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bluehoodiewoozi · 3 days ago

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Found You First

Lee Jihoon x Fem!Reader

Genre: fluff & humour with a slight side of angst. kind of a slow burn.

Word Count: 17K

Warnings: adult language. alcohol and food mentions galore. Hoshi meddles and creates more problems for everyone involved. reader’s size is not specifically mentioned, but Jihoon and she fit into each other’s clothes. one mention of “daddy” as a joke.

[best friends to lovers!AU] For years you’ve hated Valentine’s day, convinced you’d never find a love worth celebrating. Maybe this year you’ll see that what you needed has been right in front of you all along.

♡ This fic is a part of @camandemstudios Lonely Hearts Cafe Collab! Please check out the other writer's works as well! They're all so good and we've all worked so hard!! ♡

[Still don’t know what to get your loved-one for Valentine’s day? We’ve got you covered!]

You stared at your phone, almost praying it would blow up and disappear along with the message. Unfortunately, you still needed your phone and the universe knew it. You sighed and deleted the message.

Maybe you wouldn’t be so bitter every February if the world was a little kinder to single people. After all, at least half the people in the world must be single – whether by choice or not. And yet it seemed that everything in the world was keen on reminding you of how entirely single you specifically were, your sister included.

She all but wrestled the phone out of your hand. “That’s it. I’m signing you up for dating apps.”

“Please don’t,” you replied with only half your usual annoyance and enthusiasm. Maybe a part of you thought this was exactly the push you needed.

Already nose-deep in the app store, she didn’t even bother to pretend to hear you.

“This one has good reviews–” she mumbled to herself as if it was her phone all along.

You only hugged a cushion to your chest and stared at the TV. Whatever romantic film your sister had chosen to watch today was not helping your problem.

“What’s the point? Maybe Soonyoung’s right.”

“Who?” She finally glanced up.

“Soonyoung.”

She blinked. “Is this Soonyoung cute?”

“Can you please stop trying to set me up with every guy you hear about?” You rolled your eyes. “He said that the key to finding love is to first love yourself.”

“That’s, like, basic philosophy,” she replied easily and turned back to your phone. “I need your email and a password– Oh, wait, I can just make something up.”

You were fairly certain she wasn’t listening to a word you were saying but you were past the point of caring. At least talking to a person who isn’t listening is a (small) step above talking to the lonely snake plant on your windowsill.

“Maybe I should take some time to just find myself,” you contemplated out loud. “I could try a new hobby. Or a new style. Find new books to read. Maybe then I won’t even care that I’m single.”

Still not looking up from the app she had newly installed on your phone, your sister hummed. “One of my friends did say that fictional boyfriends are better than real ones.”

So maybe she was better at multitasking than you had thought.

You put the cushion away and leaned closer to her. “What are you doing on my phone anyway?”

Proudly, she turned the device for you to see. “Ta-da! Your first ever dating app profile!”

A shiver of fear ran up your spine. “You signed me up for a dating app?”

“And you’re not allowed to delete it until you find a boyfriend,” she declared. “And if you do, I’ll just download it again.”

“You’re a menace.”

“Whatever,” she laughed and handed you back the phone, picking up her own from the coffee table. “Oh, I should get going.”

You couldn’t help but pout. “Already? Why?”

She rolled her eyes and went to pull on her coat. “Because, unlike you, I have a boyfriend who wants to take me out on a date. In fact,” she was practically beaming and you felt the ugly green tentacles of jealousy crawling up your leg already, “he’s taking me on a date every day until Valentine’s day.”

A pause. With a startle, you soon realised she was expecting you to cheer for her. You tried to find words that weren’t as bitter as you were feeling. “Oh, that’s so sweet of him.”

It was the right answer. She actually squealed as she confirmed, “Right? He’s such a romantic.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratory whisper as she leaned closer to you over the back of the sofa. “I think he’s going to propose on the big day.”

You almost sighed in despair. “I hope so! You deserve that ring.”

“You are so right,” she agreed and opened her mouth to say something more when the door suddenly opened.

You tilted your head to see who had intruded. It was Jihoon, black hat covered in white snow and a takeaway bag in his hand. He blinked at the sight of your sister before smiling and waving. “Hi. I didn’t know you had visitors.”

“I do have friends other than you, Hoon,” you informed him. “Also, I do have a working doorbell.”

He gave you a funny look. “And I have your spare key.”

It was clear you had made a mistake when you awarded him the honour. Now you were stuck dealing with him even when you didn't want to.

“I’ll leave you two,” your sister announced and left, not before whispering something in Jihoon’s ear in the passing.

Jihoon’s ears turned red as he cleared his throat and set the takeaway bag on the table.

“What did she tell you?” you asked him with a groan. You knew your sister better than anyone – there was no way she hadn’t told him something so embarrassing you wouldn’t be able to look him in the eyes for weeks to come. “Lay it on me.”

“Nothing. It was nothing.” His reply was just a little bit too quick and wavering, but you decided to let it go this once. “I brought you some leftovers.”

You raised a brow. “Leftovers?”

“They ordered too much food to the studio today, so I brought you the extras,” he told you almost timidly, gesturing to the bag like it was no big deal and had required zero thought from him. He was a strange man but maybe that’s why you liked to keep him around. “Can’t let the good food go to waste. Besides,” his eyes seemed sharp all of a sudden, “have you eaten at all today?”

He didn’t need an actual answer – you both knew the truth.

“I’ll be sure to savour it,” you told him with a joking salute. “Want to join me for a movie?”

His nose scrunched up at the mention. “I wish. I promised to help Seungkwan set up for the party tonight.”

Right. The party. Seungkwan’s “Jeonghan’s party”. In three hours. You had forced yourself to forget about it.

Jihoon pursed his lips in thought, brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “But we could always pretend we got kidnapped by a serial killer.”

“Sounds like too much work.”

“We escape to Iceland, become anonymous sheep herders and no one ever hears from us again,” he then suggested, snapping his fingers for emphasis and raising his brows as he waited for your reaction.

But as tempting as that sounded… “Seungkwan would find and skin us in fourteen days flat.”

He groaned and threw his head back. “Then I guess we have no choice. We must commit a crime so vile they give us a life sentence.”

“He’d just bring the party to the jailhouse,” you laughed. “And we wouldn’t even be able to sneak out.”

He took a deep breath and straightened back up. “Well, I’m out of ideas. Just plain suffering it is then.”

You glanced at the clock. “It’s not too late to fake our deaths.”

Jihoon snorted a laugh. “You just said that pretending to get kidnapped would be too much work.”

“Faking deaths is different! Or! We could summon a freak storm that would leave us stranded here,” you suggested.

“How?”

“I’m sure there’s a good Youtube tutorial somewhere.”

He giggled at the idea. “You really don’t want to go to the party, huh?”

You could only sigh and wish for the plush green fabric of the sofa to swallow you whole. “There’s definitely going to be so many couples there, all dressed in matching outfits and giggling and making out. And I’ll be all lonely and miserable, quietly downing all of Seungkwan’s wine.”

When you looked at Jihoon, he was smiling at you almost fondly. He was silent for a while. Then he spoke again, “I’ll keep you company. Don’t worry.”

“It’s not the same,” you whined like a little brat even as his promise made you feel a tiny bit gooey and soft inside.

“I’m sorry?” He just laughed again and shook his head, the remnants of snow falling onto the floor. “I’m bringing those muffins you like so much.”

You felt yourself perk up immediately. “Muffins? Why didn’t you just say so?”

He laughed harder but said nothing else as he turned and left. You would’ve been upset if you didn’t know him better.

Your phone chimed with a new notification.

[Claim your Valentine’s day coupon now and surprise your partner with a free tour of the museum!]

You groaned but didn’t delete the message.

[HOON: if you want to match with someone, I’m wearing red today]

You groaned harder and shut off your phone.

It wasn’t that you actually disliked these parties. You quite liked them, really. Seungkwan had figured out the perfect balance of socialising, snacks and music. It was a joy to be present, hanging out with your friends as you forgot about the problems of the week.

The only problem was that ever since Seungcheol and Chan had introduced the idea of an annual friendly “Party King” competition, the number of parties you were gently blackmailed to attend had doubled. And, frankly, your social battery was due for an upgrade that never came.

You suspected the same went for Jihoon.

Clad in his dark red hoodie, he joined you on the sofa the moment his eyes caught yours. Sipping his soda and softly singing along to the music, he completely ignored your personal space and made himself comfortable by your side.

“No wonder you can’t get a boyfriend,” Seungkwan joked when he walked past the two of you, a box of party games in his arms. His smile was blinding as he told you, “Your guard dog’s going to scare all of the guys away.”

You blinked in confusion. He nodded to your side. Following the gesture, you found yourself face to face with Jihoon. A groan left your mouth.

“What?” Jihoon wondered.

“Seungkwan says you’re the reason I’m single.”

He didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the fact. “Well, if they want to date you, they have to impress me first.”

You almost felt a little fond of him, appreciating his protectiveness. But you also knew your Jihoon and you knew he wasn’t finished yet.

Under your warning eyes, he took a sip of his soda before smirking. “God knows you wouldn’t recognise a red flag if it slapped you in the face.”

Glancing down at his clothes, you snorted a laugh. “You’re literally dressed as a red flag yourself. I should be avoiding you of all people.”

“No, I’m just warning other people that you are a red flag,” he replied effortlessly, cutting your laugh short. Sensing he was now in real, actual danger, his eyes widened. “That was a joke. Just a joke. I’m sorry–”

You smacked him upside the head and shook your head. “Did someone mix alcohol into the soda? You’re so mean today.”

He blinked once. Twice. Looked into his soda cup. And then cursed. “I knew it tasted funky! Yoon Jeonghan!”

You could only laugh harder as he jumped up from the sofa and ran into the kitchen with fury that could not be matched. Drunk words are sober thoughts they say. Which is precisely why you hardly drank anything at these gatherings.

Jihoon returned less than two minutes later, two unopened colas in hand. There was still an attitude to his foot stomps and a glint of annoyance in his eyes, but he opened one of the cans before handing it to you like he always did.

“Not even Jeonghan can tamper with closed cans,” he reasoned almost bitterly. “Who mixes vodka into soda?”

“Lots of people,” you told him with a chuckle and a gentle pat to his shoulder. “It’s called mixing a cocktail.”

He rolled his eyes. “Rude of them to not consider people who don’t drink alcohol.”

“Kind of like it’s rude of them to not consider the single people here,” you half-joked in camaraderie. “Have you noticed they’ve only been playing love songs tonight?”

Jihoon’s brows furrowed. “Have they?”

You nodded towards the speakers that were blasting Love Me Right. “The last two songs were Lover and Steal the Show.”

He grimaced. “There’s still 12 days left until Valentine’s day. Are they insane?”

“Probably.” You rested your legs onto his lap. “I guess I’ll just be extra bitter and lonely this year then.”

“No shot at romance?”

You raised an eyebrow, a smile playing on your lips. “You literally just said you’re wearing red to warn others how much of a red flag I am. And now you want me to find romance?”

“I have mixed feelings about you dating,” he told you honestly – a little too honestly, if the red tint of his ears was anything to go by. He cleared his throat. “I should start checking the drinks for alcohol before I drink them.”

Pretending not to notice, you took a sip of your cola. “I keep thinking about what Soonyoung said yesterday. About loving myself before I can find someone.”

“Isn’t that just social media nonsense?” Jihoon wondered quietly, resting his free hand on your knee. His thumb rubbed little circles onto your skin, comforting you.

“What if he’s right?” you continued. “What if I love myself so little that I simply cannot be loved?”

Frowning, Jihoon let out a sharp noise of protest. The gentle touch of his thumb turned into a warning pinch between his fingers. “You are loved! Who put this dumb thought into your mind?”

“... Soonyoung?”

“I’ll beat him up on Monday,” he half-heartedly promised, a heavy look still on his face. Softening his voice, looking straight into your eyes, he spoke, “Don’t you dare think you cannot be loved. You are loved.”

“By whom?”

He looked away and didn’t say.

“Whatever,” you sighed once the silence became too much. The speakers began playing Die With a Smile. You sighed once more. “Can’t they play something less romantic? I’d kill for a dumb, mindless party song right now. Do you think you could ask Jeonghan to play something else? He scares me–”

But it seemed that Jihoon was still stuck on the last topic. “What are you doing for Valentine’s day this year?”

“... Aside from crying myself to sleep after watching To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before for the 15th time?”

“You don’t think you love yourself enough to be loved by someone else,” he echoed your earlier words, his eyes stuck on something in the distance, “so why not change that? Treat yourself to something good this year. No sad movies and ice cream,” he finally looked at you again, “just do something you’ve always wanted to do.”

You knew he was right – he always was right. “But it’s boring to do that alone.”

“Then I’ll come with,” he decided after a moment of thought. A small smile appeared on his face. His thumb finally resumed its circles on your knee. It was sweet. Until he opened his mouth again, repeating the words playing on the stereo: “Wherever you go, that’s where I’ll follow.”

To the sound of his giggles, you snorted and slapped his hand away. “You’re awful.”

“I’m serious–”

“Aren’t you two just the cutest!” Jeonghan interrupted your banter with a childish pout on his rosy lips as he leaned against the wall across from the table. Soonyoung was smiling brightly at his side. “Are you dating yet?”

You wondered if he was done asking that at every party yet. It’s not like it was ever going to change (no matter how much he, Soonyoung, and your mother hoped it would).

Jihoon sat up, narrowed eyes settling on Jeonghan as if he was the devil himself. “Did you mix vodka into the soda?”

“Maybe,” came the reply with a shrug and a wicked giggle.

“I could get you a boyfriend for Valentine’s day,” Soonyoung suddenly said, his brown eyes set on you. There was that glint of mischief again. You realised you feared this man more than you feared bears, and not for the usual reasons.

Even so, you laughed. “Soonyoung, if you were any good at being a wingman, Jihoon wouldn’t be single right now. In fact, you’re, like, the number one reason why he’s single.”

Forgetting his own argument with Jeonghan, Jihoon seemed to take offense to your statement. He let out a noise of hurt before pinching your knee once again.

“Au contraire, my friend,” Soonyoung argued and leaned so close that you could smell the raspberry-flavoured liquor in his breath, “I’m going to be the reason he finally gets the girl.”

You raised a brow. “Remember, just last week you told a girl Jihoon’s not into women when she asked if he was single.”

“I was drunk,” he told you, wearing a mask of nonchalance. “I don’t remember much from that night.”

“Or the time I got a girl’s number but you stole it and dropped it in the pool,” Jihoon pointed out with a smile that seemed almost venomous. You had no doubt he’d hold that mishap over Soonyoung’s head for the rest of their lives – you almost hoped he would.

Soonyoung had the decency to look a little deflated at the mention, at least. But even so there was no stopping him. Mumbling under his breath, he repeated himself, “I’m going to be the reason he finally gets the girl.”

You shared a look with Jihoon and mutually decided to forget this exchange.

When you were sixteen, Jihoon’s dad let you in on a little secret. He had peeked out of the kitchen to make sure his son wouldn’t hear and then he’d told you that Jihoon had set his phone up so that he would never miss your calls. He thought it was the most adorable thing, and so did you.

You hadn’t even realised your phone’s Do Not Disturb setting had an option to do so but suddenly you were giddy, excited to set your phone up in a similar manner. And when you didn’t quite manage to figure it out, you decided to compromise and just make his ringtone the loudest one you could find. It worked just the same for you.

You’ve had many phones since then, but the ringtone never changed.

Though you were no longer sure if it was the obnoxiousness of the ringtone itself or the muscle memory of answering so many calls from him late at night, it never failed to wake you up when he needed you.

Once again you woke up to the noise, hand automatically reaching for your phone even though your eyes were still closed and your mind was still halfway lost in dreamland.

“Jihoon?” you mumbled his name as if his ringtone hadn’t been burnt into your memory.

The other line was silent for a moment. Then you heard a soft sigh. “Sorry. Did I wake you up again?”

“No,” you lied, dragging the vowel out as much as you could to loosen up your vocal cords. “What’s up?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Nightmare, stress or boredom?”

“... All three?”

“You have to pick one.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

He groaned but it was soon followed by a soft laugh. “Do you remember when we were kids and I threw that ball into Mr Yang’s window?”

Weird change of topic, you thought, but Jihoon did love to reminisce. So you humored him. “You mean the time he yelled at you so hard that you cried?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “And then you told me he deserved to have his window broken. And you built a pillow fort in your closet for me to hide so my parents couldn’t find and scold me.”

“It had world-class security,” you joked. “Buddy and I were a trusty team.”

But it was like he hadn’t heard your interjection, too lost in his own memory book.

“You hid in there with me and hugged me when my mom came to get me,” his voice trailed off. He cleared his throat. “You know, she wasn’t even that mad at me. I only had to do the dishes for a week.”

“You were just a kid and she knew that,” you spoke so softly that you wondered if he even heard you this time. The shared memory of the day ran in front of your eyes. It was a simpler time but even back then you had been ready to do anything for him.

Silence engulfed the two of you, only the gentle static of the phones reminding you of the other still being there. Ten whole minutes went by like this and for a moment you wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

“I should go to sleep,” you spoke low in case he really was asleep. “I have to wake up early tomorrow.”

He hummed. “Why?”

“I’m going to a museum and I want to leave by 10. So I should get up before 9. And it’s already almost 3 am, so you know…”

“Since when is 9 am early?” he half-joked before suggesting, “Just go later.”

“I’m a woman of principles, Lee Jihoon. When I have plans, I see them through.”

He scoffed out a laugh. “Liar. Remember that novel you said you were going to write?”

“No clue what you’re talking about,” you feigned innocence, “and you have no proof.”

His laugh sounded like he was sitting right next to you. You silently thanked the wonders of modern technology.

As you prepared to say good night, you heard his voice again. “You remember the thing Soonyoung said yesterday? About finding you a boyfriend?”

You scoffed. “You don’t think he was serious about that, right? He was just joking, being Soonyoung.”

“Right. Right…” He sounded distant again, like he was in a daze, as he spoke, “Do you think– Have you ever wondered if—” He groaned and you could practically see him scrunching his eyes shut in frustration. “Nevermind, it’s dumb. Sleep must be sneaking up on me.”

You hadn’t realised you’d been holding your breath. It came out in a not entirely genuine laugh. “Maybe we should both go to sleep.”

“Yeah,” he agreed with a sigh. “You’re right, like always.”

“Always?” you teased.

“... Well, maybe not always.”

“You can’t take it back now,” you whined through laughter. “You almost never compliment me or my choices.”

He took a breath like he was about to say something. But nothing came out. Only a sigh. Then the phone call ended without another word – the way Jihoon liked it.

You rolled over to your side, reaching to put your phone away again when it buzzed. The screen lit up with a message.

[Hoon: if I complimented you and all of your good choices, it would take forever.]

Crawling out of the comfort of your bed on one of your few days off, you wondered if the art of loving yourself was really worth the effort.

As usual, half an hour was spent on reading the news and watching videos you weren’t entirely interested in. Another half an hour went by as you stared at the ceiling and contemplated your life decisions until you finally found the willpower to shower, get dressed, and eat a quick breakfast.

By 10, you were starting to feel like a human-being again, so you grabbed your keys and bag, and you walked out of your apartment.

“You said you wanted to leave by 10,” Jihoon’s voice nearly shocked you into running back to your room. He was the dictionary definition of nonchalance as he stood in front of your door, barely even lifting his head, trying to read something off his phone. “It’s already 10:04, slowpoke. Are you ready to go yet?”

You stared at him for a while. Why was he here? Had you invited him along? No, you were sure you hadn’t. And then your jaw dropped as his words sunk in. “You’re the reason I stayed up until 3!”

“And to make up for it, I already sacrificed my arm by cleaning the snow off your car. You’re welcome. Let’s go.”

He never once looked up from his phone as he headed back down the stairs. You could only laugh in disbelief and lock your door before following after him.

“Why are you here anyways?” you finally asked when the two of you reached your car which had, indeed, been brushed clean of snow. “I was going to go alone.”

Jihoon shrugged. “I was bored.”

“You were bored and just invited yourself along?” You wished you had that kind of audacity.

The car seemed to be colder than the weather itself. You involuntarily shivered as you pulled the door closed behind yourself. Jihoon let out a noise of complaint as he settled into his usual spot in the leather passenger seat. Envy filled you as he adjusted himself and burrowed further into his warm fleece jacket.

In an act of something akin to revenge, you tossed him your phone. “Read the directions. If I miss a turn because of you, I’m making you pay for my coffee.”

“Yes, captain,” he joked and turned the heat up to the maximum. One could only pray that your car’s battery would survive the trip. “Are we making any stops on the way?”

“I wasn’t going to.” You really weren’t. It was just a 70-minute drive to the museum – adding to the duration really wasn’t on your bucket list – but knowing Jihoon, not stopping for snacks was simply not an option. The deepening pout and his wide eyes were enough indication that you were right to assume so – he only ever used his cuter side to win. A deep sigh bubbled in your throat. Through gritted teeth you spoke, “But I suppose we could squeeze in a quick stop.”

He let out the tiniest cheer and happily gave the first instruction: “We need to go right, turn left at the intersection and then–” A noise of curiosity. “A Hyunjin wants to know if you have any pets? I guess?”

You frowned. There wasn’t a single Hyunjin you could think of. “Hyunjin?”

“That’s what it says,” he told you with a shrug. “He also wants to know how you feel about… ferrets.”

You weren’t entirely sure what that was about. “Just ignore it. Where to next?”

“Uh,” he vocalised, “right again.”

“Why did we even turn left then?”

He chuckled. “I’m just telling you what the app says.”

“Whatever. Next?”

“Just keep going straight. We should reach the highway in, like, fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes straight through the busiest part of the city? You regretted your museum plans already. Should’ve just stayed at home and watched Youtube the whole day. There was a sneaking suspicion that even if you had watched traffic camera livestreams, you would’ve seen fewer red lights.

While you painstakingly stared at the lights, praying for them to turn green already, you noticed Jihoon happily scrolling through your phone. Your hand rose and somewhat forcefully landed on his thigh in a warning gesture. “Stay out of my private messages, creep.”

“Why would I want to read your private messages?” he half-joked and made a face that made you roll your eyes. “By the way, your mom said to bring tiramisu cake to dinner on Friday.”

Defeated, you sighed. “Tell her I’ve got it covered. What’s the occasion?”

“She wouldn’t tell.”

“You’re chatting with her right now?”

He smiled at you like it was obvious. “She’s my mother too.”

“Stop. That’s gross.”

“Also, who’s Andrew?” he then asked, smile dropping.

Another name you weren’t sure could be associated with yours. “Who?”

“An Andrew Johnson,” he slowly read the screen. “He wants to know what your favourite colour is.” His head whipped up just as you pressed the accelerator. “What’s with all these weird chats? You don’t seem to know these people?”

Desperately, you tried to recall a Hyunjin or an Andrew. You had no recollection of either. And somehow the list only seemed to grow with Jihoon calling out a new name and question at what felt like every minute: “Jongho just sent the cringiest pick-up line I’ve ever read”, “Joshua wants you to know that you have a typo in your profile”, “Minjae asked if you prefer walks on beaches or forest hikes”.

Each notification made you more confused than the one before and soon you felt your brain would melt.

You finally had enough of the confusion when he said, “Turn right. I want a burrito. Also, Chanyeol says you look hot in your profile picture.”

“What profile picture?” you nearly cried out as you slammed the brakes in front of the gas station. “What is going on?”

Jihoon looked just as disheartened and puzzled as you felt, if not even more so. He unbuckled his seatbelt like it had been trapping him and threw your phone back to you for inspection like it was burning hot. He was already halfway through the door when you caught your bearings again. “You want anything?”

“Just a coffee,” you told him, barely paying half a mind to the conversation as you scrolled through your notifications.

You barely noticed he left when you tapped on one of the notifications showcasing an unfamiliar name, a message and a photo of a handsome man. The screen opened on an app you had barely any recollection of ever downloading. A familiar ‘swipe left or right’ homescreen made you groan and shut your eyes as you locked the phone and tried your hardest to pretend this wasn’t real.

Minutes passed in blissful almost-ignorance. You felt at almost-peace. It was almost nice.

Until Jihoon arrived once again, two burritos, a water and a coffee in hand, and a scowl on his face.

“Did you figure out who those guys are yet?” he asked and for a moment you thought he sounded bitter.

You didn’t have any sighs left in you, so you just grabbed a burrito and the coffee. “Yep.”

He raised a brow while he silently took the burrito back and handed you the other one instead. “So?”

You frowned at his actions. “Did you just swap the–”

“You wouldn’t like this one,” he said and took a pointed bite out of the burrito. “So, the mystery men?”

There it was: the last sigh you could force out of yourself. It didn’t feel anywhere as freeing as you hoped it would. “My sister got a hold of my phone the other day and downloaded a dating app. I think she might’ve messaged a few guys she thought I’d like.”

“You don’t seem happy about it.” You barely understood his words with his mouth so full of food.

“I don’t really believe in dating apps working, you know,” you told him honestly and took a bite of your own burrito. Your eyes closed in bliss – you should’ve trusted Jihoon’s judgement from the start. “This is so good.”

“I know,” he replied with a knowing half-smile that disappeared as fast as it appeared. “If you don’t believe in the app, just delete it.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Made a promise to not uninstall it.”

Your phone made the executive decision to light up with another notification just then. Jihoon tilted his head to read it and carefully voiced out the message: “Seungho says your eyes look as pretty as the starry night sky– Okay, that’s just cheesy.”

Brows furrowed and nose scrunched up in disgust, he grabbed the phone, unlocking it with ease (you had only half a memory of ever giving him the password), and scrolled through the apps until he found the culprit.

“I’m uninstalling it,” he told you when he felt your curious eyes on him.

Your eyes widened at their own accord. “You can’t. I promised my sister–”

“Lucky for you, she’s not my sister,” Jihoon says as he swiftly uninstalled the app and brought peace into your life once again. His frown turned into a proud smile as he handed the phone back to you. “You’re welcome.”

You stared at him, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, confused. “Did you really just–?”

“Anything for you.” He said it with the uttermost seriousness. “If she tries that again, tell her she’ll have to deal with me first.”

Shaking off the odd wave of appreciation you felt for this man – your best friend, you reminded yourself –, you settled back down in your seat. You stared out the window for a while, slowly devouring your burrito.

Head whipping around to stare at him in disbelief, you jolted upright again. “Wait, so my mom is your mom, but my sister is not your sister?!”

He was too busy enjoying his food (and accomplishments) to ever reply.

The banners of the café were mocking you.

Bright reds and pinks snickered as you walked past. Papers cut into perfect little hearts flew past your head, giggling as if they were better than you.

“Happy Valentine’s day!” they all said, side-eyeing you while you resisted the urge to commit your first arson.

“When was the last time you ate something other than candy?” is all that Jihoon said in reply when you told him such.

You spared a glare at him. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “You just tend to get a little…” he hummed in thought, glancing up at the sky as if he was expecting a dictionary to drop from a cargo plane any second now, “imaginative when you’ve had too much sugar.”

“I’m always imaginative.”

“It was not a compliment.”

You rolled your eyes in response and opened the door. “You can say what you want but I know for a fact that this whole holiday was invented to make fun of me.”

It didn’t take much to figure out that the pensive scrunch of his nose, the narrowing of his eyes and the tilt of his head meant that he was holding back a question that would probably end with one of you in the ER and the other in a police car. You decided the look alone was enough to warrant slamming the café door closed in front of his face and marched up to the register. His loud laughter taunted you as you did so; not even the thick walls of Soonyoung’s mother’s café could muffle the sound.

You didn’t bother to turn around to look at him as the bell chimed and Jihoon walked right up, taking his usual spot next to you, the remnants of laughter still on his tongue. “I will never get your deal with Valentine’s day, I swear.”

“There’s no deal. Only hatred. Even loathing, if you will.”

“I’ll make sure to ask Soonyoung to make your coffee as dark as your soul then,” he promised with a cheeky grin. The list of crimes you wished to commit on this day was growing by the second – he knew damn well to not come between you and your vanilla mocha latte.

“Anyways,” you sighed theatrically, “can’t Valentine’s day be over already?”

“I sure hope not,” Soonyoung’s bright voice sounded as he practically danced out of the backrooms, “our sales are always the best on Valentine’s day. So, what can I get you two?”

Why did everything have to be Valentine’s themed anyway? And so expensive? The new higher price of the chocolate muffins had you absolutely appalled.

Your bitter thoughts were interrupted by a nudge to your side. “What do you want?”

A new wave of confusion hit. “Since when do you ask that?”

“You’re acting like I order at random,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “They don’t have your usual waffles.”

You were even more appalled. Absolutely horrified, really. “They don’t have waffles?! What kind of a café doesn’t have waffles?!”

“We have waffles!” Soonyoung seemed offended by your best friend’s claim, a pout on his lips as he stood at the counter in his red apron (and was his name tag heart-shaped? (You could’ve sworn it was just a rectangle last week)).

Who were you supposed to believe? Soonyoung who worked at the café and was too earnest to ever really lie to you? Or Jihoon who sometimes lied to you just to have a laugh? You were leaning towards the former, and Jihoon could read it from your face.

He groaned. “Fine, I’ll get you your pink heart-shaped waffles.”

The use of emphasis was not accidental and his brows rose in challenge, daring you to agree to his absolutely horrifying order.

“Heart-shaped?” You prayed he was joking.

Turning to face Soonyoung, you found yourself disappointed to realise he wasn’t. With a bright, proud smile on his face, Soonyoung nodded. “We’re switching up the menu for the holiday.”

Single and lonely as you were, you could think of few things less appetizing than pink heart-shaped waffles. Biting back a whine of frustration, you leaned your forehead onto Jihoon’s shoulder and mumbled, “Just get me anything but that.”

You realised your mistake almost as soon as you said those words. Eyes widening, you pushed yourself back upright and tried to stop him as he placed an order for cinnamon rolls and a Nuts About You praline latte with a wicked grin on his face. You both knew exactly what he was doing and he found great amusement in your misery.

“Perfect–,” Soonyoung started, already clicking away to add your order.

You interrupted with a rather loud, “I do not want that!”

Jihoon’s lips quirked. “Why not? Too nutty for you?”

“I just don’t want it,” you declared, crossing your arms over your chest as you glared at him. “Just because.”

He pretended to roll his eyes before turning to Soonyoung again, “She’ll have a Cupid’s Special Never Bean Kissed instead.”

“We’re no longer friends, Lee Jihoon.”

The stupid smile didn’t leave his face. “You don’t want me to pay for lunch?”

Second mistake of the day. You groaned and his laughter filled the store as you did so.

“Your food should be ready soon. Are you paying together or separately?” Before you could answer, Soonyoung added – and you could’ve sworn his eyes glinted with something not entirely wholesome –, “If you say you’re a couple, I can give you a 20% discount and two slices of cake for free. This goes until February 15th.”

You and Jihoon stared at him dumbfounded.

He shrugged. “I’m not allowed to assume.”

“What about this–” Jihoon widely gestured to the both of you, appearing equally baffled, “–says ‘might be a couple’?”

Soonyoung shrugged once more and put on a wide smile. “Are you?”

“No!”

“Worth a shot,” he sighed, his smile never fading. “You two could pull off being a couple though.”

“Why are we friends with you again?”

“Because you love me.” Your scrunched up face must have seemed doubtful enough because he soon added, “And my mom makes me give you employee discounts.”

“Exactly why does he keep offering us the couples’ discount every year?” Jihoon wondered under his breath two minutes later while practically throwing himself onto the chair across from yours. “He knows we’re both single.”

“Maybe he’s trying to play matchmaker,” you joked, grabbing a cinnamon roll off the plate he’d placed on the table. “You know, to set us up or something.”

Jihoon caught your eyes. A moment of silence passed as you contemplated your words.

Then he shook his head and huffed. “He’s not dumb enough for that.”

“No, you’re right.” You took a bite and almost moaned at the taste – Soonyoung’s mother had a knack for baked goods. “God, this is so good– Besides,” you quickly returned to the topic, “I think he might have been right last time.”

Jihoon’s brows furrowed. “What?”

“You know, the whole ‘you have to love yourself to be loved by someone else’,” you reminded him with a shrug. “I’ve been trying to do things for myself this week and it’s actually been so nice.”

“Things like what?” he wondered, grabbing a cinnamon roll as well.

“Well, the museum visit, for one. I got a text about it and thought ‘I don’t have anyone to take with me, but I might as well go for myself’, so I went and it was actually really nice,” you pointed out. “Freeing, in a way.”

He blinked. “I was literally with you the entire day.”

“You’re practically attached to me,” you joked with a dismissive wave of your hand. “It doesn’t count.”

“Your coffee’s ready!” Soonyoung appeared at the table with two cups. He placed one in front of you, keeping the other in a flimsy grip in his other hand as he did so.

Before you could comment on it, the other cup dropped from his hand with a loud gasp and an apology.

“I’m so sorry,” Soonyoung was reaching for tissues before you could even comprehend what had happened.

Then you felt your suddenly cold button-up shirt press and stick to your skin. Glancing down, you cursed under your breath and reached for a handful of tissues of your own, starting to dab away at the spots of coffee on your white shirt.

“Should’ve known something like this would happen,” you spoke through gritted teeth as Soonyoung’s lips kept spilling apologies after apologies. “This is why I never wear white.”

Jihoon sat frozen on his chair, wide eyes wildly switching between you trying to clean your shirt, and Soonyoung, practically on his knees, wiping the floor. Eventually, he settled on watching you.

Your desperate clean-up attempt soon slowed. It was no use. You didn’t possess the magic necessary to get an iced americano out of the white fabric.

“Can I do anything…?” Jihoon asked softly.

“Nothing short of finding me a new shirt to wear,” you told him with a laugh that had no joy in it. You still had four hours of work left and you were certain your boss would have a word with you for the accidental dress code violation – wearing clean clothes was, after all, written in bold on the first page of the employee handbook.

He frowned. “I could give you my hoodie to cover-up?”

You perked up at the idea. “Would you?”

He snorted a laugh. “Is that really a question?”

Without another word, he sat upright and pulled on the hem of his black hoodie, revealing a grey t-shirt under it. It took him a few seconds and some noises of struggling (that you suspected he only made to cheer you up), and then he handed the hoodie to you.

It was warm to the touch and smelled like your best friend when you pulled it over your head. Your day was better immediately.

“It feels like a hug,” you mumbled without really meaning to.

Jihoon’s breath seemed to get caught in his throat at that exact moment. He coughed twice before humming, “You say the weirdest things.”

Thursdays are movie nights. No matter the situation, no matter your feelings, Jihoon and you would buy copious amounts of snacks and gather at either of your apartments to watch a movie together.

“We’re not watching The Lion King,” he declared while hauling your giant grocery bag up the stairs (he’d insisted it was easier to just stuff everything into a giant bag than to carry several bags; who were you to try and stop him?). “I don’t feel like crying today.”

“You never cry anyway,” you grumbled and supported the bag from underneath. There was just the tiniest tear in its side and you were growing wary. There was only one more flight of stairs to go.

He stopped and turned his head to glare back at you. “Are you suggesting I’m a monster? Who doesn’t cry during The Lion King?”

“You,” you supplied with an innocent smile and pushed at the bottom of the bag to urge him forward. “If you don’t want to watch The Lion King, then pick something better. I dare you.”

“Captain America.”

“I’m locking you outside,” you replied with a scoff. “You can sleep on the doormat, or maybe Ms. Kim will be merciful and give you one of her dog beds.”

“Can you stop acting like you don’t enjoy Marvel movies?” he wondered. “Or would that break your programming?”

As you arrived on your floor, you told yourself it was not worth the fight. You reached into your pocket to pull out the keys, ignoring Jihoon’s groans of exhaustion as you slowly and meticulously pressed the key into the hole. But when you began to turn it, the door handle tilted downwards and the door opened.

You blinked in surprise as Yoon Jeonghan gently ushered you out of the way so he could leave. He wore a pleasant smile as he opened the door wider to let you into your own apartment.

“What are you doing here?” you asked when you found your voice again.

He shrugged. “Wanted to see if you had any of that good ramyeon.” When you lifted a puzzled brow, he victoriously held up three packets of your favourite ramyeon. “I’ll be taking these. Thank you for being such a good friend!”

While you searched for words to say, he rushed down the stairs. He was still in hearing range when your brain kicked into gear and you called out, “How’d you get inside?!”

“Stole Jihoon’s key!” came a joyous reply from three stories below.

Beside you, Jihoon let out a loud groan of frustration, brows knitted and nose scrunched. “That son of a bi–.”

“I was looking forward to that ramyeon!” you whined and stomped into your apartment, pulling your best friend after you by the sleeve.

Lost in noodle-grief, you burrowed into the sofa cushions as he placed down the bag and began rummaging through the two drawers you had so kindly surrendered to him and his clothes. You watched as he closed the drawers with a defeated short hum and opened your closet instead. It didn’t alarm you – it hadn’t in years.

“Why are your shirts so much nicer than mine?” he suddenly asked, pulling off his crispy black button-up shirt to replace it with your favourite white t-shirt.

Momentarily you were brought back to reality just to reply with a short and simple: “Because I actually pay attention to what I buy from the store?”

His head turned just to give you good-natured glare. It soon gave way to a mischievous smirk – one crafted to annoy you. “Why would I do that when I can just borrow your clothes?”

“One day I’m going to take away your closet privileges,” you lazily vowed.

He stuck his tongue out. You always did bring the more mature side of him out.

As you turned on the TV – one that came with your studio apartment and would have been entirely useless if not for the movie nights –, Jihoon threw himself into the cushions next to you.

Taking advantage of your state of not-quite-being-there, Jihoon stole the remote. When you whined and tried to get it back, he laughed and pushed you away with his free hand. While you fought to get the remote, the TV began playing yet another Marvel movie.

The opening credits began playing and you only knew it was Iron Man because he’d made you watch this movie a thousand times. You wanted to argue but the movie nights had one unbreakable rule: once a movie starts playing, there’s no changing it.

“Seriously?” you groaned and threw your head back against the backrest of the sofa.

Like the TV, the green sofa had also been in the apartment for as long as you knew. You had always thought it to be a rather cosy and perfect lounging spot. Slowly, however, you were realising it had its flaws, the worst one being that with Jihoon’s manspreading habit, there simply wasn’t enough space.

“Move,” you nudged his leg that was leaning too close to yours for comfort. “Hoon, you’re on my side of the sofa.”

He only nudged your leg back with a laugh. “Since when?”

“Since ten minutes ago,” you declared, pushing back harder. “And stop manspreading. That’s rude. You’re taking up all of the space.”

“Didn’t your mother teach you to be nice to guests?” he teased, leaning even closer with his whole body now until his chin rested on your shoulder.

You found yourself pleasantly surprised by his warmth. It was cold outside, you reasoned with yourself, of course you were enjoying any warmth you could get your hands on. Besides, it wasn’t often that Jihoon burrowed this close to you. You were bound to find joy in his rare act of affection.

Your joy was short-lived though because it was only now that you noted (with slight to moderate annoyance) that he had stolen a coke from your fridge. You scoffed.

“You’re hardly a guest. A parasite is more likely.”

As more and more of his weight pressed onto you, you groaned in pain. He only laughed at your misery.

“You steal my clothes. You steal my space. You use me as your personal cushion,” you counted. “Does your audacity have no limits?”

He paused, lips pursing as he thought for a moment. Then he smiled brightly. “No.”

It took all your strength to push him off you. He had the gall to giggle the whole way, and you soon found yourself laughing along with him.

“You’re awful,” you told him with an affectionate grin. Your efforts of moving him were in vain and he happily rested his head on your shoulder, occasionally slurping his (formerly your) coke. You tried really hard not to think of how awfully domestic this position would’ve looked to a stranger.

“You’re not allowed to complain,” he eventually told you. “You’re the one that stole my hoodie yesterday.”

You gasped, appalled by his accusation. “You offered!”

“I was practically blackmailed,” he spoke loudly as if announcing it to a theatre of people. “What choice did I have?”

“Maybe I need to do this self-love journey just so I’ll have someone who actually loves me and isn’t faking it to be a drama queen,” you concluded with a theatrical sigh.

Jihoon laughed and nudged your side. “No way. You’re stuck with me no matter what.”

And you appreciated that. You really did. But. There was always a but.

“How am I supposed to learn to love myself more anyway?” you wondered, leaning into the cushions as well as his warmth, angling your body to enjoy the benefits of both. “I socialised at Seungkwan’s party. I went to a museum. I feel like I love myself enough. What else can I do?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Something that says I’m unapologetically me,” you said thoughtfully, trying to think of something. You weren’t entirely sure it had anything to do with self-love. Really, it was probably more-so to avoid your loneliness on Valentine’s day. “Something I’ll enjoy but find a little challenging, so when I’m done with it I’ll feel pride.”

“You could order your own coffee for a change.”

Dreams shattered, you let out a scoff. “I would but you never let me.”

“Yeah,” he agreed readily, “you always get the same thing anyway.”

“Well, what if I wanted to try something different?”

“You snooze, you lose. Just be glad I pay for your lunch.”

“Thank you, daddy.”

Silence. Long and awkward (just how you liked it) as you watched his reddening face with a wicked grin. This is what he got for being mean and useless. Finally, he ran a rough hand over his face and declared, “That’s it. You can pay for your own lunch from now on.”

“Oh no, how will I live,” you bemoaned, fully aware that he’d never let you pay for your own meals. “I’m still open to ideas though. I need something to do.”

Jihoon offered a mocking smile. “Well, you didn’t like my idea, so–”

“Please,” you begged, tugging at his shirt with one hand. “Anything. Please. Tell me to read The Odyssey. To start a charity. To paint an overcomplicated mural–”

Clearly uninterested in the topic at hand, he cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “Is it just me or is it cold in here?”

Now that he mentioned it, your hands were feeling a little freezing. Just a bit. And your toes felt like they’d been on an ice block this whole time. You frowned.

“No, you’re right,” you realised and jumped up to check the thermostat. It proudly showcased the number 10. You hurriedly set it to a higher heat. 10 degrees was not enough to keep you alive, you feared.

“Someone’s messed with my thermostat,” you told him as you returned to the sofa. “This old building gets cold so fast.”

Jihoon’s brows furrowed in thought. “You don’t think…”

“What?” you wondered, pressing closer to him in an effort to get warm again. The world off the sofa was far worse than you had anticipated and now you were forced to shiver as you waited for Jihoon’s natural warmth to reach you as well. You felt your eyes widen as the pieces clicked into place. “Jeonghan?”

“He was acting suspicious,” he confirmed as he wrapped an arm around your shoulder, effectively pulling you closer.

Though you found yourself wanting to purr in bliss, you told yourself he only did so because he felt sorry for you – you never were built for the cold climate. Making a mental note to fight Jeonghan the next time you saw him was the best distraction you had.

Minutes passed in silence, par the movie playing in the background. You weren’t sure either of you were focused on it. But the rule stood and neither of you dared to be the first one to break it. So you remained right there, in his arms, unable to think about anything other than your vengeance plan and Jihoon’s embrace.

It was warmer now. Whether it was the doing of your apartment’s heating or Jihoon holding you like you were his lifeline, you were too comfortable to contemplate. The soft chimes of dreamland were calling you now.

“You know,” Jihoon spoke, voice low and gravelly, “they say cuddling helps to preserve heat.”

You knew it was just a dumb excuse. You knew you should’ve poked his side and made a joke about him using you for his personal gain. But as you pressed your cheek against his chest and wrapped your arms around his frame just a little tighter, you forgot all about it.

By the time you remembered to argue, you felt your eyes getting heavy and his heartbeat slowing down under your ear.

You hadn’t disliked Seungkwan’s parties all that much last week or the week before that. But this was getting excessive – even Seungcheol had said so, but Seungkwan listened to no one. Seungkwan, you see, had a goal and no one could dissuade him from reaching it.

“I think at this point they have no choice but to crown him the party king,” Jihoon mused, once again sitting by your side on the sofa as the two of you watched the party host gloat about his impeccable party streak. “It’s quantity over quality.”

Taking a sip from your soda, you hummed in agreement. “If nothing else, they should crown him for all the effort alone. Have any of the others even planned any parties yet?”

“I think Seungcheol’s planning the Valentine’s day Party with Soonyoung.”

You nodded. “I’m definitely going to be sick for that one.”

“You’re going to have to pick a different excuse,” Jihoon pointed out with a chuckle. “You’ve pulled the flu excuse four times already this year. They’re getting suspicious.”

“Join me in becoming sheep farmers in Iceland?”

“If Seungkwan would find us in 14 days, Seungcheol would find us in half that,” he told you and you weren’t entirely sure he was joking.

You sighed. “Do you have to ruin all of my dreams?”

He laughed and nudged your shoulder. It was only recently that you’d noticed how often he did that. You hadn’t seen him do it to his other friends, now that you thought about it. It was always him and you. Perhaps, you thought, you had finally discovered his love language.

You noted with glee that he did it again, this time so slightly you almost didn’t feel it. “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?” you wondered, unable to think of anything you had done to warrant those words.

The room seemed to get brighter, lit up by a radiant magical glow, as his face broke out into a wide smile. “For staying sober with me. I think I’d go insane here if you didn’t.”

“Now you’re just being dramatic. You’d live,” you told him and took a sip of your cola as you surveyed the room, taking note of your friends’ antics. “I’m not entirely sure about the others, but you would live.”

He burst out laughing at your words as if it was the funniest joke in the world (it really wasn’t; you had elicited far colder responses to far funnier jokes but you appreciated the enthusiasm). “You’re probably right. But still,” he took a calming breath, a bright grin still on his face, “I’m glad to have you with me. I can’t imagine you have much fun sitting here with a sober me when you could be doing drunk karaoke with Joshua and Jihyo.”

You were about to tell him there was no place you’d rather be when Vernon appeared from what you could only assume was the shadows and gave the two of you that blank helpless wide-eyed look of his.

You and Jihoon sighed in unison.

“What is it this time?” he wondered, already adjusting his sleeves and flexing his fingers in preparation for whatever herculean task awaited him.

The reply was short and laconic. “The fridge is being weird.”

Jihoon offered you a look that told you he couldn’t have cared less about the decade-old fridge Jeonghan had wrestled out from some old lady’s hands at the second-hand store. It wasn’t his property. It had, in fact, absolutely nothing to do with him because he didn’t live here.

“Just go,” you laughed and waved him away, earning a look of betrayal. “The child won’t leave you alone if you don’t help him.”

“I’m not a repair guy,” he told you with a mild glare before groaning once more and finally getting up. From his new higher vantage point, he could look right into your empty cup and roll his eyes as if he didn’t want to say the words he’d utter next: “I’ll get you a new drink while I’m gone.”

You sent him off with a grateful smile and a plan to conquer the space he’d left behind. Your feet would thank you for the gentle stretch of being rested on the sofa and you could already practically hear the odes they’d sing to you. But then, as fast as the spot beside you became empty, it immediately was filled again.

“I’m sorry if this upsets you,” a girl you vaguely knew by the name of Yeonmi spoke as she slumped into the free space Jihoon had left, slurring her words, “but I’m going to marry him.”

You quirked a brow. “Who? Vernon?”

“No!” She pointed at your best friend. “Him! Jihoon!”

You suddenly wondered if you were hallucinating this entire interaction. You blinked once, and then once more, before turning your head to look. Certainly Yeonmi was drunk off her ass and had mistaken him for someone else! Or maybe you yourself were drunk – who’s to say Jeonghan hadn’t mixed vodka into the soda once again? He’d done it before, more than twice.

But then you saw: Jihoon stood at the kitchen aisle. Laughing at what appeared to be the funniest joke in the world, he passed bottles of water around for his drunk friends. One by one, they accepted their bottles with grateful glee and promises to never drink again.

Then, whining something about how he’s not that drunk yet, Seungcheol tried to push the bottle away and your best friend’s grin morphed into a short-lived frown as he smacked him across the back of his head with the very same bottle and forced it into his hand. Just like that Jihoon’s smile returned as Seungcheol’s pout only pursed out more.

As you began to laugh at the scene, you suddenly remembered why you’d looked over in the first place. Brows furrowing, your head snapped to glare at Yeonmi once again. “You want to marry him?!”

You weren’t entirely sure why the idea irritated you as much as it did. Maybe Jeonghan actually had mixed something into the soda. You certainly had no other reason to be so irate by the concept of Jihoon marrying someone.

“Absolutely,” Yeonmi mumbled, gaze stuck as if Jihoon was a beautiful mirage that would disappear if she took her eyes off of him. She took a sip of her cocktail, unaware of the scathing look of disapproval she was on the receiving end of. “Isn’t he just perfect?”

Fighting to keep your irrational temper in check, you took a deep breath. “Since when do you like him like that?”

“Today.”

“What?”

Yeonmi must have taken the growing volume of your voice for a sign of excitement because she quickly added, “I think we’ll get married tomorrow.”

“You can’t marry him,” you told her without as much as a scoff. It wasn’t a joke. It was not a threat. It was a clear-cut fact of life. To you it was anyway.

Finally, Yeonmi tore her attention away from him and stared at you, blinking her saddened puppy-dog eyes. “Why not?”

You didn’t have a reason. Not a very good one anyway. “You just can’t.”

“But I want to!” She continued pouting. You noted with glee that it was the alcohol talking. Sober Yeonmi would never do this to you. But sober Yeonmi was far gone – six beers deep gone. “Why can’t I marry him?”

Unfortunately, drunk Yeonmi was far less reasonable than you knew sober Yeonmi to be. You had to think long and hard about your words if you wanted to put this conversation to rest soon. “Because he–”

“Who’s marrying who?” Seokmin stumbled into the conversation and onto the sofa, settling right between the two of you like a rather ill-fitting puzzle piece. A drink in his hand, a backwards cap askew on his head, and a comically large tiger plushie under his arm (one you could practically hear Soonyoung already frantically searching for), he stared at you two in child-like excited wonder.

You almost had a spark of hope – could this be your saving grace? your ticket out of this conversation that was irritating you for reasons outside of your comprehension? – until you realised that Seokmin was almost certainly just as drunk – if not more – as Yeonmi. You pinched the bridge of your nose and groaned.

“I’m marrying Jihoon,” Yeonmi declared all too proudly, her pout turning into a bright smile that could rival the sun. For a moment you found yourself almost bitterly thinking she was exactly the pretty kind of girl your best friend deserved. Then she just had to open her mouth again: “Tomorrow. I’m marrying him tomorrow, for sure.”

Her words were met with a dramatic gasp and a matching bright smile. “You are?”

“I am!”

“She’s really not,” you mumbled from where you’d been pushed against the armrest by their celebration.

Then Seokmin froze mid-squeal-of-joy. He slapped a hand over his mouth. He loudly whispered, “But you can’t!”

Yeonmi’s smile once again dropped. “Why not?”

“Because Jihoon’s (Y/n)’s boyfriend!” He told her with such conviction that you began to wonder if you had missed a major life event of your own damned life.

You frowned. “We’re not–”

“Oh.” Yeonmi nodded solemnly. “You are right. I can’t believe I forgot that.” She paused before loudly whispering, “You know, I heard they’re actually married. Eloped in Vegas during spring break back in college.”

“I heard that one too!” Seokmin pointed out with inexplicable uncontained glee. “I heard he wrote a song and sang it to her at the proposal.”

“That’s so romantic,” Yeonmi swooned, smiling like it was the cutest news she’d heard all day. Her dreams of marrying Jihoon had disappeared just like that.

But you felt like you were living in a nightmare.

“What are you guys talking about?” you cried out, watching them in astonishment and horror. “There’s nothing going on between us!”

“I mean,” Soonyoung joined in, leaning against the armrest like he’d been there all along, “you’re practically married, even if the elopement thing isn’t true.”

Yeonmi gasped. “It’s not?”

You ignored her.

“It’s okay if the spark goes out a little bit, you know what I mean,” Soonyoung attempted to explain? comfort you? Whatever he was doing, you wished he’d stop. “Relationships take work, you know.”

You felt your left eye twitch. “We’re not dating.”

This was news to your friends – if their wide eyes and dropped jaws were anything to go by, anyways.

“But–” Seokmin started, slumping in his seat as if his whole world had shattered into pieces. “But you’re Jihoon and (Y/n). You’re practically always glued together.”

“So? We’re friends. Best friends. You know this.”

“If what you guys have isn’t love, then what is?” he wondered, asking no one in particular it seemed. His gaze had frozen on the fairy lights taped to the ceiling. He looked close to tears and you decided you’d had enough of this and got up off the sofa.

It had been a while since you’d been out on the balcony anyway. It was nice and quiet and away from your nosy friends who clearly could not wrap their minds around the possibility of two friends not dating. The fresh air bit at your nose but you decided it was better than facing them again.

Looking out at the nightlife of the city below, your thoughts kept drifting back to what they said. Why had you felt so irritated at the idea of Jihoon being with someone else? He wasn’t yours to keep, as much as you liked to joke about it. He wasn’t your husband, he wasn’t your boyfriend, not even a friend with benefits. He was just Jihoon.

You were just you and Jihoon. That’s what it had always been.

So why did the idea of being ‘just (Y/n) and Jihoon’ suddenly sent a rush of rage and insult up your spine?

“(Y/n)?” a voice called out and you felt the subtle warmth of the apartment creep out through the opened balcony door. You turned to find Seungkwan standing right there, his kind eyes looking at you as if you were insane. “Aren’t you cold?”

“It was stuffy in there,” you excused yourself and turned back to stare over the railing.

He hummed in understanding but couldn’t stop himself from adding, “Could’ve just opened a window instead of standing out here without your jacket.”

You let out a short laugh. “I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Warmth surrounded you, the feel of a soft knitted cardigan following soon after. “Better?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“I’m a little surprised Jihoon hasn’t given you his sweater yet,” he noted under his breath as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted you to hear it or not. He cleared his throat and added louder, “Sorry, I’m sure you’ve heard enough of Jihoon today. Seokmin and Yeonmi are a lot, I know.”

You weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “You heard them?”

“I’m sure half the party heard them,” he told you as if it was obvious before his expression melted into something more compassionate. “Do you want to talk about it?”

It was hard to choose. So you stayed silent instead. Seungkwan seemed to decide that was a yes.

“You know, I think Jihoon holds you closer to his heart than he sometimes lets on,” he told you. “Most of us see through his facade by now, but sometimes I wonder if you’re still one of the few who can’t.”

Great. Exactly what you needed: a double dose of ‘I’m an awful friend’.

“You know that keychain you have? That little cat he whittled out of wood back in high school?” He chuckled to himself. “He spent a whole week making it, constantly texting the group chat if it was perfect yet. Perfect for what, we’d ask and he’d always say it was for you like it was the most obvious thing.”

He leaned against the railing with you. Just as soon as he did so, he cursed. Seungkwan stepped away almost immediately. His voice was suddenly much louder than before: “It’s so cold! Can you even feel your arms?”

A little dazed by the information you’d learnt, you shrugged. “I guess.”

“That’s it,” he decided and grabbed a hold of your arm before dragging you back inside against your will (not that you were complaining; you suddenly realised it was indeed very cold outside). “If you want to be cold, I can give you ice cream, but please stop trying to contact frostbite.”

You barely made it through the kitchen door before running into Jihoon. It was starting to feel like Seungkwan needed to find a bigger venue for his parties because you were clearly not able to find even a minute of peace here.

“There you are,” he practically cheered at the sight of you, a wide grin breaking out on his face as if he hadn’t seen you in days rather than mere 20 minutes.

You were painfully aware of Seungkwan’s knowing smile as Jihoon handed you a cup of soda. You took a small cautious sip – it didn’t taste anything like alcohol. There went your accidentally tipsy theory. You let out a soft groan at the thought.

“You good?” he wondered, hand reaching out to pat your shoulder. “Soonyoung said you looked kind of upset.”

“I’m fine,” you said. It was a lie – at least it felt like a lie. You always did hate to lie to Jihoon. But what else were you supposed to say? “It’s just been a long day.”

If he caught onto your false narrative, he didn’t mention it.

It was 2 am and you couldn’t sleep. Your friends’ words kept echoing in your head and no amount of “we’re just friends” could keep them at bay.

For a short moment, you almost reached out to him. Your fingers knew the path to Jihoon’s contact in your phone without you even thinking about it. It was only when your thumb hovered above the green call button that you realised what you were doing.

You found yourself scoffing. Exactly was your plan? To text him? To call him and tell him…? Tell him what?

“Hey, Jihoon, I just wanted to let you know that Seokmin and Youngmi and probably half our friend group think we’re married or at least dating and, honestly, not even gonna lie, I think it suddenly made me realise I might be and have been for a while sort of, kind of, maybe just a little bit or maybe even very much in love with you. Thoughts?”

You didn’t exactly pride yourself in your ability to put together words (and you were certain Jihoon wouldn’t have cared much for it if you did), but even you knew you couldn’t tell him that. Certainly not at 2 am and definitely not after being his friend for so many years.

So you muted your phone, put on a ridiculously long historical movie you weren’t planning on paying any attention to, and found a tub of ice cream from the deepest crevices of your freezer. It was you against your demons now. You weren’t going to leave your apartment until you’d figured out how to look him in the eyes again.

Because Jihoon’s (Y/n)’s boyfriend. You’re practically married.

The voices kept echoing in your head like annoying little mosquitoes, sucking on your lifeforce. It was nothing short of irritating; not because you thought they were wrong, but precisely the opposite.

You sat on the sofa, head heavy with foreign thoughts. Foreign thoughts that weren’t all that unfamiliar at all – they’d been peeking their heads out every once in a while ever since high school. But you had always acted like they weren’t there: you brushed them aside, painted over them with other thoughts, and told yourself what you felt for Jihoon was just friendship.

Good old plain and very platonic friendship. Nothing else at all.

Your heart fluttering every time he laughed at your jokes? Friendship.

Your breath getting caught in your throat every time you saw him without a shirt? Definitely friendship.

The ugly jealous feeling in your chest – the very one that took over your entire being when Yeonmi said she’d marry Jihoon? Friends get jealous all the time, don’t they?

“They don’t,” the character on the TV said at that very moment, like a sign from the universe.

But you’re Jihoon and (Y/n). If what you guys have isn’t love, then what is?

The voices kept on echoing. You squeezed your eyes shut and drowned your sorrowful realisations in stracciatella ice cream.

Spoonful after spoonful, your brain numbed and froze. But the knowledge had sunk deep into the crevices of your very being and you knew that no matter what happened, one thing was true: nothing about your feelings for Lee Jihoon was platonic in the slightest.

Jihoon’s studio was a cosy and comfortable place. Dimly lit and full of his soft humming along to the songs he rarely let you listen to, it had become your safe space the day he showed it to you.

Never once had you felt out of place in it. But when he invited you to come keep him company this evening, you found yourself hesitating at the door for the first time.

It was as if you had forgotten how to act.

Did the you who felt only platonic feelings for Jihoon ever knock? Did you simply burst through the door and throw your keychain at his head when he was too focused on his work to notice? Or did you just sit outside the door until he suddenly remembered he’d invited you over and come searching for you?

Had your heart always sped up, doubling its pace when you stood in the hallway? Had you always worried your hair was a mess? Surely you hadn’t. Suddenly you felt like a fool for putting on a lip stain.

You forced a deep breath of air into your lungs and knocked on the door. It immediately felt wrong.

The door opened seconds later. Jihoon greeted you with furrowed brows and an amused smile. “Since when are you so polite?”

You feigned a laugh. “Had to make sure you weren’t rotting away in your chair.”

He rolled his eyes. His hand reached out and wrapped around your wrist before swiftly pulling you inside. “Come on, you’re probably freezing. How long have you been standing there?”

Silence filled the room as he led you to the sofa.

You realised under his confused gaze that the old you – the definitely-not-in-love-with-my-best-friend you – would’ve argued. You would’ve told him something silly to distract him from your tells of embarrassment. You would’ve shoved him and he would’ve laughed. He had expected you to.

Making your lips curl into another smile that wasn’t quite sincere, you nudged him with your foot. “Did you miss me? Be honest.”

Another silence. You thought of how he should’ve snorted a laugh and told you “you wish” before turning to his computer and telling you about his woes as a music producer. Instead, he frowned.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Your mouth felt dry. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s just,” he started, scratching the back of his head all the while watching you cautiously. You felt like a cornered stray cat as you sat on his sofa, still clad in your coat and hat. “You’ve been acting a little weird today.”

You wanted to laugh. You hadn’t even interacted with him enough for him to come to that conclusion. In fact, there had been a conscious effort to avoid him until you could trust yourself to look him in the eyes and not burst into ballads about how wonderful he was.

“I guess I’m just a little under the weather.” You still despised lying to him, but you told yourself it wasn’t a complete lie. If nothing else, you were at least a little bit love sick and you weren’t entirely sure yet whether seeing him was the cause or the cure.

His eyes blinked wide. “You’re sick?”

Jihoon waited a minute, watching you patiently (though you could see a line between his brows that only appeared when he was particularly frustrated). Then he walked forward. You blinked up at him standing over your seated form, his brows knitted with concern as he held the back of his hand to your forehead.

“Do you have a fever?” he wondered and leaned his face closer on instinct, pressing his lips to your forehead like a mother would to her child. He pulled back before long, seemingly finally realising his error, and grumbled, “Definitely a fever.”

Right. A fever. You were hot to the touch. Definitely a normal reaction to seeing your best friend for the first time all day. Nothing abnormal about that.

“It’s nothing,” you told him, still forcing a smile, and patted his hand. “What are you working on today?”

At the mention of his work, he seemed to perk up a little. His lips quirked in that way they always did when he was about to tell you a lie. “Nothing interesting.”

“I’ve known you for nearly two decades,” you told him with a scowl. “You can’t keep things from me.”

He scoffed and turned on his heel, returning to his usual seat at the desk. His eyes narrowed when he glanced back at you over his shoulder. “I’ll keep all the secrets I want from you.”

“No chance,” you teased, resting your head on your palm as you leaned forward against your knee. “You're practically transparent.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” he told you with a chuckle and turned to the screen. Before long, his headphones were on his head and his head was deep in the music again.

You’d never felt like you didn’t belong in this room and you didn’t feel like it now either, even as your chest threatened to burst open with all of your doubts and feelings. Your coat slid off your shoulders and you settled down on the sofa.

The you from before would’ve unlocked your phone and watched something on it at an obnoxious volume just to annoy him (but had that ever really been the goal and not just a ploy to get his unwavering attention at any cost?), but you found yourself lost in your thoughts, overthinking every memory you had of him.

You thought back to how he always seemed to be pressed to your side on movie nights – giggling in your ear, repeating and mimicking the actors just to make you laugh, nuzzling his cheek against your collarbone like a cat showing his affection.

You thought back to the late night calls and how they made you so giddy despite the fact that you desperately wanted to sleep; to the protective glares he gave any man that looked at you and how a shiver went up your spine every time he crossed his arms over his chest while doing so; to the shirts and sweaters of his that you had unapologetically stolen to keep warm at night and breathe in his scent.

As you watched him – his head bopping along to the beat you couldn’t hear, his lips pursed in an effort to not spoil the lyrics, his dark eyes flitting your way every so often –, you realised there was no room for doubts. There was nothing uncertain about your feelings for Lee Jihoon.

All this time, you had loved him for his laughter and his jokes. You had loved him for his yelling and his tears. You had loved him for his melodic voice and his silly 3 am ideas. You had loved him for the warmth of his hands when he taught you to play the guitar and the fond disappointment in his eyes when you failed your driving test for the first time.

There was nothing you didn’t love about him.

Even now you noted with certain fondness that one side of his headphones was off his ear just enough so he could hear you and it made you love him all the more so.

The only thing you didn’t entirely adore about this man was that he wasn’t yours.

His eyes found you again and he quirked a brow. “Why are you staring at me?”

“I think I just realised why I don’t like Valentine’s day,” you told him without thinking. It was silly. Of all the millions of things you could’ve told him, of all the possible insults and puns and jokes, you told him the vulnerable truth you had only barely just graped yourself.

Jihoon swiveled his chair to face you, suddenly intrigued. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

His raised both his brows this time, staring at you with interest. You didn’t shy away from eye contact – not now when you’d finally learnt to appreciate the shades of brown. You only smiled and watched him as he sighed in defeat and turned back to the computer.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” he mumbled under his breath.

You weren’t sure you had another option.

While you had always hated Valentine’s day, Seungcheol and Soonyoung loved it with their whole hearts. Who would’ve guessed that the two men who could strike fear in anyone’s heart with just a look were hopeless romantics?

After spending hours contemplating if you wanted to be present at this event at all, you arrived fashionably late. Why they had decided to hold the celebration the night before Valentine’s day was beyond you, even if it was the reason that finally convinced you to go.

Welcoming you into their house brimming with roses and heart-themed decorations, Seungcheol handed you a red paper rose at the front door and sent you on your way with a wink.

“Jihoon’s in the kitchen,” he told you with a smirk that said he could see right through you. You hoped you weren’t as obvious to the others.

Taking your time to look around was just an excuse and it felt like everybody knew it. They gave you smiles and winks and claps on your shoulder as you passed them by with soft greetings. You couldn’t help but feel nervous.

Looking for distractions, you craned your neck to look at the decorations. Heart-shaped balloons of red and pink and white floated against the ceiling. They were surrounded by pink and white party banners hung between the walls, cut into triangles with little hearts drawn in the centre, little fairy lights wrapped around the strings keeping them together. The floor was covered in rose petals. If Seungcheol and Soonyoung knew anything, it was how to go all out (and the amazed yet annoyed look on Seungkwan’s face told you he realised it could cost him the competition).

As you walked through the crowd, you realised that for once the pinks and reds hadn’t filled you with frustration and anger and resentment. Instead, a strange feeling of bitter sadness filled your chest. The spot on your side felt empty even with tens of people pushing past you. Even when you were avoiding him, you missed him.

You decided there was no point in torturing yourself further. After all, you thought, wasn’t being by his side but never being able to call him yours torture enough?

True to Seungcheol’s word, you found Jihoon in the kitchen. And you quickly realised why people had been greeting you the way they did. A laugh threatened to bubble out of you at the sight.

Jihoon stood on the kitchen island, surrounded by countless bottles of beverages, singing into a wood spoon. Eyes heavy-lidded in a way you hadn’t seen them be since that one night he got drunk in an act of teenage rebellion in 11th grade, he swayed in his spot and sang love songs at the top of his lungs.

You dreaded to think what Seungcheol and Soonyoung might think of his actions. But when you looked around you found that rather than trying to get him down, Soonyoung sat on the kitchen counter across from the island, a whisk in hand, harmonising. People came and went, getting their drinks, and loudly cheered the duo on but didn’t pay them much mind beyond that. Perhaps they didn’t realise how unusual this sight really was.

Their rendition of a Bruno Mars song came to an end to the sound of a drunken applause and a few shouts for an encore. Jihoon waved away the compliments, nearly knocking himself off balance in doing so. As he lifted the spoon to his lips to start another song, his eyes met yours. The spoon clattered to the floor and his body followed not much more gracefully.

He called your name with such joy that you couldn’t help but smile and open your arms as he practically tackled you in a hug. His face pressed against your shoulder so tightly that you worried if he could even breathe. “You came!”

You didn’t have any words to tell him, still too baffled by the situation at hand. Your eyes found Soonyoung’s and you raised your brows in question. He only smirked and shrugged innocently before practically dancing out of the room.

Drunk words are sober thoughts they say. That is the only reason why you hardly drank at gatherings; not at all because Jihoon once smiled at you all pretty and told you he was glad he had at least one sober friend to keep him company. But it seemed that tonight he was too drunk to appreciate the sentiment.

“I think I’m drunk,” Jihoon mumbled after a while and pushed himself upright. You kept one hand on his shoulder to keep him from tilting further left than he already was. “But it doesn’t feel so bad.”

“You’re going to regret this tomorrow,” you told him softly and led him to sit down.

Like an obedient puppy, he followed your command and sat on a chair, leaning his forearms on the back of it and his chin on the very top. His eyes watched you curiously as you found a glass and filled it with water. You held the glass out for him to take but he just stared at you with starry eyes.

“You look pretty tonight,” he finally uttered when you raised your brows in question.

You frowned and pushed the glass closer to him, hoping he’d take the hint. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he told you, a smile appearing on his face but there wasn’t any humour in it. It was hard to tell what emotions he was trying to convey: happiness? fondness? adoration? Whatever it was, it was making you just a little flustered. And then he delivered the final plow: “You always look pretty.”

Your heart was positively working at three times– no, ten times its usual pace. You sucked in a shallow breath and nudged him with the glass again. This time he took it.

“Since when do you drink anyway?” you asked to change the topic.

For once he answered the question and shrugged. “Soonyoung thought that maybe I should give it a try again. You know, with all the rejection and everything.” His gaze fell to the tiled floor as he mumbled, “It’s actually been kind of nice.”

“What rejection? Who would reject you?”

He laughed but it sounded bitter. “Who indeed?”

“Did you ask someone to be your Valentine?” you realised and it felt like someone was trying to carve out a piece of your heart. “And they said no?”

Jihoon scoffed and placed down the water. His hand reached for a different cup, full of liquor you could practically smell from all the distance away. As he lifted the cup to his lips, he spoke, “What’s the point of asking if they’re going to say no anyways?”

The room felt hotter than usual. You could hardly breathe. You hadn’t even known Jihoon liked someone. Of course you had to find out merely days after coming to terms with your own feelings for him. Your love life was cursed and so was everything related to Valentine’s day.

You stayed silent to mourn the reality.

“You know what’s the worst part?” he then spoke again. It was hard to tell how drunk he was because he was hardly slurring his words. “I see her every day. Well,” he frowned, “almost every day. Whatever.” He shook his head and took a long sip of the drink. “Every day I see her and every day I think today is going to be the day I finally tell her. And then I don’t. Because I’m just her friend. She’s spent all those years telling everyone we’re just friends and I don’t want to be just her friend. I want so much more. But every time I try to tell her so, I chicken out.”

You could hardly listen to his proclamations. Your eyes were burning, ready to shed silent tears. You wondered if he’d even notice if you did cry. The Jihoon in front of you was a side you hadn’t seen before and you loved him just the same, even if this side was reserved for another woman.

Finally lifting his head, his eyes found yours. They widened. “Are you okay?”

Turning away to discreetly rub the tears out of your eyes, you nodded. “Yeah, sorry. Must be allergic to something in the air. Maybe it’s all the pollen.”

When you turned back to him, he looked almost deflated. He looked down again and ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe you’re just allergic to me.”

The tears seemed to vanish at the absurdity of his words. “... What?”

He shrugged. “Every time I say something nice to you, you start acting all weird. Avoiding me. Sometimes I think that if I confessed to you, you’d die on the spot.”

Whatever Soonyoung had been making him drink had to be incredibly strong. Every sentence he uttered seemed more absurd than the one before.

“I should get you home,” you decided with a sigh, resisting the urge to tug your hair out. Just because he was drunk didn’t mean he could play with your feelings like this – knowingly or not.

He whined. “I don’t want to–”

“You’re drunk, Jihoon,” you told him firmly. “If you drink any more tomorrow, you’ll murder me in the morning for letting you get this hungover.”

Jihoon rolled his eyes and glared at you before pouting and looking away. “As if I’d ever hurt you.”

“You’re drunk and you’re not making any sense and I’m taking you home to sleep,” you repeated yourself and reached for his arm. You expected him to resist your strength as you pulled him up but instead his hold on your fingers tightened. He stood up and leaned forward, resting his forehead against your shoulder.

“I don’t want to go home yet,” he told you after a moment of resting. “Can we just nap somewhere?”

You didn’t have the willpower to fight. The little you had, he had shattered without meaning to. You went to hook your arm around his elbow – he didn’t let you, only tightening his hold on your fingers.

Without much of a choice, you squeezed his hand and slowly led him to a guest room. Seungcheol and Soonyoung’s house had two of these, one on the first and one on the second floor. For a moment you headed towards the one on the first floor. Then your heart ached just a little and you decided you needed to get away from the people to let your heart break in peace.

The second floor guest room had floor to ceiling windows covered with white curtains. The streetlights shone through at an angle that you knew would annoy you if you tried to fall asleep. You suspected that’s why they had designated it for guests rather than sleeping here themselves.

You practically shoved Jihoon onto the mattress to avoid any further complications. Instead of grumbling like you expected him to, he fell down with a series of giggles. You couldn’t help but smile.

There was a single fleece-lined blanket folded on the foot of the bed. You placed it over him with care. When you went to turn around and find a place to sit – or maybe even go back downstairs to drown your sorrows in wine –, his hand shot up and grabbed a hold of yours.

“Stay,” he spoke so softly you almost thought you hadn’t heard him right. “Stay with me. Don’t leave. Please.”

“I was just going to sit down,” you told him gently, trying to pull your hand free.

He let out a whine. “See? This is what I mean. You’re allergic to me.”

Exhaustion was making your head ache. Or maybe it was all the tears that were waiting to be shed. You didn’t have the energy to fight, so you sank down next to him, crawling to fit under the blanket with him. “Just go to sleep.”

His hand never left yours as he curled it to rest against his chest and placed his heavy head on your chest. Silence filled the room. You didn’t dare breathe – who knew when you could have him this close again without feeling guilty or angry at the fates?

Minutes passed. You thought he’d fallen asleep when he whispered, “When other guys flirt with you or smile at you or tell you you’re pretty, you smile and thank them. When I do that, you avoid me.”

You wondered when the topic had shifted from his mystery crush to you.

“Because we’re friends.”

“There it is again,” he mumbled, glaring at the ceiling as if willing it to crumble and rain down on him. “Friends.” The word sounded like venom. “I pour my heart out to you, I write songs to you, I dream of you every time I fall asleep, but that’s all I ever am. A friend.”

“It’s never bothered you before.” You frowned. Despite his harsh tone, you found yourself playing with his hair, and him leaning into your touch.

He let out a deep breath. “Because I’ll do whatever it takes to be with you.” His head nuzzled closer to you, his breath tickling your skin. You thought you felt his warm lips press down before he whispered, “The other guys will have to go through me if they want you for themselves. I found you first.”

Silence filled the room again, soon accompanied by his soft snores and mumbles of promises he wasn’t conscious enough to actually make. You weren’t sure you could sleep now or ever again, too busy putting the puzzle pieces together.

His words had mangled your heart in every way possible. And yet there was a glimmer of hope as you wondered what he’d meant by his words.

Drunk words are sober thoughts they say and now you found yourself wondering how much truth there was to his words.

He whispered your name in his sleep and you found yourself giving in to the wistful dreams of that being his truth. As you pulled him closer, you prayed you wouldn’t have to wake up to another heartbreak.

If you had thought the streetlights at night were a curse last night, then now you found yourself thinking that any and all kinds of outside light had been invented just to make whoever inhabited this room as miserable as possible.

The morning sun shone right into your eyes even through the curtains at 6 am. Even if you hadn’t spent the entire night in a restless limbo between sleep and trying to solve the mystery of Jihoon’s words, you would've been upset to awaken to the horrid rays of bright sunshine.

The more you woke up, the more your world seemed to be upside down. Sometime at night, Jihoon’s arms had wrapped around you, tight and secure as they held you close to his chest. His lips were pressed to your temple. You almost wished he’d never wake up so you could enjoy this embrace for an eternity.

But another part of you didn’t want to face the disappointment of him jerking away from you as he’d wake up, embarrassed to have ever cuddled you in his sleep.

You took a deep breath and slowly tried to detangle yourself from his limbs. Finger by finger, you pulled yourself free. You were just about to roll off his left arm when it suddenly curled and effortlessly pulled you back into his chest.

When you looked at him, Jihoon wore a frown and a pout. “You were supposed to stay.”

“I did,” you whispered, unsure if he was really awake yet or not.

“Stay longer,” he demanded almost childishly, wrapping his newly free arm around you once again. “It’s still early.”

Your brain was trying hard to convince you that he thought you were someone else. Then he mumbled your name again and you saw his eyes slowly flutter open. Instead of pulling away and apologising like you expected him to, he offered you a smile.

“What?” He chuckled, voice gravelly from sleep.

You hesitated. But you knew that if you didn’t get answers, you’d drive yourself insane. “Do you…” You swallowed. “Do you remember what you said last night?”

His brows furrowed just a little but his lips remained in a pleasant smile. “About what?”

“About the girl who you’ve wanted to ask out for years but never did,” you supplied softly. “And about us being friends?”

The joy melted from his face. His eyes wavered. His lips quivered. He gave them a nervous lick before practically gasping for air. He remembered.

You tried to choose your words carefully, you really did. But they still came out all clumsy like they always did. “Is the girl me?”

He looked like he’d been caught in a crime. But his arms remained around you – you wondered if he was filled with the same selfishness you’d felt the night before: the urge to enjoy this feeling of closeness before it could get ripped away forever.

“How’d you know?” he whispered.

“You said something last night,” you told him carefully. “Something that made me realise that maybe you feel … the same way as I do.”

He avoided your eyes, looking around the room. Then his gaze snapped back to you, suddenly full of clarity. “The same way?”

This was it, you realised. It was now or never. It was true love or losing your best friend. Except you weren’t sure you could still be friends even if you didn’t pour your heart out – could you look him in the eyes again and not think about the words he said last night?

“Jihoon, I think–” The words were on the tip of your tongue, clinging to it like it was their last lifeline. It was hard to say what you wanted to.

His face, so devoid of joy just moments before, had lit up with hope. “Yeah?”

“I think I’m in love with you. I thought I could keep it a secret and not ruin our friendship,” you told him through nervous laughter, turning to look at the ceiling, “but now I’m not so sure I could have.”

“What made you change your mind?” he wondered as he looked at you with nothing short of awe.

“When you were talking about that girl last night,” you were still struggling to breathe, adrenaline pumping through your veins, “I was so heartbroken. I was going to cry all through the night. Then you said something that made me think… It made me think, or maybe foolishly hope, that you meant me. Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you mean me–?”

“I love you,” he replied before you could even finish your sentence. A smile appeared and you were filled with relief as he leaned his head closer to press against yours. “I’ve been in love with you since 7th grade. I thought I’d never get to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you demanded to know.

His breath sounded more like a hopeless laugh. “I didn’t want to lose you. I thought there was no way you’d love me back.”

“Clearly you were wrong.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled and surged forward to press a gentle kiss to your lips as if he couldn’t contain himself any longer. You savoured the feeling, pressing closer to him, tugging him closer with a hand on the back of his head. He pulled back and laughed again. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this.”

“Good thing you can do it again as many times as you please,” you told him with a smile. “You know, I’ve always hated Valentine’s day, but you have a real shot at changing that right now.”

The door burst open just as he matched your grin and began to lean closer. Startled, the two of you looked up. Clad in a tiger-striped onesie, Soonyoung stood at the door, eyes wide. Moments of awkward silence passed. Then his face broke out into a wide grin and he slammed the door shut. You heard the lock click just a second later, followed by an almost villainous laughter.

You exchanged startled looks with Jihoon. Then he shrugged and leaned forward to kiss you again.

“All the more time to make up for the lost years,” he told you as he pulled you closer. “Happy Valentine’s day.”

Author's Note: I both loved and hated writing this fic. If at any point, you found yourself thinking "huh, i wish the writer did more with this random crumb in this story that looks like it should've been a part of something bigger", i can almost guarantee you i had plans to do something with it and then forgot or abandoned the idea mid-way through.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed this fic at least moderately and if you did, please feel free to reblog with comments or leave an emoji-filled reply or maybe even send me an ask to let me know what you thought!

#lonelyheartscafecollab #seventeen scenarios #seventeen x reader #lee jihoon scenarios #woozi x reader #svt scenarios #svt x reader #seventeen fic #woozi scenarios #jihoon scenarios

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unabletonotlovesatoru · 3 days ago

Text

it was an ordinary afternoon—nothing extravagant, nothing particularly special. nanami was sitting at the kitchen table, his sleeves rolled up as he flipped through a book, occasionally taking slow sips of his coffee. the golden sunlight streamed in through the window, catching the sharp lines of his jaw, the soft furrow of his brow, the way his fingers rested against the ceramic mug.

you were supposed to be doing something productive—cleaning, answering emails, anything other than staring at him. but you couldn’t help it. he looked so effortlessly handsome, so calm, so nanami.

and before you could stop yourself, the words just… slipped out.

“we should get married.”

nanami froze mid-page turn. his eyes lifted, slowly, meeting yours with an expression that was unreadable at first.

you blinked.

oh.

oh no.

his fingers tapped against the book’s spine as he carefully set it down. “pardon?”

your mouth opened, but no words came out. why did you say it like that? you hadn’t planned this. there was no ring, no romantic setup, no speech prepared—just you, sitting there in pajama shorts and an old t-shirt, blurting out a marriage proposal over coffee.

“um.” you swallowed, suddenly very aware of how intently he was watching you. “i just—i mean—you look really nice right now, and I was thinking about how much I love you, and then I thought, ‘wow, I could look at him like this forever,’ and then—” you gestured vaguely. “—that happened.”

a beat of silence. then—

nanami let out a small breath, something almost like a laugh—soft, barely there, but unmistakably fond. he leaned back slightly, tilting his head as if taking in the moment.

“that,” he said, setting his coffee down, “is the most unceremonious proposal I’ve ever heard.”

“i know,” you groaned, burying your face in your hands. “forget I said anything. I can’t believe I just—”

but before you could spiral further into embarrassment, you felt the warmth of his hand, gentle and grounding, as he reached across the table to take yours.

“no,” nanami said, his thumb tracing absentminded circles against your skin. “say it again.”

your breath hitched as you peeked at him from between your fingers. “what?”

his lips curled just slightly at the edges—something too small to be called a smile, but there was warmth in his expression, something soft and unbearably tender.

“ask me again.” he murmured.

your heart stuttered in your chest.

you took a shaky breath, gathering the courage to meet his gaze fully.

“kento,” you said, this time with intent. “will you marry me?”

nanami exhaled, his grip on your hand tightening just slightly. for a moment, he said nothing—just looked at you, his gaze steady, deep, full.

and then, in that same calm, even tone, he answered.

“yes.”

you blinked. “yes?”

“yes.” he lifted your hand, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. “i’d planned to ask you myself, but… this works too.”

you stared at him, feeling warmth bloom in your chest before breaking into a breathless laugh. “this is the worst proposal ever.”

“perhaps,” nanami hummed, brushing his thumb over your ring finger as if already picturing the band that would soon be there. “but it’s ours.”

#— teddy’s writing shop 𐙚🧸ྀི #nanami kento x you #nanami kento x #nanami kento x reader #nanami kento #nanami #kento nanami x you #kento nanami x reader #nanami x you #nanami x reader #nanami kento jjk #jjk nanami #jjk x you #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujustsu kaisen x reader #jjk x

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scoutofmymind · 2 days ago

Note

Momma I request a prompt inspired by a song of your choosing (: I L Y

Couldn’t Make It Any Harder — { Luigi x Reader }

Content: mental health issues, mentions of past trauma, TorturedArtist!Reader, Empath!Luigi, Luigi says “go birds” after flipping off a woman, confused feelings, situationship, reader is just Very Confused in general, angst, eventual romance.

Wc: 5,107

I couldn't make it

Any harder to love me

Oh, one day, believe me

You’ll want someone who makes it easy

This has been floating around in my asks for awhile, and I wasn’t feeling practically inspired by any songs lately until Sabrina released Couldn’t Make It Any Harder and I couldn’t stop thinking about writing it.

This work was done quickly between my other ongoing Luigi projects, so I apologize for any inconsistencies or skipped backstory (you know I’m a backstory bitch) but I simply needed to get this out of my system, and remembered that an anon had asked me to write something based off of a song quite awhile ago!

Also, how could I leave you hanging on Valentine’s Day? Even if I’m posting this at 2 AM….

It's 8:30 AM at your usual coffee spot — that tiny café two blocks from Luigi's apartment where the barista always draws terrible attempts at latte art, and you’re still wearing yesterday's mascara, not because you've been crying, but because you spent the night in your studio, channeling your frustration into a new piece that's all sharp edges and bold strokes.

"I mean, we had a great time!" You're gesturing with your coffee cup, nearly spilling it. "We went to that new gallery opening, and he actually understood my rant about contemporary minimalism. Then dinner, drinks, great conversation — and now? Radio silence. Three days of nothing."

Luigi, sitting across from you, is trying not to smile at how animated you are, his laptop open beside him — he's probably got a Slack channel blowing up with messages from his dev team, but he rushed to meet you for this emergency coffee session, anyway.

The startup's dress code might be casual, but he always manages to look put-together in that effortless way that makes other tech bros look like they're not trying hard enough.

"Maybe I'm just-“ you pause, stirring your coffee aggressively, "too much, you know? Too loud, too passionate, too-"

"Stop," Luigi cuts in, closing his laptop and fixing his gaze on you again, "You're not too anything. You're exactly enough. So don’t even go there with me.” He massages his temples, “Too early for it.”

"I know that," you say firmly, because you do. "That's the thing — I like who I am. I like that I can talk about art for hours. I like that I get excited about things. I like that I feel everything so intensely. I'm not going to make myself smaller just because some guy can't handle it."

"Then don't," Luigi says, and there's something in his voice that makes you look up from the foam disappearing from your cappuccino. "The right person won't want you to."

"Exactly! And you know what? If Jake can't handle a woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to say it-“ you trail off, reaching for your sketchbook. You start absent-mindedly drawing on a corner of the page.

“Ugh,” Luigi’s face screws in mock disgust, “His name was Jake?”

Putting down your pen, you lean back in your chair with a frustrated sigh. "But then again, if I'm so great, why does this keep happening? Three first dates in two months, Lu. Three. And they all end the same way."

"You mean with guys who can't handle someone who actually has opinions?" Luigi takes a sip of his coffee, his fingers tapping absently on his closed laptop. A notification buzzes on his phone — probably his team wondering where he is — but he doesn't even glance at it.

"No, see, that's just it," you lean forward, your hands moving expressively as you talk. "They love it at first. They think it's so fascinating and refreshing that I'm 'not like other girls', or whatever." You roll your eyes at the phrase, hating the taste of the words in your mouth. "But then it's like they realize I'm actually serious. That I'm not just putting on some manic pixie dream girl act for their entertainment."

Luigi's mouth quirks up at one corner. "Heaven forbid you be a real person with actual thoughts and feelings."

"Right? And I know — I know I'm not too much," you say, but your voice wavers slightly. You start fidgeting with your rings, a habit Luigi's seen a thousand times when you're wrestling with something in your head. "But sometimes I wonder if-"

"If what?"

"If maybe I should just- you know.. tone it down? Just a little? Just at first?" The words sound wrong coming out of your mouth, and you can see from Luigi's expression that he knows it, too. "No, you're right, forget I said that. That's stupid."

"It is stupid," he agrees, but gently. His eyes catch yours across the table again, his gaze steady and genuine. "Remember that installation you did last month? The one about authenticity?"

"Yeah?"

"What did you tell that bag of bones professor who said it was 'overwhelmingly honest'?"

A smile starts to spread across your face. "I told him that was the whole damn point."

"Exactly." Luigi checks his watch and starts gathering his things — he's definitely late now. "So maybe the problem isn't that you're too overwhelming,” he pats the top of your head, slinging his bag over his shoulder, “maybe they're just underwhelming."

•

You're standing in front of your last piece, forcing a smile that feels like it's splitting your face in half, as another guest explains to you what your own art means.

Behind you, you can hear snippets of conversations that make your skin crawl.

It's a bit... aggressive, isn't it?

Not quite gallery standard... these nepo kids..

Experimental, but perhaps too experimental..

Your hands are shaking, so you clasp them behind your back. You've been doing this grim waltz for two hours — nodding, smiling, explaining yourself over and over to people who look through you rather than at you, and the gallery owner keeps shooting you these looks, these little disappointed glances that make you feel about two inches tall.

You catch Luigi's eye across the room.

He's been watching, you realize, while pretending to be deeply invested in a conversation with some tech entrepreneur who probably thinks art is a good investment opportunity, and he tilts his head slightly — a question.

You shake yours — you’re not okay.

"The brushstrokes here," the current patron is saying, pointing at your most vulnerable piece, "they're rather — well, chaotic. Unorganized. Muddy. It’s strange to see. Was that intentional?"

Something inside you splinters.

"Excuse me," you manage, your voice surprisingly steady for how the room is tunneling, how your fingers begin to tingle, how your lungs have lost the ability to draw in a full breath. "I need some air."

You make it through the gallery, past the whispers and the stares, past the owner who starts to say something about maintaining appearances, past the front desk and around the corner to the back alley.

Then your legs give out.

You're gasping, trying to remember how breathing works, your back against the cold brick wall. The dress — that stupid yellow dress that Luigi said was his favorite — feels too tight. Everything feels too tight.

You tear at your collar, needing air, needing space, needing- "Hey." Luigi's voice, close but not too close. "I'm here."

"I can't-" you choke out. "I can't breathe, I can't-"

"Yes, you can." He moves slowly into your space, hands hovering but not touching. "Look at me. Just look at me. I’m right here. It’s all good.”

You shake your head violently, sliding down the wall. "They're right. They're all right. I'm not- this- This isn't-" Each word feels like it's being ripped from your throat, bloody and raw and dishonest and horrific. They aren’t right. You know they aren’t.

"Bullshit." The sharpness in his voice makes you look up. He's crouched in front of you now, his tie completely undone, his eyes fierce. "They're not right. They're not even close to right. They're looking at fireworks and complaining about the noise. Old fuckin’ bunch’a assholes.”

A sob catches in your throat, half laugh, half cry. "That's a terrible metaphor."

"Made you look at me, though." His voice softens, his hands resting on your clammy shoulders. "Breathe with me, okay? Just breathe."

You try to match his exaggerated breathing, your hands still shaking. "I put everything into this show," you whisper after your second deep breath. "Everything."

"I know."

"And they just- they- they just-“

"I know." He shifts, sitting beside you against the wall, careful to leave space, but still your shoulders bump together. "But. Want to know what I think?"

You turn your head to look at him, makeup probably ruined, dress definitely stained from the alley ground, but you’ve already abandoned ship, you’ve waved your white flag — there’s no use in pretending you haven’t crumbled in a New York alleyway now. "What?"

"I think they're terrified of you."

That startles a real laugh out of you, “What?"

"You heard me." He's looking straight ahead, but there's something fierce in his profile. "You walked in there with your soul on full display, unapologetic and raw and real, and they don't know what to do with that. People like that, they're comfortable with art they can hang in their dining rooms and forget about.” You watch him blink, gathering the words, “Your shit doesn't let them forget. It makes them feel things they don't want to feel."

You nudge him gently, a laugh flaring your nostrils. "That's a lot better than the fireworks metaphor."

Now he does look at you, a small smile playing at his lips, his cheeks blushed crimson from the wine he’d gulped down just to make himself a bit more sociable. "Yeah, well, I've had three glasses of their overpriced wine. I'm feeling poetic."

Another laugh bubbles up, watery but real. You let your head fall against his shoulder, just for a moment. "I don't want to go back in there."

"So we won’t." He doesn't move, letting you lean on him, his head leaning atop yours. "Let's go get real drinks instead. You can tell me all the things you wanted to say to that guy who tried to explain color theory to you."

"God, he was the worst." You straighten up slowly, wiping at your eyes. "Did you see his socks?"

"I was trying not to."

•

You're standing at the open bar, counting the minutes until it's socially acceptable to leave, when Madison — a college friend you haven't seen in years, who always seemed to help herself to open bars beyond her means — sways over.

Her champagne sloshes dangerously close to your dress, but for some reason, you don’t step back.

"Oh my god, it really is you!" Her voice carries just a bit too loud, and you can feel a few heads turning in your direction. "I almost didn't recognize you without, you know-“ she gestures vaguely at all of you, that sick smile still on her blush pink lips. "All the paint and shit all over you.”

You take a long sip of your drink, hoping it would wash away the rising tide of anxiety in your core. "Good to see you too, Mads.”

"So,” She leans in conspiratorially, her breath smelling of booze and mid-tier champagne. “I heard about your gallery show last month. The one at The Maxwell? God, that must have been-“ She trails off, eyes wide with what looks like concern but feels like something else entirely.

Your hand tightens around your glass. "Must have been what?" Your lips tighten into a line, “It was an- an honor to have the opportunity.”

Words your father had always said to you growing up echo in the far depths of your mind; Honor and Integrity.

There’s a humility in it, in accepting such a nightmare as privilege.

"Well, I mean — I saw that article that was going around Instagram. About how you just up and left? In the middle of opening night?" She takes another sip of champagne, watching you over the rim with her big, stupid brown eyes. "Is that true? That you didn't even come back to collect your pieces? God, that's crazy!"

The word crazy hits like a slap, and you can still feel the panic from that night, the walls closing in as people whispered, pointed, discussed your work like it was a car crash they couldn't look away from and did nothing to aid.

"It's not exactly-"

"And after everything with Matt, and then Jason- ugh,” She shakes her head. "I mean, I get it. Using art as therapy. But maybe actual therapy would be — I dunno — you know, beneficial?”

"Madison-"

"I'm just worried about you," she continues, reaching for your arm and her fingers feel like serpents, coiling around your skin, suffocating you. "We all are. First the whole thing with your poor father — god, remember how he used to say you were just too-"

"Don't." Your voice comes out sharper than intended, your brows furrowed at her like she’d backhanded you. “Don’t you fucking say another word.”

Madison almost gasps, clutching her necklace. “See? This is what I mean. All this reactionary stuff. The anger. The intensity. Have you thought about getting help? My therapist says sometimes when we've been through things-"

The garden somehow feels too small, the fairy lights too bright, the music too loud. Across the room, Luigi is trapped in conversation with the bride's uncle, but somehow he must sense something because his eyes find yours, his head tilted at you, his usual question.

Everything okay?

This time, you look away from him.

"I’m going to leave this conversation before-“

"No, wait, listen." Madison's grip on your arm tightens, slithering, sneering, hissing. Fangs, poison. “That show — people were talking about it for weeks. How raw it was. How fucking uncomfortable it made everyone. One of the pieces — the one with all the broken mirrors? Someone said it looked like a cry for help."

You can feel your pulse in your throat. "It wasn't a fucking-“

"And then you just disappeared! Like, who does that, girl? Just leaves their own show? The curator had to pack up your pieces himself. That's what the article said. Is that true?" She may as well have a microphone beneath your trembling lips, taking on the role of some cheap reporter for a local shittalking magazine.

Of course she read the article.

Everyone read the article.

The one that called your work a disturbing glimpse into a clearly troubled mind. The one that suggested your artistic breakdown was inevitable given your history of emotional instability.

It was laughable, truly, and anyone that knew you well enough had known so much to be so very far from the truth.

"I had my reasons," you manage, but your voice sounds distant even to yourself. “I had reason for leaving the way I did.”

"Obviously you did. That's what I'm saying. Maybe if you got some help, you know, dealt with all this and found ways to properly cope-“ She waves her hand vaguely again, like swatting away a pesky fly. "Then maybe you could make art that's more you know.. accessible. Enjoyable. Less-“

"Less me?" The words come out before you can stop them. “Bullshit. You wouldn’t know, Madison. You haven’t seen a single one of my shows, haven’t shown yourself at any of my gallery openings-“ your cheeks burn red hot, your glass of wine discarded and your hands balled into fists. “You’re lucky I don’t fucking pop that smirk right off your-“

"That's not what I-"

“It is exactly what you fucking-“

“No, it’s not! Look at yourself!”

"Hey!” Luigi's voice cuts through the rising panic. He's suddenly there, solid and real. "Sorry to interrupt, but we have that thing that we have to get to-“ he loops his arm around yours, and he swears he can feel the heat radiating off of you, hot and quivering like a volcano deciding if it’s time to erupt just yet or not.

Madison blinks at him, her nostrils flared at the sudden interruption. It seems as though this is exactly the reaction she wanted, and was pissed the show had called curtains so quickly. "What thing?"

"That very important thing," Luigi says firmly, already guiding you away. "Great catching up. Green is not your color. Go Birds.” As he turns you both, he raises his middle finger behind your back — not because you needed defending, but because that's who Luigi is; all sharp edges and fierce loyalty, a guard dog with his teeth bared in your honor, though, you catch the gesture in a reflection, and something warm unfurls in your chest.

Not because you needed saving, but because he'd always take your side, no matter the circumstances. He didn’t need to know why you were barking at this girl he’d never met before — he already knew you had good reason to do it.

You make it to the venue's back garden before your legs give out, and the fairy lights blur through tears you refuse to let fall. "Did you— fuck,” Your voice shakes as you reach to wipe away the tears before they even get the chance to glide down your cheeks. "Did you actually hear what she was saying or just see it?”

"Caught the greatest hits." His jaw is tight, his hand resting on your lower back as he hunches forward, clearly concerned but approaching all of it carefully.

You can’t help but wonder then how many times you’ll find yourselves like this — Luigi rescuing you from yet another mishap, and that alone could become a new reason to feel sorry for yourself.

And him.

"The article." You wrap your arms around yourself. "She read the fucking article."

Ironically, you had originally taken the article well.

Too well, in fact.

You'd invited them all over — Luigi, Anna, Theo — for what you called A Reading of My Professional Obituary. You'd spent all day in the kitchen, channeling your grandmother's stress-cooking legacy; bouillabaisse simmering for hours, Tarte Tatin caramelizing to golden perfection.

The good wine came out, the kind you'd been saving for a real occasion.

Perched in your chair like it was a throne, wine glass dangling from your fingers, you'd performed dramatic readings of the choicest quotes. "Sources close to the artist describe a history of emotional instability," you'd intoned, affecting a pompous art critic voice that had Luigi choking on his wine. "An unsettling collection that seemed less like art and more like a cry for help.”

The evening devolved into a tipsy game of "Guess the Snitch" — everyone taking turns suggesting increasingly ridiculous candidates for the mysterious source. "It was Gabby, in the gallery, with the emotional manipulation!" Theo had declared, wielding his bouillabaisse spoon like a gavel.

But Luigi had watched you through it all — the way your hand shook slightly when pouring wine, how your laugh got a little too loud to be genuine, and how you'd spent three hours making a perfect French dessert like your life depended on proving you weren't falling apart.

"We all did." Luigi reminds you, his voice gentle but firm. "Christ, we turned it into dinner theater. Remember how Anna did that dramatic interpretation of ' the unsettling collection'?" His hand finds your knee, squeezing. "And it was shit. Not only was it shit — it was cowardly. Didn't even have the spine to name you."

You tilt your head back, using the stars as gravity's help against the tears threatening to spill. The fairy lights from the wedding garden blur into little halos. "I know, but — these people, Lu." Your voice catches, and you hate how it betrays you. "They believe it. They're all walking around thinking I'm some unhinged artist who needs to be sedated and locked away from sharp objects." A laugh escapes, but it's wet and hollow. "God, I wish I'd understood what that article would do. I wish-"

But there's no point in wishing.

The damage was done with surgical precision.

They hadn't needed to use your name — everyone knew exactly whose exhibition had opened at Maxwell Gallery on August fifteenth.

Yours.

•

The hotel room feels smaller with each passing hour.

You've mastered a careful choreography — sliding past each other in the narrow spaces, maintaining precise distances on the king bed as you both pretend to watch some mindless cooking show. But sometimes, despite your best efforts, you slip. His hand brushes yours as you both reach for the room service menu, your feet touch under the shared blanket; each accidental contact sends you recoiling like a startled cat, though you used to fall asleep during movie nights without a second thought.

When your knee accidentally bumps his as you shift position, you jerk away so violently you nearly fall off the bed.

"Okay." Luigi mutes the TV, turning to face you. "We need to talk about this."

"About what?" But you know exactly what, can feel heat creeping up your neck and it makes you want to run.

"About how we used to share my twin bed during college when you crashed at my place, but now you act like my skin is fucking toxic." His voice is gentle, but there's an undercurrent of hurt that makes your core ache. "Remember that road trip to Detroit? You slept on my chest the whole way back because the car heater was broken.“ he looks desperate, grasping at the last straws of you. “I feel like we hardly look each other in the eyes now.”

You stare hard at the geometric pattern on the duvet, picking at a loose thread. "Things were different then."

"Were they?" He shifts closer, and you fight the urge to move away. "Or are you just scared they weren't?"

You get up abruptly, needing to put physical space between you and that question, the Chicago night spreading out beyond the window, a constellation of lights blurring through unshed tears; each one feels like a witness to this moment, to your cowardice.

"You know what changed," you say finally, arms crossed tight against your chest like armor. "After Maxwell, after the article, after everything became public consumption — I can't be that person anymore.”

"Why not?" His voice is closer now — he's moved to the edge of the bed, but he doesn't approach further. Giving you space while refusing to let you run.

Very classic Luigi.

A laugh escapes you, bitter and dry. "Because now everyone's watching. Waiting for the next shoe to drop. And you-“ You turn just enough to catch his reflection in the window, superimposed over the city lights. "You're too important to me, Lu.”

"So you'd rather just — what? Keep pretending?" There's frustration in his voice now, raw and real. "We both know that's not sustainable. Not when we used to-“ He trails off, and you recall the many countless nights on his cramped couch, your head on his chest, his heartbeat your lullaby to the most restful sleep you’d ever known.

"Maybe not," you admit quietly. "But it's safer than the alternative."

"Safer for who?"

The question almost knocks you off your feet.

Because he's right — this careful distance isn't protecting him. It's protecting you. From vulnerability. From the possibility of loss. From the terrifying reality that despite everything, despite all your jagged edges and dark corners, he's still here.

Still looking at you like you're something precious instead of precarious.

The silence stretches between you, heavy with all the things you're afraid to say, all the ways you're afraid to need him, and even more terrified of the way he needs you.

Eventually, you turn from the window, facing him. "It can't be simple. I won't let it be." Your voice catches. "I push and I pull and I keep everyone at arm's length until they prove me right by leaving."

Luigi stands slowly, like he's approaching a wild animal. "You've been trying so hard to make it impossible," he says softly. "Creating distance, convincing yourself I'll give up." He takes another step closer. "But loving you has always been the easiest thing I've ever done."

"Don't." The word comes out choked, your hand pressing against his chest in hopes that he’ll back away. "Don't say that when you know how complicated — how- how difficult-"

"Difficult?" He's close enough now that you can see the flecks of gold in his eyes, stood firm but not inching any closer. "You want to talk about difficult? Try watching you date other people. Try sitting across from you at coffee shops for years and watching you cry over them. Try fucking loving you quietly through every gallery opening, every crisis,“ his brows furrow, his nostrils flare, “you don’t get to tell me what loving you is like.”

Your breath catches as he reaches for you.

"You think you're pushing me away?" His voice is barely above a whisper, his hands finally cradling your face, tears dampening your cheeks that blaze with warmth. "I've been yours since that first night you fell asleep on my shoulder during finals week. Everything since then — it's just been waiting."

You clench your jaw, your heart a wild thing against your ribs. This tightrope you and Luigi have been walking for years — this delicate balance of almost-but-not-quite, of maybe-someday-but-not-now — has finally frayed beneath your feet. All those careful steps, those perfectly maintained distances, those nights of pretending your skin didn't burn where he almost touched you.

They’ve led you here, to this hotel room in Chicago, where the fantasy of staying safely suspended between friendship and something more has finally given way to gravity.

And what, you wonder, has Luigi seen in you to make him want to dive deeper into your chaos?

He's already witnessed the 3 AM phone calls when your mind won't quiet, the obsessive cleaning episodes that leave your hands raw and your apartment sterile. He's held you through the tears that come without warning, weathered the anger that burns hot and fast like summer lightning.

You're no manic pixie dream girl — you're the real thing, messy and unpredictable, with a heart that bleeds all over everything it touches.

He's either a storm chaser or a fool, you think.

Some hopeless beast tamer who hasn't realized that some creatures aren't meant to be gentled, that some storms leave nothing but wreckage in their wake.

But that's the thing — to Luigi, you've never been a storm to weather or a beast to tame. He doesn't look at you like you're broken machinery in need of repair, doesn't treat your edges like something to be smoothed away.

Instead, he's spent years matching your pace, stepping back when you needed space, stepping forward when you needed anchor. And now, finally, the weight of all that careful patience has brought him here — raw and honest in this dim hotel room, asking you to either meet him in this space between what you are and what you could be, or lay him to rest.

"Touch me," he says, the words falling soft but heavy in the space between you. His eyes hold yours, steady and sure, "Or let me go.”

The city lights paint his silhouette in gold and shadow, and you realize you've never seen him look so vulnerable, so stripped of the careful composure he always maintains. Your Luigi laid bare — not the patient friend, not the steady shoulder, but a man who's finally reached the end of his endurance.

"What if we break?" The question slips from your lips, small and honest, carrying all the weight of your fears that kept you at such a distance all these years — shattering to pieces, left broken by the man you’d loved the most.

Luigi's eyes soften, and something like a smile — sad and sweet and knowing — tugs at the corner of his lips. "Then we break," he says simply, his thumbs swiping away the tears that slide down your cheeks. "But I'd rather that than spend the rest of my life whole and wondering."

His hands haven’t moved. Patient, steady Luigi, who has never pushed but never fully retreated, either. Who has somehow found this perfect middle ground between staying and going, between asking and waiting.

And maybe that's what finally does it — the realization that he's offering you both beginning and end in the same breath. That he's standing here saying yes to all of it; the possibility of breaking, of shattering, of ending up with nothing but deadly carnage between you.

That he knows exactly what he's asking for, and he's asking anyway.

Your hand moves before you can think yourself out of it again, crossing the space between you like a prayer finally answered. When you cup his face, the scrape of stubble against your palm is both foreign and achingly familiar — like a song you used to know by heart, now half-remembered.

His eyes flutter closed at your touch, and you feel the slight tremor in his jaw, the way he leans into your hand like he's been starving for it.

His breath catches, shaky and soft, and when he speaks, his voice is rough with emotion. "There you are," he whispers against your palm, like he's greeting someone long lost, like you've finally come home after years away. "There you are."

His lips brush your palm once more before he lifts his gaze to yours, eyes dark with something between hope and heartache. "Tell me to pull away," he whispers, voice rough. "Tell me this isn't what you want, and I'll go. I'll understand."

But his body betrays him — the slight tremor still present in his jaw under your touch, the way he's still leaning into your hand like he can't help himself. He's offering you an exit, even now. Steady, selfless Luigi, always making sure you have a way out, even when it's killing him to do so.

And that's what breaks you finally — not his touch or his words, but this endless capacity of his to put your needs first.

To stand here offering everything he has left and the chance to walk away from it.

His hand finds your waist, fingers pressing into soft flesh with just enough pressure to make your breath hitch. That small sound seems to undo something in him — his control fractures, and suddenly he's pulling you down to him with a urgency that matches your own, your hands bracing against his chest, feeling the thundering of his heart beneath your palms.

"I've thought about this," he confesses roughly, eyes locked on yours with an intensity that makes heat pool low in your stomach, his thumb tracing a burning path along your hip bone. "Having you like this.”

You can feel the tension coiled in him, the way he's still holding back despite everything. Even now, he's giving you the chance to set the pace, to decide how far this goes. But you're done with hesitation, done with the careful distance you've maintained for so long.

You lean down, letting your lips brush against his ear. "Show me," you whisper, and feel him shudder beneath you. "Show me how you wanted me."

He moves with a swiftness that steals your breath, flipping your positions in one fluid motion. Now he's the one hovering above you, his forearm braced beside your head, other hand still at your waist.

The weight of him, the heat of him so close — it makes your head spin.

"Like this," he breathes, pressing his forehead to yours. "Just like this." He holds you like you’ll run from him — just like he’s watched you run from everything before that doesn’t run from you first.

Your hands find their way to his shoulders, feeling the tension there, the way he's trembling slightly despite his strength. "I'm here," you whisper back, one hand sliding up to cup his cheek. "I'm not going anywhere."

#yuhhhhhh!!!#req #a quick one #just a lil quick 5k nbd #luigi mangione x reader #luigi mangione fanfic

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beatlblog · 3 hours ago

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#excellent#i laughed irl#at the image of john#dropping hints left and right#going like#ask me ask me ask me#and then nobody ever really does#so he does that one self-interview like#well#if no one is going to ask me i'll have to do it myself#what's all that john and paul business indeed (via @ladyjaneasher-blog)

‘...there was talk about you and PAUL’ John, your dream journal does NOT count#put the self interview on my gravestone seriously#also I have always though that about Ram - if there was something between them Ram is a nuclear attack that John could never openly answer#and goes a little way to explain the MASSIVE counterattack of how do you sleep#this is quality johntent#oh john#very subtle john! (via @drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney)

#have you ever fucked a guy?#well that only answers part of the question#has a guy ever fucked you....conveniently left out for a subby sub#😘😘😘#okay but really like what did paul think about this interview that john did for himself#do you think he almost choked when his name was dropped so close in the vacinity of 'fucked a guy' lmfao#oh john (via @ourladylennon)

#john knows like all bullies that the best defence is a strong offence#getting ahead and controlling the narrative so nobody can bring it up first#but in a way which hints at wanting people to delve deeper#john was trying so hard to out himself and nobody paid it any attention (via @drivenalphabitchpaulmccartney)

#i always think about how john keeps going on about the lyrics#like#he says I PRINT THEM UNLIKE PAUL WHO IS A COWARD#which is weird anyway#so it's not a musical thing#he thinks there's a message on there#and perhaps it's just the one lyric he mentions#but as he's already told people about that a lot#one must assume there's more that he's telling us to think about#and i really don't buy paul didn't know#he can play innocent but he must have known#probably not that john would go THAT HARD at him#because john never had#not publicly#and while he regrets it later paul seems to come to the conclusion that he gets why john did it#helped by john telling him that jealous guy was about him too#which is so funny#did john call him up drunk and sad and apologise over and over (via @inspiteallthedanger)

#john really be out there like ask me I dare you#but honestly paul pulls a lot of the same bullshit (via @takebugs)

#john couldn’t help telling on himself could he (via @origami-money)

#oh yeah i've been thinking about the bob wooler incident and john being most mortified by how upset he got at the idea of him being queer#and seemingly going on to try and appear unruffled by that potential perception by being the one to set it up himself#like it can't hurt you if you're putting it on (via @myplasticadversary)

#classic john#make something really obvious and then saying haha it’s just a joke#truly the most damning thing tbh from johns own mouth (via @sleeper9)

#i get u john.. would have done the same thing#if he had lived past 40 oh boy#there would have been no stopping him (via @cherubina)

I should be asleep but I can’t stop thinking about Ram and John’s reaction to it. If we Assume, as 90% of the world does, that there was nothing sexual/romantic between them, then both of these things (Ram itself and John’s reaction) make no sense. Ram is not cruel in its lyrics, not really, but throughout the whole album runs this very interesting thread of almost-but-not-quite taunting self-satisfaction. As someone else said, it’s very “my wife and I are having a great time off by ourselves.” But Paul is a smart man and he knows John Lennon will see it as a taunt. So that makes it a taunt.

But again, this doesn’t make sense if John and Paul were simply besties. If they were, Paul wouldn’t feel the need to implicitly tell John that he has a wife now and doesn’t need John anymore to make good music and good love, and John wouldn’t have felt so abjectly hurt (and dare I say jealous) by it.

Also there’s a part of this interview from 71 where someone asks John about Ram and that part is interesting but y'all have been SLEEPING on the last part of that question, when someone follows up with “and don’t you have a song on your new album that could be seen as a response to Ram?” And John’s like well yeah, you could see it as a response to this, or it could just be about a chick I used to know, wink wink.

Bruh. Why u always comparing Paul to women in relation to yourself. It’s like you’re literally asking people to ask you if y'all ever fucked.

#lm meta #scourge words #self interview #EARTHA KITT MENTION

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bcksbarnes · 2 days ago

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snipped

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

summary: bucky is feeling plagued by his past so he asks you to cut his hair.

word count: 1.2K

genre: fluff, sad!bucky

bucky wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to do this, unfortunately his hair had been apart of him for so long that it was like an extension of himself. it was both a mask that represented a time that he wished to forget, and a reminder of the better human he needed to become. but, the thoughts of the tragedies he caused while looking the way did weighed heavy on his mind. he already spent most of his nights woke up with nightmares from his time as the winter solider, he couldn’t continue looking in the mirror and feeling the same way as well.

“hey,” he says as he walks into your bedroom, leaning against the doorframe while he watches you lay in bed. when you don’t respond right away he calls your name, causing you to look up from your phone with a small blush on your cheeks.

“sorry, nat’s on a date and i wanted to see how it was going.” you respond, placing the phone next to you on the bed.

“did she answer?” he asks, a small smile on his face as he watches you.

“yeah, she said he’s boring. what else is new.” you tease, your eyes raking over his face. it only takes you a second to realize he’s uneasy. “what’s wrong?”

you two had been together long enough that it didn’t take much for you to know when bucky was upset or thinking about something. his usual quiet and brooding behavior was always met with small quirks like tapping his foot or biting his top lip when there was something on his mind. this time it was the former.

he sighs as he kicks off the door frame, moving to the edge of the bed and sitting down, still an arms length away from you as he tries to think of how best to approach the topic.

“can you cut my hair?” he lays it out, his fingers picking at a piece of lint at the bedspread, feeling sheepish as he doesn’t meet your eyes. he’s embarrassed by this for some reason. he’s cut his own hair before, usually when he was on the run and was able to find a rusty pair of scissors, but that was usually just a trim and now there’s something about the meaning behind this that makes it hard for him.

your gaze softens as you hear his request, sitting up further on the bed as you wait to see if there was anything else he was going to say. when you were met with silence you speak up.

“of course i can.”

bucky looks over at you, his smile had faded a few moments ago and now all he could think about was how this was going to feel. liberated? angry? happy? he wasn’t too sure, and maybe that’s what scared him the most.

he had done horrible things as the winter solider, things that he could never forgive himself for, but life was different now. he was deprogrammed, he was helping people, he met you and he was starting to feel like he was allowed a life of not always having his demons follow him around. he was ready to move forward.

“hey.” you move off the bed to stand in front of him, your hand moving to gently grab his chin and tilt his head up towards you. “we don’t have to do this if you’re not ready, bucky.”

he sighs softly at your touch, his hands moving to rest at your hips as he pulls you a bit closer, your legs slotted between his. it’s intimate and full of affection, you two always know how to keep your touches light but meaningul.

“i am ready.” though he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself by saying it out loud. “i think ... i’m ready to stop torturing myself every day with the reminder of my past. i want to move forward. i want to show myself that i’m capable of moving forward.”

your heart aches at his words because you will never understand the pain he goes through everyday, but there was nothing that was going to stop you from supporting him. your hand moves from his chin to cup both of his cheeks, leaning in to press a soft kiss to his forehead. his grip on your hips tighten a bit as you hear him let out a shuttering breath that he had been holding in.

his hands move up to press against yours, keeping your touch on his face close for a moment as he relishes in the comfort. and despite popular belief, bucky barnes needed comfort.

it’s a few minutes later that the two of you are in the bathroom, bucky is sitting on a folding chair he managed to find and you had both the scissors and clippers ready to go.

“are you sure?” you stand behind him as he sits, your hands on his shoulders as your gazes meet in the mirror in front of you. he nods his head softly, saying everything that he’s incapable of verbalizing in that moment. “okay, i’ve only cut hair like once so if it comes out bad don’t hate me for it.”

bucky cracks a small smile before he closes his eyes, letting out one last deep breath before you get to work. a comb works through his long hair one last time, getting all the knots out as you place it in a short ponytail.

the metal scissors are in your hand and you whisper a soft you got this to him before you begin to cut. it takes a second to cut through it all but before you knew it you were holding onto most of it in the ponytail. it was shorter, shaggier, needed to be buzzed down and given a little height – but he looked good. different, but good.

you can feel the way he shifts anxiously while you use the clippers, having to tell him to stop moving on a few occasions so you didn’t accidentally cut him, but it’s over almost as soon as it starts, his eyes still closed tightly not wanting to look until the finish product.

your hands find their way back to his shoulders once you put your tools down, taking a moment to admire your work and how different he looks. you bring your lips down near his ear.

“you can open your eyes, buck.”

a beat passes and you can tell he’s nervous to but he has to face it at some point. one last deep breath leaves his lips before his eyes flutter open, landing on the mirror in front of him.

he doesn’t speak for a minute, his eyes taking in his features and his new defined haircut. it looks great, if you say so yourself, but in that moment he’s hard to read and you’re not sure what he’s going to say.

bucky rests his elbows on his knees and his head drops forward, your hand soothingly rubbing his back. when he looks up again his eyes are red and teary, the moment obviously catching him off guard with how much it would mean to him.

“how do you feel?” your voice is soft, keeping the both of you grounded in this moment which you know he appreciates.

a tear slips from his eyes and he runs a hand through his freshly cut hair. one word slips through his lips.

“free.”

#bucky barnes reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x reader #one shot #mine #not me downloading all this stuff to make gifs just so that i can use them for my fanfics / one shots #i saw this gif and was inspired by THE hair #also sorry queen of late night one shots #100

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softxsuki · 2 days ago

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Hi! May I request a Valentine's letter from Gojo Satoru, Jujutsu Kaisen, for a fem!platonic reader? The reader is a civilian. I would prefer if he addressed the reader as "my friend" instead of using her name. I want the letter to be bittersweet and angsty, sort of like him saying goodbye and apologize for not getting in touch with her for so long (cause, well, he was sealed, so) . I imagine he wrote the letter after he got unsealed and before fought Sukuna because he lowkey hinted at the fact that he knew he was going to die. Well, yeah, something like that.

Please and thank you in advance 🫶

Goodbye Letter from Gojo to His Friend

This event is now CLOSED, but you can view the masterlist for the other letters here.

Warnings: heart wrenching angst, spoilers for people who aren’t caught up to the manga! Bad ending …

Note: I’m seeing a trend where you all want me to cry and suffer while writing these…who hurt you guys this year 😭

You sigh, checking your phone for what felt like the millionth time.

Did you do something wrong? Was he okay? It had been over a month since you last heard from Gojo, and you couldn’t help but worry. He had let you in on the world he lived in; the reality of curses and sorcerers and the like–but it had answered so many unanswered questions you had about things. He was someone who kept you safe, made you laugh, and who you could trust with your life.

The strongest. That’s what he had called himself…so he had to be fine. Right?

What went wrong? Where was he? Why hadn’t he reached out to you?

You get up and decide to check the mail, better get moving to distract your mind than rot with these haunting thoughts. You open your door and collect the contents of your mailbox, closing the door and throwing yourself back on your couch.

Bills, bills, student loans, bills, spam…and a letter from…Gojo?

Your heart stops and you sit up a little straighter, discarding the other envelopes to the other side of the couch, quickly opening the letter;

My Precious Friend,

I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark for so long. Did you miss me? It’s moments like these where I can’t help but think of you. You’re doing well aren’t you? Perhaps writing this is a bit selfish of me…but I felt guilty just disappearing on you. I wish I could get the chance to tell you what happened in person…but let's just say I was stuck somewhere for a bit and just finally got free.

By now, my fate is probably already sealed. As I write this, I’m off to face my greatest challenge yet. A challenge I felt confident about facing before, but things are complicated now. You’ve been a dear friend to me, you tolerated my dramatics and laughed with me, listening to me moan on and on about those damn elders…so thank you for being a better friend than I could have ever asked for.

I guess I wrote this to you to help you move on? As much as I’d like to keep my friend all to myself…If I haven’t shown up at your door by now, then it probably means I can’t…Am i spilling too much about this to you? Maybe, but I need you to know.

Don’t wait for me anymore.

I hope only for your safety and happiness, that’s all. My friend…my lovely, wonderful friend. One of the few who have been a true friend to me, please stay well.

This is goodbye, until we meet again one day, hopefully.

Love,

Satoru :3

You couldn’t control the sobs escaping your lips. What happened to being the strongest? He was supposed to be undefeatable? Why?? Why had he left you all alone?

It was obvious that he was gone from this world. He should have been back by now if he was okay, smiling at you and teasing you like he always did.

Would you ever learn the truth behind why he left? Why he was gone? Would you never see him again?

Your heart felt empty. Your anxieties for the past few weeks had all been accurate in worrying. You should have left to look for him yourself…but then what? You were a normal human, no cursed energy, no super strength, nothing…Why couldn’t you do more for your friend who had done so much for you?

“Goodbye Satoru,” you choke out, hot tears running down your face. A small part of you couldn’t help but hope that one day you’d see him again. Whether it be in this life, in the next life, or in the afterlife, he was your friend. Yours. And no one would replace the mark that he left in your life.

Posted: 2/14/2025

#jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x y/n #jujutsu kaisen drabble #jjk x y/n #jjk x you #jjk drabbles #gojo x you #gojo x y/n #gojo drabbles

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benzodiazepinicaa · 2 days ago

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Let's learn more about the Charleston shooting from the victims, not from Roof.

Well, I was looking for information about the Charleston victims to organize a post, and I found something very interesting. It's very long, I even thought about summarizing it in my own words, but I think it's necessary for everyone to read it as it is. I copied and pasted it, but at the end I'll provide the website link, in case you want to keep it for yourselves.

Anthony and Myra Thompson never let much time pass without sharing an affectionate touch or warm embrace. This was one reason for their resilient marriage. Another was mutual respect: they trusted and believed in each other enough to speak honestly. When she thought he was being prideful, she said so: “Who do you think you are?”

Anthony chuckles as he remembers.

In restaurants—like the place downtown where he’s sitting and talking now, for instance—he and his wife shared their plates. They shared interests too, and the pastimes they did not share, they cheerfully tolerated. They shared a strong Christian faith that was the foundation of their lives. Anthony answered a midlife calling to become a priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church. Later, Myra felt the Lord’s summons to become a minister too. Anthony hoped that he could persuade her to leave the African Methodist Episcopal Church, but he soon realized she was too loyal. So he was content to enjoy the hours they spent discussing Scripture and commiserating over the often wayward, headstrong creatures they were given to shepherd.

That day (the day he did not kiss her goodbye) was a humid day in June when Myra asked Anthony to review her Bible—study plans for what seemed like the hundredth time. She was, he says, “a perfectionist. That’s the word.” Everything was just so in the Thompson house, spotless, gleaming. Myra, too, was radiant that day. “She had this glow about her. I don’t know how else to put it,” he says. “She was glowing, and I wanted to reach out and touch her, but for some reason, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself reach out to her.”

He tells this calmly, but with intensity. After that frozen moment, Anthony had something to do in another room of the house. When Myra called out that it was time for her to leave for church, he shouted back to her: Wait. Hold on. Be right there. But before he could return, Anthony heard the door close and she was gone.

From a report by Detective Eric Tuttle of the Charleston police department: “I arrived at the incident location, 110 Calhoun Street, at about 21:40 hours … I then observed a black male running toward the church as a patrolman tried to intervene. I tried to speak with the gentleman, who said that his wife, Myra Thompson … was located inside of the church. I advised him that he would not be able to enter the church at this time and that the situation was very fluid.”

This scene doesn’t figure in Anthony’s account of that day, though he speaks of June 17 at length while his crab cake sits untouched on the plate in front of him. He doesn’t mention his frantic dash up Calhoun Street through the jam of police cruisers with their lights flashing, or the cop hurrying over to stop him, or the detective blocking his path and saying something about a very fluid situation. He doesn’t mention the fear, the anguish, the shock. Perhaps he would have talked about these things four months ago, when summer was coming down thick and sweaty over Charleston and that day was still a jagged wound. But the air is soft with the melancholy of autumn now, the pain is more of a vise and less of a dagger, and what he chooses to remember—if memory is even a choice—is Myra radiant just beyond his helpless reach, and the door closing.

Myra Thompson and eight others were murdered during their Wednesday Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in the center of Charleston, S.C. But you probably know that already, because the man-made catastrophe at Emanuel is among the most sorrowful and powerful stories in recent memory. At a time when the violent deaths of African Americans were triggering protests and even rioting from Missouri to Maryland—and a national movement sprang up to proclaim that Black Lives Matter—here was a cold-blooded attack by an avowed white supremacist intending to provoke a race war in the heart of the old Confederacy.

But instead of war, Charleston erupted in grace, led by the survivors of the Emanuel Nine. It happened suddenly, but not every survivor was on board. For some it was too soon; for others, too simple. Even so, within 36 hours of the killings, and with pain racking their voices, family members stood in a small county courtroom to speak the language of forgiveness.

The brief televised hearing electrified the country. President Obama was swept up by the feeling during his eulogy for slain Emanuel pastor the Rev. Clementa Pinckney and shifted into song: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound …” Blacks and whites filled the miles-long Ravenel Bridge in a show of unity, and within days the most contentious public symbol of South Carolina’s Civil War past, the Confederate battle flag, was removed from the state capitol grounds with relatively little of the controversy that had surrounded it for decades.

The word story might seem trifling here. Yet there are all kinds of stories, including true and tragic and momentous ones like this. But a story so freighted with shock and pain doesn’t end like a Hollywood movie, with the President singing and a divisive symbol coming down as the music swells. The dead are still dead, and sleepless nights of sorrow drag on. Loss is an aching void. And anger abides, even if the frank acknowledgment of it is now off script.

In the wake of the murders, families have split over the question of forgiveness. Church members have felt abandoned by their congregation. Hairline fissures in a wide network of relationships have burst under the pressures of sudden fame and grinding grief. And as the months have passed, the survivors of Emanuel and others in Charleston have continued to search for the meaning of this story, through a process that is intensely personal and sometimes uncomfortably public.

At the heart of that struggle are two complicated subjects: history and forgiveness. The murders at Emanuel must be fitted into the long and tangled history of race relations, racial violence and oppression that stem from America’s original sin. The accused killer, who published a manifesto of white supremacy before setting out on his hateful mission, made sure of that.

At the same time, the forgiveness expressed by some surviving family members left as many questions as it answered. Can murder be forgiven, and if so, who has that power? Must it be earned or given freely? Who benefits from forgiveness—the sinner or the survivor? And why do we forgive at all? Is it a way of remembering, or of forgetting?

In Charleston, survivors projected magnanimity and peace to the world. But feelings of outrage and demands for justice are every bit as real and long—lasting. Understanding what happened in the remarkable days after that act of evil requires a hard, relentless reckoning with all that has been lost and suffered.

The situation was fluid that night. The call to 911 was logged 43 seconds after 9:05 p.m. A man was shooting people inside Mother Emanuel. Polly Sheppard, the frightened caller, was in the room with the gunman, and she described his gray shirt, dark jeans and tan Timberland boots. She stayed on the line for more than 17 minutes, even as police swarmed to the historic white-sided building with its black-shingled steeple.

Inside were eight dead bodies and one barely breathing. There were five survivors who were physically unhurt. Immediately amid the chaos, there were rumors and unfounded reports. At a nearby gas station, police collared and questioned a suspicious man. Inside a townhouse, a sleeping couple was rousted from bed on an anonymous tip. Every car on every bridge leaving the peninsula was looked at as it passed, while still more cops raced through the streets of Charleston in search of what turned out to be the wrong make and model dark sedan.

Very fluid. A police dog went sniffing for the perpetrator. A false bomb threat came in over the phone. A detective scrambled in search of a church secretary who knew the code to unlock the room where the security cameras were operated.

The person who was clinging to life when police arrived died at the hospital. Eight victims became nine.

Hours went by seeming like ages to the families sequestered in a nearby hotel. They prayed and sang hymns and tried to hope. Finally, long after midnight, family members were taken aside to provide identifying details.

Investigators compared the details to photos of the dead. The picture of Myra Thompson, 59, her body riddled with bullets, felt like such an insult to a woman who treasured neatness and composure. Her home on Rutledge Avenue was a showcase of fresh flowers, white furniture and glimmering hardwood floors, buffed and waxed to perfection. In the dining room, formal dinnerware—as though displayed in a museum—filled a towering white wooden cabinet that was painted with a subtle floral vine. Her son, Kevin Singleton, would later recall the time that he complained to his mother that young Theo Huxtable of The Cosby Show never had to clean his room with Pledge. “This ain’t no TV show, this is real life,” his mom replied, and he dutifully gathered the cleaning supplies.

She had enough disorder during her own childhood. Her father was not part of her life. Her mother, an alcoholic, “took ill,” in the words of Myra’s sister Ruby Henry, and the children were divided among various relatives and foster homes. Myra ended up a few feet away in the home of her friends and neighbors the Coakleys. They introduced her to Emanuel, and in return she was loyal to the church for life.

Myra worked her way through college as a single mother and had a failed first marriage before she wed Anthony Thompson, a gentle man with a warm, round face. For many years, she was an eighth-grade teacher in Charleston, offering disadvantaged students the gift of caring and respect. But while she went to church, her husband says, Myra was one of those people who hear the word of God but resist letting it take root. This is a description he borrows from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark.

Mark 4: that was the lesson Myra had so painstakingly prepared. She wanted to review it one more time before she left for church that day. It recounts a parable told by Jesus of a farmer who scatters seed, and some fall on hard ground, some on rocky soil, some amid thorns. By the time she died, Myra had become good soil, in whom the seed of God’s word grows strong, Anthony says. She was one of those who “hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty and some a hundred.”

Myra was a person who took the money for a new dress and gave it to someone in need. She was that person who does the thankless jobs to keep a place like Emanuel running—even as she studied at night to earn her seminary degree. She hosted holiday meals to reunite her brothers and sisters into the warm and intact family they had not always been. She encouraged Anthony to become a mentor for a boy so deprived that he had never learned to speak. And Myra became the mother that the boy had never known.

God gave Myra four spiritual gifts, says her husband: “giving, helping, teaching and counseling.” And she was cultivating them in the fields of the Lord. Almost 60, with her children grown and her future as a minister in hand, it was as if a new life was opening for Myra Thompson. But just as suddenly as a person walks through a door, it was over. There was no arguing with the police photograph.

Elsewhere during that awful night, the father and the uncle of Dylann Storm Roof, 21, scrutinized another set of pictures—the ones recovered from the church cameras, which were quickly broadcast on television. They immediately recognized the young man in the gray shirt, dark jeans and tan boots. They phoned the police.

By morning, the whole country knew Roof’s name and bowl haircut and pasty face. A sharp-eyed driver spotted him behind the wheel of his Hyundai sedan in Shelby, N.C., approximately 250 miles (400 km) from the scene of the murders. Roof was arrested without incident and waived extradition. A .45-caliber handgun was found in the backseat. Shortly before the rampage he apparently posted his manifesto online, and while FBI agents interrogated the accused killer, the airwaves filled with Roof’s racist ramblings and photos of him posed with the Confederate flag.

In a Charleston courtroom on June 19, less than 48 hours after the killings, Roof appeared as an image on a flat-screen monitor hanging from the wall to the right of Judge James Gosnell. He wore jailhouse stripes and manacles as he stood in a holding cell with two armed guards behind him.

Ordinarily, a bond hearing is a routine affair. It was obvious that Roof would not go free. But Judge Gosnell has been known to stray from routine. He once drove to the jail in the middle of the night to conduct a bond hearing that sprung a fellow judge arrested for driving under the influence. On this day, Gosnell opened with a brief speech.

“We have victims, nine of them,” the judge noted. “But we also have victims on the other side. There are victims on this young man’s side of the family. No one would have ever thrown them into the whirlwind of events that they have been thrown into.”

Nothing much was known one way or the other about Roof’s family, and whatever whirlwind was swirling around them, it did not include being shot multiple times and left to bleed to death because of the color of their skin. This wasn’t the first time Gosnell had delivered impromptu remarks of dubious validity. Once, he lectured a young offender with a snippet of tired folk wisdom that divided the world into “four types of people”—white, black, redneck and … he reportedly finished with the N word. Gosnell later allowed that his remark was “ill-considered.”

Among those listening in the courtroom was Andrew Savage III, a well-known attorney in Charleston who was representing some of the families. What he heard from the bench appalled him. “Understand where we were emotionally that morning,” he says. “And we’d just been talking about how that boy hadn’t been brought up right and his parents were partially responsible. And then the judge says, Don’t be selfish, think of the other victims, his family. And I just saw red. I was like, How dare he? Does he not know what these people have lost?”

Gosnell then invited representatives from the families to make their own statements about the case. No one had prepared for this, but when the judge called the name of Ethel Lance, her daughter Nadine Collier made her way to the front of the room.

Nadine and Ethel were best friends. The youngest of Ethel’s five children, Nadine would call her mother every morning at 7:30, just to check in. The two shared gripes about work and laughs about life, and Ethel often encouraged Nadine to go to cosmetology school and pursue her wish to be an aesthetician. Another three or four calls or texts would likely follow over the course of the day.

Griping aside, Lance, 70, enjoyed her job as Emanuel’s sexton. She liked cleaning and was quick with a joke. Once, the ministerial staff caught her on the security camera dancing as she vacuumed an upstairs carpet. She wasn’t paid much, but she had a pension after years on the cleaning crew at the nearby Gaillard Center, where she kept the dressing rooms tidy for everyone from James Brown to Jimmy Carter. Ethel’s bosses at the performing-arts center had tried to promote her over the years, but she was not interested in managing others. She loved her role backstage. Her daughter Sharon Risher thinks something else was at work too: “She did not have the confidence in herself to be a leader.”

Lance was a model of discretion. She spoke only vaguely about the evidence of excess she found in dressing rooms, keeping the details to herself. “She got to meet a lot of celebrities,” Risher says. One time, “they had a banquet, and my mama called me and told me to put my Sunday clothes on and come to the auditorium because Martin Luther King was there.” Everyone feasted on roast beef, mashed potatoes and string beans, she says, and “Mama got to meet him.”

Lance loved perfume, dancing and the great blues singer Etta James. She liked a little gambling now and then, was partial to gospel concerts and never tired of the opera Porgy and Bess. As Collier moved to the front of the courtroom, this was the woman she was mourning—a mother who, only a few days earlier, had said at Sunday dinner that she had no regrets in life.

At the podium facing the closed-circuit image of Roof with his eyes downcast, Collier began to talk in a faint voice before the judge urged her to speak up. “I couldn’t remember his name,” she recalls of her one-way encounter with the alleged killer. But she remembers that she was “angry, mad” because her mother had “more living to do.” And the killer “took something away from me that was so precious.”

At the same time, racing through her head were lessons she had learned long before: “You have to forgive people and move on,” she says. “When you keep that hatred, it hurts only you.”

Somehow—perhaps the idea was planted by the judge’s remarks—Collier was able to recognize the wreckage this man had made not just for her and the other survivors but in his own life. “I kept thinking he’s a young man, he’s never going to experience college, be a husband, be a daddy. You have ruined your life,” she recalls thinking.

What she said at the podium, while choking back sobs, came out like this: “I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again—but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul … You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you.”

Since that day, Collier has had many hours to reflect on those spontaneous words, and she says she has no reason to regret or revise them. They expressed a sense of loss and absence that remains unfilled months later, as well as her desire to move beyond the horror—a desire she still feels keenly. And she believes that her mother might have said something similar if she had lived.

“I forgive you.” Those three words reverberated through the courtroom and across the cable wires, down the fiber-optic lines, carried by invisible storms of ones and zeros that fill the air from cell tower to cell tower and magically cohere in the palms of our hands. They took the world by surprise.

They took Collier’s own family by surprise. “When she said that, I was just shocked,” says Risher. “I was like, Who in the hell is she talking for? Because she’s not talking for me.”

The question of forgiveness is as old as human sin. In the Western religious traditions that loom large over Charleston—which calls itself the Holy City in honor of its many congregations—it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. Forgiveness is a riddle to theologians, psychologists, sociologists and philosophers. Often, two people can be talking about forgiveness without realizing that they have very different concepts in mind. For some, forgiveness speaks to the condition of the offender: whatever was done wrong will be forgotten and all penalties erased. A debt can be forgiven; a crime can be pardoned. The slate is wiped clean and the sinner writes a new future.

For others, forgiveness describes the state of mind of the forgiver: you have harmed me, but I refuse to respond in kind. Forgiveness is a kind of purifier that absorbs injury and returns love. It’s not really about the offender at all. There might be a hope attached that forgiveness will inspire a radical change for the better, but the offender is still culpable, still faces legal jeopardy and, ultimately, still faces Judgment Day.

Despite Risher’s strong reaction, she and her sister were on roughly the same page in speaking of forgiveness. As children they surely heard the parable preached from Emanuel’s pulpit of a servant who begs his master to forgive a large debt. After his plea is granted, the servant refuses to do the same for someone else. “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” the angry master demands. And they surely heard Jesus’ teaching that a person struck on one cheek should offer the other to be struck as well. Forgiveness is to be poured out not once, nor seven times, but “seventy times seven.”

What came between the sisters may have been the question of who has the power to forgive. In Judaism, only the person who has been hurt has that power. Thus, many rabbis hold that the crime of murder is literally unforgivable because the victim is gone. “No one can forgive crimes committed against other people,” Rabbi Abraham Heschel, the philosopher and civil rights activist, once wrote. “Even God himself can only forgive sins committed against himself, not against man.”

That principle helps illuminate Collier’s improvised statement at the bond hearing. She appears to be forgiving the pain and loss that she endured when her mother was murdered, not necessarily the murder itself. But the extraordinary reaction to her words suggests that many people heard something more sweeping than a personal statement about private grief.

Risher was not the only person who felt that her sister’s words were premature. After Collier spoke, says Risher, others felt pressure to echo her words. “I’m a reverend. I’m in the church,” Risher notes, a bit defensively. “And I understand that forgiveness is a process. Some people with their beliefs can automatically forgive, but I’m not there yet. And I know that God is not going to look at me any different because I have not forgiven Dylann Roof yet.”

The tense feelings were exacerbated in the days and weeks that followed, as Collier’s face appeared on nearly every news program and donations poured in to Emanuel from around the world and talk started of books and movies and maybe even a Nobel Peace Prize. The publicity drove a wedge between the children of Ethel Lance. “My sister Esther and I have been pushed aside, and everybody has gathered around Nadine,” Risher says.

Instead of siblings being a comfort to each other, they’ve stopped speaking. Tragedy does not always bring people closer; some earthquakes leave nothing but rubble. “From my understanding, my family is not the only family in turmoil,” Risher says.

And she imagines her mother’s spirit must be unsettled by the fallout from Collier’s words in the courtroom. “I know that my mom has not been resting because of all this conflict going on. People on the outside don’t know what all of this has caused,” she says. “The flag went down, yes. This little boy is in jail, yes.” Risher is in tears as she continues. “But all of this has just caused too much.”

It is too soon to talk about healing when the wounds are still being torn open every day. The murder of her mother started a cycle of suffering that is renewed each time she turns on the news. “Every night somebody else gets killed in this country, and I have to relive that pain,” Risher concludes, “because I know what these people are going through.”

After Nadine Collier returned to her seat, Judge Gosnell called Myra Thompson’s name. Anthony had not intended to say anything at the hearing, but in that moment, he now says, the spirit of God moved him to stand up and deliver a message.

Anthony Thompson essentially agreed with Collier’s statement, as far as it went. It was important for him to forgive as quickly as possible so that he could continue to live as God intended. Forgiveness, as he later explains, is like a Band-Aid that holds the edges of an open wound together long enough for the wound to heal. Though he cannot heal what happened to his wife, nor whatever is wrong with the man who killed her, he must attend to the wound inside himself. “I don’t know what happened in his life, and frankly I don’t want to know,” he says.

His reason for stepping to the podium was something that Collier had left out of her statement. Thompson did not want to leave the impression that forgiveness is as simple as speaking three words. For Roof to be forgiven by God, the young man had an awful lot of work to do.

Thompson put it this way, speaking quietly: “I would just like him to know that—to say the same thing that was just said—I forgive him, and my family forgives him. But we would like him to take this opportunity to repent. Repent,” he repeated. “Confess. Give your life to the one who matters most, Christ, so that he can change him. And change your ways, so no matter what happens to you, you’ll be O.K.”

What sounded simple was actually complex. In this theological context, a confession is not just a matter of saying how a crime occurred and whodunit. Thompson was calling on the killer to turn himself inside out, to inventory everything wrong about his thoughts and actions—the murders, of course, but also the willful ignorance and cultivated hatred that apparently fueled him, and the vanity that would make him think he was an instrument of history, and the hard-heartedness that made it possible for him to sit with his victims and know their humanity before he ever drew his gun. A true confession of his offenses would entail a wrenching calculation of the measureless grief and suffering his crimes caused in the lives of those who survived. It would comprehend the theft he committed of nine lives, and all the promise and love that lay in store for his victims. All stolen. And it would face up, as well, to the wastage of his own life and possibilities.

As T.S. Eliot once put it: “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”

Before dying in a Nazi concentration camp, the German priest Dietrich Bonhoeffer identified a tendency among Christians to toss around the idea of forgiveness as if it were free and easy. “Cheap grace,” he called it, meaning “the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does every-thing, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.”

That is not what Nadine Collier and Anthony Thompson had in mind. But their statements of forgiveness in the face of such evil beg the question: Are there crimes too grievous to confess and repent? In the Buddhist tradition, even the worst offenses can be atoned for through suffering, experience and good works across multiple reincarnations. Other belief systems take a narrower view. While touring hell in The Divine Comedy, Dante is surprised to meet two souls suffering eternal damnation even as their bodies are still walking around on earth. Their murderous treachery, he learns, was so foul that they were cut off from God’s salvation even before their deaths.

The great Jewish thinker Maimonides took a less colorful path to the same conclusion. He taught that atonement consists of acknowledging a crime, repaying the victim and reliving the circumstances under which the crime was committed without repeating the offense. The test of repentance, he maintained, comes when the offender finds himself back on his original path but this time chooses the fork in the road that leads toward goodness.

The Emanuel Church gunman can never accomplish this. It is impossible to restore the lives that he took. Nor will he ever return to that night in June, reenter the Wednesday Bible study and go from the room in peace. A bank robber can repent by repaying the money and never stealing again. But murder is a shattered glass that cannot be put back together.

Rose Simmons is the daughter of the Rev. Daniel Simmons, a man of stern military bearing who nevertheless could fill a room with his deep, resonant laughter. He died in a setting true to himself. The study of Scripture was the hub of his life. Rose remembers her father as an avid reader, but there was only one book that truly mattered.

“My father’s hobby was studying,” she says. “He didn’t read many books, an author or two, but he liked to study the Bible, taking notes and writing sermons.” Leading up to the night he died, he had been coaching Myra Thompson on the meaning of her parable. It was his exacting standard that she was trying to meet as she polished her lesson plan in her immaculate sitting room. On that Wednesday night, he was seated across the table from Myra as she led the Bible study, and was keeping the discussion on track.

Daniel Simmons was descended from a long line of AME pastors and raised in the little town of Mullins, S.C., not far from the North Carolina border. But it took him a while to find his way into the ministry. As a young man he served in the Army. During a winter training exercise in Germany, the weather turned so bitter that Simmons lost toes to frostbite. He was partially disabled and susceptible to infections for the rest of his life.

Honorably discharged, he became a bus driver—one of the first African Americans on the interstate lines, his son Daniel Simmons Jr. says proudly. Some of his earliest memories feature long rides in his father’s motor coach, the fields and hamlets of the segregated South passing like a silent movie on the screen of the windows. “It was hard; the country was in transition. So to have a black driver and a black youth in the front seat, I saw a lot,” says the son. But his father had a philosophy: “Kindness always wins.”

After earning a master’s degree, Simmons traded the bus for a federal job counseling disabled veterans. He welcomed the security and the chance to be of service. But in the mid-1970s, his son says, he heard God’s call to enter the ministry. It was, Simmons later said, like picking up the torch from his father and grandfather. And it caused a noticeable change in Simmons’ demeanor as he learned the delicate balancing act of leading a flock by following God. “It’s life changing what God does when he comes into your heart,” says Rose. “He felt a responsibility to be the person he felt God wanted him to be.” Dan Jr. puts it this way: “You can’t receive grace with a closed fist. My father had an open hand and an honest heart.” People began calling him Super Simmons because he gave everything to his work and expected others to give their best as well.

As his new career took shape, Simmons set his sights on becoming a bishop—a prestigious post in the national AME hierarchy. Every four years, he put himself up for election. As a man who graduated early from high school, worked his way through college, earned two advanced degrees and raised a family, he was accustomed to reaching his goals. But this one eluded him. By the end of his life he was retired from his own pulpit and pitching in at Emanuel to help its overstretched pastor.

“We know what type of man he was,” says Rose, who is convinced that her father would forgive the young man who shot him repeatedly. “We know that in his life being taken, even in a violent act, that he is with the Lord, and his peace gives us peace.” Her struggle—which she shares with her brother—is not over forgiveness; she struggles with helplessness. She is haunted by the image of her father dying in pain. What could she have done to help him? “It’s just something that we have to live with, that we could not be there.”

She rejects the idea that her father’s killer might be beyond redemption. She is opposed to seeking the death penalty for Roof and won’t even speak harshly when his name comes up. In fact, she can imagine a meaningful future for him.

“I believe there’s a day that will come, if he has to spend the rest of his life in prison, where he will have an opportunity for repentance,” she says. “So that he can change other people’s lives. And what a great ending to this story that would be—for him to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the impact of what he did, and to know and see God himself.” In the melting of a killer’s stony heart, Rose thinks, spiritual seeds could take root after all, just as the Good Book says. And, she concludes, “it is what our entire family believes.”

The past is Charleston’s constant companion. It is a place where if you park your car after sundown, your headlights may fall on worn tombstones paved over to create the parking lot. Yesterday’s ruins are tomorrow’s foundations. The old jail, with its barred windows and brute stone walls, becomes a school of design; a crenellated fortress is converted to a hotel; slave quarters are repurposed as part of an upscale restaurant. Parts of the city resemble a theme park: MagnoliaWorld. At other moments, a visitor might feel like an extra on the set of a Merchant-Ivory movie. Mostly Charleston gives the sense—more European than American—of telescoping time, of Then and Now smashed to bits and the pieces reassembled as a mosaic. Along its narrow streets, or in its private gardens or in the stalls of the market, the city swarms with the shades of aristocrats and slaves, patriots and traitors, visionaries and liars.

So you can’t talk long about forgiveness in Charleston before the past shoulders its way into the conversation—and there is much in the city’s past that needs forgiveness. The fine 18th century homes and churches were built with profits from the labor of slaves. Captured in Africa or bred in captivity, they did the work that transformed marsh and forest into the rice, indigo and cotton that powered the Southern economy. Their descendants share the community, the names and sometimes the genes of their owners, and some four centuries now after the city’s founding, every Charleston story has a backstory, and every backstory is freighted with footnotes.

Mother Emanuel is not just any predominantly black church. It is the oldest AME church in the South. And what is the African Methodist Episcopal movement but one of the earliest expressions of African-American dignity and vision?

By the time of the founding of the United States, some whites—even in Charleston—had begun to recognize the humanity of their captives. It was acceptable to envision an end to slavery, though the details were conveniently left vague. The founders set a date, well into the future, for the end of the Atlantic slave trade and ensured that slavery would not spread into the territory of the Northwest Ordinance. A relatively small number of trusted slaves among the multitude in bondage—the butlers and nannies and artisans—were allowed to attend church with their masters. Some were taught to read. Some were allowed to keep part of their day for themselves, when they could earn money to buy their freedom eventually. Freed slaves could imagine themselves raising free children.

This doesn’t describe many slaves’ lives, let alone the majority. But it does describe the spirit in which Richard Allen, a former slave, established the Free African Society in Philadelphia in 1787 (the same year the Constitutional Convention was at work in that city). And that same spirit of freedom, several years later, moved Allen and a few others to form the first AME church when they could no longer abide the discrimination and humiliation they met in white churches.

That such a powerful expression of African-American humanity and equality could spread to Charleston in the early 19th century says something important: even in the heart of the South, free blacks and educated slaves were gathering to discuss abolition, read congressional debates concerning the Missouri Compromise and worship God without the intercession of a white master. Attempts by Charleston authorities to stifle the movement seemed instead to add more fuel. It was this milieu that inspired one of the early leaders of Emanuel Church—a freed carpenter named Denmark Vesey—to take the next step. In the tradition of revolutionaries from Yorktown to Paris to the plantations of Santo Domingo, Vesey, most historians believe, began plotting a slave rebellion.

Hatched in strict secrecy—the church shielded some of the plans—Vesey’s plot called for pike-wielding slaves to overwhelm the local armory, then turn their blades and captured guns on anyone bold enough to stand in their way. After seizing control of the city and announcing their freedom, they would set sail in commandeered ships for the free state of Haiti, where slaves had overthrown the white authorities in a bloody revolution a generation earlier.

This never happened. Betrayed by a talkative slave who had been told of the plans, Vesey and more than 30 others were arrested and executed in early summer of 1822.

What happened next would have grave implications for the future of American slavery, and for Charleston; indeed, for all of U.S. history. Emanuel Church was burned to the ground and new black churches strictly forbidden. Near the site where Emanuel stood, authorities built a fortress designed to make future rebellions inconceivable. That bulwark later grew into the military school known as the Citadel.

The Vesey plot, and others like Nat Turner’s aborted uprising in Virginia in 1831, persuaded many white Americans that free blacks were dangerous. Charleston’s most trusted slaves could secretly be planning to murder their masters. Especially in the coastal low country, where slaves greatly outnumbered the white population, the specter of rebellion hung over the South “like a bloodstained ghost,” in the words of historian David Brion Davis.

This fear spelled the end of African-American schools. Teaching a slave to read became a crime. Other laws sharply limited the ability of owners to free their slaves, or of slaves to buy their freedom. The idea that free African Americans posed a mortal threat to white society powerfully shaped the mindset that led Charlestonians to fire on Fort Sumter in 1861, bringing on the most devastating war in American history.

Though Emanuel reopened after the Civil War, the name Denmark Vesey was scarcely spoken in Charleston for more than 150 years. Under Jim Crow, church members continued to be segregated, intimidated and oppressed. Across a greensward from the church loomed the Citadel, built to keep the black citizenry in line. And between the church and the fortress, Charleston raised a monument to John C. Calhoun, the nation’s seventh Vice President and one of slavery’s most vigorous proponents. His statue stood atop a towering column—to prevent black residents from egging it, according to one version of history.

This real and symbolic oppression, maintained for generations, suggests that whites in Charleston and elsewhere continued to fear black freedom and did not expect forgiveness. While the former slaves and their descendants might preach atonement and sing about grace, in the sanctuary of their hearts, was there not something that cries out for vengeance? What sort of people could forgive centuries of bondage and disrespect?

Many of those themes were on the mind of the killer as he posted his manifesto on June 17 and set out from the South Carolina midlands past pine forests and rising exurbs toward the coast. In his online justification of hate, Roof had written: “I chose Charleston because it is [the] most historic city in my state.” Even he was aware that the past isn’t over in Charleston.

Clementa Pinckney—a black man with the surname of a white slave owner who helped to find the United States—traveled that same road from the midlands that day. His morning began at home in Lexington, outside of Columbia, with his wife and two young daughters. At 41, he was already a senior member of the South Carolina state senate, and his first order of business that day was a meeting of the finance committee. Pinckney represented a sprawling, mostly rural district in the low country, where his boyhood home of Ridgeland provided a second center of gravity. A third was in Charleston, where Pinckney reluctantly accepted the post of pastor at Mother Emanuel in 2010.

“Were we ever in the same place? I don’t think we ever were,” says Pinckney’s widow Jennifer. This is the first time she has felt up to talking about her loss in a public way. After the trauma of that day—she heard the sounds of massacre from the next room, where she cradled a daughter and waited with dread—the layers of loss have piled up like endlessly falling snow. There was the day, not three weeks afterward, when their two girls, Eliana, 11, and Malana, 6, begged her to take them to the Fourth of July fireworks. It was the first time without him. There was the memory of their plans to return to Hawaii, where they had a magical honeymoon. There were all the moments yet to happen in the incredibly busy life they made together: the birthday parties and dance recitals, the date nights sweetened by their near impossibility, the family vacations they jealously guarded.

Hear Jennifer Pinckney talk about a future without her husband

“Marriage to a pastor is like a military marriage—he was always here and there and so forth,” she says. “And then he was in the legislature, and things became more demanding for him. We never were like a ‘normal family’ who every day you come home and Mom’s home and Dad’s home and the kids are here. You learn to get used to it.”

It was the price of life with one of South Carolina’s rising stars. Born into a line of politically active AME ministers and named in honor of the humanitarian baseball hero Roberto Clemente, Pinckney was a serious student from the start; his mother’s twice-a-week trips to the library could hardly keep him supplied with books. At 13, he informed a panel of adults that his plan for life was to become “a humble bishop of the AME church.” They were amused—but impressed enough to award him a license to preach. He relied on his aunt Emma to drive him from church to church, filling in for vacationing pastors, until he was old enough to drive himself.

Pinckney wore suits and ties through high school, even on casual Fridays and in sweltering heat. “His mind-set was already that he was going to be professional and profound,” says Roslyn Fulton—Warren, a classmate. He was elected student-body president—twice—and took a hard line in government class against drugs and guns. “He was comfortable with himself being different,” another classmate, Derek Morgan, recalls. “He was sure of who he was.”

He never lost that certainty. Fully ordained at 18, Pinckney pastored his own small church while studying at Allen University in Columbia. At the same time, he launched his political career by working as a statehouse page. A close friend at Allen, Chris Vaughn, says they bonded over a shared pride in the progress they had already made in their young lives. “We’d joke that we were country bumpkins—we were both from places where people gave directions like ‘turn left at the stump,’” Vaughn recalls. “We came from single-parent homes, small towns. We reckoned we defied the odds.”

On a visit to the University of South Carolina, Pinckney met Jennifer, who was not immediately swept away. Their first date was a trip to Pizza Hut, and she made it clear she intended to pay for her own meal. But she found they could talk easily about goals and dreams, and in time he was surprising her with a ring.

Six feet tall and gradually adding the bulk of a man who loved to eat and read more than exercise, Pinckney became the youngest member of the state legislature at 23. He was an AME elder long before he turned 40, responsible for supervising of 17 churches. Along the way he earned two master’s degrees and embarked on a Ph.D. program.

So numerous were Pinckney’s achievements and so extensive his responsibilities that his bishop began to worry that his young church elder might be overtaxed. Pinckney tried to prioritize. “With so many issues, multiple issues going on, was it better to put your time into expanding Medicaid or getting better access to health care for the elderly? Reforming justice?” says South Carolina Representative Joe Neal, recalling the conversations they often had about effective use of time and influence.

The head job at Emanuel called for a high-profile pastor, someone formidable enough to represent its history, yet young and dynamic enough to rekindle its energy. Perhaps Pinckney should focus on one church rather than 17, the bishop decided.

From a distance, Emanuel’s pulpit might seem like a floodlit mountaintop. But this was no ceremonial position, nor was it a post known for advancing political careers. In fact, Emanuel was a delicate rescue operation; it was known for driving pastors away. Attendance at Sunday worship services was down to about 100 when Pinckney arrived, yet the members insisted on two services because that was the way things had always been. Pinckney’s challenge, familiar to urban church leaders across the country—black and white, south and north—was to make his church relevant and appealing to a new generation without alienating the dwindling but devoted ranks of old-timers.Hear Gracie Broome speak about her grandson Clementa Pinckney

In a roundabout way, this challenge explains why Pinckney went to Charleston that day. Along with his outreach to local college students, he was trying to bring energetic new members onto the church staff. Two such women, both licensed to preach by a Baptist church, were interested in moving their ministries to Emanuel. “It was very unusual,” says Pinckney’s fellow pastor Kylon Middleton of the switch. “And it was because of Clem.”

Pinckney hoped to speed the process of transferring their credentials, and that required him to attend a scheduled business meeting at the church. He was at his most persuasive in person, friends say. “Clem had a way of telling people to go to hell and people would ask directions,” says the Rev. Joe Darby, a prominent AME elder in the state.

He asked Jennifer to make the drive with him. Grab a moment together. Eliana was busy that evening, but Malana could come along. And that is how they found themselves together for the last time.

Pinckney was known to miss some routine meetings, relying on Simmons and other stalwarts to fill in at the head of the table. That tendency rankled some congregants, and the tension flared that evening when an Emanuel trustee accused Pinckney of putting his political career ahead of the church. But tempers cooled, and by the time business concluded around 8 p.m., Pinckney could feel that the trip was worth the effort. The two Baptist ministers—DePayne Middleton Doctor and Brenda Nelson—had the endorsements needed to seek the bishop’s stamp of approval. For good measure, Pinckney put through another ordination: Myra Thompson’s. This surely came as a surprise, says Thompson’s husband. If she had known this was coming, she would have mentioned it to him, and he would have alerted their daughter Denise, who would have rushed over from Atlanta.

The Bible study was the first official act of the new minister Thompson. Though the business meeting ran late, the class now seemed too momentous to cancel. And Pinckney felt it was only right for him to attend.

Jennifer Pinckney shoulders that weight. “We didn’t get to go on our family vacation this year,” she says. The plan was to visit New Orleans, and Eliana’s father assigned her to prepare a paper on the Crescent City. At a family dinner, he had quizzed his daughter and was delighted by the range of her research. “About two weeks after everything had taken place,” says the widow, Eliana had a realization: “I guess we’re not going to New Orleans.”

If Mother Emanuel was drenched in Charleston’s past, Clem Pinckney was emblematic of its future. For himself, he sought only opportunity, because he needed nothing more. He had abundant gifts of talent, drive and compassion.

What Pinckney sought on behalf of those with less was equally forward-looking. He wanted jobs—he was able to bring a shopping center to Ridgeland and fought unsuccessfully for a port in Jasper. He wanted affordable health care. He wanted better educational opportunities—Pinckney won a bruising battle for more equity in school funding. On his last day, he grumbled to a fellow Democrat about their party’s attempt to kill a bill that would help foster children attend private schools. He understood the need to protect public schools, but still. “Why don’t we want to help foster kids?” Pinckney asked.

Even when a white police officer in North Charleston was caught on video shooting a black man named Walter Scott in the back, Pinckney’s reaction was to look ahead. Normally soft-spoken in the senate, he delivered an unusually impassioned speech to help pass a bill requiring body cameras on South Carolina police.

He was, in other words, moving in step with a city that is gradually outgrowing its fears, suggests Bernard Powers, a professor of history at the College of Charleston. Powers, an African-American Chicago native who moved to Charleston in 1992, has watched a slowly unfolding story in which forgiveness and remembering go hand in hand, because a crime must be remembered to be repented.

“Forgiveness is a very complicated phenomenon,” he says. “It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s get over the past.’ But you can’t say that when the past is a part of who you are.” Forgive and forget is a formula powerfully skewed in favor of the offender. What person or people wouldn’t like to forget past sins? Black Charlestonians—black Americans, for that matter—could not forget, so for them, “the language of forgiveness can actually reflect a resignation to certain brutal realities. People have understood that to adopt any other strategy is a fool’s errand.”

Around the time Powers began visiting Charleston for research in the mid-1970s, fear and the oppression that it breeds were still predominant. “There was a real concern among whites about what blacks would do under the influence of the Nation of Islam or the Black Panthers,” he says. But as the real history of race relations has bit by bit come out of the shadows, what whites perceived—if they looked clearly—was an ocean of forbearance, a tide of forgiveness. “The buildings, the monuments, the emblems of white supremacy are all over this city, and you’d be burdened if you took it seriously all the time,” Powers explains.

He tells a story: when he was new to South Carolina and registering to vote, the nearest registrar happened to be located inside the original Citadel building. As a historian, he knew its founding purpose as a bastion against slave rebellions. On his way to complete his errand, he passed the statue of Calhoun. And he laughed. Looking up, Powers called out to Calhoun, “I know you never thought you’d see this!”

In those days, he recalls, tourists could visit Charleston, see the historic houses and forts, ride the horse-drawn carriages and never hear the word slave. Today, every licensed tour guide is required to know more than just the city’s idealized history. Charleston’s representative in Congress is James Clyburn, the first African American elected from South Carolina since 1897. After years of effort, Clyburn passed a law to create the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor in the coastal Carolinas to preserve the endangered culture of freed slaves and their descendants.

Joe Riley, Charleston’s longtime mayor, will leave office soon after 40 years with his dream of an International African-American Museum on the brink of completion. The project is scheduled to open in 2018, on the site of a former wharf that was one of the main ports of the transatlantic slave trade. And the Citadel now offers its cadets a minor in African-American studies.

For some, the best sign of remembering can be found in a landscaped nook surrounded by live oaks draped with Spanish moss at a city park named in honor of Confederate General Wade Hampton, one of the largest slave owners in the South. Once a plantation, the parkland was used as a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Union soldiers. Disease and neglect killed hundreds of the captives, and their bodies were buried in a mass grave.

Shortly after the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, those white Charlestonians who had not fled watched in fear as columns of black Union soldiers marched into the city with guns. It was the moment they had feared for generations. But the troops proceeded peacefully into the prison camp, where they opened the mass grave and went to work reburying their comrades in marked plots.

This has been called the first Memorial Day. Last year, after much controversy, a handsome bronze statue was unveiled in Hampton Park. It honors Denmark Vesey. “Over time,” says Bernard Powers, “you can generate real change.”

But when do you say, “Time’s up”?

From the day of the bond hearing, Malcolm Graham has been unsettled by talk of forgiveness in Charleston. His sister Cynthia Hurd was murdered at the Bible study three days shy of her 55th birthday. It was like ripping the heart from the family, because Cynthia was the one who took over when their parents died, who mothered her siblings whether they were younger or older, who always knew what the others were up to and always had a word of advice. When their brother Melvin was just off to college and homesickness was getting him down, it was Cynthia who took the phone and silenced his complaining. “You can do this,” she urged in a way that made him believe her. “No use turning back now.”

Hurd was a tornado of self-reliance and an apostle of self-improvement. She read the World Book Encyclopedia as a child. Not parts—all of it, says Graham. “That was her escape—we weren’t poor growing up, but we didn’t have a lot of money. I think that was her way of going to faraway places and learning about different things.” As a grown woman, she favored do-it-yourself: if she wasn’t in her garden or tackling a project, she was probably gleaning ideas from HGTV. Her true passion, though, was the Charleston public library, where she served as a librarian and branch manager for more than 30 years.

A younger colleague named Kim Odom credits Hurd with inspiring her career, and explains her mentor’s philosophy. “When I first started working for Cynthia—the first day—she showed me to my desk,” says Odom. “She introduced me to everyone. And she said, ‘Let’s go.’ I said, ‘Go where?’” Hurd explained that they were going to walk the neighborhood. “You can’t know what we do until you know who we serve,” Hurd told her.

That sense of a library’s possibilities and its role in the community made Hurd an important part of the city’s life. She was appointed to the board of the Charleston County housing authority, where she tried to ensure that African Americans would continue to have a place in the rapidly gentrifying city. And she was a mainstay of Mother Emanuel, where her mom once sang in the choir and where Cynthia learned to love the Lord. Her best friend from her teen years, Kim McFarland Wright, recalls the depth of Hurd’s spirituality. “Girl,” she once marveled, “you sure know how to pray!”

So great was the devastation to the family and friends of Cynthia Hurd that Malcolm Graham could hardly understand what happened at the bond hearing. His sister’s body was still in the morgue, and already people were talking about forgiveness. Where was the reckoning of all that was lost and why it was lost and what could be done? Even now, he suspects that forgiving was far from the minds of most families. “During the whole week of that shooting—and during that bond hearing—two families out of nine made that statement,” he says. “And the media kind of blanketed it across all of the families.

Hear Malcolm Graham on the search for forgiveness

“Nine individual lives, families, faith walks. Some faith walks are longer than others. For me, forgiveness is a process,” Graham continues. “It’s a journey. Forgiving for me, then and now, is miles, miles, miles away.”

The accused killer, he notes, has done nothing publicly to suggest remorse. “If my sister was walking across the street and she was hit by a distracted driver, and the driver immediately said, ‘Oh my God! Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to do this’—forgiveness would come easier. But in this case, it was calculated. It was premeditated. It was deliberate. It was intentional. This guy inflicted pain on me, my family, so many other families—and the community and the nation as a whole. My sister died simply because she was black.”

That harsh reality of murderous racism demands a more ambitious and sustained response than any he has seen so far, Graham says. As a former state senator and Charlotte city councilman in North Carolina, Hurd’s brother knows well the ebb and flow of politics, and he is worried that the chance for more profound change in the aftermath of the Emanuel massacre has already been smothered in the blanket of forgiveness.

Amid the self-congratulation over mothballing the Confederate flag, Graham published a guest column in August in the Charleston Chronicle, the city’s black-oriented newspaper. “I’m not optimistic about what will happen next,” Graham wrote, “because public-policy bodies—general assemblies and city councils and Congress—pay attention to the moment. As the days and weeks go by, people tend to say, ‘That happened; now let’s move on to something else.’”

The trouble with forgiveness, Graham suggests, is that it becomes an easy excuse to avoid difficult action. When he looks at the agenda most African Americans care about—voting rights, jobs, education, health care and equal justice—Graham sees scant progress in some areas and backsliding in others. “Ultimately, the flag is just a symbol,” he wrote. “Its removal must be the beginning of bigger reforms that empower America’s African Americans.”

Or take it one step further. The trouble with focusing on forgiveness in this story is that it might make white society more complacent while denying black victims a measure of their humanity. The Rev. Waltrina Middleton of Cleveland has thought a lot about this in the months since her cousin DePayne Middleton Doctor was murdered.

This is where she comes down: the statements at the bond hearing were genuine and prophetic, she believes, reflecting the religious conviction that “because we live in God, I can live into forgiveness.” But the way the statements were immediately seized on as the true meaning of what happened “took away our narrative to be rightfully hurt. I can’t turn off my pain.” Complex beliefs were flattened and volcanic anguish neutralized as a way of avoiding the ugly implications of racist violence.

“You have people who already look at black people as being uncivilized,” Middleton says, trying to explain why so many African Americans embraced the narrative of forgiveness. So when the eyes of the world swing suddenly to a community like Mother Emanuel, “there’s this great pressure to perform. Behave yourself! Don’t do this, don’t do that—because white people are watching. Look at how the media portrayed the anger of the people of Ferguson.”

Or consider the case, in her own city, of a child named Tamir Rice, killed by police who mistook his toy gun for a real one. “Right here in Cleveland, a 12-year-old child is shot to death. We’re not allowed to be angry?” Middleton asks. “Now you have the spotlight on Charleston and people are watching to see how these black folks are going to respond. Create this image of civility. We don’t want white people uncomfortable.” For that matter, where’s the talk of forgiveness when mass killers strike white communities? “We have to tell the truth: the racism is real.”

His was a world of possibilities. “The path to get him where he wanted to go, he was always changing it. He never had an idle bone—he always had Plan A, B, C and D. Sometimes we’d say, ‘Ty, you’re doing too much. You need to rein it in, have more of a laser focus.’ And he’d say, ‘I can’t. I gotta keep pushing.’”

This is Shirrene Goss, speaking in the past tense about a young man who was all future tense. Her little brother Tywanza Sanders was a handsome man with a dazzling smile; a poet, musician, entrepreneur; a barber who cut hair while telling everyone in the shop that one day the whole world would know his name; a rapper, philosopher; lover of a good argument and a good deed; seeker of God.

He was trying stand-up comedy. Thinking about modeling. He might pursue an M.B.A. He was considering law school. He had a sideline in tattoo artistry. He was headed to grad school in music production. Life, Sanders understood, is a multiple-choice quiz, and his answer was all of the above.

What was certain in the young man’s mind was that he would be rich and famous and at the same time kind and faithful. When Simmons, at the Bible study, advised him to share his future wealth with the church, Sanders replied cheerfully that yes, he would be wealthy, and no, he would not neglect Mother Emanuel.

Wanza, his friends called him. He had his mom’s name tattooed on his chest when she was fighting cancer. Felicia advised him that no girl would marry him with his mom’s name on his chest. “Well, that will be their loss,” he replied. He once walked up to a crying stranger on his college campus, introduced himself and instantly convinced her that things would be all right. He liked to trick his aunt Mabel almost as much as she liked being tricked by him.

Because Sanders was pure hope and possibility and future, because he resisted closing doors in his life—he was still banging them open with infectious enthusiasm—he represents perfectly the crushing loss that is murder. Statistics can be numbing: 26 dead in Newtown; 12 dead and 70 wounded in Aurora; 2,977 confirmed dead in the Sept. 11 attacks. The promise destroyed in each one can be hard to hold on to. All the blessings, trials and victories that will not be experienced and shared. All the hurt for those left behind, whose wounds will far outlast the world’s attention.

Felicia Sanders sits at her dining-room table. Weeks after that day, thousands of condolences from around the world are piled next to picture books and souvenirs of Tywanza’s life. The family has barely begun to sort through it all.

“At the bond hearing, I said my life will never be the same. I was actually speaking from that day forever, and it hasn’t been the same,” she says. Her relationship with her son was unusually close. Tywanza told her everything, even things that make a mom uncomfortable. She never wanted to say no to him. “We were like one person sometimes. And I took him to Bible study, because where is safer than Bible study? And I still lost him.”

She continues: “Time is going to help me in some kind of way. I need time. Other than that, I don’t know what will help. I’m searching and seeking.”

Although she walked out of that room alive, Felicia Sanders took with her an incalculable burden of loss. She lost her son. She lost her aunt Susie and her friend Cynthia Hurd. She lost the freedom to be with her granddaughter without the memory of their time together in the valley of the shadow. She even lost her anchor at Mother Emanuel. Like some others close to the massacre, Sanders now feels estranged from her church. She says she hasn’t met with the interim pastor, and few of her church friends have reached out. Maybe they don’t know what to say. As Robert Frost put it: “The nearest friends can go/ With anyone to death, comes so far short/ They might as well not try to go at all.”

And yet, she says, “I forgave right away.” She had no choice. “If you don’t, you’re letting evil into your heart. You’re the one suffering. You’re the one hating. You have to forgive. For you.”

Hear Felicia Sanders speak at the shooter’s bond hearing

And for those who died. For months in the aftermath of the Mother Emanuel killings, during scores of interviews across dozens of hours, this question of forgiveness was scrutinized and tweezed from every direction. And this is the conclusion. What happened after Charleston was not a matter of snap judgments or ill-chosen words. It was not born of a need to reassure white people, even if it may have had that effect. Nor was it simply the product of oppression, though the past can’t be separated from the present. It was an expression of genuine hearts. The nine lost lives belonged to church folk, Wednesday people, true believers. And their family members—for all their anger and shock and loss—all in their own ways seek to honor that and give them a victory despite the killer’s hatred.

Felicia Sanders asked the FBI for one thing: the return of two Bibles. The FBI said they were not recoverable.

She insisted.

So the investigators sent her Bible and Ty-wanza’s Bible to the Bureau’s high-tech labs in Quantico, Va., where they were cleaned as thoroughly as possible, leaf by leaf.

Sanders has them now. The pages are pink with blood that will never wash away. But she can still make out the words.

#tccblr #teeceecee #tcc tumblr #tc community #tcc fandom #tee cee cee #true cringe community #dylannstormroof #tcc dylann #charleston shooting #dylann storm roof #tcc dylann roof

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moriphyte · 1 year ago

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just debated a zionist at work i need a fuckin smoke

#told him to look up the definition of genocide and then come back and tell me i’m wrong #like i get that you’re brainwashed by our government to think being against israel equals antisemitism #but that is not the case #you think you’re doing the right thing #but in reality you’re excusing a fucking genocide #and anyone who knows anything about judaism knows that israel and the shit they’re doing is a disgusting affront to the jewish faith #like i wouldn’t normally share my opinion on this unprompted but this teacher too it upon himself to argue w one of my students #and i couldn’t stop myself from saying something #i tried but the shit he was saying was making me furious #so i took the kids side and gave my own two cents and he dismissed me just the same #fuck him tho #we won the debate #but really the wik goes to my one student for being endlessly informed and patient enough to explain it #i told him j admire that like i woulda jjst walked out #i know i’m not supposed to voice any controversial opinions here at this fucking job in this fucking place i know very well is corrupt #but liek #i cant just fucjing sit there and listen to you excuse fucking ethnic cleansing without speaking up #i don’t care #morally i cannot stand by and listen to that shit without saying something #p

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nina-ya · 2 months ago

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I’m gonna go work on some more of the ficmas things to hopefully get rid of my stress 💃💃💃I’ll see yall on the other side

#nina rambles~✦#Im gonna mini vent here #so like full warning don’t read if you don’t wanna see my crap lmao #It’s been a shit show from the start !#at work I nearly had a panic attack and had to call my friend to bring me down because a damn episode of kitchen nightmares flared my trauma #I was heavily verbally and physically abused by my ex #and hearing the guy in the episode berate and say shit to his fiancée just brought me back to where I was in her position #and I couldn’t bring myself to stop watching for some god forsaken reason #so my heart just kept sinking and sinking and my anxiety kept growing until it spilled over #so that’s that #and then I have something really important going on tomorrow morning #I just came home from a 9.5 hour soft #shift*#and when I walked through my front door #intense anxiety over this thing suddenly settled in #and so I’m exhausted #haven’t eaten #stressed #and already went through shit #and it’s all culminating together to me just being at a breaking point rn #and ugh #I’m just really not in a good place right now #so im gonna write and see if that helps!!!#fingers crossed!!!

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isabellahdid · 1 hour ago

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end of para -

BELLA

Bella couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes, feeling at ease as they slipped back into their playful, sarcastic ways. Her mind was still occupied with thoughts of Ayanna and how she could help the freshly introduced father-daughter pair but it was something she could ponder later when she was laying in bed. "I'll try to prepare myself for the fan videos that always follow when you drop a song." If she watched a couple then it was nobody's business but her own, often unable to stop herself from giving into the temptation of it all. "Can't be giving her any false hope. You know you were always her favorite." Even Adan, who had been the cowboy of Bella's dreams, never quite hit it off with the elder Hadid. She was always too picky, too quick to point out a flaw, and very few seemed to survive being under such a hateful, watchful eye.

Gaze flickering towards a window, Bella said nothing as she stared put into the dark night, trying to figure out of she wanted to make the drive home. It wasn't too far from the singers house but he was right - it was late. "Alright, I'll stay." Bella finally spoke, her eyes trailing back to him, accepting the invitation. Just once. One sleepover and she would never do it again, she silently promised. Not because she didn't want to, she did, but she knew herself and she knew him. One sleepover would spiral it something else and they would find themselves stuck in an all too familiar web.

"Go get the shirt and I'll meet you in the guest room."

ABEL

´ Yeah, well, I can’t help it—I’m Mama Hadid’s favorite,´ he quipped, flashing a smug grin. ´ You could always turn it into a bonding moment. Picture it now : you and your mom, curled up on the couch, watching fan edits dedicated to you. ´ The thought of Yolanda and Bella side by side, dissecting fan-made videos of his songs set to slow-motion clips of Bella, was pure entertainment. He chuckled at the absurdity of it, imagining their reactions. ´ Alright then, giving me my birthday present in advance, huh? ´ he teased, arching a brow. He knew this wasn’t a decision made lightly—it never was. Their history had its fair share of turbulence, and making a move like this meant stepping into familiar, unsteady terrain. But it seemed like, once again, they were both signing their names on the dotted line of whatever unspoken contract kept pulling them back together.

´ Damn, giving me orders like that ´ he added with a shake of his head, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk as he followed through, retrieving one of his shirts for her. It was a black tee embroidered with a bold 'X’O’ at the center—his brand, his legacy. He couldn’t lie; there was something about seeing her in his merch that satisfied a guilty pleasure of his. A silent claim, in a way.

Before heading back, he decided to slip into what he considered pajamas—grey sweatpants slung low on his hips and a white tank that clung just right. Once changed, he made his way into the guest room, effortlessly tossing the shirt in her direction, ensuring the angle was perfect for an easy catch. He threw himself onto the yet empty bed, exhaling as he settled into the moment. ´ Good old times,´ he murmured, a quiet smile tugging at his lips. The déjà vu hit him like a wave—nostalgic, bittersweet, and laced with something he couldn’t quite put into words. A past they could never quite outrun, yet somehow always found themselves returning to.

BELLA

Bella slipped the shirt over her head, saying nothing for a long moment. It was like every bit of exhaustion had hit her all at once, the events of the night weighing heavy on her shoulders. Not only was Abel suddenly back in her life but he had brought a daughter along with him. It was a lot and any sane person would've kept the contact cut off, but Bella didn't consider that an option. No, she wanted this. She would never say it out loud, would never give him that ammo, but she had missed him.

Settling in bed and pulling the covers over herself, Bella gave a sigh. "Shh, no more talking. It has been a long night and I'm sure it's going to be a long morning so get some sleep." She left no room for an argument, pressing close but still keeping it innocent as she gave into the wave of sleepiness that had her, drifting off in record time.

Yeah, this was nice.

#para: 002 #abelsarchives

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floral-hex · 2 years ago

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I’m out of town for a couple of days for my brother’s chess tournament and the internet in this hotel sucks butts and I only brought one book with me 😓

#sucks butts IN A BAD WAY #this is the same hotel that held the last couple of big chess tournaments my brother entered #so I’ve been here a few times but this is the first time I’m actually renting a room instead of driving back and forth each day #so positive: got a room and don’t have to drive a bunch. negative: no continental breakfast 😒#they have a little tiny starbucks but no free breakfast which is bullshit!#also all of my books are stilled packed up from moving bc I’m lazy so I couldn’t grabbed any one I really wanted to read #but I did get a free copy of Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ the other day so I brought that #and yeah I am kinda pumped to peruse that. Mr King is a pretty cool dude and I def want his writing tips #but also… I just kinda would rather read something about a fucked up wizard or something ya know?#anyway I always feel weird or annoying saying this but if you want to send me any asks or anything to help pass my time then by all means #or not. it’s cool. really. I hate bugging people and I hate coming off as desperate & needy outside of the bedroom #im going to be mushy and say im kind of excited to spend the night sleepover style with my little bro here #he’s getting older and it’s getting harder to convince him to hang out with me #love this little dude so gosh darn much #oh man what if we get a pizza and watch a movie together? would that be cool? is that something teenagers like to do with their older bros?#i’m so lame #being like 18 years older than your younger brother means you get to fulfill your cool uncle/dad vibes without actually having kids #ok I have to stop myself from filling this with tags about wishing I was a dad or being whatever #what was I saying before?… did I even have a point?#oh yeah… bad internet… only one book… I’m hungry… yeah…#this isn’t important #you can ignore this #text

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insanechayne · 1 day ago

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~ ~ ~

#I tell myself I’m done being depressed and anxious and overthinking and then still end up doing all that #I just don’t know how not to feel like I’m worthless to everyone around me when they don’t show me otherwise #dude couldn’t even spare a happy Valentine’s Day message yesterday and hasn’t talked to me at all yet today either #last night says to we can talk if I want to and wants to help with my depression but then stops replying about it after a few messages #can’t even make time to talk to me for longer than a few minutes at best #so what’s the point anymore? I thought we felt the same and matched energy and wanted the same things before but I guess that’s not true #and I don’t want to go back to the dating scene since I just get disappointed over and over again #so then the only solution is to be single but I don’t want that either because I’m tired of being alone/lonely #but there’s nothing out there for me and feels like there never will be and I hate that #just want him to remember I exist and talk to me like he used to #guess I fell into the same trap of really liking someone and wanting to talk to them and spend time with them #cause now I’m just waiting around for messages again and hoping for time in whatever ways I can get it #and that just ain’t worth it. I’m too old to still be playing these games and waiting around for someone to notice me #but I don’t have any other alternatives because I can’t force people to remember me or reach out or whatever #I’m just so tired of all of this and it seems like it’s never going to get any better no matter what I do #and I’m also tired of being the one to always reach out and start a conversation #the phone and internet work both ways and I need that bit of reliability and stability from others sometimes #just something to show I matter in some way to some one #but that’s apparently not going to happen so I gotta just keep it pushing on my own like always #nothing really ever changes and it’s getting to be pathetic #why does every partner/person I like have to end up being a lesson? haven’t I learned enough by now?#I don’t know what God wants me to see here because I can’t learn from a broken book with pages missing #just want someone to cut me a damn break one of these days #personal

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asexualjedi · 3 months ago

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Wait shit tomorrow is thanks giving can’t a bitch get a god damn break huh.

#my aunt invited herself and her family over also different aunt then the one who broke in #and. like we were like we only want us here it’s going to be too hard on my mom #and then she was like well it’s okay it’ll just be me my husband and my daughter like girl #and then today after my mom fell and it was a whole ordea #she’s fine she keeps trying to sit on tables or where there’s nothing to sit on so like I had to catch her in my arms and she sat in my arms #like I was a chair and wouldn’t get up when I asked so I had to slowly lower her to the ground #more upset bc it was just me in the house and I can’t pick her up from the ground by myself like I can help her up from a sitting hit but no #not the floor #and it took like 10 m for my dad to get here #also my grandma is on the phone during all this im trying to like keep my mom from falling then im trying to like gently put her down then #im trying to stop her from hurting her self in her attempts to get up #and she’s on the phone with my aunt #I can hear my aunt #and im yelling #we are in the same room right she’s on a chair on the other side of the couch from where this is happening #and im yelling grandma #ask aunts name for help pls pls pls ask her if she can come help #and my grandma just keeps chitchatting and im like then I just go aunts name can you hear me hello #and im pretty sure like tm grandma told my aunt shout what happened but was like yeah it’s fine (my dads name)#is on the way he’ll be here idk mayeb thirty #and it’s like grandma I haven’t been able to call my dad yet #that’s like when he estimated he’d be back from his errand #then she’s like yeah we’re fine here (my moms name) just fell it’s ok #and then I finally go grandma hang up ps bc my mom couldn’t here me through all of my grandma talking and me talking and my mom crying #and then my aunt texts me liek you good and I call her and say can you pls come here I need help pls #anyways she was closer then my dad but still ended up arriving after him which is just classic her #she was late to her own second marriage which was incredible bc #she sang while walking herself down the isle you can’t be late if you do something bonkers like that #anyways after all thsi I go like we need to not have many people around they say only 1-2 people and my aunt goes yeah I know but it’s okay #it’s just going to be the three of us coming and it’s like girl the 1-2 includes my and my brothers and her husband can you count dog like

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touchlikethesun · 9 months ago

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#i would sorta like to understand how my parents can say such unbearably cruel things to my face #and think that they’re helping me #i get that other people in my life might not tell me the truth bc they don’t want to hurt me #but there’s a difference between being honest and being cruel #between being realistic and projecting your own dissatisfaction #and in the same breath they’ll ask me why i have no confidence in myself and tell me that i’ve wasted all my potential & it’s too late for #like #not that everything is their fault i am entirely responsible for not planning better #but how can they say something like that and think that they’re doing me a kindness #it just does not compute #this conversation happened yesterday and it was an hour of them venting their frustrations at me #frustrations that i fucking share!!!!! just for the record!!!!!#and then getting mad when i didn’t respond with some sort of hail mary like actually everything was fine #like what did they expect me to say #it also feels just so manipulative how much they insist that they are the only ones that care about me #that no one else in my life is reliable #which is already something i believe bc who would ever want to put up with all my bs outside of brief dinner parties #but i also can’t rely on them because everytime i have they’ve turned it against me like a weapon #so doesn’t that just mean that i genuinely have no one??? that i’m genuinely alone???#and i know i know they are like this because of their own trauma and their own issues #but i can’t manage myself much less manage all their emotions #it’s just such an awful situation #i’ll stop there the longer i type the more i spiral #but i am just extremely disappointed in myself that i couldn’t hold on to my good productive mood from last week for even a single day #after getting back #personal #vent

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r4di0h3ad · 4 months ago

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just practice

paring! bsf!jj x reader

in which! you have a date coming up and you still haven’t lost your virginity, so you go to your best friend in the hopes he will help you out and save you from embarrassment

warnings! smut. loss of virginity. oral sex (f. receiving) pnv sex. unprotected sex.

part 2

you find jj at the chateau, laying in a hammock on the porch with his shirt off and a joint between his fingers. you could smell the scent of weed before you even made it to the door and jj gave you a smile when he noticed you.

“hey, j.” you greeted, now standing in front of the bench. “you busy?”

“what’s it look like?” he took a long drag from the joint and exhaled. you couldn’t help but grin at his glazed over eyes and his genuine, high smile.

you glanced into the screen door, looking for john b, or anyone else, but couldn’t see well from the smoky haze.

“anyone home?”

he shakes his head no.

“kie and pope are working, think john b’s out with sarah.” he says. “why? you okay?” his eyes soften and you notice his look of concern.

“yeah,” you smile, “everything’s fine, just need to uh- talk to you.” you had no idea how you were gonna go through with this without making it incredibly awkward. you already felt sick to your stomach at the thought of him rejecting you and never seeing you the same way after this.

jj nods and stubs out his joint. he stands up and opens the screen door, motioning for you to enter first.

“after you.”

you smile and step inside, but you soon begin to feel ill at the fact that you were really going to ask him this. you wanted this to happen, but you were terribly nervous.

you lead him to his room and close the door behind you. he sits on the edge of the bed and you follow, sitting crisss cross, facing him.

“you sure everything’s fine?” he asks, obviously questioning the fact that you wanted to speak to him in his room, and that you were silent.

“i told you about that guy i’ve been talking to for a few weeks, yeah?” you start, not wanting to make eye contact with the boy.

“yeah.” he nods.

you try not to pick at the skin of your fingernails.

“okay, well, he asked me out.” you say. “the date’s tomorrow.”

he furrows his eyebrows in question, noticing that you sounded kind of disappointed about something that was supposed to be good.

“well that’s a good thing, right?” he scoffed. “i mean, i cant remember the last time you went on a date.”

“shut up.” you nudge him. “yeah, it’s a good thing… i like him- i think.”

“alright, well, that’s all you wanted to tell me?” he asks. “you don’t need dating advice right? because i can’t help you in that department.”

you fight a smile at his remark and shake your head no.

“okay, here’s the thing.” you sigh before you force out your next words, absolutely dreading his reaction. “i don’t know if he’ll wanna sleep with me eventually, and, well he’s kind of experienced with girls and all that, and i’m kind of…. not.” you cringe at your choice of words, already regretting coming to jj out of embarrassment. you glance at him momentarily and he seems to be studying you, waiting for you to keep talking. “what i mean is, like-“ you sighed. you knew you sounded like a complete idiot, but you didn’t want to back out now.

“you know i’m a virgin, right?” you didn’t even want to look at him after the words came out of your mouth.

he smiled a little.

“i, uh, i figured.” he scratched the back of his head awkwardly and cleared his throat.

“don’t be a dick.” you shove him once again and he chuckles, which allows you to lighten up just slightly. “i’m saying that i don’t know what i’m doing - y’know, with guys and all that. i don’t want to embarrass myself in front of him.”

“so you want… sex advice? from me?” he asks, raising his eyebrows with suspicion.

you nervously bite the inside of your cheek and your face grows hot.

“well, i thought maybe a little more hands on.” you said before you could even stop yourself. you knew you had to just come out and say it or you would’ve backed out and nothing would ever come of this situation. you searched his face for a reaction.

he looked confused, but he didn’t seem whole heartedly against the idea. the silence between you both was becoming awkward and you felt the need to explain yourself, hopefully making the situation sound less like you were coming on to him and more like a friend just asking for help.

“i mean like, because you’re a guy and all, you would know what guys like best, i guess?” you said, as you watched him cross his arms over his chest and lean against the headboard of the bed. “and i was thinking about the fact that i’m going on a date for the first time since freshman year and now there’s a very high chance that i’ll sleep with him in the coming weeks, and it just- i don’t know, the idea of losing my virginity to someone i’ve known for a month didn’t really sound good to me.” you we’re rambling at this point to try and defend your case. “i would rather do it with someone i know, and trust.”

“you want me to take your virginity?” he asked, blatantly. “that’s what you came here for?”

you nod, probably chewing a hole into your cheek now.

“if it’s too weird for you, you don’t have to do it at all, it’s okay.” you said. “you were just the only person i felt like i could ask without it being awkward.”

“no, no,” his expression softens and he shakes his head, pulling his arms from his chest and taking his back off the headboard. “i’ll do it.”

“really?” your eyes light up because you expected this to go far south.

“yeah, no big deal.” he shrugs, even though in his head he knew it was a huge deal. he was going to be your first time and if he screwed it up, there was no telling what would happen between you two. “but, this won’t change anything between us right?” he asked. “like i just don’t want it to be awkward afterwards.”

“i swear.” you said, although you didn’t entirely know if that was the truth. “you’re just helping me out, right?”

“alright.” he responds. “you, uh, you wanna do this now or..?” he clears his throat again, visibly getting nervous, but your fears seemed to be disappearing now that you knew he wasn’t against the idea.

“the sooner, the better.” you said.

jj gets up from the bed and flips the lock on the door on the off chance someone were to come home.

“just a warning though,” you start, “i’ll definitely be really bad at this compared to the other girls you’ve been with.”

“that’s all right, you gotta learn somewhere.” he says, walking back to you and stopping right in front of where you were sitting on the bed. your heart started to race as the reality of what you were about to do started setting in. he sits down next to you and you could smell salt water and weed on his skin. “i’m gonna start with kissing you, is that okay?” you searches your face for confirmation and you nod, giving him the okay. “and you’ll tell me if i’m taking things too fast or if you wanna stop, right?”

you giggle a little at his attention to the matter.

“yes jj.”

you see a very slight smile appear on his lips before he slowly leaned in and connected them with yours. he tasted like weed but in the most perfect way as he skillfully moved his lips in sync with yours. his tongue softly swiped your bottom lip at the same time his hands found their way to the sides of your face and he held you there gently. you took him touching you as a sign to occupy your own hands with his body as you brought your hands around his back, feeling his bare skin.

his kisses started leading down your chin, and further down onto your neck where he connected his lips with your skin. you shivered at the new feeling of someone kissing your neck as he went lower still, reaching your collarbone. he pulled away and tugged at the him of your shirt, asking for more access to your body and he helped you out of the fabric.

“you doin okay?” he asks.

“totally fine.”

he connects his lips to your collar again as he carefully lays you down onto your back. he fights the urge not to leave any hickeys on you, knowing you had a date tomorrow.

you scoot your body up until you’re in the middle of the bed so that he can easily get on top of you. he continues kissing your body, getting lower and lower and with each passing second, you could feel yourself getting hotter and your arousal getting stronger. his mouth reached the waistband of your jean shorts and he looked up your for permission to take them off. you nodded and he unbuttoned them before sliding them down your legs and tossing them somewhere on the floor.

jj kissed the curve of your hipbone and you mindlessly rolled your core up towards his mouth, to which you could feel him smirk against your skin at your neediness.

“i’ll get there princess.” he said against the space under your bellybutton. you practically lost your breath at his words and your cheeks flushed out of embarrassment.

he continued kissing you even lower, placing his lips over clothed core and hooking a finger underneath the hem of your bikini bottoms.

“can i take these off?” he asked.

“please.” you nod, almost sounding too desperate.

he pulls your bottoms down your legs, leaving you exposed to him. the first time anyone had seen you like this, and you were thankful it was jj and not some random boy who didn’t know the first thing about you.

“you still alright?”

“jj,” you giggle. “i’ll tell you if somethings wrong, okay?”

“just being courteous.” he joked.

he brought his hand to your now bare core and used his thumb to swipe a line from your entrance up to your clit, making you whine from just one touch. he spreads your wetness around your clit, his pants growing tighter at the sight of your arousal. as he rubs painfully slow circles, he searches your face for signs of enjoyment, but your eyes were shut tight and your lips were parted, quiet whimpers leaving your mouth.

“just relax, okay?” he said, to which you nod eagerly. you were totally not relaxed at all. in fact you were amped on adrenaline from the way he kissed you.

and then before you could register what was happening, you felt something new touching you. you opened your eyes and looked down at jj’s face in between your thighs, seeing his tongue swirling over your clit. it felt better than any time you had ever touched yourself. his eyes met yours for a second and you wondered why you never asked him to do this any sooner even though you pictured him going down on you many times before

your hands found their way to his blonde locks, your fingers tangling into his hair as you threw your head back on the pillow.

“oh my god, jj” you moaned, to which he picked up the pace a little. he gripped your thighs firmly, holding them apart, occasionally rubbing circles into your skin with his thumbs to relax you.

his lips wrapped around your clit and he sucked, making you jolt your hips up in pleasure at the new sensation. your legs were trembling under his grip and jj didn’t think he could get any harder, but he was, in fact, getting harder by the minute.

“jj,” you moaned his name, “please don’t stop!” you were pulling his hair tighter, trying not to be too loud in case anyone were to come home, but it was impossible to keep your mouth shut with the way he was eating your pussy. “feels so good” you cried.

your hips were rocking back and forth, rolling in the same rhythm as his tongue, practically riding his face. he knew you were close based on the fact that your moans were getting closer together and your legs were shaking harder. he suddenly switched the direction of his tongue, now going side to side and occasionally sucking on your clit, swallowing your juices.

your back was arched off the bed, your hands flying to the sheets for something to hold on to as your high approached in small waves. you moved one hand to cover your mouth, trying to stifle your moans, but jj immediately reached up to your arm and pulled it from your face, not stopping his movements.

“need to hear you cum” he said against your clit before harshly sucking on it.

“fuck” you moaned, his words alone almost leading you over the edge.

he snuck two fingers into your entrance and slowly moved them against the sweet spot inside you. the mixture of his mouth expertly lapping at your clit and his fingers pushing into you had you coming undone.

“fuck- don’t stop- please- don’t st-“ you couldn’t even get the last words out as you felt yourself completely lose control. you didn’t know how loud you were moaning because all of your senses had faltered as the tidal wave of ecstasy crashed over you.

he kept licking until you had fully ridden out your orgasm, and even then, he continued, his grip still tight on your legs as they trembled. you pushed his head away from the overstimulation and then lay limp, your chest rising and falling as you came down, your eyes still closed.

“need a second?” he asked, mockingly, his hands running up your torso and to your still covered breasts. he felt your nipples harden under your bikini top and he desperately wanted to get you out of it.

you wrap your arms around his back and pull him on top of you, connecting your lips with his again. he immediately kisses you back and reaches behind you to undo your top, which quickly comes off and jj’s eyes land on your breasts. he takes them both in his hands and leans over you to suck your nipple, making you shiver.

you occupy your own hands with his belt, fumbling with the clasp until it’s undone and pulling it through the loops.

he pulls himself away from your tits and starts undoing the zipper before his eyes meet yours.

“you sure you’re okay with this?” he asks.

“i wouldn’t be fully naked in front of you right now if i wasn’t.” you joke.

he gets up from the bed to take his shorts off and look around the room, presumably for a condom.

“john b’s gotta have some around here, hold on.” he says, opening up the top drawer of the dresser and rummaging through the pairs of socks and underwear.

“you don’t have to, jay.” you say, but he doesn’t listen, still looking inside the dresser for any small, silver packages. “i’m on birth control.”

he turns around cocks his head at you.

“what?” you question. “makes my periods lighter.” you shrug.

“i’m still pulling out though.” he says before he walks back to the edge of the bed and slides his boxers off, revealing his achingly hard cock. you visibly got nervous at his length, swallowing the saliva in your mouth. jj notices the redness in your face and gets into the bed, pushing hair out of your face with his fingers. “i’ll stop if it’s too much, just tell me.” you nod, anxiously and he positions himself on top of you, stroking his cock a few times before you feel his tip at your entrance. his eyes meet yours for confirmation and you give him a nod.

his cock slowly pushes into you, not even an inch as he doesn’t want to hurt you. you shut your eyes hard, preparing for it to hurt, but you feel barely any pain. he kisses your neck and pushes himself in a little farther.

“this feel okay?” he asks against your skin.

“feels good, j.” your hands find their way to his back again.

once he bottoms out, you feel a slight pressure at your cervix before he slowly starts moving, giving you time to adjust to the feeling.

you hear jj moan in your ear from the painfully slow strokes he was taking, trying to keep himself from going too fast for you. his cock rubbed against your g-spot and you kiss the area in between his collar and neck.

“i’m okay jj.” you reassure him. “faster, please.”

he picks up the pace and continues kissing your neck. your nails dig into the skin of his back.

“you feel so good” he moans. “doin’ so good for me- fuck.” he didn’t even realize what he was saying, but you enjoyed the hell out of it. his praises added to the pleasure of him inside you.

he was going fast enough now that you could hear your skin hitting against each others as your hips connected. every thrust was stroking your sweet spot and you were pretty sure you were leaving scratches on his back, but jj felt too good to even notice.

he leaned back a little so that all his weight was on his knees and his back was straight as he grabbed one of your legs for support and used his other hand to rub your clit at the same time he was fucking you. the double stimulation illicited a loud moan from you that encouraged jj to keep going, almost nearing his end.

his thrusts were getting sloppier and his breathing was heavier but he wanted to make you finish before him. your chest heaved, feeling the new sensation of him filling you up at the same time as his fingers worked on your clit. the pressure was building up and you knew you were close. you suddenly pulled him against you so that your chests were pressed against each others.

“fuck- jj” you moaned. “m’so close.”

his heavy breathing sounded like heaven to you as he started to fuck you even harder, his cock sliding perfectly in and out of you.

“sweetheart” he moaned into your neck. “m’not gonna last much longer.”

almost immediately after he said those words, you felt the band in your stomach snap as you came around his cock, squeezing and pulling him deeper inside you. you cried out his name as he fucked you through your second orgasm.

“fuck, baby-“ he pulled out of you and stroked his cock that was slick with your wetness. you watched his face contort in pleasure, his eyes barely open and his lips parted, his eyebrows furrowed. his cum shot onto your stomach and tits.

he tried not to stare too long at the mess he made of you, realizing almost as soon as he finished that this was a one time thing he may never get you like this again.

he got out of the bed and grabbed a shirt of the floor, which he cleaned you up with and tossed it.

“you okay?” he asked again.

you rolled your eyes.

“how many times are you gonna ask that?” you scoffed. “i liked it, j. don’t know how my date’s gonna top that.” you joked.

then, jj remembered that this was all practice for you to go and have sex with another guy and he suddenly felt sick. he pulled his boxers back on and picked up your articles of clothing from the floor and tossed them to you.

the truth is, you didn’t even want to go on that date anymore. not after the way jj took care of you.

“hey, jj!” a voice, john b’s, ripped through the chateau and both of your eyes widened, looking at each other with panic. “you home?”

you swiftly put your bottoms and shorts back on in under 30 seconds and shrugged yourself into your flimsy shirt while jj was putting his belt back on. you quickly exited john b’s room before he could see where you both came from and you nervously greeted him in the living room to see that sarah and kie were home as well.

“heyy, jb.” jj said, awkwardly.

“what have you two been doing all day?” john b asks.

kiara walked over to the kitchen to grab a beer and when she turned around, she noticed the marks on jj’s back. she paused in her steps.

“jj, what’s with all the scratches on your ba-“ and then she realized. her face contorted in disgust. “ewwww, are you guys fucking serious?”

your face grows hot with embarrassment and you wanted to dig a whole to die in, but john b seems barely faced as he walked past you, saying something near you.

“at least you made that boy’s dreams come true.”

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