#anyways I’m now writing two things I have no business writing

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The Rising Empress (Bang Chan) - Chapter 8 - Envy and Power

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Chapter 8 - Envy and Power

Chapter word count: 7.5k words

Each new day brings new opportunities, Aristia thinks as she steps out of her room with resolve. She wants to accomplish two things today:

1. Reading at least one book on the history of the Empire,

and

2. Punishing that maid – Juliana.

As her doors open, she is shocked to see someone else standing in front of her room; not her usual guard.

“Changbin?” Her eyes widen.

“Your Majesty.” He bows respectfully. “I’m glad to see you’re in good health.”

“What are you doing here?”

“His Highness informed me that I will be your personal aid from now on. I was supposed to come yesterday, but there was some… business… to take care of.”

“Business?” Aristia inquires and notices the way Changbin is carefully looking from left to right to make sure no one is able to hear them.

Her maids are a safe enough distance away.

“We needed to dispose of your father’s body.” He whispers, and Aristia is glad she now has Changbin, as she’s always thought of him as an open book that keeps her in the loop.

She truly didn’t expect Chris to give him to her, and the fact that he decided to do so before their talk yesterday warms her heart a little bit.

Changbin’s always been talkative, which she would exploit to the hilt.

“What did you do with it?”

“Burned it. We also made sure to lock all of his guards in the dungeon, to hopefully get some more information from them. The Emperor opted for that instead of killing them.”

“I see.”

“However, he decided to let one of them go and sent him back to the Kingdom with an official letter declaring war.”

Aristia’s eyes widened.

“Truly? Wouldn’t it have been better to play innocent to buy some more time?”

“The Emperor also thought of that, but Seungmin – one of his assistants – suggested owning up to it and blaming the King for your injuries. Would be better for the people’s morale, he said.”

“Seungmin… I see.” She smiles. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re going to be my personal guard. I’ll be in your care.” Aristia smiles and Changbin’s lips switch to a proud smirk.

“I’ll be the best guard in the world! You can count on me!”

“Great. Let’s go now.” She chuckles.

“To the dining room, I hope. I have strict instructions from the Emperor to make sure you eat this morning.”

“It’s not even morning anymore.” She chuckles.

“Even more so to not go on an empty stomach.”

Aristia rolls her eyes but follows Changbin to the dining room anyway.

She is on her own, but this time, her food comes out perfectly fresh and tasty. It turns out that starting the day with a good meal sets you up for a good mood.

~

“Alice, grab the third book on the second row there and put it in the stack. Ah, and the fifth book on the 8th row. They seem related.”

“I’m on it, Your Highness!” The young girl exclaims excitedly as she picks the requested books and places them in Juliana’s arms.

The second maid is now holding over a dozen books that look heavy to say the least. Her hands must’ve surely gone tired.

“Alright, I think this is all for today. Let’s go sit down at that desk over there. Do you know how to read, Alice?”

“Uhm… I do recognise most letters, but I’m still learning.” The young maid smiles.

“Great. Then pick up the third book in Juliana’s arms and sit down. I want you to know how to read and write. If you feel like you’re not able to do it on your own, feel free to say so, and I will arrange a tutor for you.”

“Your Majesty! I could never accept such grace… I will do my best!”

“Good.” Aristia smiles and pets the child on the head. She’s only 5 years younger, but they are on completely different levels as far as maturity goes.

Alice is still an innocent child, whereas Aristia never had the chance to grow up surrounded by such innocence. However, Aristia is aware that Alice was brought up in the Capital, which surely means that she’s clever to say the least.

“What should I do, Your Highness?” Juliana asks.

“Oh, you’re already doing your sole task of the day. You are to hold my books so I can get them easily.”

“But Your Highness, I could place them on a chair, or on a table, or-”

Aristia raises her hand in the air to stop her from talking.

“Have I requested your opinion?” She smiles cunningly.

“No, but-”

“Then stay there quietly, will you? This is a library.”

“But-”

“Juliana.” Aristia turns her whole body to face the maid. Her eyes are cold.

“I understand you are upset at me, however-”

“Upset at you?” Aristia chuckles. “Tell me, do the insects you pass by in the streets upset you at all?”

“Your Majesty…” Juliana’s eyes widen, unable to believe that the Empress compared her to an insect.

“Defy me one more time and you’ll wish you'd been born an insect instead.” She warns and slaps the top of the book stack as hard as she can, making Juliana lose her balance and drop all of them on the floor.

With a low chuckle, Aristia continues her torment:

“Oh my, look at the mess you made. You should clean that up and resume your position quickly. And be careful, the books are the Emperor’s property. If you damage one, you could be punished.”

Aristia sits down and opens one of the books, beginning to read about the founding rulers of the Empire. They are described as cruel, but well-respected between the people, and Aristia can’t help herself but think that she might be a bit cruel to Juliana as well.

She wonders if she’s at least well-respected outside the Palace’s walls, since she’s brought peace to the Empire. However, with the upcoming war, she starts to worry, and a new plan starts brewing in her mind.

She doesn’t pay much attention to it now, as she has something more important to focus on: her health, acquiring knowledge as soon as possible, and making sure she does a good job as the Empress.

After at least two of these conditions are met, she will execute the plan as well.

~

Aristia’s days are productive enough; with the library pass, she makes acquaintances with the books in the library and reads to her heart’s content. She thought it was going to be hard focusing on her books with Juliana throwing daggers with her eyes in her back, but it was surprisingly easy to ignore her, despite her sighing and fidgeting annoyingly often.

Juliana doesn’t even complain much anymore; she’s gotten used to Aristia telling her to clean the same spot on the floor over and over again, to carry heavy books and keep holding them, and to even run certain errands, although for the more important ones, Mari and Alice were mostly trusted to handle them.

Despite going to the library and reading every day, it’s been a period of resting for Aristia; her back is a bit better, with almost no risk of the wounds opening back up, she has been eating well and gaining a bit of weight, and she’s been sleeping well enough during the night.

With a new week starting, there are many things she wants to do: first of all, there’s the meeting with Seungmin and Jisung, who will have to teach her how to do her job as the Empress.

Then, there’s the matter of the court ladies. Ever since Arabella’s been sent away, they’ve all been living quietly between the Palace’s walls, most likely afraid they’re going to meet the same fate and have their lives uprooted by the cruel Empress, as they like to shush between themselves.

Although Aristia’s never been interested in what they have to say, she doesn’t want to let it go like this either. So, she decides to host a brunch and invite them all, to become acquainted properly. It’s about time they have a chat.

She settles on a time and place a few weeks away, and begins writing letters, sealing them with hot wax and with the Empire’s seal.

~

“It’s a pleasure to officially meet you, Your Highness.” Han bows, and Seungmin follows suit.

After they introduce themselves, they sit down in front of Aristia’s desk. Chris has given her a room to turn into an office, specifically to do her job somewhere outside her bedroom.

“So,” Aristia begins, “let’s start from the beginning. What should I know about you two?”

“About us?” Jisung’s eyes widen. “Uhm, well-”

“We are mere subjects of the Emperor, Your Highness. There’s nothing of importance to be known about us.” Seungmin intervenes.

“Is that so? I’d still like to know what you two are like. If I am to choose somebody, I have to know who I’m dealing with, unless you’d be able to suggest a different method?” She challenges Seungmin, whose lips turn into a thin line.

Truth is, she already knows who she’s going to pick, but learning things about Chan’s people is never a bad idea.

“Your Highness, I’ve been training to become an advisor ever since I was born, as my father himself was an advisor.” Jisung replies, his cheeks growing a subtle pink tint.

“What became of your father?”

“He unfortunately caught a severe illness and never recovered. He left us a few years ago.”

“I see. I’m sorry for your loss. What about you, Seungmin?”

“As I mentioned, there’s nothing of importance Her Highness should know about me. I am but a clever man and the Emperor thought I deserve the honour of serving the Empire.”

“I believe the modest look doesn’t suit you too well.” Aristia attacks, but Seungmin only deflects.

“Regarding your future work, what exactly do you wish us to teach you?” He asks coldly. “We’ve been doing a very good job so far, so, perhaps Your Highness’ efforts would be better spent someplace else.”

“See, we don’t agree on that, unfortunately. I have enough knowledge in budgeting and accounting, but a brief explanation on how you’ve managed until now would be greatly appreciated.”

“We are in your service, Your Majesty.” Han bows.

“Thank you, Jisung. Then, what should I know of?”

The two men begin talking to the Empress, explaining all sorts of concepts regarding the way they’ve been dividing the work. It’s not simple, but it’s also not impossible, and with a bit of training, Aristia is sure she would have no issues taking over.

There’s a stark contrast between the ways Jisung and Seungmin are explaining things, she notices. While Jisung tries to explain every other term, unaware of how much knowledge Aristia possesses, Seungmin speaks unfiltered, using any term, no matter how complicated or hard to understand.

“So, who do you wish to assist you further?” Seungmin asks impatiently after about an hour. “As you might be aware, there are a lot of things to do, and keeping both of us here-”

“Yes, you’re right, Seungmin. Well then, Jisung,” she starts, and Seungmin places his hands on the handles of his chair, preparing to stand up, “you may go finish whatever work you have. Seungmin shall assist me from now on regarding this matter.”

“What?” Seungmin’s eyes grow wide, annoyance plastered all over his face, while Jisung bows and exits the room. “What do you mean? I thought that-”

“What, did you think that you’d get out of this if you acted like an asshole?” Aristia chuckles.

“Like an asshole-” Seungmin replies baffled, leaning back into his chair. “I see how it is. You think that because of that high title of yours, you can act however you please and everyone would bend over backwards for you and your wishes. But you see, Your Highness? Respect is not conveyed by your title, it’s earned. These cheap tactics might work on everyone else, but not on me.”

“And that goes both ways, Seungmin. You have yet to prove to me that you are worthy of my respect.” She answers with a sneer.

“Why me, then? Jisung is clearly a way better fit for you.”

“Because you declared war on the Kingdom.”

“Is that all? We have a common enemy and now you want us to be friends?”

“Nothing of that sort. I just found it a clever way to boost the people’s morale, as they now have a new objective in mind: protect the Empress at all costs. You did well.”

Seungmin sits straight in his chair and looks at Aristia, dead in the eyes.

“I will teach you, but only if you manage to solve this issue we’ve been having throughout the Empire.”

“A test?” She chuckles. “Let’s hear it.”

“The economy’s been plummeting for no apparent reason. We are the most prosperous in the continent when it comes to trades, and yet- just look at the Empire’s budget, and you’ll notice a gap.”

“Have you already solved this issue?” She asks.

“Not yet. It just came to our attention the other day when we rummaged through whatever papers we’d use to teach you.”

“That’s a bit unfair, isn’t it?” Aristia chuckles, but Seungmin only smirks.

“Those are my terms. Take them or not, there is nothing for me to lose. You have until the end of the week to find a cause and a solution to this problem.”

“Fine. I shall think about it. You may go.”

Seungmin stands up, satisfied that he’s probably won a battle against the Empress. This is a delicate matter that neither he nor Jisung know the answer to so far, that has yet to be brought to the Emperor’s attention, so solving this task would most likely be impossible for Aristia. 

He is almost elated that he won’t have to teach her anything. His aversion is very much still there; before, he hated her because she was the King’s daughter, and now, he hates her because she caused ruckus by forcing them to start a war when they are still unprepared.

He simply dislikes her and everything she stands for, and this is not going to change.

~

Aristia studies long and hard about this. What could possibly cause the decline of the economy in such a prosperous nation?

She tries to recall every economy book she’s ever read, and she reads countless more in the following days, but still, she is unsure.

Could it be counterfeit coins?

That’s the only idea that comes to mind as she reads the 15th book on the topic this week, but even if this is the answer, what would a solution be?

Seungmin mentioned explicitly to ‘find a cause and a solution’.

Ugh. Aristia frowns and stands up to grab another book from Juliana’s stack. She’s not complaining as much this week.

She briefly glances through the large library’s windows and notices the dark sky outside.

How much time did I spend here today? She wonders, but it doesn’t matter, for tomorrow is already Friday, and unless she finds a solution as well, she’s doomed.

Of course, she could always study from Jisung, but there’s just something about Seungmin that she knows would make him a better fit for her. She likes his ideas.

As she sits back down at the table, she takes one more glance at Juliana and lets out a small sigh.

“Juliana, do you know how to read and write?”

“I do, Your Highness.” She replies quickly.

“I see. Put those books on the table and pick up the third one, the one about the noble families. I need you to write a summary for me about every relevant family of the Empire, their children, and specifically, their daughters.”

“Your Highness…” Juliana immediately follows soon, her eyes showing gratitude for the first time ever.

“I need your report by Monday.” Is all Aristia says. She’s punished Juliana enough, and she’s ready to finally give her a chance to be useful to her.

Before the maid can reply, Alice enters the library and comes running towards the table, and panting, she tells the Empress that she must go to her rooms immediately.

“Why, what’s wrong?” Aristia asks.

“It’s an urgent matter, Your Highness.” The young girl responds, so Aristia instructs Juliana to see to her task and put all the books back in their place when she’s done, while she follows Alice back to her rooms.

When they get there, a selection of nightgowns and lace underwear lays flat on the bed.

“What is this…?”

“My lady, His Grace sent word that he expects you in his rooms tonight, so I selected a few beautiful pieces appropriate for such an occasion.”

“Alice… what?” Aristia’s cheeks turn red. She examines the clothing once more, and she feels that same stomach dropping sensation she felt during her wedding night.

She also remembers the way Chris treated her that night, how he practically ripped her garments just to show her how easily it would be for him to overpower her, and she shudders.

Does he really want to lay with me?

“My Lady, I think this robe would be most appropriate, as it comes easily undone.”

“Alice, you’re barely 14 of age! How do you know about these matters?!”

“I have to serve Your Grace to the best of my abilities!” She counters and urges Aristia to get changed. “Besides, I’m 14, not 4.”

“Too young!” Aristia frowns but obliges and instructs Alice to get out of the room.

She feels nervous about this for some reason, as she examines herself in the mirror. Sure, she looks beautiful, but this attire is way too inappropriate and revealing!

Ugh, why does he want to see me?

And why do I have to wear this?

Aristia grimaces when someone knocks on the door and pulls her out of her thoughts. She quickly grabs something to put over the skimpy outfit and tells them to enter.

“Your Highness, are you ready to go?” Changbin asks, blushing at the sight of the Empress. Even though she is covered in a robe, he has a rich enough imagination to know what might happen tonight, she thinks, and this thought makes Aristia grimace again.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

The walk towards the Emperor’s chambers is quiet, as the hallways are empty so late into the night. Aristia yawns and suddenly feels tired, realising how many hours she spent in the library the past few weeks.

Even today, she lost track of time and it’s now a little bit past midnight. Why did Chris ask for her so late?

They reach the Emperor’s room and Lee Know nods shortly before opening the doors.

To her surprise, both him and Changbin follow her inside. She looks at them bewildered, before turning her gaze at Chris who was sitting at his desk and got up as soon as she entered.

“Good evening, Aristia.” He greets, then looks at her clothes and rubs his eyes with his thumb and index finger. “What the hell are you wearing?”

“Clothes?” She replies, annoyed. She doesn’t understand what’s happening.

“Yeah, I can see that, but- oh, God.” He goes to his wardrobe in slight annoyance and pulls out a thick fur coat, similar to the one she’s worn on her wedding night.

“Well, you asked for me at midnight, so I thought- ugh, nevermind, give me that.” She snatches the fur coat with annoyance and puts it on her shoulders, tightening it around her body. “Why did you send for me?”

“It’s time for you to hold your end of the bargain.”

“My end of the bargain?” She tilts her head in confusion.

“That’s right. I gave you Changbin, so it’s your turn to give me what you promised.” Chris points to the guard and chuckles, and Aristia rolls her eyes. Changbin blushes a bit more, unaware of the deal between them, but he is nonetheless flattered that Aristia asked for him specifically.

“Alright. Here?” Aristia asks.

“No. We have a meeting to go to, so let’s make haste.”

Chris goes to his large bookshelf and pulls out a few books, uncovering a lever. Aristia watches him with curiosity as he pulls down the lever and the bookcase begins to spin, revealing a secret passage.

“Come on.” He urges Aristia to go first, and she does, despite it being hard to see.

They walk for a good 10 minutes until they reach the far end of the passage that ends with a large wooden door. Chris takes out a key and unlocks the door, opening it, revealing a room with multiple other entrances, which indicates that multiple other bedrooms or common rooms must be connected together through passages throughout the Palace.

The walls of the room are covered with maps of the world and bookshelves, and in the centre, a large table with ten chairs around it occupies the space.

“Take a seat.” Chris instructs, and she follows his orders, sitting down at the table and looking at the faces of everyone around it.

She recognises some – Seungmin and Jisung – but there are also several men she’s never seen before around the palace. Most of them are a lot older than her and Chris, but there is also one man who seems around her age, with pitch black hair and fox-eyes dark enough to make anyone shudder.

They don’t bow at her, nor do they bother to introduce themselves, but their auras are all the same; they exude power, and she believes they must be strong individuals that have earned a spot at this table through their own devices.

A grin threatens to spill on her lips at the thought that she has also earned a seat at this gathering of formidable people, at least for tonight, but she is quick to control her expression the moment her eyes dart again around the unfamiliar figures, and she notices the way they are looking at her.

She doesn’t pose any significance to them, she’s not of any authority, and they don’t respect her. Especially the man her age, whose eyes look disinterested in her at best. If not for the golden crown on her head, no outsider would realise she’s Empress by these men’s behaviour towards her.

Everything changes on their faces the moment Chris sits down, though. The demeanour of these unfamiliar men morphs into something different, and they share a completely distinct look, contrasting the one they’ve given her. Chris’ simple presence projects strength, but in a different way compared to the other men.

The way his head sits on his shoulders, and the way he places his arms steadily on top of the table is so authoritative, it’s immediately noticeable that he has the power and that you must respect him, and every man around the table does so, undoubtedly.

Their eyes sparkle with veneration, and Aristia becomes, for the first time in her life, envious. She remembers the conversation she had with Chris, how she told him she wants more, but now that she is sitting at this secret meeting, the feeling only gets amplified a million times.

She wants way more. She wants power. She wants these people to look at her the same way they look at Chris, and she wants a permanent spot at this table.

“So,” Chris starts, looking at Aristia. He immediately notices that burning in her eyes that attracted him since day one, and his heart skips a beat. He starts wondering what could be going through her head, what made her eyes spark that way, but time is scarce and there’s more important matters to focus on. He continues. “Since we’re all here, let’s start the meeting.”

They start discussing various things, such as problems that arose between the nobles, a possible rebellion which might put the crown in danger unless they take action, and eventually, they move onto the most troubling matter: the upcoming war.

“Aristia, you told me you have some crucial information that might help us. Let’s hear it.” Chris urges her to speak, and for the first time since the meeting starts, she does.

“First of all, my father’s army is led by a very powerful man. He’s called the General, and you must’ve heard about him in legends, as he had won all his wars. All of the legends are true, and he is a truly frightening and strong man. However… in case you battle against him, there is a secret no one knows, a weakness.”

“Which is?” Lee Know asks, his sharp eyes observing Aristia.

“His left eye. He’s been stabbed in it, and his current eye is a prosthesis our doctor created specifically for him. It looks natural enough to fool anyone, but he has no sight from it.”

“That’s impossible. You said so yourself: the legends are true, which means he’s never been scratched in battle. How would he lose his eye?” Lee Know counters with scepticism.

“He didn’t lose it in battle. My father took it out when drunk one night. You see, he was overly fearful that people would betray him, so… he asked the General if he would sacrifice his whole life for the Kingdom and for him, and upon his agreement, my father asked him to prove it. ‘How?’ he asked. ‘You must give me something of importance. Something you truly value. Unfortunately, your limbs are crucial, so how about this?’ my father replied, and pulled out his blade. You can imagine the rest yourselves.”

“And how did you come to know about it?” Chris asks, and Aristia averts her gaze.

“I was there… when he stabbed him.”

“Alright… that’s good to know. His senses might not be as sharp on his left side, then.” Changbin nods.

“Now, what do you know of his army?”

“Right…” Aristia nods and starts explaining the way their army is divided. She seems to impress most people around the table with the knowledge she has on the matter, as it’s truly unexpected. She is even able to give an estimated number of soldiers from when she still lived in the Kingdom.

Most people are amazed, with the exception of the fox-eyed man, whose gaze remains dark and unchanging.

She decides to ignore his hostility and continues telling the men about the Kingdom’s usually discussed strategies, their strengths and their weaknesses, and she tries to convey as much information as possible, despite this not being her strong suit. Truth be told, she doesn’t know much about the military; it never interested her to read about. However, she does her best to remember what she’s heard her father and the General talk about, and by the end of her talk, Changbin and Lee Know, as well as three other men she doesn’t recognise that are sitting around the table begin talking about their own strategies, using the new intel from Aristia.

“Do you all know what you have to do?” Chris asks after a little while, observing everyone. They all nod, so Chris stands up. “Alright, then. We will retire for the night. I’ll see you in a week from now, unless other problems arise.”

He comes behind Aristia’s chair and helps her stand up as well, and he guides her back to the passage. He opens the large wooden door and steps through it with her, before locking it.

“What about Lee Know and Changbin?” She asks, noticing that it’s just the two of them, but her mind is still stuck on the meeting, and on the new information that a week from now, another one will be held.

One that she has no spot at.

Yet.

“They’ll go to their own rooms for the night when they’re done planning.”

“I see.”

The walk back to Chan’s room is quiet except for their steps that echo through the long passage. When they finally reach the room, the bookshelf turns back in its place, making it impossible to notice there is something hidden behind it, unless you knew it was there.

Aristia finds it fascinating.

“So…” She starts, pulling the fur coat closer to her. “I guess I should go.”

“It might be better to sleep here, or at least stay until the morning.”

“Here?”

“Unless you want people to start talking again about how you got kicked out in the middle of the night.” He chuckles, slight mockery behind his words. “You asked me to make you Empress, and I’m giving you a chance to secure your position.”

“What, do you want to sleep with me now?” She asks in slight annoyance.

“No, Aristia.” He sighs. “I’m just thinking of how to prevent any more rumours from circling around you. I won’t touch you, so you can relax. And next time I ask for you, don’t wear such scanty clothes, and there’ll be nothing to fear.”

She chuckles, to Chan’s surprise, and drops the fur coat, going to the large bed and pulling the covers off to make enough space for her to go under.

“How’s your back?”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore. Sometimes it’s sore, but Hyunjin comes to apply a salve if I ask for him.”

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Thanks. Aren’t you going to come to bed?” She asks with a frown, noticing that Chris is heading to his desk.

“… No, I don’t think so.” He shakes his head with a smile.

“Why not? It’s big enough for both of us.”

“I just have some work to do. Worry not and go to sleep first.” He urges her, and she pouts a bit before covering herself with the comfortable duvet.

“Good night.”

“Night.”

She closes her eyes and lets herself listen to every sound Chris makes. He’s not loud at all; sometimes, he flips a paper, or tuts, or sighs, but other than that, she can only hear his breathing.

She continues laying on the bed with her eyes closed for some time, but despite being fully relaxed, it rubs her the wrong way that Chris keeps working instead of coming to sleep.

She decides to sit up and observes him for a while, until he notices she’s not asleep.

They look at each other for a few moments without saying anything.

“What are you working on?” Aristia asks eventually, supporting her head on her knees.

“I’ve been reading some reports from the Capital. It appears a new disease has been spreading and no one knows why. A lot of people have died already. Hyunjin’s team is investigating as well.”

“Oh.” Aristia replies. Once again, she’s out of the loop.

She’s at least glad that this time Chris is the one to fill her in, and not Changbin.

“What are the symptoms?” She asks.

“Stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhoea, cramps, fever… Hyunjin said it might be food poisoning. There was an issue with a trade a few years ago where the Empire received spoiled goods, and a lot of people passed away after eating them.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“We assumed it was a disease at first, we tried treating the symptoms, but as the people kept consuming the spoiled goods, they kept getting sicker. Hyunjin was, at that time, a doctor somewhere in the countryside, and he suggested which food is causing the issue. It’s what earned him a place in the Palace, actually.”

“That’s amazing, he’s a very talented doctor.”

“He is, indeed. I’m just dejected that we didn’t find him earlier. We’ve lost important people because of it.”

“Like… Jisung’s dad?”

“… Yeah. How do you know about him?”

“He told me the other day…”

“If only I would’ve met with Hyunjin earlier…”

“It’s not your fault.” Aristia tries to console him, but Chris still looks dejected. He looks back at his papers and then changes the subject, back to the Empire’s actual problem.

“I was looking at all the reports of the trades and trying to figure out what the spoiled goods might be this time.”

“Maybe it’s not food. It might be water.” She shrugs, and Chris raises an eyebrow.

“Water?”

“Yeah. Contaminated water… wouldn’t it lead to the same symptoms?”

“I’m not sure. I guess? I need to talk to Hyunjin about it tomorrow. How did you think of this, though?”

“I’ll tell you if you turn off the lamp and come here.” She grins and pats the empty space beside her in bed.

Chris chuckles but stands up anyway and comes to the bed to lay down. He doesn’t go under the covers; instead, he sprawls out on top of them, supporting his head with a hand while he watches Aristia with curiosity.

“Let me guess, you read about it in a book.”

“No, not this time.” She chuckles.

The air between them feels light and relaxed, and so she lays down as well.

“My mother’s maid has taken care of me since I was born. She was like a mother to me. Since I didn’t have the King’s affection, other servants mistreated me quite often, if my maid wouldn’t pay attention. I would get sick often, despite my food being fresh, and we couldn’t figure out why. One day, though, she caught one of the maids washing some apples with dirty water, and suddenly, all my stomach issues made sense. She took care of all my meals going further, until she passed.”

“Aristia…” Chris immediately frowns, seemingly upset about the new information. “You’ve received such harsh treatment ever since you were little…?”

“It’s fine. It’s all in the past.” She says, watching Chan’s gaze. Her eyes get adjusted quickly to the dark, and his sparkle in the moonlight.

“I’m sorry… how was it after she passed away?”

“Well … let’s just say that the way I was treated here was light compared to how it was in the Kingdom.” She chuckles lightly, but Chan’s expression only falls more.

“Do you want to talk more about it?”

“Not necessarily. Only if you want to hear it.” She shrugs.

“I want to hear it.”

She hums and thinks about how to begin, and a few seconds later, she resumes talking.

“I was given old food most days, and I would be sick often. I wasn’t allowed to get out of my rooms much, but thankfully I had access to the library. My father called for me one night and that’s when it all started… and it got progressively worse with each passing week. I never knew when to expect the next beating. It honestly broke my heart when he came here and did the same thing. I thought… I foolishly thought I’m safe here.” She lets out a bitter laugh that’s pulling at Chan’s heartstrings.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He places his hand on top of hers. “No one should ever have to go through something like this, let alone a child. And you are safe. You are safe here…”

“What was your childhood like?” Aristia smiles softly, trying to ignore his last words, as they seem meaningless. To her surprise, he actually opens up.

“My childhood?” He hums. “My parents were lovely people, but my mother passed away soon after Felix’s birth, and my father was poisoned a few years ago. That’s when I got on the throne. I was your age.”

“You became Emperor at 18, just as I became Empress at 18.” She replies in thought, knowing how much this title weighted on her shoulders. It must’ve been much more difficult for Chris, whose responsibility was so much bigger.

“Yeah.” He lays down completely, putting his head on the pillow and closing his eyes briefly. He feels tired, worn out, but he doesn’t think he can sleep.

He never can.

“How was he poisoned?” She asks almost in a whisper, making Chris open his eyes again.

“A noble’s son worked as a butler here. They were a loyal family, and that’s precisely why their son was sent here, but they were secretly planning a rebellion. We simply weren’t careful enough.”

“I’m sorry…” She gets out of her covers and lays down as well, on her side, looking at Chan’s side profile. He is a beautiful man, she notices once again, and she is reminded of the first time she’s seen his face in the church. It feels like a lifetime ago, even if it’s only been a year.

Back then, she would’ve never thought she’d spend a night with him talking casually like this.

“Is this why you can’t sleep?” She whispers again, and she decides to move one of her hands towards his head, ignoring her rapidly pulsing heart.

When her fingers touch his hair, she halts temporarily, waiting for a reaction from him, but he simply closes his eyes, so she digs her fingers deeper, scratching his scalp lightly with her nails.

“Yeah. It’s a sad realisation, knowing that you might get killed any second, unsure if you can truly trust anyone around you.”

Just then, he suddenly grabs her wrist and turns on his side as well, looking into her eyes.

“Can I trust you, Aristia?” He asks, but before she has a chance to answer, he continues speaking. “Tonight, at the meeting… you surely noticed that only important people are allowed there. I trusted you blindly, which resulted in everyone else trusting your words as well. I didn’t make a mistake, did I?”

She immediately shakes her head.

“But how can I know that?” He whispers and releases her wrist, showing a sad smile. “Can you prove it somehow?”

“How, Chris?” She asks. Her chest grows tight, as his expression is tugging at her heart. She’s never before wished so strongly for someone to believe her.

He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, but then begins talking again, and his words simply don’t sit right within her heart.

“I guess there’s no way to find out before it happens. If I am to die in this war-”

“I’m sincere, Chris. You can trust me.” She says with resolve and breathes in, trying to get enough courage to move. She decides to stop thinking so much, and closes her eyes tightly, getting closer to him and pressing her lips against his.

Chris opens his eyes wide and doesn’t understand what’s going on for a few seconds. Aristia moves away and is glad for the darkness of the room, as her cheeks must be blood red.

“Uhm, I-” She starts, but is cut off by Chan’s lips on hers, his left hand finding its way to her waist, holding it tightly.

Their kiss deepens as Chris bites her lower lip, making her gasp slightly, moment when he slides his tongue inside her mouth.

Their tongues touch numerous times feverishly, and Aristia’s right hand finds Chan’s neck. They keep kissing passionately, gasping for air, when Chris ends up on top of her. She makes space for him between her legs as her hands move to his back, fingernails touching him through his shirt, and when they get down enough, she finds a patch of skin around his lower back, and she slides her hands under.

Chris can’t get enough of her sweetness, and he keeps kissing her passionately until he feels her nails scratching his back, and he pulls away to look at her. She looks so beautiful under him, moonlight radiating on her skin, and fuck, her skimpy clothes are not helping the growing bulge in his pants. He wants to devour her completely, to make her his, and his fingers move to the small cord keeping her nightgown together.

He hesitates for a few seconds, looking into her eyes that seem as full of desire as his. Those beautiful, beautiful eyes that enticed him since day one with their powerful, alluring burning.

“May I?” he asks, and she nods eagerly, closing her eyes in anticipation. This is a stark contrast to their first night, when, despite them not sleeping together, he ripped her robe open to show her how easily it is to overpower her.

He doesn’t want to overpower her this time, or control her, or dominate her. He simply wants to bring her pleasure, and to chase his own by using her body, as long as she wants it as well. He wants them to be Emperor and Empress, husband and wife, equal to one another as they become one.

Having her accord, his fingers untie the robe that reveal her underwear quickly: a two-piece lacy set that hugs her body perfectly. He touches her breasts through the lace bralette, and she lets out a soft moan, rolling her head back.

“You’re so beautiful, Aristia.” He whispers, connecting his mouth to her neck, sucking patches of skin and marking her with his kisses.

She arches her back at the contact, and Chris takes advantage of this moment by sliding his hands under her, unclasping her bra. He takes it off swiftly, watching her breasts bounce as her back connects to the mattress once more.

He moves his mouth lower, taking her left breast into his hand as his lips latch onto her right, and he begins sucking on her nipple, while his fingers play with the other.

Aristia squirms under him, trying desperately to clench her legs together as she feels her arousal building up, but Chan’s body is still between her legs, so she is unable to move much. However, he notices her urgency, so he decides to spare her of her suffering.

He begins moving his mouth lower, and when he reaches her abdomen, he presses a long kiss on her belly as his fingers entangle the hem of her underwear, beginning to take it down.

“Chris, I- oh, God.” She moans as his mouth connects to her core, licking her clit eagerly. She rolls her head back again, and she’s never felt as much pleasure before. An unfamiliar feeling settles deep in her stomach, as she moans louder and tries to move away from him.

However, his hands on her thighs keep her in place, and he continues licking that sweet spot until she comes undone with a loud whine.

He begins kissing his way up her body again, and when he gets on top of her, he presses a long kiss against her lips.

“How was it?” He asks, looking into her eyes for any second-thoughts or doubts. He doesn’t find either. Her eyes are burning up more than ever, with a passion stronger than he’s ever seen before, and instead of replying, she raises her head to kiss him again, and she’s the one biting his lips this time.

Her hands find the hem of his shirt and she urges him to take it off, watching in awe how perfect he looks. His body is as beautiful as his face, extremely toned and pleasant to the eyes.

She holds her breath in anticipation as he takes his pants down, and when he presses his hard dick against her entrance, she closes her eyes instinctively and holds her breath.

She tries counting seconds in her head instead of thinking of all the books she has read about the female anatomy and the stinging pain a woman has on her first night, but she tenses up, nonetheless.

“Are you alright? Do you want me to stop?” Chris asks, touching her face tenderly with his hands and making her open her eyes again and release her breath.

“I’m just… scared.” She replies honestly in a small voice, it comes out as a whisper. “It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”

“Probably.” He nods. “But I’m not going to hurt you deliberately. I’ll be as gentle as I can, and if you decide you can’t take it, we can stop anytime.”

“Do you promise?” She whispers again, and all of a sudden, she feels exposed and vulnerable. All the confidence she had until now, gone, in the blink of an eye. “Do you promise not to hurt me?”

“Yes.” He answers quickly, resolve lacing his tone. “I don’t want to hurt you. I promise.” He continues, pressing a kiss on her neck.

“Alright…” She nods unsurely and buries her head in Chan’s shoulder, her hands hanging onto his back for dear life.

He begins pushing in, and she feels a slight pain, but it’s nothing as bad as she thought.

“Ugh…” She lets her head fall back on the bed, looking into his eyes, noticing how closely he observes her.

“Can you take more?”

“Yeah…” She nods, and he pushes in some more, until he bottoms out into her. The stretch is uncomfortable, but Chris is not rushing her; he lets her get adjusted to him before he begins moving slowly, and soon enough, his slow thrusts get more momentum, and the pain mixes with pleasure.

Her hands release his back momentarily, until she connects them to it again, digging her nails in his skin softly. She also adjusts her position and moves her legs around his waist, allowing him to dive in even deeper than before and hit an angle she never thought possible.

“You’re so good…” Chris praises, his thrusts becoming more and more erratic, and with no warning, he stalls on top of her, panting heavily.

He pulls out and she feels something warm dripping out of her, before Chan’s fingers find her pussy again, rubbing it. He moves his other hand as well, making two fingers enter her, curling up and touching that sweet spot from inside as he keeps rubbing circles on her clit.

She comes undone for the second time with ease, gripping his arm to signal him to stop.

He does, and comes back on top of her, taking some stray hairs out of her face and tucking them behind her ear, as he kisses her lips.

“Was it that bad?” He asks, and she shakes her head.

“I was expecting… the worst, honestly.” She laughs. “You were really good. Thank you for being patient with me.”

Chris is the one who lets out a laugh this time. Who thanks their partner like that?

Nonetheless, he is glad she also had a good time, as this experience came as a surprise to him. He never planned to bed her, and the way it happened, the way his heart kept beating faster and faster until his desire became almost impossible to control, caught him completely off guard.

Hell, his heart is still beating way too fast for his own liking, and her plump lips look so inviting, he wants to kiss her over and over again.

“We should head to sleep.” He says instead, and she nods softly.

Chris aids Aristia in getting under the covers, and he follows suit shortly, but his body suddenly feels cold, empty, like something is missing.

He turns to look at her again, his eyes softer than ever before, and he grabs her body, making her come into his arms.

She responds to his touch and snuggles into his chest, and they fall asleep, cuddled against each other.

~

Chapter 7 | Chapter 9

[letstrywritingmaybe]

Me trying to write this fic cause I was feeling petty yet again and it’s taking me forever cause of course it is. But also I have no business writing smut, but I have this specific scene (again borrowing from the vibes of my golden otp) and it just went from sexy to depressing real quick. All that’s to say is that I should not be allowed to write cause what is even happening. Except this time I know why it’s happening but yet here I am still writing it? Also it’s pride month and I should be giving off more ace energy. At least at work I’m wearing my pride pin every day and it was noticed and I was celebrated for it which is so wonderful! So to those of you in the community, I hope you’re able to shine. If it isn’t safe or you’re not ready, I hope you’re still able to celebrate and know that you’re still a part of us <3

[turtleblogatlast]

Things I make for myself when insomnia kicks in

Just a chart about what I wanna change up and keep consistent in my art - I mainly wanna draw Raph with a tail because he deserves one, it fits too well. Donnie gets a long tail too because I didn’t realize how dino-like he looks until I gave him one, and now it’s a must for me haha.

[bicheetopuff]

I have a love-hate relationship with being a fic writer sometimes… on one hand, I’ll have an idea and I’ll love writing it and I’ll love the responses I get when I post it, but then on the other hand I’ll end up with new ideas which means new wips and a lot of older unfinished wips that I committed to but don’t really enjoy writing anymore.

Like I have so many new things that I’ve started about adult bkdk that I wanna post but at the same time I have three unfinished ongoing fics that I’m bored of writing and I don’t wanna post new stuff until I finish the old stuff UGH. You see my dilemma??

[forgotten-daydreamer]

Took twice the max dose of melatonin before the final revision for tomorrow’s exam, I’m shitting my pants and I genuinely don’t know anything as thoroughly as I should but if I sleep less than 4 hrs before it I just know I’m gonna do even worse somehow

[crossbackpoke-check]

Oh these all look so lovely. May i ask about good dog bad dream for WIP files?

of course!!! 🥰💕 i answered a little bit about it here, but this is one of the tag stories i really, REALLY want to actually become a fic so i did promise a little snippet of the 2K that is done:

Things that Dylan should do: turn off the light, shut the door, walk back inside to the rumpled sheets still warm from when he left them to grab a glass of water. Leave the creature outside to the lightning bugs and the quarter moon and the shifting shadows of the woods along the gap-toothed fenceline of his yard, and then come out in the morning to nothing more than a paw print and the clean reassurance of sunlight to tell him nobody’s there, to ignore the prickle of discomfort that shivers its way across his body as goosebumps and raised hairs when he thinks about turning his back on the memory of those red eyes.

Things that Dylan does instead: whistle.

[exopelagic]

supervisor was met. god help our souls

[ugh-yoongi]

ex-conomics | csc

you supported seungcheol through years of being an aspiring athlete, and all you got to show for it was your undergraduate degree and an awkward, stuttered apology when he dumped you to go semi-pro. now he’s back after an injury derailed his career, and there’s only one problem: you’re the only one available to tutor him. you - 0; the universe - 1. talk about no return on investment.

⚽ pairing: choi seungcheol x f. reader ⚽ genre: exes to (lite) enemies to lovers; university au; angst, fluff ⚽ rating: while there is nothing explicit in this fic, there are two brief references to smut. while i can't stop anyone from reading this, i would prefer minors do not interact with this or any of my work. ⚽ warnings: cheol is some degree of famous, reader is a grad student/TA, mentions of an injury and coping with the aftermath of it, lots of economics talk that even i do not understand, swearing, one mention of alcohol, some misplaced jealousy, rom-com tropes, dino is kind of a loser but we love him anyway. probably a lot of other things i missed, but this is actually pretty tame for a fic of this length. ⚽ word count: 13.4k ⚽ thank you: a lot of people looked this over for me in the process and i'm sure i will forget some of them so if i do i'm sorry: @the-boy-meets-evil, @hot-soop, @highvern, and @haologram, who also gave me some wonderful ideas for the vlogs. thank you to MIT for opencourseware existing. i took microeconomics and dropped it, so i couldn't have done this without you. everyone in the discord server for helping me along the way and keeping me motivated. ⚽ author's note: i haven't posted a fic in nearly seven months, so i think it goes without saying that there are parts of this i like and a lot more i'm not 100% happy with. i'd love if this was more fleshed out and 10k longer, but i was able to write anything at all so it's good enough. this was written for the back to school with seventeen collab, hosted by @camandemstudios. thank you both for letting me participate! please make sure to check out the rest of the stories! everyone worked so hard and this collab was a ton of fun to participate in. <3

You look down at the paper. Back up at who handed it to you. Down at the paper again.

“You’ve got to be joking.”

The poor freshman kid laughs, all nerves, and even though the sound is grating, you remember what it’s like to be forced into work study. How far away graduate school seemed; how large your professors loomed over you with all their power and knowledge and credentials; how you constantly felt like the dumbest person in nearly every room you walked into for four straight years.

“Um—”

You sigh, just barely resisting the urge to slam your head onto your desk. “I—it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Your words do little to ease Freshman’s nerves. He’s still hunched over in the doorway of your office, wringing his hands as he shifts his weight back and forth, in for a lifetime of body pain with the way he’s squaring his shoulders. “You’re sure about this, though? Like, I’m really not being set up?”

“I don’t think so?” he offers, slowly starting to turn green right before your eyes. “Dr. Lee ga-gave me the paperwork himself, I don’t think he would’ve messed it up? Oh no, did I mess it up? Should I go back to Student Services and conf—”

Good god, this kid’s anxiety is gonna stink up your office for weeks. “No need!” you interject. “I’ll just…” Sign it, you want to say, but the longer you stare at the sheet of paper the quicker you’re losing your resolve.

TUTORING REQUEST FORM Student Name: Choi Seungcheol Degree: Undergraduate Major: Business Course: ECON04101 Introduction to Microeconomics Instructor: Lee Yeonseok, PhD. Recommended Tutoring: High (3-4 hours per week)

You curse under your breath. Of the two names on the paper, Dr. Lee’s does not come as a surprise. He’s a notorious hard-ass with an infamous attrition rate—most students don’t last more than a week in any of his classes—but he’s also the sole reason you were able to pay for someof your grad school tuition out of pocket with all the tutoring money you made.

That, however, was two years ago.

“Does he know I don’t tutor anymore?” Stupid question. The kid stares blankly back at you, as if to say I don’t know any more than the people in Student Services, let alone Dr. Lee. It is literally my first year here. “I’m Dr. Ahn’s TA this year. I’ve got my hands full with her bullsh… stuff—”

Immediately, you know you’ve said something wrong, because the kid’s eyes light up, all that previous anxiety disappearing like smoke. “Wait, the same Dr. Ahn that teaches the crypto course?”

“No, that one died,” you say quickly. Kid deflates. “Anyway, I don’t really tutor anymore, especially for econ. As you can see”—you gesture vaguely around the cramped four walls of your office—“they’ve upgraded me. They even put my name on a little placard by the door! Go look! They spelled it wrong! If that doesn’t sum up this university I don’t know what does.”

You heave another sigh. Try to school your face and tone into something that exudes professionalism and finality. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I tutored Dr. Lee’s students for, like, three years in undergrad so I’m sure they just… forgot that wasn’t my actual job here. Who’s in charge of tutoring these days? I’ll shoot them an email and explain all this.”

Freshman gives you a name, and it takes less than a second to find them in the employee directory. You expect that to be the end of it, but he’s still taking up space in your doorway. You quirk an eyebrow. “Yes?”

The hand-wringing returns, along with an embarrassed flush that disappears beneath the neckline of his school-branded sweatshirt. “I just—um. Maybe you could, uh. Send that now? Before I get back there?”

You blink. “Don’t you have to go all the way back across campus? How slow do you think I type?” He shrugs, and you give up on the idea of getting rid of him. “Fine. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lee Chan. I’m a sophomore. Do you know that guy?”

“Oh. I thought for sure you were a freshman, but you’re gonna need to be more specific, Lee Chan, Sophomore.”

“The guy they want you to tutor.” You freeze. The guy they want you to tutor is—“Choi Seungcheol,” Chan tacks on, and, yeah, you know—knew, you correct yourself—someone with that name, once upon a time.

But there are a lot of Chois and a lot of Seungcheols. It’s been years since you’ve spoken to the Seungcheol you knew, and that was when he’d broken up with you to—“I heard he’s a football player? Well, used to be, I guess. The girls in the office were freaking out so I guess he’s pretty famous, but I don’t know anything about sports, do you? They said they have photocards of him. I thought they only did that for idols.”

You think about being kids together in Daegu. Think about the exasperated looks you’d share when your parents would drag the two of you to festivals: Palgongsan in the autumn, Biseulsan in the spring; transformation and rebirth. Think about being eight years old and watching your father cram into the small space of the Chois’ living room, standing around the TV with Seungcheol’s dad, shouting at Park Jonghwan. Daegu FC made the FA Cup quarterfinals that year, and you think, of everything, that’s what you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

You think about falling in love slowly. Sixteen and clueless, the pair of you were. Didn’t really know any different, just that you’d look at him and feel butterflies. That you’d hold hands in secret. Text beneath the dinner table. That you’d watch him on the football pitch and be consumed by pride. That the future felt impossibly far away, that life would never catch up to the two of you.

You think about all the football jargon you didn’t understand—the academies, the teams, the implications. You think about, I’m thinking about trying out for the FC Seoul U-18, I just don’t think there’s much more I can do here in Daegu. You think about replying, Oh, I applied to university there.

You remember thinking it must’ve been fate, how easy that had worked out. How easy that first hurdle had been overcome.

You think about how fast everything happened. The try-out, the acceptance, the explosion. Remember being unable to go anywhere those first few months without seeing Seungcheol’s face, touted as the next big thing. Think about applying for scholarships when he was applying for international visas. Think about studying for midterms when Seungcheol was studying English for interviews.

You think about the last few weeks of your relationship, when it felt like you were desperately trying to cling to ghosts. Think about how Seoul had once felt endlessly big, both in opportunity and size, and how it now felt suffocating. You think about, So you’re just giving up? Is that what you’re saying? Think about, I don’t know what else to do. It doesn’t feel fair to you.

You think about all the places you’ve watched him. On countless football pitches; shy glances in school hallways; in the passenger seat, wracked with nerves on the drive to Seoul; poised above you in bed, hairline dotted with sweat as he rolled his hips, telling you how much he loved you.

You think about watching him walk out the door, and how you never watched him again.

So you fire off your email, concise and to the point about why you can’t tutor Choi Seungcheol in Introduction to Microeconomics, and turn to Lee Chan, Sophomore.

“No,” you finally answer. “Never heard of him.”

For all intents and purposes, your rejection should’ve been the end of it.

A few days go by. You hold office hours, attend lectures, work on your thesis when you have both the time and the energy. Try to ignore the feeling of bees beneath your skin, anxiety needling each time you check your email. You were well within your right to decline the tutoring request, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve done something wrong. That someone somehow knows who Seungcheol was to you and will pull you up on it. That those girls who’d gushed about him to Chan are somewhere laughing at your expense.

But you don’t hear anything at all about it… until you do.

Sunday evening. You haven’t moved from your couch in hours, some variety show playing in the background, barely audible over your keyboard clacking. Much to your detriment, you don’t write many papers these days, so you’re out of practice. Feels like you haven’t done anything besides formulas in years, all of your academic knowledge reduced to fucking math, so you’re about ready to toss your laptop out the window long before the email even comes through.

You see, From: Lee Yeonseok. You see, Subject: Choi Seungcheol - Tutoring.

Your stomach plummets to the floor.

You scan the body quickly. You see the words personal favor… friend of his father… urgent matter… and your hands start shaking. Whether it’s from the sheer audacity of this man or anxiety, you aren’t sure, but it’s not like it matters. There aren’t a whole lot of people on campus brave or dumb enough to go up against him twice.

“Motherfucker,” you spit, bitter the only taste in your mouth.

Where did you go wrong to wind up here? You’d followed the script: got the grades, passed the exams, received half of the required education for the Respectable Career, helped a few others along the way chase dreams that may or may not have been their own. You’d fallen in love. Only had a broken heart to show for it, but that’d been in the script, too: The First Love, followed by The First Heartbreak.

The split from Seungcheol was supposed to have been the end of that chapter. You’d planned on never seeing him again, and you never would have, had it been up to you. Apparently the universe has other plans, participation required.

“Did you spill onion dip on the rug again?” You startle, sending your laptop flying. Kaori, your roommate, is perched halfway in between the living room and the kitchen like a cryptid, clearly not expecting your reaction. “Oh. Were you watching porn?”

Face burning, you fetch your laptop from the floor. “In a common area? Kaori, please, I have far more decorum than that.”

She snorts, resuming her trek to the fridge. “See, that’s what I thought, but then I walked out here and you threw your laptop so fast it was like watching my ex get caught watching furry porn all over again.” She pries the lid off a large container of yogurt. “You think this is still good?”

“Dunno. What’s it smell like?”

She sniffs it and pulls it back to check the label. “Vanilla, I think, which is concerning because it’s supposed to be strawberry.”

You shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen, you get extra”—you pause, trying to remember the correct order of things, before giving up entirely—“...biotics?”

“Mm, so close. Care if I just eat this with a spoon?”

Nose scrunched, you wave her off. “Couldn’t pay me to eat yogurt on a good day, let alone if it’s expired. All yours, babe.”

Spoon in hand and a pleased smile on her face, Kaori collapses onto the couch beside you. You try to return your attention to your paper, try to find your momentum again, and it works for all of ten minutes before you’re groaning and slamming the top closed.

You don’t even need to look over to know Kaori’s staring. “What’s up with you?” she asks. Before she can answer: “Wait, is this serious? Because I can’t have a serious conversation in this t-shirt.” You steal a glance sideways. Ask Me About My Hemorrhoid! it says, and you exhale loudly. “Don’t breathe at me, I lost a bet.”

“And continued wearing it?”

She jokingly rolls her eyes. “God forbid a girl has hobbies.” Nudges you with her foot. “C’mon, spill.”

Kaori doesn’t know about you and Seungcheol. Most people don’t, aside from a few old classmates from Daegu who found you on social media and tried befriending you once he started making a name for himself in Seoul. After that, it was just easier to keep things private while you were together. New friends knew you were seeing someone but not their name or how long you’d been together. Any curiosity surrounding why the Choi Seungcheol was following you on Insta had been waved away easily. Our parents are friends, we grew up together. Then you broke up, and there wasn’t any evidence to delete, and he wasn’t following you on Instagram anymore, and it was easier that way.

So, yeah—even though you hadn’t met her until years later, Kaori knows you have an ex. She knows you’ve had a few flings and situationships in the time since, too, and it’s why she’s none the wiser when you ask, “It’s nothing, really. Just—do you follow football at all?”

“Nah, not really. The new guy’s pretty into it and keeps trying to get me to watch the games with him, but it’s so fucking boring? I dunno, I can’t get into it. Not in real life, anyway—I binged all of Captain Tsubasa in an embarrassingly short amount of time, though. Why?”

“Student Services asked me to tutor someone the other day and I had to turn it down. I just don’t have the time, you know? This semester’s already killer, and Dr. Ahn’s been riding my ass nonstop about grades. Turns out it’s some football player, so Dr. Lee emailed me asking me to do it as a personal favor, which means, on top of all the other shit I have to do, I’m now tutoring some football player four hours a week in Microeconomics.”

Her face distorts. “God, that guy’s such a prick. Like wow, you’re good at the economy! Good for you! Who cares! Why don’t you go balance the national debt or something instead of torturing university freshmen!”

You also wrongly assume that’s the last you’ll hear of it from Kaori.

Two days later, after Student Services replies to your email with the days and times you’ll be tutoring Seungcheol, she materializes in the living room to harass you.

“You didn’t tell me your football player was Choi Seungcheol.”

The panic is instant. You know how she means it, but it’s not how your body interprets it. All of a sudden it feels like an interrogation, an accusation, and a whopping serving of guilt takes up residence in the middle of your chest for not being entirely honest.

“Explains this weird text Ken sent me.”

She slides her phone over to you, open to her text thread with her current flavor of the week. Beneath an article about Seungcheol enrolling in classes at your school:

doesn’t ur roomie TA there Why are you calling her “ur roomie” like you don’t know her name?? Rude. Also yes. ask her to get me an autograph No babe pls he was my fav player before he got injured No 🙄 fine. can i come over later? Starting to think you’re using me for my roommate. Get your own job 🙄

You hand her phone back. “I didn’t think you’d know who Choi Seungcheol even is.” It’s the best you can do, even though it just digs you a deeper grave. “You said you’re not into football.”

“I’m not, but unfortunately I am into that stupid man.” She sighs, wistful and longing. “Babe, you have to understand. His dick is so big.”

You hadn’t wanted to stay in Seoul for your graduate degree, let alone the same university you’d gone to for undergrad.

You’d applied to schools all over—Japan, Europe, even a few in the States. Romanticized the hell out of NYU, went window shopping for an overpriced apartment, picked a favorite pizzeria based on nothing but vibes and online reviews. In those few months after graduation, there wasn’t a whole lot tying you to Seoul. Your and Seungcheol’s relationship had been old history by then, your parents split. Your dad stayed in your childhood home and your mother moved a few hours closer to her sister. They’d waited until your brother was old enough to be out of the house.

And it’d just been… a lot. Overwhelming. Some days you could barely shower or feed yourself, let alone move halfway across the world, so you’d stayed in the familiar and tried not to let it feel like failure.

But the good thing about familiarity is you learn its tricks, figure out the hiding spots. Early on, your first or second week of grad school, you laid claim to a study room on a floor of the library everyone else ignored. You write notes on the whiteboard with faded blue markers that are still there days later. The chair on the opposite side of the table is always exactly where you left it, the space between it and the table enough to only accommodate you. Sometimes you leave books—old paperbacks littered with notes in your writing—or papers, just to see if they move.

They never do.

And all of this is why it feels like a punch to the gut when that sanctity is tainted. When you’re halfway through a stack of Dr. Ahn’s exams and the doorknob rattles behind you. When you don’t even need to turn around to know who it is, because he still sounds the same, still has that overwhelming presence. You’ve always sensed him before you felt him.

“There you are,” Dr. Lee says, ambling into the room before you can protest. He, too, is overwhelming, just in different ways. Immaculate posture that anchors his slight frame that’s always dressed impeccably and expensively. Wears a watch that’s triple your tuition. Shoes polished so bright they’re nearly blinding. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

This time it is an accusation.

Well, you found me, you want to say, but just knowing Seungcheol is behind him, lingering in that half-study room, half-hallway space, is enough to keep you quiet. Like if you speak you’ll summon him closer and you’ll no longer be able to pretend this is nothing more than a nightmare.

You plaster on a polite smile. Say, “Ah, here I am, kyosu-nim,” and put all your energy into trying to glue Seungcheol to the floor with your mind.

Which is fruitless, because Dr. Lee moves further into the room. Gestures for Seungcheol to follow him with an impatient huff, and the study room is small, sure, and with three people it feels cramped, but that’s not the reason it feels like all the air’s been sucked out of the room.

Seungcheol looks… different. He looks as anxious as you feel, and he sticks close to the wall like he’s trying to disappear. Dr. Lee introduces him with grave importance, unaware of your history, and the forced smile he offers you almost looks embarrassed.

You know Dr. Lee is still hammering away, probably giving you a stern talking-to for rejecting his request the first time, but you can’t tear your eyes away from Seungcheol. Feels like the world around you has reduced to a pinhead, all hyperfocus; feels like your lungs are sucking in stale air one at a time.

“...his father is a very good friend of mine, so I expect…”

You expected to feel nothing. Seungcheol had left to chase his dream—one you’d always been so supportive of that it sometimes felt like your dream, too—and, perhaps naively, you thought the distance and the years would’ve been enough. You expected your heart to have hardened. You expected all those nights you spent crying to hit you at full force. You expected anger, hurt—indifference, at the very least.

“...as many hours per week as you both can manage…”

But you should’ve known better. Should’ve expected the butterflies, the way your palms grow clammy, the way your heart rate spikes. Should’ve expected everything to feel upside-down. You should’ve expected to look at Seungcheol and feel sixteen and in love all over again.

“...you are responsible for his academic progress…”

And that simply will not do. You’ve spent the last few years pulling yourself out of that hole, clawing your way back to something resembling normal. You’ve purged the thought of him from your mind—let his scent fade from your sheets, an old sweatshirt he’d left behind; forgot the way his lips felt against every inch of your skin; forgot the way his entire being lit up when he laughed; forgot the safety he encompassed, the way he whispered all those sweet nothings.

You cannot go there again.

So you roll your shoulders back, smile politely. Say, “Ah, kyosu-nim, Choi Seungcheol-ssi seems very intelligent, I’m sure he is capable of being responsible for his own academic standing, don’t you think?”

Dr. Lee cannot disagree without all but calling Seungcheol an idiot, so he hovers before you in shocked silence. Makes a show of huffing and checking his watch, like he’s all of a sudden remembered he’s late for something and being inconvenienced by this conversation he started, and then he’s halfway out of the library with a terse, “Discuss and figure this out amongst yourselves,” thrown over his shoulder.

You have an entire dramatic exit planned in your head. Gather your things, fake a phone call that makes you sound authoritative and important, and brush past Seungcheol wearing your nicest perfume as if all of this is so far beneath you you can’t even bring yourself to care about it.

Of course, you actually have to brush by him for any of that to happen, and since you’ve already decided you will not go there again, you quickly scribble your email address onto a piece of paper and slide it across the table at Seungcheol, who has steadfastly remained planted just outside the door. “Here’s my email. I don’t have time to discuss this right now.” Seungcheol cocks an eyebrow. You start throwing things into your bag haphazardly. You know you look frantic and affected, but there’s not much you can do about that. “What? Send me a copy of your syllabus and what you want to prioritize. It’ll be easier to get through this if we have a plan instead of winging it.”

He seems to catch on to your distaste because he mirrors it. Scoffs as he rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, no use spending more time together than we have to,” and if you hadn’t gone years without speaking, you would’ve seen right through it.

But you did, so it stings all the same.

As it typically does, the planet keeps spinning after your run-in with Seungcheol.

You grade Dr. Ahn’s coursework. Try running off your anxiety at the gym, even though it’s pretty good at keeping pace with you these days. You meet Kaori’s maybe-boyfriend sneaking out of your apartment early in the morning and he has the good sense not to mention your ex, but you chalk that up to the mess of hickeys covering his neck and not any sense of social decorum.

Other people’s embarrassment saves you a ton of your own, you’ve come to learn.

Throughout all of this, Seungcheol only emails you once to send you his course syllabus. Doesn’t mention tutoring or provide you with his schedule or ask for yours, so when you’re sitting in a bar with your friends, three or four drinks deep and feeling a little petty, you forward him the original tutoring request and make sure to bold, underline, and highlight the “Recommended Tutoring: High” part for good measure.

He doesn’t take your bait—electronically, at least—but he does show up to your office hours the following Tuesday.

Bag tossed onto the floor, he flops unceremoniously into the chair across from you and says, in lieu of a greeting, “They spelled your name wrong. On the door thing.”

“I know,” you reply, your smile polite and terse. Incredible how he has the ability to raise your blood pressure in milliseconds. “What can I help you with?”

“Depends. How long do you have?”

“Well, considering you’ve shown up to my office hours on time, I’m assuming you already know I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six. So”—you glance at the clock above the door—“assuming no one comes by who needs my help more than you do, you have approximately one hour and fifty-eight minutes.”

Seungcheol is quiet for a moment as he takes you in. His stare is weighted; it makes you feel a little green around the edges. Clinical and sharp, so far removed from the way he used to look at you. You clear your throat. “I looked over your syllabus. The good news is there’s only a midterm and a final and the rest is problem sets. The bad news is there’s only a midterm and a final so they’re weighted quite heavily. You really need to know this stuff inside-out to have any hope of passing.”

“That’s why you’re here, right? Dr. Lee specifically requested you.”

You huff a breath through your nose. “I’m here as supplemental help. I can’t take your exams or do your readings for you. What else are you taking this semester?”

He sighs, sinking further into the chair, very much playing the part of the heir who has no interest in any of this. Which… is unlike him, you think, if you’re even allowed to. The Seungcheol you knew years ago took everything so seriously. Never clipped corners or took shortcuts. Anyone else would think him a spoiled, petulant child. “Business Accounting and International Trade.”

“Could be worse,” you note. “At least those three courses are tangentially related.”

Seungcheol rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say. I haven’t taken a fucking math class in years.”

You return it. “You remember how to add and subtract, don’t you?”

“I ruptured my ACL, not my…” He trails off, looking a little embarrassed that he can’t name a part of the—“Brain.”

Whatever you were going to quip back with dies on your tongue. It's the first time Seungcheol has broached the topic of his injury—the first you’re hearing of it at all, actually—and he says it like it’s a joke, like it’s not a thing at all, but the pain is all over his face. The bitterness of the situation he’s found himself in. The unfairness of it all.

And there are so many questions you want to ask that aren’t your place: if it’s fixable, if he’ll ever play again, how he’s coping. But you don’t really need to—you can’t imagine how you’d feel if someone suddenly pulled the rug out from under you. If everything contained within the four walls of your office suddenly disappeared.

Not that the man sitting across from you hadn’t already done that, but.

“Right,” you continue, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You know Seungcheol—know he wouldn’t want you prodding, sticking your fingers in that particular wound. “I want you to take a look at this,” you say, handing over a printout you have saved from your undergrad tutoring days. “Tell me what looks familiar, what doesn’t; what does and doesn’t make sense.”

He looks down at the paper. Back up at you. Down at the paper again. “What the fuck is this?”

“I—what? Cheol, it’s my old notes on recitation. Surely you’ve already covered this—the syllabus says this is week one stuff.” He looks down at the paper again, and it’s so familiar, watching the life drain entirely from someone’s eyes.

You barely resist the urge to slam your face onto your desk a second time.

You meet Seungcheol at the sports center for your next tutoring session.

He likes the humidity and the smell of the chlorine by the pool. He also likes that it’s not the football pitch, so the two of you sit in the bleachers there and go over his lecture notes. Much to your surprise, Seungcheol talks a mile a minute. Has stars in his eyes when he says he finally understands elastic demand curves, supply shock; tells you he spent a whole hour making flashcards.

It’s the first time you’ve seen him so excited since your tutoring began—the first glimmer of hope you’ve felt since Dr. Lee cornered you in your library hideaway. None of this surprises you. Seungcheol has always been smart, even when football was his primary (and sometimes only) focus. He has more determination and grit than anyone you’ve ever met, so you’re not surprised he’s doing well, excelling, but you are surprised—

“Can I ask you something?” Seungcheol shrugs, shoves half a protein bar in his mouth and swallows without chewing. “Why are you… uh. Here?”

“At this university?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I am wondering about that, but I guess… why business?”

Seungcheol hums. Tucks his good knee to his chest and stares down at the pool. No one’s using it, and truthfully the two of you probably aren’t even allowed to be here, but you understand why he likes it. It’s nowhere near as secluded as the library and definitely not as air conditioned, but it is peaceful. Calm. The water laps against the coping in quiet, small waves.

“Ah, I don’t know. You know how it goes.”

You quirk an eyebrow. Never, in all the years you’ve known him, has Seungcheol done anything he didn’t want to do. All that grit and determination. “What about your father, then? Dr. Lee mentioned this was a favor to him. He’s a pretty important person to have in your Rolodex of favors.”

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what this is: Seungcheol’s father has new money; worked from the bottom up, made some smart investment decisions that finally panned out after Seungcheol left for Seoul. Started doing his own thing, made a name for himself. Last you’d heard from your mother, Seungcheol’s brother was second-in-command. Hell, even your own brother did an internship there.

So you know what this is: a father helping his son after his dream was shattered, life turned upside-down. You can’t blame him, even if you’ve heard the whispers from all the way across campus. That Seungcheol is washed up now, trying to nepo his way into his father’s company because of it; that all he knows is sports and he should’ve stuck to that, what does he know about business, why is he the one Dr. Lee went out of his way to help.

Doesn’t stop any of them from smiling at him, though; doesn’t stop them from asking for autographs or selfies.

But you also know this isn’t something Seungcheol seems willing to discuss, so you crack a joke—“I mean, business. God, who’d wanna go into that?”—and go back to what he was willing to talk about.

You’ve never hated elastic demand curves so much in your life.

Deep in the throes of tutoring—when you can’t tell if it’s week two or week twelve—you make it back to your apartment just before ten, head pounding.

The door flies open just as you’re about to punch in the code, and there stands Ken, looking far more put-off than you’ve ever seen him. Looks defeated, if you’re being honest, like someone mopped up all his emotions and wrung them out like dirty dishwater.

“Oh, hi,” you say hesitantly. The man in front of you seems too much like a caged animal to let your guard down. “Everything okay?”

He aborts a nod halfway. Mutters an apology as he brushes by you and stalks down the hall, disappearing around the corner to the elevators. Usually he’s a talker—you haven’t been able to avoid a Seungcheol-related conversation in weeks—so you’re a little stunned. Stand there stupidly for a while, and that’s where Kaori finds you a moment later.

“You gonna stand out here all night, or…?”

“Oh—yeah, right.”

You follow her inside. Toe off your shoes and put them in the rack. Focus on the sound of the kettle whistling instead of the overbearing tension in the room. Drop your bag off in your room, throw on a sweatshirt three sizes too big and a comfy pair of socks. Rummage through the fridge for leftovers, contemplate what mindless show you’ll watch as you eat, and you do not, under any circumstances, ask Kaori what happened.

You don’t have to. You knew what this was going to be the first time Ken spent the night—the way he looked mortified to be meeting you in the shared kitchen at seven a.m., wearing a look that begged you not to tell your roommate he was sneaking out.

I, uh, have an early class, he’d said. You know how it is.

Maybe you should’ve called him on it then. Issued a warning-but-not-really. She’ll get attached if you don’t tell her. She should know it’s different for you, if it is.

But you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t your place. Kaori wouldn’t want you in her business like that, so you stayed quiet, just nodded before watching him slip his shoes on and close the door behind him so quietly you wouldn’t have known he left at all if you hadn’t been looking. Gone, just like a ghost.

So, yeah, you know exactly why your roommate looks haunted.

“I’m a few episodes behind on this if you want to watch with me,” you offer, pointing at the television with the remote. It’s a lie—you’ve never watched this show a day in your life, which Kaori seems to know—but she contemplates it nonetheless. “Also, my mom mailed us some cookies. I think they’re in the fridge.”

“Why are there cookies in the fridge?”

You huff a laugh. “They were outside the door this morning before I left for campus. I don’t know—just saw who the package was from and was like, oh, this must go in the fridge.”

She nods. Grabs the container and joins you on the couch. Sticks her feet beneath your butt and doesn’t mention a thing.

The closest she comes is a few days later. Catches you right before you head out to campus and asks how tutoring is going.

“Not bad, actually.”

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes when she says, “That’s good. I’m glad things are going well for you two.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore makes his unexpected return at your office hours on an unsuspecting Tuesday.

“Can I help you?”

He doesn’t answer right away, just helps himself to the seat across from you. “Maybe,” comes his cryptic retort. “I was thinking about signing up for that crypto course next semester.”

You narrow your eyes. “No, you weren’t.”

He sighs. Looks a little panicked, like he can’t believe that didn’t work. “You’re right, you’re right. I, um—I wanted to come say thank you.” He pauses. “You know, for that… email you sent.”

You blink. “No, you didn’t.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore cracks immediately. Thunks his head on your desk and lets loose a pained sound. It nearly sounds like he’s wailing when he says, “I’m sorry! They put me up to it!”

What you’re able to piece together is this: Lee Chan, Sophomore has become a bit of a celebrity in the Student Services department ever since he met you, Choi Seungcheol’s tutor. And, like any smart, previously unpopular university student would do, he took advantage of it. Might’ve stretched the truth a little to make it sound like he knew more than he did, so now here he is, angling for information the girls with the photocards may or may not have paid him to get.

“They want to know about his girlfriend.”

“His what?”

What you’re able to piece together is also this: the Photocard Girls are certain Seungcheol is dating someone, based on little more than vibes. You suspect these vibes are their three degrees of separation, considering there was an abnormal amount of Change of Major files formed after his enrollment, but you tell Lee Chan that you don’t know anything and, even if you did, you wouldn’t put his business out there like that.

But some part of you still has this inexplicable urge to protect Seungcheol, so you match their offer with interest and tell him to say there’s nothing to report—not that you didn’t know, not that he couldn’t get anything out of you. Seungcheol isn’t dating anyone.

You don’t know if it’s true, but you figure that if it isn’t, he still deserves privacy.

Which is a notion you have trouble explaining a few hours later, when Seungcheol strolls into your office with a grease-stained paper bag full of cheese coin bread, offering one to you with a proud smile that drops slowly when you just stare in return.

“What’s wrong?”

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Nothing comes out, even though it should be simple. Some sophomore kid was just in here angling for information or the Student Services department is taking bets on whether or not you have a girlfriend would both suffice, but you cannot bring yourself to say the words.

What you settle on is, “Sorry, I just… had an interesting meeting before you got here.”

“Oh. Are you okay?”

You sigh. Tilt your head back to stare up at the ceiling. “It was about you, actually.”

Seungcheol chokes, starts stuttering over words you can’t make sense of. Says, “Me? Why? I passed my last exam—I mean, barely, but I still passed. And that wasn’t your fault! I didn’t study enough! I’ve been losing my mind over my International Trade class, that shit sucks—”

“It wasn’t about your grades, Cheol.”

“Oh.” Then, slowly, a lopsided, pleased smile overtakes his face. “Haven’t heard you call me Cheol in a while.”

“Seungcheol,” you correct.

He seems to forget all about the meeting. Tries again to offer you a coin bread before he threatens to eat them all himself, so you acquiesce mostly to shut him up, say you’ll bring the extras to Kaori. For some reason, you tell him about how much she’d loved the cookies your mom sent, and the nostalgia sets him off, gets him talking again, asking if they were the yakgwa she used to make when you two were kids.

They were, but you can’t seem to tell him that, either.

Seungcheol: sorry it’s last minute - running late. can you meet me at my place instead?

Seungcheol shared a location with you

You’re halfway to replying—I don’t think that’s appropriate—before you sigh and delete it. Midterms are only a few days away and you don’t have time to argue over where your tutoring sessions will be, so if Seungcheol wants to meet at his apartment that’s where you’ll meet him.

You read over the midterm notes on the train. Once, twice, and then a hundred more times until they’re nearly memorized, all so you can ignore the voice in the back of your head saying what a bad idea this is. That you have no business being on your way to your ex’s swanky part of town or integrating yourself into his life beyond tutoring at all. You shouldn’t know where he lives. Maybe you shouldn’t even have his phone number or answer his texts.

Not that there’s much you can do about it now, two stops away.

Seungcheol greets you warmly, if not a little rushed. Apologizes for the mess once you step inside, although it’s less “mess” and more “haven’t finished unpacking,” but there’s enough clear space to study at the dining table, so that’s where you set up, determined to keep things professional.

“Sorry again about this,” Seungcheol says, placing a can of cola in front of you as he takes the seat across. “I had to meet with my father and lost track of time, I guess.”

“Oh. How’s he doing?”

Seungcheol sighs, leans further back in the chair as runs a hand through his hair. A light brown, now. “Same as he always was, I guess. Talked about the business, about my brother. Can’t get him to shut up about that stuff most of the time.”

“The business is doing good, though.” You cough, clear your throat. “My, uh. My brother interned there during undergrad. I don’t know if your father told you that.”

You don’t know why you say it, because it’s clear from the brief flicker of pain on Seungcheol’s face that he hadn’t known, that no one had told him. And it hurts you too that they felt the need to keep it a secret, to protect Seungcheol from you even in tangential ways.

“He didn’t,” he admits, “but I’m sure he was happy to see him. He was, uh—he was glad to hear you’re my tutor. Said you were always smarter than all of us boys combined.”

You laugh. Hope it sounds casual instead of strained. “Well, no need to prove him right. Come on,” you say, tossing a study guide in his direction, “let’s get to work.”

Everything is alright for a while—nearly an hour at least. He has the formulas memorized and attributed to the correct equations. He can explain supply and demand, preference and utility, but things start to fall apart around budget constraints and constrained choice.

The formulas get mixed up. He grows frustrated when he doesn’t know the answers to your questions right away. Rolls his eyes and gets a little snappy when you correct him, try to explain things differently in a way he understands. At first he’s able to temper it, collect himself before things truly start spiraling out of control, but the longer the two of you sit there the more it all unravels.

He snaps, you snap back, and you can’t figure out why. You’ve survived this long in Seungcheol’s orbit even though you never thought you’d be around him again, and perhaps it was bound to explode eventually, but…

It’s the familiarity, you realize.

You and Seungcheol aren’t friends, though you’ve been playing at it for weeks now: meeting outside of the library or your office, the personal conversations bordering on reminiscing, being in his personal space. You don’t belong here. You don’t want to be his friend—you can’t be, not for real or pretend.

“That’s not what I’m say—”

“Then explain it better,” Seungcheol fires at you, eyebrows creasing. “You’re the tutor here.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m trying, okay? All I meant was—your answer isn’t wrong, but I know Dr. Lee and he’s going to want more than that in a response.”

“Right—not good enough, like I said.”

“I’m just asking you to expand on your answer—”

“And I’m telling you that’s all I’ve got. I’m not like you, all right? I don’t have all this shit just floating around in my head all the time. I’m not smart, I barely have any idea what’s going on half the time, and you sitting here being condescending about it is doing fuck-all to help.”

You inhale sharply, taken aback at the hostility in his voice. Suggest calling it for the night, say neither of you will be productive if you keep going like this, and neither of you bother to apologize.

So much of your relationship with Seungcheol was marred by clichés.

The two of you passing notes back and forth during class. You in the bleachers of all his games, screaming along to the team chants, waving a sign around with his name on it. Not realizing you had a crush on him at all until he liked someone else and it made your stomach hurt. Childhood friends turned lovers.

Another cliché: that it’s starting to feel like that all over again.

Seungcheol sits across from you in the library, econ textbook cracked in half in front of him as he pays no attention. Keeps grabbing his phone each time it vibrates across the table. Can’t fight the smile that forces its way onto his face when he reads whatever’s there.

Stupid, you think—both to do this and to think it’d play out any other way. Seungcheol left years ago. Probably lived ten lifetimes while he was away while you were here in this exact spot doing this exact thing. Barely lived half a life, just stuck your nose in textbooks and forced your way through.

“Cheol,” you say, trying to drag his attention back to the study guide. No use. He’s typing away, presses his tongue into the fat of his cheek as he responds. “Seungcheol,” you try again.

Also fruitless.

You have no claim here, you remind yourself—not to his time, not to him. He’s only here because someone else mandated it. You’re only here because someone else mandated it, but it stings all the same. Another reminder of what used to be, of what ended regardless of what you wanted. Another reminder that the role you used to play in his life is not the role you play now. That the space you used to take up created a vacancy, and eventually it was going to be filled.

And if this was anyone other than Seungcheol, if you were more emotionally evolved when it came to him, it wouldn’t gnaw at you as much. All of this would roll off your shoulders.

But it isn’t, and you’re not.

“If you’re not going to listen, then—”

“I am listening,” he interjects, but he’s not looking at you. Not looking at his textbook or his study guide. Keeps laughing and smiling at his phone, and it’s sick how bothered you are by it. That it feels like your stomach’s been turned inside-out with jealousy; with annoyance, because you don’t want to be here anyway, don’t want to do this anymore, and you’re wasting your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

Perhaps he never did.

“What are we discussing, then?”

Still not looking up: “Consumer theory.”

You laugh—more a huff of air than anything, grin sardonically out of one corner of your mouth. Seungcheol sees none of it. “Wrong,” you answer, already expecting the way he shrugs it off. “I’m gonna skip ahead a few chapters, though. Consider it a freebie for your business class.”

It must be your tone that finally grabs his attention. Cutting, precise, purposeful. Seungcheol lowers his phone, quirks an eyebrow, wonders where this is going to go. It’s clear he’s pissed you off, that you’re itching for a fight. It’s clear the years of silence are finally coming to a head.

“Let’s talk about ROI. You know what that is?” You barely give him a second. “Return on investment. A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments. So, let’s say I make one-hundred-thousand won on a ten-thousand won investment: my ROI is 90%. Are you following?”

He nods.

“Great, now let’s try something a bit more hypothetical.” You suck in a breath. “Let’s say I invest years of my adolescence into someone. A friend at first and then something more. Let’s say I played cheerleader, supported every hope and dream he had—went to every game, cheered him on, helped him practice his English. Held his hand and talked him down when the pressure felt overwhelming, when the only thing that felt inevitable was failure. Now, let’s say all I got in return was a stuttered, awkward apology as he dumped me and walked out the door. Let’s say that guy showed up again after years of silence just to once again waste my fucking time.”

The thing about pain is it’s not linear. What hurt five, ten years ago might not hurt today, but it might tomorrow; what hurt yesterday may never hurt again. The thing about pain is it lets you stick your head in the sand until it can’t anymore, and that’s where you are now: that window of time between Seungcheol walking out the door on the assumption you’d never see him again before he bulldozed his way back into your life has been slammed closed, locked up tight.

So you don’t even notice you’re crying until the room goes deathly silent and you can hear the drip drip drip of tears on paper. Until you watch Seungcheol’s hands flex and unflex in mid-air, stuck in that liminal space, wanting to reach out but knowing he has no right to. Until your chest aches so bad you’re sure you’re either about to break into stardust or cease to exist.

Until you say, “What, Choi Seungcheol, would you say my fucking return on investment was?” and he has nothing to say at all.

Kaori invites you to a party.

Just something small to celebrate the end of midterms and a classmate’s birthday. Nothing out of control or raucous, not even the kind of thing that’d earn a second glance from campus security. I won’t even make fun of you if you leave before eleven, is how she sold it to you, in addition to a small amount of begging and bargaining and a powerful set of puppy-dog eyes.

After everything the two of you have been through, you find it hard to say no.

So here you are, nearly eleven o’clock on a Friday, a cup of cheap beer in hand. A friend of a friend of a friend is wailing into a karaoke machine and although your ears are bleeding, it does feel nice for that to be your greatest worry. You aren’t thinking about your classes or how you’ve been prioritizing everyone else’s academic success. You aren’t thinking about whatever’s going on between Kaori and Ken. You aren’t thinking about Seungcheol.

At least you aren’t, until he walks through the door.

You’re going to continue not thinking about him at all—not about the fact he’s alone or how good he looks in a simple black T-shirt that’s a little taut in the shoulders. You’re not going to think about the way the air shifts, like the universe knows he’s important and is willing to accommodate. You’re not going to think about how Kaori catches your eye across the room, recognizes him from all her internet searches, and the way she mouths oh my god he’s so beefy at you.

You’re not going to think about how guilty you feel that she doesn’t know, because if you do you’re certain it’ll take over.

You watch Seungcheol work the room; watch as he floats between conversations, as strangers fall over themselves at the sight of him. How eager everyone is to give him something and how reluctant he is to take them. You watch as he winds up in the same circle as Kaori and how she must mention you, oh, your tutor is my roommate, because there’s a question in return before he turns and meets your gaze.

You wonder why the distance between you feels more insurmountable now than ever before.

Seungcheol finds you in your office.

It’s not a Tuesday or a Thursday, far later than four to six in the evening, but he doesn’t even bother knocking before he’s barreling in, stifling your space with his bad energy.

You haven’t seen him in nearly two weeks. Not since the party, if that even counts. Hasn’t bothered to reply to any of your texts or emails, and that was just fine by you, if that’s how he wanted to act, but it isn’t until he’s brooding on the other side of your desk that you realize you’re still aggrieved, too. Feels a little too familiar, him leaving you behind and in the dark.

So you don’t mean to—typically have much more professionalism than this—but when he tosses a stapled stack of papers with a barely-passing grade on your desk and says, “This is your fault,” the words come automatically and without forethought.

“Fuck off, Seungcheol.” It’s not your words that take him by surprise; more so the roll of your eyes, the accompanying huff. The impression that all of this is beneath you and nothing more than a mere annoyance. That however affected you were two weeks ago is not how affected you are anymore. “That’s what happens when you blow off your tutoring for two weeks because you’re a coward.”

He laughs, incredulous; unable to help the sound the tumbles out of his mouth. “I’m a—I’m a coward?”

“Yes,” you reply, tone giving away nothing. All he sees is feigned nonchalance despite the hurricane you feel brewing beneath the surface. “This,” you continue, pinching the corner of the paper between your fingertips and disposing of it in the trashcan beneath your desk, “is all on you, but do please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to blame me for. I’m all ears.”

You don’t miss it: the way Seungcheol’s eyes grow wide at your ‘I’m all.’ The way he thinks you’re going to punctuate that sentence with yours, and it nearly has bile rising in your throat. Makes you want to scream, rip at your hair. If the last few months have taught you anything, it’s that you are still hopelessly in love with the man across from you—the man that continues to leave before he’s left, always at your expense.

So, yeah—Seungcheol is a coward, but only when it comes to you.

But he doesn’t look much like one now, gripping so hard at the edge of your desk that his knuckles have gone white, baseball cap pulled down low enough his eyes are barely visible. He’s always been overwhelming, always carried himself with an exaggerated arrogance even when it wasn’t warranted, always took everything so seriously, and maybe that’s why you’d thought he’d treat you the same way. Take you seriously. Wouldn’t just throw it all away on a maybe thing, and that’s why it's been years and you still aren’t over it.

Maybe Seungcheol is a coward, and maybe so are you.

Because not once since he’s been back have you been able to say what you mean. Can’t seem to tell him about the anger, the hurt, the heartbreak. Played it all off as petty nonchalance because you foolishly thought that would hurt him, that you’ve been reduced to simmering ash, no hope left for a fire.

“I could never blame you for a goddamn thing,” he says, voice so deep you could drown in it.

You so desperately want to know. You don’t want to know anything at all. You want Seungcheol to explain everything to you in detail and spoil the ending, but only if it’s guaranteed to be happy. Enduring another loss like the first time—you’re not sure you can take it. Not after you two have crossed paths like this, because you’ve never quite believed in fate but you think that has to mean something. That so much time and life had transpired and you two came back together.

Today, though, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any answers.

Seungcheol straightens, looms at full height. Digs into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out a thumb drive. Wordlessly, he hands it over, and then he’s gone just as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Again.

Kaori wants to spend the weekend moping, and you can’t come up with a good reason not to join her.

She doesn’t mention Ken once. Not when she’s sobbing over A Silent Voice and Toradora! after that. Not when she keeps glancing at her phone every couple minutes to see if she has any texts. Not when you—only halfway paying attention between grading and your own assignments—suggest ordering something for delivery, maybe that new burger place down the street you heard was good, and Kaori shuts it down so vehemently you can only assume it was Ken’s favorite place.

Kaori just cries over the man with the big dick she never expected to take so seriously, and not even your stonewalling makes her feel ashamed of it.

And there’s respectability in that kind of openness and vulnerability. At least whatever she’s feeling is honest; at least she can admit she’s sad. You think watching Kaori process her breakup might help you process yours too, years too late, so you suck in a breath and ask, “Can I tell you something or is now not a good time?”

Kaori looks over at you. Dabs a soggy tissue at her eyes. “Well, I guess it depends,” is her answer, and she doesn’t shy away from how waterlogged her voice sounds. “If you’re going to tell me you’re a Takasu and Kawashima shipper, maybe, but if it’s anything worse I’m not sure I could take it.”

“I—what? Who even are they?” She gives you a half-hearted thumbs up. You sigh in response, sink further into the couch. “It’s, uh.” Clear your throat. “Do you remember when we met sophomore year? At that party? And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything and you said, and I quote, why not, I have a sixth sense for this kind of thing and I know that guy will have a huge—”

She hides her face behind her hands. “Ew, god, yes I remember that. My dick whisperer era. How embarrassing.”

“Right. And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything because I’d just gotten out of something.”

“Not really by choice, if I remember correctly. I told you if it was quiet it should’ve been loud, and then you never talked about it again.”

You nod. “I—yeah, that sounds like something I would’ve said.” You suck in a deep breath. “Listen, this is probably gonna sound bad considering I did never talk about it again, but—”

“Hey,” Kaori says, nudging you with her foot. Meant to be comforting, somehow. “It’s okay. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, too… most of which I’m not sure you should, actually.”

A laugh forces its way out, gives you a nice reprieve from the anxiety of the conversation you’re about to have. The need to explain it all, the need for advice. Maybe it’s not her—or anyone else’s—business, but you think you’ve kept this to yourself long enough. You and Seungcheol loved each other, once, and it seems foolish that no one knows.

Maybe Kaori had been right. Maybe love should be shouted from the rooftops; exist out in the open. Maybe something hidden in the shadows can never thrive in the light, and you knew it back then, deep down, but now it seems so obvious.

You think back to a few days before the library. Think about how things didn’t feel good but they felt okay. Think about the frustrated crease between Seungcheol’s eyebrows as he stared down at his textbook and how all you’d wanted to do was smooth it. Think about how you’d rolled your lips and tried not to laugh; how you thought it’d take a miracle to help Seungcheol pass this class.

Think about: What is the difference between the short-run and the long-run from the perspective of production theory?

Think about the short-run of your and Seungcheol’s relationship—that you’d burned bright and fast, even though it’d felt like a million years. Hadn’t dared to consider the long-run because anything beyond that bubble felt impossible.

Think about: Which of the following is not a property of isoquants?

Think about the way Seungcheol’s eyes lit up when he knew the answer. That they’re always linear, he said, and you smiled at his enthusiasm, raised your hand to high-five him and dropped it when he hadn’t noticed.

You think about the explanation—isoquants can be linear when inputs are perfectly substitutable—and what those graphs look like. Downward sloping, left to right. Think about how the graphs change when the isoquants are perfect complements.

L-shaped. Less straight as the inputs become poorer substitutes.

You know what your and Seungcheol’s graph would’ve looked like back then.

So it’s easy, almost, to tell Kaori everything. You tell her about growing up in Daegu, about the smell of the azaleas at Biseulsan in the spring. You tell her about how your parents had befriended the neighbors, how they had a kid your age, that that kid was Seungcheol—yes, that Seungcheol.

She’s able to anticipate the rest from there, but you fill in the blanks of what she can’t: being sixteen and falling in love, holding hands, the clandestine notes. All those football matches and how your throat would be hoarse from cheering. How nauseous you’d felt applying to university in Seoul, how excited you were when Seungcheol said he was coming with you. That, after you arrived, it felt like you were living in fast-forward. Barely any time to breathe or adjust; no time to just be you and Seungcheol. You had to be a student, someone responsible; Seungcheol had to be a phenom.

“Could you feel it was going to happen?” Kaori asks, now sat ramrod straight, all her attention on you. “Like, did you know?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe I did? It’s hard to say now, all this time later. I know things definitely felt different, like life was pulling us in opposite directions.” You laugh, bitterness coloring the edges. “You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing him on some billboard, and I was just… normal, you know? I wasn’t some rising star athlete like he was, I just went to my classes. How was I supposed to compete with something like that?”

Your roommate hums, leans back into the pillows as she stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t think you were. Maybe that’s why Seungcheol was worried—maybe he felt like you were losing your own identity feeling like you had to keep up.”

You want to push back, argue that you weren’t, that you didn’t, but the truth is that it’s possible. That the shadows created by Seungcheol’s dreams were so massive you wouldn’t be surprised if they unintentionally swallowed you up. “It still wasn’t his choice to make,” you say, voice barely above a whisper.

And Kaori already knows all about your hurt, listened as you explained it all and laid everything bare. So when she says, “Sometimes that’s just how it goes, though, babe,” it doesn’t feel condescending. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time. You can say now it wasn’t Seungcheol’s choice to make, because it’s been almost five years and you’ve made a life for yourself separate from him. But the—god, this is gonna sound so patronizing, I am so sorry—but you guys were so young. No one has it all figured out at that age.”

She snorts, runs a hand through her messy hair. “Shit, I’m nearly halfway to thirty and I still don’t know anything.” Adopts a frown. “What do you want now? Do you want closure? Want to try to fix things and become friends?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, biting at a hangnail. “He actually, um. The other day when he stopped by my office, he left me a USB drive? And before you ask, no I did not already look at it.”

“A USB drive? Who does this guy think he is, James Bond?” A pause. “Are you gonna look at it, though?”

You do.

Not until the silver, midnight light creeps in through your bedroom curtains and you’ve stared at the ceiling long enough; waited long enough for texts that never came, for divine intervention to, well, intervene. It never did—fair enough—so you decide to take fate by the reins. Grab your laptop, instant headache from the screen, stick the drive into the port.

It takes a second for it to load, but when it does: dozens of videos, organized by date. Vlogs, by the look of them—some from before your breakup but the majority of them from after.

You’re not sure what you expected, but it wasn’t this.

You click on the first one: a month and a half before both of you moved to Seoul. A fresh-faced Seungcheol appears on your screen, cheeks still round with adolescence. He’s in his room back in Daegu, can’t get the camera angle right. Nostalgia hits you like a ton of bricks as it pans to the side, to the wall behind his bed, and you see all his old posters. Mostly football players you couldn’t name, some girl group he used to love, a few movies. Just below them are some of the notes you’d written him in school, and they’re all you can focus on as he talks about how excited he is for the move.

The next: a few weeks after you’d started classes. By then, Seungcheol was well into the swing of things with Seoul FC. Already a big fish in a small pond, tryout offers from European teams starting to roll in. You can hear yourself in the background stressing over your first exam, wishing a generational curse upon your calculus professor. In the video, Seungcheol laughs, whispers like he’s telling the camera a secret as he talks about how nervous he is for his future. I don’t know why, he says, but it just feels like everything is about to change.

There’s a long pause between that one and the next. You understand why when you look at the date: three months after your breakup. Your hands hover uselessly above your keyboard. Whatever answers you’ve been looking for the last few years are probably in this video, but you can’t bring yourself to open it. Not right away, at least.

You click on a different one at random. Seungcheol’s somewhere in Europe, judging from the language on the signs behind him. Snow falls quietly—whenever he filmed this, it must’ve been early. No one else is around, and he cracks a joke that it’s a good thing, people would probably think he was crazy if they saw him. He doesn’t tell you where he’s going but he narrates the entire walk: points out a cafe he’s grown to love. The way to get to his practice stadium from where he’s standing. Pauses near a restaurant and laughs ruefully, shakes his head, says, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but one of my teammates set me up on a blind date here and I got stood up. You’d probably think that was funny.

(You do. It also makes your chest ache.)

One from two years ago: Seungcheol in a hotel room, clearly nervous. He raises his hand to wave at the camera and you can see the corners of his nails bitten raw. Dark circles beneath his eyes; cheekbones more pronounced than you’ve ever seen them. On the screen, Seungcheol sighs, rakes a hand through freshly-bleached hair. Sucks in a deep breath as he says, I’m so nervous. I’m so—so fucking nervous and I don’t. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I want to call you because you always knew what to say but that’s so fucking selfish. God, we haven’t spoken in years, and it’s my—that’s my fault, I know, so I brought this all on myself. I just want to hear your voice.

Another from a week after that: the color’s returned to his face, and he’s recording from what looks like a penthouse apartment. Sleek, modern; a small white dog napping on the bed beside him. He smiles, looks like he got his teeth fixed, looks like he’s no longer carrying around the weight of the world. Talks endlessly and excitedly about some tournament. Talks so fast you can barely keep up. Talks around words tinged with languages you don’t understand.

Seungcheol wins a championship. Records a drunk vlog from the same night, hair soaked through with god-knows-what—water, champagne, you don’t know. But he looks radiant. Looks like the culmination of two decades of dreaming. He looks happy, free, at peace. He looks like the reason he let you go, why he had to go away.

You scroll to the bottom of the files. Pause at the last video, dated seven months before the term started.

“Hi,” he says, and you can immediately tell everything is all wrong. Seungcheol’s in the dark, face only visible enough to see the tears tracking on his cheeks. “This is going to be the last one of these I make. I don’t know if you, uh—I’m sure you aren’t paying attention to me—my career—anymore, but. I, um. I got hurt. Ruptured my ACL. They’re not sure I’ll…” A sob escapes him. Has you wanting to climb through the screen to hold him, thumb away his tears, tell him everything is going to be okay. “They don’t know if I’ll ever play again.”

Seungcheol no longer looks happy, free, at peace. “Maybe you’ll be happy to hear that,” he continues. “Maybe it’ll help you to know I threw away our relationship for nothing.”

Cut to black.

The sudden silence is deafening. Has you desperately clicking back to the video you’d skipped, the one from just after your breakup. Seungcheol looks the same in that one, too, like the life has been drained out of him.

I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s not like I’ll ever show these to you now, since I…

I’m sure I owe you an explanation. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—things have been so hard, and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I feel like my life went from zero to a hundred before I could even blink and now I’m scrambling. I didn’t think it was fair to—to drag you through that. Me being away, moving to an entirely different continent. I have faith we could do it, I just. I don’t know, baby, I don’t…

You deserve to have your own life. Be your own person. I’m so scared that the world will never see you for who you are—so beautiful and intelligent and kind. You don’t deserve to be reduced to my partner. And if you ever see this, I know you’re gonna roll your eyes. Probably call me a mean name because I took the choice away from you, because you think I’m trying to be selfless and heroic, and you’d be right. It’s not fair, and I wish I could tell you I’m sorry.

I wish I could just… pluck out my brain and give it to you, because even if it killed me to do it, at least it makes sense to me. And I don’t—I don’t want you to think I’m not hurting. I’ve been sick to my stomach since I left. I know I’m making a mistake, I know I am, I just—how do I do what I think is right in the long-run when it’s not what I want right now, or ever?

I don’t want to get over you. I don’t want you to get over me, and that’s how you know I’m not acting selflessly, because you should. I want you to always be happy, I just… wish it was with me.

So, I’m going to keep making these. I’m going to take you along for the ride, wherever it takes us, because you should be here but I can only hope you can one day understand why you’re not. I’m so—I’m so sorry, I don’t…

I’m sorry.

I love you.

You fall asleep and dream that you were the one meant to meet him at that restaurant.

The first thing you do is make a call to your mother.

“Could you send another container of yakgwa?”

On the other end of the line, your mother tuts, motherly intuition audibly kicking into overdrive. Is probably wearing that all-knowing, sly grin she always does when you try to be coy and evasive. “What happened to the last container I sent?”

“Ah, you know Kaori loves those. They barely lasted an hour after I told her what was in there.”

She hums an acknowledgement. Sounds like she takes a sip of tea. “I remember someone else being quite fond of those cookies, too.”

“Well, they are the most popular cookies in the country, so.”

After haranguing you into admitting they’re for Seungcheol and not your roommate, your mother promises to send them quickly. A few days at most, which buys you enough time to figure out how you’re going to approach the man in question.

The vlogs have turned your entire world upside-down. Answered questions you hadn’t even known you had. Took all that anger and resentment you’d been holding onto and set it free, and now you’re just left with… a void. Want to mend things, and it makes you wonder if such a thing is even possible, if it’s too late, but you don’t let those thoughts get very far.

Instead, you let them spur you into action. Have you sitting in front of your laptop at your desk, office hours long since over, silence creeping in the more the department empties. The thrum of the airconditioning and the tick-tick-tick of the clock are all the only company you have.

You worry if it’ll show on camera, how out of sorts you feel: sweating from the nerves, dabbing at your hairline; cheeks warm to the touch. But you suck in a breath anyway, steel yourself. Look at your webcam and the daunting red circle…

And start recording.

He hadn’t gotten it at first. Not really.

There’d been a container of yakgwa outside his door with his USB drive taped to the top of it. No note—not that he needed one to know who it was from, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A goodbye? A please fuck off forever and never contact me again?

He’d just taken them inside. Ate too many of the cookies while feeling sorry for himself. Maybe had a glass or two of wine to compound the issue, and never, ever considered contacting you. Didn’t think he could bear it if you never wanted to see him again, but he just…

Well, he was drunk and alone and he missed you, and he’d rewatched all those videos he recorded a million times before when he was like this, so what was a million and one?

It’d been the same as every time before: he smiled at the happy parts, cried at all his old wounds. Wanted to reach through the screen and strangle his past self for including that part about the blind date, because he never wanted to date anyone who wasn’t you, why would he say that, felt mortified at the thought of you watching that—

And then there it was.

All the way at the bottom. A new video. One that hadn’t been recorded by him—

Hi, Cheol, you say, and that’s all it takes to reduce him to a sobbing, yearning mess. I’m not sure what to say here. I don’t really record much—sometimes for lectures when the professors are too busy, but never anything personal like this, but I watched every single one you made for me and I thought I should return the favor.

I wanted to tell you everything I’ve been up to since you left, but it hasn’t been much. I got my degree. Tutored a lot in undergrad—the same thing I’m tutoring you in now, actually. I was good at it and it felt good to have something that was mine, you know? I almost moved for grad school. Thought for a while I was going to wind up in New York, but then my parents divorced and it felt like too much, too scary, so I stayed. Kaori also stayed, so we got an apartment together. It’s not much, definitely not as nice as your place, but it’s good enough.

I don’t think I ever told you, but she was seeing a guy for a bit and he was… obsessed with you, to say the least. Thought you were the coolest person in the world. They aren’t seeing each other anymore. Ended pretty badly, but—speaking of which, maybe steer clear of Student Services for a while, too.

Sometimes it felt like failure that I wound up staying here. That I had scholarships from all these far-away, prestigious places and didn’t take advantage of them. That I gave into my fear. And now… I don’t know. Maybe there’s a reason I stayed behind. Maybe there’s a reason you ended up back here, too.

Whatever happens—I don’t want you to think I still blame you. Kaori says we do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time, and I understand now that’s what you did. Even though it hurt me, you were trying to protect me. I get it now. And I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to go to all these places you didn’t know. To have to deal with your injury, the loss of a dream.

You said in one of your videos that you just want me to be happy, and that’s all I want for you, too, whatever that looks like.

Here’s my address if you ever want to come by to talk.

I love you, too.

—and then he’d been up and out the door, feeling stone cold sober, running to the front of his building to wait for his ride.

Felt like the drive took hours. Must’ve hit every red light between his apartment and yours. Took the steps two at a time just to get to your door faster.

There’s a man already standing outside your door when he gets there. One that looks shocked to see him, stars in his eyes, and when Seungcheol says, “Oh, you must be Kaori’s ex,” he looks more like he wants the earth to swallow him whole. Embarrassed in front of his idol.

He knocks on your door and gets no response. Knocks again, harder this time, and he has to try really hard to stifle his laughter when your voice yells from the inside, “Fuck off, Kenji, I already told you she’s not here!”

“It’s me,” Seungcheol yells back.

There’s quiet again. Just enough time for it to feel like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest and follow Kaori’s ex down the hall.

Then you’re yanking the door open—slowly, so slowly, like you’re scared it’s not actually him. Your eyes are brimming with tears when they meet his own, and he doesn’t let himself think, just goes on instinct, when he grabs for you, hands on your cheeks, and presses his lips to yours.

Somehow you taste the same.

Somehow you taste like redemption.

You taste like home.

Seungcheol kisses you until the tears slow. Kisses you until the universe realigns, until he could map your mouth in the dark. Kisses you until all you’re all he knows again.

When he pulls away, you’re gripping at his sweatshirt, don’t want to let him go. He presses his forehead to yours, offers up a million more apologies, starts talking nonsense. Says he’s going to drop microeconomics, what the hell does he know, he barely has a passing grade anyway, what does it matter, he’s such an idiot—

And then you say, “You came back,” and nothing else matters.

“I always will.”

(Later on, as you’re trying to steady your breathing, slick with sweat, your thigh thrown over Seungcheol’s hip as he stares down at you, dopey smile on his face, you say, “Choi Seungcheol, don’t you dare drop that class. I have worked my ass off to get you to barely-passing.”)

if you’ve made it this far thank you so much for reading! i am still very new at writing for seventeen, so i hope this was acceptable. i'm now going to throw myself into the warped tour vernon fic and will hopefully not go another 7+ months without posting anything. 😭

i would love to hear your thoughts! <3

[nanamis-angel]

𝐈𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 ♡︎

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 ৹ You and Suguru have been dating in secret and it hasn't been easy but it's totally worth it. So, while at a party, Suguru slips away to see you, not thinking anyone is around. But just how long does it take Satoru and Shoko to figure out what's going on?

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 ৹ suguru x fem!reader, fluff, making out (oop), you and suguru get caught kissing (losers lol), suguru is annoyed, satoru is the annoyer ™, shoko is a girls girl, yaga mention.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 ৹ 2.1k

𝐚/𝐧 ৹ was literally in class when I got this idea so I started writing it in my notebook. i'm shameless (hearts divider by @/s-h-o-w-y).

“You could have practically any girl here, Suguru and yet you keep ignoring them all!” Gojo exclaimed at his best friend. The two of them, along with you and Shoko were at a house party of a friend. And despite his flirty personality, he noticed that a lot of the girls their age seemed to flock to Suguru. Yet he ignored their advances every single time.

“I’m just not interested,” Geto replied, putting his hands in his pockets.

Satoru scoffed. “C’mon, you can’t possibly be serious. We’re at a party, have some fun! It’s not like Yaga is breathing down our necks right now or anything.”

But again, Suguru shook his head. “Knock yourself out, I’ll pass.” He shrugged it off.

Up until a couple of months ago, the two boys would go out and meet plenty of girls and would just have fun. But as of late, Suguru had just been ignoring any girls who came his way. Politely, of course, but he always made sure that they knew he was simply uninterested. Gojo would watch as Suguru would turn them away, his jaw agape. He simply couldn’t understand it.

Truth was, Suguru had been dating you for the past couple of months but the two of you had mutually decided to keep it a secret for the first little bit. You were still navigating relationships and you wanted that aspect of privacy. Suguru, of course, wanted to give it to you. But that did make seeing each other quite difficult.

At first, Suguru had no desire to attend these parties anymore. Knowing that he’d be approached by the girls there. But Satoru begged him every time, not knowing about his relationship with you. You didn’t want Suguru to miss out on the fun and told him to go anyway. So, he did. He’d just turn away any girl who’d come his way.

Especially since you wanted to keep things on the down low, he couldn’t just tell these girls that he had a girlfriend without the possibility of the word getting out to your friends.

Satoru glanced at two girls who had their eyes set on him. “Suit yourself.” He shrugged off before putting on a flashy grin and walking towards the girls.

The moment Satoru was distracted, Suguru let out a sigh of relief. “Finally,” he groaned. “That should keep him busy for a while.”

Now was finally his time to slip away—to slip away and find you. You had wandered off with Shoko ten minutes ago and he was already itching to see you again. He pulled out his phone and texted you.

“Where are you and Shoko?”

Moments later, your text popped up on his screen. “Don’t know where Shoko went but I’m down near the bathroom.”

Suguru smiled at your message—finally, he could just be with you alone, even if it was just for a minute. He made his way through the house, ignoring anyone and everyone he walked past. He just wanted to see you and he was determined to do so.

Turning around the corner, Suguru saw you in the hallway, leaning against one of the walls and his face lit up. Shoko was nowhere in sight, and neither was anyone else, just you. He understood you wanted to keep the relationship a secret but boy did it make things hard sometimes.

“There you are,” He said, walking up to you. Immediately, his arms were around your waist, and his chin was propped up on your shoulder. “Felt like I was going to suffocate back there.” He mumbled.

You chuckled a little. “That bad, huh?” You asked him with playful empathy.

Suguru nodded his head. “Satoru can’t take a hint that I’m not interested in any of the girls here. But I can’t just outright say why.” He sighed. Keeping your relationship a secret was hard—especially from his best friend.

Mr. “Six eyes sees all, nosey, and in everyone’s business Satoru Gojo” was hard to keep a secret from. Especially when he didn’t understand why Suguru was so uninterested in the girls around him all of a sudden.

There was no rule in school saying you couldn’t date other students—however, Yaga viewed relationships in school as a distraction and while if he found out you and Suguru were together, he couldn’t do much about it, he would just make it very obvious that he didn’t approve. Which in turn, would just make things awkward.

So, all of this together was the reason why your relationship was so private and secret.

“But now… I don’t have to deal with any of these pesky people.” Suguru grinned down at you. Within seconds, he pulled you into one of the rooms right by the bathroom, just so he could kiss you in private—away from everyone else, hoping nobody would come stumbling across the two of you.

Putting far too much faith that no one would, Suguru didn’t close the door all the way. Instead, he got straight to it, not wasting any time by pressing his lips against yours. You were a little taken aback by the sudden kiss and his eagerness but you reciprocated with fervor.

It had been hard having to sneak around all the time to do something as easy and simple as kissing; like conveniently going to the bathrooms around the same time while in class—or saying you were going to get some of the cursed weapons from the shed and Suguru would offer to “come help” you every time.

Needless to say, he was making up for all of the times he wanted to kiss you but couldn’t. He understood and respected your wishes to keep things private but boy were there enough times when he wanted to kiss you, no matter who was around.

His hands slipped from your back, down to your hips, giving them a firm but gentle squeeze. The only time you pulled away was to catch a breath, only for you to reconnect your lips with his moments later. With his hands still on your hips, he pulled you closer, kissing you harder.

Suguru was a great kisser—granted you had no one to compare him to since he was your first boyfriend but he made you feel alive every single time. He was the epitome of an amazing boyfriend. Respectful, sweet, with just the right amount of playfulness. You swore you could love him forever.

You don’t even remember when you fell for him but you were so glad you did.

But before you could continue, you heard a very familiar voice near the doorway, which caused you both to freeze right in your tracks. “Am I interrupting something?”

It was Shoko, standing in the doorway with a little mischievous grin on her face. You finally pulled away from Suguru, your face as red as a tomato and your eyes as wide as ever. “S-Shoko! Where—how’d you get here?” You asked, stumbling over your words.

“Smoke break in the bathroom,” She said, holding up a cigarette.

Of course, a smoke break. In the bathroom. In the bathroom right next to the room, you were just making out with Suguru in. Suguru mentally cursed himself for not closing the door all the way. At least that would’ve given you a second or two to pull away from each other and make things look normal.

“So, how long has this been going on?” Shoko asked, clearly not giving up on her curiosity.

“Um,” You looked at the ground for a moment. “About three and a half months…”

Shoko looked a little surprised. “Wow, that long? I always assumed something was going on between the two of you but I didn’t know you were together—especially for that long already.” She replied. It was decently impressive, given how strict and nosey Yaga was. Not to mention how nosey Satoru was. “And whose idea was it to keep this a secret for so long?”

Suguru pointed at you almost immediately and Shoko let out a snort at his quickness, provoking you to roll your eyes. Shoko’s eyes moved to Suguru. “And just where is Satoru?” She asked, knowing that the two of them were practically attached at the hip on nights like these.

Suguru sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “He’s occupied talking to some girls who were flirting with him earlier.” He answered, feeling slightly bad that he had just dipped. “I took that as a chance to come find [name].”

Shoko’s lips tugged into a grin as she looked you up and down; your lips were still slightly swollen from the passionate kisses you had just shared. “I can see that.” She teased.

Shoko had been your best friend ever since attending school but for some reason, you wanted to die of embarrassment. You wanted nothing more than to crawl into a little ball and blip out of existence. It was pretty embarrassing when you were caught making out with someone, even if it was your best friend who caught you.

“Honestly? I’m just impressed you two managed to keep this a secret for so long.” She said, crossing her arms. “Yaga-sensei is practically breathing down our necks most days and Gojo is awfully nosey.”

“Trust me, it hasn’t been easy,” Suguru muttered under his breath, earning a quick glance from you.

“You’re not going to tell Yaga, are you?” You asked Shoko. Shoko wasn’t a snitch—you knew that much but there was a little anxiety in the back of your mind that word might somehow get out to your teacher and make things awkward in places like the classroom.

“You won’t hear a word from me,” Shoko replied.

You let out a relieved sigh and smiled but it got you wondering why you were even anxious to say something about your relationship before. You reached out and your fingers laced with Suguru’s and he squeezed your hand.

However, just moments later, you heard footsteps coming from behind Shoko and towards the doorway to the room. It was Satoru, stumbling over after hearing your voices. “Is Suguru over here? He just disappeared.” He said, his voice slightly dazed.

But his slight daze immediately went away when he saw you standing right next to Suguru, your hand in his. “Ooooohhh what’s going on here?” He teased, leaning his arm on Shoko’s shoulder. It was pretty obvious what was going on. He had observed enough, and Suguru had talked about you enough to know that you liked each other at the very least.

Shoko rolled him off her shoulder and you narrowed your eyes at Satoru. You knew it was practically impossible for him to keep his mouth shut about certain things and you weren’t taking any chances.

“Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut.” You said firmly. You almost sounded like a mother scolding a young child.

“Okay fine,” He groaned, knowing there was no use in fighting you. He could tease or annoy Suguru all day but you were definitely not the girl he wanted to cross. You were not as forgiving as your boyfriend was. “How come I’m the last one to know about this though?” He looked at Suguru, feigning humorous offense.

Suguru began to walk towards the door, your hand still in his. There was no use in trying to hide anything around Shoko and Satoru anymore, so why would he? “Because you have trouble keeping quiet about certain things.” He replied to Satoru as he passed by him. “AKA you have a big mouth.”

Shoko just snickered, following you and Suguru out of the room. “What? What do you mean?” Satoru exclaimed, following behind the three of you. “I can keep a secret! I promise. C’mon you guys I’m not that bad!”

“Name one secret you’ve kept,” You said, looking back at him over your shoulder.

Satoru hesitated as if he was trying to think of one he could say. But then he crossed his arms and turned his nose up. “Well, I can’t say them because they’re a secret, obviously.”

Although this was obviously not true, it earned around of laughs from the three of you as you returned to the party. Even though this wasn’t how you planned your night to go, part of you was quite relieved that you no longer had to hide your relationship with Suguru around Shoko and Satoru. It felt like a weight had been taken off of your shoulders.

And Suguru? He was the most relieved out of all of them.

And he definitely kissed you a lot that night.

[luludeluluramblings]

Smalltown!Neglected! Meta!Reader x Yandere!Batfam ☁️ Part Seven

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

Part One ☁️ Part Two ☁️ Part Three ☁️ Part Four ☁️ Part Five ☁️ Part Six ☁️ Part Eight

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A/N: I’m not sure if I’m satisfied with this. But, I doubt I’ll ever be satisfied with this. I want Reader to come off as more Bruce like with the emotional suppression and planning. And, this was my actual first and third attempt at dialogue. I’m gonna need some practice. But, I tried.

A/N: Up next we get some yandere!Bats vs. yandere!Smalltown action. (Holy frick is that gonna be hard to write.) I’m also going to start work on the Dick Obsession now. Gotta fight the temptation to write the Vigilante!Smalltown!Reader story while this is still in the works.

Warning: Yandere Themes.

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As the coming months passed by, Reader could feel Gotham starting to wear on them. Or, they at the least Wayne manor starting to wear on them. They haven’t been given permission to leave the manor since the kidnapping. Not even to drive their truck for some unhealthy, but soul healing fast food. Of course, that doesn’t stop the other residents of the house from leaving whenever they wish. 

They see the Bat Burger wrappers in the trash the morning after another soundless night in the manor. God, how they’d love to try it one day. 

But, as time moves on something draws closer. An important date. Reader’s legal eighteenth birthday. They’re excited, by all means. But, there’s something significantly more important coming sooner. 

Reader’s Younger Brother’s Birthday was just a week before Reader’s. There had been many fond memories made while growing up with the week between the two different dates being filled with fun and excitement. (And love.) 

With such an important date coming up, and with Momma and Daddy no longer being here, Reader had plans to make it a fun week. 

They just have to convince Bruce to let them go back to Smalltown. Just for the week. They’re all too busy to spend time with Reader anyway, besides this is important to them. They’ve stayed in the manor like asked. They’re grades are good. They do their chores. They don’t ask for much. It should be perfectly reasonable to request to let them visit back home. 

But, just in case, Reader approaches Dick next time he's in the manor and is smothering them in affection before he goes to disappear into the library. 

“Can you help me convince Bruce to let me go, please, Dick?”

It’s a simple request. And, it makes Dick’s heart melt a bit. Reader’s the only one in the family to easily give into his affection and to have them finally ask him for help in such a sweet polite voice was heart melting.

Wholeheartedly, he agrees and he is rewarded. With Reader bouncing into his arms with an impressive amount of enthusiasm that he hasn’t had a chance to see previously. Probably due to always being so busy. Maybe he should make more time for Reader if they shower him with such genuine gratitude and affection like this. 

The thought lingers in his head as he makes his way towards the Batcave. A spring in his step despite the glares he receives as he makes his way down the stairs. 

The manor cameras had caught the entire thing, leaving the occupants in the cave to get a front row seat to Reader being sweet on Dick. 

He can’t stop the tiny smug smile from forming on his lips as Barbara gives him a disapproving ~~jealous~~ look. Or, the look of straight bitterness on Damian’s face. The mild satisfaction from Duke’s face being as blank as Cassandra’s. Stephanie’s forlorn expression. The way that Jason looks like he wants to shoot him with the gun he’s cleaning that makes him want to laugh with glee.. 

Tim doesn’t even look at him. Too annoyed with Dick as he sits at the Batcomputer furiously clicking and typing away on something. 

Bruce had been out at the moment for League Business. But, the entire family now has a competition forming. Whoever could convince Bruce for Reader would win. The prize being the winner possibly getting showered in Reader’s affection. And, the hope of visiting Reader’s hometown with them. The very idea of it makes some of them shudder with some particular emotions. 

The bombardment of pleading and puppy-dog eyes began almost as soon as Bruce stepped back into the cave. It was nearly comical how everyone petitioned Reader’s case. 

Hell, Bruce was nearly convinced they should all make the trip when Tim threw his bid in.

Pulling up all the research on Smalltown and how apparently harmless it was. He even managed to remotely bug Childhood Friend’s Brother’s phone just to double check. 

That’s when things spiral. 

Right at that very moment, a call comes through to the phone. It seems harmless at first. The guy talking to his boss. The two had immediately talked about Reader returning to town. As if the two knew without a doubt that they were coming back.

That sparked suspicions, but it's not what ignited the fire.

The fire came when the two started talking about Reader's time in Gotham. The whole kidnapping incident. Childhood Crush admitted that Reader tried to down play the incident to Nana. After which his boss ask a horrifying question.

"Do you and Grand Daddy need some help killing this guy? It might be a bit harder than the last one y'all killed."

The last one.

Immediately the phrase makes questions arise. But, once again things get worse.

"Nah, we'll let him live. He's from Gotham. He'll probably never come out this way. And, if he does them we'll drag him out where we drowned the last sorry son of a bitch. He was just in it for the money."

"That's right. The other guy just wanted to kill Reader to keep 'em for himself. Still..."

It was difficult to give the rest of the conversation their full attention after that.

It was like the blood had crystalized in their veins. Both cold fury and hot rage filling them till it seemed to shred their minds apart.

There was no way in heaven or hell or high water that they were possibly going to let Reader go back to that vile little town filled with monsters. As if Gotham wasn't filled with abominations of it's own designs.

Without a moment to delay Bruce Batman jumps into action, barking orders for Tim, Barbara, and Cassandra to start digging up everything imaginable on Smalltown. Every resident, every social media post or mention, every single person that has ever lived there, visited, and gone missing. "Find me the name of the bastard that nearly took my child to the grave. I want the memory of them wiped of the face of the earth as their bones rot in it."

The other's are ordered to cover his patrol and redouble their efforts to capture the remaining Gotham Rouges by any and all means necessary The Court of Owls is low priority until more is uncovered about Smalltown and what the hell happened.

Reader's usual pacing around the unoccupied halls of the manor conversing on the phone is interrupted by Bruce Batman stalking towards with a violence simmering under the surface of an obsidian mask. Easy to shatter and sharp to the touch. Before a words is even spoken the phone the lifeline is ripped from their hands and shattered under a pair of designer loafers.

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You could only stagger back as you watched his foot trample over the well used phone. You hadn't even chance to hang up the conversation you were having, when Bruce had come barreling down the extravagant hall way you roamed so often you 'd already practically memorized the brush strokes on each painting and the pattern of the wood grain on the walls. Not even the chance to put a hold on the plans you were making before it all came to an abrupt halt without your blessing.

For a moment your just baffled. Looking at the shattered phone screen with pieces of glass and plastic on the ground before looking up at the shattered facade your father Bruce wore.

His face was deathly still. Not even a twitch. It gave him an inhuman like visage that set off the same warning bells that Jason Red Hood had made you hear.

So that's where he got it from.

You can't help put think, trying to form the words to question his actions and confront him. It isn't long before he gives you the excuse explanation for his unwarranted action himself.

"You're not going." Is all he says. His voice was cold enough to burn.

It doesn't take a genius to know what he's talking about.

"If this is about me getting Dick to help convince you-"

"Dick agrees. Everyone agrees. You are not going." The interruption is rude, but the words sting. They thought that everyone else would be on board with it. Even the members of the family that didn't care for their presence should have been on board with it.

"I'm not asking for a vote. I was asking for your permission and yours alone." Another attempt.

"I am saying no. I am your father and you will listen to me about this." The totality found in his icy voice makes them finally feel that helpless. Like nothing they say will improve this situation. That continuing to smile will not solve a damn thing.

"What did I do?" The resentment that has locked up tightly inside beings to swirl. Ire churning into gales. The long withheld temper becoming a tempest. "What the hell did I do to make you treat me like this?"

"This has nothing to do with you. This is my decision on the matter. You need-" The sound of a notification going off interrupts his words, but they don't stop the ringing in you're ears. Even after Bruce abruptly dismisses himself, muttering about getting you a new phone, before moving towards the library. Again.

For once, you don't bother cleaning up the shattered pieces on the floor. Leaving them on the ornate carpet in the lavish and deserted hall. You have planning to do. Restraint is gone. Holding back is over. It's time to take things into your own hands. They want to ignore you, fine. You'll leave and you'll fucking live without them.

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Consequently, incoming weather reports start showing some unusual patterns on the news that week. Meteorologist say there's a massive possibility of a potential hurricane brewing off the coast. Everyone is on edge. (Gotham is already a disaster as is. No one wants another one on top of it.)

Reader's not to worried. They grew up with Hurricane parties. Besides the manor has it's own power grid says Alfred. Gotham's power grid is a bit more vulnerable, but luckily the Hospitals and Arkham are on different power grids. Everything should be alright. (Everything should also go according to plan.)

The next time Dick comes by, Reader is a bit short with him. Giving him a disgruntled look that breaks his heart a little and makes it melt. Try as he might he gets nothing other than their annoyance. Even when he finally admits it was Tim's fault they had been denied the chance to go home. It does make them pout even more, how cute. Even when he gifts them a newer phone. Their not stupid, the damn thing is probably bugged to high heaven. And, it's missing all their old contacts since Bruce slammed the SD card under his big bat toe.

Their clearly in a foul mood and everyone is being subjugated to the silent treatment. As their birthday, and their younger brother's birthday, draws closer and closer, a dark cloud seems to hang over them and Gotham.

In a moment born from guilt and ignorance, Bruce buys them a car as an early birthday present. A grandiose little luxury model. With all the bells and whistles. It's even in their favorite color. Not that anyone in the family asked what it was. (Tim might have had something to do with it. After all he did get them banned from traveling. Not that he feels guilty. No way in hell was he letting you go. Especially without him or the others.)

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"It seems kinda wasteful." You can't help saying it. To tired of putting on that pleasant people pleaser mask for once.

"I know it's a bit extravagant, but since everyone has their own car I thought you should have your own too." Bruce had such an eager smile on his face. Like the whole incident with the crushing your hopes and your phone never happened.

To bad you haven't forgotten nor forgiven.

"Still a waste. I'm not going to get to drive it anywhere." Vinegar coating your tongue as you look at the sleek design.

You can here everyone around you stop cooing and praising the gift. There's no need to further elaborate your point. He gets it. The family gets it. The very earth you stand on gets it. You're not leaving this house. There's no need for the tank of gas to be filled. Or the damn thing to be charged since its some fucking electric hybrid, and probably filled to the brim with all sorts of nasty little tracking bugs.

You could have left it at that. But why not sink that needle deeper into his chest. Not a knife. Never a knife. You want your words to sting and stick. No taking the cut and letting it heal overtime. Let it be tattooed on the skin.

"Besides I already have Daddy's old truck. I don't need this." Don't those words hit like a strike to the soul. Bruce grows visibly still at them. That practiced mask going up and hiding the tells from all of them. Except Cassandra. There's no hiding things from her. They're all laid bare in front of her and she can tell everyone has somethings to say. While you have something to scream.

"You could at the very least be grateful for Father's gift" Damian spoke. He had been so well behaved to far. Keeping quite and watching with attentive green eyes. He could tell this wasn't going to go in the family's favor. He didn't necessarily blamed you for being disgruntled. But, would it kill you to give them a smile. They missed those. Hell, he missed those.

Something in you crackled, but you managed to hold you're tongue. The side-eye you gave him, however spoke enough volumes for you instead.

Astonishingly, it was Duke that set off the electric charge.

"I mean, it is a really nice car. You sure you don't want to take it for a spin?" You can here his attempt at trying to defuse the static in the are, but as fond of him as you are compared to the others, it just sets you off.

"Oh, and where to exactly?" You can't help but snort. "Down the driveway and back?"

"You're acting like a brat." Jason throwing in his two cents. Of course he would say that. And, he's rewarded with a voltaic look from you eyes and a snarl from your lips.

"I. Don't. Care." The words echo in the massive car garage. Bouncing of the walls and the other sleek fancy model cars in it. Your apathy and anger is reward with quiet.

It doesn't last long.

"Let's all just calm down." Dick steps between them, trying to play reconciler. All it serves to do is make you feel more isolated. The way he steps between you cuts you off from the rest of the group and makes it seem like he's singling you out.

"I am calm!" The words coming from your clenched jaw.

"They're the one acting like a spoiled little-"

"Jason, enough." Bruce finally steps in. That stoic look still on his face. Internally, he knows he miscalculated. He made a mistake, and it's humbling to know he can still make them at his age and with all his experience. Still, he wears the mask. He's too busy recalculating and coming up with another plan. Perhaps he was putting to much focus on the wrong thing. That didn't stop him from glaring at that classless truck in his garage.

"Of fucking course Daddy's princess gets away with acting like a brat." Jason doesn't stop though, looking directly at you. Always looking at you. Everyone is always looking at you. But never speaking these days.

"Fuck you." You whisper. Caution and hesitance thrown into the stirring winds.

"Uh-oh, looks like the princess finally snapped." That sickly green look appearing in his eyes. God, does he love this. He knew they had some fucking bite in them. Some spice. Something that made them even more delicious. That just enhanced their sweetness tenfold.

"Jason. Knock it off." Barbara murmurs after Cassandra places a hand on her shoulder. Signaling the direction this could easily head in.

"No, I don't think I will." He sneers, making an attempt to step around Dick and get in your face. It's Tim and Stephanie that try to stop him this time. Both muttering to him and trying to get him to calm down.

You can clearly see it. Their family dynamic. Clear as day. It's right in front of you for you to watch unfold while you stand on the outside looking in. Only getting stray remnants of it when they deem you worth it. You're always worth it though, silly little sugarplum. They’re just terrible at showing it, you poor poor thing. That'll change soon, don't worry. Actually, you should worry.

There's no need to stick around any longer. No fucking need at all. Your feet echoing as you leave the room filled with strangers family and cars. You're leaving. You're going home. And you're going home tonight.

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That night, the news is blaring over Gotham. A sudden hurricane off the coast is set to hit by nightfall. People are being asked to evacuate, already there is panic in the streets.

As much as they don't want to leave things unresolved, the family has no choice, but to respond. Making sure evacuations go smoothly. Keeping the mobs at bay in the stores. Checking that the Arkham inmates are both secure and safe.

It gets worse when the reports further come in. There was lightning spotted off the coast. A lightning storm predicted to hit before the hurricane. That would double the difficulties everyone in Gotham was dealing with.

Most everyone, but Reader.

With the family busy they had plenty of time to pack a few belongings and necessities for a long drive. Glowing eyes taking inventory as the electricity crackled under their skin and the distant skies. Brewing excitement in their chest as the skies filled with dark clouds. Some might think it ominous. But, for Reader it was freedom.

In Gotham that ominous feeling continued. It was as if Gotham itself knew what chaos was about to unfold. Chaos that it would have reveled in if not for the impending feeling of loss found not only in the empty streets, but in Wayne Manor.

As the wind started to wail, nightfall seemed to come earlier with how dark the clouds made the sky. Rain poured in sheets. Most of the Bats took cover, but when the lightning began to strike is when things really when to hell.

By luck or something else, the Gotham power grid was hit. Shutting down over half the city in the first moments of the storm. The downpour hadn't even soaked the concrete when it struck.

The darkness washed over the city and the family knew it was going to be a long long night.

Barbara, in Oracle mode in the Batcave, was focused on keeping everyone updated on new alerts and any looting. She didn't have a chance to glance at the manor cameras and see Reader walking through the halls with a bag on their shoulders before. Multiple strikes of lightning reverberated through the manor. They could be heard echoing all the way down in the cave.

And, they caused the power to go out.

It was only out for twenty minuets. Twenty long minuets of Barbara and Alfred trying to fix the power and get everyone back in contact with each other.

A lot can happen in twenty minutes. Like a garage door opening and closing manually. Like someone driving down the long driveway out of the security gate without being noticed. Like someone could escape without notice in those twenty minutes.

☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️

@starsdotalk @sleepyghoster @maicenitas @box-of-kinderjoy @yandereheros @skwunkler @cl0esblogg @delias-stuff @rosecentury @lilyalone @addie-r-u-ok @space1crow @imaginarydreams @dhanyasri @rosalietodd013 @rissareader @rando2509 @h0rr0r-10ver-69 @interobanginyourmom @heyitsaloy @myanyan-me @animegoddess15 @resident-cryptid @schaarfyx

[zreamy]

i'll love you forever

pairing: park sunghoon x fem!reader

summary: you were sunghoon's first everything; first friend, first love, and first heartbreak. after years of quietly crushing on you, he was finally ready to confess. so ready to confess, that he told his parents the two of you were already dating! it was an easy enough lie to keep up and he kept it up for months, what could possibly go wrong? he thought. little did he know, you would have a falling out and stop talking for months.. and then, you'd both get invited to spend a week at home with his parents, who still believe you're his girlfriend.

genre: smut, fluff, angst, college au, childhood best friends to lovers, fake dating

warnings: minors dni, fake dating is pretty mild (sorry), she kinda doesn’t rate him at the start, these two kind of exist in a vacuum a little bit idk i had a self-enforced word count to stick to and broke it.. (im within the 10% allowance !), sunghoon in a vest, sunghoon arms, sunghoon

word count: 21,858

playlist: click here.. (for my non-spotify babes, the main song is light by wave to earth (which for some reason i put last.. whatever))

author's note: for silly @asahicore. happy birthday pooks i hope it's amazing and that u enjoy reading this when u have the time !!! LOL (lots of love) also im never writing without telling you things again this was so absurd.

to everyone else.. ok happy reading also emma did not beta read this so im sure it's missing its charm .. anyway it's for emma not you 😭 anyway i hope u enjoy regardless and lmk ur thoughts! omg this is the first fic im nervous about posting.......... please enjoy or else.

In the three years since Park Sunghoon moved away for university, he’d been doing a pretty good job of going home to see his parents. They’d welcome their baby back to the nest with open arms and wide grins. With a rehearsed level of indifference, his younger sister, Yeji, would say, “Oh, I didn’t know you were coming home this weekend.” when she saw him at the dinner table. Sunghoon pretended to only be marginally hurt by this. 

In the last three months, he hasn’t so much as sent a text to his parents. 

Or to you. 

Ignoring texts from his mother is devastating. Between classes, he watches as, “Hi, sweetie, I love you 😍,” turns into, “Missing you, honey, know you must be busy but spare some time for your old mummy, no?” which turns into, “Getting really worried now, are you doing okay? Has something happened with YN? Talk to me, I love you, my baby boy!” 

Ignoring texts from you is easy because texts from you never come. 

Sitting at the end of his bed, Sunghoon rereads a text his mother sent a few minutes ago: Please talk to me, son. Really worried and YN isn’t answering calls either. What’s going on with you two?

When he leaves his room, he finds Jake lying on the couch, and with his keys in hand, Sunghoon says, “I’m going home.” 

And the drive is great! At least, he tells his mum it is. In truth, the drive home without you was nearly impossible. Your ever-expanding home time playlist buzzed through the speakers in his car, but without you there to screech along to the songs, it wasn’t the same. He felt your absence the most when he stopped to get petrol and you weren’t there behind him struggling to carry enough snacks to feed a small family without offering to pay. 

The look of worry on his mum’s face stirs a pit in his stomach. “Why are you so quiet these days? God, you look so tired,” she says, frowning. “Is it school? Or something with YN? It’s not like her not to text back.” Her brows crease as she whispers the word unless. She pulls him into a hug, her chin resting perfectly on his shoulder, and her comforting hand strokes the hair on the back of his head. “Breakups are never easy, honey. I’m so sorry, I know how much you love her.” 

Breakups are never easy. The sentence hangs heavy over his head. 

Whether she knows it or not, she’s handed him a get-out-of-jail-free card, the opportunity to set things straight, to end this mess once and for all. No further questions, and most importantly, no more lies. 

For the first time since he left your flat three months ago, Sunghoon lets himself cry. He’d imagined this moment countless times, his first cry since you ended things. In his mind, it was always intense. Today, as it happens, only a few salty tears leak from his eyes, spilling onto the cuff of his sleeve, darkening the blue cotton in tiny indigo splotches. 

“We didn’t break up,” he says in a small voice—for some reason. “I’m just having a hard time.” Neither statement is technically untrue, but the words taste rotten in his mouth.

The tightening grip of his mum’s arms around his body is what brings on the harsh, shoulder-racking sobs he’d been anticipating. For a while, they stand like this, Sunghoon weeping into his mum’s cardigan until she sends him upstairs to lie down, promising a cup of tea that never comes. 

His childhood bedroom is chilly, so he changes into clothes he left behind and climbs into bed, pulling his duvet up to his chin. He turns his head to look at the walls and the room around him, everything is exactly where he left it in the summer. It should be comforting, but it’s weird to be home without you. 

There are photos of you and him everywhere, growing up and around each other through different stages of life. The two of you together during the summer your family moved in next door, you wore glasses back then and were the first friend he’d made in his life. Sunbathing and sharing earphones at the beach, listening to music together on your iPod classic. Sunghoon in thick glasses with a stiff smile and your arm around him on the first day of high school. Wide grins at the start of this summer, the last time things were okay between you. 

Overwhelmed, he stares up at the ceiling, only realising he’s crying when a hot tear slips from his eyes to tickle his ear. Because Sunghoon likes to upset himself, he screws his eyes shut and thinks about the night before you stopped talking. 

Though he didn’t know it at the time, you’d left Yeonjun’s place to sit with him in a tiny restaurant on campus, the one you’d only visit to toast to each other’s heartbreaks. It had become a ritual — ever since your first year boyfriend dumped you after two weeks — to cry as much as you wanted and drink as much soju as your bodies could handle before stumbling back to your apartments. 

Having spent years suffering from an unrequited crush on his best friend, Sunghoon was always the one to comfort you. But that night was different; you were there to comfort him. It was easy enough to play the part of ‘boy whose crush likes someone else’ because he spent your entire friendship in that role. He’d had no problem accepting his fate, but his composure started to slip when you met Yeonjun. It was the first time you’d dated someone who Sunghoon had reason to be jealous of. In every way, Yeonjun was better than him—taller, funnier, hotter. Sunghoon knew he didn’t stand a chance. He took it personally, you liking Yeonjun instead of him, and let his jealousy consume him from the inside out. 

This jealousy led him to start telling you about Minjeong—lying to you about Minjeong, and his feelings for her. She was a girl from a college out of town that he saw on his Instagram Explore page. He followed her by accident, and by some stroke of luck, she followed back. Sunghoon didn’t really have feelings for her — he didn’t even know her — but she was a girl that you didn’t know, so you wouldn’t be able to meddle. 

It only took a few weeks for Sunghoon to become so upset about your relationship that he couldn’t hide his emotions anymore. So, in a fit of tears, he told you over the phone that things ended badly with Minjeong, and he was in urgent need of a soju ceremony. 

But the night was missing its usual comforts.

It was strange to be the one crying, to see you looking put together and ordering the food. To see you pouring the drinks and raising your glass to propose a toast to ‘Hoonie’s first heartbreak’. You were driving that night, so you only had a tiny sip of soju and let him drink as much as he needed, the way he always did for you, at the same table, in the same restaurant for years. 

Hours later, in your car, you entertained his drunken rambles, though he remembers how your lips were set into a frown that he wanted to kiss away while you gripped the steering wheel like you thought it would run from you. Sunghoon was more drunk than he’d been in a while, drunk enough to let you sling his arm over your shoulders and keep him upright until you reached his flat. 

The voices coming from Yeji’s room disrupt the memory. He’s thankful.

“Your brother’s going through something, so be nice to him this weekend.” His mother’s voice is her version of hushed—a loud whisper. 

Yeji’s response is harder to make out, but he doesn’t miss the way their mum says, “I mean it, missy.” 

A dramatic sigh rumbles through Yeji as she barges into his room without knocking. Sunghoon sits up, feeling an ache in his back and crossing his legs. 

“Mum told me to lay off you today, which is fine, but before I do, I need to tell you something.” 

Yeji pushes the door shut behind her, and the open window makes it slam, both of them flinching from the sudden noise. She pulls her hair out of a silk scrunchie and throws herself on the floor. A pang of irritation forms in his chest, knowing that he could immediately find the empty hanger in his wardrobe where the shirt she’s wearing used to live. 

“I hate you and your perfect golden boy image, Hoon. Would it kill you to fail a class for once? I don’t know how I’m supposed to carry on your legacy.” She’s looking up at him, her chin in her hands and irritation written in the crease between her thick brows. 

It’s impossible to know if it’s because of Yeji’s complete lack of boundaries or the fact that her ‘perfect, golden boy’ big brother is on track to fail three out of three classes and get cut from the hockey team, but Sunghoon immediately bursts into tears. 

“Oh, uh.. I’m sorry?” Yeji offers. “I was kidding if that helps.” 

“I’m alright, it’s okay.” The tears don’t stop stinging his eyes. “Why do you want me to change everything about myself?” 

With a frown, Yeji pours out her frustration and mild resentment. She doesn’t understand how Sunghoon effortlessly conquers every aspect of life while she struggles. Neither do their parents, who had been baffled by her plummeting grades since she moved to boarding school, especially when Sunghoon’s academic performance has only soared since he left for university. The weight of this perceived injustice pulls Sunghoon’s shoulders down with guilt as she talks about the expectations he has inadvertently set for her. 

“But other than that, I’m good.” She shrugs, sitting with her legs out, and leaning back on her palms. “How’s YN?” she asks. It’s clear from the brightness in her voice that she thinks she’s helping. 

Sunghoon cries again. 

Back on campus, he’s trying to scrape together what’s left of his academic career with the help of two of the smartest guys he knows, and their friend Jay. Though the word ‘friend’ feels a little strong at the moment given the way Jay’s goading him. 

Sunghoon rolls his eyes, sitting back in his seat. “There’s nothing you can do that I can’t,” he says, meaning every word. 

Jay scoffs, shrugging and raising his brow in a way that, over the years, Sunghoon knows to interpret as his ‘about to say something ridiculous’ look. “Pretty sure I could call YN right now, and she’d answer.” 

There’s a pit in Sunghoon’s stomach as Heeseung turns his head in the other direction like he’s been slapped, trembling with stifled laughter. At least Jake doesn’t hide his amusement, throwing his head back in a fit of giggles that draw nasty looks from the other students in the library. Sunghoon doesn’t waste his energy trying to argue because Jay’s right.

Now composed, Heeseung turns back to the table, flipping through some of Sunghoon’s course materials to find whatever his class was doing in class that week. The English Literature class he’s taking — The Modernist Movement: Joyce, Woolf, and Hemingway — is the same class he had to send a million emails over the summer to get enrolled in, but it’s the same one Heeseung aced two years ago. Lucky for him none of the boys seem to be in the mood to make fun of him for trying so hard to have a class in common with you, and then practically failing out of it before the term had started properly.

“This class is, like, beyond easy, dude.” Heeseung pauses to sniffle and twist the stud in his ear. “Everyone in my class aced it. How are you doing so badly already?” 

“I only took it because YN thought it’d be fun if we had a class together, but.. I kind of haven’t been going since we stopped talking.” Sunghoon shrugs, pretending to be unaffected. 

As if the mere mention of your name has some sort of summoning power, like saying Biggie Smalls in the mirror three times, you appear in his eye line, rounding the corner with a furious stride. Your demeanour crumbles when Jay waves at you, and you grin, waving back, but as soon as you look Sunghoon in the eye again, the rage comes back, and you smack a hand on the table when you reach it, leaning over to him. 

“Sunghoon, a word?” you ask.

He thinks you’re asking, but it’s hard to tell with the way you set your jaw afterwards, and the way the warmth of your signature vanilla scent hits him hard. Dazed, Sunghoon lifts a hand, pointing at himself. “Me?” 

“Does anyone else at the table answer to Sunghoon?” 

“Okay,” he says, somewhat pathetically, nudging Jay for laughing at him. 

As slowly as possible, Sunghoon pushes his chair from the table and stands up, following you to the corner of the references section where only anthropology students in scratchy thrift store knits, and Jay, come to check out encyclopaedias by volume. You look good, save for the rage written all over your face—which, honestly, Sunghoon thinks he likes.

Sunghoon isn’t sure what to expect, so he says, “Hey.” He’s being cautious, waiting a moment to gauge your reaction. “What’s gooooood?” His cheeks burn as soon as he closes his mouth around the vowel, but you laugh. You laugh, and it’s beautiful and happy, and you’re laughing because of him—or at him, but he’s glad either way. 

Annoyance quickly clears all traces of amusement on your face. “Were you ever going to tell me we’re spending next week at Mum and Dad’s?” you ask. 

Sunghoon gasps dramatically, clicking his fingers. “I knew there was something I’ve been meaning to do.” 

His attempt at lightening the mood falls flat, and you only nudge his shoulder gently, sighing. “Can you be serious? For once in your life, even for a second, can you please think about how the things you say affect me?” You’re frowning, crossing your arms over your chest and looking at your feet. “It’s not fair, Sunghoon. For you to keep saying things—making plans involving me and then acting like I’m the bad guy when I turn you down.” 

“I don’t think you’re the bad guy at all,” Sunghoon admits. “If anyone is in the wrong, it’s me, I guess.”

You scoff, looking at him like you hate him. “You guess? Are you serious?” You look furious, but you sound hurt and Sunghoon hates it. Hates himself. “I can’t have this conversation with you right now. Tell mum I’m sick, and it’s contagious.” You roll your eyes and walk away, leaving Sunghoon alone with his thoughts and judgemental stares from students in crochet scarves so long they graze the floor. 

He sighs, slumping against the wall. How does he keep getting it wrong with you? 

Back at the table, Sunghoon manages to act like he’s not falling apart and makes some serious headway on his missing assignments with Heeseung’s help before they call it a day as the sun starts to set. 

When he gets home, he lies down on his bedroom floor, spending hours poring over the conversation you had. Over the minute changes in your facial expression, the tone of your voice, and the endless list of things he should have done, rather than watch you walk away. 

The moment feels familiar, both identical to and worlds apart from what happened after you left three months ago. When he managed to scrape the last shreds of his dignity from the kitchen table, he dragged his feet to his room and lay down like he is now, face to the rug. That day, he left his door open and lay so still that Jake thought he was dead. Sunghoon remembers wishing he had been. 

For once in your life, even for a second, can you please think about how the things you say affect me? The words run on a loop in his mind, over and over, until he can’t remember the order of the sentence or where you put emphasis. They’re cutting all the same. 

Sunghoon sighs into the itchy fibres of his black rug before rolling onto his back. In the diminishing purple light of the setting sun. he looks at the walls of his room. At the Fleetwood Mac poster, he stole from Jay when they moved out of their first year dorm, that curls away from the wall towards the ceiling—a diagonal strip of shiny tape being the only indication of the otherwise invisible tear through the face of Stevie Nicks. 

He’s glad when his phone rings, cutting through the quiet, though the sight of your name and the anatomical heart emoji next to it only dampens his spirit. Reluctantly, Sunghoon answers the phone, holding it to his ear. 

“I just got off the phone with Dad..” You trail off. Tangible silence follows, so thick it weighs on his chest. “I’ll go home with you.” 

“You will?” 

“Yes. Goodbye.” 

Sunghoon reaches your flat at five in the evening. You don’t smile when you open the door for him, nor do you invite him in. Instead, you dump your bag at your feet and he cringes, looking from the floor to you. You’re aggressively beautiful and cosy-looking as you pull a jacket over the sweater you wore that night. Sunghoon’s heart aches in his chest and he wonders if you even realise. Suddenly, the memory of the last thing you said the morning after hits him like a truck: Then let’s not be friends at all. 

A familiar weight lands on his shoulder—your hand. Concern lines your eyes as you ask if he’s okay. 

With a lump in his throat, Sunghoon nods. 

In the discomfort of his car, the two of you sit in silence while he starts the drive home. 

“How’s Yeonjun,” he asks, eyes flicking towards you but regretting it immediately when he sees how you clench your jaw. 

“No,” you say simply, shaking your head. “You don’t get to ask me about him.” 

These are the only words you exchange until Sunghoon stops for petrol. He has enough fuel for the rest of the journey, but he feels like dying and thinks the fresh air might quell his thoughts of running his car off the road. Like always, the two of you get out and head into the kiosk, where he follows you wordlessly through the aisles, watching you debate on snack choices before settling on the same things you always get. Sunghoon pays for your snacks and you roll your eyes but don’t protest, mumbling thanks as you take them into your arms, leading the way back outside.

He knows he needs to tell you before you reach the house, but he’s not entirely sure how to say it—so he just does. “My, uh.. my parents think we’re dating.”

You stop so suddenly in front of him that he almost bumps into you. Stepping around you, Sunghoon keeps walking. 

Over the top of his car, he watches your face cycle through all five stages of grief until anger comes back around in the loop as you scoff. “Why do they think that?” Your face is devoid of expression now, the blankness over your features dragging a sharp chill over his spine. 

He stares blankly at you, processing. “Because I told them we’re dating,” he mumbles. 

“Why did you.. do that?” You tilt your head, eyes pressing shut in a long blink. “What are you even talking about? Why did you.. What?” 

A thin layer of sweat coats his palms despite the cold. Why did he do that? “We can stage a breakup during the trip or say we broke up right now,” Sunghoon offers. “Just one night, YN, please.” 

The wind whistles by, ruffling your hair and jacket that you hug tightly to your chest. Behind you, Sunghoon takes note of the group of girls standing by the pumps, all five of them jerking their heads abruptly when they notice him watching, suddenly finding interest in the scattered litter and flickering halogen bulbs in the steel canopy over their heads. 

You’re staring when he looks back at you, nostrils twitching with a sniffle before you sigh. “Or we could say that you’re a liar and end things there,” you say. “Or better yet, you go down there on your own and tell them the truth.”

Sunghoon’s gaze drops, his thoughts racing in his mind. He knows you’re right. At some point, his parents will have to find out, and it’d be better for them to find out now. Sunghoon sighs, nodding. “Alright,” he concedes. “I’ll take you back.”

An angry laugh comes out of you as you shake your head. “No need, I’ll walk.” 

The station you’re at is neatly nestled in the middle of nowhere, on a road so narrow he’s not even sure it has a pavement. You’re halfway through the three-hour drive, so there’s no telling how long the walk would be, never mind the fact that the sun is already setting and it’s deep enough into October for the wind to sting. 

“From here?” he asks, incredulous. 

“Yes, open the boot so I can get my bag.” 

Sunghoon can only bring himself to say your name, a desperate whisper. 

“Open the boot.”

He repeats your name as if it’ll make a difference, he’s pleading with you, begging—though he doesn’t know for what. 

You go to the back of his car where Sunghoon joins you, a pit in his stomach when you step away. With misty eyes, you look up at him and his heart breaks. “Please.”

Sunghoon knows you well enough to know that you’re not actually going to attempt the walk home but also knows that you won’t back down if he keeps challenging you. He nods, opening the boot for you and getting into the driver’s seat—your move. 

You stand there, unmoving, and long enough passes that he thinks you’ll actually leave. The boot closes softly and you join him in the passenger seat. You sigh, buckling your seatbelt. “Let’s just get this over with.” 

For the rest of the journey, you sit in silence as Sunghoon briefs you on the relationship, fighting a smile as he thinks about being your boyfriend—even if only for a night. You scoff when he ‘reminds’ you that you’ve been together for four months now and the only reason you haven’t been able to come home recently is that your schedules don’t match up very well anymore—which couldn’t be further from the truth as, before term started, you went out to celebrate the fact that your class schedules couldn’t be more suited for seeing each other. 

Finally, at Sunghoon’s childhood home, the two of you smile and laugh for his parents before going to bed. Your relationship has only made his mother more averse to the idea of you sharing a room under her roof than she had been when you were younger. He’s relieved about this, and in the solitude of his bedroom, he lies on the duvet of his twin bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the last few hours. 

With his parents, you’d sat up in the living room watching TV. They sat on the couch together, his mum nestled in his dad’s side, while you two sat on the couch opposite, mirroring their position. If your complete stiffness was anything to go by, you were less than comfortable with his arm around you and Sunghoon felt terrible for begging you to go along with this. It was after midnight when you all went upstairs and you let him kiss your forehead before all but slamming the door to the guest room in his face. His heart twirled and his mum beamed at him before saying goodnight again. 

Now, at 3 a.m. he can’t sleep. Flinching at the knock on his door, he furrows his brows and goes to open it. It’s you. Standing there with your hair scraped away from your face in one of his t-shirts. Your eyes are red, brimmed with tears as you step into his room and sit on his bed. 

He closes the door softly, heart aching at the sight of you so upset, and when he sits next to you, his heart tears apart because you move over, putting a distance between you. It falls out of his chest onto the floor when he realises you’re not wearing your necklace. 

Sunghoon suspected you might have stopped wearing it, it only made sense that if you didn’t want him, you wouldn’t want the necklace he bought for you either, but at least earlier, your sweatshirt sat so high he couldn’t see if you had it on or not. 

It was a gift for your sixteenth birthday, after your first heartbreak. He was so upset and angry that you let some loser hurt you that way, upset and angry that someone could be loved by you and fuck it up. Sunghoon was inspired by Jay, who’d gotten a pretty necklace for his girlfriend, and talked about her cute reaction for weeks, how happy she was to have a piece of him with her all the time. It was a locket, with a picture of Jay in one side and a picture of her in the other so the pictures would kiss when she wore it. 

While at the jewellers with Jake, Sunghoon thought something like that might be a bit much for the two of you and eventually picked out an equally pretty piece with his first initial on it. He wrote a corny note to put in the box, something about how ‘boys come and go but Sunghoon is forever’ and gave it to you with trembling hands a few nights later—it was the first time he ever made you cry. Immediately, he thought he’d done something wrong and was ready to snatch the box and run back to the jewellers (even though he trashed the receipt). You hugged him and told him you loved him. Sunghoon’s been riding that high ever since. 

Until tonight at least. 

“Are you okay?” he whispers. 

“I’ll do it, Hoon.” Your eyes lift from the floor to meet his gaze. “For as long as you need me to, I’ll pretend.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, Sunghoon feels lighter, an unbearable weight slipping from his shoulders. You haven’t called him ‘Hoon’ in ages, and he can’t tell if you’ve said it out of vulnerability, or even noticed that you’ve said it at all, but it warms his heart nonetheless. However, he’s not fully at ease, still curious about your sudden change of heart and why you’re crying. 

“What happened?”

You pull him into a hug, and his eyes bulge out of his head. “It doesn’t matter,” you say, the words muffled by the skin at the base of his neck. 

For as long as he’s known you, you’ve smelled like vanilla, a sweet warmth that grounds him. Yet it’s only after these months apart that he’s able to put a name to the sensation: home. The realisation of how much he’s missed this feeling, missed you, floods him with a rush of emotion so overwhelming he can’t find the words to press the issue. A moment passes before he remembers to hug you back, his arms finally wrapping around you, pulling you close, and you sink into his hold. Months ago, he would have kissed the top of your head and mumbled reassurance into your hair, but tonight, Sunghoon settles for stroking the back of your head and hopes it’s enough. 

“You can talk to me, you know? You can always talk to me.”

A heavy silence follows, sharp as a dagger—scraping his skin, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge and lodging itself between his shoulder blades. Sunghoon’s breath hitches in his throat when you cling onto him even tighter, shifting so close you’ve had to settle in his lap. His heart races in his chest, pounding a rhythm so loud it fills the room. 

Finally, you speak, assuring him that you know and that you’re okay. At this, Sunghoon holds you as tight as he can, and neither of you speaks for the rest of the night. You fall asleep like this, in his arms, so deeply that you don’t even stir when he lies down. 

Rubbing your back, he watches the clock on his nightstand, the piercing green LED digits cycling through two whole hours right before his stinging eyes until you wake up. Sunghoon presses his eyes shut, pretending to be asleep when you kiss his cheek and leave his room. 

For the entire morning, you stay in your room, and although Sunghoon is concerned, he decides not to bother you. In the afternoon, he sits at the dining table with his mum, listening as she talks about work. When she asks him, he gets up to make a cup of tea for her. It’s at that moment when you finally come downstairs, looking so effortlessly pretty. Your hair is still damp from the shower, and you’re bundled up in one of his old sweatshirts. There’s a bright grin on your face that leaves his heart thudding. 

“Baby!” you squeal when you see him, charging towards him and wrapping your arms around him from behind. “Good morning.” Your words are muffled against the back of his t-shirt, and the four-letter word, and the sugar coating it, make his cheeks burn. 

“It’s great to see you too, YN,” his mum says with a smile. “My night was amazing; I slept very well and had no dreams.” 

You let go of Sunghoon and walk over to the table, kissing his mum on the cheek and wishing her a good morning as well. “Sorry, mum, how are you?” 

His mother doesn’t seem to have the heart to correct you either, allowing your 3 p.m. ‘good morning’ to go unnoticed. 

Sunghoon carefully fills both mugs to the brim and, with extra caution, carries them to the table. He places a steaming cup of peppermint tea in front of his mum and a milky coffee in front of you. A warm smile spreads across your face as you mouth a ‘thank you’, and his knees turn to jelly. 

The next day, after eating an early dinner with his parents at the table, the four of you go out on a walk along the bike path you used to take for school. His parents have gone ahead, not intentionally, but because Sunghoon can’t stop you from dragging your feet. 

As with most things in the town where you grew up, nothing about the trail has changed. The leaves are yellowing in standard form for the season, and crunching under his feet with each step he takes. The only foreign experience is the silence that you’re determined to uphold. Everything Sunghoon says to you is met with either a hum, a nod, or no acknowledgement at all. At this point, he feels like he could drop dead at your side and the most you’d do is step over his body like a fallen branch. 

After letting you go ahead, the weathered slats of the wooden footbridge sag in the middle under his tread. It’s been like this for as long as he can remember and he wonders how nothing has been done about it. The stream rushes under it, loud and unruly, the smell of wet grass both comforting and suffocating as you look over the railing. It’s like something from a postcard, the low-hanging branches sweeping back and forth under the breeze, the grass lush and green around the path, murky water thrashing against the mud and rocks underneath with you in the middle of the frame, peering over the edge.

You keep walking when Sunghoon approaches, leaving him alone on the creaky bridge with nothing but the ache in his chest. He looks up, staring at the grey clouds in the sky through the gaps in the leaves, and sighs. 

Eventually, he catches up with you, grabbing your hand and locking his fingers with yours when his parents slow down. You stiffen, looking up at him with cut eyes and a creased brow. “What are you doing?”

Sunghoon matches your clipped tone. “Holding my girlfriend’s hand.” 

“No one’s looking, boyfriend.”

“You think my parents aren’t going to wonder why we’re lagging behind?” 

A scoff—your fingers remain defiantly stiff. “Do you think your parents are going to care whether or not we’re holding hands?” 

“My mum might after the show you put on yesterday afternoon, baby.” Bitterness covers the word like a blanket, a stark departure from how you said it. 

A long sigh rumbles its way out of you before you fix your lips into a strained grin. “Sorry, sweetheart, this is my first time pretending to be in love.” 

As your words hang in the air, Sunghoon’s emotions brew like a storm within him. Frustration gnaws at his patience. All hopes for a smooth week are dashed, though determination simmers in his chest with a strong resolve to make this work, to fix your relationship. It doesn’t stop the sharp pang of hurt piercing his stomach—he knows you don’t feel the same way, he knows you’re faking, but the word ‘pretending’ hits him like a truck anyway. 

“We held hands all the time when we were friends,” he points out.

Your smile drops immediately, hurt flashing behind your eyes. “Yeah, and now we’re not.” 

If there was a competition for who could hurt Sunghoon’s feelings the most, you’d be a shoo-in for first place. With distinction. 

“Exactly!” he says, feeling the sting of his own words. “Because now we’re dating.”

At the sight of his mum turning around, you switch up in an instant. Lock your fingers with his, wrapping an arm around his bicep, leaning into him, giggling. It’s forced but his parents are far enough away that all that matters is the curve of your lips.

“You two okay back there?” she asks. 

“Perfect! I feel like a kid again!” you call back, beaming up at Sunghoon in a way that makes his stomach flutter even though it doesn’t meet your eyes. 

The two of you don’t talk at all when you get home, with you hugging his parents goodnight and running up the stairs. 

“She’s not feeling too well,” he explains, nodding when his dad tells him to make you some tea. 

His parents spend the whole day at work, and you spend the whole day following him around like a shadow until the evening when they return. He doesn’t pretend not to like it.

Sunghoon helps you make dinner, turning leftover rice into fried rice with the help of some eggs and vegetables. It’s nice moving around the kitchen with you, watching you scramble eggs in his t-shirt and bump his hip with a playful frown when he eats some of the peppers you’re chopping. 

His parents watch from the table, cooing over the two of you and he does his best to fight the blush forming on his cheeks and neck. Embarrassed, he hugs you from behind, hiding his face in your neck—the scent of your coconut conditioner mixing with your vanilla perfume doesn’t do anything to stop the flush. 

Over a bottle of wine, the four of you eat together at the table, swapping stories about your days. Sunghoon tries to hide his surprise as you lie about the time you spent at the play park by your primary school, competing for height on the swings and spinning on the roundabout until you couldn’t stand up. You grin at him, and it meets your eyes as you hold his hand under the table, and kiss his cheek.

After eating, his parents head upstairs, leaving to clean up together. You hum a song he’s never heard as you load the dishwasher, carefully placing the plates and cutlery in the rack, shaking your head when he hands you the glasses you’d used. 

“Leave ours,” you say. “If you want.” 

Sunghoon nods, putting them back on the table, where you sit in the seat across from the one he was sitting in. He sits too, staying quiet rather than saying the wrong thing. You don’t speak either. It’s reminiscent of the past—the hours you’d spend in the same room, only speaking to share a funny post you’d come across or to ask if you were hungry. 

His eyes track your movements—reaching for the half-empty bottle on the table to pour yourself another glass, filling it to the brim. Before putting it down, you offer him some, filling his glass too when he nods. The three glasses of wine he’s already had must be the reason he wants to reach across the table and hold your hand, run his thumb over the soft skin on the back of it. 

Sunghoon doesn’t know why you’ve been so nice to him all day or why it makes his chest hurt. 

“You know you don’t have to be nice to me when we’re alone, right?” The words come out before he can stop them.

Over the top of your glass, your brows knit together. A sound of confusion, a low hum, comes from your throat as you try to finish your sip. “What?” you ask finally. 

“I only asked you to do this because of my parents, you know? You don’t have to sit or talk with me when they’re not around.” 

Sunghoon’s known you long enough to recognise the look that flashes across your face. The way your eyes narrow and your brows tug together, the little pout that sets on your lips before you speak; you’re hurt.

“Why can’t I just be nice to you because it’s the right thing to do?” 

Because it hurts, is what he wants to say. He wants to cry, to beg you to forget everything he said that day. “Because I don’t want to make you any more uncomfortable than I already have.” Is what he settles for. 

Your face softens. “I don’t feel uncomfortable around you, Hoon. We were best friends for ages, I don’t think you could ever make me uncomfortable.” You pause to take a gulp of wine. “Why can’t I just want to be nice to you?” 

Sunghoon has to chew on his cheek to distract himself from how much your word choice stings. The implications of were and all of your past tense. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“What for?” 

“Everything.” 

There’s a sadness in the way you run your fingers on the base of your glass. The way you chew on your lip, how your hair falls when you tilt your head and how it moves when you shake it. “It’s not your fault,” you say. “I don’t know anyone who would choose to have unrequited feelings for their best friend.” 

Wow, he thinks. You’re on a roll. Sunghoon wonders if you’re meticulously choosing your phrasing to upset him. Wonders why you feel the need to remind him that his feelings aren’t reciprocated as if he didn’t live through and spend hours reliving the day he confessed. 

“But I didn’t have to tell you about it. It was unfair of me to spring that on you when I knew about Yeonjun.” 

“Did you.. did you think I was going to leave him for you?” 

“Maybe?” Sunghoon chews on his lip—he has no idea what he thought would happen. “I think I thought I loved you enough for both of us, that you might play the part for fun or out of curiosity, and.. I don’t know, just learn to love me.”

“Hoon,” you whisper, frowning. “How could you even think about settling for something like that?” 

Sunghoon shrugs. “It’s not settling if it’s you.” 

Silence takes a seat at the table after he speaks, interrupted only by the ticking clock on the wall—a glittery mess of scrapbooking paper and washi tape layered over each other that Yeji had decorated at summer camp years ago. You’re picking at your fingernails, letting flecks of black polish fall to the table, stark against the varnished oak. 

“I know it’s not my place to ask,” Sunghoon starts after a while, hesitant and only continuing when you nod. “But what did Yeonjun say when you told him? About.. everything?” 

You take a long sip from your glass and sit quietly for so long that he thinks you’re not going to answer him—he doesn’t blame you. 

“I didn’t.” 

He waits for you to elaborate. You don’t. 

Sunghoon nods slowly, deciding not to ask any follow-up questions. Instead, he takes another drink, scrunching his nose at the bitter taste. “He didn’t ask why we stopped hanging out?” he blurts out.

“I told him we fell out but I didn’t say why.” You shrug, but your posture is stiff. 

“Where did you tell him you were going to be this week?” He knows it’s not his business at all, that he’s pushing your boundaries, but he can’t help his curiosity.

“Nowhere.” 

“You told him you were staying on campus?” 

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Your gaze shifts, avoiding his as you toy with the stem of your glass. You drum your nails against it, letting the dull clink ring out. 

“So you just left?” 

“Does it make a difference to you?” 

Sunghoon nods.

For a while, you tug at the drawstrings on your hoodie, pursing your lips to the side, considering this. “Yeonjun and I aren’t together anymore.” Your admission is so shocking that Sunghoon’s jaw drops. He tries to cover his surprise by coughing, his tongue sticking out like a small child. “I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want you to think it was because of you.” 

Sunghoon’s thoughts move at lightspeed, too fast for him to catch onto any of them and process this information. His emotions compete with each other—disbelief, guilt, and a painful glimmer of hope he hadn’t dared to acknowledge until now all at the forefront. 

“Was it?” he asks. “Because of me?” 

You scoff—an incredulous sound that doesn’t match the sad look on your face. “I don’t know, Sunghoon. Do you think my boyfriend used me to make his ex jealous because of you?”

He’s not sure what he expected you to say, but this is.. Complete disbelief eclipses him as his heart sinks in his chest, shock, and guilt bubbling in his stomach. 

“I’m sorry,” he says after too long. “That I wasn’t there. That I haven’t been there.” 

“You didn’t know,” you say, gaze softening as you look up at him. 

“But I made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me about it.” 

You shake your head. “I made me feel like I couldn’t talk to you about it. All you did was change the friendship, I’m the one who ended it.”

“I still should’ve been there.” 

“You’re here now, right?” 

Sunghoon nods, earnestly. “Always.” 

Only one thing comes to mind when you repeat the word ‘always’ before taking a sip from your glass, downing its contents. Sunghoon gets up and crosses the room with wobbly steps to open the fridge, where he pulls out as many bottles of soju as he can hold in his hands and puts them down on the table. He goes back to collect some glasses from the cabinet, puts some of the leftover fried rice from dinner into the microwave, and brings it all over when it’s done, with bowls and utensils. You watch him with a fond smile as he opens a bottle and he hopes you think the flush on his cheeks is from all the drinking you’ve been doing. 

“Is it bad that I’ve missed doing this?” You’re grinning now.

Sunghoon shakes his head, raising his glass. “To YN’s fifteenth heartbreak.” 

You grin, clinking the rim of your glass against his. “To YN’s fifteenth heartbreak,” you repeat. 

Both of you down the glasses, and Sunghoon refills them, pouring the soju with an oddly steady hand. As you eat spoonfuls of rice and sip your drinks, silence settles over the room. The soft glow of the kitchen lights forms a warm ambience, a cosy familiarity that brings up simple memories—doing homework together at the table while gossiping about your classmates, the first New Year after you were both eighteen and had your first drink with his parents. 

For at least an hour, the only sounds are the occasional clinks of forks against bowls, glasses hitting the table, the faint hum of the refrigerator and the steady tick of Yeji’s clock. Sunghoon’s eyes meet yours, and he can’t help but notice the slight change in your expression when they do. 

You clear your throat, running a hand through your hair. “This is my sixteenth, actually.” 

“What?” 

You take a small sip of soju, staring down at the table. “My fifteenth heartbreak was losing you. Yeonjun is my sixteenth.”

In the two days since your soju ceremony, Sunghoon finds himself sinking into the role of your boyfriend like a hot bath. But there’s no use pretending it doesn’t hurt. Pretending it doesn’t hurt when you kiss his cheek before bed, or when you reach out to push the hair out of his face or snuggle into his side on the couch; because it does hurt—a lot. It hurts to think that in three days when you put your bags in the boot of his car, you’ll sit in silence all the way home. When he drops you off at your flat, you’ll close the door in his face and stop talking to him again. These realisations are harder to confront when he’s alone in his room, like now. 

About an hour ago, you asked if you could borrow his car, saying there was something you needed to do on your own. It seemed important, so he handed over his keys with no question. Sighing, Sunghoon gets up from his bed and heads to the shower, where he jerks off to clear his mind. On his way back to his room, he notices the light leaking from the open kitchen door that illuminates the landing. 

He hears the lock on the front door clicking, and stands at the top of the stairs, dripping water onto the carpet while listening attentively. His ears perk up when he hears a gasp—his mother. 

“What’s this for?” she asks. 

“I just..” You trail off. “I know it’s not much, but I wanted to thank you both for always looking after me.” You pause, and Sunghoon holds his breath, waiting. Your voice trembles as you continue. “It’s been hard since my parents went back home, and I guess it was still hard when they were here, but you both supported me. I don’t think I could’ve managed without you guys. I want to make you guys proud, you know? And I’m trying, really, so this is me saying thank you. I’m sorry it took me so long.” 

He grips the railing by the landing, digging his nails into the wood until they start hurting—an ache in his fingertips that makes him wince. 

An odd feeling settles in his stomach, a bittersweetness tinged in his fondness for you, and the gentle shock of realising how much his parents have done for you. Growing up, you became an honorary member of Sunghoon’s family. His parents showered you with gifts during holidays and birthdays, which you often celebrated with them rather than your own family. 

The memory of your parents’ sudden decision to move across the country still lingers, and Sunghoon vividly recalls the tearful conversation he overheard at the top of the stairs. Your parents understood the enormity of their request but had earnestly asked if Sunghoon’s parents could continue looking after you. 

His chest tightens when you start crying. 

“You don’t have to thank us for anything, sweetie. Just you being here and taking care of our boy is more than enough thanks. You never forget our birthdays, and you always come and visit when you can. You’re doing a great job, and you should give yourself some credit,” his dad says, a little choked up. “We’ve always been proud of you.” 

Sunghoon’s eyes sting with tears and his skin gets dry in the spots where the water from the shower is evaporating. He presses his fingers to his closed eyes, forcing a few tears to fall and walks the rest of the way to his room with his eyes shut. He can’t hear anything through his closed bedroom door, which he decides is a good thing as he coats himself in moisturiser and swipes deodorant under his arms with intention to spend the whole night alone. Once he’s dressed, he gets into bed and pretends not to be bothered by the way his wet hair dampens his pillow. Under the duvet, he tosses and turns before sighing and heading to Yeji’s room.

In her absence, the room’s subtle transformation is stark. The sage green-painted walls, once a backdrop to the A3 faces of Wave to Earth and Beabadoobee, now bear the faint imprints of those missing posters. Tiny, shadowy rectangles are the only remnants of the 6x4-sized pictures of her and her friends, of her and Sunghoon, that she took away with her to school.

Her hairdryer is still on her desk where she’d left it for him to use and he sits in her stiff wooden chair, plugging it in. The airflow starts immediately, hot and loud, humming throughout the space as he runs his fingers through his wet hair, feeling cosy under the heat. His shampoo is fresh and soapy scented under his nose, and his reflection watches him in Yeji’s mirror, eyes red and concerned while his hair blows around his head. Sunghoon closes his eyes and finishes his hair, sighing as he lets his worries slip under the whir of the fan. 

Finished, he shuts off the dryer and opens his eyes, flinching at your reflection in the doorway behind him with a soft smile on your face. “Mum and Dad are going to open a bottle of wine if you want to join,” you say, meeting his eyes in the mirror. 

Sunghoon can’t find it in himself to speak, only nodding in response. You smile wider but don’t move. He unplugs the hairdryer and leaves it on the desk where he found it before crossing the room. Without giving himself a chance to think about it, he pulls you into a hug and kisses the top of your head, smiling into your hair when you wrap your arms around his waist, holding him closer. 

You’re sitting on the edge of the bathtub, mumbling sleepily that you’re never going to drink again, and Sunghoon leans over the sink brushing his teeth, he’s glad you have the decency to cover your mouth as you speak. 

“Brush your teeth and go back to sleep then,” he mumbles around his toothbrush. 

You don’t respond. 

Sunghoon sighs through his nose, spitting foamy toothpaste into the sink, leaving bubbly, blue splatters on the porcelain. “And quit staring at me, I can feel your beady little eyes on the back of my neck and it’s freaking me out.” 

“But you’re so pretty,” you coo. 

There’s a flutter in his stomach and he rinses off the sink and his mouth, buying himself some time. With a hand on the Listerine, he lifts his gaze to meet yours in the mirror and stops short. You’re still staring at him, features soft and glowing under the afternoon light. You look like an angel; a gentle smile spreading over your lips, and a sleepy glint sparkling in your eyes, wide and gorgeous as you watch him. Sunghoon gulps, mumbling his thanks and looking back at himself. He hopes you can’t see the flush on his cheeks. 

“Go back to sleep,” he says. 

“Will you come and lie down with me if I do?” Your voice is a sleepy drawl, coming out in a slow, high-pitched slur, and your eyes are closing on themselves. 

Lying down doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, especially not if it’s with you, so he nods. “If you brush your teeth, then yeah, baby, I’ll lie down with you.” 

You chuckle softly at Sunghoon’s agreement, the sound carrying a mix of exhaustion and genuine amusement, showing no repulsion to him calling you the B-word. He didn’t mean to, it’s been a confusing few days. You nod, saluting to him and getting up to join him by the sink, using your hip to bump him out of the way, but he feels like he’s glued to the spot. 

“Move, baby,” you mumble sleepily, reaching for your toothbrush. “We can cuddle in my bed,” you suggest, to which Sunghoon only nods, taking your words as a cue to unstick his feet from the floor and go to your room, playing the word ‘baby’ on a loop in his head. 

He stands in the doorway staring at your bed, the duvet is all crumpled in the middle, and the pillows are in an L shape at the top corner. He sighs, he can’t go on like this, can’t stand around hoping even a tiny part of you called him ‘baby’ and it meant something for you as it did for him. It’s not fair for him to project his feelings on you like this, but he can’t help it. You’re already pretending for his parents, so would it be so bad to pretend for his sake as well? Even if only until the day after tomorrow when you leave? 

The sound of the bathroom door shutting behind you snaps him out of his thoughts, your bright smile making his heart race when you tug him by the sleeve to your bed where the mattress dips underneath you as you curl into his form, resting your head on his chest and falling asleep. You’ve shared the bed before, countless times, but he knows you’ve only asked him because you’re tired. Because your brain is foggy with drowsiness that clouds your judgement, not because you want him there, not because you miss him when he’s two doors down the hall, tossing and turning at night thinking about you. He wonders absently if you can feel his aching heart beating through his chest, a painful, yet all too familiar rhythm that pulls his own eyes shut, plunging him into a deep sleep too.

It’s dark in the room when he wakes up, the sun already down behind the curtains and the soft yellow of the bedside lamp casting a glow around the space. You’re staring up at him, smiling and you don’t look away when he catches you. “What is it?” he asks, voice thick with sleep. 

“Nothing,” you mumble. “I just missed you.” Sunghoon has no time to respond or even register what you said before you clear your throat, speaking again.  “Come on, dad’s cooking tonight, he’ll need help.” 

Helping Sunghoon’s dad with dinner always looks an awful lot like Sunghoon eating snacks on the kitchen counter and staring at you as you help his dad cook. Tonight is no exception, he’s sitting on the island, and his snack of choice is a family pack of Chilli Heatwave Doritos his mum bought for Yeji. He’ll have to remember to replace them before leaving seeing as he’s reaching the halfway point. 

You go back and forth with his dad about measurements, with you rummaging through the drawers for measuring cups while his dad says it’s best to trust your gut. Reluctantly, you nod, chewing the inside of your cheek as you watch him eyeball the seasoning. 

The gas stove turns the kitchen into an oven, and you complain about it while opening a window, pulling your hoodie over your head and leaving it in Sunghoon’s lap. Time stops when you grin at him, the light from the stove hood illuminating the necklace you’re wearing, his initial resting on your chest and glowing under the light. He chokes around a crisp when he sees it, catching your attention with his coughing. 

“You’ll spoil your dinner, snacking like that, baby,” you scold, using a hand to push his knee. “We’re almost done, I swear.” 

All he can do is nod, cheeks burning as he folds the crisp packet over before putting it back in the bread bin where he found it. 

“Wow,” his dad says, resting his hands on his hips and shaking his head in amusement. “Being in love looks good on him, he’d never have listened if I said that.” 

It’s already your last day when Sunghoon picks up Yeji from school. She grumbles for the entire half-hour drive and all the way to the front door about why the two of you couldn’t have started the trip today instead of ending it, but all of her irritation dissolves when she sees you in the hallway, leaving the front door wide open to fling her arms around you. You and Yeji exchange compliments for a while — You look so pretty. No, you look so pretty. I love your hair. I love your hair. — as Sunghoon locks the door and watches with a smile.

“God.” Yeji sighs, holding you by the waist and craning her neck up to look at you, as you push some of her hair from her face, pinning back her wispy bangs with the palm of your hand. Yeji giggles. “I’m so happy you two are together, even though I have no idea what a girl like you sees in my loser brother.” 

Sunghoon rolls his eyes, leaning back against the wall. Despite his mild irritation at Yeji’s words, he finds the sight of you with her so adorable his stomach flutters. Over the top of Yeji’s head, you look at him with a fond smile. “He’s not so bad.” 

It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but Sunghoon takes it to heart. 

Like always, Yeji manages to capture your undivided attention and the two of you giggle and whisper with each other all afternoon while Sunghoon watches, too enamoured by the sight to care about being left out. An hour or so passes like this, until his parents get home from work, excited to see Yeji after a few weeks, and you leave her side, coming to cuddle with Sunghoon instead. 

It’s nice being home with everyone, laughing and sharing a meal before his family walks the two of you to his car with at least a month’s worth of cooked food for you to share at university. Yeji makes you pinky promise that she can visit you and waves with a pout on her face until the car is out of view.

Contrary to what he’d been expecting, the drive back is nice. Your playlist is on, and you’re telling him about all the new songs you added, catching him up on things with Chaewon and Yunjin, and all the things you got up to in the time you spent apart. You tell him about a new café that opened up near your place and how you’ll have to go together when he has the time, and Sunghoon bites his tongue before telling you that he always has time for you. The first half of the trip goes on like this but you start dozing off around the halfway mark, your sentences becoming few and far between, eventually turning into half-mumbled thoughts that end prematurely. 

You’re still asleep when he reaches your flat, head propped up against the window with your soft lips parted, looking too pretty and cosy to wake up. Instead, he drives in circles around your block, deciding to wait for you to wake up on your own. It only takes a half-hour but you blink your eyes open, stretching your neck before looking around and out the car window, recognising the street. You don’t say anything, only smiling when you look at him, a small curve of your lips that makes his heart race.

He gets out of the car with you, opening the boot to get your bag before pulling you into his chest for a hug, liking the way your arms settle around his waist. “Thank you,” he mumbles into your hair. 

Sunghoon doesn’t follow you when you take your bag from him, only watching from the back of his car. You don’t notice until you reach the main door, looking over your shoulder and frowning at him. “Aren’t you going to walk me up?” 

The two of you walk in silence up four flights of stairs as the lift in your building is out of order. Your bag feels much heavier in his hand now than it did outside. At your door, he watches you dig around for your keys, sighing with relief when you find them. 

“Do you want to come in?” you ask from your open doorway.

“I—uh—I have training in the morning and I’m already pretty tired, so..” He trails off.

Unfazed, you nod. “Right, of course. I had fun this week.” 

“Yeah, me too.” 

You smile at him, sweet and sincere. “Text me when you get home, yeah?” 

Sunghoon nods, saying goodbye. Out of habit, he doesn’t leave your doorstep until he hears the lock click shut, and walks back to his car with his head down. 

True to his word, he sends you a text to let you know he got back to his place safely and you read it immediately but don’t reply. It’s empty in the apartment, Jake is out with his football team and the space is larger than usual in his absence. Far too tired to even consider going out and joining him, Sunghoon goes through his night routine, putting his phone on the charger and stepping into the shower where he spends entirely too long wishing he could live in this week forever as he scrubs his body. With brushed teeth and damp hair, he goes back into his room where his phone lights up with a notification; a text, from you.

YN🫀: i’m glad you got home okay, i just got into bed :) i don’t want to make you uncomfortable or overstep or anything and you can say no (obviously).. i’ve been missing you so much and didn’t know how to reach out or if you wanted me to but i had soooo much fun this week and spending time with you again made me happy, so i’d like it if we could keep hanging out, like before yk? ik it’s a long shot ahahaha but just say you’ll think about it? 

hoonie: You’re not overstepping at all, I’ve missed you too, so bad. I had soooo much fun this week as well and I’d like it a lot if we kept hanging out, thank you for agreeing and coming along 😚 If you’re free after Lit tmrw you could come over? Or we could go out and do something, whatever you prefer

hoonie: I missed you so much.. 

hoonie: 🤍

The texts greet you as the first rays of Monday morning light filter into your room, instantly lifting your mood. Your bright smile doesn’t escape Chaewon’s notice as you find her in the kitchen, bathed in the soft light seeping through the sheer curtains. The kettle is boiling with a loud rumble that fills the whole room and leaves her yelling as she speaks to you. 

“Good trip?” she asks, coming over and hugging you. “Never leave me for that long again,” she mumbles into your shirt. 

“It was a week, Wonie,” you say, rolling your eyes even though you missed her too. 

She leans away, looking at you with knitted brows. “It was nine days.” 

“The longest of my life.” 

Chaewon pulls air through her teeth, tilting her head and releasing you. “That bad, huh?” she asks, walking back to her seat at your tiny square table and shooting you a look that tells you to join her. 

During your trip, you gave her nightly updates over text, so you know she knows how much you enjoyed yourself, but you elaborate anyway, sitting across from her. 

“No, not at all,” you say, shaking your head and trying to fight a smile. “I had fun.” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you have to bite your bottom lip to stop the grin curving them; it doesn’t work. 

Chaewon raises a suggestive brow, crossing her arms over her chest. “How much fun?” 

“You’re disgusting.” 

“I didn’t even say anything!” she defends, holding her hands up. “I made an implication. It was only a matter of time, you two have that whole.. lifelong best friends to lifelong lovers thing going on, and it’s hot.” 

“Shut up.” 

“You’re telling me, you spent nine days playing lovers with Sunghoon and you still don’t want him? You’re a lost cause, people would kill for that chance,” she says, tilting her head. “I think I would kill for that chance.” 

“Don’t touch him.”

“Oh?” 

“Jesus, Chaewon, it’s not like that. Hoon’s too sensitive for your roster.” 

“I never said it was like anything, you’re the one who’s dangling me over the ledge for saying I want to fuck your hot best friend.” 

“Sunghoon isn’t hot; he’s..” You find yourself at a loss for words, unsure how to continue your lie. Of course, Sunghoon is hot, you’ve known since you were seventeen and spent the summer at your grandparents’ house, only to come back to find your previously scrawny best friend having ditched his LEGOs for dumbbells. You sigh. “Just leave him alone.”

Chaewon grins, eyes sparkling as she leaves the table. “Okay,” she says in a singsong voice, leaving you and the irritation in your stomach alone in the kitchen.

You sigh, pressing your eyes shut and trying to will away your discomfort. It’s not like Chaewon would actually try anything with Sunghoon. Right? Even if she did, it wouldn’t bother you, nor would it be any of your business. They’re grownups and reserve the right to explore their options. Still, there’s a nagging feeling you can’t shake, an uninvited guest in the back of your mind. 

When you check your phone, you realise you have half an hour before you need to head to campus, so you leave to get ready and text Sunghoon back on the way to your room.

you: sounds good, see u later 🤍

After showering, you stand in front of your wardrobe, towel hanging from your body as you pick an outfit. For some reason, you feel under pressure, picking a pair of jeans that do the most for your ass and a low-cut top that Sunghoon once — drunkenly — said he loved on you.

You have the residual sting of mouthwash on your tongue, and one foot out the door when your phone vibrates in your hand. 

hoonie: Do you want to head to class together? 

you: sure! i’m omw out, where should i get you? 

hoonie: .. I’m outside your building :D 

Breathing a laugh through your nose, you don’t fight the giddy smile on your face as you make your way downstairs to meet Sunghoon. Through the glass in the main door, he’s standing at the edge of the pavement and kicking a stone between his feet. The top of his puffer jacket covers the bottom half of his face, and the draught nips your skin when the door opens. Two girls you vaguely recognise stumble in with smudged makeup and heels in their hands, smiling at you while holding the door to let you out.

“Hey!” you call out, jogging over to him. 

Sunghoon turns around, his head poking out of his jacket to grin at you, holding a travel cup and an abundance of tinfoil in your direction. 

“I wasn’t sure if you’d have eaten anything yet, you don’t normally in the morning,” he says, a sheepish smile spreading over his lips when you take it. “Matcha. Ham and cheese toastie.” 

“Did you make these?” you ask, inspecting the familiar cup and appreciating the warmth it provides. 

He hums, nodding his head.

You ignore the heat spreading over your cheeks and thank him with a hug, grinning when he offers to hold your drink while you eat on the walk. The toastie is still hot, the cheese coming close to burning your tongue as you chew, but you appreciate it wholeheartedly, humming contently with each bite. When you’re done, you shove the foil into your pocket, taking your drink from him and smiling around the sweet taste of a matcha latte as he tells you about his schedule for the day. 

“I’m meeting with Coach after class to talk about my grades, but I’m all yours after that.” 

“Talk about your grades? What’s wrong with your grades?” 

Sunghoon groans, head falling back and highlighting the bump of his Adam’s apple. “My grades are.. I failed my coursework this month, so I have resubmissions during finals, and I think he’ll bench me if I fail again.” 

He sounds like he’s being serious, and if the look on his face is anything to go by, he is. The news creases your brows because for as long as you remember, Sunghoon’s grades were your parents’ favourite point of comparison.

“Really?” you ask. He nods. “What’s up? Is something the matter?” 

A humourless laugh slips out of him before he pulls air through his teeth. “Yeah, my best friend didn’t talk to me for three months.” 

“Oh..” Guilt stirs your stomach as you look up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not blaming you, it’s not like I was trying to talk and you ignored me.” He nudges your arm with his elbow, giving you a warm smile. “But if you feel as guilty about it as you look, you can tutor me for Lit.” 

“Deal.” 

Sunghoon grins, wrapping his arm over your shoulders and holding you close; the action itself isn’t unusual, but the increased heart rate it brings about is. “You’re too good to me,” he says, holding onto you for the rest of the walk to class.

At his request, you sit with Sunghoon in the back row, watching as the lecture hall gradually fills up in front of you. He seems well-prepared, with his laptop and a small notepad and pen neatly arranged on the desk in front of him.

Throughout the class, your eyes inadvertently track his every move. He diligently types up colour-coded notes, occasionally pausing to write things in his notepad before continuing to type or stopping entirely to listen. There’s something melodic about his actions and the way his fingers run over the keyboard. 

During a five-minute break, you glance at his screen. What you find is more than just lecture content; it’s a document adorned with Sunghoon’s own musings about Hemingway’s style and carefully analysed quotations that go beyond the class discussion.

“How are your notes so good?” 

“I picked up the book over the summer when you mentioned it,” Sunghoon replies with a shrug, a shy smile playing on his lips as he leans back in his seat. “I liked it.” 

A slow nod is your response, though your thoughts swirl like autumn leaves in a breeze. The last time Sunghoon read for leisure, you were in primary school, buddy reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. But this—this is different. You can’t help but stare at him, awestruck as you take him in. His eyes are wide, shining amber in the sunlight as he pushes some of his hair from his face, frowning when it falls back where it was. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he mumbles. 

Sunghoon takes a new line in his document and points at the screen where you watch the cursor move through the words he’s typing: I would’ve read and annotated the Bible if you wanted me to..

There’s no time to digest what he wrote or the funny feeling in your chest as you reread it before he deletes the whole sentence, pressing his lips together and looking out the window. Speechless, you stare at his side profile, willing your heart rate to slip back to normal. Steep-sloping nose, plump lips flattened into a line, two points of the triangular mole constellation on his face. Analysis worsens your condition, breath hitching in your throat before stopping entirely. Warmth and trepidation blend within you, fuzzy enough at the edges to seem like one thing—a single force that makes your palm itch with desire, desperation, to reach out and run a finger over his features, feel the bump of the mole on his nose — the most prominent — against your skin. 

You remain this way — silent, watching — even when your lecturer resumes the lesson, and Sunghoon starts typing, writing, and listening again. Polite enough to pretend he doesn’t notice your gaze searing into his face.

After class, and his meeting with Coach, you let Sunghoon lead the conversation and the way to your flat, where you find Chaewon and Yunjin sitting on the couch, whispering to themselves while the two of you study at the coffee table. It’s uncomfortable, an awkward height, too high for the way you’re sitting but you feel calm under the supervision of Chaewon and Yunjin—you won’t do anything to merit teasing in front of them, no matter how badly you want to feel Sunghoon’s face in your hands or stroke his cheekbones with your thumbs. 

To the best of your ability, you answer the questions he has for you—he’d written a ton in his tiny notepad during class, his own concerns clear with each neatly-penned iteration of: How to see actions/dialogue for what they are and not what I want them to be? written in the margins and you try not to feel heartbroken for him.

Three hours have passed by when you walk him to the door, the two of you wrapped up in a bubble so secure you’re surprised to find Chaewon and Yunjin still sitting on the couch. They don’t say anything about Sunghoon in his absence, or the fact he’d given you his sweater when he noticed you were cold. You’re not sure why their silence disappoints you.

Instead, Yunjin asks you about trivial things like dinner while Chaewon sits in silence. 

“What flavour for ice cream?” Yunjin asks, rolling her eyes when you tug on the blanket but not complaining. “And don’t say something ridiculous like mint chocolate, YN.” 

“That happened once! And it was three years ago.. How was I supposed to know you hate fun?” 

Chaewon leans into you, letting you curl your limbs around her from behind as you rest your chin on her shoulder, liking the way her clean scent tickles your nose. 

“Mint-cho isn’t that bad,” she starts. “It’s a little jarring, sure, but it’s kind of sweet. Like watching people come to terms with their feelings for each other.” 

You nod your head, humming in understanding and furrowing your brows when Yunjin scoffs, staring straight at you. Her tone is equal parts cutting and loving, so you know she’s not trying to insult you, but don’t know what she means when she says, “It must be so nice to be as oblivious as you.” 

Yunjin never elaborates, and you never ask, actually feeling the statement’s journey in through one of your ears and out the other when dinner arrives. The three of you share pizza, ice cream, and secrets — the three pillars of 20-something-teenage-girlhood — at the kitchen table, with Chaewon sitting in your lap and picking pepperoni from your slices. 

It’s only hours after Yunijn’s gone home, that her words circle back to you, the statement and all of its weight perching on your chest with all the debilitation and persistence of a sleep paralysis demon.

“I think I’m getting sick,” you say as soon as she opens her door. “It’s been coming on for a while now, at least a week, maybe more.” 

Unimpressed and exhausted, Yunjin looks down at you through half-closed eyes. “Do you..” She pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing. “Do you have any idea what time it is right now?” 

“Yes. It’s three a.m.” 

“Exactly. See a doctor if you’re sick, I’m going back to sleep.”

“This is an emergen—” Yunjin cuts you off by pinching your lips together. “It’s three in the morning,” she reminds you. “You can’t yell like that in my hallway, come in.” 

You nod, crossing the threshold and taking off your shoes next to hers. “Sorry,” you whisper when the door is closed. 

Using her hand, Yunjin lifts your chin, squinting as her eyes adjust to the light when she flips the switch to inspect your face. “You don’t look or sound sick,” she mutters, flicking the light back off and going to her room. “What are your symptoms? And why did you come here?” 

You don’t have an answer for her last question so you ignore it, following her and tripping over a pair of her shoes in the process. “My cheeks start burning like crazy and my heart races, sometimes it gets hard to breathe.”

“You seem fine to me.” 

A shoulder-slumping sigh slips from your lips. “That’s the thing. I’ll be fine and then Sunghoon shows up with his pretty smile and perfect hair and I feel like I’ve run a marathon.” You know how it sounds, choosing your wording meticulously to let Yunjin be the one to say the words out loud instead of you—it’ll be easier to confront that way. 

From the doorway, you watch as she arches a brow, her interest piqued. “Oh?” 

“I know.” You nod, head bobbing rapidly in furious agreement. “It’s only a matter of time before I cough up a lung and die in his bedroom.”

At your words, Yunjin doesn't reply, only lifting her duvet and getting cosy underneath. You feel like you’re glued to the spot, waiting for her to say something, anything, but nothing comes. All she does is pat the empty spot in her bed. 

“What are you smirking for?” you ask, entering the room properly and closing the door. 

Her response only comes after you’ve taken your jacket and hoodie off, sitting next to her under the covers. “It’s nothing,” she says, laughing. 

“Tell me.” 

Yunjin sighs, resting a hand gently on your shoulder. You think it’s meant to be comforting but it’s the opposite. “You’ll be fine, I promise. Lovesickness isn’t deadly.” 

Feeling the weight of her reassurance, you settle down properly and sigh when your head hits the pillow. Lovesickness. Hmm. 

Closing your eyes, you try to sleep but can’t help tossing and turning as Yunjin snores behind you. You pat blindly around the end table for your phone, grabbing it and wincing at the brightness of your screen. Chewing on your lip, you open Google, looking up ‘lovesickness’ and frowning immediately at the results. Endless negativity fills the screen, terrifying words like ‘unrequited love’ forming a pit in your stomach. There’s nothing negative about what you feel for Sunghoon, nothing unrequited—you think. 

It was obvious during the trip, painfully so. In the way he’d tuck your hair behind your ear when his parents weren’t there to see, or how he slipped up and called you ‘baby’ in the bathroom, blushing when you said it back. You can’t fake something like that.. Can you?

Yeonjun did.

Shaking your head, you open Instagram to distract yourself. Jake’s story comes up first; he’s at a party where Jay is losing a game of beer pong, and at the other end of the table is Sunghoon grinning with a bright red lipstick kiss on his cheek. You lock your phone, using your hands to press on your belly to stop the stirring. 

Oh, you think. Lovesickness. 

When you wake up, the first thing you do is check Jake’s story again. The video is still there and that terrible stir in your stomach churns on, burrowing deeply into a pit of canyon-like proportion—so vast there’s a safety railing lining its edges. 

You eat breakfast in silence with Yunjin, zoning out mid-chew to figure out the origin of these feelings and how to handle them. Suddenly, the moment hits you clear as day, vivid like you’re watching it on a screen—it was your third night at his parents’ house, after your walk. 

You felt bad about how you acted, and what you said, so went straight up to your room. With nothing but the bedside lamp turned on, it was dimly lit, shadows cast on the walls as you sulked, replaying everything in your head. Guilt wrapped its long arms around your body, making you feel sick as you thought about it all. About the hurt etched over his face with every word you said, and the frown that stuck around for the rest of the walk as his hand clung limply to yours. 

There was a knock at the door, so gentle you almost missed it, and Sunghoon was standing there when you pulled it open, chewing on his lip with a mug in his hand. Steam skated over the opening, a rich chocolatey smell hitting your nose but the real kicker was the mug itself. In its place on Jake and Sunghoon’s mug tree, it was unassuming, a regular white mug, but upon meeting hot water, the face of young Sunghoon appeared, grinning with his tiny glasses on. It was a gift from one of his old coaches and though he never used it, it was your absolute favourite cup in the world. 

You felt soft around the edges when you looked up at him, his eyes wide and unsure as you met his gaze—he brought that mug three hours across the country so you could use it again. The thought shifted your heart into a comfortable position, settling in your chest with overwhelming warmth and an increased rate. 

“Hi,” you said, clearing your throat. 

“Hi,” he repeated, holding the mug out for you to take. “It’s still hot so be careful.” 

Nodding, you covered your hands with your sleeves, taking the cup from him and asking if he wanted to come in. Sunghoon nodded, shutting the door behind him and standing by the bed, watching you set the hot chocolate on the bedside table as you sat down. The two of you stayed like that for a while, with him only moving when you patted the spot next to you on the duvet. Your train of thought escaped you as soon as he sat down, the warmth of his familiar fresh, citrusy scent taking over and becoming the only thing you could register. The smell of summers with him, long days at the beach and short nights spent on the couch at random parties, cuddled into his side with his arm over your shoulders. The smell you’d come to associate with comfort and home—with Sunghoon. 

“It’s not fair for me to treat you like shit just because I’m annoyed, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that earlier. I’m sorry.” 

A crease ran over Sunghoon’s thick brows as they tugged together, he shook his head. “You don’t have to apologise. I roped you into this whole thing and didn’t even try to think about how you would feel. I’m sorry.” His eyes carried a mix of regret and sincerity, mirroring the weight of his words.

“Anyway, I only came to bring you that,” he said, pointing at the cup. “And to check up on you, I’ll get out of your hair for tonight.” Sunghoon wiped his palms on his pants before standing up, reaching behind him to pick up the cloth he brought. For a moment, he stood there, staring down at it in his hand while you thought about telling him to stay, telling him that you wanted him in your hair—whatever that meant. But he spoke before you had the chance. “You left this, at mine, after.. well, you know. I’m sure you left it intentionally, I mean it was folded up perfectly on the end of my bed, so I know you did, but it didn’t feel right keeping it, you always wore it more than me.” 

Sunghoon extended his hand, holding it out to you and you knew exactly what it was as soon as the fabric touched your skin after so long. It was the shirt Jay bought him for Christmas in first year—they were roommates still trying to get a feel for each other. For a few weeks, Sunghoon had been pestering you about what he should get for Jay, saying it didn’t feel right not to get him anything, and you suggested a targeted t-shirt, one you’d been laughing at all day after seeing an ad for it on your timeline. Sunghoon was sceptical, but bought the red shirt anyway, hoping Jay would find BEING DAD IS AN HONOUR, BEING PAPA IS PRICELESS funny. He did. And Jay bought Sunghoon a targeted shirt too, your favourite. It was black and two sizes too big, with I NEVER DREAMED I’D BE A SEXY FIGURE SKATER BUT HERE I AM KILLING IT written over the chest. 

“Goodnight, YN,” Sunghoon said, crossing the room to leave but hesitating before closing the door. He poked his head through the opening and sighed. “I really am sorry.”

That night, you fell asleep in the shirt, the thinning, yet cosy, fabric wrapped around you like a hug as your heart started to beat a new rhythm, one that eerily echoed the five-foot-eleven figure skater who you let break it. 

This morning, Yunjin claps her hands in your face, seeming irritated when you look over at her. “You have class in an hour, what are you doing?” Before you have the chance to speak, realisation covers her face. “Oh, the feelings.” 

You nod solemnly, too caught up in the butterflies raiding your stomach to come up with something to say. 

At lightspeed, you scarf down the rest of your food, apologising for showing up so late as you head out the door. When you get home, you take the fastest shower of your life and feel grateful Chaewon isn’t around to tease you about the smile you can’t wipe from your face thinking about Sunghoon—you’ll text her later.

You run to campus, feeling the brisk autumn wind beating against your face while the rest of your body overheats under your jacket, hoodie and long sleeve. Despite the discomfort and ache in your lungs, you don’t stop until you reach the door of your lecture hall, huffing and puffing into the faces of classmates who don’t take any notice. Of course, in a stroke of pure luck, your lecturer is late, and you realise bitterly, that all of your huffing and puffing was in vain—you would have gotten to class with time to spare even if you walked.

It’s not a total waste though; you use the time to update Chaewon. 

you: i have news wonie..  i like sunghoon

wonie: …………….. fork in the kitchen yn what’s the news? 

wonie: OHHHH news to YOU.. can i call? 

She calls you immediately. You answer without thinking because your lecturer still hasn’t arrived, and there’s no one sitting close enough to hear or notice you taking a call. 

“Are you going to tell him?!” Chaewon’s voice is so loud you wince, pulling the phone away from your ear. 

“I don’t know.” You shrug even though she can’t see you, still holding the device at a distance just in case. “I don’t have any confirmation that he still.. likes me. It’s been a while, and I was pretty mean that day. 

Chaewon groans and you can picture her throwing herself onto her bed, exasperated. The rustling that comes through the receiver only frames the image, hanging it up. “Did you have to tell him to get a grip?” 

“You know..” You trail off, chewing on your bottom lip. “In hindsight, probably not.” 

A beat passes, she’s thinking. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll help you.” 

“I.. have never been so worried in my life.” You sigh, picking at your freshly painted nails. “But I know you’ll do something no matter what I say, so do what you want, Wonie, but please be subtle about it.” 

Chaewon squeals down the phone. “I love youuuuu!” And it’s the last thing she says before kissing the mic a few times and hanging up. 

Slumping in your seat, you don’t have any time to stress about Chaewon’s plans because your lecturer walks in, with a travel cup in her hand and a paperback tucked under her arm. 

She apologises for being late, running a hand through her hair as she announces that you’ll be watching a film, an adaptation of a book you read at the start of term—Ian McEwan’s Atonement. You spend the first hour of the movie falling in and out of sleep until a text comes through from Sunghoon, and sheer excitement keeps you up.

hoonie: Wanna study together after class? 

you: of course!!!!!! 

hoonie: 🤍

The rest of the movie goes by in a drag, and you come away from it with a mild irritation towards Saoirse Ronan.

you: class just finished, heading to lib rn 

hoonie: Shit, still in the locker room, sorry !!! Omw, can you get a table? 

you: i’ll try..

It takes a while but you find an empty booth on the second floor, and set your bag on the plush green seat to take pictures of your surroundings to send to Sunghoon. You sit on the side facing the stairs so he can see you when he arrives. The thought of seeing him makes your heart race and you try out a few natural-seeming poses for when he’s here, cycling between resting your palm under your chin and sitting with your arms crossed a few times until the top of his head comes into view. 

Seeing him knocks the wind out of you as he approaches the staircase, taking them two at a time with his damp hair clinging to his forehead and neck. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing a tight black vest, and his sweats are hanging low on his hips. A breath you didn’t realise you were holding slips out when he lifts his head, spotting you immediately as a grin spreads over his lips and he raises his arm to wave, the veins in his forearm peeking out to say hi too. You can’t tell if it’s his lack of winter wardrobe or your newfound appreciation for him that’s making his biceps look so huge but it’s hard to look away, even when he reaches the table. 

“Are you hot?” you blurt out. 

Sunghoon laughs, raising a brow and something about the way he’s looking down at you makes your cheeks burn. “Depends who’s asking.” He takes his backpack off, leaving it on the table as he sits down, dumping his jacket and hoodie in a pile beside him.

“I’m asking,” you mumble. 

“Then, yeah, I’d hope so.” 

Is he flirting? It sounds like he’s flirting. Flirt back! “Nice arms.” 

He looks down at his biceps for a beat before looking at you warily. “Are you flirting with me?” He can’t fight the smile twitching at the corners of his lips but he tries his best, pressing them into a straight line.

“A little. They are nice though,” you admit.

Sunghoon grins. “Thanks, I’ve had them for a while now.”

You can’t come up with anything to say, too distracted by the way his smile reaches his eyes, lighting up his whole face and forcing a flustered heat to spread over your cheeks and neck. It’s only when you look away from him that you remember what you’re here for. It’s a study date, not a study date—there’s a difference. 

You hand Sunghoon the material you’d printed for him over the weekend, excerpts from texts you’d studied in class, so he can practise close reading and proper citation. As he makes his way through them, you can’t help stealing glances, smiling at the way his tongue sticks out a little while he focuses, or how he twirls his pen in his fingers while he’s thinking. You aren’t making the best use of your time together, copying out the slides from class yesterday, but you can’t help noticing the way he watches you when he thinks you can’t see. The small smile on his face while he does so only flusters you, an odd weakness settling in your knees as your cheeks heat up. 

After a while, Sunghoon sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Could you stop watching me?”

“If you noticed me watching, that means you’re watching me.” 

He shrugs, chewing on his lip. “Well, yeah. I’m always watching you,” he says like it’s a given. “But you don’t normally watch back, it’s distracting.” 

“You’re distracting.”

A playful smile curves his lips as he arches a brow, smugness painting his face. “Am I?” 

Too scared to verbalise your response, you nod slowly, hoping you don’t look as wound up as you feel. 

Sunghoon’s eyes flick over your face, flashing with something you don’t recognise. At least not from him. He sits back in his seat, assessing you and eventually shaking his head. 

“You know,” he says, eyes glowing with something you do recognise: cockiness. “If my sexy arms are getting to you that much, I can always put my hoodie back on. Wouldn’t want my little tutor getting distracted, would I?” 

Oh. 

Your stomach turns with want, mind reeling from his tone and the way his gaze lands on your lips. Sighing, you roll your eyes and try to seem unaffected. “Sunghoon, I never said your arms were sexy.” 

His phone starts to go off, buzzing against the table and he turns it over immediately, screen down on the surface as he shifts his focus back to his work. He chews on his lip while he does, eyes flicking back and forth between his phone and the words on the page. Curious, you lean over the table, elbows propped up as you rest your chin in your hands. He doesn’t spare you or his phone, which vibrates another four times, a glance.

“Are you going to get that?” 

Sunghoon shakes his head. “It’s nothing.” 

You hum, letting just enough curiosity seep into the sound that he’ll elaborate without being asked to. It doesn’t take long for him to deliver.

“It’s just Chaewon,” he says, running his hand through his hair and lifting his head. Sunghoon smiles. “We’ve been texting a lot these days.” 

“Cool.” You nod a few times, aiming for nonchalance but hitting bobblehead as you wait for him to continue. He doesn’t, only humming in response, nodding too. 

After a beat, he picks up his phone, angling it just high enough that you can’t see the screen. He reads the messages, an exhaled laugh coming from his nose as the tips of his ears redden—Fuck. This is worse than you thought. 

Chaewon’s commitment to girl code runs deep—she’s been rebuffing Jake since first year when she overheard a girl she’d never seen before telling her friends she thought he was cute. So you know without having to read the texts that nothing she’s saying is even remotely flirty, you can smell the auto-caps and use of the word ‘buddy’ from across the table. 

What you hadn’t counted on, however, was the potential for Sunghoon’s feelings to shift. If they really have been texting more, can you rule out the possibility that he might like.. her? Chaewon is a catch, beyond a catch, and you’d already turned Sunghoon down. Brutally. Of course, he’d move on, he has moved on. 

The rest of the study session is spent manifesting, writing Park Sunghoon over and over in the back of your notebook. You fill three pages while brainstorming ways to snatch a lock of his hair until he suggests that the two of you call it a day. He walks you home, telling you about how Jake’s been bribing him with food to get a ride to the LEGO store across town for the new Marvel set. 

“With or without the meals, I would’ve taken him, but his ramen is my favourite, so..” Sunghoon says, climbing the last step of your building and holding the door open for you. “He even brought a slice of tiramisu to the rink for me after practice.” 

“You’re terrible,” you say, frowning up at him as you search for your keys. “Do you want to come in?” 

Sunghoon chuckles, shaking his head. “I have a meeting with one of my lecturers soon, I’d have to leave in—” He pauses, rolling up the sleeve of his jacket to check the time. “—eight minutes.” 

“I’m cool with that if you are,” you mumble, suddenly shy. 

A bright smile spreads over his lips and he nods, following you in. 

Chilled by the harsh wind, the only thing on your mind is a hot drink as you lead Sunghoon to the kitchen. He shakes his head when you offer him one, sitting on the countertop and exhaling into his palms before rubbing them together. You can’t help but frown at the sight, feeling guilty that you can’t change the weather to suit him. At your thought process, your brows raise. Wow, you think. Is this who you are? 

You busy yourself with the selection of hot drinks you and Chaewon have accumulated, eyeing each container from top to bottom. A purple tub of Cadbury’s hot chocolate that you’re sure is on the brink of expiration, coffee—sachets of the instant stuff you’ve grown to like since leaving home, Earl grey from one of many brands, or the fancy silk tea bags Chaewon’s mum brought home from a trip—rooibos or plum-apple-cinnamon. 

Craving something sweet, you settle for hot chocolate, pulling the heavy container from the cupboard next to Sunghoon’s head and setting it beside your cup. He’s on his phone, scrolling too fast to take in anything he’s seeing and he shakes his head when you ask if he wants something to drink. 

On the dish rack, Chaewon’s mug catches your eye, so you pick it up to dry it off and put it down next to yours. “I’m going to check if Wonie wants any,” you say, wiping imaginary crumbs from the counter onto the floor. 

Sunghoon only clears his throat, shaking his head. “She’s not home, one of her acrylics popped off so she’s at the shop waiting for a cancellation.” 

The information itself isn’t jarring but hearing it from Sunghoon is. You put on what you hope is a neutral smile and nod, taking milk from the fridge and assembling your drink on autopilot while thinking of ways to redirect the conversation. 

“If you knew you’d have to go back to campus so soon, why’d you walk me home?” you ask, watching your cup spin in the microwave. “I could’ve walked on my own.” 

Sunghoon is already looking at you when you turn your head, his cheeks puffed out with air as he blinks slowly. Because I love you, is what you hope he’ll say. You think you need him to say it. 

“Because you don’t have to do anything on your own when you have me,” he says instead, and it’s infinitely better. 

The words seep through your every fibre, his intonation and lucid affection making a home for themselves in your heart, spreading warmth from head to toe. Your smile becomes a radiant grin, only brightening when he shakes his head, smiling down at his feet. 

Sunghoon hugs you in the kitchen when it’s time for him to leave, his arms holding you tight to his chest as he rocks you back and forth. You inhale his scent, all warm citrus under freshly washed cotton and something exclusive to him.

Wiping the smile from your face feels impossible. You don’t let go when he does, and a sweet laugh — a giggle, you think — tumbles out of him as he mumbles that he really has to go. Still, you cling onto him, taking clumsy steps backwards, with your arms locked around his waist, to your front door, smiling as you watch him put his shoes on. 

“You don’t have to walk me downstairs, honestly,” he says, looking down at you in the doorway.

“I want to.” 

His lips quirk up at the corners, a full smile breaking through and causing your stomach to flutter with so much force you’re sure it’s visible through your shirt. His eyes fall to your lips, lingering, before he clears his throat, looking away. 

“I’ll text you when I get to the door, promise.” 

You lock your pinky with his. “Send a selfie, just so I know it’s you and not someone else using your phone.” 

Sunghoon’s head falls back in a laugh. “Should I just call you? That way you can make sure I get back to uni in one piece.” 

You nod.

“That wasn’t anything with Chaewon earlier, I just needed advice on some girl stuff..” He trails off, searching your eyes. It’s obvious that he’s telling the truth, that he wants you to believe him. You do. “I wasn’t sure if that was something I could talk about with you.” 

Girl stuff. Hmm. You try not to read too much into it and look at the bigger picture instead—your best friend is going through something and doesn’t feel like he can come to you about it.. You squeeze his pinky reassuringly, a flutter in your stomach when he smiles. 

“You can talk to me about anything,” you say, meaning it. 

Sunghoon presses his lips together, humming and unlinking your fingers. “Next time,” he says after a beat, waving at you. 

You shut the door, locking it while watching through the peephole, he leaves as soon as the lock clicks shut. In the kitchen, your hot chocolate is cooling down, and your phone rings in your back pocket. Sunghoon’s calling. 

Hanging out with Sunghoon. Making sure he sticks to the time-blocked schedule you made for him. Quizzing him on biology terms until he gets restless. If the last two weeks were an episode of Family Feud, those would be the top three answers to the question: Name something YN is doing right now.

Thankfully tonight, it’s the first one. 

You’ve been sitting on the couch for so long, Jake has both left for football practice and arrived from football practice. Conversation ebbs and flows—an hour or so of nonstop talking, followed by another hour or so of comfortable near silence. 

It’s during a quiet hour that Sunghoon sits up straight, clearing his throat before saying, “Let me ask you something. He retreats to the other side of the couch, turning to face you with his whole body. “I don’t want things to be weird after I ask, so no matter what your answer is, I won’t bring it up or ask again.”

Arching a curious brow, you nod. “You can ask me anything,” you say, meaning it.

Sunghoon’s face is impressively blank—minus the motion of sharp teeth worrying plush lip, there’s absolutely nothing behind his eyes that seem to stare right through you. 

Eventually, he asks, “Can I kiss you?” He says more. Big, scary words like for closure and moving on, but they don’t register. They don’t matter. 

Your heart pounds at the base of your throat as you find interest in your hands that sit in your lap. Even without looking at him, you can’t get over the slight crease he had in his brow and the slight tremor in his hands. 

“For closure,” you repeat, though your voice doesn’t sound like it’s coming from you, muffled under the thump of your heart. 

Sunghoon nods. “For closure.” 

A humourless laugh sneaks past your throat as you look at him. You shouldn’t have. In the lamplight, Sunghoon is golden and glorious. Warm light casts one side of his face, diffusing gently over the steep slope of his nose, highlighting his moles and the look in his eyes, gentle and curious all at once. Unwillingly, your gaze falls to his lips, parted, tempting. 

One firm nod of your head brings Sunghoon’s hand to your face, his palm cupping your cheek with soft skin as his thumb traces your cheekbone. You grow anxious under his stare, under the drag of his eyes over your features, taking them one at a time like he’s committing them to memory.

Leaning in, your eyes flutter shut as your lips meet his and he freezes, mouth completely still on yours. Delicately, your tongue traces the seam of his lips, soft and plump, until they part for you, moving with yours. Sunghoon’s kiss is unpolished when it reaches you. It’s hesitant but tender, clumsy but sweet, he’s trying and he’s perfect; your favourite. 

The kiss is.. it’s everything. It’s the racing of your heart, the thudding, the vibrant buzz you can hear, feel humming against your ears. It’s a rush of blood to the head, a lightness all over that pulls you out of your body. It’s Sunghoon’s soft lips curving into a smile against yours, his gentle hold on your face never letting up as he holds you as close as he can manage, and it’s every bit as lovely as the rest of him.

Palpable is the heartbeat of your friendship, beating to a lull under the surface of the kiss, fizzling out into nothing, a steady silence, flatlining to give way to something more, something bigger. 

Every brush of your lips against his is a revelation, a confession. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, you tell him with your kiss. You’re everything I need. His free hand finds yours, locking your fingers and squeezing, the action timed well enough to make you think he hears you, to make you think he’s saying, we’ll be okay, I still love you. 

With that, he pulls away, a delicate tension piercing the air. Blown eyes and laboured breathing—he’s beautiful, fuzzy around the edges with warm orange and all of the love in your heart. Breathless, you chew on your lip, cognisant of Sunghoon’s hand in yours and the sparkle in his eyes as he looks at you. 

Belatedly, you squeeze his hand back, smiling. “Was it everything you ever dreamed of?” you whisper, part teasing, all curious.

Abruptly, Sunghoon stands up, letting go of you in the process. “I have to go.” 

You want to stop him, you think you’re supposed to. To grab him by the arm and kiss him again, to yell in his face that you love him until he understands. But you don’t. Instead, you stay seated, staring at Sunghoon’s back and following him with your eyes out of the room and down the hall until he’s out of sight. 

It’s your first time being so upset after a kiss, and you can’t tell if it’s his leaving or the mention of him moving on that’s tripping you up so much. That’s causing melancholy to crawl from the shadows, sinking its jagged nails into your skin to pull you under. 

You love him. He’s gone. 

Eyes stuck on the doorway, time stretches over the room around you, thick and malleable, wet and cloying—clay stuck under your nails for days as the fire in the kiln rages on. 

Sighing, you get up and wait at his door. You ball your hand into a limp fist, knocking weakly. Sunghoon doesn’t reply. You try again, harder. Still nothing. 

Barging into the room, you find him sitting on the end of his bed with his face in his hands. 

“Don’t move on.” The words come out before you realise and Sunghoon lifts his head, squinting at you. 

“Huh?” He tilts his head, watching closely as you approach him, tipping it back enough to meet your eyes when you stand over him. 

You take a breath, holding it until your head starts to spin. “I don’t want you to love someone else, Sunghoon. Please don’t move on.” 

The stillness that follows is disconcerting, a long quiet you can feel on your skin, amplifying the blank stare on his face as he looks up at you. His eyes flash, a spark of hope behind them so bright it stings to look at.

“Do you..” He trails off, his lips moving to form the next word though stopping short.

“I do,” you whisper, nodding. “I’m sorry for taking so long.”

An exhaled laugh comes from his nose as he grins, shaking his head. “You like me?” he asks, excitement and disbelief fighting for authority over his voice, his hands holding your waist and pulling you down into his lap.

“I love you,” you admit, settling on his thighs. 

“You do?” His eyes are wide and gleaming, searching every feature on your face before settling on your own.

You nod. “So much.” 

Sunghoon’s chin tips up, his lips pressing against yours, excited pecks that can’t turn into much more for the smiles on your faces. You rest your arms on his shoulders, hands clasping behind his head, nervous fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

“So.. will you be my boyfriend? For real?” 

Tilting his head, he tries and fails to fight a smile. “I will. I’m a little bummed though.” 

“Why?” You raise a brow, and the word tips up at the end with it. 

“I wanted to be the one to ask you.” Sunghoon’s honesty warms the room, endearing you completely. 

You grin, loving the heat spreading over your cheeks. “Ask me anyway.” 

“Please can I be your boyfriend?” 

In the weeks that followed, it became immediately clear that boyfriend Sunghoon operated on a pendulum swinging between sexual ferality and terror. He’d get distracted during study sessions at home, finding more interest in biting at your neck than stream-of-consciousness prose, but closed his eyes if a sex scene came on TV. He’d buck his hips against yours while making out but flinch at the sight of condoms in the store.

He wasn’t ready to have sex and didn’t know how to tell you, so you took matters into your own hands, asking if you could wait until after his results for resubmission came in, saying you didn’t want the distraction for either of you. Sunghoon agreed, pecking your cheek and holding you tight to his chest. 

The only thing was that your lecturer hadn’t given him an exact date, so every morning, you held your phone in a vice grip waiting for Sunghoon to update you, and every morning, you got the same text: Nothing today, baby ☹️ 

This morning, you’re brushing your teeth when he texts you, in all caps: NO FUCKING WAY I GOT A 98 !!! LOOK !!!

When the picture comes through, it’s of him in the mirror and you choke on mouthwash at the sight. He’s smiling, bright and beautiful, in a black vest that he’s holding up a little to show his stomach, though his palm is in the way of his toned abs, and it cuts off right at the top of his grey sweatpants. 

Your mouth goes dry as you click on it, fixating on every little detail you can find: the thickness of his fingers against his phone, the dip in his collarbones, the breadth of his shoulders and the cinch of his waist. In a fit of desperation, you try swiping at the bottom of your screen, willing the picture to magically extend. It doesn’t. 

hoonie: Finger slipped.. You like?

you: mm.. 

you: 98??? HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT YOU!!!

hoonie: All you.. do you like the picture?

you: i love it………….

hoonie: My girl 🤍

Another picture comes in, and sure enough, through the glare of his laptop screen, you see: Course name: The Modernist Movement: Joyce, Woolf, and Hemingway. Marks Awarded: 98.0.

you: well done baby !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hoonie: Thx 😁

hoonie: Can I have my prize now ha ha .. haha 😈

you: just for that emoji, no you absolutely cannot.

Your resolve isn’t strong enough when it comes to Sunghoon, because purple devil emoji and all, you show up at his door with condoms in your bag and a bouquet of lilies behind your back. 

The door creaks open and Sunghoon greets you with a grin. “Hey, gorgeous. You proud of me?” 

You beam at him, holding out the flowers. “I’m very proud, Hoon, well done.” 

“I don’t want to ruin the moment,” he starts, taking the bouquet from your hands and sniffing the flowers with an approving smile. “But hearing you say you’re proud of me is awakening something I didn’t know existed.”

“A good something?” 

“Mm,” he hums, arms finding your waist before he pecks your lips. “A very good something.” 

Sunghoon’s words hit your lips and your core, a desperate heat flooding your stomach as he kisses you deeply, his body pressed tightly against yours while he pulls you into his apartment. He kicks the door shut with his foot, slipping his hand under your jacket to settle in your back pocket, not quite squeezing but holding your ass as gently as he can manage. 

He breaks away from you, love in his eyes as he stares down into yours, catching his breath. “I don’t think we own a vase.” 

In his kitchen, you rifle through cupboards to find something to hold the flowers, eventually finding a whiskey decanter in the cupboard under the sink, and holding it up for Sunghoon to see.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “It’s Jay’s. It’ll work right?” 

You nod, taking it to the sink to rinse it. Sunghoon wraps his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder watching you fill the decanter with water and flower food before grabbing the bouquet. He presses open-mouthed kisses to your neck and you struggle to stay focused as you cut down the stems on the flowers, arranging them neatly. 

“Can I take a photo?” he asks when you’re done. 

He’s smiling when you turn around to look at him, a soft curve of his lips that makes your heart race, a deep tenderness in his eyes when you meet them. You smile too. 

“They’re yours, baby, do whatever you want.” 

“A photo of you with the flowers,” he clarifies. 

Warmth settles in your chest, a grin spreading over your lips from ear to ear. You nod, taking the decanter in your hands when he lets go of you, holding the flowers up beside your face and smiling for his camera. As his phone shutter clicks away, you steal glances at his face behind it. He’s watching the screen with a smile, telling you how beautiful you are.

“I want pictures of you too,” you say, handing the flowers over. 

“I’m yours, baby, do whatever you want.” 

Sunghoon poses for your photos, smiling sweetly in some and sniffing the bouquet appreciatively with closed eyes for others. He’s glowing and he’s beautiful and your heart triples in size while taking picture after picture until your phone tells you it has ten percent. 

“Thank you, YN,” he says. “I’ve never gotten flowers before, I love them.” His arms settle around your waist, lips pressing against yours before you have the chance to respond. 

You try anyway, mumbling against his lips that you love him. In response, Sunghoon grins, but the feeling of his cock growing hard against you is distracting, a lust-coated thorn in the side of the butterflies fluttering in your stomach. With locked lips and uncertain steps, the two of you bump into corners and trip over your own feet, stumbling to his room and parting only to tear his hoodie over his head.

Breathless, you pull away, eyes trailing over him and picking up on everything, from the tremble in his hands to the lust-addled worry in his eyes. He’s nervous, you think—though it escapes you, the last word coming out like a question.

Sunghoon scoffs, his hands resting on your waist under your shirt, skin clammy against yours. “Of course, I’m nervous.” 

“You don’t have to be.”

“I just want to be good for you.” 

“Don’t worry about that, let me take care of you, Hoon.” Your palms drag up his torso — firm abs through soft cotton, defined chest over racing heart — to rest on his shoulders. “Sit,” you say when he nods. 

He gulps, taking a seat on the end of his bed under your gentle push, eyes widening when you sink to your knees between his legs and reach for his drawstring, pulling the ends to untie the knot. 

“Wait,” Sunghoon says, breathless, scrunching up his face and dropping his head. “Let me calm down, baby. At this rate, I’ll come just seeing your hand on it.” 

You giggle, resting your head on his thigh and wrapping the drawstring around your finger.

“I’m serious, YN,” he mumbles, laughing as he takes his vest off. “I need a minute.” 

Sunghoon’s eyes are pressed shut as he tries to collect himself, lips pouty and kiss-bitten, slightly parted with ragged breaths slipping out. You wait patiently for him. He’s so pretty like this, with the crease in his brow and the pretty pink flush dusting his cheeks as his chest rises and falls. You can’t help but smile, leaning into his touch when his hand rests on top of your head, his blunt nails grazing your scalp. After a while, he seems more at ease, his eyes finding yours and he smiles shyly, telling you he’s ready now and lifting his hips from the bed to let you pull his sweats and underwear down. 

Free from the constraints of fabric, his cock slaps his stomach with a wet sound as the tip meets his skin, leaving a pearlescent streak over his abs. The sight makes your mouth water and you can’t look away. “Pretty,” you whisper.

Wrapping a hand under his tip, you swipe it with your thumb, taking time to memorise the flutter of his eyelids, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple, and the soft sigh he lets out. You stroke him slowly, liking the way his breath picks up as his brows knit together before you take him in your mouth. It’s a tight fit but you do your best, spurred on by the way he tugs at your hair and stutters through a holy fuck as you take as much of him as you can. 

Sunghoon goes silent, only squirming when you use your hand to stroke him near his base. Self-conscious about his lack of vocal affirmation, you look up at him through your lashes, and the pure bliss on his face is unbearably attractive. His eyes are rolled back under furrowed brows, his mouth hanging open as he throws his head back.

“Am I doing okay?” you ask, using the moment to catch your breath.

He nods, inhaling shakily and screwing his eyes shut while his hips buck up into your fist. “I’m.. You’re doing such a good job, baby, so good.”

Satisfaction courses through you from the praise, a high that dulls the ache in your jaw. Still watching him, you massage his balls in your palm, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his tip when he whines. You tongue at his slit until he thrusts back into your mouth, tip hitting your throat, and he gasps when you gag, his arm coming up to cover his eyes. A belated apology slips from his lips, mumbled as he strokes your hair with a shaking hand and goes quiet again. When you speed up, his breath stutters, the muscles in his thighs contracting around your head as you suck and lick and drool on his cock. 

A moan of your name, and his hand holding your hand down, are the only warnings you get before Sunghoon comes, spilling his load right down your throat. Whining, his hips buck up against your face, pushing further and further until he falls back onto the mattress.

Your throat is hoarse and aches while you use the back of your hand to wipe at your lips, enjoying what’s left of his taste on your tongue. Deep red tints his neck and chest, a pretty flush gleaming under the sheen of sweat on his skin. He’s mesmerising, as he tries for air through swollen lips and looks up at you through squinted eyes. He reaches for you, cute grabby hands tugging your shirt and pulling you down so you’re lying next to him with your head on his chest. 

“You’re amazing, baby, so good for me,” Sunghoon whispers, eyes fluttering shut as you drag your nails over his torso, feeling the subtle heave of the slick, sculpted muscle over his stomach and chest. 

Pride heats your chest, satisfaction rolling over you like a wave. “Really?”

He hums in affirmation, nodding his head. 

“You were so quiet, I couldn’t really tell,” you add, hungry for more praise. 

“The walls are so thin in here, I just got used to being quiet,” Sunghoon says, frowning. Hand meeting your chin, he tips your head up towards him, pressing a soft kiss to your lips and mumbling, “I’m sorry. You were perfect, I swear.” 

It’s a sweet kiss. Until lips move harder and hands get lower, desperate as he thumbs the top of your leggings, palm unmoving but a dangerous heat blooms in your stomach anyway.

“Can I..” Sunghoon pinches you softly through the material, unsure eyes boring deep into yours. 

You nod. “You can.” 

Slipping under your waistband, his fingers skate across your skin dipping between your thighs. He grazes your slit, satisfaction clear in the groan he lets out as he feels the wetness there, pulling it over the length of your slit to cover your clit. Your breath hitches, a strangled gasp, pleasure and surprise meeting in your throat under the pressure of his thumb on your clit, the gentle sting of his finger pushing into you. 

What Sunghoon lacks in experience, he makes up for with the sheer length and thickness of his fingers. It’s almost jarring, it’s enough to force your eyes closed and bring a sigh rumbling out of you, ache and relief settling between your legs, where he curls a finger against your walls and drags slow circles over your clit. 

“Can you take these off, baby?” he asks, hand away to touch your leggings. 

You don’t waste a second, sitting up to pull them off, throwing them and your underwear across the room. Sunghoon licks his lips, tugging at the hem of your shirt. 

“And this? If you want..” 

You nod, pulling it off immediately to let it join the rest of your clothes in a heap on the floor. The way he gulps is a confidence boost, his dilated pupils taking in every inch of your body, though his gaze always pulls back to your bra—white and lacy, thin enough for your nipples to push through the fabric and Sunghoon can’t seem to get enough, though he waits until you’re lying down again to touch you. 

Sunghoon props himself up on his elbow, leaning over you. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers, dragging a finger over the lace at the top of your bra, toying with the material and the little bow sitting between your breasts. His eyes flick up to meet yours. “So beautiful,” he repeats. 

Hiding your face in his chest, you mumble, “Thank you,” into his skin while trying to ignore the heat spreading over your body wherever he touches you. His hand trails from your arm to your waist, resting on your hips to slip over your ass for a beat, where he grabs and squeezes the flesh there before coming back around to slot between your legs—you lift one of them, resting it over his body, and he’s smiling sweetly when you look up at him.

Sunghoon’s movements are unchanging, though the sensation is heightened by the unbridled desire in his lidded eyes that urges white heat to lick over every inch of your skin—this time he pushes two fingers into you.

It doesn’t get better than this, you think. But it does, quickly. 

Leaning over you, his eyes flick across your face, one feature at a time as he chews on his lip. Reaching up, you push some of his hair from his face, holding it back and saying, “Relax, baby.” 

“Don’t want to hurt you.”

Moving your hand, you blink when his hair flops back over his forehead, tickling your eyelashes. His eyes are focused now, staring straight down into yours, want and worry flashing behind them. 

“You won’t, I promise,” you say, locking your pinky with his, feeling relieved when he smiles.

Sunghoon pushes in slowly, his name slipping from your lips when he exhales shakily, head falling forward. The sting, the pleasure, make it hard to breathe, molten desire taking hold of your lungs as he carves out a place for himself as far as you’ll take him, all the way to the hilt as slow as he can manage. 

A moan tears out of him, lewd and whiny as his hair tickles your collarbone, head falling into the crook of your neck. His skin is hot and damp against yours, his breath burning your shoulder as he tries to calm down. It’s difficult to register much else, tethered only by the sound of his voice when he asks, “Am I hurting you?” 

“Hoon,” you whisper. 

“Can you look at me, baby?” He lifts his head, resting a hand on your cheek. You blink your eyes open, gaze locking with his, where concern pushes through his desire. “Am I hurting you?” he asks again. “Are you okay?” 

You nod. “I’m okay, just..” You sigh. “Full. Need a minute.” 

Sunghoon kisses you, lips moving gently with yours, passing breathy whines between your mouths until you feel yourself relaxing. Pulling his plush bottom lip between yours, you suck on it, nodding. “Want you to move, baby,” you mumble. 

He scans your face, eyes meeting yours as he pulls his hips back. He’s slow, so slow with his thrusts that your belly turns with want, your fingernails sink into the taut skin of his back, and jagged sobs fall out of you with each drag of his cock along your walls. 

Everywhere his skin touches yours is set ablaze with scorching heat, goosebumps pushing past the surface as his breath fans your neck and his sharp teeth graze your skin. He bites hard enough to sting, and you wince as his tongue flicks over your bitten flesh to soothe you.

You were so worked up earlier, writhing against the sheets and coming undone in his palm, so bliss quickly pushes through the ache between your legs. “Good, Hoon, feels so good,” you manage, struggling to convey how perfect it is.

“Just want to make you feel good.” His words melt into each other, vowels soft and elongated as they curl around each other. He’s working up a steady rhythm, his tip consistently nudging you where you need it—the spot that makes the room blur around you. “That’s all I want.” 

Before long, the knot in your stomach pulls you up from the mattress, arching your back towards the ceiling. Mouth to mouth, chest to chest—it’s the closest you’ve ever felt to someone else, the closest you’ve ever been. The thought alone knocks the wind out of you, and his persistent whining does nothing to help.

Your want and adoration for Sunghoon run bone-deep, inching up your spine and creeping over your shoulders, intertwined with an all-consuming pleasure that turns the heat in your stomach molten as a shudder zips through you. Even though you can’t find the words to let him know, he lifts your hips from the bed to fuck you deeper, harder, into the mattress until shaky orgasms pull both of you under. 

You let him fall into you, fingers curling around his hair, whispering I love you into the skin of his neck as he comes, most of his weight on top of you while you catch your breath, relishing in the fullness you feel as the last waves of your high pull back. You stay like this for as long as he needs, his head coming up from the crook of your neck to smile at you before pressing his lips to yours. A sleepy haze fills the room around you, tongue swiping tongue as you giggle happily into his mouth. 

After a while, he gets up, tying the condom to throw it away and comes back with his shirt. He uses it to clean up—gentle between your legs, pressing kisses to your calves while he does. Sunghoon’s tenderness wraps around your heart, and love clouds your vision, forming a blurry trail that follows all of his movements, glowing like something from a dream, ethereal, an apparition. 

The bed dips beside you, his arms around you, pulling you in so his chin rests on your head. You push your cheek into his chest, hoping the two of you will meld into one—the thought makes you warm all over, a fuzziness that reaches every part of your body while he presses kisses into your hair, rubbing your back. 

“I love you,” he says, voice as soft as the rest of him. “I’m glad I exist.”

mama park: Hi lovely 😍 missing you lots, wondering when you’ll be home for Xmas………..love ma

Sunghoon stirs, nose scrunching as he snores softly into the quiet of a winter morning. His chest rises and falls steadily under your head and he doesn’t move when you sit up. The lamp on his desk is still on — neither of you could be bothered getting up to turn it off last night — and under its dim glow, you admire him. Perfect lips gently curved—long lashes kissing the skin under his eyes. 

Love hits you from all angles, warmth all over from head to toe despite the chill in Sunghoon’s room. You can’t help but grin, leaning up to nose along the underside of his chin, his natural scent so soft yet dizzying as you nuzzle into him. He stirs again, turning his head this way and that before resting, you feel a bit bad, deciding to leave him be and text his mum back. 

you: hi mum !!! missing you sooooooo much :((( will be home asap

mama park: BTW Sunghoon told me everything. I raised such good actors LOL make sure he looks after you and keeps you happy!

you: i’m so sorry we lied to you..

you: but i’m really happy with him and he loves me a lot

you: i love him so much .. never been so sure of anyone in my life

© zreamy (2023), all rights reserved. do not repost, translate, or plagiarise my work. do let my know your thoughts !

permanent taglist: @asahicore

[likeumeanit9497]

just like that | m.s. |

matt sturniolo x fem!reader

based on this request :))

summary: after dating for four months without having sex, y/n finally decides that she's ready to take matt for a ride

warnings: smut; established relationship; unprotected p in v; oral (fem receiving); riding; mentions of questionable consent (NOT with matt dw); dirty talk; 18+

notes: damn i completely forgot about this im so sorry:/ i've just been so busy over the past week or so it completely went under the radar. def not my best work (i wrote it all today), but i wanted to get it up because i'm going on a trip through europe for 6 (SIX???!!?!?!) weeks and will probably not be able to post much when im there. anyways i hope u all enjoy!!

p.s. working on one more fic that i would LOVE to post before i leave tomorrow, if not it might be a while before im able to write again :/ it's gonna be a good one for the matt girlies though so keep ur eyes peeled ;)

─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─

“Do you want anything from the kitchen baby?” Matt’s soft voice in my ear pulled me from the lull I was in, curled up beside him on the couch watching a movie. My drooping eyes fluttered open and I couldn’t help but smile once I came face-to-face with my beautiful boyfriend. The late-August sun was setting, and it shone through the living room windows in just the way that made Matt’s gorgeous blue eyes almost transparent; a harsh contrast to his dark eyelashes and tidy beard. He was looking at me with such unclouded care, the way he always did, and it never failed to make my heart flutter.

Matt and I had met on social media about six months ago, and started dating just two months after that. Our earliest conversations online had consisted of occasionally discussing our shared interest in pretty embarrassing hobbies — playing Minecraft, journaling, and watching rom-coms to name a few — but those occasional conversations evolved into staying up all night messaging each other, multiple-hour long Facetime calls, and eventually meeting at a restaurant for our first date.

Although it hadn’t been long since we started dating, Matt’s soul was one that I felt like I’ve known all my life. Never before had I felt more at home around another person than I did once I met him, and his presence in my life gave it a new level of stability that didn’t exist before. I had dated a guy in high school for almost two years, but the quality in the time spent with Matt versus him was incomparable. I was sure that Matt was the person that I was meant to be with, and everyday he did something new to prove that to be true without even trying.

Another thing that I loved so much about Matt was that, even after months of dating, he hasn’t once pushed me to have sex with him. In one of our early conversations, I had told him that my ex had always made me feel bad when I would turn down sex with him. While him and I did have sex a few times during our relationship, I had since come to terms with the fact that I really was just doing it to make him happy. Once Matt got over his immediate anger for me, he had sat me down and told me that he could wait forever, but that he won’t have sex with me unless I tell him I’m ready.

That was months ago, and still, he has kept his promise. While we have done plenty of other things in bed, he has always made it a point to stop everything before it gets to the point of sex. At first, I felt riddled with guilt because I felt like I should want to have sex with my boyfriend —especially one so kindhearted as Matt — but over time that guilt has fizzled out from Matt’s reassuring words and actions. He never ever put me in situations that he knew had the potential to make me uncomfortable, and wouldn’t allow me to feel bad about it either.

Lately, though, I had been feeling slightly different. While before, I would squirm at the thought of anything more happening once Matt’s hand would slip out of my panties, now I feel a slight tightening in my stomach at the idea of more. And before, I would feel a certain level of nervousness as I felt the weight of his member in my hand, where now there is a flutter in my core at the thought of that same part of him filling me up.

Never before in my life had I felt any of these feelings, and I didn’t quite know what to do with them. I was afraid of the abundance of dirty thoughts that flooded my own head constantly, and I realized that I was ready for more, but only with Matt. I had been contemplating on telling him this for the past week, but as I watched him walk back over to me on the couch in nothing but baggy grey sweats — the black ink of his tattoos hypnotizing me — my body reacted in such a way that let me know that tonight was the night.

“Here, I know you didn’t say you wanted anything but I grabbed you a water anyways. I haven’t seen you drink any yet today and you-” I cut Matt’s rambling off by climbing on top of his lap as soon as he was back on the couch; wrapping my arms around his neck and planting a deep kiss to his pink lips. He responded with a soft hum against my lips before wrapping his own arms around the small of my back. I opened my mouth slightly before pressing it against his again and moving them in a slow but passionate rhythm. Matt quickly followed suit, slipping his tongue through my parted lips before using it to explore my mouth. I fluttered my eyes open for a brief moment and caught a glimpse of Matt’s most beautiful features up close — lidded eyes, flushed cheeks, straight eyebrows — and released a satisfied sigh against his mouth.

I ran my hands through his soft brown hair, tugging slightly at the ends and eliciting a soft gasp from him as I felt my body flood with arousal. His hands travelled up and down my back, his firm yet somehow delicate touch a comfort that eased my nerves. From my place on his lap, I could feel a growing hardness against my ass. This wasn’t uncommon, obviously, but in the past I usually pretended to ignore it pressing against me. This time however, I rolled my hips up and down, feeling it slide against my aching core. “Baby.” Matt’s voice was barely above a whisper against my lips, but the combination of shock and arousal was still evident in its tone as he grabbed firmly onto my forearms to hold me still.

I detached my mouth from his while still keeping our faces just centimetres apart. His breath was rapid, but so was mine as we stayed like that for a moment; wild eyed and equally uncertain. Finally, I repeated my action by grinding my hips against his clothed shaft; this time watching as his eyes rolled back slightly in pleasure. “Y/n, what are you doing?” He mumbled, clearly wavering between making sure I was okay and wanting desperately for more. I continued grinding my hips against him, my mouth dropping open as I felt his shaft reach my nerves. “I want you Matt.” I whispered, and I watched as his eyes widened in shock; pupils dilated. “What do you mean?” He asked hesitantly, brushing his knuckles softly against my arms.

“I mean, I’m ready. Ready to have sex again.” I blurted out, feeling my face immediately flush in equal parts nervousness and arousal as I waited for him to respond. His face was unreadable as he clearly tried to gauge whether or not I was serious. That was confirmed once he finally spoke. “A-are you sure? I don’t want you to think just because I’m hard we have to do anything, baby.” I felt his dick twitch in between my legs as he spoke, and it shot electricity down my spine. “I know Matt, but I really am sure.” I responded, running my hands up and down his bare chest and leaving a trail of goosebumps in my path.

He continued to stare at me, his eyes travelling wildly across my face; clearly still in a state of uncertainty. I, on the other hand, was growing more and more frustrated by the moment as the heat continued to grow between my legs. “Give me your hand.” I stated, and he obliged; placing his much larger hand in my own. I guided his hand down to the waistband of my sweatpants, inside of the material, and finally slid it against my dripping wet core. Intaking a sharp breath from the contact, I watched his face as it immediately darkened once he felt my arousal coat his fingertips.

“See? I told you I’m ready,” I leaned forward slightly, bringing my lips to his exposed collarbone and kissing it wetly. “So please Matt, can you fuck me?” The room stayed silent for a beat, the only sounds being our ragged breathing, and I felt fear begin to trickle down my spine; worried that Matt might reject me. Just as I was about to retract everything I had just said, Matt’s hand snaked to the back of my head, guiding it up from his chest before crashing his lips onto mine.

I deepened the kiss immediately, feeling a mutual level of desperation like a surge of electricity between our lips that had never been there before. Matt’s hands began traveling all across my writhing body — taking his time on the curves of my ass — before planting firmly on my hips where he helped them grind against his rock hard member. Breathy, almost silent moans fell from both of our lips as our bodies slid against each other, and the deep-rooted sensation was taunting.

Matt’s hands slithered from my hips up to the bottom of my t-shirt, where he toyed with the material for a moment before detaching his lips from mine. “Can I take this off?” He asked, glazed eyes staring longingly into my own. I nodded, and without a moment’s hesitation my vision was blocked for a brief second by Matt peeling the fabric over my head and tossing it to the side. Once my vision returned, my view was of Matt’s hungry eyes glued to my bare chest.

Matt had seen my tits countless times before throughout our relationship, but at this moment it was like he was seeing them for the very first time. Mouth slightly parted, his breathing was ragged as he brought both hands to my chest and cupped my tits delicately between them; pushing them together slightly and brushing a thumb along each nipple. I hissed at the feeling, and that seemed to pull him from his trance, as his eyes immediately shot up to mine. “This okay baby?” He asked, and I nodded my head wildly.

A smirk toyed at the corners of his mouth before he attached it to my left nipple. I released short moans as he sucked and nibbled it gently, still pressing my core against his throbbing shaft. I felt myself falling deeper and deeper into a trance that I had never experienced before, and it was like my body and mind had completely separated as I mindlessly tugged desperately at the waistband of his sweats. Catching on to my gesture, Matt shifted slightly below me before using one of his hands to haphazardly pull his sweats down slightly; allowing his cock to spring up in between my legs.

I gasped at the sight before me, only now realizing its true size with it between my legs and feeling just a tinge of excited fear trying to figure out just how it was going to fit inside of me. Shaking the thought from my mind, I collected a pool of saliva in my mouth before spitting it in my hand and bringing it down to his shaft.

Running my thumb along his slit, I felt his whole body shudder below me from the contact. I began pumping my hand up and down his length; spending extra time twisting my wrist around his sensitive tip, and watched as his mouth went slack on my tits. “Mmm, keep doing it just like that baby.” He muttered against my plump skin, and I continued to work his cock in my hand while simultaneously grinding my core against its base. Just knowing that I was making him feel good was making me feel good, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head in pleasure.

After a few short moments, I felt Matt’s hands snake to the waist band of my own sweats. My eyes found his again, and I watched as they searched my face. “You’re sure you want this, Y/n?” He asked, his voice gentle but laced with a huskiness that could only be explained as pure desire. I nodded desperately once again, feeling so pathetic but not capable of giving a shit. “I’m sure baby, please.” My voice had a slight whine to it, making my frantic need even more evident.

Planting a soft kiss to my lips, he grabbed firmly onto my sweats and began peeling them off of my body. I lifted my hips up slightly to assist him in this, and once I dropped them back down, I hissed from the feeling of my bare core against his cock. “Matty, I need you right now.” I practically cried out, leaning my body forward and planting nibbles and kisses along his exposed neck. The suspense was torturous, my body only just now recognizing how badly it was craving his.

His hands cupped my ass, and he used his grip to lift me just a couple inches off of him. I felt him spread me open slightly before dragging a finger once again against my aching folds. “Mmm, so wet for me baby.” I released a breathy moan at the combination of his touch and words, and squirmed in his grasp. “I’ll help you get it in, but I want you on top. That way you can take it as slow as you need to, okay?” His voice softened as he spoke, and his hands massaged me gently causing me to physically relax. “O-okay.” I muttered, so turned on that I was willing to do just about anything he wanted me to.

Just then, he placed a soft kiss to my lips before I felt the very tip of his cock brush against my opening; causing me to gasp. “Shh, it’s okay baby. I’ll go slow.” He whispered in my ear, and I pressed my forehead into the crook of his neck in anticipation. Finally, I felt my walls begin to expand as he pressed the first few inches into me. Moaning at the sensation, I felt my whole body flush in immediate lust. As if they had a mind of their own, my hips subconsciously began lowering onto his shaft; taking more and more of him as I sunk down.

A moan fell from his lips as my walls enveloped him inch by inch, and I slowly lifted my head from his neck and straightened my body up to allow more of him to fill me up. Even though he was big and I hadn’t had a dick in me in a long time, my slick arousal allowed him to bottom out without causing me to feel any pain; only indescribable pleasure. Once every inch of him was in me, I stayed still for a moment looking down at him. His desire was plastered across every inch of his face, and it made him look impossibly beautiful. There was no fear in me in that moment, only want, and so I began riding him.

As soon as I propelled my body up and down his shaft just once, I felt a pit of arousal begin to grow in my stomach. Groaning in pleasure, I continued with my moments; holding onto his shoulders to keep my trembling body stable. “Mmm you feel so good baby.” Matt moaned out, his eyes never leaving my pinched face. After a while, my body adjusted completely to his size and I was able to increase my speed. As I slid my walls up and down his shaft, Matt gripped onto my ass with all his might, using his hands to help me maintain my speed.

Moans fell from my lips as his cock ruthlessly hit my g-spot, and I felt my lower stomach build in pressure. “Fuck.” I muttered under my breath, feeling my skin go flush from the heat of the moment. The room filled with the echo of our wet skin slapping against each other, adding to the erotic air around us. Prolonged strings of moans fell aimlessly from my lips, and as I came closer and closer to my impending climax I began struggling to maintain my movements.

Matt seemed to pick up on this, as he adjusted his hips and began pounding into me from below; his hands holding me in place where I just clung onto him for dear life. “F-fuck Matty, like that. S-so good.” I cried out, my voice choppy from his rapid movements. My brain melted into a pool of liquid as all I could think about was reaching my high that was just out of reach. “You’re taking me so good baby.” Matt groaned out as he continued driving his length into me, staring deeply into my eyes with a fogged over expression.

“I-I think I’m gonna — oh god, think I’m g-gonna cum Matt.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head and I dug my nails into his shoulder blades, struggling to give into this new overwhelming sensation bubbling up inside of me. At this, a guttural moan fell from his lips and he somehow increased the speed of his thrusts even more. “Want you to cum around me baby, please.” There was a desperate whine to his voice as he spoke through his shortness of breath, and it was enough for me to reach my climax. Legs shaking, I released a plethora of moans and curses as my body was hit with multiple waves of indescribable pleasure. “Good girl, feels so good honey.” Matt’s voice was soft in my ear, and it helped to bring me back to earth as my hurricane of an orgasm left my body in shambles.

I continued to bounce on Matt’s dick slowly as I attempted to regain what little composure I had before my orgasm stole it from me, but I quickly learned that all of my energy had been stripped away. My body was trembling uncontrollably, and my head was filled with a fog that made it difficult for me to stay upright. Matt caught on to this, as he planted his hands firmly on my hips, keeping me still, before reaching forward and kissing me deeply. “You tired, baby?” He asked gently, rubbing circles on my sensitive skin. Sheepishly, I nodded, and Matt didn’t hesitate before guiding me off of his lap and helping me lay down on the couch.

As soon as my head hit the soft material, I felt my body immediately begin to relax again. I watched from my place on the couch as Matt began to slowly crawl over to me, before leaning above me. “You did so good baby,” He brought his lips to my chest and began dropping soft kisses against my skin, “Now,” His mouth travelled from my chest down to my stomach, “I want you to just lay here and relax,” He continued to move his lips down my stomach to my hips, “Let me make you feel good, okay?” His face was now hovering above my swollen heat, and I couldn’t help but nod frantically, feeling a sudden need to have his mouth on me.

Matt situated his body so that he could lay down with his face still just above my core. He brought both of his hands to my folds and I flinched as he used his thumbs to spread them apart slightly; exposing my bundle of nerves to the air. My vision partially skewed by his hair flopping in front of his eyes, I watched in awe as he brought his mouth closer and closer to where I needed it the most; before immediately gasping in pleasure once I felt his warm tongue make contact with my clit.

Immediately, Matt got to work in swirling his tongue in expert circles on my overstimulated nerves. This sensation in combination with his rough beard against my inner thighs was so intense it was almost painful in the best way possible, and I was incapable of controlling the throaty moans that fell from my lips as I watched him devour me entirely. Matt then used his mouth to suck on my nerves, bringing forward yet another new sensation that drove me crazy. It felt so unbelievably good, my hands flew to his hair where I held firmly; doing everything in my power to keep him in place. “Oh yeah baby, please, just like that.” I struggled to get the words out through my constant gasps of pleasure, but it was clear that they didn’t fall on deaf ears as Matt moaned in pleasured acknowledgement against my heat and kept his rhythm and pressure the exact same.

Feeling another orgasm begin to bear its teeth in my stomach, it was like my hips grew a mind of their own because as soon as Matt brought his hands under my ass to lift me slightly up on the couch; I began grinding my heat against his eager mouth. “Fuck.” He moaned against my clit as he continued to greedily suck and lick my nerves. I squeezed my eyes shut as a whine escaped my lips from an approaching orgasm, the pleasure that his mouth was giving me was too much. “S-stop baby.” I said suddenly, to which he immediately detached his mouth from me and I watched as his eyes scanned my fucked out face. “What’s wrong? You want to stop?” He seemed so concerned, clearly worried that he had somehow crossed a boundary, and it caused my chest to flutter. “N-no. It’s just, I was gonna cum again.” He raised a quizzical eyebrow, clearly confused by how that might be a problem. “I…I want to cum with you.” I finally said, and watched as his facial expression changed from one of concern back to one filled with lust.

He smiled quickly before dragging his body up my own, planting occasional kisses along my body on his way. Once he reached my head, he immediately began kissing me passionately, slipping his tongue through my parted lips and allowing me to taste myself on his mouth. Pulling away, I noticed my arousal laced throughout his beard, and that along with his pink swollen lips fresh off of my heat was enough to make my head spin. Just then, I felt him line his shaft up with my entrance, and immediately gasped out when he slid it in completely. Before moving at all, Matt took a moment to gaze down at my destroyed face before grabbing my legs and wrapping them around his waist. He then leaned forward and propped himself on his forearms on either side of my head; slipping a hand through my hair and grabbing onto it gently.

After noticing my body relax, he finally began thrusting into me. Starting off slow and deep, he gradually increased his speed until he was pounding his inches deep into me at a rapid pace. Already being close to cumming, I struggled to get a grip on my thoughts as the pleasure of the moment pulled me deeper and deeper into a world of euphoria. “You’re so tight sweetheart.” He muttered through his grunts, and I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head at his words. “F-feels so good Matty.” I managed to reply, tightening my legs around his waist as I tried everything I could to hold off my orgasm.

Matt’s hand snaked through my hair before he grabbed onto my cheek, brushing it gently with his thumb as he stared at me with a gaze so intense that it was almost intimidating. “I-I’m close Y/n.” He nearly whispered, and I felt his pace begin to slow slightly as he began to be overtaken by his own orgasm. My eyebrows knitted together as I felt my walls began to break. “M-me too.” I replied, wrapping my hands tightly around his biceps to keep me grounded. “Ah fuck, I’m cumming baby.” His erotic words were followed by a string of animalistic grunts as he drove his cock in and out of me — slow but hard — and it was like my body was waiting to hear those words as my second orgasm immediately ran through me like a freight train.

My breathy moans harmonized with his deep ones, and I felt my walls contract around his shaft; milking his dick as it painted them white. My legs were wrapped so tightly around his waist, he was barely able to move them as we both rode the waves of our intense pleasure. As my orgasm continued to tear through me, my back arched off of the couch and my body trembled. From above me, Matt watched me writhe in bliss as his movements completely stopped. As I finally began coming down from my high, I felt his hand brush through my hair affectionately, and watched as his face turned up in a smile before he placed a deep kiss to my lips.

He gently pulled his cock out of me, causing me to wince from the raw pain, before laying beside me on the couch and pulling me into him. Face to face, we stared lovingly at each other for a moment; my mind still spinning from how good he had made me feel, and in that moment I was worried that my heart might explode. His blissed expression told me that he was feeling the same, and his hand delicately rubbing the small of my back confirmed it. “Are you okay?” He finally asked, minor concern visible on his beautiful face. “I’m more than okay.” I answered honestly with a chuckle, causing him to laugh in relief as well. “I think I actually love sex.” I continued, causing him to really laugh this time before planting a kiss on my sweat-beaded forehead. “Well I think I actually love you.”

─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─

[norrizzandpia]

this might have to be more than one part, but can you please write a wrong number lando fic? like lando texts the wrong number somehow and they end up becoming good friends, they start falling for each other but lando lies about his identity the whole time until they meet or he tells the reader. and she’s pissed and she doesn’t know anything about f1 anyways so she doesn’t understand why he lied. with angst and stuff? idk if this is too specific or too much to ask!

Wrong Number, Right Person (LN4)

Summary: A wrong number leads Lando right to Y/n, but even the beautiful love they find together struggles to stand a chance against Lando’s lie of identity.

Warnings: none, BUT A HAPPY ENDING!!! Y/n’s bsf threatens to kill lando lol

Note: she is LONG! The word count is almost 9k oml but i have to say that @piastrification was a major help in making this because she read it for me and made it read less stupid! She also gave me some ideas so credit to her for that xx

If there was any moment where Y/n was beyond confused with absolutely no inkling of an answer, it was now. She stared down at her phone, clutching the device as she read over the message sitting on her Lock Screen over and over.

“What’s wrong?” Her best friend, Annie, asked. Her eyebrows were scrunched together in a way she had always done since they were kids, Y/n loved the way that had never changed. The two women had experienced so much growth over the years, but it was heartwarming to see some things hadn’t.

Her eyes flickered to Annie before turning her phone around, “Why does this person think I’m supposed to be meeting them in half an hour?”

Annie laughed out loud, taking the phone from the other girl’s hands and typing out a reply, “Seems like this poor person has the wrong number.”

When Y/n’s phone is returned to her grasp, she giggles at what Annie had done.

Unknown Number

Hey! Just letting you know I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Hope you aren’t running late like last time…

Y/n

Uh, I’m actually running really behind schedule. I won’t be able to get there until around three hours from now. Sorry.

The two girls continued their lunch, feeling a bit bad about messing with a stranger’s plans but laughing nonetheless. It wasn't until Y/n’s phone started blowing up that the color began to drain from their faces.

Unknown Number

WHAT? THREE HOURS????? WHAT?

Unknown Number

YOU’RE MESSING WITH ME RN

Unknown Number

If you don’t answer me in .5 seconds, I WILL show up to your house and wreck your shit

Unknown Number

LIKE WHAT? THREE HOURS? WE’VE HAD THESE PLANS FOR WEEKS MATE

Unknown Number

Literally answer me rn or I’m telling Oscar to help me plan your murder

Y/n’s hand clasped over her mouth as she frantically began to type out a reply, guilt settling over the amusement.

Y/n

You most definitely have the wrong number. Sorry, me and my friend thought it would be funny to tell you that your plans were basically ruined. Our bad. But, I have no idea who Oscar is and I pray for the person you are meaning to text rn. Plz don’t wreck their shit!

His response was immediate.

Unknown Number

Oh… sorry for my small outburst then. But, how am I meant to know this isn’t actually the person I’m trying to get a hold of?

Y/n laughed before Annie suggested taking a picture and sending it to the mysterious number. Probably stupid considering they had no idea who was on the other side of the phone, but an image was sent regardless.

Y/n

*Image Attached*

Y/n

I am most definitely not whoever you are trying to get a hold of.

The number doesn’t respond for a few minutes, busy for all they know or getting bored of texting a supposed stranger. However, her phone dings on the table and the two girls peek to see the response.

Unknown Number

Woah, you are for sure not who I am meant to be texting right now.

Unknown Number

You are very pretty tho

Y/n giggled,

Y/n

Thank you, but not thank you if you are an old man or serial killer. I don’t take compliments from psychos.

Unknown Number

Haha no I am not an old man or serial killer. I’m a child in a 24 year old man’s body.

Y/n

How do I know this for sure?

Unknown Number

Trust me?

Y/n

Okay, ig. What’s your name?

The food comes to the table and Annie begins to dig in, watching her best friend closely before the girl puts her phone down.

“He stopped responding. I asked for his name. Probably got scared or something.” She murmurs before cutting into her chicken. Annie nods her head side to side before they take up another topic of conversation, seemingly moving on from the previous random male who had interrupted their lunch.

However, there’s another vibration on the table ten minutes later. Y/n picks up her phone.

Unknown Number

Robert :) But, people call me Bob. What’s yours?

Y/n

I am going against everything my parents ever taught me by telling a stranger my name and what I look like… but I’m Y/n :)

Y/n

Btw bob sounds like a fake name that’s so funny

🏎️

The next day, Y/n wakes up to yet another message from Bob- who had begun to take up the majority of her text notifications’ real estate. She didn’t mind in the slightest, though. They got on like a house on fire, banter, jokes and conversation free-flowing at any given time.

Bob!

Good morning :)

Bob!

Wait, is it morning for you? Where do you even live?

Y/n

Okay, stalker. It’s literally 9 am, why am I already having to deal with a man trying to get my address.

Bob!

GIRL WHAT? That isn’t what i meant and you know it, Y/n

Y/n

Yes, i know what you meant, bob. I’m just joking lol

Y/n

I live in London! What about you?

Bob!

Monaco

Y/n

Shit, girl. You’re rich asf?

Bob!

NO nah nah nah. Y/n, I literally work as a server here. I enjoy the glamor tho

Y/n

Oh… so no diamond necklaces :( You could’ve been my sugar daddy, bob.

Bob!

😭

Y/n

No i joke I JOKE i can buy my own damn diamond necklaces

Bob!

Of course you can, Y/n. I’m not surprised.

Her heart warms at his portrayed support, and even though her bank account is in the negative, she likes to think Bob believes in her just as Annie does. Maybe he actually did.

She shakes her head at her thoughts. I’ve known him for a day, she thinks. He shouldn’t already mean this much to her. She doesn’t even know him.

Y/n

Ty, bob :) I have to go though. I have so much to get done today.

Bob!

Ok! text me when you’re free?

Y/n

yesss

—

There is a small void in Y/n’s body as she unlocks the front door of her apartment. A day of being broken down has taken its toll on her. Usually, it doesn’t get to her, the stress and pressure of it all, but today, as she flops down onto her ratty couch, part of her wants to give up.

Her phone buzzes underneath her leg.

Bob!

Are you free yet?? It’s been all day, y/n!!!

Y/n

sry, i just got home.

Bob!

Just now? Didn’t you leave at like 9:30 this morn??

Y/n

yeah

Bob!

Y/n, its 10:45 at night for you

Y/n

that would be correct… how did you know that?? Tracking my time zone, Robert?

Bob!

you might be scared to hear I have London saved on my world clock so I can see it at all times

Y/n

thats love fr

Y/n

but yeah its been a long day

Bob!

oh, well, im sorry :( how are you? Tired?

Y/n

Yeah, definitely. Just a hard day in general.

Bob!

Talk to me about it then <3

Her face blushes before the color is being forced back beneath her face. She doesn’t know this man enough to tell him all her sorrows. He’s just being nice.

Y/n

it’s ok. Thank you tho bob

Bob!

Who else are you planning to talk to abt it then?

Y/n

no one?

Bob!

you need to talk about it y/n to let it go. Talk to me.

Y/n

We barely know each other.

Bob!

Do i look like i care?

She laughs and types,

Y/n

Bob, I don’t even know what you look like

Bob!

We’ll fix that someday :) Now talk to me about everything

Y/n takes a breath before her fingers begin flying across the keyboard.

Y/n

People are just mean. I try so hard everyday to give my all and my best effort, to not let people down, but I seem to still do it. I can’t quite get things right and my boss is suffocating me with the way he looms over me like I can't hold my own. It makes me think I can't. There’s no room for mistakes or excuses, you have to be perfect in the office i work and i will never be that. There’s this other girl who holds my same position yet she does it so much better. I will never hold a candle to her and I know that. She’s everything I want to be because she accomplishes everything I can't. My boss knows it, everyone knows it, and it makes me feel like an outsider. I can’t share certain memories with these people or fit in quite right because I haven't been able to achieve the same success as they have. I know I’m just starting out and I have the rest of my life to surpass them, but what if I can't? What if I am never able to gain a good understanding and I am constantly behind?

There are tears pooling in her eyes as she relives the moments of her day when certain tasks were given to this girl she envies, Sam, while her boss gave her a look that had her close to quitting on the spot. Sam gets to revel in the future while Y/n stays in terror of it. A career path she has wanted all her life taunting her.

Bob!

I can relate to that. I can understand the feeling of seeing everyone around you get something you want so dearly while you share the same tools they do and yet you still come up empty. But I’ve also learned that good things come with time and we can’t always be yearning for something that isn’t meant to happen right now. What’s meant to happen will happen for you, I’m sure of it, Y/n. I know it’s hard to not be jealous or feel inadequate, but you just have to make peace with the fact that you try your best and that’s enough. You’re a good person, Y/n. All the good will come to you.

There’s something in his words that makes her feel heard and for once, Y/n finds peace in another’s reassurance. She doesn’t want to think about what that means toward who Bob is to her.

Y/n

Thank you. That means a lot.

Bob!

Of course. I wish I would’ve had someone telling me that when I was experiencing it.

Y/n

When were you experiencing it?

Bob!

A few years ago. But, that doesn’t matter.

Y/n

You’re always vague, bob. Give me something please? I’ve told you so much.

Bob!

There’s not much to tell, Y/n.

Y/n

You’re a server. Is that something you want to do for the rest of your life?

Bob!

I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out.

Y/n

VAGUE

Bob!

Ok, okkk!! I don’t want to be a server for the rest of my life. I think I’d like to work in Formula One. I’ve always loved racing and cars, the thrill of speed and all that. Trying to be Max Verstappen fs

Her eyes twinkle,

Y/n

Haha yeah right brotha

Y/n

That’s great tho! I think you’d be great in Formula One, Bob. I’ve heard of it but not a huge fan. It seems boring.

Bob!

Damn, shitting on my favorite thing… but thank you, Y/n. I think I’d be great too.

Y/n

You know i didn’t mean it that way!! What about your family?

Bob!

If you’re gonna ask me all these questions, should we just call?? Might be easier haha

She stares at his text for a moment, only a few seconds, before his contact name is large on her screen as his call awaits her answer. She clicks the green button and puts the phone to her ear, suddenly nervous to hear his voice for the first time.

“Y/n?” His deep, husky tone fills her ears and the truth of his identity begins to genuinely reign true. His voice is none of some old, slimy man. She could see it fitting someone younger, handsome even. Part of her even wants to say he sounds familiar.

She breathes, “Bob?”

There’s a silence that passes between them, a line crossed in the random relationship they’d surprisingly developed. Rustling sounds from Bob’s end, sheets moving before Y/n adds to the commotion, her heels falling to the floor once she pushes them off.

“Are you going to ask me about my family?” He asks, a hint of laughter in his voice.

Y/n giggles, “Tell me about your family, Bob.”

He lets out a small noise of confirmation, “Well, I have two sisters and a brother. A mom and dad. Still married. I don’t know, what do you want to know?”

The two laugh together at his sudden loss of words before Y/n speaks, “Uh, tell me about your parents. Any crazy love stories in the family?”

“No, they got together relatively normal. They’ve been together since they were younger and they’re still in love to this day. They set up a great example for me.”

Y/n rises from her couch, putting Bob on speaker, and moving into her bedroom to get ready for the end of the night. His voice echoes off the walls of the glistening white walls of her bathroom as she asks him more questions about his siblings and relatives. The way he speaks so highly of them makes the pull to him she feels stronger. Something about him seems too good to be true, but she wouldn’t say that out loud. She believes too much in the power of a jinx.

Bob somehow changes the conversation to her, asking her further about her job and her worries. It’s scary how easy it feels to open up to him, things she had a hard time even telling Annie. Maybe it’s the anonymity of him, the elusiveness of the man she truly doesn’t know. However, none of that matters wholly as she lays in bed, eyes trained on the fan above going in circles as she talks about insecurities she’s had since she was a kid.

“It’s hard to know what traits you truly hold, you know? I can be the sweetest to one person, but horribly mean to another. I don’t want people to think I’m armed with ill intent. Sometimes things just don’t come out the way I want.” She whispers, arms sitting heavy over her stomach.

Bob sighs, “It’s scary how much we share in common. I’ve felt that way too many times before. You can never be too careful with your words and it just hits so hard when people don’t understand who you truly are at your core. If they did, they wouldn’t think I was saying something with malice.”

She smiles to herself. It’s as if he lives in her head. “I don’t think you’d mean anything malicious, Bob.”

He chuckles, “I don’t think you’d mean anything malicious either, Y/n.”

The quietness of her name on his lips brings her closer to sleep and it’s the way he begins to ramble about how much he loves to talk to her that sends her over the edge, a warmness accompanying her body to sleep.

Bob keeps talking for a few minutes before her silence is deafening and he realizes what’s happened. Still, he talks, traumas and all, because something about knowing she’s there makes him not want to hang up.

🏎️

“So, you’ve been talking to this guy for how long?” Annie questions, her eyebrows pulled together just as they always have while she stares bewilderedly at Y/n.

“Three weeks,” She replies, a message from Bob appearing on her screen just as they utter his name.

Annie stares at her, “And you don’t know what he looks like?”

Y/n shakes her head lightly, “No…”

Annie scoffs, “Y/n! That’s so stupid! He could be stalking you for all we know!”

“No! He’s not stalking me, Annie. I think I know him now, really. In the beginning, no, but we call all the time and we talk about anything and everything. He’s sweet and he’s everything I’ve ever been looking for in a guy.” Y/n is quick to defend, her phone in her hands as Bob calls her.

Annie glances down to the ringing phone, “Is that him?”

Her challenging look makes Y/n nod slowly. Annie lurches forward and Y/n yelps just as her best friend yanks the phone out of her hands and answers the call.

“ANNIE!” Y/n yells, grasping for the phone while Annie just moves away.

Bob’s voice meets Annie’s ears, “Y/n?”

“This is Annie, Y/n’s best friend. I’d like to know your address and full name, seeing as my beloved friend has not gotten that information yet.” She demands, eyes glancing toward Y/n as she awaits the man’s answer.

Bob stutters, “Uh, my name is Robert Dancing. I live in Monaco.”

Annie shakes her head, “No, I’m talking address. Like, 12345 Hemingway Street.”

Bob laughs, “Can I just talk to Y/n?” There’s a hint of anxiousness in his voice that sends Annie into a manic spiral.

“No, tell me where you live.” She fires back.

“Annie!” Y/n tries again, grabbing onto Annie’s sweatshirt to pull her closer. When she’s within reach, Y/n reaches for the phone and snatches it back, much to Annie’s dismay.

Y/n apologizes, “Bob, I’m so sorry. Annie’s a little insane.”

He laughs and it lingers around her heart, “It’s okay. Just call me later, yeah?”

She nods and murmurs confirmation before hanging up. She turns to look at her best friend, a rare moment of betrayal. “Why would you do that?” She asks, annoyance radiating off of her.

Annie crosses her arms, “Because, Y/n! You don’t know this man.”

Y/n groans, “Yes, I do! Also, getting to know him by demanding his address seems satisfactory to you?”

“You’re being stupid, Y/n! I’m just looking out for you!” She raises her voice, anger getting in the way of truly getting her point across.

Y/n shakes her head, “Looking out for me would be trusting me when I ask that of you! You just completely went against everything I asked of you! I asked for support, not outraged behavior!”

Annie’s face drops, “You don’t get it! Y/n, you do not know this man! You didn’t even know his last name until I asked for you yet you’ve apparently told him all of your secrets?!”

Y/n begins to pack her purse in a moment of fury, “No, Annie, you don’t get it!”

As she stands at the cusp of the front door, Annie yells back at her, “Stop falling in love with someone you can’t trust!”

Y/n closes the door shut, a huff coming from her lips as she storms down the stairs, tears down her face. To have her best friend question her judgment regarding someone who means so much to her hurts immensely. Though, what hurts worse is knowing she might be right.

—

Max almost looks perplexed when Lando hangs up the phone.

“Robert Dancing? What the hell kind of name is that?” He teases, a patronizing tone.

Lando shakes his head, “I didn’t know what else to say! Dancing was the first thing that came to my head!”

Max crosses his arms over his chest, “Are you ever planning on telling this woman who you really are?”

Lando’s mouth opens and falls closed, at a loss for words, “I don’t know. I want to, but I know she’ll run. I don’t blame her. I’ve lied about fundamental things.” There’s a crease in his forehead as he continues, “I can’t lose her. I’m too addicted to the way she makes me feel.”

Max sighs, “I hate to say it, but you might, Lan. You told her you were a completely different person, betrayed her trust in an insane way. You’ve got something special, that counts for something, but you need to be prepared for the possibility of her never being able to find it in herself to forgive you. I don’t want you to get your hopes up and get hurt.”

“I won’t. I know the risks of what I’ve done, but I can’t take it back now. I just need to find the time to tell her. I will tell her and I’ll do it in a coherent, calm way.” He tries, but the two of them know he’s already gotten his hopes up. Max looks at him with faux confidence, knowing Lando’s found himself with someone it’ll cut deep to let go of.

Lando knows it too, knows the kind of pain that’ll shred through him if she leaves because of his mistake. It’s ironic in the way that a lie, one so unnecessary, is the thing that plagues his mind at night even as Y/n’s voice puts him to sleep.

🏎️

There’s a nagging in Y/n’s brain that pushes her to get out from under the covers of her bed and find her desk in the dark of the night. She sits in the chair with a creak before opening her laptop and the random browser she’s had tabs open in for days on end.

Her fingers however over the keys before typing in a dreaded question of truth.

“Robert Dancing.” She whispers as she presses enter and the screen begins to load. Her stomach churns and her eyes whip away, too scared to look. What would she do if nothing came up? What if Annie was right? What if Bob wasn’t who she thought he was after all?

But, then, his voice calls her back to the safety of her blind trust as it rings throughout her brain. He seems too nice to be what Annie had thought him to be. Bob is who she thinks he is, he has to be.

Her gaze takes one more look at the picture of her and Annie on her nightstand before she turns her head fully to find out her fate.

A blank screen with the haunting words, “Sorry, we couldn’t find what you were looking for.” stares back at her. For a moment, she thinks she must’ve spelled his name wrong and she tries multiple, very clearly wrong, versions of what his name could be in an attempt to console the last of hope dwindling out of her body.

Bob. A name in her mouth that now means nothing takes on what she had originally thought it had been. A fake name.

This can’t be, she thinks. There has to be some logical explanation. But, then again, Robert Dancing is not a typical name, something should come up for a server who lives in Monaco. A link to his social media would’ve shown. He’s young and living in Europe, there would be a trace of him.

Robert Dancing does not exist.

🏎️

Unknown

Y/n, you never called me back. Is everything okay?

Y/n

Everything is fine.

Unknown

Can I call you now?

Y/n

I’m busy.

Unknown

It’s been three days and I haven’t heard from you at all. Seriously, are you okay?

Unknown

Y/n, answer me. What’s going on?

Y/n

Stop messaging me.

Her body jolts in surprise when her phone rings aggressively against the desk at her work. She looks around sheepishly at her staring coworkers before grabbing the loud device and walking outside. The moment the door shuts behind her, she answers.

Bob speaks so quickly, “Y/n, what’s going on?”

She stares at the skyline, trying to find peace in the view, “What’s your name?”

Bob is quiet, “Robert Dancing. You know this.”

“No, I don’t. What’s your name?” She tries again, anger in her voice and sadness deep in her soul.

“Bob.” He states, breaking her heart once more.

Y/n scoffs, “I know that’s not your name. If you don’t start telling me the truth right now, I will hang up and block you.”

A door closes on his side and she hears him take a breath, “Okay, okay. Don’t do that. How’d you find out?”

A dry laugh leaves her mouth, mixed with astonishment, “Do you think I’m stupid?! You gave me what was supposed to be your full name, so I searched you up. Choose a name that actually comes up next time, yeah?”

“Y/n, I’m so sorry. You told me you would never think I meant malice by my actions. That should apply here.” He tries, but she just shakes her head.

“That was back when I thought I knew at least your name. Who ever are you? Do you even live in Monaco? Was any of it true?” She cries, somewhat surprised at the tears that have appeared.

He sounds disappointed, “Yes, it all was. I do live in Monaco and I have three other siblings. My parents are still married. All the things I told you were true, my doubts and insecurities. That wasn’t fake, Y/n.”

She pulls herself together, not ready to break down for a man so cruel, and wipes her tears, “What’s your name?”

“Y/n, I-”

She interrupts, determined, “What’s your name?”

A build up manifests from the silence he lets go on before he answers her dying question, “Lando Norris.”

Part of her was expecting him to say a name she would’ve recognized, but no part of her has any reaction to him. His name is just another one she wished to have been able to connect to another human being.

He takes her silence for realization and his body slumps against the wall behind him. Part of him knows she won’t, but another part worries she’ll take their situation and everything he’s told her to the press.

What she says next completely contradicts everything he built up in his head, “You act like that’s supposed to mean anything to me.”

With that, she hangs up the phone.

—

Annie and Y/n haven’t spoken since their fight a week ago, but the betrayal of it is pushed aside when Annie opens the door to find Y/n crying at her door.

No words are shared, Annie understands, and Y/n is ushered into the home, coaxed by her best friend to sit on the couch.

“What happened?” She whispers, her hand rubbing over Y/n’s back. Annie hates to see her best friend in such brokenness, even in a moment where she could tell her I told you so. That would do no one good, Annie knows that. Y/n doesn’t need to be proven wrong right now, she needs someone to sit with her when no one else seemingly won’t.

A sharp intake of breath and Y/n speaks, “He wasn’t who he said he was. Robert Dancing doesn’t exist. His actual name is Lando Norris. As if that means anything. Why would he lie?”

Annie cocks her head because it doesn’t make sense. Why would he lie? Lying about your life to make it seem more interesting than it was would make sense, but to blatantly lie completely about your identity? That didn’t make sense.

“Have you searched him up? Maybe it’s supposed to mean something?” She tries, genuinely lost at the situation.

Y/n shakes her head, tears falling to her lap as she hangs her head, “If I do and I see him, I don’t want to know. I already like him too much and that makes this hurt more than it should. If I see him, learn who he truly is, I’m scared I’ll never be able to let him go.”

Annie frowns, part of her wants to know about the man that put her friend in such a state. But, it’s not what Y/n needs as she cries on the beige couch. Her head fits in the crook of Annie’s shoulder as the girl turns on mindless TV for her friend.

Still, though, Annie knew she would find herself investigating Lando Norris later when Y/n fell asleep.

—

It’s ironic how similar Y/n and Annie look when they scour the internet for information about a specific man. Annie has a bit of blanket pulled over her lap as Y/n hogs the majority of it, the rise and fall of her chest a telltale sign of needed slumber.

The face of Lando Norris stares back at her as she tries to think of this man calling her best friend at night, asking questions no one has before. He seemed bubbly in the few moments she spoke to him and when she clicks on a video of him in an interview, she knows immediately it's him. His voice is distinct as it speaks through a clear microphone. There were no lies in his second confession to Y/n.

From what she can tell, he’s a beloved member of the Formula One community, a sport she had never truly looked into because she assumed it was overrated. So, did Y/n. The off chance that Lando texted a random person and found something more with them, he lucked out that that someone was clueless when it came to the sport that made him famous.

Her breathing stops when she finds a video that titles Lando’s supposed telling of a woman he’s taken a liking to. The date of the video tells her it’s within the time frame of him and Y/n.

She glances at her sleeping best friend before clicking the link, his smiling face large on her screen.

Lando’s giggle is sweet, “Yeah, I guess you could say I’ve found someone. Or, at least, have a crush. This girl and I are definitely not official, but there’s something there, I think we can both feel it. I’ve never felt so free with someone.”

The reporter, out of view from the watcher, coos, “That’s great, Lando! What’s her name?”

Lando gives the man a warning glance as he states authoritatively, “I won’t be handing that information right now.”

He clutches the microphone and Annie can see the way his body shifts with protectiveness. If anything, this is exactly the kind of way she had always wanted Y/n to be treated. Protected and cherished. From what she could gather, from the deepdive of articles and the stories Y/n had told, Lando did just that.

Her heart aches. A stupid man tried to protect himself whilst falling in love with a woman that never even knew who he was. They were never even given a chance.

Somehow, in a black out of pure sadness for Y/n who had always yearned to be adored in this way, Annie found herself buying a ticket to the next Grand Prix, Silverstone of all places.

With a crappy seat and no plan or guarantee of finding him, Annie knew she had to find Lando. She had to fight for something that wasn’t even hers.

🏎️

The commotion of fans surrounding the entrance to the paddock puts Annie on edge, not to mention the size of the crowd. She thought she got here early, wanting to be at the front so she could try and talk to him, but as she sees the large amount of people between her and the path where the drivers walk, hope diminishes. Still, she pushes through everyone, apologizing when she gets dirty looks. She knows how bad this looks, how much this most likely goes against common courtesy at races such as these. The face of Y/n with bloodshot eyes and a puffy face forces her to persevere, her best friend deserves someone like Lando.

She’s halfway through the crowd when it roars to life, screams emitting as people begin to stick McLaren hats and posters in the air. From the sliver of light she can see through some bodies, Annie watches Lando begin to walk through. He stops to sign for some fans and she pushes more forcefully, knowing this is her only chance.

He moves through it all with grace, but a certain speed that makes her heart pick up. He’s at the front of the crowd, about to step into the paddock and be lost completely to her when she yells, “Lando! It’s Annie!”

It’s the first thing that she can think of, hoping he’ll be reminded of Y/n’s voice when she tried to cover for her best friend’s moment of protection. Annie watches him pause, turn around slowly, as his eyes roam over the sea of people. He locks eyes with her as she waves her arms in the air, something passes between them and he begins running toward her. A connection to the woman he let down, one he hadn’t stopped thinking of in the weeks she had left him.

When he reaches her, Lando is stunned by her presence. “You’re Annie? Like Y/n’s Annie?” He whispers, the people around her screaming for his signature as she nods her head.

“Y/n’s Annie.” He looks to be fighting tears as he ushers a security guard over. “I need you to escort her into the paddock, to my driver’s room.”

The large man nods and Lando walks off, nodding at Annie gratefully. Once he’s gone from the premises, the guard moves the rope keeping people from bombarding the drivers up and lets her through.

The walk to wherever Lando had ordered is quiet as Annie takes in the money that surrounds her. People with Cartier jewelry and Birkens waltz around with an air to them that allows Annie to suddenly understand Lando. This is what he was afraid of. A greedy woman who would take advantage of the status he had and lie to him to get to his money and the money around him. While she understood, however, she still felt angry at his deceiving. Y/n was never given the benefit of the doubt.

The guard knocks on Lando’s door and it swings open, his sunken face coming into view and in the new light, Annie can see the love that Lando had found in her best friend. The effect of her leaving him is seen all over his body and from what she could gather during her time looking into him, he wasn’t doing as well as he usually had during races.

He motions for her to come in and when she does, the door closed, he begins talking, “Did Y/n send you here? Is she here? Can I talk to her? Does she want to see me? Is she forgiving me? Are you-”

Her heart breaks as she interrupts him and his quick anticipation of a reconciliation is crushed, “None of that is true. I’m here on my own terms. Y/n doesn’t know I’m here. At this point in time, she doesn’t want to see you, but I think that’s the shock of finding out about you.. That will wear off eventually. She’s hurt, Lando, but I also know she hates not talking to you. She hasn’t stopped talking about you. And I can’t stand to know that you two found something she’s always deserved, but let it slip away because of fears and betrayals.”

He sits opposite of her, staring at her and trying to find the answers he wants to hear in her eyes. He never does.

Lando rubs his palms over his eyes, “I never even got her last name. There was no way for me to find her.”

“Y/n Y/l/n.”

He lifts his head slowly, “What?”

At the look in his eyes, Annie smiles, “Y/n Y/l/n. That’s her last name. Actually, her full name, I guess.”

A small grin finds its way to Lando’s face and the way he touches his mouth lightly makes her think he hasn’t smiled in a while. “Y/n Y/l/n,” He whispers, smile widening as it all falls from his lips.

He’s even in love with her name, Annie thinks.

“Can you take me to her? I would like to be given the opportunity to fight for her.” He asks hesitantly, as if Annie hasn’t made it abundantly clear that she is here to help.

She nods, “I will tell you where to meet her, but first, I need you to tell me everything from the beginning, from your perspective.”

Lando’s head hangs and he begins, hands wringing together in his lap, “When I first texted her, I thought she was my friend, Daniel.”

“Daniel Ricciardo?” She asks, clarification needed for this story.

Lando’s eyebrows rise, “You know the sport?”

She shakes her head, “No, both Y/n and I never got into it because we didn’t think it was that exciting - sorry - but, I basically learned everything about your life and Formula One when Y/n told me your name.”

He nods and continues, “Well, yes, I thought she was Daniel Ricciardo, we were supposed to be meeting for lunch that day to just catch up before starting the new season. Well, as it turns out, he had changed his phone number over break because it leaked and never told anyone that he wasn’t needing to contact immediately during that time. I assume Y/n must’ve gotten a new number around the time because she got his.”

Annie thinks back before realizing Y/n had shattered her phone in the weeks before and ended up getting an entire new cell phone profile. New number, email, everything. She had said she liked the clean slate.

At her nodding, Lando talks once more, “When she sent me the picture of her, I immediately thought she was one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen in my entire life. That’s cliche, but it’s true. She’s still so beautiful to me. Um,” He shakes his head, tears having pooled in his eyes at the mention of her beauty, “I knew I wanted to keep talking to her, see where it went because I couldn’t just stop talking to her and never knew what could’ve been. So, I made a quick, impulsive decision. I lied about who I was because I just wanted her to treat me normally. I had no idea who she was or her morals, I couldn’t guarantee that she would treat me like everyone else. Obviously, when I learned of who she was and the deep parts of her that no one else got to see, I wanted to change it all. I wanted to tell her so many times who I was and what I wanted with her, what I saw with her, but I knew if I did, I would just lose her. So, I tried to find ways to keep talking to her, but also slowly introduce the truth. Clearly, I never found a way. When you called me, demanding my address and full name I panicked and didn’t think about what would happen if I said what was supposed to be my full name. You’re very scary, you know.” He chuckles, Annie does with him, “So, it all fell from there. She found out Robert Dancing was something entirely fabricated and she called me, telling me to tell her the truth. I was backed into a corner and everything I wanted, I needed, left me. That moment is ingrained in my brain.”

He breathes slowly, his eyes still on his hands, before whispering, “I miss her.”

Annie nods, “I know. So does she. That’s why you need to go to this address,” She hands him a small paper, “Meet her there on Monday at 7 PM, come prepared to tell her all of that and more.”

He clutches the paper like it’s his last lifeline and Annie smiles at how important Y/n is to him.

Lando glances up at her, “What do you mean by more?”

Annie continues to smile lightly, “That you love her. That you need her. That you’re sorry. Lando, remind her of what you two had.”

🏎️

The small apartment complex is daunting to Lando as he stands in front of it. Annie never told him where he was going or what he would be met with, but considering he’s here to see Y/n, he can only assume the building he stares at is her home. His anxiety only spikes. He does not want to mess up again. He doesn’t want to taint her home with even more pain, he thinks to himself, images of himself groveling and begging for her forgiveness flashing in his mind’s eye.

Nonetheless, he knows if he backs out, Annie would find his address this time and physically harm him.

So, the boy walks to the gate and rings her neighbor, following Annie’s instructions closely. He remembered how she told him if he rang Y/n, she wouldn’t let him in, being stubborn and all. Though, if he rang the neighbor, an older woman Annie called Lo, he had a chance.

“Hello? I’m here to see Y/n.” He said into the rusty speaker, a questionable smell infiltrating his nose.

A crackling sound emits from it before Lo is speaking back to him, “Are you Robert Dancing? Annie told me you would be coming.”

Lando laughs at the name, his random ideas being the reason for it, and murmurs a yes to her. She doesn’t say anything back, just a loud buzzing noise that tells him the door is unlocked.

When he walks through, part of him groans at the lack of an elevator. For an athlete, the man is lazy.

Thus, he begins his scale to the top floor, cursing himself for falling in love with someone who lives so high up.

He’s almost completely lost to his thoughts that he doesn’t realize Y/n’s door stands in his way once his feet hit the doormat. It dawns on him the time has come to meet her in person, having never before. It should be studied, he thinks, how he’s fallen in love with her without ever truly seeing her.

He knocks on the door, not wasting time before he truly aborts whatever mission he’s found himself on. And his heart soars when he hears her yell, “Coming!”

He’s only ever heard it over the phone. To hear it feet away from him is almost as exciting as the idea of her forgiving him.

The door unlocks and pulls open, revealing Y/n in a matching set of pajamas that he remembers her texting him about, asking if they were a stupid purchase or not. He told her to get them, she told him probably not, that she was poor, but she still had.

Her eyes land on him and he’s ready for whatever screaming he’s about to endure, but she just smiles at him.

“Hi! Can I help you with anything?” She acts as if she doesn’t recognize him and Lando realizes she doesn’t. Annie had mentioned something about Y/n becoming disinterested in seeing who he truly was, out of fear of becoming too attached. His mind must’ve not genuinely absorbed that information because he only understands it now.

She doesn’t know who he is.

He could do the same thing he had before, lie and tell her he’s someone else. Take the safer option and secure her love, but he takes a breath instead and remembers all Annie had told him. He’d already put her through so much, to do it again would be cruel.

“Y/n, I’m Lando.” He says while he watches her face fall.

Her hands fly to the door, about to slam it on his face, but he sticks his foot in right before she can. The impact hurts, but he continues with what he had practiced so many times on the way here.

“Please, Y/n, just hear me out.” He pleads as her cheeks fill with red. He’s almost sure it isn’t a blush.

“How’d you even get my address?” She says, astonished at who stands before her. Her eyes fall over his body, trying to understand the information. Who he is, what he wants.

“Annie.” He whispers, knowing her confusion will only heighten more.

Her mouth falls open and she yells, “ANNIE?!”

What he believes to be Lo, pops out from her behind her door at the yelling and Lando lowers his head.

“Can I come in? We shouldn’t have this conversation in the hallway of your complex.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, hoping she’ll agree. When she does, opening the door for him slowly, he flies forward. While he was ecstatic to be given another chance, he still fears for his image and what would be speculated about a seemingly heated conversation between him and another woman.

She guides him to the couch and they sit down. A familiar creak sounds that reminds him of the ones he would hear when they got into deep conversation during their nighttime calls. The image of her on the phone with him, concentration on her face as she listened to whatever he was revealing and getting comfortable on her sofa, makes him smile softly.

“Bo- I mean, Lando, you need to start talking. I don’t have all the time in the world to listen.” She gives, her tone ice cold. However, the break in it when she realizes she’s said his former, fake name makes the anger he felt over his lies further. He wants her to say his name, the real one. He wants her to say it with love and excitement, not distance. He wants her and his name on her lips.

“I never meant to hurt you. Actually, what I did was in an attempt to shield myself from any kind of bad faith. I didn’t expect to develop what he did. I didn’t even expect to open up to you in the way I did. I thought I could make a friend, one who didn’t know who I was and didn’t have any kind of bias toward me. I’ve always wanted that with someone, especially a partner. I saw an opportunity and I took it, not thinking through it all and I hurt you in the process. I’m so sorry, Y/n. From the moment we started truly talking, calling and all, I knew I had messed up, but I never found a way to tell you. Well, a way to tell you that wouldn’t result in you getting rid of me. I wish I could take it all back, but not you. Not what I got to experience with you, what I felt with you. You’re my favorite memory and you’ll never understand how grateful I am for you. You helped me through bad races even when you didn’t know, helped me through weird press interactions when you didn’t know. I loved that. I loved how at peace you made me feel. I can’t let this go without knowing I gave it everything I have and when Annie showed up at Silverstone, telling me I had to fight for you, I took whatever she had to give.”

Y/n stares at him, trying to digest it all, and murmurs, “Annie went to Silverstone?”

He chuckles lightly, “Yes, she came and she told me who she was, what she was doing there. She told me she knew what we had and she didn’t want you to lose something you’ve always deserved. She gave me this address and told me to come here at this time, told me to buzz Lo instead of you so I could come in. She told me I needed to remind you of what we had.”

Y/n goes red again, blushing this time. She smiles at the idea of Annie going to great lengths just to make her happy, “Annie sounds determined.”

Lando smiles along with her, “She was. She told me if I didn’t fight for you, she’d find me and kill me. She’s really scary, Y/n.”

Their eyes meet and Y/n is reminded of what once was, the way he made her feel. She misses him and knowing the intricate shade of brown in his eyes doesn’t help how much she wants to shut him out.

“I understand why you did what you did, but that doesn’t make it any better. You could’ve given up everything you were saying at any point in time and you didn’t. You only told me when I confronted you with it.” She whispers, disappointment evident in her voice. She plays with her fingers and Lando is close to taking them in his hand.

He nods, “I get that. But, I was scared to tell you because I was just so in love with you. I still am.”

Her eyes snap to his and a moment passes before she asks, “Still am? You love me?”

His cheeks turn cherry tomato, “Yes, of course, I am. The moment I realized you were safe enough to open up to, knowing my identity or not, I was in love with you.”

She groans and lets her face fall to her palms, “But, I’m in love with you too.”

He laughs and shakes his head, “Why is that a bad thing?”

Her eyes peek from over her hands, “Because I want to hate you.”

Finally, his fingers lace with hers as he brings them away from her face, “But, you love me. Isn’t that enough?”

She knows it is. He knows it is. Annie knows it is, even if she isn’t there. It’s a matter of if Y/n can put aside the grand web of lies he put together to let them have their shot at something that could be wonderful. In the warmth of his presence, she thinks she can.

🏎️

Y/n

Can you stop blowing up my phone

Bob <3

Why????? I’m bored baby

Y/n

im at work girly

Bob <3

girly 🤭🫶🏻🤗 plz go out to the balcony and answer me

Y/n

I think you might be obsessed with me

Bob <3

i made an alter ego so i could talk to you didn’t i?

Y/n

girl

She picks up his call as she closes the door behind her, the new office building she’s in allowing for a wider view of London. The new team she works with is less competitive than the last and their support is proving beneficial with the news she got today.

“My beloved girlfriend, are you free for lunch today?” Lando giggles into the speaker like the lovesick man he is. Y/n can hear Oscar make fun of him in the background.

She smiles, “I thought you were bored?”

“Yes, so now I’m asking if you want to have lunch with me” He answers as if it’s obvious. In the months after the soft moment shared between Lando and Y/n on her old couch, they’ve found something more than love between them. Lando says it’s destiny and Y/n says it’s a soulmate tie, but they agree that the love they once shared over the phone only grew once in person.

Y/n chuckles at his antics, “Sure, I will have lunch with you, Lan. Can you come pick me up though? I don’t want to drive.”

Lando makes a noise, “What did you think I was going to do? Make you drive yourself? No way. There’s one person in this relationship that drives cars professionally and it’s not you, sweetheart. Sorry to break it to you.”

Oliver, her coworker, comes to the door, asking for her assistance on something with a smile. She tells him she’ll be a minute and he nods, retreating back into the office quietly, “Sorry, my love. I need to go. But, you’ll be here when?”

Lando hums, “An hour?”

“Perfect! Oh, and, Lando?” She asks, her voice filled with joy as he responds, “You’ll have to come to the Junior VP’s office to pick me up.”

Silence is met with her sentence before Lando whispers, “Either I’m stupid and you have some big project I forgot about or you’re trying to tell me something that will actually make me lose my mind and sanity right now.”

She laughs loudly, “I got Junior VP, Lan. Youngest one yet.”

He shrieks, momentarily making Y/n go deaf, before screaming to everyone around him about his girlfriend’s achievement, “I’m so proud of you, baby! Oh my god! I’m so happy! We need to buy champagne! You can have your own podium moment! Holy shit, I’m so proud!”

“I would love that, Lan. Thank you. I love you.” She whispers the last part softly, three words that mean so much.

He’ll never get tired of hearing her speak of her love for him, “I love you too, Y/n.”

She’d never get tired of saying it.

[obbystars]

It’s You!

Synopsis: Despite everything, it’s still you.

Notes: Sebastian Solace x GN!Reader / Established relationship, can be interpreted as either married or not / Sebastian and Reader live together / Connected to my previous fic, Drown in the Deep, but this can be read as a standalone / Cigarettes cause it’s canon Sebastian smokes, up to you if reader also smokes / Fluff + Comfort / Reader has read Sebastian’s document, but nothing too specific is mentioned from it

(UNDERTALE REFERENCE RAHHH anyway another fic where I’m playing/experimenting with Sebastian’s character. I’m trying to find something that clicks, y’know? You’ll probably expect me to be writing him for a bit until my fixation decides to latch onto something else.)

Credit: Dividers by @cafekitsune

The moment you felt the empty space beside you, you felt wide awake. You’re not sure how long he’s been gone for, but that part doesn’t really matter. You threw off the blanket and got up, almost immediately feeling a shiver run down your spine. It’s cold.

You began to search through the house, quietly opening doors and listening if you could hear movement. Not in the bathroom, not in the living room, not in the dining room or the kitchen… You grabbed a snack while in there just in case. You checked everywhere inside the house. He’s definitely outside then, probably smoking. You grabbed a sweater and made your way to the back door.

Hearing the door open, Sebastian turns to you with a cigarette still in his hand.

“Oh, hey,”

You tilted your head with a smile, “Hey. You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he nods, turning away as he said that, “I’m fine, just can’t sleep,”

You hum as you walked to him and gently lay your head on his shoulder. He didn’t react at first, but you feel him lean onto you as well. He eventually relaxes.

“Let me guess. Nightmare?”

“You could say that,”

“You wanna tell me about it?”

He shrugged, “Not really,”

Sebastian wasn’t one to talk about certain things much like this, so you didn’t question it any further. You pulled out the snack you grabbed earlier and held it up to him.

“Care for a trade?” You smirked, shaking the bag.

He smiles a little as you held out your other hand for his cigarette. Once you feel him place it in your hand, you let him have the snack. It was mostly quiet once he started eating. Silent moments like this were nice. It makes you feel sleepy sometimes and you could very much fall asleep right here on his shoulder. Unfortunately, the wind picked up and it started to get a bit cold. Both of you shivered.

You gently patted his arm, “You ready to go back inside?”

There was a brief silence between the two of you before he nods, “Yeah,”

Sebastian leans off of you as you do the same. Just as you turned around to head inside, he tugs on the sweater.

“Wanna return my sweater?”

“You’ll get it back in the morning, it’s mine now,” you smile.

He rolled his eyes as he followed you inside. You kept the swearer on when you two got to bed. You crawled in on your side and held out your arms to Sebastian as he got in. He laid his head over yours while you got yourself comfortable on top of him.

“Hey Seb, you know what we should do?”

Sebastian doesn’t take his eyes off the ceiling, “What?”

“We should go to an aquarium some time,”

“Where’s this coming from?”

“Fish are cool. Plus, I figured it’d be a fun and cool little date, y’know?”

He lets out a laugh, “I’m getting the feeling that’s not all,”

You rolled your eyes with a scoff. He wasn’t wrong about that, so you continued.

“Yeah, cause you didn’t want to come with me back in college because of your business major. The same one you switched out of,”

“Okay, now that’s just unfair!” Sebastian abruptly sits up, pushing you off of him, “It’s not my fault the damn class was boring!”

He pinches your cheek and pulls on it, causing you to wince, “You didn’t even end up going anyway because of your own classes!” He adds.

“Oww! Hey!”

He lets go of you and lays back down, facing you. He closed his eyes for a moment before sighing, “Sooo… Where’s this aquarium?”

You smiled and reached for your phone to check the location. Hopefully that window to go is somewhere in your lives as there’s time and money to worry about. It was a bit expensive and a little far. One day, and maybe if there’s another opportunity, you could invite his brother and sister to come along. You don’t see them much anyway so that could be a great opportunity.

Once you were done talking about it, you put your phone back where it was. You were about to close your eyes, but Sebastian still has something to say.

“It’s funny that you brought up the aquarium, actually. My dream had to do with the ocean,”

You looked at him, “Really?”

“Yeah, it was cold, dark… I don’t remember it hurting. I don’t think I was drowning either,”

“Woahh… That’s kinda cool,” you reached your hand over and started playing with his hair, “Kinda makes me want to go diving now,”

“What’s with you and your sudden interest in the ocean?”

“When you think about it, there’s a bunch of stuff down there we haven’t discovered yet because we don’t have what it takes to go further down. It’d be so cool to see and learn about it. Of course, I’d be happy to see a sea turtle and maybe swim with one,”

“Kinda sounds like you love fish more than me,” he scoffs.

“Not true!” You then paused for a moment, totally not thinking about it, “But if you were a fish, I’d still love you,”

“How reassuring,” the sarcasm in his voice is clear.

You pouted, “Shush. It’s because I’ll know it’s you. Now let me braid your hair until I’m too sleepy,”

He lets out a sigh as he moves closer, “Fine,”

Sebastian ended up falling asleep rather quickly as you worked, and you didn’t take too long to fall asleep afterwards.

Your eyes snapped open with a gasp. You feel cold. You’re not sure what it was, but you remember seeing a dark creature with multiple white eyes staring at you through a locker. It was ramming into the door, trying to get you out. It had human teeth and its face looked like it was melting. That was the last thing you remember as the locker doors finally gave out and you couldn’t hold it shut anymore.

Your heart was pounding against your chest. You feel something move underneath you and quickly remember where you were and who you were with. You pushed yourself to sit up and looked at Sebastian who was still asleep. His tail had coiled around you, almost acting like a bed if it weren’t for the scales. You’re reminded of the current situation you’re stuck in and it doesn’t help to calm your heart. You’re still stuck in this abandoned facility with no way out unless you leave his hideout to retrieve the crystal like Urbanshade requested.

You sighed, lying back down and facing him this time. Your hand reached over to move some of his hair away from his face so that his third eye is visible to you. Perhaps playing with his hair to get you to fall asleep was more of a habit now. You nudged yourself a bit closer to him and started to make a small braid.

Sebastian had quickly woken up due to feeling something gently tugging on his hair, but seeing you so focused, he stayed quiet and watched you. Part of him wanted to know just how long it’ll take for you to notice him watching you. You were being careful as you weren’t aware he wasn’t already awake.

He’s become such a light sleeper ever since his stay here. The smallest noise and movement could wake him up, but it was like a lifesaver as the dangers persisted. It didn’t help that Urbanshade is going to kill him without hesitation the moment they see him.

Your hands are shaking and you’re struggling more than usual. It might be because you’re still shaken up by your nightmare of getting killed mixed with the problem you’re currently in, but it did feel a little too real. It felt like you used all of your strength to hold the locker closed. You can’t exactly feel your legs either, like that was the first thing that monster had consumed. The image of it was still in your head. A million eyes staring at you through the locker from inside its mouth, its face seemingly melting away and the scream it let out once it grabbed you.

Your hands stopped, the shaking becoming more evident. A blue scaled hand takes hold of your small hands. You blinked, snapping yourself out of your thoughts and looked at Sebastian.

“O-Oh, uh…” your voice trembled, “How long were you awake?”

“Long enough,” he says, “You’re shaking. What’s wrong?”

You looked down and tried to pull your hands out of his, but he only held tighter, “Just a nightmare…”

“Well, whatever it was certainly frightened you to this extent. What was it about?”

“I was still here, somewhere in this facility. The lights flickered and I heard a distant voice getting louder, and then it suddenly screamed as it saw me entering a locker,” he lets go of your hands at this point, “It kept ramming into it, trying to open it or knock me out of it. When it finally managed to open it, its face looked so… disturbing. There were so many eyes in its mouth, a-and…”

You’re not sure how to describe it, or maybe the memory of the nightmare is fading at this very moment. But you still feel it.

He props himself up on one of his hands, using his extra limb to pull you closer, “Ohhh, you had a dream about that thing? Yeahh, dying to that isn’t really pleasant. Won’t get into the details, you probably get the idea of it anyway considering what you’ve seen,”

You say nothing in response to that. Is that what the last person you were with felt? You can’t imagine just how painful it would’ve been had it spotted you inside the other room. All that was left was the beat up locker and a pool of blood. You don’t remember hearing them scream either, but perhaps it was drowned out by the sound of the monster. You didn’t want to think about it anymore.

Sebastian lays back down so you can continue with what you were doing, but instead, he feels your hands come back to his and gently holds it. He watches you for a bit, trying to figure out what you’re trying to do now. You traced your fingers against the scales, almost fascinated by it. You were being oh so gentle with him.

“Y’know, any sane person would be cautious whenever they see a tall fish with the features of an angler fish and razor sharp teeth,” he suddenly comments, “But you? Didn’t anyone ever tell you curiosity kills the cat?”

“It’s because I know it’s you, Sebastian,” you held his hand tighter, “Just because you look like this now doesn’t change the way I feel about you. Does it make me upset knowing why now? Of course I’m upset…and angry, too. Had it been me instead, I think I would’ve done the same after everything they did. You must’ve been in so much pain too,”

He doesn’t respond to that and only stares at you. You didn’t seem to mind as you eventually move on to compare your hand sizes, and his is significantly larger. When he was still just a human, your hand sizes weren’t all that different. Now, he can hold both of your hands in one of his. He could crush your head if he so wanted to.

You sighed, continuing, “The day they gave you the death penalty, I… I think I gave up. I knew I was going to lose you so maybe in a sense, I died too. There were so many days and nights where I struggled to even get up and struggled to even go back to sleep. Every single morning was just a painful reminder for me that I wouldn’t be seeing you again,”

You gave up. A part of you had already died.

“I guess this “job” was just another way of me not having to wake up anymore. It’s silly, I know… But isn’t it kind of funny? I came here because I thought this could be my chance to see you again in death, and here you are. You’re still alive, and that’s all I cared about,” you smiled, “Maybe a little different, but… Still alive, and still you,”

His eyes widened slightly. That stupid line again. Sebastian looks away with a hiss and you can feel his tail shift beneath you.

“Go back to sleep, [name],” he sighs, “You’re gonna need the rest,”

By the way, I am aware Sebastian isn’t THAT big when you take away the tail part, but look…

Big hand… Also there was this post that I found while making this so

Also not really proud of this one but oh well

[lovebugism]

Hi!!!

Could you write jealous!eddie x reader…🫣

I’m down so bad for this man istg

ty for requesting :D i too am down bad for this man — grump!eddie can't believe other people get to look at you (jealous!eddie, established relationship, 1.7k)

bug's one year celebration ♡

Eddie thought the comic book section of Family Video was the coolest thing in the world until he met you. And it’s weird ‘cause now you’re all he can think about. He’s holding a collector’s item in his hands, but all he can see is you — and how close you’re standing to Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington.

The boy lays two VHS tapes on the counter before you, each packaged in a thick plastic case. My Neighbor Totoro and The Land Before Time. He waits for you to make an impossible choice while you idle just ahead of him, elbows propped on the countertop with your head in your hands. Your wide-eyed gaze darts between the two options.

Your head shakes between your palms. “I can’t decide,” you conclude, rising to full height with a final huff. “It’s like choosing your favorite child.”

“Well, good thing you don’t have to,” Steve quips with a lopsided smirk. His nose scrunches, and it makes his honey eyes sparkle. “‘Cause you’re getting both. On the house.”

“You don’t have to do that,” you tell him, brows pinched in a quiet sort of protest.

He drops the tapes into a plastic bag, then shrugs like his hand slipped. “Too late.”

“Won’t your boss get mad?”

“What Keith doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“I don’t want you getting in trouble because of me,” you agonize, face twisted with every bit of it.

Steve meets your worry with a wider, pink grin. He bounces a shoulder and jostles the nametag pinned haphazardly to his emerald vest. “I’ll be fine, alright? I’m strong— I can take one of Keith’s stupid lectures.”

Your hesitant fingers brush his golden ones when you take the bag from him. “You’re so brave, Steve Harrington,” you lilt with a teasing glint in your eye, tilting your cheek to your shoulder to feign sincerity.

“The bravest, actually,” the boy jokes in return.

Eddie watches all this play out from where he lingers at the comic book stand. A whole rack of his favorite superheroes, and he isn’t paying an ounce of attention to a single one. 

He was only halfway listening at first, still mostly focused on the cartoon in his hands — if only to pretend he wasn’t completely eavesdropping on your conversation. But now he’s outright staring the two of you down, with an unabashed glare pointed at the asshole flirting with his girl. 

“God, he’s disgusting,” Eddie grumbles under his breath when Steve says something that makes you laugh.

He’s not talking totally to himself. Not entirely, anyway. Dustin’s crouched just beside him in search of one of the newer comics that he swears Keith is hiding from him. “He’s just being nice,” the curly-haired boy reasons with a shrug, obviously distracted as he flips through a stack of flimsy magazines.

Eddie scoffs and finally turns away from you to look at the boy below him. He blinks for the first time in several minutes as he shoots the kid a deadpan stare. “Oh, so it’s not because he thinks my girlfriend’s hot?”

“He’s definitely doing it because she’s hot,” Dustin answers without thinking twice.

“Watch it, Henderson.”

“You asked!” he argues, tilting his chin to look up at Eddie with a wide, ocean-eyed stare. “I’m just saying. Steve’s a good guy. He wouldn’t do that to you— Now, can you please help me find this stupid comic book before I lose my mind?”

Eddie huffs. He decides it might be healthier to distract himself with this metaphorical treasure hunt than stare daggers at you and Steve from across the room. “Which one are you looking for again?”

“Metamorpho— The original. Not the stupid reprint that just came out.”

The older boy stills. He closes the comic book between his palms with one pale hand until the cover of it flips down. Metamorpho, the vibrant cover reads, The Element Man. He’d been too busy looking at you, he hadn’t realized he’d been hiding the thing from Dustin for five whole minutes.

“Is this it?” Eddie murmurs, shoving the thing in the boy’s face.

Dustin’s head shoots up. He snatches the thing from the boy’s grip and gapes at it, with all his practiced teenage boy dramatics. “You had it the entire time?!” he shouts, but Eddie’s already sauntering to the front counter — where Steve’s still making you laugh. 

As pretty as you are smiling (so much that it makes his chest ache), there’s a simmering anger burning orange in his chest. Making you laugh is his job. Not Harrington’s.

You seem to notice his presence before he’s even wrapped you in his arms. You flash him a beaming grin that makes his stomach whirl. He gets sick with it — with nostalgia or something equally tender. 

The green of his envy starts to fade when he realizes you’re wearing his skull and cross-bones sweater, all bundled up in it like it’s yours. He feels a primal sense of ownership, knowing that you’re swaddled in something that belongs to him, knowing he has you in a way Steve doesn’t. It’s not every day the local freak gets to one-up the king.

“Ready to go?” Eddie grins, rosy and broad, as he wraps his arms around you in a loose, sideways embrace. The warmth of the proximity has your stomach doing backflips. The familiarity of his scent, musky and woody and smoky, makes your heart thud hard against your ribcage.

“Yep,” you nod, still smiling. “Steve’s letting me get the movies for free.”

Eddie’s lips smack against his teeth as his jaw drops in a feigned sense of awe. His wild curls bunch at his shoulder when his head tilts softly sideways, looking at the boy across the counter. “Aw,” he croons, high-pitched and sarcastic. “Isn’t that sweet?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Shut up before I revoke your comic stand privileges.”

Eddie squints. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me, Munson.”

Eddie, deciding to be the bigger person, chooses to abandon the petty argument. He feels like the bigger person, anyway — like he’s ten feet tall, walking out of Family Video with you under his arm. He could lose a thousand arguments and still feel like a winner as long as he gets to crawl home to you.

You can’t help but notice how weird he’s being, though. There was a foreign bite behind his words as he spat his sarcasm at Steve. The tension follows you even now, as he opens the passenger side door of his van for you. 

Eddie holds onto the rusted latch with a pale, tattooed hand. You turn to face him instead of planting yourself onto the chipping pleather seat. “Are you okay?” you ask, a subtle furrow between your brows when you peer at him from beneath your lashes.

The boy scoffs a boyish laugh, obviously overcompensating. “Yeah, I’m fine— what are you talking about?”

Your eyes narrow. “You’re being weird.”

“I think you’re being weird, doll— interrogating me outta nowhere.” 

He expects you to laugh. Then he could tell you how pretty you are, and you’d be so flustered by the compliment that you’d forget this entire conversation ever happened. You don’t laugh, though. You don’t even crack a smile. You just keep staring at him.

“I’m fine,” Eddie groans, wild curls billowing when a breeze rolls by. He still tries to smile, though the bright pink expression doesn’t quite meet his eyes. He shrugs and tries to play it cool because anything less than that is so not metal. “I’m just… I’m just a little annoyed. That’s all.”

Your chest stings and your stomach starts to ache. Your mind reels as you try to understand what you could’ve done because the oh-so-sensitive you feels like it must be your fault.

“Annoyed at me?” you press in a tiny voice.

“No!” Eddie booms instantly, much louder than you. He quietens, but his face still swirls with protest. He could never be annoyed at you. As far as he’s concerned, you’ve never done anything wrong in your life. “No— are you kidding? You’re perfect.”

He takes your face in his ringed hands, cradling your cheeks until they squish softly together. A perfect thing, indeed.

“Then what happened?” you mutter through your gently jutted lips.

The boy drops his chin to his chest and sighs. He hates that you care so much about him that you actually make him talk about his feelings. He’d much rather bottle them up and save ‘em for a rainy day. But no, you love him enough to pry the hidden emotion from his cold, black heart.

“I don’t know,” he answers first in an inaudible murmur, kicking at loose pebbles on the concrete because it’s easier than meeting your eyes. “Sometimes it gets annoying when… Other people look at you, I guess…”

He peeks at you beneath his long lashes, button eyes made of chocolate. They swim with a glittering emotion. Something tender and sheepish. He’s like a puppy when he looks at you this way. You can’t help but find him utterly adorable accordingly.

He’s a little surprised when his words make you laugh. He wasn’t joking, really, but he’s relieved to hear the honeyed sound. It runs over him like drops of summer rain and absolves him of all his envy.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think I can fix that,” you reply, smiling wide between his calloused palms.

“I know,” he whines, pouting softly. “And it sucks. ‘Cause you’re too pretty for your own good.”

You lean further into his warm hand. You blink at him with pretty eyes, and in a pretty voice, you wonder, “Would it make you feel better if I said that I only care when you’re looking at me? And that everyone else is basically invisible when you’re around?”

Eddie’s heart swells so much it starts to ache. You’ve awoken something in him — something that used to be dead before you came around, or something that didn’t exist at all. It’s something golden and made of velvet. Something warm and honeyed. Something that doesn’t have a name because you don’t even know you’ve invented it.

Despite trying not to smile too wide, a beam begins to pull at the corners of his mouth. A second later, and he’s grinning with all his teeth. He gets all shy, ducking his gaze as he nods at you. “Yeah, actually— that does make me feel a little better.”

You beam up at him, all lovesick and stupid. With your cheeks still in his hands, you rise to the tips of your toes and press a smacking kiss to the flushed apple of his cheek.

Eddie figures it doesn’t get more metal than this.

[iamred-iamyellow]

⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚ Gangsters Wife

♥ masterlist | request rules

♥ pairing: mafiaboss!carlos sainz x fem!wife!reader

♥ synopsis: things start to change for you and your marriage-of-convenience husband after you stitch up his wounds

♥ one-shot - as always none of the pictures are mine <3

♥ warnings: swearing and vague descriptions of smut - p in v (wrap it before you tap it) !!!

♥ a/n: i wrote on my vacation lol. i’m a little nervous to post this since it’s uncharted writing territory for me but i hope you enjoy reading it <3

You sat on the black satin sheets of your bed, waiting for your husband to come back from business. You knew you should probably be asleep; that he wouldn’t want you up worrying for him, but here you were wide awake. 

It wasn’t like the two of you married for love, anyway. It was much more out of convenience. His job was… interesting, but you weren’t complaining about the luxury that you now lived in due to the arrangement. 

Your breath hitched as you heard the door unlock, assuming it was Carlos. He made his way towards the bedroom and immediately locked eyes with you. His hair was slicked to the side and he had a couple of cuts on his face. He was wearing a red shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, black dress pants, some black shoes, and an expensive watch. 

“Go to bed,” he demanded, removing the ticking object from his wrist and laying it down in a drawer with the rest of his collection. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” you admitted, rustling in the bed sheets. 

“I’m alright if that’s what you’re wondering,” he swiped his thumb over the blood on his bottom lip. “Get some rest.” 

You slowly stood up and strolled over to him.  Your gaze dropped down to the ripped fabric on his side, presumably from a fight. 

“Were you stabbed?” you asked in a whisper. 

“Lightly.”

“Lightly? What does lightly mean?”

He began unbuttoning his shirt, though it didn’t take long before it was off of him. The moonlight from a small open window illuminated his body, his muscles were strained, covered in sweat, and there was a wound flooded with blood on his abdomen. 

“It’s not that deep,” he murmured.

“Literally or figuratively? Because it looks like the knife went in pretty far.” You softly grazed his skin with the light touch of your fingertips. 

You walked over to your nightstand and pulled out a small stitch kit. 

“Sit down,” you commanded him, nodding towards the edge of the bed. 

“I’m fine. I can do this on my own.” 

“I said sit. down.” 

He took a deep, agitated sigh and did as you told him. You dampened a rag in the bathroom and returned to clean the blood off his wound.

You threaded the needle and pierced it through his skin, beginning the first stitch. 

“Are you sure you’re qualified for this?” he asked. 

You nodded, “I wouldn’t have married you without knowing how to do this.” 

He hummed and your left hand went to his waist to hold him still. He could feel the coldness of the silver wedding ring he gave you only a few months ago. 

You finished pulling the last part of the thread and cut the excess off. 

“There,” you said, pressing your palm gently against his abs.

He pulled you onto his lap and his hands firmly gripped your thighs. You made a soft sound and ground down onto his belt. 

“Tomorrow, amor.” he stopped you and whispered. “Let’s go to bed.” 

-

You woke up first at 7. You had rolled over to find your husband awake, messaging someone on his phone.

“Go back to sleep cariño,” he mumbled, running one of his hands over your hair.

You grabbed his hand and kissed his palm, slowly making your way up his arm.

“Amor,” he warned.

“What? You said tomorrow… it’s tomorrow.”

The next thing you knew he had you pinned down by your neck. His phone rang on the nightstand and he used his free hand to pick it up, still thrusting into you as he did so.

“Leave us alone,” he said and hung up instantly.

Leave. Us. Alone.

You woke up again at 9, this time alone in your bed. You wandered into the kitchen to see your husband making breakfast.

“Carlitos?” you ask, a faint smile teasing your lips. “Where’s the chef?” 

“I sent him home.”

“You’ve never cooked for me before,” you took a seat on the barstool at the counter. 

“I’ve never cooked for anyone before,” he admitted.

He set some pancakes on a plate and handed it to you.

You hummed, “No syrup?”

He shrugged “I don’t think we have any. I usually eat mine just the dough.”

It was odd having a conversation like this with Carlos. The two of you weren’t used to making small talk.

“Uhm, how do you feel? Are any of your cuts infected?” you asked.

“No, I feel fine,” he said putting cooking supplies away as you ate. “The stitching you did is good but i’ll probably still get my doctor to look at it.”

“Yeah that’s a good idea,” you replied, picking at your food as his phone rang.

He flipped it open to answer a call from an unknown number. From the muffled spanish voice on the other end you assumed it was from Fernando. 

“Sí, I’ll be there soon.” Carlos said and hung up the phone. 

“I’ll be back,” he told you, walking out the front door without a goodbye.

Your eyes caught the abundance of bodyguards that entered the room to block the exits and entrances. You sighed and slouched, tapping your nails on the marble counter. Great. Just when things were starting to get good.