him for him to get up. "you don't have to call me that just because those two stupid idiots does and please get up!"

semi was intrigued with you after that.

you must be one hell of a woman if you managed to get thanos and nam gyu to respect you like that.

and you were just her type too.

you and her are dubbed mama e papa of the team

they don't know you both made it official after a few months of getting to know each other though

you and semi found it fun to see how long will it take till they find out.

min su found out first but didn't say anything to the others because you roped him in into betting how long till the others realises.

when they found out

they acted as if you punched their grandmother in the throat and cooked their pet fish jeffrey for dinner.

"semi how dare you seduce our princess?!"

"(name), how could you?! i thought we were 4lifers we locked in. we're suppose to tell each other everything!"

"you guys can only hold hands when we're here! no lovey dovey stuff!"

semi proceeded to give you a big smooch on the lips in front of them, her hand then never leaving your hips.

you try to attend all of their performances but if you can't due to some plans you have to attend to, they always give you a shoutout at the end of them.

you're like their second manager. it's like your side hustle aside from being fashion designer.

they will wear your brand with pride and joy

it also makes your business boom 2x max

Posts that they will post:

> thanostone4u

liked by namgyu124 and 19k others

thanostone4u best gal 💪🏻

> namgyu124

liked by gyeongsuuue, semilw and 20k others

namgyu124 sister from another pussy

> blackstonesofficial

liked by thanostone4u, minsublackstone and 45k others

blackstoneofficial happy birthday to our precious lady boss! 😘🎉💕