#and the soundtrack didn’t have to go so hard | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pennjammin · 2 months ago

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run, rabbit, run

JJK HALLOWEEN!! nanamixreader

summary ❥ you babysit for the wealthy single dad who lives across the street. it’s the end of october and his halloween party is the talk of the neighborhood. you’re not invited because the kids are out of town, but you decide to pop up on him anyway, and he shows you just how badly he’s been dying to get you alone without the children.

CONTENT: age gap, 86’d sorcery, dilf!nanami, toys, smut, alcohol, dom!nanami, cunnilingus, afab!reader, fluff, friends to lovers kinda, bossxworker, aftercare, slowwwww burn, reader wears animal ears during sex, breeding kink, spit kink, masochism.

word count. 10k

soundtrack 💿: eating - madeintyo

A/N: i tried to stay away from specific pronouns this time but i just love using the word pussy bro

and this one isn’t so much Halloween-centered or spooky as the others RIP i didn’t forget that it’s halloween but it was hard to keep bringing it up once the smut started lolz

also!!! there’s a joke in here involving the color of 🐱; i know everyone’s is not the same color so , fill in the blank for the color that fits yours if u have one HAHAHAH 😭🙏🏼

✩

You give your ass a good shake.

You’re making sure the long, fluffy tail poking out of your blue shorts isn’t going to fall out. It doesn’t.

You’re dressed as a fox, but not just any fox. A fox cop. You have on a short blue collared top, matching shorts, and of course you’d be no real cop without your utility belt housing fake handcuffs and a plastic baton. To top it all off, you’re wearing fuzzy fox ears on your head, and sheer tights to cover your legs.

You nod in the mirror, satisfied. But the real test, to you, is if Mr. Nanami will like it just as much.

Mr. Nanami is your employer, but more importantly, your neighbor. You watch his two young children five days a week; sometimes even overnight when he has a particularly busy work day. You consider yourself close with them, but your feelings about Nanami are a little deeper than that.

You’d seen him the first time a little under a year ago, when he’d been out on an early morning jog. From then, on you’d become disgustingly obsessed ever since.

Your schoolgirl pining only gets worse every time you see him, and recently you've even gone as far as trying to shamelessly flirt - but he seems to have absolutely no idea. That is the less painful explanation, the other being that he’s just not interested.

But you’re planning to see if you can get that to change tonight. You always dress sensible in front of his children; this will be the first time he's seeing so much skin. It has to work, right?

Tonight, Nanami is throwing the party of the century. He has house workers of all kinds who serve towers of food and delicious mixed drinks. The cherry is that his entire gated lawn has been decorated to the perimeter of fun inflatables and spooky decorations. You know it's mostly for his kids, whom he goes nothing short of above and beyond for.

However, he had informed you days ago that they would be out of town this weekend - and, even if they were not, he's off work, so he doesn’t need you. This means he also had not invited you to his party.

You clearly still intend to show up unannounced, a bold move on your part.

You lock up your house - a small, co-owned property that truly looks out of place across from Nanami's home - which he technically pays the rent for. You carefully make your away across the overcrowded street full of cars, decorations, and humans who are already half past drunk.

As you walk up the stone steps that lead to his front door, your stomach is keyed up. You shouldn't feel any different than you normally do when coming over for work, but you’ve really let this highly unprofessional crush of yours get out of control.

You make it to the porch. You're unsure if he will even hear the doorbell, but you press it anyway. The door slides open after about ten seconds, as if he has been standing there watching it. You feel your body freeze immediately upon seeing him.

Nanami is towering over you in the threshold. His face lights up almost instantly, but that's not all that has your heart threatening to crack open your rib cage; it's also his delicious white button down, popped open by a few to reveal tiny bits of blond chest hair, and then of course there are the long, white ears on top of his head.

“Why hello, officer, did we get a noise complaint?” He chuckles at his own dad joke before bowing his head in greeting. “Sorry, I’m just surprised to see you. I figured you would be thrilled to not have to look at these four walls for a few days while my children are with... their mother.”

You watch his face drop in disgust at the mention of his ex-wife, but he’s never said anything bad about her. Whenever you’d asked why things hadn’t worked out, he’d said "they just didn't." And that was that, but part of you aches to know what had happened.

It shouldn’t matter. He is not interested in you. He gives you a paycheck, and that is all.

"Well," you begin carefully, "Who would want to miss out on the most exclusive Halloween party of the year?"

This coerces a deep laugh out of Nanami, then he steps aside and allows you to walk in. He is holding a short rocks glass of unidentified brown liquor, and you can smell whatever it is in a cloud around him.

Once inside, Nanami’s voice is quite muffled from the clank of dishes and bustle of workers. The two of you stop to stand in the foyer, a grand crystal chandelier winking at you from above.

"Exclusive isn't the word I'd use," he says, following your eyes as he takes a sip. "Everyone and their mother is here. Literally." He tilts his glass towards an elderly woman who stands next to a redhead about Nanami's age.

You should be laughing at his joke but instead, your stomach knots grow tighter at the reminder of how many people his age are here preying on him, the neighborhood catch, with careers and homes of their own.

Nanami is seven years your senior, you think. No wonder he wants nothing to do with a young, non career-oriented thing like you when he has all of these sophisticated people crawling at his feet.

You can't think about that now, or the courage you’ve spent a week building will cease to exist.

"Heh - well, either way," you continue, "it's a big party. I know the kids aren't here, but-"

"But I'm glad you are," Nanami smiles, his eyelids hanging a little low from the liquor in his system. "You look very nice, darling. I like your ears."

He grins and points to his own headband. A grown and very, very large man dressed as something as vulnerable as a little rabbit has your nerves aflame.

"Hmm, I bet you do," you tease. “Like it so much you had to copy me?”

Nanami makes a disapproving sound with his tongue, leaning forward a bit to be eye level with you. "Copy you? I was unaware that rabbits and foxes were the same animal. In fact," he adds, "if I'm not mistaken, foxes are a rabbit's natural predator."

You had been trying to look away from him now that he has moved so close, but as the last sentence rolls out of his mouth, you make the mistake of looking directly into his eyes - and what you see makes your limbs jelly. Maybe it's your delusions, but he seems to be drinking you up equally as much as he is his liquor.

You laugh to pop the bubble of tension, but Nanami's face remains as still as ice.

"Well, I certainly don't think I pose a threat to you, sir," you say, voice unnervingly dry. "You are twice my size."

At this, his intense stare transitions into a soft smile. "You just have to get my guard down. Then, I'm sure a little thing like yourself would be able to have your way with me."

You blink quickly, assuming you've misheard him. Then again, though, he tends to say things that could be flirty - but he is just a naturally charismatic man. Means nothing.

"Ah," you mumble out, shifting your weight from side to side. You have to find a way to change the subject, but most importantly, you need get his attention off of you. You’d wanted it so bad, now you don’t know how to handle it. As you scheme, he sips his drink again, eyes still watching you over the rim of the glass.

"So... the kids always go with their mom on Halloween?" you ask abruptly.

Nanami quickly swallows his sip before shaking his head. "Well I had them for the Fourth of July, you recall."

You do recall. A little too well. Nanami in nothing but tight, black swim shorts and his signature sunglasses as he flipped meat over the grill - and you playing in his pool with the kids. He’d invited you to celebrate the holiday with him after his kids had begged, but your mind was definitely elsewhere. The memory popping into your head almost makes you not hear what he says next.

"We alternate holidays. So I will have them for Thanksgiving, she for Christmas," he shrugs a shoulder. "I would have traded Thanksgiving for Christmas, but alas. Christmas is always the busiest day of the year for me, so they would just miss out on time with their father anyway. I couldn't ask you to ditch your holiday plans for us, again, either."

He sighs. You feel your heart ache; he cares deeply about his kids, but he is definitely a workaholic. That is why you spend every chance you get at his house… well, that’s mostly why. But even then, you sometimes wish you stayed more to help, because Nanami works tireless double shifts, then spends his off days trying to make up for lost time with the kids.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," you say, attempting to comfort him. "You're an amazing father who is doing all he can. They love you so much."

He smiles and bows his head politely, so as to say thank you. "They love you as well. Sometimes, I think more than they do their mother."

You swallow a choke, before rutting out, “Surely not."

Before Nanami has the chance to reply, an older woman who you’d come to known as Agnes walks by with a large tray arraignment of bright green cocktails.

“Nanamin!” she shrieks out. “Where would you like me to put these? Very afraid of them falling. There’s drunkards crawling up the walls! I’ve already swept up sixteen broken glasses! Sixteen!”

You and Nanami turn to look at her with an equally astonished expression.

Nanami leans forward a bit to whisper in your ear, “My apologies in advance for her erratic behavior.”

Agnes is still staring wildly between the two of you as you giggle, awaiting further instructions from Nanami.

“Sit them wherever you think is safest,” he says calmly.

She huffs but ultimately takes his word, speeding off with her kitten heels clacking against the marble floor.

Nanami turns back to you and opens his mouth, but another voice cuts him off.

“Nanami, sir!”

You feel a twinge of irritation in your chest, but you really shouldn’t. He is the host and people need his attention. You should have seen this coming.

“Is everything okay?” he questions politely, turning to face the short brunette in front of him, who bats her eyelashes.

“I… I think that someone is fighting outside,” she says quickly, unable to keep eye contact.

Nanami is a smart man, though. “Oh? Well, what shall we do about that?”

“I thought you could run and stop them,” she says, twisting a piece of her hair around her finger, glancing at you out of the corner of her eye.

“I’m in no mood to be in the middle of a brawl,” he says sternly. “Have the butlers stop it, and remove them. You try not to get involved either.”

She huffs and spins on her heel, walking back through the living room with an angry stomp in her step.

Nanami clicks his tongue, “I really need to have her counseled in compulsive lying. She cries wolf so many times a day.”

You’ve never seen her before, she must be new. This makes you jealous all over again. She’s not quite as old as the rest of the workers, but still older than you. The issue is you see yourself in her, the uncontrollable pining over your shared boss. She just makes hers much more obvious.

Nanami clears his throat, and you notice too late how his hand has slithered to the small of your back.

“Perhaps we should escape somewhere more secluded, hm?” he says. “I really am enjoying our conversation. A shame we keep getting interrupted.”

You swallow thickly. The hair on your spine has raised at his sudden contact, making you shiver.

“Yes, that’s a good idea, sir,” you say, trying to hide how dry your voice has gotten.

Not another word is uttered before Nanami is swiftly whisking you off to another room; his hands now free of his drink and instead gently guiding you by his hand placement.

His gaze is not as focused on you as it is leading you both through the overwhelming crowd of people, and to the hall under the stairs that you know for a fact leads to his workspace. He moves his hands into yours as he gently pushes you ahead of him.

You take the lead and find yourself pushing open the big door to his study. Inside is a complete reflection of Nanami, his wealth and his cleanliness. Even his desk is free of papers, or any indication at all that he works in here.

You recall the days he works from home, in this very study, and he'd still be in his work suit, just minus the blazer. You'd let the kids sneak in on him, only once or twice thoughout the day, just to see his smile; and while you’re already there, you'd drop off a cup of hot coffee to help him plow through the rest of his shift.

He shuts the doors behind you both as you run to make yourself comfortable in his desk chair, spinning around like a child.

As you do so, you fail to see or hear his fingers slyly clicking the lock on the door.

“Much better,” Nanami breathes, moving to flick on a floor lamp in the corner, giving the study a soft, warm glow accompanied by the full Halloween moon. “Now, what were we discussing?”

“You, uh,” you clear your throat as you stop spinning in the chair to face him. “You really didn’t have to come in here just to talk to me. You are the man of the evening, you know.”

Nanami rolls his eyes, an out-of-character action you never thought you'd see, but one that looked so tasty, so sultry. God, you’re a pervert in heat - and your sweet, sweet boss is completely oblivious to the kind of horrible thoughts you have daily about him.

Nanami's now staring at you. His mouth is moving, but you have no idea what he had been saying.

"… to spend time with all of those shallow, insolent creatures,” you register, “when I have someone like you here?" He walks over to the desk and leans against it, right next to you now, as he crosses his arms over his massive chest. "We have never just sat down and talked. We always have little people depending on us or wanting our attention. Tonight, I’d like that to change.”

You let his words simmer for a moment. “What is it you’d like to talk about, Mr. Nanami?” you then question.

“What did I tell you about that ‘Mr.’ nonsense?” He frowns. “That makes me feel so old.”

"Sorry, sir," you gulp, not intending to upset him. You just can't help the way 'Mr.' and 'Sir' roll off your tongue, or how bad you enjoy seeing him shift uncomfortably at the use of the names.

"Meanie," he tuts, knocking you playfully with his leg. Another uncharacteristic action.

"What'd I do?" you blink, tilting your head as you look up at him.

"You mean besides drive me insane with your teasing?" he questions, before his eyes widen and he looks as though he's just spilled a secret. "I- wow, I am sorry. That is not what I meant to say."

"I drive you insane?" you echo. "I didn't even think you noticed my… teasing.”

Nanami's face is neutral, but his jaw is working under his skin. "I’m not naive, little fox." He lets out a breath. “This was truly an excellent costume choice.”

He leans forward and flicks the furry ear on your head.

“Thank you,” you smile. “I can’t say the same for yours. You hardly scream innocent bunny.”

“What about me isn’t innocent?” he raises a brow, standing off of the desk.

“I…” you blink as he walks around to the back of the desk chair. “You’re just, um…”

“Fox got your tongue?” he coos, spinning the chair so that you’re forced to face him.

You inhale a deep breath and hold it as heat travels through your stomach and right to the center of your thighs.

“You’re a man who is about his business,” you say. “I imagine you’ve… had a lot of life experiences,” you pause to remind yourself to breathe, but it’s hard because of how ferociously Nanami is staring into your eyes. “So you c-can’t be all that innocent…”

“You seem nervous,” he coos. “Here. Let’s stand up, I’ll sit down. Maybe that will help you to not be so tense, hm?”

Your body obeys before your mind catches on. You’re standing in a beat, and Nanami has replaced you on the chair. Your bottom hits the crease of his large desk, and you slam your hands down on the surface to balance yourself.

“Sorry,” you say, putting a hand up to cover your face. “I don’t mean to imply that you make me uncomfortable, sir.”

Nanami's pupils flash white, but it's gone so quickly, you might have imagined it. "If I do, please let me know immediately.”

“No,” you say, dropping your hand, “I just think we need to get to know each other better, right? Our entire relationship is through the kids. I know that your son’s favorite shade of green is kiwi, but I don’t even know your first name.”

Nanami chuckles at this. “You know, I was thinking exactly the same thing.” He taps your knee. “Kento, silly girl. My first name is Kento.”

"A-And your favorite color?” you continue, trying to ignore how close he’s moved the chair towards you, now that you have fully planted your bottom on his desk.

“Pink,” he says, serious as death.

You giggle. “Why pink?”

“It’s the color of my favorite thing to eat,” he says, slowly placing his arms on either side of your thick thighs, hands planted flat on the surface of the desk.

You think for a moment. “Strawberry ice cream?”

“No,” he cocks his blond head to the side and his eyes fall on your tights. “Try again.”

You pretend to think, though you fear you may be catching on now. “Hmm, dragonfruit?”

“Nah,” Nanami says, looking up at you through his eyelashes. His pupils have been dilated from the alcohol, but there is an unrelated darkness in his eye now. “Something I don’t even have to swallow.”

You gulp. “Oh,” your suspicions have been confirmed.

“Get it now, little fox?” he coos.

“Mhmm,” you taunt back. “Well, I suppose I came prepared with your favorite dish, then.”

“Did you?” His hands boldly make their way to the top of your thighs, barely hovering over the skin but enough to make the flesh there light on fire. “Prepared it all nice and pretty for me?”

“Yes sir,” you nod eagerly, feeling your own boldness appear as your knees slide further away from one another. “How do you like it?”

“Extra moist,” he grits hungrily, fingernails curving into your tights and shredding a thick rip! through the material.

You gasp, entire torso lurching forward as he drags the hole bigger and bigger.

“Sorry, little fox. They were in the way,” he shrugs an innocent shoulder. “And what should we do about these shorts? They’re in the way, too.”

“Then let’s get them off,” you whisper, hardly registering that such filth had been uttered.

This truly can’t be happening. Is Nanami… Kento Nanami actually going to eat you out? Are his hands really slithering up your waist and fumbling with the button on your shorts, or are you in some kind of sick daydream?

"Mr. Nanami-"

"Please," he holds up a hand, one still remaining on the button of your shorts. "Kento. Call me Kento."

"Kento," you echo softly, and his eyelashes flutter. “You really want to do this?”

Nanami sucks in a breath. Several moments of silence pass, then his fingers are gently pressing against your chin, and he has risen to tower above you. "Maybe it's the liquid courage in me that's pushing me," he says, "but I’m okay with that. I dream about you on my tongue, night after night. I need you, Y/N.”

Instead of allowing you to reply, Nanami's lips are assaulting yours in a flash. A harsh, irrational kiss from a man who's lost his battle of self control.

Your hands fly up to his face to balance yourself at the sheer force the shock of the kiss has on you. He groans softly into you as your lips mold together, getting used to the shapes of each other’s mouths.

You want to begin deepening the kiss, but Nanami is suddenly pulling away.

"I'm sorry," he says quickly. You look at his face; for a man who is always so calm and composed, he is flushed and even shaking a little. “I should have asked if that was okay.”

"Did you hear me complaining?" you ask sternly.

“No-”

“Then shut up and kiss me, Kento.”

He wastes no time obeying your command; this time as he kisses you, his hands find the soft skin where your hips crease into your thighs. You’re aware of your thighs rubbing against his stomach as he crawls further on top of you.

You slide your arms up around the back of his neck to hold onto him as his lips work pure ecstasy into your mouth.

You sigh against him and he digs his fingers into your sides to get you to do it again. Now his tongue is in your mouth, softly swirling your own, smacking fiercely on your lips as he does so.

You're panting now, but Nanami is swallowing your breath with every second. He's leaning his weight on his palm, so his body isn't quite attached to yours, but you want to make him lose his balance so he can crash down on top of you. Every moment that you stay like this, your cunt drips wetter and wetter, seeping through your shorts onto his desk.

"So perfect," Nanami utters into your mouth, "s'much sweeter than I deserve."

You frown at his self deprecation but don't comment, instead your hands start sliding down his chiseled back, exploring the deep ridges and shapes of pure, hard muscle.

Then, plop! You blink in shock as his bunny ears have fallen plum onto your face, nearly gauging out your eye.

"Oh," he gasps, breaking away from you. "Forgot about these."

He pulls away from you, standing upright but staying between your legs. You swallow a needy whine at his absence, before sitting up with him, staring expectantly.

"Think they'll look better on you though, huh, darling?" he coos, reaching over your head and plucking your fuzzy ears off. Then, he’s replacing them with his bunny ears. "There, that's more fitting. I feel much more like the hunter than the hunted.”

You tilt your chin defiantly. "Mm, so I'm just an innocent rabbit in the sights of a dangerous hunter?"

“Clever bunny,” Nanami murmurs, leaning forward and catching you by surprise with a wet kiss at the nape of your neck. You shudder. “Time for me to eat my latest catch, hm?”

“I-I guess so-”

“Oh, don't get shy now, bunny,” he mewls against your ear. “Do you want to do this?”

You pretend to consider it, but your dripping hole has already answered for you. "Yes, sir."

Nanami purrs in response and taps your earlobe with his perfect teeth - before you're being shoved back on the flat surface. Three quick beats occur. Beat, shorts off. Beat, tights off. Beat, panties sliding slowly down your legs.

"God," he says, hooking his fingers over the trim of the panties, which are light blue in color, accented by an adorable pink bow in the front. "All this time, I could've had you like this, if only-” he cuts himself off to lean down and place a kiss to your inner knee.

Your nerves send repeated quivers over you. You dig your nails into the desk, but your palms are so sweaty that your hand slips. Nanami catches you, a heavy hand on your lower back, the other hand entangling in your panties and proceeding to rip them all the way off. Your clothes are now in a discarded pile to the right of you, fuzzy tail and ears a reminder of what got you into this position in the first place.

“Well we can make up for lost time now,” you whisper, sliding your feet farther apart until your knees are angled into the air - gaping pussy winking up at Nanami.

His eyes nearly jump from his body as he watches you open up for him, glistening cunt all in his face. He's sinking back down into the chair before either of you really processes it, and his heavy palms fall flat on your inner thighs.

"She's s'pretty, sweetheart," he coos, the breath from his words tickling your clit and making you writhe pathetically. "Haven't even touched you yet. Why are you shaking?”

You whine out in embarrassment. Something about your most perverted fantasies coming alive before you, Nanami talking to you like this, and him staring directly at the forbidden parts you'd never thought he'd see, is depleting your confidence.

"What's wrong, bunny?" he asks, reading your expression. "You look like you are second guessing this."

"N-No!" you cry out, making him jump, before you sigh. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell. No, I want to. I'm just embarrassed."

"Why?" he perks a brow, astonished.

"Because you're so..." you huff uncomfortably, "fine, and here I am, of course anyone would be embarrassed of their own genitals, y'know I just kind of never expected this and-”

"Y/N," Nanami interrupts. "I've seen plenty of these before; all different types, sizes and colors. I am going to devour you regardless of what you think.”

You swallow thickly. Your head nods like a puppet, though you're unsure if that's you saying you understand, or telling him to go ahead.

While you're deciding, Nanami plants a kiss to your bikini line, then slides his hands to wrap his arms around your thighs so that it's now impossible for you to close them. Your stomach is on fire, and you're on the verge of gyrating your pelvis right into his stupidly perfect face.

"Tell me you want this, bunny," Nanami rasps, placing another loud kiss to your inner thigh.

"I want this," you confirm again, "want you."

You don't have to say anything else because his mouth has already found your clit. Warm breath travels between your folds as he keeps his tongue narrowed out to swirl agonizingly slow circles over the bulb.

Your hips convulse against his strength. It does nothing except prompt Nanami to flatten his whole mouth over your heat and pick up speed with his tongue.

"Oh, ohh," you drawl, your hands leaving the desk surface and going right through his fine hair. His hold on you ensures you can’t fall backwards, but you’re gripping his roots for dear life.

He grumbles against your cunt and you feel it all the way up to your ovulating uterus. The desire to have your womb house more of his children starts to enter your brain and you have to remind yourself that this is just sex.

Oh, but it's so much more than that. Nanami's taking his time to work your body, to know exactly which pace makes you cry out like a pathetic fucktoy, noting when you wriggle under his grip, as he pushes his fingertips into the flesh on your legs.

His warm tongue keeps your puffy lips parted effortlessly; lathering you up with his saliva, drinking in the fluid your body creates more of each second.

You sit up farther to look down at him; his eyebrows are furrowed and focused, his cheeks hollowed as he treats your twitching clit like his tongue’s dance partner.

He swirls, flicks, slurps - each variation unlocking a new noise from you as you fight back your orgasm.

As you watch him, your fucked-out, needy brain begins to tell you would give him whatever he wanted in this moment; six children and a house from scratch if that's what he requested. Because he deserves it; the way his tongue’s now dipping slightly into your desperate hole, making your hips jerk from the desk until he counter-forces them with his hands.

"Where do you think you're going?" he snaps, grazing his teeth over your clit.

You can’t even speak; he’s eaten your voice right out of you. His head shakes side to side as he plants his mouth back on you and peers up through his blond lashes, daring you to pull that stunt a second time.

Your hands are still deeply entangled in his roots, but at this point you can't keep your eyes in the front of your head. Your head lolls back on your neck as your hips twitch with an unholy amount of momentum. Your moans are growing dangerously loud; knowing full well there's an entire party nearby, as well as the possibility of nosy maids. Not that either of you care.

"Kento, s-so good," you lament, bucking your hips into his chin as if you could chase more pleasure than he's already giving you. The heat in your stomach is the first indication that your pleasure is morphing into an orgasm, but you don’t want to cum yet.

You want to try and run again, just to give yourself a little time to catch up…

The minute Nanami feels your hip bones sliding away from him, he pulls his mouth off of you; your orgasm slipping away. You take a deep breath in regret.

“Someone must not want to cum,” he taunts, keeping his mouth close to your trickling cunt. “Need you to stay still.”

“I can’t,” you breathe, trembling.

“Try for me?” Nanami requests softly, lifting your thighs into the air before plopping your feet flat on his shoulders.

He plants a heavy kiss to your clit after the adjustment in your position and you dig your toes into his back.

“F-For you,” you repeat mindlessly, brain officially scrambled like a breakfast platter.

“Mmh-” Nanami grunts, planting his fat tongue back between your slick folds, working his jaw intensely to finish pulling the orgasm out of you. He sticks the narrow tip back at your hole, flicking the rim of the inside as if it’s his purpose for living.

Your toes lift into the air as Nanami tests your flexibility, pushing your knees next to your ears. With the pressure built up in your stomach, you barely have time to mutter out the announcement of your orgasm before you're cumming all over his tongue and clenching your walls around the wet muscle.

"Give it to me, bunny," he moans, words muffled because of the way you're gripping his tongue with your pussy.

You keep shaking for a solid thirty seconds, because he is refusing to take his tongue out of you. When finally you’ve calmed to a slight twitch, he removes his face from between your thighs and the entire lower half of his face glistens in the light.

"That's one," he murmurs to himself, crawling back over you to plant a sloppy kiss on your lips. "You did so well. You taste so sweet, bun.”

"Can I return the favor?" you ask needily, dragging your palm down his chest.

He grinds his pelvis across your lower half, so that you can feel the sheer length of his bulge beneath his pants. "What for?"

Your eyes widen at just how large it feels; surely it's smaller than it appears.

"Wanna please you, sir," you babble out, watching his eyebrows furrow at the self-proclaimed pet name.

"Hm, think that ship sailed long ago,” he chuckles, rubbing his clothed dick against your inner thigh this time, and now, you take notice of the warm trail of precum that’s leaked through his pants onto your skin.

You dig your nails into his chest instead of replying. He bites back a groan and kisses your neck.

“I’m going to have to restrain you if you want’a keep being so touchy," he whispers sternly.

"I do have handcuffs," you say, following it with a giggle. Though you’re only half joking.

"That's cute," he mewls. "You think I need handcuffs to restrain you?" He pauses. "What's that you said? That I'm twice your size?"

You swallow thickly, remembering that you had, in fact, said that.

"So I can, and will easily pin you down, bun," he continues. "Don't act up, and I won't have to, yeah?"

You wish you can say you won’t, but if he thinks you dislike the idea of being pinned down, he must not be faking his innocence, like you’d thought.

A moment later, he's standing away from you, and his hands expertly unbutton his shirt. You watch him with desire, and he smiles a little shyly at you as he shrugs off the garment and tosses it to the floor.

“Funny, you’ve seen me shirtless before,” he says suddenly. “Why do I feel a bit nervous about it this time?”

You giggle and cock your head to the side, legs still spread wide. “Should’ve always felt nervous. I’m a huge pervert, y’know.”

Nanami dips his head before coming back to be close to your body again, his fingers mindlessly tugging on the hem of your shirt now.

“I know,” he whispers. “A little minx, you are.”

“Took you long enough to realize it, hm?” you tease as you lift your arms to assist him in removing the shirt. But you are caught off guard when he doesn’t continue.

"You're still sure you want to do this?" he questions, changing the subject. “I'm sorry. I'm going to ask a hundred times, it’s just a habit.”

"Yes, Kento," you rasp frustratingly. "Do I have to get on my knees and beg to be fucked for you to get it?"

He blinks, stunned, as if that is not something he ever considered; but does sound appealing to him.

"No," he says quickly, slowly lifting your shirt further over your body. "How did we end up here, hm? Was this your plan from the moment you crashed my Halloween party?"

"Uh-uh," you say innocently, as he pulls the shirt over your head. Now you sit completely naked in front of him - save for the bunny ears on your head.

"I get the feeling you're a big, fat liar," he teases, leaning back over you, now your stomachs are touching and everywhere your skin meets is tingling. "Didn't I tell you to be a good girl? Good girls don't lie."

“‘M not lying," you argue. "Admit you were over here waiting for me to show up all night."

"Maybe I was," he murmurs, dragging his top teeth over the connection between your neck and your shoulder before planting a wet kiss on your collar bone. "And you came for me, like always."

A gasp erupts from your throat and Nanami cuts it off by sliding his hand there. He uses his fingers to apply the gentlest amount of pressure to the sides of your neck and your body arches against him.

"Tell me if anything I do is too much for you, little fox," he coos in your ear before dropping his hand from your neck and standing back straight to quickly unbuckle his belt.

He slides the garment out of his belt loops, and discards it to the side, on top of your clothes. So in other words: close by.

"Kento," you pant, "please."

"Please what?" he questions, raising a brow innocently as he pops open the button to his tight pants - visibly taking a deep breath as his bulge pokes free.

"You're dragging this out," you whine. "I've needed you for so long. This is torture."

"So what?" he shrugs, allowing his pants to fall to the floor, where he steps out of them.

"I..." you cut yourself off with a frustrated grunt.

"You said please, but you aren't using your words, little fox.” He slides his body back over yours - his boxers now being the only barrier between you. "What do you want?"

"You, your cock, your mouth," you pant all of it out in one quick sentence. "I... I just need you inside of me, Mr. Nanami."

Your breasts rub against his hard chest, teasing your achingly hard nipples. Just so pathetic. Can’t control yourself. Your brain's swirling with desire and ecstasy for him. If he can't read your mind, you're sure he can see it in your face.

"Okay, sweetheart," he says, voice returning to its usual softness, "you got me. All yours."

He tugs his boxers down quickly, desperately. Now your hips are aligned to each other's. He's still hovering, his cock not even touching you yet. He slides a hand between your legs as his other keeps you steady, gripping harshly on your hip which is sure to leave a delicious bruise.

Your arms wrap around his neck and he drags his mouth across your jaw before attaching his lips to your neck. His fingers gather the drip from your hole, and then he slides them up through your folds and to your clit. He swirls the fingers softly, keeping his ear right next to your mouth so that he can hear exactly what he’s doing to you.

Your legs shake against his ribs while you moan for him, and he grunts as he takes in all of your body's reactions to his touch.

He goes to try and put a finger in your cunt but you grab his wrist. He does not argue with you, which should be a red flag, but you think you’ve won until he takes the hand he had been using to play with you and grips your wrist, yanking it back, and your entire body goes falling against the desk.

Somehow, both of your wrists are being pinned to the wood in one large hand now. You whine and squirm under him, but he doesn't care. His free hand grabs his cock.

He takes the heavy tip and taps it against your clit several times, each time causing you to gasp and arch against him.

"That's right," he whispers above you. "No escaping now, bun."

You blink up at him, lifting your hips to grind your pussy on him, which causes his lips to part and his eyebrows to furrow.

You open your mouth, tongue flying out, wanting to appeal to another twisted fantasy. “Need your spit,” you mumble shyly.

He seems to ponder for a moment before he realizes what exactly it is you are asking, and a moment later he is leaning forward, dripping a warm glop of saliva from his mouth down your throat.

“Mmh-” you moan as you swallow happily, before looking down between your legs where he is finally done lubricating himself on your juice. He's staring at you hopelessly, as if he’s thinking that putting his cock in you isn't going to be enough.

“So nasty,” he coos, “ready for me, sweetheart?”

"Hngh- please," you beg.

Not a second later, hot pressure is at your hole. Nanami slides his hips upward to push himself deeper, deeper, deeper - the girth feeling like it's going to simply rip you in half.

You shriek and shut your eyes tightly, waiting for the pain to pass. It doesn't.

You feel so embarrassed as he takes his free hand to lift up your left thigh, because pain shoots up through your stomach - and not the good kind.

"Ah- wait," you cry out, eyes falling open.

Nanami stops immediately. "What's the matter?"

"It... it hurts," you admit shyly, biting your lip. "Wh-Why d'you have to be so big?"

"Why d'you have to be so tight?" he chuckles back, but carefully slides out of you. "Hang on. I know what will help, little fox."

He pulls away from you, letting go of your wrists to lean over and dig into a random drawer in his desk. You have no idea what he could possibly be doing until he stands back straight, a hand still holding up your leg, while the other holds a small, light pink, bullet-shaped rubber object.

"Brand new," he says, eyeing it as he rotates it between his fingers. "Just put batteries in it."

You swallow as you realize what this implies. He knew he was going to fuck you - or at least, that he was going to use this toy on you at some point. Or, a third worse thing: it hadn't been for you at all.

You don’t want to think about that possibility, though.

He hands the little toy to you, a small buzz coming from it already.

"Hold it for me," he instructs. "I need my hands to keep my prey from running."

You gulp and do as he says, and again he is taking his cock head and pushing it against you, before it slides through the gummy entrance and you cry out again.

You hold the toy to your clit and the feeling travels straight through your veins. You focus on the vibrations and before you can even inhale again, your insides are completely full.

"Deep breaths, bun," he grunts, "feel her o-opening up… now.”

Did he just stutter? Kento Nanami, who's always so composed. You'd made him lose his wording. You.

Nanami takes his hands and pulls your knees up, holding them to his sides, while you keep your hand occupied on the little bullet between your legs.

The combination of the toy plus his cock filling you up and molding your walls against it has you aching to spill over, already.

Now that the searing has begun to dissolve, his cock is gliding effortlessly inside of you - feeling as though the organ was crafted to fit you perfectly. Your juices cover every inch of him, delicious squelches creating a symphony with your moans as Nanami's pace quickens.

He has his hands still pressed on your thighs but he leans forward and gently pulls a nipple into his warm mouth. You don't know what to do with your free hand, so it ends up on his back, nails mercilessly breaking open his skin. He hisses and nips your nipple between his teeth.

"Fuck. Me," he groans, pulling away from your chest to look down at you. You want to make a comment about how you already are, but he just looks so fucked out - so vulnerable. Lips puffy and wet, eyes shut tight, hair dangling over his forehead.

He’s ruined.

He claws his fingers into your outer thighs. His fingers dig so hopelessly into you as his cock swirls your insides, his hips now moving in a rhythmic wave motion.

Your hand falls away from your clit with the toy and you hardly notice that it's gone because now, his pelvis is brushing over it, sweat practically gluing the two of you together.

"Aw," he purrs, and you look up to see that his eyes are staring directly between your legs. "You’re creaming all over me. Shit - your cunt looks so good, swallowing me up.”

Your face heats and you take your hands to grip his arms, as he's now drilling into you so torturously that you're gliding up the desk - the sweat on your back making your skin slick. He notices you're moving away and shifts his hands to grab your hips, holding you down onto him, and now his fat tip is violating your cervix.

"H-Hah Kento, ngh - God," is all you can manage to say, but there’s nothing holy about what his cock is doing to you, as he angles himself upward, attacking your uterus from a new direction.

You shriek, so horribly loud. It sounds like a horror movie - which is fitting. You’ve nearly forgotten that it’s Halloween night; the moon full, your passions like the tides, being pulled to their peak.

You desperately feel a needy confession on your lips but you know that now isn't the time. You can't love a man you don't date... right? But you definitely love the way he's tearing up your insides, sure to leave you swollen and limping.

"I don't remember telling you that you could remove your hand," he snaps, realizing you’ve removed the bullet, "put it back. Now."

You shake your head, begging for mercy. "Was too much, c-can't take it."

"Yes you can," he whispers, leaning forward and hovering his mouth over yours, cognac-scented breath teasing your parted lips. "Put it back, or I stop."

You whine and obey, the vibration revisiting your clit making your body convulse against him.

"Mhmm, like that sweetheart," Nanami coos, staring at you as your face twists every couple of seconds from the introduction of new kinds of pleasure. "Stick that tongue back out for me."

Your mouth is open, drool practically spilling out of the sides in a millisecond. He's spitting another alcoholic saliva drop into your mouth the next.

His breath is ragged as he drags out, "Thought I knew everything. But y’teaching - hah - me new things. Like how I can never live without your pretty pussy, ever again."

You quiver your lip and dig your nails into his back again, ready to cum on his cock.

"S-Stop talking like that," you grit out. "G-Gonna cum if you don't stop."

"Is that supposed to scare me?" he questions harshly. "You can cum over and over. I’m not finished with you."

You shake your head, but before you can fire back, Nanami is suddenly sliding himself out of you. You panic and sit up, staring at him with wide eyes as he drops to sit on the chair.

His hands come up to grab your hips roughly, and he's effortlessly pulling you down off of the desk. Your stomach makes contact with his thighs as he lays you over his lap like a disobedient child.

"Nanami?" you breathe, but he doesn't seem to hear you at all.

"We just needed to pause for a second," he says softly, running a hand down your spine and over the hill of your ass. His voice is very misleading, as are his gentle gestures; you have no idea what's coming.

"N-No," you whine, "I was so close."

"But, naughty bunny, didn’t you tell me to stop?" he questions, distracting you from the fact that his fingers are sliding between your asscheeks and down to your swollen hole.

You jerk in his lap as two of his fingers glide down your slick, parting your thick lips, repeating the process several times just to watch you squirm.

“Y-Yes, but-”

“What’d I tell you about lying?” he grits, and a blink later his fingers have parted from your skin.

You turn to scold him and his hand cracks down on the back of your thighs.

You yelp, but the action exhilarates you in some kind of disgusting way.

“Oh, and here’s another for calling me Nanami,” he spits, another crack landing on your backside but this time - higher, and harder.

“K-Kento, I’m sorry,” you whine, but you truly don’t want it to stop. Your fingers dig into his leg and he hisses, his cock jerking against your stomach as his body responds.

“How sorry, bun?” he coos, voice faking softness before another pop! of his palm stings your skin.

“I’ll be good, promise,” you whisper, arching your hips up to encourage another smack.

“You like this, don’t you, naughty bunny?” he realizes suddenly, and you try to shake your head in denial - but he’s caught on. “Hm. I’ll only accept your apology if you give me two more orgasms. Deal?”

“Two?” you cry. “I-I’ve already had one!”

“Good things always cum in threes, baby,” he murmurs, running his hand over the pretty hand-shaped welps he’s left on your skin. “You can give it to me. You want to be good, don’t you?”

You don’t know when the shift happened, but you loved it. You loved how he was letting his soft facade crumble to the ground so that he could truly slap you around like you were just a hole. Truthfully, that’s all you wanted to be. Wanted to let him take out the stress of being a single father on your guts, fill you up with more babies to care for, and then kiss you on the forehead when it was all done.

Pathetic. This is still your employer, your boss. And not to mention how much older he is. You don’t care, but you’re unsure if he does.

“I wanna cum again, please,” you beg, wriggling your ass up to show him you still needed punishment.

He groans before his two thick fingers are pressing between your lips and then, shoving through the soft ring at your center.

Your body shamelessly arches, but he allows your arms to stay free, clawing into his skin wherever you can get a grip.

Nanami is making his own noises above you but you’re on the verge of tears, wailing and carrying on as he fucks you with his fingers, curling the tips into your squishy ridges to try and drive the cum out of you faster.

“Maybe we should get one of those tails with a plug,” he comments, tone implying he’s thinking out loud. “It’s a shame I didn’t get to see you in your cute little tail while I fuck you.”

“Hngh - no, mmh…” you don’t even know what noises to make anymore. Words escape your brain.

Nothing but mush and the burning of your approaching orgasm are on your mind.

“Hold it in for me,” Nanami requests suddenly, “I’ll tell you when I’m ready for it, sweetheart.”

“God,” you shake your head and clench your thighs, but Nanami’s strong hand forces them back apart.

Your toes curl on the other side of the chair, your head falling forward. The pulse in Nanami’s cock is still drumming against your abdomen, as if knocking on your tummy to threaten you to hold your orgasm.

“I-I can’t,” you say, “Please, can I-”

“Cum.”

Nasty, wet squelches don’t stop as your body sends you over the edge. Your vision blacks and you shake so hard that you nearly roll right to the floor.

He hums approvingly, slowing his fingers down as you clench around them. “Good job, bun. Only one more to go.”

“I can’t take another,” you shake your head, as he gently guides you up into a sitting position on his lap.

“You’re so strong,” he says, “the perfect person for me. The way you always take care of me and the kids, how you fit so effortlessly into our little family. I know you can do this for me, sweetheart. Let me repay you for all that you do for us. Make you feel good.”

You hadn’t expected this little speech. It almost brings you to tears as Nanami gently rubs your back, sliding his free arm underneath your legs to lift you princess-style back onto the desk.

“Say something,” he begs, his voice hoarse.

“I wanted to be good for you,” you grin softly, and he smiles back as he runs his hands gently over the top of your legs. “But you want to be good for me. Which is it?”

“Both,” Nanami whispers. “I told you that you already do everything that keeps me content. Now, I want to please you.”

You realize that he is passing his power off to you. Letting his dominance slip through his fingers and right into the palm of your hand. You think you can handle being in control for your final orgasm, so you grip him harshly by his cock and scoot your ass to the edge of the desk.

He moans so softly that it could have been a whimper. You take his curvy length and drag it up to be aligned with your hole.

“Is your cock alone gonna please me, hm?” you purr, swirling your hips to tease his cock head, salty precum spreading across your hole.

“Y-yes ma’am,” he mutters, body lurching forward as if he’s the overstimulated one.

“Prove it,” you quip, shoving him back inside of you before pushing your hips down onto him.

You furrow your eyebrows to try and pretend the pain of him entering isn’t still intense. You lift yourself off of your palms and feet, using them to fuck down onto his twitching cock.

“Hah - Y/N,” he speaks your name in two sultry syllables, putting his hands on the desk to fully release his control as you use him.

“Baby, I need to fill you up,” he continues, “b-but if you don’t want me to…”

“Yes,” you say, “want me to have your babies, Mr. Nanami?”

“Oh,” he whimpers, “shit. Shit, don’t say stuff like that.”

You whirl your hips on him in the shape of an ‘O.’

“Want to breed me?” you continue. “Make me all big and pregnant?”

“That’s enough,” he snaps suddenly, hand clamoring down on the belt that is to your side, before he grips the garment in his hand. He sits up from where he’d been leaning on you, before taking the leather and slithering it around your neck, pulling it through the buckle, and yanking it towards him like you’re just a pathetic bitch on a leash.

“You had your fun,” he grits, “now you need to remember your place, bunny. I’m going to fill you to the brim until your cunt can’t take anymore and it drips back out of you, got it?”

“Mmh,” you pull against his belt as your hips are no longer the once controlling the pace. “Nanami, n-nooo…”

Your voice tapers off as he fucks you, fucks you so good and hard and mean until you’re drooling and crying and shaking and hissing and-

“Cumming!” you scream, but Nanami shows no signs of slowing down.

“That’s it,” he says. “Number three. What about four?”

“Y-You said…”

“Oh, you’re the only one who gets to lie around here?” he chuckles, a deep hypnotic sound that vibrates against your chest. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m gonna - ngh” and one viscid moment later, Nanami begins to shudder, and it is the beginning of the end.

You cannot tell if you are mourning or rejoicing the conclusion of this insane chain of events, but you forget all about it when Nanami is spurting hot semen all over your taut, spongey walls - that are now sore and quivering from the excessive abuse.

Your name leaves his lips in between the sultry noises he makes, and his body jerks on top of you until he’s finished spewing his load. Now, he stands in front of you with his head dipped down as he pants for several seconds.

“Do you understand how addicting you are?” are the first words that leave his lips after he is able to drag his head up to look at you.

You’re focused on your own huffing as you try to come up with a witty response, but with your brain so fucked out, the only thing you can mutter is “Oh, Kento.”

He nestles his sweaty face into your neck and plants a feathery kiss there, reminding you that he is still the same gentle Nanami that tucks his children in bed at night and drinks green tea in the garden.

He is everything you have dreamed of, but the sex had truly sealed it. Now, as he slips out of you and his cum follows soon after, you feel your post-high clarity morphing into embarrassment at the fact that all you’d been feeling is lust; Nanami deserves so much more than that, including his recognition as a father.

“Why are you staring at me? Have I still got your nectar on my face?” he jokes, and you admire his ability to loosen the tension.

“I’m sorry,” you say meekly, “I just think you are amazing. I don’t want you to think I really did just come for some cock.”

At this, he laughs so hard that his torso shakes. You smile, as it is rare to hear, and you are the cause of it.

He grabs his shirt and begins to use it to wipe himself off, then does the same for you, his movements intentional and gentle as he cleans you up, rubbing all of the puffy, red reminders on your body softly.

“I don’t think that,” he says with a crooked smile. “But whatever the case, I do hope that things have… changed between us.”

You scoff. “I should hope so,” you tease, tilting your head as he stops his hands on your body. “I hope you’re not going around making every person who comes near you cum three times in one sitting and expect to just be friends.”

He grins. “Nah, that treatment is reserved for you, bun.” His hands slide up your hair and pat the fuzzy ears on your head. “We should keep these around, though. But I’d like to take you out before we use them again.”

You wrap your arms around his shoulders and bring his face to yours, planting a gentle kiss on his nose. “Of course. You did say good things come in threes,” you grin. “The sex was one. The date will be two. What’s three?”

And your question gets answered nine months later, when Nanami proposes to you on a white beach in another country.

…Right before you go into labor.

But of course, once the baby is out, it’s time to start on number 4 the following Halloween.

A/N 2.0

ty all sm for the love on this series so far i’m rlly havin the time of my life writing all these twisted monster-fucker stories ^.^

~ pennjammin

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk smut #jjk x reader #jjk fanfic #kento nanami #nanami my love #jjk nanami #nanami smut #nanami x reader #jujutsu nanami #dilf nanami

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 7 months ago

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Pixar did not have to go as hard as they did with the Kronos Unveiled scene in The Incredibles (2004), yet they did anyway and gave us one of the best scenes in modern cinema. Literally cannot stop thinking about how good this scene is, from the animation to the build up to the soundtrack.

I don’t think I truly understood how dark this scene - and this film - was a child: Syndrome is systematically and strategically luring in superheroes and killing them off in order to test and improve his Omnidroid design… these people were not only supers but they also had family and loved ones too, just like Bob, and one day they would have just disappeared because chances are they weren’t telling people where they were going because it was "top secret" and against the law. They thought they were doing something good, like helping the people in the island, while also getting to relive their glory days, perhaps even paving the way for superheroes to make a proper comeback… only for Syndrome to kill them in cold blood.

Most of these people can actually be seen at Bob and Helen’s wedding in the beginning of the film - they weren’t just random supers, they were their friends, people they worked alongside and cared about. It’s even worse when you realise that Bob probably blames himself because, after all, Buddy/Syndrome was his biggest fan and he dismissed him by not letting him help.

The relief on Bob’s face when he realises Syndrome doesn’t know where Helen is - meaning he also doesn’t know where their children are because he didn’t realise they were married at this point - is so realistic and gut wrenching to see. The relief contrasting with the anguish of knowing how much danger they and their entire family could have been in the entire time without even knowing...it's so well-done, you can literally feel it.

It’s also worth noting that originally the next target wasn’t Mr Incredible but Frozone - that was who Mirage was trailing, hence why his location is “known”. Imagine if she/Syndrome hadn’t realised that Mr Incredible was with him and they’d lured Frozone in instead as planned; he would have gone to the island to fight the Omnidroid 8 in a volcano setting. We saw how being in the burning building dehydrated Frozone and made it impossible to use his ice powers - presumably it would have been the same in the middle of a lava filled volcano, and he’d have been slaughtered just like the other superheroes before him.

This scene shows an entire generation of superheroes - Bob, Helen and Lucius’ generation - wiped out all because Syndrome felt slighted by his hero as a child, because he internalised that slight and let it drive him to revenge. And, if we take into account the deleted alternate opening scene, it’s mentioned that superheroes "aren't supposed to breed” - meaning there’s a likelihood that Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack are among the very few supers of the next generation. I know that it's deleted and so not really canon, but it's definitely a concept to consider, I think.

Then there's the fact Syndrome named the project "Kronos" - Kronos was a God who overthrew his own father in order to take over his rule, and then he ate his own children to prevent them doing the same thing to him. It feels like it reflects Syndrome once looking up to Mr Incredible and even saying "I could be your ward!", meaning Mr Incredible adopting or fostering him - the project name is a metaphor for Syndrome destroying the Supers, especially Mr Incredible, who he viewed as a father figure. The Omnidroids he built killed two birds with one stone: not only was he able to acquire the data to upgrade the robot to its final design, but it also eliminated the real super heroes and so left him as the last remaining "superhero", even though his powers are man-made, not something he was born with.

Not only did he want to become the only remaining superhero by killing the real ones in revenge, he also planned to sell his inventions at some point so everyone can be super - because "when everyone is super, nobody is". It's like a final blow to the memory of the superheroes he had killed.

I've talked too much about this scene but God... I love it so much more as an adult because it's just so chilling to think about. I'm sure other people can put it much more articulately than I just tried to, but I just really wanted to appreciate this scene.

#the incredibles #pixar #disney #mr incredible #elastigirl #bob parr #helen parr #edna mode #syndrome #buddy pine #kronos #kronos unveiled #cinema

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girlrry · 1 year ago

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#this soundtrack didn’t have to go so hard #Spotify

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wosofutbolfan · 1 month ago

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Remember, Remember

Alexia Putellas x Explorer!R

Sometimes being in a relationship with someone from a different culture can be hard, but so worth it.

3rd part in the Explorer! Verse. Pt 1 and Pt 2 can be found here.

Fluff. 10k.

We're officially in October and the leaves are crunchy so we're here for the Autumnal vibes. Again, this is a complete vanity piece, and may only make sense to those Brits out there but should be readable to everyone. For those who don't know what Bonfire Night is, good ol' wiki can help, here.

People wanted more of the team involved so this is my attempt at that!

I'm trying to get into my short fluff era but here we are 10k words later. Honestly, those people who can write short, snappy pieces, take a bow.

3rd part in the Explorer! Verse. Pt 1 and Pt 2 can be found here. Again, all can be read alone but are better together.

For those interested, this is the song playing in my head when I wrote this. Did I mention my dreadful taste in music? James Blunt is king.

You threw another log on the fire and with a sigh, moved back and settled more deeply into the rattan furniture you were sitting on. You lay your head back and take in the stars scattered on a blanket of darkness above you, smoke plume rising gently and disappearing into the inky abyss.

With the crackle of the fire being the only soundtrack to your evening, you noted the changing of the season in the crunching of the leaves on the patio, and the lack of cicadas chirping which had become the soundtrack to your new life in Barna.

It had been a few months since your accident.

You called it an accident.

Alexia called it an inevitability.

She hadn’t quite shook off her anger whenever reminded of what happened. She would turn quiet and mutter in fast-catalan to herself, something you learnt she would only do if she was really annoyed and didn’t want you to understand her; “neu estúpida, que fins i tot necessita veure tanta neu de totes maneres”.

But you had learnt the best thing to do in these situations would be to bundle her into your chest and give her your previously injured hand which she seemed to find comfort in massaging, as though reminding herself that there was blood running through the veins.

You’d apologise, and you’d thank her over and over again.

You knew she was never angry, she was scared.

But, you’d both worked through her fear and your trauma, you’d mended physically and mentally. Both going to therapy, surprisingly, after Alexia has insisted on it.

The usually stern captain was a massive advocate of the counseling, finding it helped her during her injuries and time away from the pitch.

You needed more convincing, talking to strangers about feelings did not come naturally to your keep calm and carry on attitude.

You were much more inclined to put on Paddington 2, lay on Alexia's lap whilst she played with your hair and pretended that she didn't know you were crying.

But after one-too-many nights waking up with a start after feeling trapped by your blankets, or on one bad occasion, shoving your girlfriend out of bed when her arm slung across your stomach had felt like a vice suffocating you, you had agreed.

For her.

You’d do anything for her.

You knew Alexia was relieved, with the shadows disappearing from your eyes. She told you that you had your spark back.

You think she was just happy she didn’t have to keep being the small spoon.

She did miss Paddington 2 though. She loved that damn bear.

You both found your rhythm. And you settled into domesticity that you never expected to adore so much until you met the blonde and you know… almost died.

Alexia looked at you every day like she couldn’t believe you were standing in her kitchen, or settled onto her couch when she returned from training.

It melted your heart every time that look was directed your way, and it tugged on your heart strings when you imagined her coming home to an empty house when you were on an expedition, worried about if you were dead or alive.

You swore to yourself that you would never let that image become a reality again.

But.

You had itchy feet. Naturally. You hadn’t changed that fundamentally as a person, and you knew a jobless, housewife in a high-rise city centre apartment you were not.

So, one day, you had sat Alexia down and held her hands in yours, and told her you needed a job.

“You do not need a job mi amor! I look after us, and you stay safe, I like it. me gusta cuidarte.” she’d proudly exclaimed, practically puffing her chest out like a caveman. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes at her.

“Of course I need a job, love. I am not making a life of walking around Barna, watching football games and being a beach bum.”

“I like your beach bum.” she’d retorted, childishly whilst you swatted her wandering hands.

“I know you do bebe…” you’d straddled her lap then and looped your hands around her neck, playing with her baby hairs at the nape of her neck.

You knew she loved that.

That was confirmed as her eyes fluttered closed at your ministrations. “But I want to build a life here and I know what I want to do…”

“Yes Mi Amor, anything you like, I will help you. I have contacts. I will support you in what you chose.” she’d giddily replied, seemingly doing a 180 on your career decisions once she realised it was a part of you cementing a life in Spain.

“Well you know, I’m kinda really good at what I do…” you saw her face drop slightly, though she quickly recovered, “well… what I did… you know. And I still love it, that will never change even after… everything…” you felt her squeeze your waist tighter at that. “but my skills outdoors, survival, foraging, working knots…”

Well.

She couldn’t deny that. - you had accidentally become barca’s unofficial shoelace captain after you’d tied Mapis boots once for her when she’d dislocated her thumb, and they had to be cut off. Suddenly you had a whole teamload of girls queuing up for your services, headed by your girlfriend.

She was the only one who got a kiss on the knee as you finished up though.

Alexia immediately declared it a pre-match requirement.

“Si?” she asked, somewhat desperately.

“So I am thinking. I would like to join the British Army.”

A breath of silence, a beat, maybe not even more than 3 seconds until…

“Si crees que voy a aceptar que te unas al puto ejército, estás literalmente loco!, No, No, Absolutely not.” she was up now, you tossed aside as she started pacing… whilst you were on the couch…

Laughing your arse off.

“Que. What is so funny tu idiota?” she took a pause in her pacing, her stern face directed directly at you, hands raised in despair.

“I’m only joking Ale!” you giggled to yourself, wiping tears from your eyes. “Come get back here you big oaf.” you dragged her back into your embrace.

“You are not funny.” You could have camped on that bottom lip as she pouted.

“I am a little funny.” you'd bantered, showing a measurement of how funny you thought you were with your forefinger and thumb, which she pushed together with a huff.

But you noticed that she didn't let go of your hand.

Softie.

“Ok not funny my love I’m sorry. No, never the army. I do not want danger. Or travel for months at a time. That part of my life is over.”

“sí, lo es” she’d mumbled.

“But, I do still have the contact urge to be outdoors. To share what I know. To show people the world.” you spoke with so much passion that she couldn’t help but nod. It was that same spark that she fell in love with.

“So, I have spoken to Mario…”

A smile appeared on her face. God. She loved that guy. He was a lovable rogue and she loved when he and his tribe of kids would join you at games. Sometimes she’d secretly watch you from the tunnel play with them whilst you all waited for the game to start. It made her heart flutter as they clambered all over you.

“... and he’s up for it too. If we go into business together. Guided tours and expeditions. Like how we met. But permanently. It would be based here, in Spain, and obviously I would be travelling but no more than a week or two at a time, and it would all be very low level and safe. Nothing big…. But if it makes you un…”

You were abruptly stopped in your rambling by her lips on yours.

“You don’t have to ask my permission mi amor. But I support you. It sounds fantastic. Perfecta para ti.”

You knew she’d support you but you still felt like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders.

“... but not. Like… exactly like the trip we met on. No? No falling in love with other women, si?”

You’d burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of your girlfriend at that. “No, my love, never.” you’d muttered into her lips.

As you sit now, in your tree-lined garden on the southern edge of the Montseratt national park, only a short commute from estadi johan cryuff, you couldn’t really imagine a more perfect life.

You’d moved away from the city not long after you’d built your business. Turns out alot of people want a tour that a record-breaking explorer was running, and that's how Christopher Colum-Tours became a massive success.

You were booked for years in advance.

Mostly because you made sure you took so few, but well paying jobs. You thought the name was hilarious, when Alexia didn’t you were sure it was lost in translation.

She assured you it was not.

You’d mentioned it in passing to her that you needed more space to store all of your kit, but you didn’t expect her eyes to light up and to wake up the next day with 20 different house viewings booked.

She was literally buzzing with excitement, dragging you around Spanish villas on the edges of Barcelona, pointing out coving and brickwork. You'd never been fancy, you didn't care.

Until you walked into the last house on the list. And you knew you would build your life there.

It was on the southern edge of the national park, more modest than the others you had seen but views from the master balcony were endless and beautiful. It was surrounded by forest and its garden wasn’t as sculpted as you’d gotten used to in these multi million villas.

It was a wild garden with a natural-styled pool and a built-in fire pit.

It blended into the landscape it was built within.

Alexia has found you on the balcony, giddy about beams and authentic features, and all it had taken was one look in her eyes before she was squealing with glee “It's this one isn’t it amor!”.

Alexia had tried to pay outright cash. But you had refused. You both went on the mortgage and you loved that, that piece of paper connected you.

When you tried to explain that to her she’d lovingly rolled her eyes, “only you would see the good side to tens of hundreds of euros worth of debt and interest, Mi Amor.”

But you knew that meant she agreed. And she loved you.

So no, you couldn’t really understand the melancholy that was settling over you at the moment.

You’d just returned from a trip to England for your brother's birthday. Even though you now lived in Spain you’d been able to go to more family events than ever before, with your lack of travelling the world.

You made the journey across every few weeks, usually when Alexia was away with a game or the national team. And you’d loved being more dependable to your family, with your nieces and nephews, being a part of their growing up.

Maybe that's why you are a bit sad now. It's November 3rd. The Spanish air was crisp but you couldn’t see your breath in the air like you could in England. The smell was all forest and fresh air. The days are still bright. There wasn’t a lingering fog in the evenings, or the smell of burning sulphur with the symphony of rogue fireworks being set off until the early hours.

Because this week was your favourite week growing up.

Mischief week, the firemen who visited your school had called it.

The week between Halloween and Bonfire night when kids lost their minds, hyped up on sweets and adrenaline. Bonfire displays all around your village and fireworks bursting the sky into life. You’d go to the cricket club display every year, warmed by the bonfire and cider. You’d eat toffee apples and hotpot. You’d spend the rest of the week sitting in your living room with the lights off watching the sky light up.

Usually you didn’t even notice what you were missing out on. But you had a home now. And you felt a little sad to be missing out on the festivities that your family group chat was organising.

But Alexia had just returned from National Camp. And she was always a bit down when she returned. Even if she pretended not to be. So you wouldn’t have delayed your return to Spain for all of the world.

You’d picked her up from the airport in your battered truck that she pretended she hated, spent a cosy evening together sharing food and soft kisses.

She’d gone to wash the plane off her whilst you wandered to your favourite part of the house and built a fire.

You tried to not drown in your own melancholy as you stared skywards. You heard the sliding of the patio door and you didn’t need to open your eyes to imagine your girlfriend making her way out to you. Cup of tea in one hand and ginger tea in the other. Scuttling barefoot with a blanket draped over her head adorably, muttering about you insisting on being outside.

And when you felt a warm mug pressed into your hands you knew your image had been correct, you couldn’t hide your shy smile as you felt a kiss being dropped to your neck as she settled on the other side of the garden furniture, legs draped into your lap. You enjoyed the warmth of her legs as you continued to look skyward.

You didn’t realise how much time had passed until you felt Alexia sit up next to you and stroke your hair behind your ear.

“¿Qué pasa mi amor?” she’d whispered into the silence of the evening. You turned your head towards her, “Nothing, love, sorry I was just in my own world for a second there.” you smiled at her, reassuringly.

“en tu propio mundo…” she muttered to herself, struggling for a moment with the translation. “Ah, well. I thought so, usually I don't need to even think it before you’re massaging my knee, I was practically kicking you there carino and nothing.” she’d laughed lightly, as you flicked her playfully on the nose, whilst still moving your spare hand under the blanket and digging into the flesh of her calf, glad she’d asked for what she wanted.

“Let me in ti mundo, mi amor. What's on your mind.” she asked, lovingly, whilst laying back down, suppressing a groan as your hands manipulated the tissue around her knee cap, digging into the tightness that you found there with practised ease.

“Nada, soy buena.” you’d replied, purposefully timing your reply with a particularly satisfying knead just under her kneecap, making the beautiful blonde groan loudly, “Shhh, Ale. You don’t want to give the neighbours a show.”

She lightly kicked out at you at your teasing comment, rolling her eyes, “We don’t have any neighbours idiota, unless you count that molesta goat that you insist on feeding when he turns up in the garden.”

“His name is Billy and he’s my friend. You keep Billy out of this.” you allow a beat of silence, “And he’s not a goat he’s a mountain goat, he’s manly, don’t upset him…” you raise your voice “Billy if you’re listening ignore her she’s being mean!... Hey! Ale stop kicking me! I am not a ball.”

“You're trying to distract me.” she says, plainly. “What are you thinking?”, the way her eyes look at you with so much love stops any lie that was on the tip of your tongue.

“It’s silly…” another huff from the side of you, “I’m just missing home a little but thats all.” you admit, and her face drops. “No, not home, sorry, England. Home is here with you. Obviously.” you panic, you don’t want to upset her, Alexia is home.

You don’t know what's come over you but you can’t stop speaking,

“It’s just this time of year, it's my favourite time of year that's all. I never missed it when I was away, I didn’t have time to. But now I feel so at home here. With you. That it just feels a bit weird to not be doing what I did growing up and if we had kid…” you stop yourself, eyes widening.

Her smile is breathtaking. Her eyes light up and it's all teeth. But she gives you an out.

“And what would you usually be doing at this time of year, mi amor?” she asks,

“You know… Remember, Remember, the 5th of November…” you trail off, speaking in that rhythmic way British school kids are taught. Her blank expression makes you continue “...gunpowder, treason and plot. No? Really? I’m sure I was taught he was Spanish.”

“Amor, you are speaking in riddles. Help me here.” she asks, with a laugh teasing her lips.

“It's Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes Night, Fireworks Night… whatever you call it.”

“I think Amor, we call it a Thursday Night.”

“Oh. Yeah, no of course. Sorry.”

“Why are you apologising to me? Tell me about it. Tell me what you’d be doing.” she asks, so genuinely that it cracks your heart wide open.

So you do, you tell her.

You tell her all about what you were taught in school. About Guido and his gang of conspirators, about parliament, about gunpowder and about the plan to blow up the King. You tell her about hanging, drawing and quartering, laughing at her squeamishness. You feel yourself getting giddy as you wrack the corners of your brain trying to remember all of the story you were brought up on.

You tell her about penny for a guy, about kids sitting outside shops with their effigies for pennies, you tell her about your dad setting off fireworks in your street, almost blowing himself up, and then your mum insisting you go only to the official bonfire at the cricket club from that year onwards and watch the effigy being burnt on the enormous fire.

Alexia listened with rapt attention, and as you stopped for breath she spoke; “esperar, esperar, so let me get this correcta. Some guy 500 years ago tried to blow up cortes generales, so they graphically and publicly murdered him… and you celebrate that, as a country every year, by… kids begging and burning him on a fire you all go stand around?... In November?”

“Si.” you reply, with a smile and a nod, eyes moving back skywards.

“Estás todo loco” she laughs.

And you suppose it is. A bit mad, when you think about it really. But you were feeling a bit sensitive and a bit… mocked?

You felt like how you feel when someone would name-call your brother on the playground. You can do that. He’s your brother. But someone else can’t. Because that's your brother.

Alexia can’t mock your traditions. They’re yours. God knows you’d bit your lip throughout all of hers. I mean. If you could get through the explanation of a literal model of a pooping Alexia on your Nativity last year you felt like maybe she would get this. You even graciously accepted your own Canager from Eli with a smile.

You took a moment, a deep breath, you knew you were being sensitive, out of character.

You knew usually you’d join in with her laughter, maybe tickle her and have a fake argument about it just as an excuse to make up. But you weren’t really feeling it today.

“Well, let’s agree to disagree, yeah?” you turned and smiled, you moved her trouser leg back down under the blanket, gave her knee a pat and moved her legs off you to stand. Whilst she looked up at you in bewilderment, with wide, curious eyes.

“I’m gonna get to bed love, I’m really tired all of a sudden, going to get my head down before I wake myself up again, you okay sorting the fire and locking up?”

She nodded, lost for words for a moment, practically having whiplash at the mood swing. You didn’t let Alexia lock up, or sort the fire. They’re your jobs. Always have been. Keeping you both safe. So she knew you were upset.

“Amo…” she started but she heard the patio door slide closed and moved to throw some sand onto the fire. She noticed your mug of tea on the arm of the sofa where you’d been sitting.

And when she saw that it was still half full she knew.

She’d fucked up.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“....and then she said, estemos de acuerdo en no estar de acuerdo, and went to bed! And Mapi. She left her tea!” Alexia explained, desperately to her best friend, the next morning at training.

“...It’s only tea Ale.” Mapi tried to reassure her, “It means nothing amiga I am sure.”

“No, you don’t understand. And she was asleep when I went to bed and it wasn't even 10 minutes later. And then this morning, she was still asleep. She’s never still asleep. You know her Maps, she's up with the sun and…” the midfielder lowered her voice further,

“she always makes me a coffee with the cute foam heart and she didn’t but maybe she’s just tired, I thought, but then I looked and I saw she must have been up that morning because there was food out in the garden for that stupid goat… so was she pretending to be asleep to not speak with me?”

Alexia's voice got more and more panicked as she rambled on.

Mapis' heart melted for her friend, the panic in her face reminded her of the Ale who used to pace the changing rooms with her phone cemented to her hand waiting for word from you. Of the Alexia who missed games because she made herself sick with worry that you were dead somewhere. She hadn’t seen this Ale for a while. She needed to help.

“Keira! Come here!” Mapi shouted over to the red haired midfielder.

“Mapi! Shh. Don’t! What are you doing!” Alexia hissed,

“I think this is a British problem, Ale, we need an expert.”

“Well, why shout across the room? Lucy is standing right there.” Alexia pointed to the defender who was currently pretending her shin pads were lightsabers.

“Lucy thinks she’s Spanish.”

Alexia hummed.

Fair point.

“What's up guys? Skip? Why do you have that face on?”

“Say the thing Capi. You know… the spell thing.” Mapi painfully nudged her captain in the ribs… “Que?... Oh…. Remember Remember the 5th of November....”

“Gunpowder, treason and plot, I see no reason, why gunpowder treason, should ever be forgot. Yeah? Why are we doing nursery rhymes” Keria recited, without a pause. Looking at them both, curiously.

“See it is a thing!” Alexia exclaimed, hitting Mapi over the head, “tell her what happened Capi.” Mapi asked, as Keira settled between the two.

As her story came to a close Alexia began to finish up… “and then she said we should ‘agree to disagree’” at this Keria winced but gestured for her skipper to carry on “...and then she went to bed but didn’t finish her tea.” Keira audibly groaned at that, moving to grab the taller girl's shoulder.

“Sorry Skip, In British ‘agree to disagree’ means, ‘I’m really upset but I don’t want to talk about it’ and well… I think it's a crime to leave a cup of tea. She must have really wanted to get out of there.”

“But why! I don’t know what I did!” the blonde groans into her hands.

“We’ll figure it out, amiga” Mapi reassured her, rubbing her back sympathetically.

“Erm…” Keria looked up, unsure.

“What?” Alexia's head shot up, looking at her teammate.

“I don’t want to talk out of turn Skip.. but…”

“No, go on, help me, please. What did I do?” Alexia asks, desperately.

“You can be... Well... You can all be… a bit. Catalan?”

“Que?!” the captain exclaimed, “What does that mean? I am Catalan!”

“No, No I know. And it's not a bad thing. But. You know, there's a lot. A lot to remember, Saint Jordi, all the pan con tomate…the loud dinners, the touching, the human towers… the fire-devil thing. And it's great! I love it! I respect it, And I know she does too but…”

“But…?” Mapi and Alexia ask together, looking everything like school children at a lesson, pencils poised.

“But. And I am just guessing here…”

“Speak Keira or I will make you run laps.” the captain threatens.

“Maybe, you could… you know… try a bit… and I mean… a little bit. With some English things?” she finishes her sentence as a question, nervous to criticise her well-respected captain in any way.

“What do you mean! I do! I respect her! And all her things!”

“I know it's not on purpose Ale. But how would you feel if she said Sainte Jordi was silly.”

“It’s not silly! It's special, Mi Papi used to get me and Alba a rose every year and I still remember it now. I love doing it every year. It makes me feel… oh.”

“Yeah. And you know, me and Lucy come round for Sunday roast every month and you always go out.” she’d started now so she supposed, in-for a penny in for a pound, “and when she put an orange in your stocking at Christmas you laughed and told her it was a bad football and kicked it at her.”

Alexia looks at her teammate, cluelessly, whilst Mapi sniggers behind her hand,

“Alexia, It’s an English thing. Oranges don’t grow in England. They used to be a luxury so people would give them at Christmas to people they love. Like a sign of sharing?...and on pancake day you told her it went against your diet plan…”

“Didn't she literally fell a tree last year to make you your own Caga Tio? She asked me where Onas was from, I said Amazon and I'm fairly sure she thought I meant the rainforest…” Lucy joined in on the salt being rubbed into the enormous wound party that Alexia didn't even know she was hosting.

“Okay, Okay, I get it.” The captain said. Raising her hand. She felt terrible. She did go out on what she’d dubbed ‘English-Night’ when Keira, Lucy and sometimes Ona would invade her kitchen and cook weird food and watch English TV shows.

But she thought you'd want to enjoy your evening in English without her. And the pancake thing… well. It did go against her diet plan.

You never said it was a tradition.

She would have made an exception.

She'd do anything for you.

You happily went along with all of her things, she had never even told you about Caga Tio, you'd found out on your own and done such an incredibly sweet thing that Alexia had cried and slept with it next to her side of the bed for a week.

Not that she'd tell her teammates that.

She hadn’t realised you’d been trying to share your traditions with her and she’d been closing it down.

“Why didn’t she say anything?” Alexia asks helplessly,

“Because she loves you, and she doesn’t care as long as you’re happy I suppose… and also… because she’s English.”

This made her roll her eyes in frustration.

She felt ignorant.

She would fix this.

“Mapi, I need your help.”

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You’d managed to shake off your little moodswing by the early afternoon.

You’d spent the morning answering a few work emails and planning a few new routes. As you set off for your run you felt noticeably brighter, calculating that if you did a bit of a longer run than usual then Alexia should be back home when you returned.

Sometimes you did that on purpose, and went on a longer run so she would be home when you got back. Like when you go to the toilet in a restaurant and you're excited when your meal is at the table when you return.

A little treat for yourself.

God you had it bad.

You really wanted to spend time with your girlfriend, you felt a little bad about your moodiness and you wanted to make it up to her.

So when you got home from your trail run to a driveway with just your truck in it you tried to keep the sadness down. Training must have gone on this afternoon, sometimes that happened.

By the time early evening rolled around, you got a bit concerned, just as you picked up your phone it vibrates in your hand.

sorry Mi Amor, training turned into watching film, I will eat with Mapi at the canteen, see you soon, love you, miss you xx

You let out a little huff of annoyance to yourself. It's not Alexia's fault that you wasted your time together yesterday being moody. It's not her fault she's stuck at work.

At least her version of being stuck at work isn't being trapped under a mountain of snow and slowly dying.

Your little internal monologue of darkness makes you chuckle to yourself but your attention is grabbed by a knock on the front door.

“Hola Chica!!!”

You suddenly have a facefull of hair and are pulled into the bosom of a very loud and excitable Alba Putellas.

“Hi Alba! What are you doing here?” you ask, trying to not be rude but also wondering what has dragged the famously city-slicking younger Putellas out into the sticks.

“Que? Can a girl not come and spend the evening with their future cuñada? What's with the million questions hermana!” she blusters past you and into the entryway, leaving you standing with your mouth hanging open at the door as she settles into your sofa.

“... I asked one question” you mumbled to no one as you closed the door with the tornado now inside your home.

You explained that Ale was stuck at work, but Alba dismissed your apologies with a flick of her hand. “I'm not here for her, I’ve spent too much time with her, I think we should spend the evening together. Hermana to future Hermana.”

“Erm… sure.” You got on well with Alba. You got on well with all of Ales' family. They;d welcomed you as one of their own immediately. Eli had taken a vested interest in “getting you back up to strength” after your accident. That mainly consisted of not letting you leave the dinner table until eating 3 full plates of paella.

Usually though, Alba could be found in the bars of Barna, not in your living room, and you had a feeling that she knew Alexia was stuck at work. Which meant that Ale had sent her to spend the evening with you. And you hadn’t gotten away with your melancholy without her notice yesterday like you hoped you had.

Still, the thought of her sending her sister to keep you company warmed your heart.

Hours later your stomach hurt from laughing so much, and you felt ill with the amount of food you’d consumed. You and Alba had spent the evening watching telenovelas and cackling at the erratic storylines. Alba would insist every character was gay and you would nearly wet yourself with laughter when in 4 episodes she was proven right.

It's late when you hear the door slam in the hallway, you glance up at the clock and see its later than you even imagined.

“Hola cariño!” Alexia yells from the hall, and you can hear her shoes being kicked off and bag being shoved into the hall cupboard.

“Hola, my love!” Alba mocks back, voice high pitched and sounding resolutely nothing like yours.

You shove her by her shoulder as you rise to greet your girlfriend.

“Hola, my love.” you repeat as you greet her, settling into her open arms and nuzzling into her neck dropping a kiss against her warm skin you find there.

You take a deep breath of the taller woman. “Ale… why do you smell like… onions?” you ask, curiously.

“Vale, vale, I am going to bed before the show starts.” Alba interrupts as Alexia separates herself from you in order to reach across and slap her sister's head.

“Oh, Si? Si Alba, of course you can stay over. Thank you for asking.” she shouts sarcastically at her sisters retreating from. Grumbling to herself as she turns back to her.

“Oh behave you big grump you love it when she stays over.” you whisper, falling into her arms again, settling into her warmth. “Long day?”

You feel the tension leave her body now she's home. “Si… we got lots done though,”

“Good. Feel ready for the weekend then?” you ask, she had a game on Saturday and you know she preferred to be over prepared.

“The weekend?”

“Si, the game? Seville?” you ask, with a laugh to your voice. She must be tired.

“Oh, si, sorry, of course. I am tired mi amor. Yes. I feel ready.” she replies, moving to face you more closely, large hand cupping your cheek and dropping a quick kiss to your lips.

She moves away but you aren’t finished. You've had a long day of missing your girlfriend. And you pull her closer and deepen the kiss, moulding your lips to hers and groaning when she accepts your tongue in her mouth. As you break apart for breath you hear her mutter a little ‘wow’, which melts your heart.

Seriously, only your world famous, drop dead gorgeous, professional footballing girlfriend can get so worked up over some heavy petting.

It's her turn to pull your lips back together and you enjoy swapping sweet kisses before you pull apart… “Al…” she's moved down to your neck… “Ale… why do you taste like… pepper?”

“Huh?” you can’t see her face as she continues to press kisses down your neck. “Don’t know what you’re talking about amor.” she seems to have decided she's finished with your neck for now as she takes a step back.

“I better go wash the day off me. Meet you in bed?” she asks, and who are you to refuse as you nod your agreement and start to tidy the living room as she leaves for upstairs.

“Hey?” you look up and she's popped her head back into the living room, “I missed you today.” she says, simply. Cheeky smile on her face.

Alexia was the most intelligent and complex woman you knew. But sometimes her ability to be so simple was the thing that made you fall so deeply in love with her. She missed you, so she told you.

“I missed you too, love.” you reply, softly.

She smiles satisfied, and moves from the doorway again. For 3 seconds until she reappears.

“Don’t go to sleep til I’m there por favor, I want to fall asleep together.” you feel your blush start to creep up your neck and open your mouth to reply before,

“Ay dios mio, perdedora! It's a shower, you aren’t going to drown. How do either of you get anything done!” Alba shouts from the top of the stairs, and your girlfriend's head quickly disappears again, before you hear a scream and the thunder of her scaling the stairs…

“vuelve aquí diablo!”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You drummed your fingers on the steering wheel as you waited for your girlfriend outside of the training buildings. It wasn’t usual but she’d asked you to pick her up that morning.

As you’d passed her her morning coffee (foam art included), she’d taken a moment longer than usual giving you a soft morning kiss and breathing you in before she asked you to keep the afternoon free.

“I want to take you on a date, Mi Amor.” she’d mumbled, cutely, “Alba will take me back into the city, then you can pick me up after your session at the school, dress warm.”

“I haven’t said yes yet!” you’d teased, with a roll of your eyes, “and hey, what they say is true, el romance esta muerto! I am picking you up for a date you asked me on! Tut. Ale. You used to be suave.”

“soy muy suave.” she’d confidently replied. “You’ll see on our date… that you’re picking me up for”.

A cheeky smile and a pat on the bum later she’d chased Alba out of the house, and suddenly you felt like you were watching the vision that Eli had grown old too.

Two bickering Putellas sisters acting like teenagers on their way to the school bus, hitting each other and Alba chasing Alexia down the drive after one kick too many.

So, you’d done as you were told and after your talk with 28 school kids about basic survival skills here you find yourself patiently waiting for your girlfriend.

The door to the training facility opened and you were surprised to see Alexia emerge bundled up in far too many layers and knit hat cutely adorned on her head. She really was adverse to the cold. Usually she’d be the last to leave training, insisting on a team talk or taking extra free kicks, but she searched the car park eagerly and eyes lit up as she took you in in your beat up old blue pickup truck.

The next surprise she gave you was when she didn’t hurry to the passenger seat, instead making her way to your window and, when you didn’t move, knocking on it with a rap of her knuckles. You roll the window down with a quick of your eyebrow.

“Can I help you señora?” you ask, “Si, mover… por favour. I am driving.”

The absurdity of her comment makes you bark out a laugh, but you do as your told,

“Ale, you hate my truck.”

“I have never said that.”

“Yes you have. One million times. ‘Mi Amor, your truck brings our house price down.’...’Amor, your truck is warming the planet. I thought you liked trees.’...”Amor, your truck is so loud that I think a dinosaur is coming up the driveway…” you imitate, crudely but with a gentle laugh.

She just fixes you with a stern eye as she turns the key, a large grinding sound coming from the engine.

“In gear please Ale!”..."Ah, Si.” followed by the successful roar of the engine.

“Remember love, she doesn't have any heated seats, we listen to my Beatles CD cause its stuck in the player, and the gearbox is a little worn so please… be gentle”

“Weird, usually you aren’t asking me to be gentle.” she dryly replies, eyebrow arched and make you blush. She moves her hand to your thigh and you take it in both of yours as she asks about the school you spoke in, she listens with rapt attention and you bask in the way her eyes light up when she tells you about how Jana finally mastered a trick she’d been working on.

You’d gotten so lost in conversation and checking out your hot girlfriend that you’d forgotten to check your destination until you felt the truck come to a halt.

As you looked around you saw you were in a small car park, a familiar style building imposing in front of you.

A stadium.

You can’t help but be a little disappointed, if Ale’s idea of date night had transformed into football games then you may as well start just going to training with her to keep your romantic life alive.

“Oh. Lovely.” you’d hoped you’d infused as much enthusiasm into your tone as you could. Just happy to spend time with the blonde. “Who’s playing?”

“Barca.” she’d replied, getting out of the car and hurrying to your door, all the while holding her hand up as she hurried past the bonnet indicating to you that she wanted to open it.

She’d taken your hand in her large one and started to walk towards the stadium, you looked around and took in a few people milling about, some with unrecognisable kit on.

You don’t know if a temporary deafness had taken over your girlfriend but she ignored you as she pulled you towards the turnstiles. It was a much smaller stadium than your girlfriend usually played at, and it was quick to get into the grounds.

“Ah, gran admirador?” the steward asked, as he pointed at your trusty blaugrana laces, and you just smile and nod, no idea what's going on.

As you looked up you were at pitch level and you saw a familiar sight of… ‘H’ shaped sticks? You almost broke your own neck at the speed at which you spun to look at your girlfriend who was staring at you with a Cheshire cat grin splitting her face.

“We’re here to watch Rugby!” she practically cheers, clearly very happy with herself.

You’d always used it as a weapon to tease your football-obsessed captain-girlfriend with, that you had been brought up on Rugby. Your brother played and you’d spend weekends down at the Rugby Club cheering on at the side lines. Your dad followed the town team religiously and you’d been dragged down to London more than once for cup finals.

As your world got bigger your love for the game diminished but the familiar smell of tiger balm and clack of metal studs always managed to make you feel 9 again down at the local rugby club.

You felt a childlike giddiness erupt from your stomach as you took in your glowing girlfriend. “Ale, this is… this is…” you feel a bit emotional as you struggle to get your words out, your girlfriend saves you.

“Vamos! Let's go find the best place to watch!” Alexia drags you into the small stands which are sparsely occupied.

“I didn’t even know Barcelona had a rugby team…” you say as you take your seat,

“Si, they do. They were promoted in 2006 but have been struggling since… they are currently 4th in the league though and today they’re playing 3rd so it…”

You interrupt your girlfriend by pressing a kiss to her lips, unable to stop your affection as you realise how much she had researched for you. “Te amo.” you mutter into her lips. You open your eyes before her and see her sit with her eyes closed for a moment, smile teasing on her lips, dazed.

“yo también te amo cariño” she replies, opening her eyes, “now come, watch. They're kicking off.”

You thoroughly enjoy yourself for the next 80 minutes. You realise that you have never watched a sports game with Alexia. Usually watching her or if she wasn’t playing she’d be sat on the bench with the team.

She’d usually be too invested and serious to have a fun time. But here, without being impacted by the outcome, nor really having any idea what was going on. Alexia was clearly having the time of her life.

She was giving off serious big dick energy, sitting in her plastic chair like she owned the stadium, legs spread wide and ankles hooked as she took in the pitch before her. Alexia wasn’t into PDA, however, here she pulled you close to her as though you were in your living room, clearly happy that she wouldn’t be bothered by anyone at a sparsely populated Rugby game.

“Amor, comer aqui. Explain this to me… “ she'd gestured to the pitch before her with one hand and pulled you closer with the other, draping both of your legs over one of hers so your legs dangled between hers, and you sat sideways facing her as she rested her arm around your shoulders.

You tried to ignore the feel of her strong thigh muscle underneath yours. Noticeable even though two sets of heavy clothing.

She started to play with the baby hairs at the nape of your neck as you tried to explain a scrum, mauls and drop kicks.

But you found yourself watching her side profile more than the game, her sharp jaw, the curve of her eyebrow. How cute she looked in her little barca beanie, eyes bright with excitement.

She gives your hair a little tug, “Mira el juego bebe…” she mutters, eyes still looking forward but a grin teasing her lips, “...I paid a good €8 for these tickets.”

You laugh and concentrate on the game before you, laughing at Alexia's commentary throughout, ‘you can use your hands! How is it even that hard!’ until a big hit where she would recoil into herself and muttered ‘nevermind’.

She would cheer every time someone kicked the ball and when you got into the game and shouted “Offside ref!!” she hushed you and insisted that it wasn’t, until you explained the offside rule was different and her mind nearly exploded.

It was a close game and you found yourself sucked in.

Becoming more animated until the final play of the game, Barca had possession and you couldn’t help it when you stood up and shouted, “stick it up your jumper… go on… RUN….ooooh!”, you looked down and saw Alexia looking up at you with wide eyes, a teasing glint in them, you grew flushed and sat down tentatively, “Amor, I have never seen you so… aggressive… I like it.” she decided, smirk on her lips.

Barca ended up losing but it didn’t take away any of the shine from the day, as you left the stadium you swung your hands between your bodies with excitement, “Ale, that was the best surprise date ever. Thank you.”

You noticed that a look you didn’t recognise flashed across her face as she opened the door for you, guiding you into the passenger seat with a kiss.

“Can we go to Casa Pepe for some dinner?” you ask, looking out of the window and taking in the darkened sky, “No.” she replied, which caused you to turn, and you saw a wry grin on her face, “date isn’t over yet amor, I have plans on plans. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Alexia then goes onto stall the truck and take off to a stuttering start, and because she was being so sweet you didn’t say anything but looked out of the window to hide your face.

“Shut up.” she chides anyway.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You’re confused as Alexia drives your truck off road and onto a beach just outside the main area of Barcelona. You see fairy lights in front of you and a huddle of cars and people milling around.

“What's going on Ale?” you ask, trying to take in the look on her face in the darkness of the cab of your truck as she reverses into a semi-circle with some other cars.

She doesn’t have a chance to answer before you are startled by a knock on your window and Mapis' face pressed against the glass with glee.

“You’re here! You’re here! Finally… Capi, can we start it now pleaaaase….” Mapi is silenced by her girlfriend who has made her way over and pulled her from the window. “Give them a second kjære, come, I need your help over here…” and Ingrid winks at you as she leads her excitable puppy of a girlfriend away.

You remain not having any clue about what the hell is going on.

Alexia has slipped out of the truck and moved around to your side, opening the door and you spin on the bench, widen your legs, and pull her between them.

She looks at you with a wide, open expression.

“Remember, Remember, the 5th of November…” she starts, which immediately causes the penny to drop, as you look to the scene on the beach before you.

A large unlit bonfire stands a safe distance from the trunk of your car, you continue to look around and see Eli ordering around most of Alexias team mates and even some backroom staff you recognise from the training grounds, as she stands in charge of what seems to be a crudely put together buffet table. Illuminated by fairy lights you see pots of steaming food which she stirs intermittently.

You even spotted Mario with his newly pregnant (again!) wife and his tribe of kids playing with a small football alongside Jana and Marta.

You can’t help the tears that come to your eyes at the scene before you.

“I am so grateful for you Amor…” she starts, “You have fit so well into my family and life that maybe I missed some things about your family and life…”

“No Ale.”

“No it’s okay, I know you love me. But I wanted to do this for you. But then… well. It escalated. I asked Keira and Lucy for help but then they got so excited about bonfire night that they kind of invited themselves, and then one person turned into another… and then, as soon as Mapi found out there were explosives and fire I couldn’t keep her away. And well, Ingrid had to come because she has a vested interest in keeping Mapis fingers attached to her body. And well. At that point it had got so big that I just invited anyone from the club who wanted to come, and their families. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind! This is the sweetest thing in the world… Is that…” you sniff up… “hotpot?!”

Alexia soon became old news as you scurried over to Eli and the food table, kissing her in greeting and falling into her embrace, there were bubbling pots of Chilli, Hotpot, Mushy Peas and even a tray of toffee apples.

Ingrid had come over and presented a tray of parkin that she had baked, beautifully presented in the elegant way that only the Norwegian could. “I hope this is right, I googled it and Mapi taste tested it and she was happy, but honestly, she’s happy if I give her dog food so i’m not sure she's the best judge.”

“Ingrid it’s perfect.” you assured her, the grin breaking your face convincing her more than your words.

“Can we set the fire yet!” Mapi had shouted across the set up, bottle of accelerant in hand that she had been spraying onto the pile of dried wood. A somewhat maniacal look on her face.

One of the physios took the bottle from her hand gently and pushed her towards Ingrid, taking over the situation when he recognised there was a chance the whole beach was going up in flames if she was left in charge.

As the fire grew and grew, everyone's faces were bathed in the golden light. The chill was still in the air and you felt a large puffy jacket being slung around your shoulders. Alexia standing behind you, resting her chin on your head as you settled back into her.

“Ale. Is that Guy wearing a Real Madrid jersey?” you asked, amused, as you noticed that the traditional effigy had a familiar football shirt on.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, amor.” she replied, laughter in her voice. Before you had a chance to tease her further she pinched your hips, “come on, lets get some food! I’m starving, and all this brown British mushy food smells so good…”

Well. At least she was trying.

You ate and ate, you don’t think you’ve ever been as full in your life. Alexia had spent all the evening before perfecting her hotpot recipe with the help of Eli and it was good.

She’d even shown you the burn marks on her fingers where the hot toffee from the toffee apples has caught on her skin.

Eli told you how Alexia had turned up at her house with Mapi, arms full of ingredients needing help to make traditional foods, which she then stressed over for the rest of the evening, whilst Mapi paced the kitchen, talking to her ‘fireworks guy’, because of course Mapi had a man with explosives on speed dial.

You’d told the story of Guy Fawks to an intrigued Irene, Mateo happily munching on a sticky apple on her knee. “Ah, I see… It feels like a cold San Juan. I like it” she’d declared, with an air of finality.

“So… they’re like, guisantes but… pulposa?” you overheard Parti asking Keria, as the ginger was gladly wolfing down a portion of mushy peas. “Yeah! Try them… you’ll love them.”

As a second passes before you hear a distinctive gag and Kerias laughter echoing around you think maybe Patri did not love them. Ona greedily scoffed her own portion down with Lucy looking on, proudly, “Te acostumbras amiga” she jeered towards her retreating friend, who went in search of the drinks table.

The fire dimmed but still fought on and you were shepherded towards your truck by your girlfriend, the hatch had been brought down and you could see that Alexia had stored every spare pillow and blanket from your house and made a cosy nest in the bed of your trunk.

She threw herself in, happy to warm herself in the nestle of blankets, always being more susceptible to the cold. Nose red and beanie pulled low down on her head. She opened her arms invitingly and you settled between her legs, watching the scene before you.

You watched as Alba and her latest girlfriend messed around feeding each other parkin. You watched as Mapi chased Pina around with a sparkler in her hand, the younger girl screaming for her life as Mapi cackled. You watched Eli cooing over Jona’s young baby, looking so confident with the newborn only an experienced mother could. You took in how Lucy seemed to eat her 5th bowl of chilli as Ona chatted her ear off.

The scene was perfect.

Only made more so as you felt Ale move her cold hands beneath your warm clothing, grabbing you around the stomach and resting her hands there, making you hiss at the contact, “buscar mi amor” she whispered into your ear, as you looked to the sky and watched as the familiar explosion of fireworks in the sky above you.

The whoops and hollers of the kids (and Mapi) warmed your heart, as you watched the display you let the the sound of the explosions and the ‘ooh’s’ and ‘ahh’s’ of the families and friends around you seep into your bones. The smell of sulphur invaded your senses and you settled more deeply into the woman behind you.

You quickly snapped a picture to share in your family group chat, quickly joining the tens of fireworks pictures from different displays as you all shared your evening, far away yet able to be involved, thanks to your Ale.

“Tell me about Bonfire Night, Mi Amor, I promise, I do not think it is silly.”

That much was obvious, with the effort she had gone to in such a short space of time.

You told her about the big fires the village came together to build. How it made your community stronger. The fireworks and how the sky lit up all week. The school projects and crude drawings of fires you would make. The toffee apples you would get stuck in your teeth and the parkin your mum would bake.

How the stickiness would sit on your hands for days. How your dad would always throw an unexploded firework into the bonfire without thinking, making him run away from the explosions behind him as you and your brother peeled over with laughter. How the cold would pinch your cheeks and you’d check the bonfire for hedgehogs before it was lit. How you’d spend days building a guy from your dads old clothes stuffed with newspaper. How you would run around with sparklers and spend all the next day picking them up from the streets with your brother and putting them into a bucket.

“It sounds fun, Mi Amor. I am glad you grew up with so much love. I get to benefit from it now.” Alexia had muttered into your hair, and pressed a kiss to your head.

You felt those memories wash over you, and knew that this bonfire night would be right up there with them, cemented as the best times of your life.

Yes, you weren't used to the sound of the waves as you usually watched the bonfire burn, and no, you usually weren’t stood on a bed of sand. No, your usual bonfire night would not consist of Alexia telling off Jana and Patri for sneaking in croquetas behind one of the parked cars, insisting they had to eat the British food prepared.

But the smiles were the same, people coming together around the fire was the same, the children laughing and family enjoying time together was the same, couples falling further in love and cuddling together for warmth was the same, the colours and the sparkles that lit up everyone's faces. The same.

“Thank you Alexia. For all of this. The rugby, this, it’s…It's… perfect.”

“You are perfect.” she’d replied, without hesitation.

You swatted her hand that still rested on your stomach, “Soppy.” you’d admonished.

“Not sorry,” she’d quipped back. You fell into a comfortable silence, enjoying the sound of the fireworks popping above you.

“Our kids will celebrate bonfire night.” she’d let out, suddenly, with certainty. Finishing the thought you’d started to express days earlier.

Before you had a chance to formulate a thought she continued, “and pancake day. And they will watch Rugby. And football. And celebrate La Mercè. They will know about Sant Jordi. And Saint George.”

“Ale…” you’d let out, wetly, tears brimming in your eyes.

“They will be a mix of both of us. And I will marry you, you know? One day. We will be married.”

There she is again, with her beautiful simplicity.

You don’t really know what to say to that, and you let the silence take hold for a moment.

Where was the woman who blushed in embarrassment when she realised you’d understood her muttered Spanish compliments? Though, you suppose, you’d both changed together. Where was the woman you used to be who would refuse to stay in a postcode for more than 2 weeks?

“ain’t no mountain high enough” you softly sang at her, trailing your fingers down her arm, lightly, it had become your song, between the two of you, when things were bad with your PTSD she would hold you close and sing quietly, in the safety of your bed, her spanish lilt would settle your heart rate and the lyrics would melt the ice in your veins.

Her arms squeeze you tighter, both lost in the safety of your blanket fortress under the stars, surrounded by friends and family but you may as well be the only people on the beach.

“I can’t wait to ask you, officially.”

God if this setup was her idea of a date, you couldn’t imagine her idea of a proposal.

“I can’t wait to say yes” you replied, playing with her ring finger that was settled on your stomach, “officially.”

You moved back and kissed the tall blonde softly, passionately, until you’re interrupted by Mapi’s aggrieved exclamation;

“Espera! The Guy was ¿Español?”

#alexia putellas x reader #woso x reader #woso community #alexia putellas #woso imagine #alexia putellas imagine

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chocosvt · 4 months ago

Text

HER | part one.

✧✎ synopsis: wonwoo, a heartbroken and burnt out writer nearing the end of his math degree, wants nothing to do with the seemingly perfect, intimidating girl who has everyone under her thumb. you. unfortunately, his literary talent has got him shoved him between a rock and a hard place when you want to write a book and require his expertise. you two are the furthest from compatible. wonwoo can’t see this going well. at all.

pairing: wonwoo x fem!reader word count: 23.5k genres/tropes: writer!wonwoo, university!au, plug!vernon + boyfriend!mingyu as prominent side characters, SLOWBURN (i am not fucking around this is my slowest burn yet), relationship drama, soul searching, strong angst/hurt (i’m coming for the jugular), comfort, romance, smut, a smoothie of every emotion on earth.

(!) warnings: drug use (weed, coke, ecstasy), wonwoo has anxiety + anxiety attacks + fairly dark thoughts, prescribed medication, gambling, intense language, infidelity, throwing up.

✧✎ a/n: just some quick things i want to make apparent!

the fic is told from wonwoo’s pov, not the reader’s!

all major timeline events are organized through chronological dates

potentially triggering scenes within the fic are NOT MARKED in advance

the content is already quite mature, so pls heed the warnings!

bolded and italicized text implies characters are conversing in korean, tho it doesn’t happen often!

the fic in its entirety is 140k, so it has been split into 6 parts

everyone's patience and understanding has been endlessly appreciated! you have no idea ;_; i give you all shining stars 🌟

⇢ part two | part three | part four | part five | part six ⇢ soundtrack for those curious! ⇢ read at ur own pace! :)

—MARCH 19TH.

“I have a relatively big favour to ask of you.”

No. Wonwoo didn’t want anything to do with favours.

The fact that Seokmin had actively picked out his presence in the coffee shop like he was some shiny contortion of plastic had actually offended Wonwoo. He came here for two things: to not be bothered, which his friend knew, and to work on the book he was halfway through typing and had been halfway through typing for the past six months. Call it writer’s block, or an inspiration drought, or an absolutely depressing lack of drive—it had been hanging over the writer with an annoying persistence and it seemed that no number of lemony scones or cold coffees were going to make it vanish.

“Uh, Wonwoo?”

“Sorry… what?” He forced his gaze to shift from the blank page on his laptop to Seokmin’s apologetic, softly expressional face, slightly flushed from his time outdoors in the chilled March weather.

“I was just wondering if you’d be up for a favour—a pretty big one—and I know this is your special creativity spot, but she’s been like, breathing down my neck about it and I can’t put it off again.”

“Whose been breathing down your neck?”

At first, Seokmin didn’t say a word, or even make a sound. His lips twitched for a moment, but then he pressed them together and his chest visibly sucked in with a breath. God, Wonwoo hated the suspense and he hated Seokmin for interrupting him when he had been so stupidly close to putting a sentence down that he probably would have back-spaced in frustration a minute later.

“Y’know…” he trailed off, “Her.”

Her.

No, not her, you.

But most people—if not everyone—referred to you by an alias that had seemed to stick so well the majority believed it actually was your name. When people said her they meant Her, and so in a confusing mess of finger-pointing they really meant you. Come to think of it, Wonwoo had no idea where the nickname even came from or who gave it to you or what it even meant.

And he was perfectly fine with never knowing.

“What?” Wonwoo deadpanned. “What on earth could she want to do with me? She doesn’t even know me.” He slid down in his chair, fingers pulling at his circle-lensed glasses so they tilted uncomfortably across his nose bridge. “Or, is this a joke?”

“Oh—no! Absolutely not!” His friend was insistent on proclaiming, vigorously shaking his head. “I’m being serious.”

“Why don’t I believe you then?”

“Okay, well, if you let me explain everything, it’ll all make sense. I said I know someone who writes really well—”

“Meaning me?”

“Yes, meaning you. And the only reason that was even brought up is because she wants to write a book.”

Wonwoo couldn’t help it. He laughed a very short disbelieving laugh that flashed a transient smile to his face as he readjusted his crooked glasses. You were the last person he would ever envision wanting to write a book. He then navigated the trackpad on his laptop, deciding to close the document simply titled, 01, that harboured the fleet of pages to his own current work in progress.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo disregarded, “sounds like bullshit.”

“I’m telling you the truth!” Seokmin exclaimed, gripping onto the metal back of the café chair like he was squeezing someone’s taunt shoulders. “She won’t tell me about what, okay? Just that she’s been thinking the idea for a while now. It’s not like I didn’t try to get details. But she refused—said the only person who can know is whoever’s going to help her. Look, y’have to understand, she was pestering me about it nonstop. And you’re my only writer friend!”

“Well, you’re about to have none.” He answered, reaching for his coffee cup but stopping it just short of his lips. “How serious is she about this, anyway?” Wonwoo sighed. “Do you know how much fucking time you need to dedicate to writing a book?”

He stomached a slow, somewhat grimacing sip as he tasted the coffee’s coldness, meanwhile Seokmin swallowed heavily, and at last pulled out the chair he’d been white-knuckling to take a seat.

“Yes, I’m aware it takes time. I know that. And she is serious or else I wouldn’t be here, bothering you. She takes everything seriously.” The boy began unbuttoning his sleek black jacket. “Really, who knows what’ll happen? Maybe you’ll meet her once and she’ll decide she can’t stand you, and then you’re off the hook for life.”

“Yeah, well have you ever considered what might happen if I can’t stand her? Are my feelings even being considered? Minutely?”

“Minutely, they are being considered.”

“Liar.”

It wasn’t that Wonwoo disliked you.

In actuality, you scared him more than anything. But to be associated with you was to be drawn into your life and caught like a firefly in a glass jelly jar. The proof was right in front of him—to Wonwoo’s eyes, Seokmin was basically your little mailman that scrambled around in hectic nature to do your bidding, because most tasks apparently weren’t worth the time or effort.

“I can’t believe you’re trying to rope me into this. You know I can hardly write my own shit, right?” Wonwoo said bitterly, wishing it was the opposite, “my mind is a desolate, blank canvas of fuck-all and if she thinks I’m writing it then she needs a reality check.”

“No, no—of course you won’t write it!” Seokmin reassured him with his big, opalescent smile. “Really, you’re just giving tips, maybe guiding her process, helping with the planning… you know, this could be facilitated so much easier if you spoke to Her yourself!”

“So, my nightmare?” Wonwoo huffed, shaking his leg.

In an instant, Seokmin had whipped out his phone, tapping around the screen quickly using his thin pointer finger.

“I’m just going to pull up her schedule. It’s always pretty packed, but more into the summer break, it thins out a little. “

Wonwoo exhaled, staring off into the warm, afternoon sunlight that hailed in through the windows, striking all the shimmering flecks and pieces of dust afloat in the café air. When he breathed in again, he could smell the luxurious coffees brewing in their rich and distinctive notes. It was such a beautiful day—still chilly as the snow outdoors began to thaw—but pleasant nonetheless.

“This is such a fucking waste.”

And Wonwoo spent it being miserable.

“No, it’ll be useful. Trust.” Seokmin chirped.

“You’re trying to dip me in your optimism gloss again.”

His friend smiled affectionately, tilting his head.

“This will be good. You’ve been a hermit since I’ve known you.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo scoffed, “so you think it’s a good idea to shove me with the person I relate to least on the entire planet?”

“Really? The least? So, what you’re saying is, you relate more to serial killers? Or animal abusers? Or like, literal fasc—”

“Stop.”

“You want to do this. I can see it in your eyes. I’ll set you up.”

A part of Wonwoo knew there might be no wriggling out of the situation, especially with Seokmin sitting across from him, characteristically eager and brightly pushy as always, like a goddamn salesman. For now, it could be easier to let himself get cuffed.

“Can I at least have some time to think it over?”

“Uh… well… the thing is… the thing with that is—”

“You’ve cornered me?”

“I wouldn’t word it like that.”

“… Okay.” Wonwoo removed his glasses, shoved his knuckles tender but deep into his eye sockets, massaging through flashes of white as he came to accept a fate he didn’t know even existed in his astrology. “Just, I don’t know—fuck—schedule me in wherever.”

“Ha! It doesn’t exactly work like that.”

“I really don’t give a damn how it works, Seokmin.”

“Right,” his friend laughed nervously, “I promise that I’ll get back to you pronto. Sorry for the disturbance. And, uh, good luck.”

“With what part?” Wonwoo grumbled, fixing his spectacles back on to clarify Seokmin’s sympathetic face, the light bouncing off his head of brassy hair like a disco ball. “My incapability to write a goddamn thing or the fact I have to help your perfectionist friend who’s probably going to chew me up and spit me out?”

“Both parts.” Seokmin grinned. “It can only go up from here.”

Wonwoo had one very distinct memory of you: creative writing with Mr. T. It had been an elective class he took amongst all his compulsory maths, and at the time it was a much appreciated break when Wonwoo grew apathetically bored from looking at matrices and confidence intervals and equations that engulfed the length of his notebook. Professor T was late one day in the fall.

And that’s when Wonwoo remembered you walking in.

There was a sort of sharpness about your presence that pulled everyone’s spines straight. People tended to angle themselves away from you, though they did it subtly, feigning an adjustment in their seat or a plunge into their bookbag for something that wasn’t even there. Wonwoo lacked the words to describe you. To be honest, he most likely could if he put that infinitely expanding lexicon of his to work, but even then, he feared that everything would fall flat.

Some scruffy looking guy had made the mistake of sitting in your seat—someone who probably skipped most lectures and only happened to find himself near Gildan Hall purely by chance.

It was the seat squat in the middle of the small auditorium.

He remembered the hand propped on your hip as you sashayed up to him—you always sashayed places. Wonwoo found it funny, like there were paparazzi stuffed behind potted plants and vending machines waiting to spring out with their blinding flares, just to capture you picking up a half-empty bag of flavourless popcorn.

“Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no.”

“Hm?”

“Excuse me? Yes, hello. You—can you get up please?”

“Up...? Why?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m sorry… what’s this about?”

“Are you a first-year or something? Never bothered going to class until now? All the moshing and beer pong and ending up in some random basement of a friend of a friend of a friend is done so you’re deciding to actually get your money’s worth? Well, let me tell you this—I’ve been showing up to class punctually, and this is my seat. I always sit here. It’s my unofficially-assigned-assigned seat, which seems to be a known fact to everyone in this room except for you. Everyone has one. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to sit in other people’s seats. I don't care who you are. You could be my own mother. You could be my best friend, even. President of the universe. That doesn't make it okay, 'cause it’s a respect thing. It's one of those assumed societal rules and you just fucking kicked dirt all over it.”

Whoever he was, he never came back to another lecture.

Since then, Wonwoo had dually made it his mission to never cross paths with you, look at you, or even so much as huff one single carbon-dioxide filled breath in your general direction, just in case that was some degree of unbeknownst personal law he might violate.

Seokmin had royally screwed it up for him.

What could you possibly want to write a book about, anyway?

—MARCH 26TH.

Wonwoo didn’t know how he was expected to find you in this gigantic mall. As he brushed through the streamlines of people, bumping their shoulders and mumbling the driest, most insincere apologies, he couldn’t stop looking at his phone. Seokmin had given him your number with the instruction that he could find you, here, on a busy Saturday afternoon. So far, Wonwoo had sent you four texts, none prompting a response or the grey-dotted bubble, even. Fuck, why did he agree to this? He couldn’t stop thinking it.

Why did he agree to help you, whom he was beginning to not even like, or want to be aquatinted with, write a book, when he’d been struggling to fill the same page of his own story for months?

Squeezing the phone tighter in his fingers, Wonwoo’s broad shoulder then smacked into someone else while he was busy steeping in his misfortune. It earned him a wildly disgusted look.

“Maybe watch where you’re going," the stranger grumbled, some man with an engrained scowl and big, bewildered eyes.

But Wonwoo ignored him.

He didn’t fucking care, and he was sick of wandering through this mall. It made him feel overstimulated, like his clothes were sticking to his skin differently, like the back of his head was swelling, and like all the smells in his nose were somehow making him warmer.

The stranger just stared at Wonwoo as he walked away.

Ding!

A text, but not from you—Seokmin, instead. Apparently, you were in some clothing store on the second floor. Wonwoo stepped onto the escalator, pressing himself into the barrier to make room for the especially speedy people who couldn’t simply stand and wait. He felt a random touch on the back of his head. Scrunching up the glasses on his nose and turning around, Wonwoo stared at the downward escalator, locking eyes with a pretty dark-haired girl he’d never seen before. She wiggled her fingers at him with a flirtatious smile, the scent of her perfume still lingering. Fresh roses, he thought.

He blinked at her once, twice, then turned back around.

Never in a million years.

It was funny, though.

Once Wonwoo stopped outside the clothing store you were supposedly inside, he felt the myriad of distractions and scents and noises dampen behind him. The irritability he couldn’t shake was slowly transforming into nerves. He’d never met you before, unless half-glances controlled by fear from across the small, basement auditorium that hosted creative writing counted.

Focusing on one breath, and then another, followed by a deep, self-soothing inhale, Wonwoo attempted to convince himself that he was in control, not the emotions quivering at his fingertips.

He cracked his neck and walked in.

After a minute or two of confused isle-pacing, Wonwoo rounded a corner, his eyes immediately fixating on a girl who was picking through a neatly assorted dress rack, her head tilted elegantly and her lipstick glimmering under the sterileness of the lights—you.

He gulped. Just suck it up.

She can’t be that bad. You can’t be that bad.

“Uh, sorry to bother you. I’m Wonwoo. I know we have a mutual friend in Seokmin. Lee Seokmin. He’s in one of your seminar classes or something, and, uh…. anyway. I believe I’m supposed to help you with a book you’re interested in writing… that’s what I was told, at the very least. And… I know we’ve never met but… um… I guess…” he trailed off upon noting your lack of acknowledgement.

Suddenly, he was taking a step back, letting you progress further along the clothing rack, your fingers hopping between each hanger and your eyes scanning their corresponding fabrics.

Wonwoo jerked on the inside with panic. He hated the situation already, though he somehow found the resounding courage, or perhaps, humility, to address you again, even if he’d rather die.

“So, I’m not sure if you—”

“Can you move, please? Over here or something? I want this dress.”

He kept his mouth shut in order to avoid spilling out any obtuse nonsense, instead watching with a nervous, analyzing gaze as you removed the hanger and shook out the purple, wine-coloured fabric, its sparkles rippling when you stroked your hand along it.

“Woah. This is too pretty.”

Wonwoo cleared his throat, unsure if you were speaking to him directly. You already had a bundle of dresses tossed over your arm. Why would you meet up with him when you were clearly busy?

“Hey, what did you say your name was?”

“Me?” He found himself echoing.

“No, the mannequin wearing that hideous plaid mini skirt. Of course I’m talking to you. Should I get you a q-tip or something?”

“No... I don't need a q-tip. It’s Wonwoo.”

“Wonwoo?” You exercised the name slowly on your tongue.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, just so you’re aware, it’s 11:35. You were supposed to meet me outside the boutique at 11:30. I can see you’re not very punctual, so that’s noted…” for a moment, you stood back, and the searing line of your gaze judgmentally raked him from top to bottom. “Anyway… you’ll have to assist me with some things now, thanks to your big delay. I got all bored waiting for you, so I decided to do a little self-indulgent shopping."

It could have been wiser to continue biting his tongue, but even Wonwoo, who had practically vowed to avoid you for all eternity due to his fear, felt compelled to challenge your unorthodox logic.

“Big delay? I don’t mean to be rude, but I did take the bus to get here, and their timing is never right. I feel like five minutes is a reasonable time to wait. Not that I’m saying you’re impatient.”

“Well, here’s the thing…” your back turned to him as you took a few slow steps down the clothing rack, probing between the different, pricy materials for anything exuberant you might have missed. “That is what you said, isn’t it? That I’m impatient? I mean—jeez—why bother dancing around it when you can just say it?”

He watched you face him again, except he was keeping perfectly silent, clutching his hand into an anxious, balled fist.

“Well, I suspect you lack urgency, making you apathetic, so therefore you have no sense of initiative. I’m sure you’re already aware, anyway. I can be slow, too, with certain things. Like, when I’m icing a cake. Or painting my nails. But I don’t walk slow, ever. That’s for unmotivated, pointless people who will probably go nowhere in life.”

“… Pardon?”

“Hold this, please.”

Suddenly, you draped the wine-coloured dress over Wonwoo’s shoulder. And he left it there for a second, still gobsmacked, chest shuddering from the pressure of his pumping heart, and wondered how you were even a real person. Once you began walking elsewhere in the store, Wonwoo questioned a very understandable escape toward the exit, though, for some reason, he snapped from his stupor and quickly paced after you, now folding the dress more straightly over his arm. He realized he was too afraid to surrender.

“I’m supposed to help you write a book,” he stated, feeling his lungs dig deep for air, “Seokmin said you needed help.”

“Okay, I’m tired of holding these two. Here—” you again blanketed the dresses into his arms, “—please keep this olive one in good shape, no crinkles. I have yet to find this colour anywhere else.”

Swinging back around, you began heading toward the change rooms, your uncomfortably tall looking heels clicking with each step. Wonwoo stuttered, and he couldn’t stop doing it—just, absolutely baffled by you and your consuming sense of worth. He didn’t know what to say, he could only follow, producing bits and pieces of sentences that you were either ignoring or genuinely hadn’t heard in comparison to the monologues in your own head.

“At what point will we discuss why I’m here?”

Finally, he spat out something coherent.

You paused, and for a fleeting moment, flicked your very intense eyes up and down in an examination of Wonwoo, who felt like he was being intrusively picked apart under a microscope.

He swallowed tautly, “I’m just wondering… that’s all.”

You pressed your wallet against the top of his shoulder, guiding him to sit down on the white leather stool placed just outside the fitting rooms. He sat, too, fighting the urge to wipe his clammy palms on his jeans—even worse, the dresses you’d dumped on him.

“Let’s talk after I try these on, ‘kay?”

There was something different about your voice. It fell lower, sweeter, and he shivered with the thought that you had quite possibly just hypnotized him. He looked up at you, nodding his head.

“Good. Everyone calls me Her, by the way.”

“I know.”

He held his breath as you reached out to take a dress, the wine-coloured one, which was more like a dark, nightly amethyst now that Wonwoo was observing the fabric up close. So, what the hell was he supposed to do? Just sit there, twiddling his thumbs and shaking his knee while you busied yourself with fitting into all those wildly sumptuous dresses? There was a plethora of other things he’d rather be doing—too many to name, in fact. But he wasn’t going to bother slithering away now, chiefly because you petrified him too much and he wasn’t in the mood to be further guilt-tripped by Seokmin.

Throwing his head back, he blew out a tired huff and looked at the ceiling. Why the fuck was he doing this? He just couldn’t stop thinking it. What on earth could he possibly gain from being terrorized by your weird authority.

“Hey, I’ve been there, for sure.”

Wonwoo noticed an older man waltzing past him, probably in his early thirties or so, who’d spoken in a sympathetic tone. He seemed very polished and clean-cut, made apparent by his sleek suit, and as a university student who was routinely on the verge of going broke after most rents, Wonwoo knew money when he saw it.

“Pardon?”

The man stopped and smiled.

“Waiting for your girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Oh, no. I’m just—”

He was interrupted by the squeak of the change room door.

“Be honest. How does this look?”

You had stepped out to examine your silhouette in the large, full-body mirrors against the wall, taking advantage of the heavier lighting to scrutinize every divot and ruffle that textured the amethyst dress. Wonwoo wasn’t sure what to say in the moment, and the man he was explaining himself to had wandered off into another aisle to answer a phone call. He watched your fingers pick and pull at the material so it could be readjusted in certain places, your bottom lip pursed as you angled your hips and tensed a leg to make a pose.

There were at least three other dresses strewn in his lap, and you were most definitely going to make him sit there and judge each one. Now, he could be honest. The dress was glittery yet sophisticated, something like a gloaming, purple-stained sky and its first emergent stars encapsulated into fabric, though he wasn’t completely sold on it. But he also wanted to leave the mall as quick as time would allow, so rather than being verbose, he shaved it down.

“It’s pretty, not great. I don’t really know.”

“Hmm…” you mumbled, keeping your eyes fixated on the mirror, “not great? What’s not great about it? The frilly parts?”

“Yeah, the frilly parts.”

God, he wanted to go home so bad. Warm tea would be nice right now. There were crinkle-cut fries in his freezer.

“Ugh, but I love the colour. I’m getting conflicted. Maybe I’ll toss it aside and think about it again later. Yeah, I’ll do that... okay, let me get the white one next. It’s a little short but I can make it work.”

Wonwoo carefully pulled out the white outfit from the bottom of the pile and handed it off to you. The skirt was notably cropped.

Again, you strode back into the change room and softly clicked the door shut behind you. Wonwoo pulled out his phone almost immediately, navigating to his texts with Seokmin. His thumbs blasted against the screen, tapping out literary warfare that expanded into a decent sized paragraph Seokmin would most likely respond to with an apologetic smiley face. It might take a day or two for Wonwoo to cool off, but he always forgave him. Mr. Sunshine.

When he heard the door rattle, Wonwoo quickly hid his phone back in his pants pocket; however, he severely regretted that decision because holy fuck—that vinyl white skirt was indeed short and tight and the winding, crossed straps of the top were just maintaining your cleavage. He needed something to help avert his eyes because Wonwoo felt them itch with the urge to stare at your body despite how uncomfortable he was. The floor tiles—count the floor tiles, or count the lights—something, anything to distract his brain.

“Okay, this is like—if I bend over, I’m flashing someone.”

He prayed you wouldn’t ask him his thoughts.

“But like—okay, I can make this work, right? This has potential. If I stand really straight, and proper, and, just… pull this down a bit here—okay, fuck, that was too much. Don’t look for a second… don’t look…. don’t look… m’kay, fixed it.”

Wonwoo wanted to cradle his head in his hands. And, right when he swore that the situation couldn’t sink much lower, the wealthy, black-suit man returned from his phone call. He paused the second he saw you in the mirror, watching intensely as you fiddled with the vinyl and attempted to adjust the x-shaped top a little higher over your cleavage. Except he wasn’t exactly modest about his gaze. It was drinking you in like some sort of insatiable alcohol.

“This is tough,” you huffed, pressing your hands against your chest, “the top is super sexy. I love how open the back is. But it’s such little fabric considering the price. It sucks that I look so hot in it.”

Horrendously, Wonwoo noticed a jewel bracelet slip off your wrist onto the tiled floor. Even more horrendously, he watched in the tensest position possible as you began to bend over and grab it.

No. No, no, no, no way.

The last two dresses spilled in a silk and cotton heap off his lap, nearly tripping him during his rush toward you. He managed to cover your backside in the most heart-hammering nick of time, his hands accidentally brushing in static sparks against yours to help you pull the tight fabric back down your hips. Knowing the man was still watching in the mirror, Wonwoo clasped onto your arm and dragged you back toward the fitting room, his cheeks turned to rubies.

“Fuck, you need to be more careful,” he rasped, “the skirt is too short for you to bending over like that, alright?”

“I’m not leaving a gifted two-hundred-dollar bracelet on the fucking ground. Should I have just kicked it into the change room?”

“Gosh…” Wonwoo rubbed along his neck with tire and lowered his voice. “Bending over in a skirt that short, especially when there’s a fucking weirdo watching you, is not the best procedure.”

“So, it’s my fault he’s a creep?”

“Okay—that wasn’t what I—um—”

“Do you even like this outfit?” You deadpanned.

Wonwoo chuckled in disbelief, “I’m not answering that.”

“This is useless." Your eyes agitatedly rolled. “I’m changing.”

“Great, whatever. Do that.”

He gently pushed you further into the change room and closed the door with a smooth, loud shutter. His heart was still racing.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t let my girlfriend wear that either.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Wonwoo didn’t care that his tone was snappish and clearly tired as he collapsed back onto the stool, making a point to ignore the perverted bastard until he left.

“Wonwoo!” You called his name after a few minutes of silence from the fitting room, “please bring me the green one!”

He wanted to utterly vanish, have the building collapse and crush him in a pile of dust plumes and rubble. Sliding the dress through the small gap in the changeroom door, Wonwoo found himself pausing.

“Why don’t I just hand all these to you?”

“Because, I’m using the hangers in here for my clothes.”

“Why can’t you just pu—”

“Thank you!”

Impatiently, you nabbed the dress and shut the door.

However, that dress was the last one you tried on, and Wonwoo couldn’t have been any more relieved. Talking to you seemed like it might give him heartburn or a hemorrhage.

He thought the shiny colour of olive green suited you best.

The dress was silken and long, slightly form-fitting, with a slit cut far up the right thigh and thin spaghetti straps at the shoulders.

You picked the first three dresses to take home, and left the last shimmery one on the rack.

“We’re leaving now?” Wonwoo asked, cracking his fingers.

“Yes, after I pay. Don’t seem so eager.”

“With all due respect, this place isn't really my scene.”

“Your attitude isn't really my scene.” You swiftly corrected him.

He stood next to you at the counter, observing as you zipped open your small black wallet to pull out a credit card. If you were shopping at a store like this, you must be making bank. But Wonwoo was somewhat nosey, and when you set the card on the countertop, he glanced at its embossed name. It definitely wasn’t your name.

Kim Mingyu.

It was your boyfriend’s.

[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm ]: Goddammit Seokmin answer me

[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm]: I’ve sent you at least ten texts

[ Wonwoo | 1:16 pm ]: Truly how do you do anything with this girl? I feel like she’s somewhat psychotic and you just fucking had to flash your sad mopey eyes at me in that café so I would break and help her write her book. I’m sitting here with dresses in my lap, pretty much acting as her unpaid personal assistant. Why the fuck is she asking me about dresses, anyway? Did you help her orchestrate this bullshit? I’m actually pissed at you. I want an entire paid lunch.

He wasn’t all that surprised you made him carry the matte silver shopping bag (with these twine handles that he absolutely hated because of how they suffocated around his fingers), and by a certain point, Wonwoo just didn’t give a damn any more. What little social battery he’d maintained since leaving his apartment had officially depleted, for he could feel it weighing in the plaza air around him like an imperceptible mist. Unfortunately, you weren’t lying about being a fast walker. He’d never seen someone stalk with such vigor.

It was nearly an endurance test to keep at your swaying hip, and the few times he fell behind, you would pause and beckon for him.

But Wonwoo discovered that even you needed to stop, to eat and drink like a normal human rather than the disguised cyborg he fleetingly speculated you were. Your touch was so abrupt—a hand had curled around his bicep and suddenly Wonwoo found himself being jerked into a café on the bottom floor of the mall. Of course, you had to pick the most expensive place to buy food in the entire fucking vicinity, and since Wonwoo was penny pinching at the moment, he opted to stand back and let you order.

But then he saw you flick open your wallet, waving Mingyu’s sleek yet flashy credit card between your fingers with blatant enticement.

“I can pay for you.”

He shook his head, muttering a careless, “no thanks.”

“Don't BS me. What do you want to eat?”

Wonwoo couldn’t stop staring at the credit card.

“What’s the limit on that thing?”

“Enough.”

“You haven’t burned through it already?”

“These openly snide comments you’re making aren’t appreciated, you know. Now, please give me an answer before I break off the temples to your glasses so I can use them to stir my drink.”

“… What?” Wonwoo mumbled, completely lost.

“Pick something!”

“Okay, fuck. I’ll just get a coffee, then.”

He took a step forward to examine the menu boards that the employees were wildly scuttling around underneath, browsing down their chalk-written cold brews until he picked one at random.

That was all Wonwoo asked for.

You bought a lemonade and some sandwich he didn’t catch the name of, toasted on panini bread. It felt amazing to sit down. Wonwoo let the silver bag slide completely off his arm and hit the floor, to which he could sense your gaze stinging over him in disapproval. He should have gotten a sandwich himself, but Wonwoo still wasn’t sure how he felt about using the money on your boyfriend’s credit card.

Wonwoo relaxed in his chair, angling a glance down at his phone that he kept below the table, checking for any Seokmin texts.

None. He was supposed to be Wonwoo’s stupid life preserver in this situation with you, and so far, he’d been left for dead. Taking a lengthy sip from his drink was the only way he could stomach it.

“You should put your phone on the table. Screen down.”

“For what reason?” Wonwoo responded in a dull tone, quickly checking his social media with impatient swipes of his thumb.

“So we can have a conversation.”

At that, he almost gagged, slapping down the coffee cup he’d just picked up.

“Now?” Wonwoo laughed, his deep voice reverberating louder than he intended around the café, “you want to talk now?”

“Uh, yes,” you answered, picking up one half of your sandwich and readying it before your mouth, “why is that shocking?”

“Because—you—ah, whatever.”

“You seem crabby. Is that your normal shtick or are you just hangry? Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

He was in a worse mood than usual, but that could be blamed entirely on the mall and how exhausted it made him feel—everything about its environment sucked out his soul. It was most likely the reason he was even daring to act so impatient. You took another bite as you waited for him to answer, and the delicious crackling sound of the toasted bread managed to fissure something inside him.

“Your eyes tell all. Here’s the other half.” You offered.

Finally, he’d experienced his first flares of contentment that day, though he wasn’t expecting it to be from a panini sandwich with what he could taste to be lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, and different types of melted cheese.

“Thanks.”

“Well, I’ll at least give us time to finish eating.”

[ Seokmin | 2:30pm ]: I can do one paid lunch :)

[ Seokmin | 2:30 pm ]: Her’s not psychotic she’s just uhh

[ Seokmin | 2:31 pm ]: She probs did it to mess with you

[ Wonwoo | 2:37 pm ]: She thinks being 5 mins late warrants putting me through one of the worst experiences in my life.

[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Awwww

[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Who doesn’t like a little shopping??

[ Wonwoo | 2:39 pm ]: It wasn’t shopping it was torture. You owe me so much more than a fucking lunch.

—MARCH 29TH.

Unfortunately, Wonwoo never got the opportunity to discuss your book that Saturday. In the middle of eating, your phone buzzed with a brief call that had interrupted your peculiarly passionate rant on the different cup sizes at the movie theatre (Wonwoo had listened without saying anything, mostly because he dreaded the circumstances that may come from peeping a word when you were so fixated on explaining that ‘the medium is too much but the small is too little and they’re both obnoxiously priced’).

He then watched cluelessly as you launched up from the table, collecting every little belonging between your fingers, babbling about some wax appointment that had escaped you.

It was just that simple—you were gone.

In the beginning moments of your absence, Wonwoo had sat there without much inclination of what to do next.

He’d worried it was another test, and that he was supposed to dutifully follow you to said wax appointment and continue bending to your every endeavour with no retaliation throughout the day. He had also found the silence across from him unsettling, in a way.

Nonetheless, if you weren’t there, then Wonwoo figured he didn’t need to be there either. So he left, taking the fifty-six back to his apartment, and you hadn’t contacted him since.

Wonwoo actually knew his landlord quite well.

Her building was comprised of four apartments, which sat above her pottery shop on the ground floor. She wasn’t a very bothersome landlord and it was fairly easy to connect with her whenever something broke or caused problems.

When he first moved in three years ago, Wonwoo had ardently adored living there, constantly studying the shelves of shiny glazed vases in addition to the beautiful water colour paintings that were created by his landlord or her students. It had been an inspiration supernova in terms of his personal literature, and he was able to start writing his book. Though, at the time, Wonwoo hadn’t been living alone in his apartment, and it was an inescapable fact that the only reason he began writing his book was with the hope of eventually presenting it to his old girlfriend-slash-roommate.

Now, it was just him.

And as Wonwoo pushed up from his grave of rumpled bedsheets, feeling lethargic and empty, he tried concerningly hard to pinch those thoughts from his mind. It was nearly lunch. He knew damn well he shouldn’t have allowed himself to rot that long in bed, but the other half of himself, the self-sabotaging kind, just couldn’t be bothered to fucking care. Wonwoo reached for his glasses that lay half-opened on the nightstand, raking them onto his face while brushing the hair from his eyes. The first thing he properly saw was his tall, skinny, orange bottle of venlafaxine. No. He was ignoring it.

Wonwoo had been ignoring it for the past few months.

Whenever he got particularly sick of staring at the bottle, he’d shove it in his drawer, making sure to bury it deep under old, amply-scribbled notepads and inkless pens that he’d worn to the bone. At last getting up from the bed, Wonwoo experienced his entire body sway and he caught the room spinning at the distant edges of his peripheral. But he walked through it without a care in the world, utterly too used to the feeling of imminent nausea even without his medication. He decided on a shower, then dressing himself, one Poptart, a swig of water from the kitchen tap, and almost walked out the apartment door with the minty toothbrush still in his mouth.

After walking three blocks down from his apartment, Wonwoo stepped across the dead, spiky grass and into the lacklustre parking lot behind the bowling alley that always smelled like stale pizza.

He knew the vanilla Camry well enough to identify it—stalled smack and centre amongst the emptiness—the licence plate being chiselled into his head like his old locker combination from high school (16-12-24, because Wonwoo for some reason liked fixating on prehistoric details that were glaringly useless in his present).

Early two-thousands R&B was blasting from inside the outdated-looking car, though it was thankfully turned down once Wonwoo threw the door open and shimmied inside.

The odor permeated Wonwoo’s lungs in a heartbeat.

“I thought you were getting this dry-cleaned,” he sighed to his friend, Vernon, who was busy rifling through a backpack.

“Uh, didn’t happen. Didn’t wanna pay all that. M’gonna find someone else to do it that’s not taxin’ my ass. Air fresheners are all dried n’shit so you’re gonna have to deal. My bad, Glasses.”

Glasses. That nickname had always made Wonwoo huff a little half-chuckle, and almost instinctively, he pushed the glasses a bit higher back up his nose. He was introduced to Vernon at a New Year’s Eve party he was forced to attend back in December, though it had been difficult to speak with him because he was blitzed out of his fucking mind—not to mention the choking pain of ignoring the girl who had been sliding her hands along the divots of his shoulders and chest from behind, kissing at his neck.

But Vernon was branded in tattoos, and had all kinds of metal in his face, and was blessed with concupiscent, honey-burnish eyes magnetized every woman in the vicinity straight to him.

Somehow, Vernon had become Wonwoo’s plug in the mix.

“Now, what are you gettin’, Glasses? The usual quarter ounce, right?” Vernon’s tongue poked between his blistered lips as he dug a heavily-inked hand further into the backpack seated in his lap.

“Yeah, quarter ounce.”

“Oh, fuck yeah. Found it. This one.” Vernon exchanged the plastic-bagged ounces of weed with Wonwoo’s cash. “Gimme, gimme. I know it’s all here, but let me check… “ he flaked out the tinted bills with a satisfied head nod. “Prettier than a princess. You’re golden.”

“Did you just say princess?”

“Yeah. That’s what I said… what?”

“I’ve never heard that.”

“It’s not princess?”

“It’s picture, isn’t it? Prettier than a picture.”

“Really? Oh. That’s not how I remember—why the fuck are we even talkin’ about this? Doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Now, that’s gonna last you if you’re cute,” he said, throwing his notorious bag into the seat behind him, then tapping at his busted radio with a thick strip of tape across it, the next song rasping through the speakers, “don’t go crazy on it with your meds and shit. Do you still got enough papers?”

Wonwoo scoffed dryly at Vernon’s assumption while he hid the plastic bag within an inside pouch on his navy-blue jacket. A second later and his phone buzzed with a text message.

“Fuck the meds, honestly,” Wonwoo grunted, shifting his hips up in the seat to remove the phone from his back pocket.

Vernon itched his dark eyebrow. “Alright. Just askin’.”

Wonwoo opted to say nothing as he checked the text message without much expectation, and he was thankful that Vernon was the type to drop a subject easily. Instead his friend transitioned into a different conversation, something about another tattoo that he’d been debating, but in the kindest way possible, Wonwoo wasn’t listening to a goddamn word. You had texted him. Finally. For the first time. After three days of radio silence. And Wonwoo didn’t know why he’d suddenly exploded into such a fidgety, heart-pounding mess. You wanted to meet up again in order to discuss the book’s details.

“Who the fuck is that? Jesus Christ?”

“No,” Wonwoo laughed, clasping his right hand into an anxious fist, “um, I dunno. Just—Seokmin’s got me doing this thing with a friend of his. She’s trying to write a book and he kinda threw me into helping her. We’re supposed to meet up and talk about it.”

“Oh,” Vernon answered, leaning his elbow against the window and sweeping a hand through his black tresses, “do I know the chick?”

“Maybe?”

“She got any social media? An Instagram?”

“Yeah.”

“Ou, let me see.”

Wonwoo wasn’t following you. Then again, he was hardly following anyone. His Instagram had remained completely empty since his girlfriend left him, which had prompted Wonwoo to archive every single picture and delete all the ones that contained her, even the ones that captured mere traces of her in beaded bracelets and hair ties and white socks left on the carpet.

Wonwoo used Seokmin’s account to find you. Honestly, he hadn’t ever looked at your Instagram before. Without gleaning a single photo, Wonwoo thrust his phone at Vernon.

“Oh, yeah, I do know this chick,” Vernon chuckled, thumbing through your profile with a growing smirk, “Her, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm, yeah. Know her. Tried to fuck her. Didn’t work at all.”

Snapping his head to look at Vernon, Wonwoo gaped, “what?”

“Yeah, I mean—” Vernon adjusted himself in his seat, pulling up his knee to rest a tattoo-coated arm across it, “—ran into the chick at a party that some rich dude at your university threw. Sweet-talked her for a bit until I realized she had a stupid boyfriend. She told me a million different ways to kill myself. Yeah, she’s somethin’, for sure.”

“You’re lying.”

“Ha—a little. She didn’t tell me to kill myself, just scolded me for about ten minutes. God, she was wired as fuck though. Her boyfriend—fuckin’, Mingyu, or whatever—he gets her coke. I’ve seen her take a line like it’s pixie dust, man. This was like, over a year ago, though. Dunno if she’s still that loopy. I don’t care. She’s pretty hot.”

Vernon then flashed him a picture from your account, a full body picture of you sprawled across sparkling white sand in a bikini, meanwhile Wonwoo could only stare at it with the blankest possible expression as his brain splattered with computing Vernon’s story.

“Is she still with him?” Vernon asked.

Wonwoo cleared his throat and sat with his spine rigid against the leather, nearly forgetting where he was and what he was doing.

“With who?”

“Lady Liberty. Mingyu.”

“Oh… yeah. They’re dating, still.”

“No fuckin’ way,” his friend lamented while he continuously plunged further into your pictures, thumb pressed to his chin, eyes glimmering, “you coulda flipped this book thing on its head and actually got some fuckin’ head, especially with that deep ass voice you got there. I know it’s gotta feel good. I mean, look at her lips—”

“You’re being gross as fuck,” Wonwoo groaned, swiping his phone back and stuffing it away, “get a girlfriend yourself, man.”

“I’m tryin’ to clean up my act a bit before I do that.”

“That’s definitely a work in progress, I’m assuming.”

“Asshole,” Vernon’s voice was gritty as he coughed into a fist, slipping his knee back under the steering wheel and proceeding to crank his stereo until the music was practically suffocating Wonwoo, “now get the fuck out. You’re not my only deal today. Sorry, Glasses.”

“Later.”

Wonwoo pushed open the door and stepped outside into the cold afternoon breeze. He sucked in a long, relieving breath. At times the fresh air disgusted him, especially when he cozied into one of his mental ruts and everything in the world seemed so grey it was soul-crushing, but Vernon’s car smelled like straight fucking cannabis.

Fresh air was heavenly.

“Don’t forget to text your girl!” Vernon laughed just before Wonwoo slammed the door shut to swallow up the melodic lyrics.

He wanted to make a snap comment before the boy drove off to his next endeavour, but he didn’t care enough to think of one.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: hey wonwoo, it’s her. I think we should finally settle a date to talk about this book thing. let me attach a pic of my schedule and you can pick any open slots

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: 145_348.JPG

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: seokmin isn’t going to be our communicator anymore, so u can stop complaining to him about it

[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm ]: Okay, thanks.

[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm]: I’ll take a look soon.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:45 pm ]: I’m excited to see you again

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: no likewise?!

[ Wonwoo | 1:50 pm ]: Likewise.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: ugh. thx

—APRIL 1ST.

It was around six in the evening and Wonwoo was seated in the SRX building, the sky rolling with lambent, hazy-toned pastures of peach in the windows behind him. He had arrived about an hour ago, taking the staircase up to the third floor. It was much quieter there, making it easier for Wonwoo to endlessly stare with glazed, void eyes at his laptop screen and the cursed document he couldn’t finish. After tapping his fingernails in a bored, repetitious pattern against the shiny white table, he felt the urge to delete each and every paragraph as if he hadn’t poured months of earnest love into them.

You would be meeting him soon.

He could still remember looking at your schedule, pinching into the screen and examining all the different colour-coded blocks: dinner parties, SSA meetings, gym sessions, errands—how the fuck you managed to juggle those things and more left him marvelled yet terrified. You were pretty on point regarding your arrival time, to which Wonwoo could immediately identify you before even seeing your face due to the heel clicking and the sounds of tapping jewelry on your bag.

Emerging onto the floor with a very intense scowl and a notably crushing grip on your drink, you were to say the least, angry. Wonwoo gnawed slightly on his tongue as you sat down.

Your purse clunked like a cinderblock onto the table.

He watched you inhale a slow, shaky breath, raising your hand with the expansion of your chest in order to calm down.

“I’m going to kill myself.”

Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, subtly trying to establish more distance between you. He flicked a glance at his laptop.

“Damn. Why is that?”

“Because of stupid, incompetent people.”

“Yeah?”

“I just—I don’t get it!” You laughed, though it wasn’t a particularly jovial sound and more than anything it seemed like you were going to start smashing glass. “I don’t get how people are unable to understand that we don’t do walk-ins unless one of the stylists are free—” you dug a hand into your purse, pulling out a straw, “—which in the salon’s case, is almost never! I tell them we can’t in my very sweet, established customer service voice: ‘I’m sorry, but the only way to receive a chair is to book online.'”

Wonwoo tilted his head, grinning a little.

“Blah, blah. I tell them the entire story in the kindest way I can, even though I want to grab them by their fucking neck and drag them over the counter to show them our website.” You slipped out your laptop next, accidentally dragging out a lanyard along with it that you agitatedly shoved back into the purse. “And then, they get all uptight and pissy when we can’t wriggle them in! Sorry, our makeup artists are busy! Working with people who made scheduled fucking appointments! The world doesn’t fucking revolve around you!”

You scraped the drink toward you, slamming the straw straight through the plastic film lid with such force that several people ended up turning their heads. After taking a long sip, you gulped and glared until they probably realized it was you and pretended not to care.

For a moment, Wonwoo didn’t know what to say, so he’d folded his arms instead. Considering that Wonwoo worked the late shift stocking shelves at the pharmacy department, your predicament sounded like an entirely new world to him.

“Ugh, I’m sorry to bring all this negativity with me,” you apologized, still exasperated, “I don’t need this fucking tea—I need straight vodka. I’m seriously frazzled.”

“Seriously frazzled?” Wonwoo repeated, finding your choice of words funny as he resumed leaning forward, arms still crossed.

“Very, seriously frazzled.”

“I’m sorry about your day.”

Again, you sighed deeply while removing your long, warm jacket to drape over the chair’s spine—it was a rather elegant reveal of the strapless pearl dress underneath, tinted by the evening light, peach-pink as it rained from the ceiling length windows and framed your body like you were some sort of resurrected angel. Tension at last started escaping your shoulders. Wonwoo quickly realized that he'd been staring, and his fingers curled into a nervous fist.

“You’re actually such a good listener.”

Wonwoo cleared his throat. “Um, thank you.”

“I like that you don’t interrupt me.”

Settling his elbows on the table and ruffling the back of his messy black locks, Wonwoo felt himself panic a little on the inside.

“Well,” he heaved in, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I know," you chirped, posturing yourself confidently, “anyway, the book. We need to talk about it.”

“Table’s yours.”

Wonwoo’s knuckles pressed softly into his cheek while he waited for you to prepare your laptop. His own document was glowing at him, and he swore the emptiness of the page made the screen brighter (in the absolute worst, most mocking way).

“Okay, I’ve got my ideas and such pulled up.”

He expected you to continue and introduce the concept, but you had suddenly stopped, and Wonwoo thought you appeared almost smitten and somewhat timorous. It was strange, because from what he’d known and gauged so far, you were nothing akin to that.

“Well, promise that you won’t think it’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t even know what it is.”

“That’s why I want you to promise!”

Wonwoo pushed up his glasses and sighed, “I will need to be honest at some points you know, depending on what kind of help you want from me. Not that I’m going to be a straight-up dick.”

You scoured at him from over your laptop.

“Whatever.”

“I’ll promise if it makes you feel better.”

“Just—shut up." You wiggled your hand at him dismissively and proceeded to tug the laptop closer. “I don’t even care anymore.”

Once you spent a moment affirming the document to yourself, you looked up at him and smiled. “I’m going to write a book for Mingyu. Our fifth anniversary is coming up in the winter—it’s actually on Christmas Eve—the day he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. I just want to write him a little memoire thingy that tells our story. I want it to walk through the events of our lives, and how I remember them. First encounter, first date, first kiss, stuff like that. I’ve already collected some good memories to include. I have… somewhat of an outline? But my problem is the writing. I can spew nonsense from my mouth at a million miles an hour, but when I try to actually write? It’s crickets.”

You sat back, a hand poised thoughtfully at your cheek while one leg folded over the other. Wonwoo knew you were granting him the space to speak and at least offer a slice of his thoughts, yet, in that moment, he found himself to be drowning. He didn’t believe in fate or destiny or anything of the delusional like; however, hearing you explain the exact premise of a story that he had been successfully writing until a certain breakup—it had shaken him, and Wonwoo felt like the universe was smearing salt fresh into his unsewn wounds.

“So…” your head cocked to the side. “Can I at least an ‘okay’ or a head nod or some sign of life? Or are you just too disgusted?”

What could he say? What was he supposed to say?

Wonwoo was genuinely clueless on how to help you write a story that he’d been utterly failing at writing himself. And, sure, maybe Wonwoo should just give up completely. His ex-girlfriend had ripped out his heart without a single indication that it would happen, and then exited his life in the blink of an eye, disappearing so fucking abruptly that Wonwoo could have said she was a shadow that he imagined in pure lunacy. But he hadn’t dropped the story because there was this very stubborn, unwilling part of his being that could not move on from her—her, who had been his love, and breath, and bones.

He’d decided to finish the story as a manner of easing into closure. If that closure never came, then so be it.

“Are you seriously fucking ignoring me right now?”

His silence had promptly disturbed your peace, and now you were glaring at him with the beginning licks of fire and hell in your eyes.

“I don’t think I can help you.”

“What?” You pronounced sharply. “Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said while closing his laptop and sliding it back into his shoulder-sling bag, “I just—I’m not the right person to help you. I’m not, and you’ll have to take my word for it.”

“Seokmin told me you could write fucking anything. He made it out like you were some literature God with a golden quill. And—great, you’re just packing up fucking everything. Are you serious? Am I even allowed more of an explanation or are you gonna leave it at that? Wonwoo, you couldn’t have told me this at a worse time.”

“I didn’t plan for it to be like that.” He could hardly push the syllables up his diaphragm. “It can’t be me. I’m sorry.”

You didn’t lift a finger to stop him from leaving, though the wavelength of your incinerating stare was felt like a hot, melting scratch down his neck. This was terrible, he was terrible—Wonwoo already knew that about himself. He wanted to go home. He wanted to shut himself away in his room and sink straight through the sheets until he was swallowed. His anxiety was webbing around him. It was pulling him down into the soil and earth like he belonged there.

He truly hated this part of himself.

More than anything, he truly hated when other people saw it.

Especially people like you.

—APRIL 8TH.

Wonwoo didn’t think you would ever speak to him again, in person or over text message. In retrospect, he was fine with it. You were rather overwhelming and especially tiring for someone like Wonwoo who would be perfectly fine never seeing another human in his lifetime. Not to mention he was freed from helping you with your book, which he learned was a technical love letter to your boyfriend in addition to a romance he wanted a nonexistent part in. Going down that path once was already excruciating enough, and given his anxiety attack that saw him locked in a cold washroom stall last week, it was best you just forget about him. He assumed you already had, anyway.

After he stocked the last red bottle of sinus medicine onto the shelf, Wonwoo used his boxcutter to break down the cardboard package and fold it flat with the others he’d opened. It was time for his break, and then he would only have one more hour until the pharmacy section closed for the night. Once it hit ten o’clock, the store was automatically still and hardly anyone came in—minus the few student couples whom Wonwoo had to point in the direction of pregnancy tests or plan b. But it was a Tuesday night. He was at the bare minimum appeased he didn’t have to console a sobbing, snotty-nosed eighteen-year-old girl imploring for a First Response.

When he collapsed down at his favourite seat in the breakroom, Wonwoo pulled out his phone. He had sent Seokmin a text yesterday evening about going studying at the SRX building for their upcoming math midterm, though Seokmin had yet to respond and Wonwoo couldn’t evade wondering if you were pulling some strings behind the curtain.

He opened his bottle of juice and spent the remainder of his fifteen listening to music and jittering his knee.

Wonwoo took his earbuds with him back onto the floor, sneaking the wires under his shirt to pull out his collar. There were only a few boxes left on his cart that required stocking, and whatever didn’t fit would have to be scanned into storage. That shouldn't take long. Wonwoo could almost taste the crisp atmosphere of the night air and feel the gentle chilliness soon to ghost against his face.

However, halfway into shelving the cough drops there had been a polite tap on his shoulder, and Wonwoo wanted to wither up and lose his head right there on the tiles like a sundried rose.

He didn’t know who to expect when he turned around, pulling out a single earbud while the other continued to blast his music.

“Oh, shit—I didn’t know you worked here.”

Fuck. He wanted to kill himself.

“Yeah, started a couple months ago, actually.”

Mingyu.

It’s not that Wonwoo didn’t like speaking with him, because they had definitely exchanged cordial conversations in the past, particularly when they both took that Probability Poker elective last semester and Wonwoo learned that Mingyu was a pretty decent bluffer. Unfortunately, Mingyu’s belief that he was a great bluffer was actually the one indication that he was indeed bluffing. It showed in his overly confident eyes before a twitch of the lips or a subtly shifted foot, meanwhile Wonwoo was able to sit there the entire time like he was an Easter Island statue incarnate.

Put simply, Wonwoo had always preferred to avoid Mingyu because he was your boyfriend, and per routine, he attempted to slip around most people that were associated with you.

“Cool.” Mingyu smiled and the flashes of his pointed teeth caught the light. “Stuff’s got switched around in here again.”

“New mods came out last week,” Wonwoo answered, placing the last cough drop box onto the shelf and facing it straight.

“Well, don’t know what the fuck that means,” his tone was brassy as he laughed, “I just came to ask where the plan b is now.”

“Two aisles down, check the endcap.”

“Appreciate it, thanks—oh, condoms?”

“Next aisle.”

“Got it.”

“Just come get me when you’re done,” Wonwoo said, grabbing his boxcutter and running the blade along the taped seam of the cardboard to satisfyingly slice it open, “I’m the only one in pharmacy right now, so I have to ring you up.”

As soon as Mingyu disappeared around the corner, Wonwoo tossed the flattened cardboard onto his cart with the loudest, most life-draining sigh that could be harboured. He wasn’t the kind of person to cultivate those racing, panicky thoughts that consumed his brain like a merciless hurricane, rather it was typically one single thought that was an eternal black space to swallow him. But Wonwoo had to admit that seeing Mingyu had triggered something of the latter, and now he was feeling sick with the fact you possibly told Mingyu about his episode at the SRX building last week. To Wonwoo it had been the shackles of his anxiety, though it probably came across as a very ill-mannered, abrupt rejection from your perspective.

Mingyu didn’t take long picking out his items. It was clearly a run of the mill routine for him at this point—a mere grab and go.

At the register, Wonwoo mentally questioned why Mingyu had grabbed such a plethora of condoms. He didn’t mean to be vulgar in his thinking, but how often were you getting fucking railed?

Either that, or Mingyu preferred being well stocked.

Vernon would be bruising his knuckles on his steering wheel right now, considering how devotedly he attempted to seduce you.

As payment, Mingyu pulled out that godforsaken credit card that you had borrowed during the dress shopping. Wonwoo felt nauseous just looking at the damn thing. He swiped all of the items into a small plastic bag which he then handed to Mingyu with a notable impatience, wanting to whisk the boy out as quick as possible.

“G’night, man. Thanks for the help.”

“Night,” he answered in a deep, tired sigh, watching Mingyu’s head of thick and bouncy black hair disappear toward the aglow exit.

Well, clearly you weren’t wasting anytime thinking about him despite the dramatics pertaining to the situation last week, not even in the most marginal fraction. Mingyu must rail it out of you every night—not that Wonwoo would be surprised to learn such a thing considering the tall boy’s physique and your openly lascivious nature.

Well, good luck to you both, he supposed.

At least it was closing time.

Wonwoo had always suspected there was something ever so slightly off kilter about his body, especially in the way it reacted to certain situations and emotions. He knew it probably wasn’t the most mundane, ordinary act—locking himself in his aunt’s washroom the day of his sixteenth birthday, sliding down onto the cold, hard tiles, feeling his heart jolt, punch, and thump again his chest like a battering ram. There had been a pattern of rubber ducks on her eggshell blue shower curtain, and Wonwoo remembered counting them row by row, over and over, until his breath managed to steady.

Twenty-four ducks. He could still recall the number.

A doctor’s visit about three weeks later had granted him the diagnosis and a scribbled venlafaxine prescription. Wonwoo was already collecting his sweater off the tissue sheet bed, ready to leave.

In the beginning, he was strict about his medication. He organized them into pill cartridges and set alarms and always ate them with cooked, warm meals. Understandably, his habits dwindled every now and again, however, Wonwoo was quite pious to the routine for a good couple years. But then he met his most recent girlfriend in university. She was shy and reserved. All about the books.

Cute as buttons.

He fell in love.

And it was all such a rush of rose petals and sweet symphonies that Wonwoo became distracted from his healthy habits.

Of course, everything crashed and burned once she abandoned him. He capitulated in an instant, and the sight of the orange bottle made him paler than winter moonlight. It’s not like he wanted to suffer, or despise the way his body put him through a neural hell beyond his own control. The fact of the matter was that Wonwoo just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take those stupid pills.

It was a mountain. Every. Single. Time.

And for the third time that week, Wonwoo found himself awake at an ungodly hour, rifling through the black lunchbox he kept in his closet with his glasses about to slip off the fine point of his nose.

He pulled out the baggie filled with the quarter-ounce, his silver grinder, and his rolling papers. Moving to his desk, Wonwoo clicked on the small overhead lamp to illuminate his space, in which he tapped some of the weed into his grinder and began twisting the lid until he was satisfied. He liked preparing joints to smoke on the roof. It wasn’t particularly hard to access, anyway. Right outside his bedroom window was a balcony with a short ladder attached to the brick, and once Wonwoo had discovered it, he made a habit of climbing up to spark his joints so that their pungent aroma could be carried away by the fresh winds usually stirred up at gloaming.

Honestly, it was the only thing he enjoyed.

Just before he slipped out the window, Wonwoo grabbed a pair of black jeans he’d worn earlier in the week, discovering the lighter he’d accidentally left in the back pocket.

The ladder shuddered slightly when Wonwoo gripped it, though if he were being candour, he didn’t care whatsoever if all the bolts suddenly loosened and he were to splatter against the sidewalk like an uncooked pancake. In fact, the fall probably wasn’t enough to kill him. Maybe a few broken bones and scrapes, some blood staining the street akin to little patterns of rain, bruises that signatured violets into his skin, but Wonwoo would still be painfully, vividly alive, enough to see the stars if the glasses didn’t snap off his face.

It was a colder night, so Wonwoo made sure to tuck on his beanie and huddle into his thicker-sized coat. He sat with one leg dangling over the building’s edge, feeling the wind whiplash against his back and crawl in these chilly, indecipherable whispers from his shoulders to his neck, almost tickling him, like it had missed him.

An orange flicker popped to life from the butane of his lighter, which he used to lightly singe the joint perched at his lips. Wonwoo then tilted his head back, blowing the cloud and its loose, airy curls straight into the sky’s deepest purples.

He loved being alone.

Even when his ex-girlfriend had moved in with him all those months ago, there was an unyielding part of him that hadn’t been ready to forfeit all his space and privacy.

But, over time, his love surmounted the sacrifice.

He would wake up to her sleeping face, and with thoughtful nudges, clear the hairs off her cheeks. He would spend an hour working on his homework or writing his story while waiting for her to stir so messily in the sheets that it became graceful. He would tease her with his cold hands as she boiled up tea in the kitchen, pinching at her hips with the utmost softness and giggling huskily into her neck when she would twist in the arms that bracketed her body against his chest. He would trap her between the counter, sunshine striking the room aglow in these nearly blinding seas of light, mouthing at her throat and tugging at her shorts and hitching his fingers so deep into her heat because all Wonwoo wanted to do was make her feel good.

Opening his eyes again, Wonwoo saw the stars rather than her face. The high was disseminating past his lungs and mingling with the pain that festered in his heart, concocting something that hurt so wonderfully, in all the right places, in all the right spots.

He was a fucking mess.

It wasn’t sustainable. But he didn’t care enough to fix himself.

—APRIL 15TH.

Why did Wonwoo keep coming back to that café? The number of times he’d sat down with conviction that today would be fruitful—today, the eloquence would flow from his fingertips like perfectly pitched music notes and the symphony would read as beautiful and mellifluous as it sounded in his mind. Today, he was going to write.

Except, he accomplished nothing of the sort.

Repeatedly tapping his index finger against the space bar, he waited for the right adjective or phrase to leap out—to grasp him in a headlock even—whatever it took, Wonwoo was willing to sit there all afternoon until one fucking word conjured in the infinite blankness that was his imagination. He reached for his drink, only to take a sip of dry air that smelled like his earlier cocoa. Wonwoo realized the cup was empty. Had he wasted this much time already?

It pricked similarly to a bee sting. His passions felt impossible. A sigh upheaved from his chest and fingers curled into his hair, musing up the already disarrayed strands and slowly warping himself to look more and more like a mad scientist. Wonwoo removed his glasses and slumped back in the chair, rubbing at the reddish prints left on his nose. Writing had soaked itself in agony and he was going to remain in the storm of it until the bitter, ungratifying end.

‘Till death do us part.

And then, something struck.

Though it wasn’t what Wonwoo had hoped for.

Literally—it was your hand hitting the glass of the café window, which had jerked Wonwoo out from his self-pitying.

He scrambled to fix his glasses back on, your face clarifying in an instant. You smiled at him with your glossed lips, and he didn’t like the nuance of your countenance one bit. Watching you enter the café was jarring and uncomfortable and his fist immediately clenched, his index nail picking at the ruined cuticle of his thumb. Two weeks ago—that was the last time you had spoken. At the SRX building.

“Hey!” You sounded friendly. “Can I sit here?”

“Well, uh—”

“Great, thank you.”

You pulled out the chair across from him, then set your bag delicately on the windowsill. Wonwoo watched with nervous, fluttering eyes as you smoothed out your cropped skirt before sitting down, ensuring it was tucked under yourself appropriately.

“How are you?”

Gulp.

“Fine.”

“Good. That’s really good. I’m glad.” Your nails drummed once against the table. “I actually didn’t plan on coming here, but I saw you as I was crossing the street, and I thought, ‘I should stop by and check in on him’ because, y’know, we haven’t been talking.”

Wonwoo furrowed his brow. “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Slap your hand against windows to get people’s attention.”

You swept something off the table with your palm, and this sunshine-like laugh turned your entire face to sweetness, but it wasn’t entirely earnest, and Wonwoo bit into his lip because you fucking terrified him. He caught your sparkling eye and wanted to melt.

“Did I scare you? I’m so sorry.”

“No, you’re good.”

“What are you working on?”

“A paper.”

Obviously, he was going to lie. Whether or not you could pick up on his lie was beyond Wonwoo’s control at that point. He didn’t know what you wanted, or why you were interrupting the flow of your very organized scheduling system to seemingly toy with him.

You didn’t respond to his paper comment. There was a thick silence between you despite the distant clattering of dishes, bubbling coffee machines, and conversations that coalesced into one big buzz.

Wonwoo bit the bullet.

“Something you want from me, yeah?”

“Not… exactly… I mean, after you left me at the SRX building, I wanted to get very angry about the whole situation. My day was terrible, and you responding to my idea with that sickly look on your face didn’t help. But I thought about it. You said no. I can’t ask anything more of you, y’know? I have to respect what you said.”

“Oh.” Wonwoo unclenched his fist, stretched out his long legs a bit more. “Yeah, sure. I get it. Thanks for understanding.”

“I just didn’t think my idea was that bad.”

“Well… no. It’s not bad. It’s not bad at all.”

A twitch to your lip suggested you didn’t believe him. Wanting to clear the air a bit, Wonwoo stopped slouching. He sat straighter and lowered the lid of his laptop, inviting the space between you.

His mouth opened, and then closed.

Fuck, just breathe you idiot—he cursed at himself.

You did that little head tilt thing, half-smiling at him, looking radiant underneath the café sunlight and so oddly patient with his tied-tongue that Wonwoo was miraculously able to find his words.

“There is nothing wrong with your idea. I made it seem like there was. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to help you write a romance story, for personal reasons that would be useless explaining. But you seem very confident in everything you do. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Hm, well, thank you for believing in me. Romance can be a touchy subject—I didn’t think of that, and I get it… I guess I felt more insecure about your reaction because writing is the one thing I can’t ace. I do need help with my story, even if I don’t want it. Well, it’s just the truth, isn’t it? There are some things I can’t do!”

You chuckled at yourself, and Wonwoo thought it to be actually endearing. All your hard edges softened in that moment.

“So, I haven’t made any progress in my story, which sucks because I’m operating by deadline—” reaching into your bag, you unveiled a small, compact mirror, using it to remove something invisible from your eyelash, “—do you have any writer friends that would help me?”

Wonwoo scratched his nose.

“Uh, with the book?”

“Yes.”

“None.”

“What?” The mirror snapped shut as you gagged at him. “How do you have no writer friends? Isn’t that your major? Literature? Do you even have friends that aren’t Seokmin?”

“I’m a math major for fucks sake.”

“You’re fucking joking, Wonwoo. Please, tell me it’s a joke.”

He leaned back, folding his arms and propping an ankle onto his knee. You were still gaping at him, and he wanted to smirk.

“What’s wrong with math?”

“Nothing. Math is… math,” you gritted, shoving the mirror back into your expensive-looking, gold-buckled bag, “but why math? Why straight math? I thought you wanted to be a writer.”

“Man, Seokmin really didn’t tell you fucking anything, did he?” Wonwoo chuckled. Or, maybe you had only heard the things you wanted to hear, which was what Wonwoo assumed.

“Like I have space in my brain to remember the multiverse of information that constantly comes out of his mouth.”

“So what is there space for then?”

“You're toeing a dangerous line.”

“Well, I like math and writing.”

"And what kind of papers would you be required to work on as a math major? Did you stumble across some quintessential theorem that nobody else really cares about except for you and all the other pocket-protector wearers out there? Or is this a Good Will Hunting scenario? Even better—are you waiting for someone to walk by behind you and see all that really complicated mumbo-jumbo on your screen and think to themselves, 'woah, this guy is really smart. He's working on a paper with numbers, and I only work on papers with words. Where did I go wrong in my life?' so you can develop some sort of alternative complex that writing just isn't giving you?"

Wonwoo cocked his head at you, perplexed.

“What the absolute fuck are you talking about?” He felt a laugh in his chest, but he pushed it down. Wonwoo had never met anyone like you before. “You made up everything you just said.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I go on tangents. It’s just something I do.”

“Damn. I can tell.” Wonwoo rubbed at the corner of his eye and slipped the ankle off his knee, further spreading his legs. “You like hearing the sound of your own voice, yeah?”

He always hated when people bothered him at the café, especially when he was trying to write. Today, it was different.

“Well, that’s true.” You beamed at him so matter-of-factly, like it was obvious. “The most beautiful sound in the world, isn’t it?”

“Mm.”

“Thought so. Ugh, I just can’t believe you have no writer friends to hook me up with.” He watched you slouch forward, slapping your arms across the table. “I’ll have to go wait outside Gildan Hall and start ambushing all the smart-looking literature majors.”

Wonwoo found himself examining your perfect nail polish.

“Good luck with that.”

“Can you at least try to sound more sympathetic?”

“You don’t seem like a person who appreciates sympathy.”

“Pft. According to who? I like being comforted when the time is right, and you’re not being very comforting.” You groaned into the table.

“You like being comforted?” He scoffed.

Your head popped up, and you were pouting. “At certain times, yes. Most times, no. It’s a complicated system. No one’s really cared enough to learn it except for Mingyu, and that was by force, and I think even he hates it. But I’m not asking for the moon. Just a reasonably sized chunk of it. I have to be worth something, right?”

“What’s life without someone catering to your every whim at the drop of a hat, huh?” He couldn’t help but mutter with sarcasm.

“Yes, exactly! See—you read my mind.”

Wonwoo bit his tongue.

“Ugh, now where’s my stupid phone?”

It was in your purse. Immediately, your eyes lit up.

“Jesus Christ. I’m gonna be late to my electrolysis!”

Like a burst of lightning, you shot up from your seat and quickly fixed the cream-white purse back over your shoulder. It reminded him of that time at the mall. One second you were engrained into a tangent, and the next you were scrambling about, attempting to recover the lost time in your meticulous schedule.

“If you think of anyone, please text me!”

Wonwoo nodded his head.

Now, there was a vacant seat before him, left slightly tugged from the table due to your hectic departure. For a moment, he just sighed, feeling the breath emerge from somewhere so deep in his chest that it ached. That was the thing about you—in a confusing turmoil, you managed to fill him up when he felt empty, but then empty him once he felt full.

He didn’t know what kind of person you were.

But there was an odd thrill to it that Wonwoo couldn’t articulate.

—APRIL 18TH.

Sat with Seokmin at the boy’s dining room table, Wonwoo popped a purple grape into his mouth while flipping a pencil between his fingers. The two had been staring plainly at their last problem from the math homework, but the question was horribly long, and his handwriting had morphed from legible penmanship to the most slurred hieroglyphics. Wonwoo wanted to dump a ramen packet into some boiling water and call it a night. He’d devoured a whole stem of grapes. His head was pounding and his stomach growled for a meal.

“Oh! You see—this is what gets me every time!” Seokmin exclaimed, leaned over his scattered papers, shoulders hunched with strain, “I mess up one multiplication in a matrix, and it screws me all up! Now I have to go over—uh! My fucking pencil just snapped.”

“Good,” Wonwoo mumbled, pressing a hand along the groove of his stiff neck, cracking it, “take it as a sign to give up.”

“We’re so close.”

Scooting the chair back to stretch his legs, Wonwoo then snatched his phone off the table. It was nearly ten at night.

“I’m hungry, and I don’t care anymore.”

Seokmin sighed, “are you going to eat now?”

“Yeah. Any ramen left?”

“It’s in the box sitting on top of the fridge. Soup broth is in the cupboard beside the microwave. I think there’s some eggs, too.”

Wonwoo easily grabbed the noodle packet off the fridge. He asked his friend if he wanted a bowl as well, and Seokmin agreed, abandoning their math homework after his defeating pencil-snapping incident. While they waited for the water to start bubbling over the stovetop, Seokmin had joined Wonwoo in the kitchen, though he leaned against the counter, holding his phone six inches or so from his face. Wonwoo had never seen anyone text that fast.

Gosh—he didn’t even need to ask who it was.

Noticing a few smudges on his glasses, Wonwoo lowered them down to the hem of shirt, beginning to massage the marks away.

“Our math final is the twenty-eighth, right?” Seokmin asked.

“Should be, yeah.”

“Thanks. If it’s on the twenty-eighth then I can definitely go.”

Wonwoo slid the glasses back onto his nose.

“Go to what?

Taptaptaptap—Seokmin’s fingers were practically electric.

“Uh, this thing that Her is having… at her parents’ house… like… a big dinner party… I’m helping her plan it… just need to make sure… I’m free those days… there! Okay, all settled.”

At last, Seokmin had clicked off his phone and slid the device back into the pocket on his sweatpants. Wonwoo folded his arms, staring at his friend with a deeply furrowed yet confused brow.

He sucked in a helpless breath.

“I don’t get you, Seokmin.”

“What—why?”

A few hot droplets of water had leapt from the pot, slightly scalding Wonwoo’s arm. He promptly ripped open the ramen packet and submerged the noodle brick, poking at it with chopsticks.

Wonwoo cleared his throat, “are you obsessed with her?”

Seokmin laughed, sounding astounded.

“No, I’m not obsessed. I’m just helping. We’re friends.”

“Right.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Setting the chopsticks beside the stove, Wonwoo turned around again, habitually crossing his arms low along the chest.

“I guess I don’t understand what you get out of that relationship.” He admitted. “Why can’t she do shit herself?”

“Ha!—That’s an interesting question.”

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“No, it’s not that.” Seokmin lifted himself onto the kitchen counter, his head thumping back against the wooden cupboard. “I just wasn’t expecting you to ask that. And—I meant it’s interesting to see your interpretation of it. Like, my friendship with Her.”

Wonwoo nodded. He wasn’t going to coax anything out of his friend that he wasn’t already willing to say. In fact, Wonwoo had only begun talking to Seokmin back in the early, rainy days of September, since they ended up in the same discrete mathematics course and happened to choose seats right next to each other. Their bond had formed fairly quick, but they never really conversed about topics more intimate than school work and their own interests.

“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said, “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, don’t apologize. I mean, I totally get why you’re curious.”

Seokmin glanced down at his knees, scratched his chin.

“Uh—well, what did you say, anyway? Why can’t her do shit herself? I mean, her life is super busy. Her mom’s a writer and editor for that popular fashion and beauty magazine you always see at all those glamour stores—Stunning Monthly—something like that. Her’s dad is this business tycoon guy. He works with my dad, actually. I’ve known Her since high school. Our families are close, so naturally we’ve spent a lot of time together. Her family picked up all their stuff and moved into Hillcrest on account of her dad needing to relocate for work.”

Wonwoo remained silent at the revelation, even though he was urged by curiosity to badger Seokmin with questions.

“But, uh—without all my non-essential rambling—the relationship with her parents is tumultuous. Who doesn't have a shaky relationship with their parents, though? A few lucky souls, probably. But they've set things up for her quite well, in my opinion. Her mom got her a job at the Milestone—that fancy beauty place down Bank Street? She has a makeup chair from time to time and works reception. She’s definitely gonna graduate Cum Laude with some big fancy scholarship. Not to mention the little power couple thing she’s got going on with Mingyu. She just tends to be…” Seokmin winced, massaging his shoulder, “she’s just a bit unpredictable. It would be way too easy for things to start falling all over the place. She’s a busy girl so I figure it’s nice to help her out. Keep things organized.”

Wonwoo bobbed his head, thinking.

“I guess I’m curious about the book thing. I mean, if everything is so perfectly laid out for her, and she’s so busy all the time…. why write a book? That takes months, extreme dedication, planning out the ass… it’s loving everything you’ve written and then hating it so atrociously… I don’t know,” he sighed, shrugging with confusion, “if I were her, writing a book would be the last thing on my mind.”

Folding his arms, Seokmin leaned back against the cupboards and agreed. “I know. But sometimes she just lurches onto random things out of nowhere. One year she practically turned her entire living room into a freakin’ art studio and I slipped on an open tube of paint on the floor—nearly popped out my tail bone. To be fair, her passion projects never last long. She never has the time, as you said… I know you’re not helping her anymore. She’ll probably drop it without help.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Yeah,” Seokmin answered, smiling, “just like that.”

For some reason, Wonwoo gritted his teeth. He would hate for you to discard the feat so readily, just because he couldn’t pitch in as initially planned. Yes, writing was not always a fruitful cherry blossom tree and sometimes chalking down one sentence was equivalent to a month of effort and squeezing out all the creative fibres in one’s brain, but there was so much worth and occulted beauty to it at the same time. It was the art of expression.

Wonwoo thought it was quite cruel to deprive oneself of the ability to express and articulate things as they coursed through the fragile skin and the warm veins, and chiefly, the heart.

“Anyway, maybe I didn’t really answer your question,” Seokmin laughed, “but, y’know, don’t worry too much about turning down the book. You’re right. She’s got more important things to focus on, as I was telling her over and over, and—oh! Fuck, the ramen’s bubbling!”

Wonwoo quickly twisted around as the water began spilling over the edge and sizzling like fried meat. He lifted the pot off the piping hot, orange element, to which Seokmin joined him, twisting the stove dial to a much lower heat. Blowing at the white froth, Wonwoo waited a precautionary minute before returning the pot.

Once dinner was ready, they gathered back at the dining table, entwining the noodles with their chopsticks and hardly allowing a second for the ramen to cool before they were shovelling in burning mouthful after mouthful. The bite in Wonwoo’s stomach was gradually appeased. He soon felt warm, and full, and less tempered.

“Seokmin.”

“Hm?” His friend glanced up from his phone.

“So…” Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, his fist clenched. “I guess what—from what I understand—if I don’t help Her, or if she doesn’t find someone who can, then the book just won’t happen ”

At his observation, Seokmin nodded, seeming unbothered.

“Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”

“That’s sad.”

“Hey, you two just aren’t destined for each other,” he replied, slurping his noodles, “you were right back at the café.”

Picking up the white and blue patterned bowl, Wonwoo prepared to drink the broth, feeling the delicious heat fan back against his face. Once he finished eating and helping Seokmin with the dishes, he planned to catch a late-night bus back to his apartment above the quaint pottery shop. He didn’t know if he would sleep or not.

Maybe, however, that would give him time to rethink some choices, even if he shouldn’t trust the musings his brain happened to curate past nine at night. Especially any musings concerning you.

[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: Sorry to message you this late.

[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: I’ll keep it brief: I’ve given your book idea some thought, and if the offer still stands, I’d like to help you write it. Though, I understand if you want someone else’s help.

[ Wonwoo | 11:50 pm ]: Goodnight.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: AHHHHHHHHHHH

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: good morninggg

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: no that’s so perfect

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: okay. OMG. there’s just so much we have to sort out. I’m trying not to overwhelm myself lol

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: thank u for giving it more thought. I’m excited to plan everything and see u again ofc :)

[ Wonwoo | 12:55 pm ]: Likewise.

—APRIL 24TH.

Since last November, Wonwoo hadn’t invited many guests to his apartment—not even his older brother, who had never stepped foot into the building after Wonwoo originally signed the lease. Seokmin visited once or twice, but everything was curt, and while there had been one time that Vernon slept overnight on the couch, it was hardly notable.

Knowing that you were going to be at his apartment in a few hours was a very daunting thought. Consequently, Wonwoo had done something he hadn’t properly completed in months: clean.

It wasn’t like he just threw out the garbage and wiped down the kitchen counter either. He legitimately cleaned, picking over his apartment with a fine-tooth comb, not allowing one coffee cup or coaster to seem even vaguely incongruous. He fluffed out the couch pillows and vacuumed the floors. He went through his entire room, tidying up piles of clothes on the floor and aligning every book on his shelf. For the first time in months, Wonwoo threw open his heavy curtains, pure sunlight engulfing the space in such a bright glare that his eyes stung and he hardly recognized his own bedroom. Most importantly, he remembered to hide the pill bottle in his nightstand.

After all the anxiety-driven cleaning was done, Wonwoo collapsed onto the couch and stared plainly at the ceiling, the reality of what he just accomplished beginning to sink into his pores.

What the fuck?

He doubted you would care even microscopically if his apartment wasn’t perfectly swept and polished and artistic like a photo from an interior design catalogue. But at the same time, it would have been impossible for him to leave it alone. The burst of productivity undoubtedly left Wonwoo rather hot and sweaty, so he opted to take a shower before you arrived. Standing beneath the cool water and taking slow, languid breaths helped ease his nerves.

And, for the first time in what he imaged to be—months, Wonwoo dried himself off with this feeling that everything was okay.

Not good. Definitely not great. But okay.

While he buttoned up a pair of blue jeans, Wonwoo heard his phone ding from his desk. Reaching over, he tapped the screen.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:05 pm ]: hi, I’m almost there

His chest fucking lurched.

Roughly jerking open his drawer, Wonwoo pulled out the first shirt he saw, tugging the white long-sleeve over his head before he wiggled his feet into a fresh pair of socks. Once Wonwoo found his glasses, he sat on the edge of his bed with his phone.

[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Okay.

[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Would you like me to come down?

God—he felt like his stomach was going to collapse.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:08 pm ]: no that’s okay :)

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:09 pm ]: it’s really pretty down here

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm]: sorry I was looking at some of the pottery / painting stuff. it’s the staircase down the hall, right?

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm ]: unit 102?

[ Wonwoo | 12:12 pm ]: Yes.

He reminded himself to breathe. Calm and slow and lifting the pressure that dug so bluntly into his lungs. The webs began to burn away. It had been a narrow escape, but it was successful.

[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:13 pm ]: heyy, I’m outside

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Wonwoo walked to the front door. His fingers brushed the knob in a flash of doubt, though his mind had already committed and now the door was pulled open and you were there, just as you said.

“Well, hello.”

He nodded at you, and then gestured for you to enter.

“Where should I take off my shoes?”

“There’s good,” Wonwoo answered, pointing to a textured mat in the corner that you proceeded to leave your simplistic heels on.

How absurd was this? Never in his life would Wonwoo imagine you at his apartment of all places—the one girl whom he adamantly tried to avoid because you were his gleaming opposite, and everything that you were, certain and in control, scared him. You were gazing around with your hands politely clasped together, ignited in the fulgurant sunlight, a small smile on your mouth.

“Wow, you’re very clean.”

Wonwoo stepped after you, maintaining a shy distance.

“It doesn’t normally look this neat,” he admitted, watching you readjust the strap of your tote bag, “I did clean for you.”

You turned to face him, and your laughter filled the space with a refreshing, long lost tone that made everything brighter. His fist clenched up anxiously and he knew his cheeks were pinkening.

“Um, cleaned or power-washed?”

He merely stared at you. Why couldn’t he fucking speak?

“Jeez, don’t look so afraid. I’m joking. And I obviously appreciate the effort.” You spun back around, continuing to walk past the coffee table and toward the kitchen. “It’s a lovely place, and it’s definitely got your personal touch. Oh—this is a cute mug.”

He breathed out, unfurling his hand and stretching his fingers until the air in his knuckles popped. You began wandering in the natural direction of the bedroom, and so Wonwoo followed, his eyes drifting up the jeans that hugged your legs and your sashaying hips, to back of your delicious-smelling hair. What was that scent, anyway?

Manuka honey?

But it was just a trivial glance, really.

Nothing meaningful.

“Is this your room?” You asked, stopping at the doorframe.

“It is.”

Biting your lip, you peaked inside and started to grin.

“Do you care if I go in?”

“No.”

He tried not to crumble right there on the floor. Wonwoo’s room was his sanctuary, a fortress, something that barred out everyone but himself and granted him the freedom to do whatever he pleased (whether it was self-detrimental or not). The thought of others in his room was a gash in that perfect sanctuary, in which he could see the walls bleed out all their comfort and familiarity. His ex was the last person to be in his room, typically sprawled across the bed with a good novel in her hand.

It was a sour, sour reminder.

“Oh, and there’s the bookshelf,” you pointed out, “how fitting.” That penetrating gaze of yours roamed his desk and his bed and all his knickknacks in between. “Hey, why’s there a balcony outside?” You then asked, settling your hands onto the window frame and leaning out, the wind fluttering minimally through the layered curtains.

“Just a remodelling error,” Wonwoo explained, “it was supposed to be removed, I think. Never happened.”

Allured by curiosity, you leaned further out, examining the ladder that led up to the building’s roof. He looked at you again, specifically the arch in your back and the way your arms were planted so firm at the windowsill. He looked at the sunlight rippling on your cheek and your lips that appeared to sparkle, like you had kissed glitter.

“You definitely go up there, right?”

“Yeah.”

Half-shutting the window as to keep the breeze flowing, you chuckled. “I figured… so, I guess we should stop dawdling and get to the meat and potatoes. Is here a good spot? Or do you want to go back to the living room?”

“We’re in my room anyways,” Wonwoo commented, pulling out his desk chair and promptly sitting down, “so, why not.”

“Cool. Let me get my laptop.”

You slipped the tote bag off your arm and sat on the edge of his freshly made bed, being careful not to rumple the sheets.

“Okay!” Your hands echoed a series of soft claps. “I’m all ready now. I’ll try my best not to ramble—oh, and please, please don’t interrupt me until I’m done. I’m going to be very pissed if I lose my train of thought and I’d like this meeting to remain pleasant.”

Wonwoo nodded. “I know.”

You flashed him a brief smile.

“So, as you know, Mingyu and I’s fifth year anniversary is coming up in December. My gift to him is this so far nonexistent book. We’ve been through a lot as a couple, and as individuals, and I want the book to fully capture this journey we’ve been on and how much I… appreciate him. Also, I’m going to introduce a second, special element—” a hand plunged into your tote bag and suddenly a video camera was revealed, “—I want to record some of our brain sessions, and, like, our voyage of figuring this shit out. I like mementos. I hope that’s okay.”

“… Do I answer?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Then, yeah. I’m okay with it.”

“Secondlyyy—” you lilted while scrolling a little ways down the notepad on your laptop, the video camera stuffed back into your flower-and-honeybee-patterned tote, “—there are a few places we’ll need to visit—not the actual places that Mingyu and I went to since we grew up nowhere near here—but places that more so have a strong resemblance to the ones in my memory. I feel like it will help me with visual aspects of the writing. I’m a very visual person. Y’know, setting up the scene and technical things like that. I like touching and feeling and seeing and breathing everything in. I want all my senses on fire, basically. Like… the way your lips feel after eating insanely hot noodles.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

Wonwoo didn’t really care. He just agreed.

“Lastly, I want to make a schedule for us. So, I’m kindly asking you to set up a schedule of your own—work shifts, doctor’s appointments, tests—the like, so I can incorporate them into my own hectic life and make us one colourful, super writing schedule.”

And then, with a big, winded sigh, you shut your laptop.

“That’s it. Done. Thoughts?”

Honestly, the entire premise didn’t sound all that terrible. He had braced himself for the worst, but you were unsurprisingly organized and had pinpointed all your desires quite clearly. Of course, he knew it was going to be sheer hell—flames up to his knees and desert sun beating on his skin like a hot skillet frying butter. You were structured and dedicated and Wonwoo was none of those things.

No doubt, Wonwoo would have to learn to deal with you.

You would either be his trigger or his pulse.

But, even worse, you would have to learn to deal with him.

“I’m just following your lead on this,” Wonwoo announced, lacklustre of much interest, resting his hands against his stomach while he rotated back and forth in the swivel chair, “whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. How soon do you want the schedule thing?”

“Like, as soon as possible.”

“Okay.”

“Do you really have no questions?”

Wonwoo scratched the side of his head.

“Uh, have you got anything written down yet?”

“Yes,” you propped open your laptop again, “an intro.”

“Oh, really?”

“Don’t question me. It was already difficult enough to write it, and I agonized over it for hours.” You pouted, slumping slightly.

He shifted up straighter in the desk chair.

“I’m sorry. I was just wondering. It’s good you started.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

Wonwoo tilted his head at you. “Do I get to read it?”

Your feet crossed and twirled together. He didn’t think you had any nervous ticks, but that was something easy to pick up on.

“Um, not yet. Not until we officially start.”

“Okay.” He answered with a gentle voice, noticing your swaying feet still again and a bit of rigidity dissipate from your body.

Well, he didn’t really know what to do at this point. Wonwoo suspected you were constrained by more tasks for today and your time with him was limited. It’s not that you were sitting in an awkward, stifling silence, but he would rather occupy himself with something rather than nothing, because nothing left his heart to race.

“Are you hungry?” He asked.

Glancing up from the laptop, you shook your head. “I ate before I came here.”

“Are you going to be leaving soon?”

At that, your face crinkled with laughter. “Sick of me already?”

Wonwoo crossed his arms. “No. Just asking.”

“Well, I have a wax appointment soon. I’ll be leaving in ten minutes or so.” Finally, you looked up, and your eyes clicked with his in a way that made the fine hairs along his neck prickle coolly. “Does that answer your question?” A subtle grin pulled at your soft lips.

“It does, yes.”

“You don’t like having people in your room, do you?”

He huffed at the observation and delved a hand through his black hair, feeling the dampness slide against his fingers. “Not particularly.”

“You should have just said that.” Rising off his bed, you closed the laptop and shoved it back into the tote bag.

Wonwoo’s entire chest jerked. It felt like a ten-story drop.

“Are you leaving?”

“Mm, I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding.”

Why did his throat close up just then? Why did his vocal cords abruptly feel so coarse and tight? Why was his heart hammering? He didn’t mean to project the wrong impression. He didn’t hate you in his room. It just felt misplaced, and new. Like picking up a puzzle piece from the box and attempting to jam it into a different puzzle.

“It’s fine. Seriously. I should be early, anyway.”

Wonwoo stood up, realizing he needed to breathe. “Um… would you like me to walk you down?”

You stopped on your way out, faced him with a pretty smile.

“That’s okay.”

But then you did something rather strange; your hand sank into his firm upper arm and suddenly you were leaning into him, so carelessly close that he could feel the fanning, light warmth of your breath against his neck. Wonwoo’s head started to spin, and he thought a cloud had enveloped the room because his vision fuzzed.

“Sorry,” you took a step back, removing your hand, “you just smell really good. Like an ocean or something. It reminds me of this beach in Puta Cana. But your hair’s all damp and fluffy so that’s probably why. That was weird. I’m sorry.” Again, you laughed.

Why the fuck did you do that? He was almost angry. But not at you. At himself. For reacting in such a giddy, stupid way. Your touch and breath had burned him and there was this sharp, cutting flare inside Wonwoo that didn’t want to let you leave.

“All good…” he mumbled, sounding groggy and slow.

“I’ll see myself out then. Bye!”

And with a final chirp, you left, the front door closing in the distance while he could only stand there, shuddering and strangely hot and beyond confused. Wonwoo moved to swing the heavy curtains shut, the entire room succumbing into its usual shadiness. He sat on the edge of his very neat bed, removed his glasses, and buckled over while rubbing his veiny, pale hands through his hair.

The feeling was so lost and suppressed to his memory.

Wonwoo didn’t even know what it was.

He was relieved you were gone, but he also wished that you were still there, leaning out his open window with the wind and sunshine in your face. It was a sight so sweet and equally intimate.

Who are you?

What are you doing in his meaningless life?

—APRIL 28TH.

Wonwoo had finished his math final with half an hour to generously spare, and now, he was sitting, bored, sketching his pencil against the last page of the thick packet. The professor wouldn’t care.

Hopefully.

On one hand, Wonwoo knew he should really just stand up and hand the damn thing in, but on the other hand, he hated—no, abhorred being the first person to return a test, especially an exam at that. Wonwoo was pretty smart. He knew that about himself and he never bothered to maintain the guise he wasn’t. Still, Wonwoo wasn’t pretentious. If he had to wait until the final fucking minute to hand the packet in, solely to avoid being the first student up, then so be it.

Besides, there wasn’t anything too pressing that required his immediate attention—minus the pertinent schedule he was supposed to make and have sent to you approximately three days ago. You had called him last night, to which the phone crackled with a loud, static bark of his name as you admonished him for his lateness.

“I told you three days ago I wanted the schedule! Three days! I can’t believe this. What’s so hard about making a schedule? Beep boop, you press some buttons on your laptop and it’s done. It would take ten minutes tops! Ugh, I’m so done with you, Wonwoo. In fact, don’t call me back—don’t even text me until you have the schedule!”

And then the line had collapsed, leaving Wonwoo to stare rather expressionlessly at his phone screen, the boy huffing out a breath of tendrilled smoke while he relaxed on the apartment roof. That had been his first experience sat on the receiving end of your seasoned quips, and it left him with this very profound emptiness, like his insides had been scooped out and the shell of his body was nothing but a wooden nesting doll. It had been such a long time since he genuinely cared about disappointing someone. Wonwoo had grown far too complacent with the feeling of disappointing himself.

That would never motivate him to do anything.

But you were different. In the sense that Wonwoo mostly remained proactive out of fear you might bite his head off.

From somewhere near the back of the room, Wonwoo heard chair legs scraping, and he eagerly flexed his fingers while observing a girl with the slickest ponytail he’d ever seen march past him to the professor’s desk. She set her packet down. He thanked her. She left.

Jesus Christ. Finally.

“All finished, Wonwoo?” His professor mumbled in a tone that hardly escaped his own lips, glancing up at the boy expectantly.

Pushing up his glasses, Wonwoo nodded.

“I suppose it’s harder for you to sit there and wait than it is to write the actual exam, isn’t it?” The professor noted with an almost undetectable smirk as he slid the test packet inside a tan-coloured folder, to which Wonwoo turned January cold.

“I don’t know.” Wonwoo shrugged, pretending to feel unbothered when in reality his skin was slithering like a snake pit at the thought of being even marginally perceived. “Maybe.”

“You have a good summer, alright?”

“Thanks. You too.”

Wonwoo swept a quick glance over the classroom right before he left, noticing that Seokmin was sat beside the wall, one hand tangled tight into his black, ruffled tresses as his pencil scribbled all over the paper like he was writing pure nonsense. He probably was.

And Wonwoo meant that in a nice-this isn’t really your sweet spot, but you’ll manage nonetheless-way. After leaving the classroom, Wonwoo thought he might go home and plunge head first into his oasis of bedsheets and flat, foam pillows that he loved so much, and permit himself to decay until it was physically impossible to lie down any longer. But he decided against it at the last minute, turning up at the café instead with his shoulder-strung book bag and the timely urge for a scone. He then sat down at his favourite table.

Pulled out his laptop.

Opened the document he was at incessant war with.

The last scene he’d written was breakfast.

“Uh, okay. Orange juice… or orange juice?”

“Did you say orange juice?”

“I did.”

“So… chocolate milk?”

“Ha! Funny... is there any sort of correlation between being a complete nerd and making such well-woven jokes?”

“Not sure. But I’ll get back to you when I find out… thanks. Your tea is sitting on the island, by the way.”

“Thank you, Won. Oh—you even put it in my Woodstock mug!”

“Yes, why are you so surprised that I remember?”

“Because it’s always hidden at the back of our cupboard, behind ten other mugs that we certainly don’t need and all our plates. I mean, I guess it’s my fault. Half of them are from my mom.”

“It’s sweet.”

“It takes up too much space. But I can’t tell her no.”

“That, you’ve got to work on.”

“The Christmas thing isn’t happening anymore, if that helps. I think the thought of having to cram all my family into our living room for a night was what motivated me the most. My mom said she’ll send us poinsettias instead. I think that’s way easier.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Believe it or not, I can assert myself. Sometimes.”

“No, no. I do believe you. I’m proud. Okay—bottoms up.”

“How’s the combination of venlafaxine and orange juice?”

“I don’t know. Juicy?”

“Better juicy than anxious?”

“You could say that.”

Right, back when Wonwoo actually had the willpower to make himself breakfast rather than slapping a mixed berry Poptart into the toaster or worse, nothing at all. Back when he could wake up before noon without feeling nauseous enough to curl into a ball and drape the sheets over his aching head. Back when he actually took his medicine. Her face beaming at him from across their table had always been like a glass of sunlight and citrus. She had been his own vitamin.

Wonwoo knew he wasn’t going to write. He was just going to stare and mope and ensnare himself in the pinwheel of memories that blew over him whenever he had the gall to reread his past literature.

The Woodstock mug. She’d taken that with her.

He decided it was strange and sometimes irritating how love, broken or not, could suture itself into even the most mundane things. Orange juice was just that—juice—the carton he used to pick up and impetuously drop into his grocery cart every so often. Now, it wasn’t juice at all, but slow mornings, steaming tea kettles, and reading together on the couch with legs all tangled up until lunch time.

Now, Wonwoo couldn’t drink it at all.

Breaking the lemon raspberry scone in half, Wonwoo dropped a flaky piece into his mouth before it got too cold, and then proceeded to close the document. There was no way in hell he would write, and while he loved drowning in his own misery in order to snuff any glimpse of productivity more than the average individual, he thought it might be worthwhile to finally start that schedule.

[ Wonwoo | 8:20 pm ]: schedule.pdf

[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: thanks

[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: don’t piss me off again

—APRIL 30TH.

For an April morning, it was surprisingly bright. The sun was out in full and glistering warmth by the time Wonwoo stepped onto the sidewalk and began pacing down to the park, practically needing to squint the entire way. He almost hated it. Early mornings were not his friend, nor were the blades of light cutting across his glasses. But today was his first writing session with you and Wonwoo knew it was more than crucial that he was the furthest thing from tardy—it would be akin to willingly setting his hands inside a burning fire if not.

You agreed to meet at the park since it was roughly equal distance between Wonwoo’s apartment and some breakfast place you wanted to stop at. He thought it was uncharacteristically thoughtful of you to shoot him a text asking if he wanted anything, though Wonwoo declined nonetheless. It was damn near impossible for him to eat a bite of food until lunch time, hence his expression softening in confusion when he at last climbed into the passenger seat of your sleek silver car and was greeted by you passing him a cold tea.

“Am I… holding this for you?” He wondered, sitting still.

You shook your head. “No. It’s yours.”

“I didn’t ask for anything.”

“Yes, I realize that. I can read, thank you.”

Wonwoo wasn’t going to argue. He simply shut his mouth, clicked on his seatbelt, and set the tea into the cup holder. He then began looking around at your car’s interior. Everything was exceptionally clean and smelled sugary, like iced gingerbread.

The thing was, Wonwoo still wasn’t very sure how to talk to you, and most often there was the stiffest frog in his throat whenever he sat around you in silence for too long. Your thumbs were tapping against your phone at light speed. It reminded him of how Seokmin was texting you back at the boy’s apartment when they were studying for finals. Wonwoo couldn’t help but wonder if Seokmin was naturally more inclined to respond to you out of friendship or fear. Maybe even a pinch of both if that was possible. Another quiet minute passed by.

“Okay, fuck, sorry,” you suddenly spluttered at random, quickly slotting your phone into the GPS holder, “just some shit with my mom. Um, okay. Yeah. We can get going.”

“All good," Wonwoo answered.

“You know where we’re off to?”

“Vaguely. The track by Caldwell High School.”

He watched you flit him a smile. “That’s the place. I’ll explain more once we get there. And, by the way, I am expecting you to drink that tea. It’s not anything crazy. It’s oolong. Only a bit of caffeine.”

“I drink coffee, you know.”

“Yes, and it probably makes you jittery and insufferable.”

Wonwoo preferred not to comment.

The car ride wasn’t too long. Actually, Wonwoo did love a good car ride. He remembered the long trips he used to take with his family to the water park when he was a child, the sensation of the breeze blowing into his face and how different shades of green would scatter in through the windows as the sun hit the tree leaves like emeralds. There was something so limerent and sadly distant about the memory that Wonwoo felt his chest hurt. Even if he were to take that same road, and smell the same breeze, and see his skin glow with the same hues of the forest, he doubted it would feel the same.

His mouth had gone awfully dry. Wonwoo then reached for the cold tea sitting in the cup holder and took a sip, suddenly very appreciative that you had thought to get him something, anyway.

And while he couldn’t be too certain, Wonwoo wanted to think that maybe this would be a good memory, too.

After the half-hour long car ride, Wonwoo made sure to stretch when he stepped out into the empty parking lot. It was cloudier now, a bit more of a breeze to help counteract the warmth that remained in the air. You came around to join him, twisting out a cramp in your leg while adjusting the purse over your shoulder.

The walk to the track field wasn’t long, no more than a few minutes, and Wonwoo obediently trailed at your side until he witnessed the bleachers slowly coming into view. It resurfaced memories from his own high school days in PE, which Wonwoo had actually been quite successful at despite his distaste for sports and their atmosphere in general. He remembered liking kickball the best.

You sighed in a wistful tone while staring across the marked asphalt and fresh April grass. “All high school tracks look the same, don’t they?” Then, you carefully set your purse onto the bleachers.

Wonwoo rolled his shoulders, taking a more observant look around. It wasn’t strikingly different from the track at his high school.

“Sure. I guess.”

“I mean, there are some differences. We had ditches by our track. Come to think of it, I honestly believe they put them there for kids to hurl in from heat stroke or over-exertion… that’s what I did, anyway. It was right before I had to do triple jump. I hated it because you had to really build up speed. I didn’t want to run. So, even if I hadn’t thrown up from heat stroke, I probably would’ve made myself throw up some other way. Straight to the nurse. She gave me a popsicle.”

He glanced at you sideways. “Seriously?”

“Mmhm.”

“You’d rather throw up than hop, like, three times?”

“I said it was the running part I didn’t like.”

Wonwoo couldn’t imagine purposefully making himself upchuck in order to get out of something. If his anxiety was terrible enough, then he wouldn’t even have to worry about it, really.

That was its own mechanism of disaster.

“Running is eighty-percent of Activity Days," Wonwoo said.

You clicked your tongue at him. “Exactly. And I’d do anything to never run. I tried to sit in one time with the seventh graders. They were in their art block and they were doing painting under the trees; birdhouses or something. But their teacher kicked me out. And she didn’t even let me take the fucking birdhouse that I was painting.”

“The nerve,” Wonwoo answered, scratching his temple.

He proceeded to take a seat on the metal bench, rubbing his hands together. He still didn’t know how Mingyu fit into everything.

“So… what’s your plan, here?”

You sat next to him, folding one leg over your thigh and proceeding to reveal a journal that you had stuffed inside your expensive bag. The tips of your fingers skimmed through a few fluttering pages, until you stopped on one in particular that was ink-abused with cursive scribbles. Wonwoo assumed you did most of your planning on a laptop, hence his surprise to learn that you actually used a journal. He had a journal himself, though it hadn’t been touched in months. It mostly contained small poetic excerpts.

Next, you pulled out a pen.

“This is how I first ran into Mingyu. At my school’s track field. He was new and good at all the activities. I swear, his name spread like wildfire. Anyways, I haven’t figured out all the bits and bobs. I want to really soak in the feeling of—oh!” Suddenly, you grasped the journal back onto your lap, the pen hitting the paper in a cursive ribbon that Wonwoo could hardly read. “I just thought of a great line. His eyes, I wanted to soak in them, like an oasis.”

You stabbed the paper again to make a period.

“Not bad,” Wonwoo commented.

“Okay, here it is!” A black case was pulled from your purse, and once you unzipped it, Wonwoo realized it was the video camera that you had initially shown him at his apartment. “Okay, I want you to film some stuff. The field, obviously. I need it from different perspectives. It will help me with setting the scene later on.”

“Why do I have to film it?”

“Because, Seokmin told me you’re quite handy with film equipment stuff, and I don’t want to drop it. So just do it, please?”

Accepting the video camera from your hand, Wonwoo sighed in agreement. Flipping open the side-screen of the camera, Wonwoo began clicking some buttons and adjusting the focus. Luckily, he was familiar with the particular camcorder thanks to a film education course he’d taken outside of school.

While you busied yourself at the bleachers with starting up your laptop, Wonwoo began collecting footage, slowly panning the camera across the vast length of the gravel track and the grassy soccer fields situated beyond. He kept a concentrated eye on the side-screen to ensure the lighting wouldn’t change too drastically. A wind had picked up from over the forest, and he could see how the clouds were consequently being pushed along like herded sheep in the sky.

Once he brushed back the floppy, black hair that kept tickling his face, Wonwoo lowered the camera and turned to you.

“So, where else should I film?”

You were typing something, and didn’t bother looking up.

“Go across the field. Film from the other side.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“I have to go all the way over there?”

“Yes. Walk, crawl. Skip, hop. I don’t care. Just do it, please.”

“Jesus Christ,” he huffed out, feeling tired and yearning to go home, “I hate how seriously you’re taking this, y’know that?”

Your fingers continued blitzing against the keyboard.

“Nobody likes a complainer.”

Ironic, he thought, but obviously kept to himself.

There wasn’t a point in expecting any sympathy from you—that, he already knew—which engendered Wonwoo’s long, trudging walk from one side of the track to the other, the wind irritably blowing his grown-out locks over his glasses every time he attempted sweeping them back. Hoisting the camera back up, Wonwoo adjusted the side-screen and began his same ritual of steadily panning the camera along the landscape.

You appeared in the view, still sat on the bleachers, though nothing about your face or figure was too discernible. It felt like you were a background character in a painting, just a little glob of acrylic.

“All done?”

Finally, you had glanced up at him with a smile.

Wonwoo nodded. “Unless you need anything else filmed?”

“No, that should be enough. The track is most important.”

“Right.”

He tried giving back the camera.

“Actually, do you mind keeping it?”

“Um, okay. But how will you look at the footage?

“Dropbox. We’ll share one. Upload the clips there.”

Wonwoo plopped himself back down on the bench, fitting the camcorder into its black case. He pulled the zipper along the seam.

“How much longer do we need to be here?”

“Not that much. Just let me finish this paragraph.”

There was a dull pain throbbing at the front of his skull, edging down to his temples—across his nose bridge where his glasses pressed in more tightly than usual. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled a deep breath, trying to escape the feeling, the nausea, the chills that were beginning to seep up his neck as the wind blew turbulently against him. It would be embarrassing if this happened here, right in front of you. The hard lump had suddenly lurched forward in Wonwoo’s throat but he leaned his head down last minute and swallowed it despite the roughness. No, everything was okay.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

Wonwoo opened his eyes, staring down at the trembling hands buried in his lap. Subtly, he pulled the sleeves of his cardigan over them. He assumed his face was reflecting a sheer, sickly opacity.

“Nothing.”

“Uh, sure. Now look me in the eyes and say that.”

Again, Wonwoo swallowed, but he managed nonetheless.

“Nothing’s wrong. I get headaches sometimes. That’s all.”

“… Oh. Well, I’m basically done here. I was gonna ask if you wanted to walk a lap around the track with me, but maybe we should just go home. I mean, how bad is it? Your headache?”

Yes, yes. Home. Wonwoo wanted to go home. He had only been away from his apartment for a solid two hours, and yet all his mind and body’s energy had completely drained. He felt dried out, withered, fragile as tempered glass. Going home sounded cosmic.

“It’s getting better. I wouldn’t mind walking with you.”

“Oh! Cool. If it gets really bad, just tell me.” You then spent a minute collecting your belongings back into the cream purse.

Wonwoo immediately looked the other way, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair, mouthing a string of guttural curse words directed at his discombobulated head. Because what the hell was he doing? All his relief and peace had just suckled itself down an invisible drain. Why on earth did he agree? Why?

“I think this will help me, too," you said, having left the shiny bleachers behind, instead kicking the pebbles at your feet, “if we walk the entire track, then it’s like we did the four-hundred meter.”

“You’re supposed to run the four-hundred meter.”

“Well, I know that.”

“I’m surprised you hate running. I mean, you walk so fucking quickly sometimes.”

He heard you snort, clearly amused by his observation.

“It’s because I’ve mastered the art of sashaying. To have a perfect sashay, you can’t walk too slow, but you also can’t walk too fast. It’s like a strut. You need to have confidence while you do it. It lets people know that you’re serious and professional. I’m not dragging my feet, but I’m also not in a rush. It’s the perfect pace.”

Wonwoo sniffled and scrunched the glasses up his nose, continuing alongside you at a pace that was rather aimless.

“I didn’t realize there was a science behind sashaying.”

“Now you know,” you declared.

Wonwoo’s upper lip quirked slightly, and a small grin appeared on his face, which was starting to dapple with colour.

“I don’t sashay, do I?”

At that, you laughed, “no, you amble.”

“Yeah, I’m an ambler… which basically means I’m an unmotivated, pointless person who will probably go nowhere in life.”

For a moment, you stopped walking, and you merely furrowed your brow at him while your forehead creased with thought. Wonwoo stopped as well. He raked back his fluttering, windswept hair and smirked, flashing his teeth. The behaviour was uncharacteristically snide and a bit of a dig at your bluntness, but he couldn’t help it.

“Don’t remember, huh?”

“No… but it sounds familiar.”

“You told me that, the day I met you—that people who walk slowly are unmotivated and pointless. Their life is a waste, basically.”

He noticed your eyes shift up toward the right, as though you were pulling the memory forward from the intricate files of your brain. And then you started to smile, and it made Wonwoo smile, too.

“Oh, I do believe I said that.” You started walking again, and he followed. “Ha! Wow, you’re right. I said that. I’m so funny. I mean, I was right. You only walk slow when you have nowhere to be.”

“I did have somewhere to be. I was going to meet you.”

“Well, then you just didn’t care.” He felt your elbow press shallowly into his rib. “See what I mean? Unmotivated and pointless. And, honestly, I would have taken your apathy as more of an insult if it wasn’t for the fact that you seem to treat most things like that.”

“So, I’m just supposed to accept that you’re calling me a loser? How do people normally react when you say things like that?”

“Things like what? They’re just my observations about the world. You are a person in this world. I was making an observation about you. Albeit, it came across strongly. But I don’t know. No one ever cared about being gentle or sugar-coating with me. Gives you tough skin, y’know? Metaphorically, of course! I always moisturize.”

Wonwoo scoffed, smiling at your nonchalance. “The way you word things is honestly fascinating.”

“Psh. How do you even remember that?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem that hard to remember. It was a pretty memorable, somewhat awful experience, to be fair.”

“Awful?” You retaliated in unprecedented disbelief, pushing into his arm until he allowed his tall frame to stumble. “Try again.”

“Interesting?” Wonwoo substituted, his heart thumping.

Your eyes were narrowed at him, glimmering with a sharpness that made his fingers clench into anxious fists.

“… That’s a little better.”

He exhaled a soft breath of relief.

As you began nearing the full circle, Wonwoo realized his head had eased from its horrible aching and the chills dampening down his neck were gone. Everything didn’t feel as awful compared to before. He was still tired, and his energy was sputtering in tiny, dying sparks, but at least his desire to crawl under the earth and degrade to his bare bones had subsided into something less morose.

“I heard you were having a get together next week,” Wonwoo decided to ask, rounding the last bend in the track.

“Oh, the dinner party?”

“Yeah. Seokmin’s helping you plan it, right?”

“He is. Which I appreciate. My mom is usually the one in charge of everything, and she loathes it. But, I mean, when we try to help her, she just ends up fretting even more—says we’re basically getting in the way and ruining it. I don’t know. She’s such a snappy perfectionist. Seokmin can have fun dealing with that.”

Wonwoo almost made a thoughtless comment in response to your story—he’s probably had eons of practice with you—though the pieces connected just in time and his mouth sealed shut.

“Your dad can’t help either?” He questioned instead.

“Ha! No way. My dad helping is a recipe for fucking disaster if I’ve ever seen it. He’s painfully bad at decorating, can hardly be trusted to cook or invite anyone from the guest list. The most my mom allows him to do is set the table.” You then scoffed, shooting a pebble forward with the tip of your shoe. “I swear, he knows exactly how to push my mom’s buttons. The faster he does it, the quicker she kicks him out and he’s absolved of all chores. What a cheat, huh?”

“Hm, yeah… is Mingyu going?”

“Of course.” You smiled. “He always goes.”

At that point, you had circled back to the bleachers. Adjusting the bag strewn over your shoulder, you heaved out a longing sigh.

“Well, that’s four-hundred meters in the books.”

“Is it everything you hoped and dreamed it would be?”

You cackled, “not even close. I think I was right to avoid it.”

—MAY 3RD.

Wonwoo slid his pharmacy badge through the time-machine until he heard the beep. After an eight-hour shift, he was hungry and tired, but Wonwoo also knew the second that he got home, his urge to eat and desire to sleep would be gone. Instead, he would spend his midnight staring up at the ceiling, thinking. About anything and everything, and nothing at all. When the first cracks of dawn light would spill in from under his curtain, then he would close his eyes.

It was all very typical.

He stood outside the store, phone in hand, waiting for Vernon to pick him up because Wonwoo hadn’t felt like walking home despite the softness of the nighttime wind and the alabaster moon’s shining ambiance. The mirage was pretty and he enjoyed it, but his feet were too sore to inch him another step. Luckily, Vernon didn’t take long.

Luckily, he was the only one of Wonwoo’s few friends with a sleep schedule just as horridly fucked up as his. It was eleven at night, but on a weekday? The dead, empty street testified for him.

“Heyy, Glasses,” Vernon sang in his throaty voice as Wonwoo climbed into the passenger seat, “you look like a prostitute standin’ there, waitin’ for me to come get your ass. But a sophisticated one.”

The interior didn’t smell heavily of weed, he noted. Thank fucking god, Vernon had finally paid someone to dry clean it. Either that, or he took the initiative into his own hands.

“I highly doubt you have ever seen a prostitute in your entire life. And the fact you think they’d be standing outside a pharmacy at one of the quietest parts on this block attests to that.”

“God, I hate when you get all technical n’ shit. Such a stiff.”

“I’m tired.”

“Yeah, well. You’re always tired. N’ for the record, I have seen a prostitute, outside Room 319. It was a week before Christmas; she had this huge coat on, walkin’ up to people in her pink heels and this crazy eyeshadow that made her eyes pop. I bet she’s a nice girl.”

“Mhm. I bet she was.”

“Oh, you’re a cunt, yeah? You don’t believe me.”

“Does it matter?”

“I’ll take you one day. Room 319’s got a table with your name on it. They’ve got this one shot, the Stabilizer— it’ll put you down like a fuckin’ sick dog but it gets you the best drunk of your life. Maybe we’ll even run into Pink Heels lady. She’s our Halley’s Comet.”

“Halley’s Comet only comes once every seventy-five years. “

“You know what the fuck I meant.”

“Not interested.”

Vernon blinked at him for a moment in the dull light, and then he sighed, forfeiting. He placed the tip of the key in the ignition, but he quickly removed it as though he remembered something.

“Wait, I’ve gotta ask—how’s it going with Her?”

Biting down on the inside of his cheek, Wonwoo reached for the seatbelt and pulled it slowly across his chest, debating how intelligent of an idea it would be to entertain Vernon’s curiosity. But he could also understand the allure. You were like this enigmatic myth that people craved to know about, even if it frightened them.

Wonwoo’s head collapsed back against the seat.

“It’s going well.”

Vernon spat out a boisterous laugh, a hand slapping down on his knee. “Jesus Christ. You’re so dry, man. That’s it?”

“I mean, it’s true. We’ve started the book. Or, she has.”

“Okay, and?” Vernon attempted to engage him further.

“And, what?”

“What’s she like, obviously? Is she actually a fuckin’ psychopath? Is she normal? Can she walk on her hands? I dunno!”

Wonwoo rubbed underneath his glasses. He didn’t really want to talk about you when you weren’t there. It felt like a Bloody Mary situation, where you’d magically conjure in the backseat to sinch your cold hands around his neck and wrangle him limp and lifeless. But then there were Vernon’s shimmeringly prying eyes that just wouldn’t stop burning Wonwoo no matter how hard he bit his tongue.

“I have nothing to say. She’s cool.”

“Oh my fuckin’ God.” Vernon slacked back into his seat, clutching at his steering wheel. “You just don’t wanna talk about it… oh! Shit. I just remembered. She’s having a dinner party tonight, isn’t she? In Hill Crest. Or as I like to call it, Rich People Neighbourhood.”

“Yeah, that’s where her parents live… how do you know that?”

“Shit!” Vernon immediately shuffled up in his seat and delivered a hard smack into Wonwoo’s shoulder. “We should drive down and check it out! Right fuckin’ now!” He was lit up with excitement, even though Wonwoo considered it a terrible idea.

“No. Absolutely not. And answer my question.”

“Was sittin’ behind Seokmin at Solar Pop, he talks really loud, happened to overhear some things—doesn’t matter. I think we should go! C’mon, allow some spontaneity into your life! Why not?”

“What the fuck do you mean, why? It’s a family party. With some close friends, which—in case you haven’t noticed—neither of us are. You can’t fucking crash a family dinner party. Who does that? Not to mention the fact that it's eleven at night. They're probably washing up. Sending people home. By the time we get there, it's lights out."

“Aren’t you her friend?”

“No. I’m just someone who’s doing her a favour.”

“Favours are from friends.”

“We’re. Not. Friends.”

“Okay—fuck, Glasses. Fine. We won’t crash the stupid dinner party. But don’t you wanna go for a drive or something? I’m tellin’ you, the houses are insane. Last time I went down there, it was for a big fuckin’ party some dude at your university threw. I think I ran this by you already, when I talked about tryin’ to chat up Her. I stopped by with my old friend—y’know, Dots, the guy that died from the overdose and everything. That party was crazy. It was in a mansion.”

“Vernon,” Wonwoo had just finished massaging the throbs at his warm temples, “we are not going to Hill Crest.”

His friend swung his head in disapproval, making a tsking sound with his teeth. “Such a fuckin’ stiff.” He started the car. “It’s the fact I know you have jack shit to do tonight, or tomorrow.”

“I’m not gonna do some stalker drive-by on her house.”

“You don’t wanna do Room 319. You don’t wanna judge a bunch of richies sittin’ up in their ivory towers. I mean, it’s not like we’re eggin’ them or spray painting fuckin’ curse words on their eight-door garages. What do you wanna do?”

Wonwoo rolled down the window and leaned his face toward the moonlight, to which he could feel the wind brush up against his skin in feathery strokes, as though it were caressing him. He knew that Vernon meant in a general sense rather than in the heat of the moment. But in a general sense, Wonwoo would rather not be anywhere at all. He would rather do nothing, or even exist.

“Can you just take me home? Please?”

Vernon exhaled a defeated gust of breath and began to angle his tires away from the curb, the pharmacy lights pulled behind them.

“Yeah, ‘course. Mr. Boring.”

—01:49

Wonwoo hadn’t been able to fall asleep since Vernon dropped him off a couple hours ago. He’d anticipated that. Usually, Wonwoo wouldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t toss or turn, or pace circles around his bedroom, or count down from one-hundred, because even if he did, none of it would work. His mind would still be wide awake.

Hence Wonwoo’s decision to grab his phone. Staring at a lurid screen definitely wasn’t going to help, though he wasn’t trying to sleep, anyway. That conversation with Vernon was repeating in his head like a chattering bird, pushing him, pushing him, pushing him to find your Instagram and dig into your pictures because now Wonwoo was thinking of your dinner party and how vehemently you seemed to hate it. He saw that you had posted something quite recently, around the same time Wonwoo had left the pharmacy.

For a moment, his thumb hovered over the post.

He didn’t want to press it because he didn’t care.

Or, maybe he did.

There were multiple pictures in the set, and Wonwoo flicked through all of them. Some were of food, close-ups of your jewelry—you even included a picture with Seokmin. But then Wonwoo had settled on the last photo and something in his stomach convulsed.

He recognized the dress like a flash of light—the sapphire one with the glimmering detail that you had modelled for him at the expensive boutique in the mall. Of course, that arm hanging cheekily low around your hip belonged to your boyfriend, Mingyu. He had a champagne glass pressed to his lips, fitted in his black suit with his hair neatly combed and styled into place. The smugness in his face was stifling. Wonwoo rolled onto his stomach, his eyes refusing to drift from the picture for even an instant. He just kept staring.

Staring and thinking. Staring and thinking.

One minute spent staring at your smile.

The next minute at the low placement of Mingyu’s hand.

Another minute staring at your sparkling dress.

The next minute at Mingyu’s brutally cocky expression.

He would switch back and forth.

But Wonwoo didn’t really care. He was just bored.

And alone with his thoughts.

—END OF PART PART ONE.

NOTE! while i truly cherish & adore all comments, pls refrain from remarks such as "pls post part x" "i need part x" "when are you posting part x" while i do understand the sentiment, i find these comments very dismissive & kinda disrespectful! i don't prefer to post series fics and so i don't receive these often, but pls note that if you comment this i will delete the comment!

the fic itself is completely done, so all i have to do is get the parts ready for posting. however, bc this is the first part, i don't have a set posting schedule just yet. i think it will depend on roughly how long those who read the fic take to finish it! but i will be sure to make a post about it or include the schedule in part two once i figure it out!

again, thank u so much your ur patience :3

much luv!! 💕

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