#anyways i was planning a reread of it soon and had this idea

[dilly-dahlia]

okay guys, hear me out

if any of y’all have read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, imagine basically that but with Aphmau

like a similar concept. how do we feel about that

[artytaeh]

honeymoon!Mattheo? Also I'm so obsessed with your pages aesthetic, especially since I've been on this app for like 3 years and just changed my profile picture... anyways adore you and your writing <3

this is so sweet! i melt everytime i reread this rq, i swear. tysm for reading my posts and accompanying my writing, also for requesting 🌷 honeymoon!theo was a silly shower thought— i didn't plan to do a version of it. however, since you're asking, i just can't say no; so i hope that you like it, love! ♡

warnings: includes smut, so obviously it's advised for +18 readers; read at your own risk. brief mentions of trauma from being the son of bellatrix lestrange + the dark lord.

honeymoon!mattheo who felt like these next two weeks outside england, just the two of you, were like a blessing after your wedding day— don't get me wrong, mattheo riddle feels like the luckiest motherfucker to have been the one to marry you, the man who put that ring on your finger and to see you walking down the aisle to him. even so, fucking hell, how can a celebration for your marriage be so, so exhausting for the two of you? mattheo himself begged you to take off those heels; it was paining him to see you in them after so many hours, really!

honeymoon!mattheo who was ecstatic at the idea of going out of the country with you, of all people. sure, he's been out of england: he studied at hogwarts, which is in scotland; italy too, courtesy of theodore's invitations to spend a few weeks or most of the summer break at his family's estate; that one time that draco bragged about his wealth and took all of his friends to spend weekends or some days somewhere through europe. but travelling with you? that's different. this isn't a vacation with the boys; he's on his way to enjoy two paradisical weeks with the love of his life— just. the. two. of you.

honeymoon!mattheo who planned these vacations with you — where do you wanna go? how long would you like to stay? would you rather somewhere to rest and do nothing, or travelling around? truthfully, mattheo had his own preferences; as fun as it is to explore new places and unraveling different cultures, mattheo was a bit (a lot more) into seeing you in bikini most of the day. visiting a city or some nearby mexican tourist attraction is totally fine by him; a few were chosen by the two of you during a rainy day, cuddling on the sofa as you and him daydream about the sound of waves, sunny days and heat tanning your skins. with a laptop in front of you, mattheo checklists and makes notes of whatever was decided that day.

honeymoon!mattheo who jumps straight to the bed as soon as you arrive to the hotel's bedroom. soon, strong arms pull you close to him; mattheo spends some minutes like this with you, cuddling and feeling you close, nevermind how warm it is in mexico during this time of the year, not giving a flying fuck if you two are sweaty. mattheo riddle needs to rest after so many bloody hours inside a plane, and dealing with the airport's burocracy. fuck, there's a fucking spell for everything in the wizarding world, how come no one found a better way to travel between two continents already?!

honeymoon!mattheo who has his arm around your waist at all times. walking together? mattheo is there, hugging your waist, matching his usual long strides to your calmer pace, making sure that you're the one leading the speed of your walk. taking a stroll on a nearby city or exploring the streets? mattheo riddle won't unwrap his arm from your waist, fingers gently tracing the curve of your side, as you two comment about the beautiful streets you walk by and how good all of these restaurants smell. and, well, if his arm becomes bothersome because of the heat, mattheo is happy to hold your hand— as soon as it becomes sweaty, mattheo himself moves to your other side, to take your other hand in his, nevermind if he has to repeat this ritual every five minutes.

honeymoon!mattheo who drags you to play on the beach with him! this man will proudly buy a kid's kit for himself: a set with beach toys, including a bucket, shovels and other stuff to build castles on the damp sand. obviously, the set is green, if there's that color option— hey, all of those years as a slytherin, wearing a green tie on a daily basis, got him a little attached to the color, alright?!

honeymoon!mattheo who looks like a man preparing himself to go to war, as you patiently massage the sunscreen on his face, warm shoulders and back, along with the rest of his body; you don't trust your husband to apply the sunscreen correctly, since mattheo is all too impatient to go have fun. he does the same to you, of course; pulling you to his lap, big hands making sure that your smooth thighs are protected by the sunscreen— maybe a little too much, since you grow suspicious that mattheo caresses your thighs for a moment longer than necessary. hey, he's a man in love; can't a husband appreciate his wife's beautiful body?!

honeymoon!mattheo who lowkey tries to learn how to speak spanish, or at least simple phrases; thank you, hello, please, and perhaps being a little more observant to catch a curse word or two. god forbid mattheo catches on how to compliment you— now, each time you show your outfit, smile or do something as simple as existing near mattheo riddle, he grins and dramatically pronounces: 'guapissima! bonita, muy bonita.' — sneaking a squeeze on your bottom, pressing your body closer to his. you'd be at least a little annoyed, if mattheo's bambi eyes weren't so full of love for you. you know he means every single praise that rolls out of his mouth.

honeymoon!mattheo who sleeps a little more peacefully now, in mexico, far away from london and the looming notion of his ancestry. here, a continent away from his lunatic of a mother, oceans away from the knowledge of being the dark lord's son, mattheo riddle relaxes. you're married now; away from the chaos. during your wedding day, mattheo was terrified that something would tarnish this happiness with you. being physically away from all of that, on a country where no one blinks an eye at the surname riddle, mattheo is able to relax and let go of the overthinking habit he created since childhood. mattheo riddle isn't a cursed child anymore— at least not here with you.

honeymoon!mattheo who buys a lot of souvenirs. at least for theodore, he gets something that he knows that his best friend would find funny too; perhaps one or two things for his slytherin friends. then a lot of bracelets, or whatever the fuck you happen to stare for a few seconds. sundresses become part of your wardrobe, too, since mattheo argues that is sinful to not have you wearing such flattering clothes, choosing colors that you like the most, and compliment you the best.

🗯️ : matt, this is the third dress you're about to buy for me. i already have enough!

m : nonsense. you don't have any on this color, do you? besides, it's fancy to say 'hey, see this dress? my husband got it for me from mexico'; i'm helping you to brag, woman!

honeymoon!mattheo who hugs you from behind in the pool, trailing kisses from your left shoulder, cheek, neck, shoulder blades, until he does the same to the other side. he's not even attempting to convince you to lustful things— mattheo is just so in love with you. should an older couple or bitter tourists side-eye any of you, mattheo will kiss your cheek for a moment longer, staring menacingly to whoever is nosy enough to notice him and his wife. mattheo riddle, as always, doesn't even have to open his mouth; his serious expression and dark eyes being enough of a warning. as soon as they avert their gaze, mattheo goes back to the task at hand: kissing every inch of you with that silly little smile of his.

honeymoon!mattheo who takes full advantage of the jacuzzi on your bedroom. you should have expected it, as soon as dark eyes shine with mischief, a wolfish grin on his lips as mattheo riddle inevitably plans ahead— hours later, you'll find out exactly what was going through that devilish mind of his.

honeymoon!mattheo who is safe to say that fully enjoyed the warm water at night— calloused hands placed on your hips, thumbs brushing soothing circles on your hipbones as mattheo takes in the sight of you, naked on top of him, guiding your movements as you bounce on his length. mattheo fights the urge to tilt his head back and close his eyes, wanting to drown himself in the sensation of you so tight, so warm and wet around him— but then, he'd lose the bewitching vision of you, so mattheo bites his lip while his hands move lower and lower, greedily squeezing your bottom, hands full of the smooth, soft skin. mattheo watches you so intensely, that you're almost shy under his gaze; his strong arms embrace you so close to him, lips bruising the skin of your neck, collarbone, chest (and for a moment, you wonder if wearing a bikini would be safe tomorrow, giving each reddening, becoming purple hickey left on you) as he whispers against your wet skin. 'so pretty— such a good girl for me, aren't you? riding your husband so, so well. so wet and tight for me, huh? moan for me, baby. let me hear all of your pretty moans, hm?'

honeymoon!mattheo who is so gentle with you afterwards. without even having to ask, mattheo carried you back to the bedroom, patting your body with gentle movements so that the towel absorbs the water from your body, cooing at you. despite your tired demeanor, sore legs recovering on the comfortable mattress— mattheo riddle is all too energetic and blissfully satisfied, massaging your smooth skin with a body cream of yours; and trust me, it takes everything within him to not tease you, holding back any 'fun' comments about you after three rounds that got you absolutely wrecked.

honeymoon!mattheo who dedicated a part of these few days to read one of your favorite books. you see, mattheo riddle isn't really one to take reading as a hobby; at most, mattheo would have fun spending the afternoon at some bookstores to read bd, mainly about superheroes, or the ones that blaise brought from school breaks to lend to him. apart from that, mattheo's hobbies mostly revolve around drawing or listening to music— but he's making an effort for you, alright?! he is! look, he read five pages today, while you were tanning!

honeymoon!mattheo who brought a camera with him for the sole purpose to have photos with you during these weeks; as much as he adores all of your wedding photos, either with you, his best friends and other guests— this honeymoon with you must have physical evidence, not wanting to depend on his memory alone. mattheo plans to show most of them (*cough* the appropriate ones) to your children, if you ever have kids together, that is. the camera and him are present at the same place, at all times; like symbiosis, mattheo has the camera by his side to never lose the opportunity of a good photo of you.

photos of you while you're sleeping, dressing up or changing clothes, while you're relaxing on a chair near the pool to tan, swimming, at night with a flower tucked on your hair— one that mattheo picked up for you and fixed behind your ear. mattheo riddle will come back home with enough photos to decorate a wall. there's photos of you two together, too; silly selfies with you, some of them while you're sleeping by his side or on his chest, others blissfully taken by other tourists who offered such a favor. mattheo loves every single one of them.

honeymoon!mattheo who discovered that breakfast could be delivered in bedroom, four days after waking up a little earlier to shower, dress up and go downstairs to have the first meal of the day. ever since mattheo discovered such a wonder, never again— fuck that. he's having breakfast on the bed with you, requesting the staff to put an extra portion of your favorite fruits, which he'd then feed to you while the two of you are lazying on the bed after a shower, talking about whatever.

honeymoon!mattheo who suddenly doesn't hate that much anymore. at hogwarts, first years were a headache; little tiny humans that mattheo had to be careful to not bump against, or else they'd fall to the floor and god forbid professor mcgonagall saw it, should anyone accuse him of bullying. first years were also troublesome at the bloody hogwarts' train, running around like hipper active insects— however, this one little boy that came running up to you, giving you a flower? mattheo riddle couldn't help but smile, a smug grin on his lips as he crouches down:

m : hey, little dude— this beautiful woman is taken. hasn't your mother told you that flirting with a married woman is wrong? the husband might get you in trouble, you know.

honeymoon!mattheo who would complain a little less about the kids running around or simply existing around the hotel. there was this one little girl he saw at the pool, while you were getting drinks; curly hair, soft cheeks that remind him of your beautiful face— mattheo riddle is a weak man, and ever since then... baby fever. suddenly, the idea of a tiny human that is the perfect mixture of you and him, doesn't sound so scary anymore. i mean, if you and him ever had a baby, it'd be the most beautiful kid to exist; mattheo reasons that not having such a blessed child would be illegal, a heartbreaking loss to this world! (correction: a small sized demon that inherits mattheo riddle's troublemaker nature, and your charm that'll get them out of trouble ever. single. time.)

honeymoon!mattheo who tries at least once every single drink and cocktail at the bar. and more than that, makes you try them with him, which becomes a game of creating a tier list of the whole menu. mattheo will get you the colorful ones, being aware of your taste— and should you dislike alcoholic drinks, well, mattheo is a man that is unknowingly considerate, making sure to taste the drink first (so that he's sure that it tastes good, according to your preferences, of course), before giving it to you. lowkey, mattheo riddle who becomes a bit obsessed with those drinks straight from the coconuts— he might have like, seven photos of that, some of them being selfies with you.

honeymoon!mattheo who takes you dancing. hands on your hips, feeling as you sway them, gripping at them each time that mattheo riddle has to take a deep breath to not get a hard-on in the middle of the dancefloor. if possible, he'll learn how to dance the bachata with you— be it by a free class at the hotel or some bar, or even just by staring at an experienced couple dancing with ease. mattheo would be so happy to dance with you, twirling you around and pulling you closer to him, your noses brushing as mattheo looks at you with such intensity; the love of his life, this goddess in his arms. physically can't listen to one of those latino songs without immediately pulling you to dance a little with him; fuck the stares that you might receive.

honeymoon!mattheo who wants to live right here, at mexico.

m : fuck england, let's ditch london.

🗯️ : mattheo, darling, we can't do that.

m : why not?! here's the best— no rain, no people bothering us. why can't we just fuck and chill every day like we do here?

⋯ ⋯ ﹒ 🌿 ’

౨ৎ spend the summer of a lifetime with me ♡ ͡

let me take you to the place of my dreams . . .

🪻 ; . . . fandom : harry potter.

— ever since i posted my masterlist i've been receiving some requests; i didn't expect so many so soon! tysm for reading and requesting to my blog; i'll do my best to write and post each of them asap. ♡

the headers + gifs + icons aren't mine. credits to the respective creators ! 🌷

[gliphyartfan]

Your dear double anon has returned

Anyway, I hope you had a good night's sleep and breakfast, because I'm back with more thoughts on LU I had this at 4am when I couldn't sleep (that's exactly why this sounds so far-fetched and mixed, perhaps a little meaningless(?)

I've been thinking a lot about Villain Chain lately, you know, by cloudninetonine. Also in humans are hylian space orc reader but that comes later and thinking a lot about cloudninetonine basically since I reread his/her mess au.

This is all set in mess au, in fact.

So far I have only found three writings that involve them and I have not found any more, which is a shame, because I'm interested in the concept of when a hero is a villain and a villain is a hero, I've always been a fan of role reversals in any context.

And one of the writings I read was about how they became like this when their guide/Reader/player died and they made a huge statue for them as a tomb and they see the guide/Reader/player from the original chain and kidnap them to maintain it and so on (this no has minimal relevance, I just woke up very talkative, although I'm sure I sent you messages yesterday)

Yeah, wrong, but I've kept them in mind because, remember the yandere version of cloudninetonine's chain? Where they're older and guide/reader/player isn't really their guide/reader/player but they think it is? Well, here I came up with an interesting continuation.

guide/reader/player is not really the guide from the original chain either.

Whether it's Dark Link or Villain Chain, they corner the reader and are like 'aha! You have no escape, little guide' and with a blank expression guide simply (when the adrenaline and fear have passed), grabs the blade of the sword that is pointing at their neck and bends it.

Here is the first clue that something is wrong, if it is Dark Link, whether by this action or not, he realizes that there is something wrong with the guide, it is not as he remembers it. If it is Villain Chain, there is bewilderment because the guide who described that shadow that plans to betray them did not resemble the guide they had before them who was not affected by magic, potions or weapons.

is not the guide that Dark Link remembers or that he described to Villain Chain because it turns out that is not the guide either, Reader is a guide but not of that specific chain.

Either because Hylia was confused or she searched for a stronger guide/Reader to stop Dark Link she simply looked for a Reader/Guide who she felt had even a modicum of power over the Hylians and found Guide/Reader from Human are Hylians Space Orc.

But that's where my train of thought ends.

Looking back after getting a proper night's sleep and reading this out loud, I feel like this was so far-fetched but my tired, sleep-deprived brain couldn't figure it out in time.I'm not particularly satisfied with these ideas, but perhaps I'll salvage something for the future.

Or maybe I'm thinking of ideas for a Villain Guide/Reader/player getting to know everyone, seeing as how no one has really done anything like this and some players can be evil in video games.

—double anon (since you already know my problem with Tumblr and the fact that I have to send at least two messages for one to arrive, I wasn't sure if I should give myself a name because my attention span It's null and void and I bounce from fandom to fandom every week. and I disappear the moment I decide to give myself a anon name, but I've been paying attention to Linked Universe for over a month, and I think that's reason enough to know that I won't disappear anytime soon, although I have your Tumblr profile saved in my Google bookmarks anyway so I'll still come visit even if it disappears)

This is a doozy. (Quite the long one, tad overwhelming. 😅) I’m not that familiar with villain chain? Let’s see what I can do with what I can figure out.

One thing I realized is that When Reader sees how the Villain Chain practically worships them, they’re baffled.

To this Reader, adventure games are meant to be just that, games.

The idea that she’d be revered as an actual deity is unsettling, and she’s torn between keeping up the act to protect herself or leveling with them. If she lets on that she isn’t their Guide, the Chain only becomes more obsessed, deciding she needs saving from whatever memories she’s ‘lost.’

And if she realized the Chain has suffered from the loss of THEIR Guide, Reader tries to gently reason with them, perhaps offering compassion?

Big mistake sadly. The moment they show even a hint of softness, the Chain decides Reader has truly “returned” to them. They double down on their devotion, misinterpreting kindness as affection, and it fuels their possessiveness.

To jog ‘memories,’ the Villain Chain might recreate locations or scenes from the past with the old Guide.

They could go to absurd lengths ya know, clearing whole areas, painting fake backdrops, even dressing up in the same worn, ragged clothes they had when they met the Guide. Reader plays along, but she’s constantly trying to figure out an escape plan, as she now knows nothing she says or does will convince them she’s not their Guide.

The Chain takes turns watching Reader, monitoring her behavior for signs that she’s “returning” to them. This means Reader can hardly go anywhere without someone at her side or in the shadows. Even a sigh or a glance could be analyzed endlessly.

Twilight would try to remind Reader of the old days by isolating her in forests or mountainous regions, telling tales of their past escapades.

He thinks being in these familiar places will awaken her ‘true self.’ But when this doesn’t work, he only becomes more frustrated, insisting that Reader must remember and that her real memories are just buried.

Hyrule would repeatedly try to heal Reader, convinced they’re suffering from some curse.

Every time Reader resists or tells him to stop, he assumes it’s the curse talking and only becomes more insistent, going as far as sneaking healing spells while she’s asleep or distracted.

[asahicore]

we’ll always have this summer - psh (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader synopsis. Your mom ruins your summer plans by sending you to the equestrian center your grandmother owns in the south of France, wanting you to spend some time away from the city and take a break from your med studies. Although you’d been determined to spend the worst time ever there, you soon find out that maybe the cold but cute horse nerd next door who doesn’t want to talk to you might actually turn this summer into the best one of your life. genre. summer au, strangers to mutual dislike to friends to lovers ig, city girl x country boy type beat, mainly fluff and smut but also angst cause i love pain word count. 25.9k a/n. hi sisters i'm super excited to repost this, it was really fun rereading and editing it, and i hope that all of you who had enjoyed reading it last summer will still like it this time around and that those of you who hadn't read it will enjoy it now <3 i had also posted an sfw version, so if anyone would like that too, pls lmk! ok thats it let me know what u think love you bye

Sunghoon was going to have a very normal, uneventful summer. He would take a very much needed break from his studies and take care of the equestrian center he lives in, letting his parents take a breather and enjoy their summer. He’d wake up early and do everything he needed to, then spend the afternoon on horseback or sleeping in a random field. It’d be a routine his body is used to and likes, and he’d be able to let his worries go for a while. But then, you came along.

You, who’d had big plans for the summer. You, who should’ve been going on a two-week vacation with your friends to Mallorca as a treat for having aced your second-year medical school final exams and as a celebration for getting an internship in the hospital of your choice. You, who would’ve done nothing for those two weeks but sunbathe, read trashy romance novels, and get margarita-drunk at 2pm, and would’ve spent the rest of the summer hanging out with your friends in Paris, your home, and taking day trips to random French cities. This summer would be your last fun, carefree summer before you were thrown into real semi-adult life, and you were going to make the best of it. That’s what you had planned; to your utmost despair, your mom seemed to have other ideas in mind.

“We’ve gone over this a thousand times now, sweetie. You’re going. It’ll be good for you.”

“You know what will be good for me?” you say, close on her tail as you descend the stairs. “Relaxing and having fun with my friends for two weeks. Not cleaning horse manure and having to walk ten kilometers to get service.”

“It’ll be one or two kilometers at most, dear, not ten.” 

“Ugh!” you groan ostentatiously. Your mother only shoots you a don’t-be-so-dramatic look. You glare back at her.

“It’ll be good for you,” she repeats, turning back to whatever was occupying her in the kitchen before you started arguing with her as you plop down on one of the stools at the center island. “You’ve seen neither your grandmother nor the countryside in ages, so it’ll be a nice change. What’s more, they say the best doctors are the ones who’ve done different jobs, you know.”

“Who’s ever said that…” you mutter under your breath, a clear look of distaste on your face. “But anyway, I see Mamie every Christmas at Auntie’s in Perpignan, and even if I didn’t, whose fault is it I never go to the countryside? You never bring me there.”

Your mother lifts her head and looks at you. “I’m too busy to make the journey all the way there. You’ve seen it, there’s two trains and two buses, I can’t do all that. Which is why we settle for Marseille. Direct train, easy. You, on the other hand,” she says, pointing to you with her wooden spoon, “will have plenty of time this summer.”

“Yeah, time I could’ve spent on a beach in Spain or with my friends here!” You know you’re being annoying, but you can’t help it. You really want to go to Mallorca.

She sighs. “I just need you to trust me on this one, honey. You’ll have tons of other summers to do all that. Your grandmother is getting old, so I want you to have at least some memories with her before… you know. I know it’s our fault you didn’t see her more often, so this is our way of making up for it!”

Your father walks in the kitchen, materializing out of nowhere as he often does. “Your mother’s right, you know.” They both peer down at you, and you know then you really don’t get a say in this. “I had an amazing bond with my grandfather, and I want for you to have something similar with your grandmother. She’s the only grandparent you’ve got left, and I promise you, you don’t want to let that go to waste.” You still don’t look fully convinced, so he adds, “Plus, you already get along well, right? You always talk lots when you see each other at Christmas.”

Your father does have a point. You know the problem isn’t being with your grandmother, anyway. Truth be told, you were quite looking forward to spending more time with her. She had a great sense of fashion, and you were sure she had many stories to tell you. It was the fact that you had to spend your summer in a godforsaken town of Southern France where the nearest town was seven kilometers away and the nearest city almost a forty-minute drive. Where you lived in Paris, you had everything you needed in a five-minute walk radius, and you just needed to hop on the Metro or the train to go anywhere else. And it was an equestrian center, of all places. You didn’t even like horses.

“Also,” your mother starts, dragging out the vowel, “the family that lives in the house next door has a boy your age. I heard he’s cute.” She wiggles her eyebrows and you groan at her, which just makes your parents laugh more. You don’t want to stereotype, but you highly doubt a boy who lives in an equestrian center in the middle of God-knows-where is anywhere as handsome as the boys you see everywhere in the capital city. Hot people live in cities; to you, that’s always been a fact.

And as if a stupid boy could make this any better anyway.

-

Your mother wasn’t lying when she said the journey was long. You took the Metro from your apartment to the train station, then a rapid train to Perpignan, a regional train to Argelès, and a bus to the town of Laroque-des-Albères. And that wasn’t even it - there could’ve been a second bus, but your grandmother had arranged for the neighbors’ son to come and pick you up and drive you to the small commune named La Pierrerie where the equestrian center was. 

To your dismay, there was another thing your mother had been right about; the neighbors’ son being cute. When you get off the bus, you look around the almost empty parking spot with no idea of who you’re supposed to look for. But he must see your lost expression and all your luggage and assume you’re the one he had come to pick up, so he calls out your name. Your head snaps towards the direction of the voice, and the moment your eyes settle on him, you have to hold yourself from gaping at him like a dead fish. For someone who supposedly spends his weekends and vacations outside, taking care of horses, cleaning stalls and doing handiwork, his features are… delicate. The perfect blend of sharp and soft - a round face contrasted by a knifelike jaw, plump lips, his eyebrows forming a straight line over his almond-shaped eyes. But you find roughness on his face is in the crease of his eyebrows as he peers down at you. You haven’t done anything yet, but he already clearly disapproves of you.

There’s a scowl on his face - he may be pretty, but he’s definitely not welcoming. You walk towards him, dragging your luggage behind you, and he doesn’t move to help you until you reach the car, and finally he opens the trunk and hauls one of your suitcase in. 

“Thank you,” you breathe, looking up at him, “um?”

A beat passes as your eyes lock, and he looks so bored you think he might not even bother to give you his name, but thank God he does. “Sunghoon.”

You decide not to let his rudeness get to you and put on a bright smile, but by the time you’re done saying “nice to meet you,” he’s already gotten in the driver’s seat. He starts the car without another word, and your efforts at any sort of conversation are so fruitless that you give up after two minutes of asking questions that are only met with two-word sentences. You can only hope that his family isn’t as unfriendly as he is, otherwise you’d be in for one hell of a summer.

When you arrive in La Pierrerie, it’s almost nine p.m., and you’re exhausted from your long journey and from carrying around such heavy suitcases. Still in complete silence, Sunghoon takes two of your bags and heads towards what you can only assume is your grandmother’s house. You go to follow him, but you soon notice your grandmother and another woman, who you guess is Sunghoon’s mother, sitting at a table, sipping on some lemonade. As soon as they see you arrive, they rush towards you (well, the woman does - your grandmother walks as fast as she can), helping you with the rest of your baggage. They kiss you on both cheeks as a greeting, starting from the right but you’re used to starting from the left, which almost makes your lips bump into each other. Thankfully, they laugh it off, and you make sure to remember the local custom to avoid future potentially awkward encounters.

The woman introduces herself as Mrs Park and tells you she lived next-door to your grandmother, just like you’d guessed. She says that she’s happy to meet you and hopes that you had a nice trip and that you weren’t too tired for the meal she and your grandmother had prepared for tonight. You like her instantly - her kind eyes and warm smile make you feel at home right away. 

Your grandmother hugs you too, and you had to admit it felt nice seeing her after such a long time. Such a sweet welcome revives you a bit, and a nagging voice in your head tells you, see, this isn’t that bad, this summer might be good after all, but you quickly shut it down. Your stubborn nature wants you to hate this for at least a little bit, especially after the excruciating car ride you just had to sit through. You won’t show it to your hosts, obviously, because you want to be respectful, but you can at least scowl and curse your parents when nobody’s looking.

There’s no time for awkward silence and looking back and forth between the two women because as soon as the greetings are over, Mrs Park announces she’ll go heat up the food and get the last things ready while your grandmother shows you around her home, which would be yours for the next two months and a half, and lets you unpack for a bit.

Your grandmother’s house is on two floors. The ground floor is basically one big room, which the front door leads directly into. There’s the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. It’s all very open and bright, and you can tell it must be very warm when the sunlight poured directly through the large windows into the room at the right time of day. It’s simply decorated, with furniture that probably hasn’t been updated in a while but that is well maintained and looks cozy enough. Black-and-whites and photographs of fuzzy quality are hung on the wall of the dining room and you’re eager to take a closer look at them later on.

Upstairs are two bedrooms and the bathroom, as well as a mezzanine that’s a few steps lower than the rest of the floor and that looks over the living room. This is where your grandmother keeps her books and her trophies from her past very successful horse riding career. There are a couple armchairs in the corner and a window to bring more light in, and you’re sure this would make an amazing reading nook for late evenings or stormy afternoons. 

Your room is not much more than a double bed, a chest of drawers, a cupboard to hang your clothes in and a few empty shelves. Your grandmother had told you you were welcome to bring any kind of decoration you wanted to make this room yours for the summer, so you’d taken with you a few posters and framed pictures as well as some babbles you liked looking at. She’d picked out some daisies from her garden and made a bouquet out of them, livening up the vase on your bedside table. 

She sits on your bed as you put your clothes away (which you had brought so many of, you weren’t sure there’d be enough room to put them all in) and tells you how she’d come to live here with the Parks. This is something you like about her - she has many stories to tell, each more fascinating than the other, and she’s always willing to tell them.

Your grandmother had actually grown up not too far from here, on the other side of town. Her parents had signed her up for lessons every Wednesday afternoon for a few years, until her instructor recognised her potential and told her she could ride professionally if she wanted. So, she started having two-hour lessons four times a week. When she started winning local, then regional, then national championships, she moved to Perpignan to be taught by more qualified instructors in a more renowned riding club.

Years forward, she got pregnant and her career as a rider was over. When her kids were old enough, she got a job as an instructor and even managed a few athletes of the club in Perpignan, but she continued to visit her old club in Laroque once in a while, as she always did throughout her career. She’d seen it wear down and lose customers over the years to the point that at the end of the nineties, it was under threat of closing down. Her old teacher had long passed and her son and his wife had taken over. This son, who was a bit older than your grandmother, had worked there his whole life, but it wasn’t what he wanted to do - as the only son, he’d had no choice but to stay and take care of the club. However, he hadn’t wanted it to close that way, and he was still desperate to keep the club alive, especially because his own son truly loved it and wanted to take over and manage it once he was done with high school.

Your grandmother, with more money than she needed from her successful career and the inheritance she got from her husband’s passing, offered to buy the club from the Parks and manage its finances while they took care of the horses and of lessons. Her only condition was that she could move in in the other house on the property that wasn’t inhabited and needed a few renovations. They agreed immediately.

Mr Park graduated from high school in 1998, got married to the now Mrs Park in 2000, and they had their first child, Sunghoon, in 2002 - the same year as you. His parents moved out to the city and got new jobs that they liked a lot more while the club, thanks to your grandmother’s donations and Mr and Mrs Park’s hard work, prospered once again. It did help that an Olympic rider sometimes helped out with lessons and gave out advice for aspiring athletes.

And now, here you are, twenty years later, visiting her for the first time since you were probably six. You don’t have many memories from those few times you’d been here, so it was all new to you. Especially that Sunghoon boy, whom your grandmother was sure you would get along with based on how chummy you were back in 2008. When you were both six. You didn’t have the heart to tell her how he had been with you in the car.

“Sunghoon’s a bit shy, but once you get to know him, he’s a really good kid. Very passionate and hardworking. So is his sister Yeji, but she’s got different ambitions,” your grandmother muses.

“Oh yeah? What does she want to do?” you ask, genuinely interested, as you try to somehow fit another t-shirt into one of the drawers. You’d started out by folding them nicely but you’d soon given up and started stashing them into the corners.

“She wants to become a professional rider. Says she wants to become like me,” she explains with a small chuckle. “Well, she’s definitely got what it takes. I got her a spot in that bigger club in Perpignan I told you about, so she goes there after school twice a week, but she still trains here with me every weekend.”

“You give her lessons?” you ask, some surprise in your voice, which makes your grandmother laugh.

“What, you think I’m too old?” she jokes and you shake your head rapidly, but she doesn’t take any offense to it. “I can’t stand for hours and shout like I used to, but I can sit in the center of the riding hall and watch, then tell her what she needs to work on and what she’s doing well. She says it helps her, so I’m happy to do it,” she adds with a shrug. You nod as you open another drawer and decide this one will be for your underwear.

“What about Sunghoon?” You can’t help but ask, a bit curious about him. You doubted you could really chalk up his impoliteness to shyness, but you could still listen to what your grandmother had to say about him.

“He’s more like his dad, wants to take after the club. But he’s a very decent rider, too. If his sister hadn’t said she wanted to go pro so early on, I’m sure he would’ve. You know one thing that’s great about getting old?” she asks suddenly.

“No?”

“You observe people a lot more, and you understand them a lot more too. Well, now that I think about it, it might be just me,” she says, making you chuckle. “I don’t have a lot going on in my life, so I have more time to be nosy and see what others are up to. He’d never admit it, I don’t think, that he gave up on a potential riding career for his sister. He’s the type to make quiet sacrifices, and he loves his sister to death. He’d rather take over the club and watch her be happy than the opposite.”

You nod, an approving expression on your face. “Sounds like a good guy,” you say honestly, surprised that someone supposedly so kind could also be so rude.

“He is. Handsome, as well, by the way, as I’m sure you’ve noticed,” she adds, a knowing smile playing on her lips, but you just roll your eyes playfully.

“That’s what mom said,” you reply, not wanting to admit that they are both right on the matter of Sunghoon’s handsomeness. 

Sunghoon’s the one who opens the door when you and your grandmother knock. His expression when he sees you is the same as earlier, but you don’t have the time to ponder over his behavior, because quickly enough, two figures appear behind him. He steps to the side, letting enough space for you to come in, his harsh gaze never once leaving your face. You turn your attention to the figures, namely his father and a young girl who you guess is Yeji, and, thank God, they’re looking at you with wide smiles.

“You must be Y/N!” his father beams, and you nod, returning his smile and saying hi. He kisses you on both cheeks, and this time you remember to start from the right. “Welcome. We’re very happy to have you here, aren’t we, Sunghoon?”

He seems oblivious to his son’s clear distaste of you as he loops an arm over his shoulders, happily shaking one of them under his grasp. “Right,” Sunghoon says, voice monotone. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you reply with a slightly confused tone - what the hell was his deal? Usually, whatever energy someone gave you, you’d give it back to them. You’d have no problem being as rude to Sunghoon as he was to you if only his family didn’t seem so nice.

“I’ll go help Mom in the kitchen,” he announces and walks away. His father turns back to you and gives you an apologetic smile.

“Don’t mind him, he’s just shy. He’ll warm up to you eventually.” You nod, saying it’s okay. 

Yeji then takes a step towards you, introducing herself as she goes in for the usual two kisses on the cheeks. “Hi, I’m Yeji!”

“Hi, so nice to meet you!”

“Me too, I’m really happy you’re here! It’ll be nice being with another girl,” she says, gesturing towards her oblivious brother with a tilt of her head. It takes a lot more effort to be nice than to be rude, you think, side-eyeing Sunghoon in your head.

“Are there not a lot of girls that come here for lessons?” you ask as she leads you inside the house, showing you where to take off your shoes and jumper.

“There are, but they only come here once a week and stay for a few hours, so it’s not the same. I’m stuck with my anthropoid of a brother most of the time,” she says, lowering her voice to make sure only you can hear what she says. You both laugh at her diss; nothing like bonding over hating boys with another girl. You can already tell you’re going to like her.

You ask if there’s anything you can do to help, but the Parks tell you to not worry about anything and sit down. You and Yeji join your grandmother who’s already sitting at the dinner table, and the three of you chat, or rather, you and Yeji chat while your grandmother listens. Or maybe she isn’t listening, you’re not sure. 

Yeji is in her first year of high school. The prestigious riding club she is being taught at doubles as a school, so that’s where she’s been studying for the past few years, and she boards there as well, coming home every weekend unless she’s got important competitions coming up, in which case she stays there for a few weeks. Competition season is about to start, so she’ll be spending most of her time there this summer.

“And do you like it there?”

She looks slightly taken aback by your question, as if she’s not quite used to being asked about that. “I mean, yeah, yeah, I do. It’s nice being able to ride so often, and not having the stress of needing to figure out what I want to do next. But it is… you know,” her voice gets quieter, “a lot of pressure sometimes.”

Sunghoon walks in then, plates and cutlery in hand, and starts setting the table. Yeji’s face lights up at her brother’s arrival, using it to change the topic. “Sunghoon is studying to become a vet. He’s finished his two years of preparatory classes, so now he’s going to a vet school in Toulouse.”

He glares at his sister, but she doesn’t pay him any mind. “He graduated top of his class, you know.”

“Why are you telling her about me?” he interrupts.

Yeji just shrugs. “I’m telling her about us.”

“Well,” he says, putting down a plate in front of you and a fork and knife on each side of the plate, “she doesn’t need to know about me.” You can’t see his face but the cold tone of his voice and his presence right behind you are enough to send shivers down your spine. What the hell is his deal?, you wonder.

You look at Yeji, a confused look on your face, and she rolls her eyes as a dismissal of her older brother’s behavior. “Don’t ask me, cause I don’t know what his problem is, either,” she says, and you can’t help but chuckle.

Mrs and Mr Park walk in then, bringing in the main dish of duck confit as well as roast potatoes, vegetables and some bread. Mrs Park gives you the biggest chunk of meat and a load of sides, saying you must be famished after such a long trip even though you tell her you’d brought things to snack on. She says she’d hesitated between cooking Korean food or a typical French Southwestern dish but had opted for the latter, wanting to welcome you properly in the region. You thanked her and told her it looked amazing.

When everyone is served, you wish each other ‘bon appétit’ and start eating. You’re chewing on your first mouthful of duck and potatoes when Mrs Park asks you what you study. “Your grandmother said you were a med student?” she asks with a smile. Everyone looks at you except for Sunghoon, who only has eyes for his food.

You nod, waiting to swallow before answering, and Mr Park tuts his wife for not letting you eat. “I am. I passed my second year,” you say, earning yourself some congratulations, “and I’m starting my residency in a hospital in Paris next semester.”

“Do you know what part of the hospital you’ll be in?” Mr Park asks.

“We get to do turns, so we can see what we like. We give our school our top five choices, and then they put us in three departments for three months each, and then choose our favorite one based on the offers we get for the summer. I’m in the children’s ward first, then cardiology, then reeducation. We’ll also get to watch over surgeries.”

He nods, humming at your words. “And is that what you want to do later? I mean, work in one of those departments?”

“I’ve got time to change my mind, so I guess it depends how much I like being at the hospital, but I think I’d rather have my own cabinet after some time. I feel like overtime, you build more of a relationship with people, and it’s a lot less stressful, too,” you add with a chuckle.

Mr Park smiles and nods again. “Ah, I see. That’s nice. And would that be in Paris?,” he asks, and this time, it’s his wife that tells him to leave you alone, but you say it’s okay.

“Probably. It’s the city I know best, but nothing is set in stone.”

“You should come here!” Mrs Park perks. “Most people who live here are quite old - no offense, Nadine - ” (“None taken,” your grandmother says with a smile), but we’ve only got two doctors, and one is probably retiring in the next six to ten years.”

“You tell me to leave her alone, and then you tell her to move here,” Mr Park mutters, earning himself a small slap on the arm. They start bickering, and your grandmother just sighs and shakes her head.

“Young love,” she says, making everyone laugh. Even Sunghoon cracks a smile, and you get a glimpse of his dimples. As soon as he catches your gaze, his smile drops, and you turn your eyes away, your cheeks heating up. Yeji starts a new topic and soon enough you’re all chatting again. If it wasn’t for Sunghoon making it very clear he didn’t want you here, you’d already feel at home, just sitting at this dinner table.

When dinner is over, you insist on clearing the table and doing the dishes, saying you felt bad not doing anything. “I need to earn my keep,” you tell Mrs Park with a smile.

She laughs and says, “Oh, no need to worry about that, with Sunghoon showing you the ropes the next few days, you definitely will.”

Sunghoon perks up at the mention of his name. “What’s this about?” he asks, that crease still in his eyebrows. You find yourself wanting to stroke them with your thumbs and brush that frown away, but you quickly snap out of it. He may have a pretty face, but from what you’ve seen, that’s about all there is.

Mrs Park lets out a small puff of air through her nose. “We’ve talked about this, dear. You’re showing Y/N around the club tomorrow and Monday. It’s so you know how everything works before summer lessons start,” she explains, turning towards you.

“Why does it have to be me, though?” Sunghoon almost whines, and you want to scoff at him.

“Because your father and I said so,” his mother says, ending the conversation there, and you’re reminded of your own parents.

Sunghoon looks at you and frowns, so you raise your eyebrows back at him. It wasn’t your fault you were here or that his parents had designated him to show you around, so there was no reason you should make yourself small or apologetic for him. He scoffs and looks away. “Just be outside by eight a.m. tomorrow morning, okay?”

He doesn’t let you answer, just gives you one last hard look and walks away.

-

“Why are you wearing a dress?” Sunghoon asks as soon as you step outside the next morning.

“Good morning to you too, Sunghoon,” you reply sarcastically. You roll your eyes when he doesn’t say anything, just stands there, arms crossed over his chest, so you add, “Because it’s going to be hot today. And because it’s pretty.”

“This is an equestrian center, not a fashion show. You won’t be comfortable. Go put on a t-shirt and some shorts or some leggings. And wear sneakers, not sandals, Christ.”

You scoff and mirror his posture. “You don’t get to tell me what to wear, you know.”

He lets out a dry chuckle and rolls his eyes, a disbelieving smile on his face. “This might be a holiday for you, because it’s sunny and there’s nature everywhere, but this is work we’re gonna be doing. So, for your own sake, wear the right kind of clothes. But if you want to get horse saliva on your dress or step in horse shit wearing those shoes, be my guest.”

You glare at him for a few seconds, realizing that he’s right, and huff out an annoyed “fine,” stomping back into your grandmother’s house. “Be quick!” he calls after you.

You come back out five minutes later, wearing a tank top you usually use for sleeping, a pair of denim shorts and old sneakers your mother had told you to pack. “Took you long enough,” Sunghoon says, a true ray of sunshine, but you decide it’s better to ignore him. He barely talked to you yesterday, but now that it’s just the two of you and he has to, his words are somehow more annoying than his silence.

You stare at him unfazed and ask, “So, what’s first?”

He raises his eyebrows, seemingly surprised, but answers anyway. “Right. Follow me.” He heads towards a part of the farm that is attached to the riding hall and that your grandmother had pointed out yesterday evening as the reception and office area. 

Sunghoon fishes a keyholder out of his jean pocket and slides open the door using one of the many keys he has. He goes to stand in front of a postboard and points to it. “This has the daily and weekly schedule on it. It’s a routine, so things don’t change much, but when they do, we add a post-it to the board. For example, the blacksmith is coming next Thursday to check horseshoes. That’s a post-it. Today, we’re cleaning out all the stalls and adding fresh straw. We do that every Monday, so it’s on the schedule. No post-it.”

“Right. That makes sense,” you nod. “Is that all we do today?”

“We do rounds first, but basically, yeah, because cleaning takes a long time. And Monday is technically our day off. No one comes in for lessons so we use that free time to clean out the stalls.”

You nod and Sunghoon chuckles at you, but you don’t have time to question him about it because he’s already off and you have no choice but to follow him. He leads you to a part of the farm on the other side of the courtyard and pulls out another key, pushing the door open to a wide three-and-a-half-wall room with rings attached to the walls every few meters. Three and a half because behind that space on each side are stalls, as Sunghoon points out.

“This is the prep room, where we get the horses ready before a lesson.”

“What do you do to get them ready?” you ask, looking around the room.

“You clean their coat and their hooves, brush out any tangles in their manes and tails, then saddle and bridle them. The club saddlery is over there,” he says, pointing to a door on your right. “Horse owners have their own stuff in lockers in another room.”

Apparently, you’re not checking out the saddlery today, because Sunghoon is already walking over to the stalls. 

“Hi everyone,” he greets softly. You follow him closely as he walks on one side of the stables, petting each horse as he walks past them or peering over the door to see how the sleeping ones are doing, and then does the same thing on the other side. He greets each horse by name, and even though it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he remembers each and every one of them, it still does. You tell him exactly that, and he chuckles.

“What would you think of a teacher that doesn’t know their students’ names? This is kind of the same,” he explains. He shows you the stacks of hay and straw at the end of the stables, and explains that they bring it here from the fields every once in a while because it’s more convenient, and that this is what you’ll be using later.

When he’s checked that everything is okay, he opens the door on the other side of the room leading outside. On your right stands a huge pile of manure, and you can’t help but make a stank face at the odor hitting you right in the nostrils. Sunghoon chuckles again (can he please stop chuckling at you for no reason?) and reassures you by saying they’re emptying it soon. “The farmers use it for their crops,” he explains.

On your left, there’s another barn that you guess hosts more horses. He gets out yet another key and pushes the door wide open. Light fills the barn instantly, making the dust particles in the air visible, and you hear a few grunts and huffs from the horses - of annoyance at Sunghoon waking them up or of happiness at seeing him, you’re not yet qualified enough to say.

There are two other smaller, one-sided stables next to the riding hall where he takes you and does his rounds again. When he’s all done, you follow him to the riding hall where he opens two doors on each side, that way you can walk through it to get to the pastures in the back rather than walk around the whole center, and takes down the electric cables that serve as an entrance to the pastures. He doesn’t explain any of this, however, so you sort of have to guess. Wordlessly, you head back to the last stables you were in and there, he throws a bunch of what you think are harnesses at you.

“What are these?” you ask dumbly, looking at the thing in your hand.

“They’re halters,” he says, and when you just stare wordlessly, he adds, talking as if it were obvious, “you put them around the horse’s head so you can take them places?”

“Right. Can you show me how to put one on?”

He sighs but obliges; he doesn’t have much of a choice anyway. Not your fault that he’s lived here all his life whereas you’ve encountered a horse maybe three times in your twenty years of life. 

He demonstrates how to put a halter on and watches over you as you practice it on an old and tired-looking white horse. When you manage to do it somehow quickly, he says, “there you go,” and you’re surprised to not hear any sarcasm in his voice. However, when he pats the horse’s forehead, you have a feeling the praise was more directed towards her than you.

You walk side-by-side to the pastures, you with the white horse, whose garrot reaches your shoulder, and Sunghoon leading a small pony in each hand. They have to walk quickly to keep up with his strides and you can’t help but laugh at their cute swaying hips.

“How old is she?” you ask Sunghoon, head tilting towards the horse you’re walking with.

A soft smile cracks on Sunghoon’s lips, perhaps the first smile you’ve seen on him today. “That’s Nellie,” he answers quietly, looking at the horse in question. “She’s turning 20 this December. We were only born a few days apart.”

“Wow, so you grew up together, that’s pretty cool,” you say honestly, and Sunghoon’s eyes settle on you for a few seconds, eyebrows raising a bit as if surprised by your words. 

“Yeah, it is,” he says, looking back in front of him. “My parents taught me how to horse ride with her. And she’s the only horse that belongs to the club whose papers actually state that I’m her owner. All the others have my parents’ name or the club’s on theirs.”

“Ah, so she’s your horse,” you say, looking at Nellie and smiling. You’d have imagined a much taller, handsome and dark-haired horse for him, but this somehow matches as well. It makes Sunghoon appear sweeter, for some reason.

“Yeah,” he says simply, but you don’t miss the small smile on his lips. So maybe there is a way to get to know Park Sunghoon, you think.

Once in the pastures, he shows you how to release a horse safely in case they get excited about being outside and hurt you accidentally or run away. Thankfully, these horses know better than to do that sort of stuff, so it’s very unlikely that anything will happen, he explains, but you’re always better safe than sorry. You head back to the stables in a silence a bit less awkward than before and do the same things with the three other horses in those stables. Not much is said, but you don’t want to force the conversation. He just explains to you that these few horses work well together in the pastures, but that it’s not always this easy.

“Horses have a herd instinct, so they need to be with each other, but also not with anyone. You know how wolf packs have alphas and betas and stuff?” he asks, and you nod. Your friends and you had an obsessive Teen Wolf phase when you were in middle school. “Well, horses kind of have that too, because there’s a hierarchy in their herds. So there’s usually one leader, a mare, and some others that just get along.”

“How do you know which horses get along, though?”

“You just have to observe. You can tell pretty quickly which horses are going to have a leader or a follower type personality. Just put two leaders together, and they’ll clash instantly. It can get pretty bad pretty quick, so the first few times you put certain horses together outside, you really have to watch over them and be careful.”

“That’s so interesting,” you say after a few moments. “I never knew horses to have such complex relationships,” you say, and he smiles.

“Horses are really cool,” he says, and immediately grunts. “That was such a loser thing to say.”

You can’t help but laugh at his self-realization, but quickly reassure him. “No, it’s not. It’s something you’re passionate about, of course you’re gonna find them cool,” you say, and the smile he gives you as an answer shouldn’t make your heart beat that much faster, but it does, and you don’t know how to feel about that. You’re just glad he’s being nice to you - bare minimum, but still, a small victory.

“Time for the hard part, now,” he says when all five horses are happy in the pasture. You follow him to a toolshed where they keep tools, of course, but also two empty wheelbarrows and snacks for the horses like grains, carrots and salt blocks. He tells you to grab a shovel as he rolls out a wheelbarrow and you head back to the stalls together.

There’s nothing complex about shoveling dirty hay and horse shit into a wheelbarrow, but by God is it a draining task. The shovel itself is heavy, so having to pick all that stuff up, heave it back into the cart, and then repeat for who knows how many times is a real burden on your poor back and arms. You definitely let Sunghoon know how hard this is for you, what with all the sighs and loud breaths and grunts you’re letting out. You’ve barely finished cleaning one stall out when Sunghoon is starting his third, and you can tell he’s not happy about it.

“If you complained less, you’d work faster, you know,” he says, that scowl back on his face.

“I can’t help that I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” you chide back, out-of-breath and wiping some sweat from your forehead.

“Yeah? All the hard tasks usually done for you, princess?”

His scowl turns into a small smirk as he looks at you, and you curse your heart for doing a flip when he chuckles at your dumbfoundedness. It’s just a stupid nickname, you tell yourself, no need to get so worked up over it.

“I’ve never had any hard tasks like this in the first place,” you say, moving on to the second stall. “My body isn’t made for it.”

“Well, it’ll have to get used to it.” Yesterday, his mother had also told you you’d get used to it, as a way of reassuring you; but Sunghoon’s words are a far cry from his mother’s, and are more of a threat than anything.

Another few minutes and you’re done, Sunghoon watching you as you finish cleaning your designated stall. You dump everything at the manure pile, then head to the straw pile and fill the wheelbarrow to replace the dirty straw with fresh one in the stalls. And then, you only have to do that four more times. Easy enough, right?

No. Not easy.

The only semi-easy part is taking the horses out of their stalls and tying the rope that are attached to their halter to a ring in the prep room, except some horses are less compliant than others and you end up having to call Sunghoon a couple times so he can take care of them for you.

The whole time you’re heaving manure into the wheelbarrow, you’re complaining. At first, it was the stank that had really gotten to you - as one can imagine, hay infused with horse piss and shit doesn’t smell like fresh linen. But somehow, you got used to it - maybe the physical exertion forced you to forget about the smell and focus on the pain taking over your whole body. 

You huff and puff as you feel the heavy weight of the shovel in your arms and shoulders every time you need to lift it up and bring it back down. The pain in your upper back from years of carrying your backpack on one shoulder makes itself known, and after half an hour you’re whining that you can feel muscle scores coming in your whole body.

“They’ll probably stay for a whole week too,” you mumble to yourself, but still loud enough for Sunghoon to hear.

“You’ll get used to it, I told you. In a few weeks this will feel like nothing.” When you only grunt in response, he adds: “I usually do this on my own, you know. You’re lucky you’re only doing half of the work. Or more like one fourth, with the speed you’re going at.”

“Why don’t your parents or sister help you out?” you ask as you lean against the stall wall, using the distraction of a conversation to take a break.

“My parents already work all week when I’m not there, giving lessons and taking care of the club, so it’s the least I can do to help out on weekends and during my breaks. And my sister already works hard enough at her school so I want her to relax when she’s here,” he replies, never stopping his shoveling.

“But you work hard too, don’t you? I mean, your sister said you were top of your class. You should get a break too.”

His movements halt for a split second only. If your words have any sort of impact on Sunghoon, he doesn’t want to let you know.

“I just study hunched over my desk all week. It’s nice to do something physical, and I don’t mind the time alone.” You’re not sure whether this is an excuse he’s come up with for himself or if he’s telling the truth, but his tone is so final and you understand that he’s done with the conversation, so you pick up your shovel and get back to work. You don’t complain for the rest of the morning.

When you’re finally done with the stalls, you bring back the horses you had walked to the pastures so that others can enjoy the free space and green grass. That’s when you run into an obstacle.

No matter how much you pull, coax, or stare impatiently, this horse won’t budge. Sunghoon rests his back and one foot against the plastic half-wall of the riding hall, chuckling at how awfully you and Dona are getting on. He’s already brought back the other five horses to their stalls and has nothing better to do than be useless, apparently. 

After a few minutes of you trying to negotiate with Dona, to no avail, Sunghoon finally speaks up, just loud enough for you to hear. “Stop staring at her. Horses get nervous when you stare too much.”

You scoff. “But she won’t move! I’m trying to show her the desperation in my eyes!” you shout back, and turn to the horse who only peers at you with empty black eyes.

“Don’t shout. Horses don’t like it when you shout,” Sunghoon simply answers, propping himself off of the wall and taking his sweet time walking towards you. When he reaches you and Dona, he takes the tether from your hands and says, “C’mon, Dona,” without even looking at the horse, who immediately follows, no questions asked.

You stand there dumbfounded and mouth O-shaped as you watch the two of them stride away calmly, running after Sunghoon when your shock dissipates. “Don’t run,” he says when he hears your quickly approaching footsteps, “horses don’t like it when you run.”

“My God,” you say, already out of breath, “how many things do horses not like?”

“Quite a few,” he answers matter-of-factly, although you meant your question more rhetorically than anything.

“How did you do that, anyways?” you ask when your breathing returns to normal.

“Well, mainly, it’s just because she knows me and knows to listen to me,” he explains, turning his head just a bit to look at you as you walk back to the main stables, the sun making itself shy behind the tall trees even though it’s nearing midday. A warm breeze blows, sweeping your ponytail to the side and rustling the leaves on the trees. “But also, horses need to be told what to do, not asked. Your attitude needs to be, ‘we’re going back now,’ not, ‘hey, wanna go back?’” You nod slowly at first, then faster when the words start making sense in your head. Sunghoon wants to make fun of you but finds it sweet that you’re at least trying to understand.

“Right,” you say after a few moments. “It’s not very nice, though,” you add, causing Sunghoon to tilt his head and frown his brows, silently asking you to go on. “Well, I’m sure Dona would like a say in the matter.”

He once again contains his laughter because you look so serious and he doesn’t want to make you feel bad, but ultimately fails and snorts at your comment, making you look up at him, bewilderment written all over your face. “What? I’m being serious!”

“I know you are,” he chuckles, “but don’t worry, Dona doesn’t mind having to go home. And if it was up to her, she’d stay out all night.” 

Sunghoon tells you some anecdotes about the club and its occupiers on your way back, making you giggle at some of the mischievous things the horses have gotten up to. He’s more talkative than this morning which takes you slightly aback, but you’re not going to complain about the change. You were dreading having to spend your summer annoyed at a cute boy you’d have to see every day, so you’re glad his first impression is drastically different from what he’s actually like.

You and Sunghoon part ways a bit before noon, and you plop down on the couch as soon as you get to your grandmother’s house. “Tough morning, huh?,” she calls from the kitchen. You only have enough energy left to hum a small “yes” back. She chuckles at you, then tells you to take a shower before having lunch. You spend the rest of your day sunbathing on a deckchair in the backyard, taking some time to relax before what you’re sure will be a tiring week.

-

One thing you learn during that week and the weeks after that is that Sunghoon has his fair share of fangirls. As a female-dominated hobby, most of the club members are teenage girls who love horses and cute boys.

Tuesday morning before lessons start, he shows you basic things like how to properly groom a horse and how to put their saddles and bridles (which is actually a lot harder than it looks - putting your thumb in a horse’s mouth seems a bit counterintuitive), just in case you ever need to get a horse ready for whatever reason. You’re going to be here for two months, so might as well learn things like these. 

While you help him walk some horses to the pastures, he explains that summer lessons are different in that instead of learners coming once or twice a week, they come all day from Tuesday to Friday and then pass an exam on Saturday morning if they want to. Since both his mother and father teach, they’re able to have two separate groups, one for riders who come for more laidback lessons with games and walks in the fields nearby, and one for those who want to improve their skills in an intense week of both practical and theoretical lessons.

There isn’t much you can do on your own, so after you’ve gone around the stables giving grains to the horses that need them, you join Sunghoon outside in the courtyard as he cleans and greases some saddles and bridles that are starting to wear out. It’s fairly easy to do and he lets you help out, so you sit outside together in silence, enjoying the warmth of the sun on your face. That is, until you start noticing the girls.

You don’t want to pay them any attention, but what with the way they wave shyly at Sunghoon and giggle when he waves back, a smile you can’t describe as anything but dazzling adorning his lips, it’s impossible not to. Some of them even call out his name, saying “hi” in the sweetest way they can. You don’t blame them: had you been fifteen and seen a boy as pretty as Sunghoon, you probably would’ve acted similarly, especially if you got to see him on a regular basis. 

What gets on your nerves, however, is how much Sunghoon enjoys it: you can tell by the smirk that won’t leave his face the whole time or the way he makes them all swoon by remembering their names. Bare minimum, you think to yourself once again, but you don’t say anything. Even if slightly infuriating, it’s also entertaining, seeing Sunghoon enjoy himself this way. You would’ve thought he was the type to want to be by himself at all times, unbothered by anyone, yet here he was, blushing at all the attention he was receiving.

After a girl who had come up to him (sparing you a confused “hi” when she saw your unfamiliar face but quickly turning her attention back to Sunghoon), wanting to know how his year at school had gone, skips giddily away, you can’t help but tease him.

“I can’t believe you’re liking this so much,” you say with a smile, keeping your attention on greasing the leather parts of the bridle.

Sunghoon looks up at you, a semi-offended look on his face. “I’m just being nice.”

“I didn’t know ‘just being nice’ entailed letting yourself be showered in compliments and winking at fifteen year-old girls. Aren’t you turning twenty?” 

“I’m not- I didn’t- Whatever,” he gives up, a pout on his face as he returns to work. You nudge his shoulder, making him crack a smile, and you feel like you won the Grand Prix of something.

Another thing you learn that week is that there’s a lot of going back and forth with Sunghoon. One minute he’s laughing at your jokes and acting like a normal human being, and the other he’s giving you the cold shoulder as if he suddenly doesn’t want you around anymore. Sometimes, these changes in his attitude are so quick, they give you whiplash.

You learn to not pay too much attention to these mood swings, not wanting to create any problems for yourself. He seems to be happy when you ask him about horses, so you often come up with the most random things you can think to ask, and he always patiently answers even the dumbest of questions. However, his patience is much quicker to run out when you complain about any task you’re given, so you settle on glaring at the back of his head.

Thankfully, you’re actually a lot less busy than you thought you would be. Your tasks consist mainly of cleaning the stalls, feeding the horses, and taking care of the ones who are too old or have some kind of illness and can’t be mounted. You bring them to the pastures, where they spend a lot of their time, then brush out the dirt and dust embedded in their fur after rolling around on the ground. These horses are often the most affectionate, gently nuzzling your hands when you try to clean their face and huffing happily when they see you arrive.

You do this a couple times a week and Sunghoon often joins you, bringing Nellie out and attaching the rope of her halter next to the horse you’re taking care of so he can groom her as well. These are the moments when he’s in his best mood and he lets you blabber away, talking about random things and concerns in your life as he listens and nods, sometimes sharing some of his as well, letting you take a peek into his closed-off world. You find that you have actually quite a lot in common, with you being in med school and him in vet school, which are both intense and high-pressure. Yet, there’s always something that’s quite surface-level about these conversations; students will always easily bond about the stress of deadlines and horrible professors. You want to dig deeper, but something tells you that Sunghoon will quickly shut you down, and you’re okay with waiting for a bit. You’re just glad he hasn’t been the way he was with you that first day the whole time and that he’s actually talking to you and even sending a smile your way once every now and then.

You also hang out with Yeji quite a lot. Even though she’s on her summer break, competition season means she spends four days a week at her boarding school to train and the other three days at the club, trying to enjoy her summer like any other normal high schooler as best as she can. She doesn’t say much more on how she feels about training so much, only slightly hinting at her level of stress and fatigue like she had done at the dinner table, and you can tell it’s a touchy subject, so you don’t pry.

It does take your body a few days to get used to being outside in the sun and walking around all day, so your first week at the club, you head home as soon as you’re done with your tasks and take a shower then help your grandmother with dinner, spending your evenings reading or playing Scrabble with her (she’s an impressive player, by the way, and has taught you many words). Every Sunday night, you have dinner with the Parks, although Mrs Park also sometimes urges you into her house at one p.m. with the promise of delicious food.

On your second Wednesday there, however, you feel like going out in the evening. After a really hot week, it had stormed during the night that made Tuesday turn into Wednesday which had made the air feel less heavy and more refreshing, so doing anything was a lot less energy-consuming than it had been before. It’s nine p.m. and the sun is low in the sky when you tell your grandmother you’re going to explore the property some more. You know there’s a path that goes behind the pastures to a forest and that is used for horse rides and walks, so you make your way there and follow it.

The mud is still a bit soft from all the rain of the night and morning and you can tell apart footsteps as well as hoof and dog paw prints. The trees on each side on the path are so full of leaves that they make a sort of arch overhead, barring any of the remaining sunlight from entering and casting a shadow all over, and you wish you’d have brought a thin jumper with you. It feels nice to be outside when the sun isn’t making you feel like your skin will melt right off of your body, though. 

You’ve been walking for about fifteen minutes, stopping here and there to look at a flower or snap a shot of the clouds you can see through the trees when you reach a clearing. It’s completely empty, the trees making way for a vast patch of just grass and small daisies, so of course you see him immediately.

A couple hundred meters away from where you’re standing is Sunghoon on a tall, ginger horse, galloping in circles. You don’t know much about horse riding, but you can tell that he knows what he's doing from the way he holds himself and directs the horse. His back is straight and his legs are pressed against the horse’s flanks, his hips moving in perfect synchronization with the horse’s strides so that he stays seated on its back rather than bounces like you’ve seen many less advanced riders do. The horse’s neck rounds and its head stays down, making its steps light and refined, and Sunghoon holds the reins long and low on each side of the horse’s garrot so he can gallop in a continuous circle.

The sight is breathtaking.

You’d always thought that horses had a certain grace to them, especially such tall and slim horses like the one right in front of you, and Sunghoon, with his perfect stance and control, somehow brought even more of that grace out. It was clear that it took a lot of work and talent to reach such elegance.

Although he seemed highly concentrated on what he was doing, Sunghoon noticed you after a minute of you standing there, all but gawking at him. You see him chuckle as he subtly changes his position on the horse and slows to a trot, heading towards you.

“Hey,” he calls out when you’re within hearing distance of each other. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just… taking a walk,” you say, pointing to the path behind you with your thumb but your gaze not leaving Sunghoon, still wearing an expression of astonishment on your face. “Sunghoon, that was- I mean, just, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You looked amazing,” you say, unable to keep your honesty at bay. If the girls from the club had seen him ride like this, then you were definitely starting to understand why they were so smitten over him - you felt almost starstruck.

He chuckles again and looks down bashfully, hoping the dim light hides his growing blush from you. “Thanks. I wasn’t really doing anything special.”

“Not anything special, are you kidding? I’m serious, that was awesome. It was like- like a figure skater gliding, or like a ballet dancer doing turns or something,” you say, shaking your head in disbelief.

Your grin gets even wider when he lets out a giggle at your words, immediately covering his mouth with his palm when he hears the sound he’s made. He really does have a thing for being paid attention to and praised, you note.

“So you were just on a walk?” he asks awkwardly as a way of changing the subject, scratching the back of his head.

“I needed some fresh air, I guess. Plus, I’ve only been staying in the club, so I thought I’d take a walk around.”

“I can show you around when I’ve got time this week, if you want.” His offer seems to come as a surprise to the both of you, but you nod anyway, grateful for the extended hand.

“That’d be nice,” you say. You’re not sure what’s happening when you two stay there for a few seconds, just smiling shyly at each other, but you don’t hate it. 

“Have you ever been on a horse?” he asks, breaking the silence first.

“Well, just a couple times, but it wasn’t lessons or anything, so I don’t know if it counts- wait, wait, what are you doing?”

A sudden mischievous smile has made its way to Sunghoon’s features as he dismounts, bringing the horse next to you. “Wanna try, then?”

“No,” you say with a pointed look. “No way. That horse is taller than me, Sunghoon, I’m not getting on him.”

“Oh c’mon, I promise you it’s not scary, and I’ll be holding onto the reins the whole time. We can just walk back to the club like this.” His eyes are working hard to convince you, and his small pout makes what little resolve you had crumble.

“Fine. But you better not let go of that horse.”

“I won’t,” he says, and something about his tone makes your qualms dissipate.

You walk over to where he’s standing on the left hand side of the horse and hook your left foot in the stirrup. Sunghoon instructs you to place your hands on each end of the saddle and hoist yourself up. It requires a lot more arm strength than you’d have imagined after seeing so many riders do it effortlessly, but Sunghoon is there to help you up as soon as he sees you struggling, two strong hands coming up to hold you at the waist and lift you onto the horse. You tell yourself it’s the physical exertion and not his touch that renders you breathless.

“Wow,” you say when you look around you, almost two meters above ground.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?”

A small giggle escapes your lips. “Yeah. Pretty cool.”

“How does it feel? Are you sitting okay? Here, I’ll change the stirrup length so they fit you. Or we can just cross them over the saddle, since you won’t really need them, anyway.”

“No, I’d rather wear them, please,” you say, and your slight anxious tone makes Sunghoon chuckle.

When he’s done adjusting the stirrups for you and made sure you’re comfortable, he shows you how to hold the reins properly and tells you how to get the horse to start walking. “We usually teach beginners that you knock your heels against their flanks, but because Flame has only been mounted by more advanced riders, he might not like that. Don’t panic,” he reassures as soon as he sees your eyes go wide, “just press your calves against him instead of using your heels. Here, see? I’m holding him by the front of the reins, so he won’t run off.”

“Right, right,” you breathe out. Sunghoon’s right there, so there’s no reason to stress about this.

“Good. Just a small pressure from your calves, and we’re good to go.”

Flame is very reactive, already started walking when you’ve barely squeezed your legs against him. With Sunghoon practically directing the horse for you, you realize there’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the ride.

“This feels nice,” you say as you try to get used to Flame’s quick but steady rhythm. Sunghoon’s smile is better than any other spoken answer he could’ve given you. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, you decide to speak up.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Sunghoon replies, looking up at you.

“Why were you so mean to me the first night I got here?”

He seems slightly taken aback by your question, but you get a glimpse of a guilty expression before he looks back down. “Right, sorry about that. I’ve kind of been feeling bad about it all week, but I was scared to bring it up.”

“It’s okay, I’m just curious about the sudden change is all,” you say.

“I just-” he starts, but then seems to think for a bit. “I’m not the best with strangers, for one. Plus, you were going to stay for the whole summer. I’ve built a routine for myself every summer here, and I don’t like it when something, or someone, disturbs my peace. Also, no offense, but I’m not a huge fan of you city folk. So many people at school have this weird prejudice against me for being from the middle of nowhere, so I’ve kind of got a low tolerance for them. So before I even met you, I didn’t really like you. Sorry, that’s harsh.”

You tell him not to worry about it. His words make you understand him a bit more, and you’re glad it doesn’t seem to be anything too personal against you. You tell him to go on and he sighs. “And you know, I talked with my parents and they told me it’ll be nice to have someone else around to help, and that your grandmother always talks highly of you, and that it was stupid to have decided in advance I wouldn’t like you, and I sort of agreed, but I couldn’t bring myself to be okay with it all. It’s like, we’ve been fine all this time, so why bring in someone new? My parents told me that technically this whole property belongs to your grandmother, and that she could bring anyone she wanted, and I couldn’t really say anything against that. But anyway, I told myself that if I just was cold and pretended you weren’t here, that it’d be fine. But then I- I saw you, and…” his words trail off here and he looks down as if embarrassed to say what comes next.

“And?” you pry, too curious not to.

You really have to focus to hear his words because of how low he mumbles them. “And you were really pretty…”

This confession that seemingly comes out of the blue makes your heart swell with satisfaction and you can’t help but tease him about it. “What was that? I didn’t hear you clearly.”

“Oh c’mon, you heard me. Don’t make me say it again.”

“I want you to say it again, though.”

He sighs and gives in. “Fine. I said you were pretty.”

You laugh, way happier than you should be at his words, and he whines at you to not make fun of him. “So you were mean to me because I was pretty? Doesn’t make much sense,” you taunt.

He sighs again, shaking his head a bit as if in disbelief he’s actually talking about this. “It’s just that… I wanted to be nice, I promise you I did, but I just… I’m not even sure myself. I think it just pissed me off even more, because it wasn’t like having to ignore some rando, it was having to ignore a really pretty girl, which obviously I don’t really want to do,” he says, and you laugh again. “But then you ended up being really nice as well and even funny, and I felt like an asshole for being mean. Which I should never have been in the first place, I know. I’m just… bad with strangers, like I said. Not used to them. It’s not an excuse for my behavior, though, so I’m sorry.”

You look at him with a smile and thank him for apologizing. Sadly, it’s a lot more than most nineteen-year-old boys would do, so you appreciate it. You spend the rest of the ride teasing him about how he thinks you’re pretty and how he was really acting like a tsundere, earning a few embarrassed chuckles from him. Something about getting him flustered just gets you going: his shy smile that reveals a pair of dimples and another of fangs, the blush creeping on his cheeks as he looks down at his feet. Too adorable.

When you reach the entrance to the club, he helps you get off the horse, holding you when your knees almost buckle at the impact of your feet against the ground. For some reason, you weren’t expecting to be so high up, even though you had been on a nearly two-meter horse for the past fifteen minutes.

“You know, I could teach you how to mount, if you’re interested,” he says as you brush some horse hair from your leggings.

That’s the second offer Sunghoon makes you tonight; he’s really showing you his nice side now, you realize with a flip of your stomach. You could just say yes, that sounds fun, but instead, you decide to annoy him some more. “Didn’t know I was so pretty that the Park Sunghoon would offer to give me lessons!”

He rolls his eyes playfully and starts to walk away with Flame. “Forget it then.”

You giggle as you catch up to him and nudge his shoulder with yours. “I’d love to.” 

-

From that day on, it’s a lot easier to be around Sunghoon. He still doesn’t let you complain, and you can tell the walls he’s built around himself have only shrunk by a few bricks, but at least his attitude doesn’t flip around anymore. He reveals a side of himself that’s goofier than you’d have imagined, cracking random dad jokes and making side comments that never fail to make you laugh. He’s also quite sensitive to your teasing, always looking away with a blush, mumbling a small whatever at your words, but his shy smile lets you know that he doesn’t actually mind it.

The riding lessons usually happen in between work breaks or at the end of the day, and after a few of them, you know how to get a horse to start, turn, and stop, and you don’t like a complete fool when the horse’s pace goes up to a trot, having mastered the art of sitting and standing at the right time. Sunghoon had shown you a few horses you could practice on and you’d gone for a piebald horse named Picasso whose garrot reached your chin, because the agglomeration of white hairs at the top of his otherwise black head formed a small heart.

Although you’d noticed from the get-go that Sunghoon was nothing less than gorgeous, it hadn’t hit you in the face until now that you could call him a friend, and every time he smiled or that the light hit his eyes a certain way, your heart skipped a few beats. At first, you told yourself that that was it - you found him pretty. That didn’t mean much more than you being able to recognise beauty, and it certainly didn’t mean you actually liked him as anything else than a friend.

That was until this one day, when he was giving you a lesson after everyone had left the club. In the south of France where temperatures often rise to the high thirties in the summer, heavy storms are bound to break out. This was one of those days - it had been raining the entire day, but it had calmed out a bit at the end of the afternoon which was why you had gone ahead with the lesson. However, twenty minutes into it, the rain got heavier again and thunder suddenly rang, loud and resonating in the emptiness of the fields. Horses are generally skittish creatures, and Picasso was no exception, the sound frightening him so much that he took off in a rapid gallop. In less than a fortnight of lessons you hadn’t developed the strong legs and quick reflexes of an advanced rider, and you were unable to keep up with him, falling off of him with a yelp, everything happening in the fraction of a second.

You fell right on your butt, the pain shooting off from there and spreading to your whole body and taking away your breath for three long seconds. You had barely the time to register what had happened that Sunghoon was already next to you, frantically asking if you were okay and telling you to stay still. He pulled his phone out and called Yeji, telling her to come to the riding hall quickly. 

From your peripheral vision you could see Picasso pacing back and forth at the other side of the hall, as if to calm himself down. Sunghoon held you up with one firm hand planted on your back, his other hand resting on your arm as his thumb brushed your skin comfortingly. He helped you regain a normal heart rate by making you mirror his long and controlled breaths, worried eyes never once leaving your face. 

Yeji got to the riding hall in no time and immediately spotted you sitting on the floor and Sunghoon crouching over you, but her brother asked her to please take Picasso back to his stall before she could walk over to the two of you. She nevertheless asked if you were okay and you nodded, trying to give her a faint smile that reassured both her and Sunghoon.

“You feeling better?” Sunghoon asked when your tears had finally stopped falling, wiping away the ones that had rained down your cheeks and reached your jawline. 

You nodded, taking a deep breath through your nose that turned out to be useless when you opened your eyes and realized how close Sunghoon was, face merely inches away from yours and arms wrapped around you, taking your breath away more than the pain had. “Y-yeah, I’m fine, more shocked than anything.”

He let out a chuckle of relief and brushed the hair away from your face, fully putting your heart and lungs out of order. “I’m glad. Falls always happen when you first start out riding, but they’re still really scary. I was worried you got badly hurt for a second there,” he says simply, and before you can even process his words, he asks, “Are you feeling ready to get up?”

You can only nod, looking up at Sunghoon like he saved you from a near-death experience as he helps you up. If he notices your gawking, he doesn’t say anything, and you’re thankful for it. In your three weeks of knowing each other, you’ve been the one to tease Sunghoon and make him unable to say anything. Even just in general, you’re used to being the flirt that makes boys blush - very rarely were they able to do the same to you, even though they all tried their hardest. Yet Sunghoon, without even realizing it or doing it on purpose, had just made your heart flutter and your brain draw a blank. You wished you could blame it on the shock you just had and the pain still making your legs weak, but you’re reminded of all the times a simple smile or passing touch had put you in the same state, and you know you’d be a fool to continue on ignoring them.

It takes you literally falling flat on your ass to realize you have feelings for Park Sunghoon.

-

Unsure what to do with this newfound information, you decide to keep things between you and Sunghoon as they were. You’ll be leaving at the end of August anyway, no need to make things awkward for the remainder of your stay. Although some moments make you wonder if he might feel some kind of way for you too, you try not to think too much of them and enjoy your friendship as is. 

When you’ve reached a level where you being on a horse isn’t a danger to yourself or those around you, Sunghoon keeps his promise of showing you more of the premises and you go on horse rides together, allowing you to discover random creeks and benches that were placed in the middle of nowhere. You go on these a few times a week when you’re all done with your tasks of the day and the raging heat of the sun has somewhat calmed, and to your surprise, you actually really enjoy being out in nature, even though bugs are still a very much unwelcome part of it.

One day he mentions vet school and you’re reminded of your grandmother’s words on your first night here about how it wasn’t particularly what he wanted to do, so you ask him about it. He turns to you with a stunned look on his face. “I didn’t know she knew about that.”

“She told me she noticed a lot of things like that.”

He turns his head again and gazes up at the sky. “Well, she’s not wrong. It’s my parents that wanted me to go to vet school. I’d be happy just taking care of the club and making a living that way, but they say they don’t need my help year round and that it’s better for me to take up a better job.”

“For someone who doesn’t want to do it, it’s very impressive that you’re top of your class.”

He chuckles shyly and a blush appears on his cheeks. “Did Yeji say that? I only got the top grade for a couple of subjects, not all of them,” he says, making you scoff as if to say ‘still, very impressive.’ “And you know, I still like it and find it interesting, and if I’m doing it, might as well give it my best and make my parents proud.”

“Yeah, I get that. My parents are both doctors so there was never any doubt in either their or my mind that I’d become one too, until I started my first year and realized that maybe I could’ve done something else.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

You turn your head to look at him and he mirrors you. “Cause if I’m doing it, might as well give it my best and make my parents proud.”

You both look away with a chuckle. “Guess we’re more similar than I thought we were,” he says, taking you aback, but you’re very glad he thinks that way. You turn to your side, leaning against your elbow as you peer down at him.

“What about a riding career? Had you ever thought about that?”

“God, yeah,” he answers without any hesitation. “My parents signed me up for a few competitions when I was younger, and I won a couple. It made them happy, so I was happy, but I also actually really liked it. My parents never really asked how seriously I wanted to take it, though, and I didn’t say anything, so when Yeji started showing a lot of interest in competitions and becoming a professional rider they focused their attention on her and assumed I didn’t really mind, I guess. I never tried to prove them wrong. As I said, I’d be fine just taking care of the club.” He sighs and pauses for a second. “She was really young when she said she wanted to have a horse riding career, and my parents just ran with it. Now that she’s older and it takes up basically ninety percent of her life, I can tell it’s a lot of pressure on her. But it’s too late to switch places and she’s the same as me, doesn’t want to let down our parents. I just hope she won’t push herself too much, you know.”

You nod, listening intently to his words. “I’m sure you’ll be there to watch over her if she ever does. You seem like a good older brother.”

He smiles and looks up at you. “I try to be.” He reaches a hand up to your face and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. The sudden, unfamiliar and intimate gesture takes you by surprise and as soon as he registers your wide eyes and agape lips he retracts his hand, apologizing. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to be weird, I just- I don’t- I’m sorry,” he stammers, looking away with a blush.

You don’t say anything for a few seconds, too stunned by what just happened, and he looks back at you, calling out your name in a small voice. His worried expression immediately crumbles when you start laughing. “It’s fine,” you say between giggles. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

He breathes out a sigh of relief and smiles again. “Sorry, I just did it without thinking. My friends and family are always super touchy so I’m just used to that sort of thing.”

“I’m the opposite,” you say, and Sunghoon raises his eyebrows. “My parents aren’t very affectionate. I mean, they tell me they’re proud of me, and buy me gifts and stuff like that, but we never hug, or say we love each other. You’ve seen my grandma, right? The only time she’s hugged me in the almost three weeks I’ve been here was the very first day, and that’s because we hadn’t seen each other in six months.”

Sunghoon nods and hums at your words. “Yeah, now that you say that, your grandma isn’t the type to hug, or, I don’t know, pet your hair or anything, even though I’ve known her basically my whole life. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he says, and you shake your head.

“No, don’t worry, you didn’t. It was actually… kinda nice,” you admit, looking away from him quickly.

“Really?” he asks with one of the widest grins you’ve ever seen on him, and you can’t believe this is the same boy that glared at you as he opened the door just a few weeks ago. You look at him from the corner of your eyes for a few seconds, trying to hide your smile, but give in and nod.

He opens his arms wide and says, “Come here,” and you look at him in disbelief.

“As in…” you say, pointing with your index finger to his chest, and he nods, blinking slowly. You scoff but do it anyway, resting your head on his chest, and a weird but warm bubble envelops your insides as he circles your waist with an arm and caresses your hair with his other hand.

“Is this okay?” he whispers, sending shivers down your spine.

“Yeah,” you whisper back. “This is okay.”

-

One Friday morning when he’s grooming Nellie and you’re braiding Picasso’s mane, he tells you he’s driving to the city tonight to meet up with his friends. “We’re just going to McDonald’s and then the cinema… and they’re kinda losers, you know, but it’d be fun if you came too. If you want to, I mean,” he offers, his shyness preventing him from looking you in the eyes. When you say you’d love to, his whole face lights up.

The day passes and when the clock strikes six p.m., you walk out of your grandmother’s house and find Sunghoon who’s waiting for you, back resting against his parents’ car. Hands in his pockets and sunglasses on, you can tell he’s trying to look cool and it makes him all that much more endearing to you. He fixes his posture and takes his sunglasses off when he sees you approaching, as if trying to get a better look; he’s seen you wear cuter outfits than tank tops and denim shorts for the dinners with his family but you’ve never worn such a pretty dress, and his heart speeds up at the mere sight of you.

“Like what you see?,” you say when you’re closer to him, twirling around in your dress.

“You look beautiful,” he says, and the look on his face must not be far from the one you wore when you saw him with Flame in that clearing a couple weeks ago.

His honesty makes you a bit shy, and you thank him as you ruffle his hair on your way to the passenger seat of the car. He stands there dumbfounded for a second until you call out his name, getting him back down to reality.

On your way to Perpignan, he tells you about his friends Heeseung, Jay and Jake, and how they all met two years ago. He shared a dorm with Jay and Jake in their first year of preparatory classes, and Heeseung, in the year above, was assigned as his mentor. They all clicked instantly and have been practically inseparable ever since, although they all live quite far away from each other, which is why it’s easiest to meet up in Perpignan when they’re on break from their studies.

“Heeseung’s girlfriend will also be there. Her name is Yunjin, she’s really nice, so if the guys get annoying you two can just talk together.”

“Why, do you guys have a tendency to get annoying when you’re together?,” you ask lightheartedly, making Sunghoon chuckle.

“Not always, but it’s a possibility. They’re nice though, so don’t worry. Jay and Jake especially are outgoing, even though Jay kinda ruins the mood sometimes cause his jokes are just awful. Heeseung is a bit shy though, just don’t take it personal if he like, doesn’t really talk to you or anything.”

“That’s funny, that reminds me of someone,” you say with a smile, unable to stop yourself. Sunghoon just replies with one of his famous whatevers.

It takes you about an hour to get to Perpignan. When you arrive, his friends are waiting outside of the McDonald’s, the boys waving with their whole arms in your direction while Yunjin watches them cross-armed, a smile on her face. “Oh, God,” Sunghoon murmurs, already embarrassed by his friends. “They’re not always like that, I promise,” he says as you walk over to them.

“Really,” you deadpan when they’ve started chanting Sunghoon’s name, watching as his face turns a deeper shade of red.

“Hi guys,” he greets them, bro-hugging Heeseung, Jay and Jake and kissing Yunjin on each cheek. You remind yourself once again to start from the right and not the left, and greet the boys first. They all say “hi, Y/N” and give you their names, and you’re quite flustered that you don’t need to tell them your name.

“Sunghoon’s told us a lot about you,” Jake says with a knowing expression, and you all chuckle when Sunghoon mutters “shut up, Jake.”

You go to greet Yunjin next and you��re surprised when, rather than simply pressing the corner of her lips against your cheek like most people do when they greet someone they’re not particularly close to, she actually kisses your cheek, an extra-friendly gesture. “I was so relieved when Sunghoon said he was bringing a girl,” she confesses, reminding you of Yeji, “I can’t deal with having to babysit these four all the time. Look at them,” she says, gesturing towards the quartet with a nudge of her head. They’re sizing Sunghoon up, ruffling his hair, pinching his cheeks and brushing away invisible creases in his t-shirt as he tries to swat their hands away, to no avail, and you can’t help but laugh at them along with Yunjin.

You all head inside the McDonald’s, getting into pairs of two to pick your order on the giant touch screens. You choose a McChicken, potato wedges and ice tea, and Sunghoon chides you for getting wedges instead of fries.

“People who get those think they’re better than everyone else,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Because we are,” you say with a smile. You touch the screen to get to the payment page but Sunghoon goes back, saying he’ll order too.

“But I need to pay?” you say, looking up at him questioningly.

“I can pay for the two of us,” he says nonchalantly, and you tease him with an ‘ooh.’ “Shut up,” he mutters, already blushing, “just let me do something nice for you.”

“Fine,” you smile, nudging his shoulder with yours a bit. “Thanks. I’ll get the cinema tickets then.”

He turns to you abruptly, his eyebrows drawn in together. “But then that cancels out me paying for this…” he whines, and you give him a look as if to say, “yeah, exactly.” 

“I don’t mind getting the tickets,” he says. “I get paid for my work at the club but I never spend any money, so, you know, I can get this for you. It makes me happy,” he mumbles, avoiding your teasing gaze.

“Thanks, Hoon,” you say, the nickname escaping your lips before you can stop it. He doesn’t seem to mind it; if anything, his blush gets deeper. You think he might end up eternally red at this rate.

“Of course.” He orders a double Big Mac, fries and a coke, and you tease him for getting such a boring meal. “They’re classics for a reason,” he defends himself. 

You swear you’ve never seen him so red and so stuttery as when you get on your toes to press a kiss to his cheek as a thank you for paying, and you think there’s no way he could get any cuter than this. His friends don’t miss it and Jake punches him very obnoxiously in the shoulder as what you can only assume is a weird congratulatory gesture.

His friends are a bit annoying, but in a funny way, so it’s okay. You’re so unaccustomed to their very unique sense of humor that everything they say and do makes you laugh, whereas they’re used to behaving like that and don’t even question their weirdness anymore. Contrary to what Sunghoon told you, Jay’s jokes land with you every time, even when the whole table grunts. 

Most of the conversation, to Sunghoon’s dismay, is spent telling embarrassing stories about him, which his friends have a lot of after having seen him drunk so many times. Heeseung asks you about how it’s been being with Sunghoon at the club, and you don’t really notice the sly smirk on his and Jake’s faces until you’re done answering. You tell them about all the things he’s made you do, but when you notice him about to complain, you add that it’s also been nice, learning how to ride a horse and spending time in the countryside.

“So you’ve seen Sunghoon ride, then?” Jake asks, and Heeseung’s snort tells you it’s not an innocent question.

“Yeah, I have,” you say, but it comes out more a question because their behavior confuses you.

Jake gives you a pointed look. “And, what did you think? I mean, it’s not the coolest sport out there, is it?” he asks, and the way Sunghoon looks down at his half-eaten burger is enough for you to put the puzzle pieces together.

You frown slightly. “Well, I think it’s a lot cooler than running after a ball and pretending like you’re gonna die when you twist your ankle,” you reply, remembering Jake’s mention of him playing soccer. Jay is quick to diffuse the tension when he sees Jake about to bite something back, saying to just talk about something else. You back off and look at Sunghoon, who seems to have completely spaced out and left the conversation. You rest your hand at the top of his knee, his attention snapping back towards you and he gives you a small smile, then turns to his friends and the conversation starts again as if nothing had happened. You’re thankful for it, because you don’t wanna create trouble the first time you meet them and make it awkward, but you really don’t appreciate his friends making him feel like he’s not “cool” because he’s a horse rider; there’s already enough stigma about it being a girls’ sport, he doesn’t need any added pressure from them.

The rest of the meal goes well, Heeseung and Yunjin throwing fries at each other, and the table making fun of Jay for eating his McFlurry so messily. Apart from the horse riding comment and the fact that they love teasing him (which you do too, to be fair), Sunghoon’s friends are nice and make him laugh, so you relax around them once again, although you and Jake exchange a few tense eye contacts. You won’t feel sorry for defending Sunghoon, even if you’ve known him for three weeks and Jake has for two years. 

When you’re done eating, you walk to the movie theater that’s just two minutes away, the boys ahead and you and Yunjin in tow. “I’m really glad you spoke up for Sunghoon earlier, and I’m sure he appreciated it too,” she says, just loud enough for you to hear. “I’ve tried speaking about it with Heeseung, but he and Jake just don’t seem to get that it actually annoys Sunghoon and they say it’s just for fun. I did horse riding when I was a kid, so I know how hard it actually is, and Jay is just a bit more mature than them, so we try to get them to stop, but they still do it a bit. Their humor is basically just making fun of everyone in their group, so sometimes they don’t know when to stop.”

You nod at her words, the situation a bit clearer now. “He should bring them to the club and show them how good he is,” you say. “Or better yet, make them get on a horse so they can see firsthand that it’s not the horse doing all the work like everyone says.” Yunjin laughs and agrees, saying she’d pay to see those boys on a horse. 

You reach the cinema as you make a note to talk to Sunghoon about this later before you can forget. You ask Yunjin what movie you’re seeing, realizing you had no idea, and she rolls her eyes. “I wanted to go see the new Marion Cotillard movie, but the boys said it looked boring, so we’re going to watch some horror movie. I don’t even know the name, but I’m sure it’s just a rehash of the same tired haunted house plot.”

While Sunghoon gets the tickets, you sneak to the food counter and get two bottles of coke and a large popcorn to share with him. He complains that he could’ve gotten that but you shut him up with a tut. 

“Are you good at watching horror movies?” you lean in and whisper when you’re seated and waiting for the movie to start while ads play, and you see him shiver slightly, but that might just be because of the aircon in the theater and not your proximity.

“What do you mean, am I good at watching them? Do you mean if I like them?” he asks, eyebrows slightly furrowed as he looks at you.

“No, I mean if you get scared easily. You can like them and watch them a lot but still get scared. I feel like you’d scream at all the jumpscares,” you add that later part just to tease him, and you know you hit bullseye when he looks away with a scoff, straightening in his seat.

“I guess they’re fun to watch, but no, I don’t get scared. And I’m definitely not going to scream.” He looks down at you with a smirk, his confidence hitting him out of nowhere as it sometimes does. “But I know you will, so feel free to hold onto my arm when you get scared,” he says, and it’s your turn to scoff and look away.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be alright,” you say just as the lights start to dim and the movie starts playing.

It takes a while for the movie to pick up, so the first half hour, you’re not really into it, paying more attention to the way your hand brushes against Sunghoon’s whenever you reach for the popcorn at the same time rather than to what is happening on screen. However, when a ghost with a very unpleasant face suddenly pops out, you can’t keep yourself from jumping in your seat and letting out a small gasp which Sunghoon would’ve made fun of, had he not been twice spooked as you were, the pieces of popcorn he was about to eat discarded somewhere at his feet because of the jumpscare.

You share a look with Sunghoon and when the both of you realize the other was completely bluffing, you burst into quiet giggles. He offers you his arm to hold onto again and you roll your eyes but take it anyway, glad for the reassurance his warmth brings you. You wrap one hand around his bicep and place the other in his hand, interlacing your fingers together, and for once you’re the shy one and can’t look him in the eye, keeping your gaze on the screen when you feel his eyes on you, surprised but pleased by your cute action.

You spend the rest of the movie like this, bodies turning towards each other every time something scary happens on screen as if instinctively going to the other to find comfort. If you weren’t in a public place, you probably would’ve ended up in his lap. Or he in yours, perhaps.

The loss of his warmth when the movie ends and the lights turn back on makes your heart a bit sad, and you already find yourself waiting for the time you’ll get to feel him next to you again. When you walk out of the theater, the sun’s finally set and the sky is starting to get dark. You all walk back to the parking lot, Heeseung, Jay, Jake and Yunjin ahead, talking about the movie excitedly and recalling their favorite scenes, but you and Sunghoon hang back a bit. He’s silent and for a second you’re worried all the hand-holding has made him awkward but when you look up at him, he gives you a smile that calms all your nerves in an instant.

Jake suddenly turns around to face you, walking backwards. “What did you two lovebirds think?” he asks.

“It was alright,” Sunghoon answers. “It had some scary scenes but I couldn’t really get into it.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause you two were too busy being all- ow!” Jake starts but is interrupted by a kick in the shins, courtesy of Jay.

“Can you read the room, just once in your life, bro?” he says, and Jake rolls his eyes but turns back around anyway, leaving you and Sunghoon to laugh at his friends’ antics. 

When you reach the parking lot, you say goodbye to everyone, saying it was nice meeting them and you hoped to see them again soon. “If you can, you should try and visit the club at some point, it’d be nice seeing you there,” you tell Yunjin as you hug her goodbye.

The car ride home is silent at first, betraying both your and Sunghoon’s shyness. “Tonight was nice,” you start, wanting to start a conversation after a few minutes of just looking out the window.

Sunghoon responds immediately as if he’d been waiting for you to say something. “Yeah? I’m glad. I was scared you weren’t going to like my friends or something…” he says, glancing at you with a worried expression on his face.

“Well, I really liked Yunjin and Jay…” you trail.

“But?”

“But…” you sigh, too late to turn back, but unsure whether it’s your place to bring this up. “Heeseung and Jake were nice, you know, but that comment they made about you horse riding really brushed me the wrong way.”

“Aww,” Sunghoon coos, and you roll your eyes at his fake saccharine tone. “Did it make you upset for me?”

“It did!” you say, wanting Sunghoon to know you were serious. “Friends shouldn’t make fun of your passions. Plus you’re really good at it, and I’m sure they’d be impressed by you. I talked about it with Yunjin, you know,” you add before he can cut in. “She said it happens all the time and you’re used to it, but it’s not something you should have to put up with. You should have them over at the club some day.”

Sunghoon hums, pouting his lips a bit. “I don’t know… It’s not that big of a deal. It’s how we mess with each other.”

“You looked really down when they were saying those things, Hoon. You’re allowed to say when something bothers you. And if they don’t listen, then they’re assholes. I know you’ve been friends for a while now, and I’m not trying to make you cut them off by any means, but I think you should talk to them. If they’re good friends, they’ll understand and not want to say something that hurts you. At least I hope so,” you say, looking out the window again to hide how upset this truly makes you. Sunghoon’s next words come as a surprise to you.

“Thanks, Y/N.” You look back at him with a questioning look, wordlessly asking him to go on, and he sighs. “I’m sort of used to keeping everything for myself. Taking a step back so I don’t take things personally, not complaining and just doing what I’m told even if it’s not what I want to do, stuff like that, I’m used to it. I just- I don’t wanna bother anyone, you know. I think you’re the first person who’s ever told me I’m allowed to voice things out.”

You don’t know what to say for a few seconds, shocked by this revelation. It’s very fitting of him - sacrificing his potential career for his sister, going to vet school to please his parents but taking care of the center whenever he’s on break. You didn’t know this behavior went deeper than that, and it was ingrained in him to just take it all and never put up a fight.

You say, “You’re allowed to put yourself first, you know. Sometimes, you even need to,” and it’s an unfamiliar breath of fresh air that blows away some of the weight on his shoulders, hearing those words. He chuckles a bit, hoping that the tears pooling in his eyes don’t accidentally overflow.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that, but it’s nice knowing I have the option. Thank you, Y/N,” he repeats, and you smile at him, relieved when he smiles back.

The rest of the car ride goes by in a flash as you make fun of each other for being so scared of the film and jump from topic to topic like frogs bouncing around lily pads, somehow neither of you ever losing track of the conversation. You tell him someone with such a boring McDonald’s order doesn’t deserve to have opinions and he says that of course you’d think that since you chose potato wedges instead of french fries.

Without noticing it, you soon reach the center, and Sunghoon walks you to your doorstep after parking the car. You stand in front of each other at the door, and you seriously feel like the main lead in a teen rom-com, butterflies in your stomach and all the works as you look up at him, expecting a little something.

“So…” he starts, pressing his lips into a flat line to hide his smile.

“So…” you repeat, nudging your foot with his as you both look down.

“Tonight was nice,” he says sheepishly and you can’t help but laugh, him soon imitating you.

“It was. But we’ve already established that, I think.”

“Right.” His gaze finds yours, and the look in his eyes makes your heart feel like it’s on an acid trip. You stare at each other for a few seconds, unable to look away, and you’re about to run off into the house, the tension too much to handle, when his eyes finally drop to your lips. Knowing him, he probably won’t do much more, so you take a small step towards him and raise your lips towards his, closing the distance between the two of you inch by inch, getting closer, closer, closer, until-

“Sunghoon!” Yeji’s voice rings out in the night, taking you aback as you gasp and stumble a few steps back, not wanting her to see you almost devour her brother’s face. Sunghoon closes his eyes and shakes his head, then lets out an exasperated “what.”

“I can’t believe you went to see that new movie without me. I saw it in Jay's story. I told you I wanted to go see it!”

He sighs and looks at you, mouthing a “sorry” before walking towards her, hooking his arm over her shoulders as he walks her back to their house. 

“Sorry, lil sis. We can go watch it together, I don’t mind seeing it again. Also, why do you follow Jay? Unfollow him,” he commands, and after that you can’t hear anything because they’re too far away. You watch them walk with a smile on your face, appreciating their little moment together, and your heart does a little somersault of joy when Sunghoon turns around to wave at you from his door.

-

After that night, you’re more determined than ever to turn that almost-kiss into a actually-happened-kiss. However, your resolve soon seems to have been for nothing when Sunghoon tells you about how he wishes he didn’t have to leave with his parents, but they won’t let him stay, and you’re reminded of the Parks yearly vacation that starts the next day, exactly three days after the night out.

It’s a late Sunday afternoon and you’ve done everything you needed to for that day, so you and Sunghoon went off on a horse ride as you often do, deciding to take a break when you reach a field in which a bunch of haystacks rest. You only had to exchange a look to understand the other immediately, so you tied your horses to a tree and raced over to the closest stack, helping each other get to the top and laying there.

“I wish you didn’t have to go either,” you say, playing with a loose strand of hay peeking out from the stack in the small space between you and Sunghoon.

“You gonna miss me?” Sunghoon teases, grinning as he lightly nudges your shoulder.

“As surprising as it sounds, I think I might,” you say, and from the corner of your eye you see his grin get wider.

“I think I will too,” he replies, and he giggles when he sees you try and fail to suppress a smile. “Actually, I definitely will,” he adds just to see you smile bigger, and it works.

“When are you leaving again exactly?” you ask to change the subject.

“Early tomorrow morning. I still haven’t packed,” he says and sighs.

“We should head back so you can pack,” you say even though you don’t want to do that at all.

“Yeah, we should, but I don’t want to,” he replies, practically reading your mind. “I wanna stay here for a while.”

A small silence settles between the two of you, but it says more than a thousand words. The tension that has been hanging over your heads for a while now but only thickened after Friday night is almost palpable now. You’re laying so close that your arms are almost touching, occasionally brushing when one of you shifts, and if you turned your head, his face would be right there, which means his lips would be right there. Well, one of you is going to have to do something about this tension, you think, and it’s definitely not going to be him.

“Sunghoon?” you call out, turning your head towards the boy next to you. He does the same and your eyes meet. In this late afternoon hour, the sun is right behind you and he has to squint a little bit and use his hand as a shield to look at you properly. He looks a bit stupid like that, but you think he’s cute.

“Yeah?”

The warm feeling that spreads over your whole body at the sound of his voice is what gives you the confirmation that you want to say what you say next, and the courage to do it.

“Can I kiss you?”

His eyebrows raise slightly but he’s quick to hide his surprise and starts grinning instead, revealing those fangs of his you love so much. You have a feeling they’d leave the cutest marks on your skin. “Sure,” he says, letting his eyes drift down to your lips just like that other night.

So you do.

You lean in close enough to press your lips onto his, letting them touch for a brief second before leaning back again. A small pout forms on his lips at the fleeting contact. “That’s it?”

You could just eat him whole, you think. A kiss will have to do. “What did you want?” you ask, trying and failing to hide a smirk.

“That wasn’t a proper kiss.”

“Yeah? What’s a proper kiss then?”

He looks away with a huff. “I’m sure you know what a proper kiss is. Why would you ask to kiss me if you’re not even gonna do it properly…”

“How about you show me then?”

This makes him look promptly back at you, his eyes a bit wider. When he just gulps without saying anything, you add: “Or should I try again? Properly this time?”

He nods, eyes set on your lips. He’d always found them pretty and inviting, and he’d caught himself daydreaming about this exact moment a few times, but now that it was right in front of him, his brain was short-circuiting. All he could do was close his eyes and wait for you.

You find it cute how he screws his eyes shut before you’re even kissing him, making him look like a k-drama female lead during the first kiss scene. You can’t help but smile a little even as you bring your lips to his once again, this time a bit firmer, a bit deeper. He waits for you to move your lips against his before he does so too, but once he’s started, he’s unstoppable.

In fleeting conversations and off-hand comments, you’d learned that Sunghoon had had a couple girlfriends but that it always ended after a few months. When you’d accused him of “virgin behavior” after he did something embarrassing for an almost twenty-year-old, he’d fervently defended himself of very much not being virgin and very much having had sex before, which you’d said was what a virgin would say, but you knew he was saying the truth because he wasn’t the type to lie, especially about this sort of thing.

What was sure was that he kissed you like he knew what he was doing, and he was doing it well. His shy demeanor from a minute ago is completely gone as he tilts his head and deepens the kiss, holding you tight against him. His hands were shy at first, but when yours made their way to his hair so you could gently tug at the strands there, he understood he didn’t need to be so polite. One of his hands found your waist while the other cupped your cheek, his thumb coming under your chin to tilt it up towards him. 

Your lips move against the others’ like you’d done this your whole life, and you’re unable to keep it Disney-friendly for long as your feelings and the fact that you were finally touching each other like you’d been wanting to take over any reason you had left. The kiss turns hungrier, needier, hotter, as if catching up on all that time you lost to dilly-dallying around each other. It’s easy to slip your tongue inside his mouth and you swear you hear him moan when your tongues come into contact, the small sound making your brain turn into mush and giving you one goal, and one goal only: hear him again.

You pull away and press a palm to his shoulder, and he lets you push him down on his back as you straddle his lips, positioning your core right over his growing erection and watching with a smirk as he bites his lips and furrows his eyebrows, humming at the feeling of you against him. You press your lips back against his and note with satisfaction that his movements are messier than before, kissing you mouth open and letting you take full control of the kiss, almost unable to focus on kissing you and on feeling you grind very lightly, almost teasingly against him. Slick pools in your underwear at the angelic sounds he’s making, and you’re very happy he doesn’t seem to be shy about being vocal because his moans are the prettiest sound you've ever heard.

You move away from his lips and trail wet kisses on his cheeks and jawline, moving down to his neck and his Adam’s apple, gently biting and sucking the skin at the base of his throat, enough to make him squirm underneath you but not enough to leave a mark, even though you’d love to, the thought of other girls seeing him all marked up because of you filling you with a sense of pride you didn’t know you could have.

You find his sweet spot at the juncture of his neck and his shoulder, so you kiss him more there, tracing the other side of his neck with your fingernails. He’s so sensitive and those actions alone are enough to have him whine a small “fuck, Y/N, that feels so good,” and you think you might actually go insane with lust for him. 

You’ve just started kissing him on the lips again, his hands holding your hips so tightly you think they might almost bruise your skin and his kisses desperate and needy, when his phone buzzes. Taken aback, you pull away quickly, and he whines at the loss of contact. He goes in to kiss you again but you tut and tell him to check his phone in case it’s important. You note that he does what you say, and you wonder whether that’ll hold up for other situations. You observe him as he unlocks his phone and reads the text, and you curse yourself for waiting until he leaves to do this. You could’ve had him heaving, cheeks rosy, lips slightly swollen and eyes blown out for some weeks now, but your hesitation prevented you from doing anything, and now you’ll have to wait ten more days to see him like this again - that is, if he wants to do it again.

“It’s my mom,” he says with a sigh, snapping you out of your reverie. “She says I need to come home and pack my bag and have dinner.”

You pout at each other and he sits up, wrapping his arms around your middle and nuzzling his face in your neck. The rather intimate action surprises you a bit, but mostly you find it endearing, and it was pretty obvious Sunghoon would be the clingy type. You’re happy he feels comfortable enough around you to show this side of him - plus, it makes him ten times more adorable than he already was in your eyes.

“I want to go even less now,” he murmurs, voice muffled and you giggle at him as you caress his head.

“Same. But ten days will go by quickly, right? And I’ll be right here when you come back,” you say, leaning back so you can cup his face in your palms and look at him, his cheeks a bit squished. “You’re so cute,” you whisper with a smile, and the compliment makes his cheeks heat up but for once he doesn’t look away and keeps your gaze locked in his.

You peck his lips quickly and get off of his lap. “Right, we should go then,” and when he whines in protest, you add, “your mom will be mad, Hoon,” which is enough to convince him.

You head slowly back to the center and walk the horses to their stalls, talking about this and that as you often do, but you grow silent as you near his house, dreading having to say goodbye. The only difference with Friday night is that you’re standing at his door and not yours; the tension and heart-fluttering awkwardness are the same. Well, maybe not exactly the same, because you had your tongue down his throat just fifteen minutes ago.

“You’ll be alright when I’m gone, right?” he asks, taking your hands in his and letting them hang between you two.

“Yeah, I will. Plus, your parents’ friend is coming to take care of the club, right? I’ll help her, and I’ll hang out with my grandma while you’re on vacation and the ten days will be over before we know it,” you say, more trying to reassure yourself than him.

Sunghoon sighs but nods as if trying to convince himself too. “Right.”

“Right,” you repeat, and look up at him with a smile. The thought that this might look completely dramatic to any outsider crosses your mind, but you ignore it because you’re really not looking forward to spending ten days without Sunghoon here. When he comes back, you’ll only have three weeks left, and that simple fact already makes your heart ache.

He takes you in his arms and holds you close to him for a few moments. “Okay. I’ll see you soon, Y/N,” he whispers in your hair. “Don’t miss me too much. But not too little either. Just the right amount,” he jokes, and usually you’d have punched his chest or something but right now all you can do is chuckle. He pulls away and pecks you on the lips, and when you take a step back, he opens the door and waves at you goodbye, then disappears inside the house.

-

Not to be dramatic, but those ten days are probably the longest of your life. The Parks’ friend, Madame Rasson, is nice enough, and you enjoy helping her out and having dinner with her and your grandmother every night, but she’s no Park Sunghoon. You don’t really have the urge to gallop away with her and kiss at the top of a haystack as the sun sets behind you, nor do you feel like a small part of your heart stays with her when you’re not together.

Sunghoon calls you every night under the pretext of wanting to know how the horses are doing, but you know Mrs Park and Mme Rasson are keeping in touch and that he just wants to talk to you. You don’t call him out on it though and let him tell you about his day when he’s done pretending he cares about who did what and who went where. After a few days, as you’re nearing the end of a call, he tells you he misses you then hangs up right after as if he hadn’t been basically crying into your shirt about how much he didn’t want to leave and how much he’d miss you just a few days prior, but you just giggle and text him that you miss him too, which he texts a heart back to.

Yunjin also comes around one day, saying she missed horse riding and wanted to hang out again, so you show her around the club and go on a horse ride together, taking her to all the spots Sunghoon took you to, pointing with a giggle to the spot where you made out. She gasps when she hears that and lightly slaps your shoulder. “You two made out?” she says, surprise and excitement all over her face. You only giggle some more and nod, face heating up.

“I mean, it was obvious it would happen at some point. You guys were giving each other major heart eyes the other day.” You roll your eyes and say you weren’t even though you know you very much were. “Plus, the guys send a lot of voice messages on their group chat and I sometimes listen to them with Heeseung. The way Sunghoon talks about you is so cute it makes me want to throw up sometimes.”

The thought of Sunghoon talking about you to his friends makes your heart jump and swell with pride a bit. “Really? What does he say?” you ask, not looking at Yunjin to hide the stupid smile you’re wearing.

“He just talks about your day and what you guys did, but he’ll focus on a random thing like the way you said hi to the horses or how you ate your food and he’ll be like, it was the cutest thing ever. He doesn’t go into too much detail cause he knows the guys will make fun of him but it’s still really sweet. Heeseung told me he’s never talked about any other girl like that, you know,” she says, looking at you pointedly. “And you probably also know Sunghoon isn’t the easiest to get to know. But he’s clearly let you in, and he really wanted you to meet the boys, so I think he really, really likes you.”

You give yourself a few moments to process Yunjin’s words, but all you can say in the end is “Well, I really, really like him too,” and Yunjin laughs at you.

She stays over for dinner, charming your grandmother with her jokes and willingness to help, and spends the night as well. You two stay up until late talking about your families, school, how she met Heeseung and how cute you and Sunghoon are, and the fact that you have to stay quiet so as not to wake your grandma up makes you want to laugh even harder. When she leaves the next morning, she mentions that she saw the sea was really nearby and asked if you’d been.

“I haven’t yet, but Sunghoon did say he knew a spot and would take me sometime… I’ll ask him about it again,” you say, and she nods fervently, saying she hasn’t been to the beach forever. You hug each other goodbye and you wave at her until you can’t see her car anymore, and you get that empty feeling of being alone again, so you go find your grandmother and bother her with tons of questions which she answers patiently. Five days to go until Sunghoon comes back.

And then these five days are over, and Sunghoon finds you in the middle of the afternoon, taking a nap in your grandmother’s backyard and oblivious to the fact that the boy you like the most is back. He wakes you up by taking your sunglasses delicately off of your eyes and pressing his lips to the top of your head. You frown and open your eyes bit by bit until you recognise the boy hunching over you and then open your eyes all at once, sitting up in your lounge chair and wrapping your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, pulling him down towards you.

“Hi,” he giggles, chin hooked over your shoulder.

“You’re back!”

“I am.” He pulls away to peck your lips, and it’s like he hasn’t even left a day. “I’ll go get changed and check on Nellie and then we can go for a horse ride, if you want?”

You nod excitedly. “Sure. I’ll go get the horses ready.” You both rush to your respective destinations and meet again fifteen minutes later in the grooming hall just as you finish buckling Picasso’s saddle. Sunghoon pecks your lips once more just because he can, and then you’re off.

Sunghoon’s prepared a blanket so you could lie in the grass in the clearing. On your way there, you ask him about his vacation and he admits it was actually really fun. They drove down to Spain, spending a couple days in Barcelona and then a week in a smaller seaside town. In terms of weather and landscape, it wasn’t very different from their hometown, but the food was amazing and the people very welcoming, and Sunghoon and Yeji could finally put their years of learning Spanish in school to the test.

“I took a lot of pictures because there were so many things that reminded me of you or that I thought you’d like,” he admits bashfully, taking out his phone from his bag once you’re settled on the blanket. You rest your head on his chest and rest your hand on the side of his stomach, feeling the vibrations of his laughter against your ear and commenting on the pictures he shows you, giggling when he starts rapidly scrolling through fifteen consecutive selfies.

You try to keep up a conversation but it’s a bit hard to do when his neck is right there, close enough for you to press kisses on or to nuzzle your face in if you just lifted your head a bit, and his skin is soft and warm and you want to feel all of it under your palms. Even Sunghoon, who usually never shuts up when he’s with someone he’s comfortable around, is quiet. His sigh when you trail your hand up from his waist to his shoulder tells you he’s probably thinking the same as you, and as soon as you graze your fingers through his hair, he’s rolled you onto your back and his lips are on yours, kissing you with all the need that’s built up over the past ten days. You have a feeling just kissing won’t be enough to satisfy either of you today.

There’s a sense of urgency to all of your movements, the way all four hands are restless and travel each other’s body tirelessly, pulling on the other’s hair, kneading the skin here, caressing it here. Sunghoon bites down on your lower lip and the action makes you moan, so he takes that opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth. Your kisses are open-mouthed and wet and messy, but you wouldn’t have it any other way because they translate all the desire you have for him and you want him to know exactly just how he’s making you feel.

You remember how much Sunghoon likes it when you compliment him, or tease him using your words, so you decide to do just that. When he starts trailing kisses your jaw, then sucking and biting at your neck, leaving tiny marks there, you whisper his name, making him hum. 

“Hoon. I want you so fucking bad.” 

You feel him trembling at your words and he nuzzles his face in the crook of your neck, whining as he continues pressing wet kisses there. He ruts his hips into yours, seemingly more by reaction than deliberately. “Want you too,” he murmurs, and slips his hands underneath your t-shirt, the flesh on your stomach burning everywhere his hands touch it. You lift your arms so he can take the piece of fabric off, and he’s quick to find the back of your bra as well, unclasping it and revealing your breasts to him.

In no time he’s already delving into your body, pretty pink lips circling and sucking on one of your nipples and deft fingers playing with the other, warmth spreading all over you at the intense pleasure he’s finally giving you, wetness already starting to make your underwear stick to your core.

Your fingers find purchase in his hair, pulling whenever it feels particularly good, and he seems to like the pain that comes with it because it’s enough to have him moaning around your nipple. “Fuck, Hoon, that feels so good,” you breathe out. Despite your praise and to your confusion, he pulls away, trailing kisses down your stomach until he reaches your shorts and looks up at you when his fingers are around the button, asking for confirmation to go further. He whispers “thank God” when you nod your head yes.

“Wanna make you feel good,” he says as he drags your shorts and underwear down at the same time, eyes fixated on your glistening folds.

You hold yourself up on your elbows, admiring him and his blown-out pupils and disheveled hair - he’s never looked hotter. “You already were, baby.”

“Wanna make you feel even better,” he says before diving right into your pussy, giving you no time to get used to the feeling as his tongue licks up a long stripe up your folds before finding your clit, alternating between giving it kitty-licks and sucking it. You’re a moaning mess in an instant, pulling even harder at his hair and sometimes holding onto his shoulders as if your body might start levitating at any moment. As if that didn’t already feel good enough, he then adds a finger, and quickly a second one into your hole, his thin and long digits feeling better than yours ever have. He must be some kind of fingering expert because he finds your g-spot in thirty seconds, pressing the sensitive spot again and again until you come apart for him in an embarrassingly quick orgasm, moaning his name and how good it feels like a broken record.

That doesn’t seem to be enough for Sunghoon, however, who doesn’t relent and sends your body into overstimulation until you find the energy to tell him to stop. “Was that good?” he asks innocently when his lips find yours again, letting you taste yourself on his tongue.

“Was it good?” you repeat, almost scoffing. “Baby, it was amazing.”

“Really?” he asks, a childlike grin on his face that is worlds away from the things he just did to your body.

“Really. Let me show you how good it felt,” you say with a mischievous smile, pushing his shoulder down so you switch positions and he’s the one laying, back against the blanket. “Let’s get this all off, yeah?” you say, hands fiddling with the hem of his shirt, and when that’s gone, with the band of his sweatpants and underwear. He gulps when he’s fully naked under your curious gaze, but he’s brave and his eyes don't leave your face, patiently waiting for what you’ll say or do next.

“So pretty, Hoon,” you purr as your hands trail from his thighs up to his neck, applying some pressure there, not enough to cut off any oxygen but enough for him to feel it. “And all for me,” you add as you mark his neck just like he did yours, before pushing yourself down his body until your face is level with his now fully hard cock. You press wet kisses to his thighs and hear his breaths get shakier when your kisses get dangerously close to his crotch. “Haven’t even touched you, and you’re already this hard, baby?” you tease, and chuckle when his cock twitches at your words.

“Please,” he implores, voice small.

“Just a second, baby. Be good for me, yeah?” you ask and he nods, eyes screwed shut as if in pain. You had a feeling that Sunghoon might like to give control rather than have it, but you hadn’t thought he’d let you have full power over him like that. You can’t say you dislike it, though.

You don’t want to make him wait for too long, and the sigh of relief he lets out when you finally place your tongue on the base of his shaft and lick a stripe up is worth it. Your baby is loud and lets you know exactly what he likes, and what he likes is when you pay attention to his tip and his sensitive balls at the same time. You alternate between having your lips around his tip, hands massaging him, and your palm circling his tip, taking his balls in your mouth and letting them out with a pop. In just a few minutes, his whole body is shaking under your touch and his moans are getting louder and louder, almost shout-like. He calls out your name and pleads with you to stop, and you look up at him with a worried expression. Before you can ask if he’s okay, he says, “Wanna cum inside you,” and how can you refuse him when his blush has spread to his whole face and his eyebrows are furrowed in concentration and pleasure, trying his best not to cum?

“Of course, baby.”

He sits up and you straddle his lap, telling him you’re on the pill when he’s about to pull out a condom he’d sneakily brought from his bag. “Fuck, okay,” he says, voice shaky at the idea of feeling your bare walls around him.

You raise yourself over him, your arms wrapping themselves around his neck and his around your waist, you line your entrance up with his dick and then sit back down onto his lap, his cock stretching you out in the best way possible as it slips right in, your wetness serving as natural lube. You waste no time before moving your hips against his, first rocking them back and forth and then raising them up and down, the both of you letting out loud moans and breaths at the pleasure taking over your bodies.

“Y/N, feels so good, gonna cum quick,” he breathes out into the crook of your neck, biting the flesh there which feels surprisingly good.

“That’s okay baby, you’ve done so well, cum whenever you want.”

“Want you to cum too, though,” he whines, and you can’t help but chuckle.

“You already made me- fuck!” you scream out of surprise when Sunghoon’s hands suddenly grip your thighs tightly and he holds you steady like this as he ruts his hips up into yours, the angle hitting right where it needs to. Your brain can’t form sentences that make any sort of sense so you’re left blabbering praises and curses at the same time, feeling your second orgasm rapidly approaching.

“Fuck, baby, just like that, fuck- so close, Hoon…”

The feeling of your walls clenching as your high washes over you is enough for Sunghoon to tip over the edge as well, your releases mixing together in a loud and sticky mess. You’ve never felt closer to heaven as you do now.

The seriousness of it all soon starts to fade as you and Sunghoon lock eyes and burst into giggles, breathing still heavy and irregular. You help clean each other up and put your clothes back on, but you don’t head home until the sun has long set, feasting on the snacks and water he’d brought along.

You check the time before you go to bed that night. 00:57, Thursday 11th August 2022. Twenty days left with Sunghoon. 

-

Eighteen days left with Sunghoon. Your last days together feel like a montage, like you’re watching a movie in which you play the lead role and you know the ending credits will have to start rolling at some point. You hate to be thinking that way, but the first thing you do when you wake up every morning is check the date and tell yourself how many days you’ve got left with your summer love. 19 days, 18 days. If Sunghoon feels a change in your attitude, how your gaze lingers more, how your touch softens, he doesn’t say anything.

You mentioned how you and Yunjin would like to go to the beach, so he called up his friends and got them to drive all the way over here. He said another time when you told him this is the perfect opportunity to show them his horse riding, and you didn’t push it.

He drives you all to what he calls ‘his’ beach spot, and indeed, it feels like it’s yours and yours only. It’s a bit of a trek getting there, having to walk up a dirt road and climbing some rocks before heading down to a small sandy beach where the sand is so hot it burns and the water only feels refreshing for two minutes, but you love it. He side-eyes Jake and Jay when you take off your dress and reveal your bikini-clad body, and barks at them to stop salivating even though they weren’t looking at you.

Yunjin on Heeseung’s shoulders, Jake on Jay’s and you on Sunghoon’s, the six of you play a tournament of who can make the others fall faster. Your boy has amazing balance, robust legs, a strong core, and decent (surprisingly impressive) arm muscles, so you win, a victory peck turning into a makeout session that everybody groans at, except for Jake who whoops. 

You apply sunscreen on each other’s backs and complain that evening when you’ve got weirdly-shaped sunburns anyway, you along the lines of your swimsuit and him on the back of his knees. You eat the watermelon Jay brought and the boys spit black seeds at each other, not daring to do it to you or Yunjin after the stank look you gave them.

When you get home and everyone has driven off, neither of you is quite ready to call it a night yet. Sunghoon eyes the backseat of his car and you understand what he wants immediately. His skin smells like sun, sweat, sunscreen and sea water, and it’s all so him. It smells so good, it’s almost intoxicating, and you think you’ll never be able to get enough of his scent, of him. You won’t be able to look up at the bright star in the day sky or at an orange bottle of sticky sunscreen the same way ever again. 

You’ve had many things in your life. You’ve had dolls, and you’ve had books and CDs. You’ve also had and still have friends, sometimes even boyfriends. You’ve had fun, and times that were not as fun. You’ve had sex. But you’ve not had anything like what you have with Sunghoon. He’s the one who gave you the intense feeling of truly loving and being loved, the insatiable craving of wanting more, the overwhelming need to see and talk to and feel and smell. 

He’s the one who gave you the best summer of your life, and it’s the best thing you’ve ever had. It overpowers everything you’ve ever had to the point that it feels like it’s the first thing you’ve ever had; it might be the only thing you ever have, because you don’t understand how you could want anything else now that you’ve had him. He’s all you need.

Seventeen days left with Sunghoon. You’re having your joyful weekly dinner with your grandmother and the Parks when you feel something hit your foot gently. You feel it again, and when you look up at the boy sitting right across the table from you he’s trying to hide a small smile, but you know him too well to miss it. His clothed foot caresses the ridge of your own and you suppress a giggle at the ticklish feelings. You tease him back, and you realize you’re playing footsies at the ripe age of twenty years old, but it doesn’t bother you. You both end up failing at not laughing and when innocently, his mother asks, “what are you two laughing at?”, he coughs and says it’s an inside joke.

Fourteen days left with Sunghoon. The last two weeks of summer lessons have started again and Sunghoon and you can’t run around and lay in random fields at any time of the day anymore, but you still try your best to spend every waking second of the day together, to the despair of his fangirls. However, you still find moments where it’s the two of you in an empty stall and one exchanged look is enough for you to push him against the walls, your lips finding his in the fraction of a second. Sadly, before it can get too heated, a nearby horse always neighs or huffs as if telling you to get a room.

Twelve days left with Sunghoon. Conveniently, Sunghoon’s sister and their parents are out for the night at a party in celebration of the competition season that’s about to end, so you finally get to spend the night in his room. You technically could’ve done it before, but the house is old and the walls are thin, and you didn’t need that kind of humiliation. 

Maybe Sunghoon feels that your time is slowly running to its end too, because as the days pass, he melts under your touch like a candle to a flame even more than before, he kisses your lips with more desperation and he holds your hips tighter as if you were going to disappear from between his hands at any moment. He always asks to please, please let’s cum at the same time and please, please say my name and you do it because you’d do anything for him.

You do it three times in a row, both of your bodies weak and sensitive with overstimulation yet unending desire, and you feel tears pouring down your cheeks as your third orgasm of the night hits you. There’s no way anything will ever feel as good as this. You tell him this, and he says, “I know.”

Seven days left with Sunghoon. He asks you what you’ll do when you go home, and you reply that you don’t know, because even though you’ve been thinking about what little time you have left together, you haven’t been thinking about the time after that, simply because it puts a bland feeling in your mouth whenever it crosses your mind. “I’ll start studying again and I’ll start my internship. I’ll get black out drunk at least once a month to forget all the stress and pressure of being a med student. I’ll think about you. That’s probably about it. What about you?”

“I’ll study too and I’ll have an assistantship at some point too. I’ll get drunk on Thursday nights and take care of the club during the weekends. I’ll think about you, too. More than you, I’m sure.”

“That’s not possible. You won’t ever leave my mind.”

“You won’t either,” he whispers.

Two days left with Sunghoon. He tells you you’re going camping for your last night together, not wanting to leave your side for even a second. “We’ve only got so much time left, we need to make the most of it,” he says, and you wished he knew that that had been your exact thought for the past twenty days.

That night, everything goes much slower than it usually does. You take your sweet time taking the clothes off of each other, reveling in discovering the smooth skin underneath the fabric as if you hadn’t seen it dozens of times by now. You find all of his moles and kiss them one by one, and he takes a full minute kissing down from your lips to your core. His thrusts are slow but deep, and your lips don’t leave the other’s the whole time.

-

Ten hours left with Sunghoon. You wake up the next morning when the sunlight the thin walls of the tent are unable to keep away gets too bright for your eyes’ liking. The warmth of this late August night has made you two drift apart while you slept, but you quickly find his body again and you wrap your arms around him, nuzzling your nose into the crook of his neck. He smells like sleep and like himself, which is comforting.

He calls out your name and you lift your head to look at him. When he doesn’t turn his head as well and only gives you his chin and jawline to look at, you know he’s about to say something important. Something he doesn’t dare to say while looking in your eyes. 

Your mind goes back to all the times you’ve laid down next to each other and you hope that those will be what you see whenever you think of Sunghoon in the future. The sun not quite ready to call it a day, a slight breeze picking up, the hay a semi-comfortable mattress that sometimes poked you at the back of your neck and arms. Sunghoon right next to you. You were always happy then, hoping you wouldn’t regret anything later. You wouldn’t have known what to do to prevent that anyway.

All you know is you don't want your memory of Sunghoon to be tainted by this moment right now, this moment in which he avoids your gaze and your heart feels heavy because you’re leaving soon and you won’t get to have him in your embrace like this. You want to be happy when you think of him; you don’t want to feel his absence.

“Yeah?” you answer. He still doesn’t look at you, and you get a bit nervous.

He sighs a deep breath like you’ve never seen him do before. “Is it okay if I say something a bit selfish?”

You love him so much. You realize that maybe that’s what you’ll end up regretting. “Go ahead.”

“I wish you didn’t have to leave,” he says, and you almost laugh out of relief.

“That’s not selfish, Hoon. I don’t want to leave, either.” You reach for his hand and he lets you take it, your fingers intertwining immediately as if made to hold each other. To hold onto each other. He still doesn’t look at you, and you know there’s something more there.

“It’s selfish because I’m scared I’ll resent you for leaving,” he says, voice a whisper. 

Ah. There it is.

You squeeze his hand, wordlessly asking him to go on. He takes another breath, a shakier one this time, and he chuckles at the tears he feels pooling in his eyes. “You showed up here out of nowhere and you made me so, so happy. You listened to me and got me to open up, which I usually hate doing. You told me that I was good, that you were proud of me. And now you’re leaving and no one will tell me those things anymore.” The first crack in your heart happens when you hear his voice quiver at the end of his sentence.

“You don’t need me to tell you those things. You know them now, and you have yourself,” you try to reassure him.

The second crack happens when he finally turns to look at you, lips trembling and eyes full of tears. “But I want you to tell me those things.” It takes everything in you to not burst into tears, but you want to be strong for him. For the both of you.

“I can still tell you those things. Phones exist, you know.” A small smile appears on your lips as you try to alleviate the tension. Sunghoon’s eyebrows crease and he pouts his lips; you can tell he doesn’t want to laugh in this moment, but the nudge you give him and your smile make his facade break.

You laugh as he whines, telling you this is a serious moment and to not make him laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you say between chuckles and you wrap your arms around him, bringing him to lay his head on your chest. You kiss the top of his head and graze your fingers through his hair. “Laughing is all I can do to stop myself from crying, baby,” you whisper. When you feel a tear roll down your cheek, you add, “And it’s not even working that well.”

Sunghoon buries his face deeper between your breasts and sobs. No more, no less, he sobs, loud, choked sobs that make his whole body shake against yours, and you hold him as tight as you can so that they don’t break him in two. “I’m gonna miss you so much,” he manages to say, and that’s when the third and final crack happens and your heart shatters. It breaks into a million tiny pieces that fall all over your body; some of them make their way to your throat while others travel to the tips of your fingers and others lodge themselves behind your knees or in the pits of your stomach. Your heart breaks into sharp pieces and you feel them piercing under your skin everywhere. You feel like you’re gonna throw up.

You and Sunghoon aren’t even technically dating. You’ve known each for two months. You live far, but not halfway across the world; you can see each other again. You will see each other again. It’s not supposed to hurt that much, yet it hurts even more than that. 

“I know, baby, I know,” you whisper into his hair. “I’ll miss you so much too. But we’ll see each other again, right? Paris isn’t that far away.”

His sobs calm down and you hear him sniffle as he catches his breath. “Paris isn’t far away, but we’ll be worlds apart. You’re going to study and become a doctor, and I’ll stay here. You know what medical school is like, you’re going to be flooded with work for at least four more years. I can’t expect you to stay in touch all the time.”

“Well, it doesn’t need to be all the time, does it? I’d annoy you if it was.”

“You could never annoy me,” he says, and it makes you laugh. He’d never have said this two months ago.

“Plus, I’ll still get time off. I can come back next summer.”

He raises his head to look at you and you can see all the hope and sadness in his puffy eyes. You want to kiss away the tear stains on his cheeks. You want to right everything wrong just to see him smile again. “Next summer?” he echoes in a small voice.

“Next summer,” you promise, a smile you hope is comforting on your lips.

-

Next summer doesn’t work out. The one after that either. Your internship is going swimmingly, and so is his assistantship, and you simply don’t have the time to make a trip all the way down there. A part of you is also worried that if you see him again, you won’t have the force to leave.

Those years you don’t see him, you’re reminded of the ten days you were apart during that summer, and how you’d felt like he’d kept a small piece of your heart with him, because it still feels that way. There’s something that’s keeping you tethered to that summer, something that the strongest scissors or the sharpest knife in the world couldn’t break.

For a short period of time, he was all you needed. But reality quickly seeped back in, and now you needed good grades and then a good job, a decent flat, a decent income. You didn’t need anyone like you needed him, but you still wanted them because even if they weren’t as pretty, or as patient, or as kind as your Sunghoon, they were still good, and sometimes that was all you could ask for. You were always sorry that you couldn’t give them your whole heart, because a piece of it had stayed in the south of France and you didn’t have the courage to march down there and demand it back. Selfishly, you hoped you also kept a piece of Sunghoon’s heart in yours.

You did call once in a while, but those calls made both of you more sad than happy, and after a couple years the calls were so spaced out that they only happened on birthdays and special events. The next time you see him, it’s five years later, at your grandmother’s funeral. You can only stay for three nights and you spend most of your time there with relatives, celebrating your grandmother’s life, so you don’t see him much. When you do, you get to catch up for a few hours. He’s almost done with vet school and he’s specialized in equine studies. He’s an intern at the horse vet in Laroque which means he gets to stay in the center and help his parents out. Yeji is on her way to becoming one of the best in the country, he adds with a proud smile. You’re finishing up your last years as an intern in a Paris hospital, but you haven’t changed your mind about becoming a general practitioner, which you need just a few more years of experience for. You don’t miss how his face falls slightly when you tell him you have a boyfriend and that you’re thinking of getting engaged to him. He tells you he’s happy for you with the saddest eyes. The hug he gives you when you have to leave brings back so many feelings and memories, and even after all these years there’s nothing more that you want to do than stay in his arms and never move again.

You break up with your boyfriend as soon as you get home.

On a random Thursday, you’re done with your decade-long studies, and you’re free to go out into the world, a medical diploma in hand. You get a job in a cabinet owned by a friend of your parents, and you like the job, but you know you’re just passing the time until the opportunity you’ve been waiting for comes around.

Every week, you check whether a spot opens up for a general practitioner in the small town of Laroque-des-Albères. It doesn’t for about eighteen months, until suddenly it does, and in a week you’re packing your bags and taking that trip you took twelve years ago.

Sunghoon doesn’t even know. He could be married with a wife and three kids, for all you know, and it’s foolish but you hope he’s been waiting for you. He’s just finishing up a health check on some of the older horses when you get out of your car, eyes finding him immediately. From the other side of the courtyard, he smiles at you, and it’s like the summer you first fell in love all over again.

permanent taglist: @ozymandia-s @bbujiikseu @sd211 @lalalalawon @sunghoonmybeloved @w3bqrl

© asahicore on tumblr, 2023. please do not repost, plagiarize or translate my works. feedback and reblogs are always appreciated!

[greenduvet]

flowers she gave him pt. 1

A/N: Hi loves!! So excited to finally share this story that has been brewing in my head for what feels like forever. I haven’t posted any of my writing publicly for years! So this is a big step for me, and I just couldn’t keep these thoughts to myself any longer. I want to say the biggest thank you to @luiscarrutherss and @galarian-weezing-on-prep for not only reading the early draft but making me feel excited to write and share my story. Also my girlfriend for helping me edit and watching succession. This will be a friends to lovers slow burn, so if that’s your jam like mine stick around! Anyways, enjoy mwah!

The floor was silent. Most people had gone home hours ago, the lights off in most offices. It was always so odd this time of night — looking out over all the different worlds happening just below, life continued on so vividly yet it felt so stiff and halted here.

It wasn’t the plan to have been here this late. Really he should have picked you up hours ago, the dinner reservation that had been made earlier this week now way past check in.

The reservation was Roman’s idea. Maybe a poor attempt at an apology, the only way a Roy knew how to apologize — dance around it yet never letting it fully resolve. You were used to it by now, a lifetime of Roman had made you well familiar. Yet this time felt different. Roman for once in his life was being distant, independent. He would blame it on work, family, stress, but you knew him better than that.

Tearing your eyes from the window, you look at your phone. Still nothing from Roman, not even a heads up that he would be an hour late to the aforementioned reservation. The thought of sending another ignored text filled you with a sense of irritation. Why wait here when you could see him face to face?

Without a second thought you haphazardly throw your things into your bag, muttering softly to yourself. The lights of your borderline clinical office flick off as you shut the door.

The way to Romans office was nearly tattooed in your brain from years of walking back and forth. Though your office was just down the hall, tonight it felt like a dreadful journey into unfamiliar territory. This wasn't how the night was supposed to go.

Turning the corner you could see him through the thick glass walls. He was staring at his computer, full attention to whatever was on the screen. You swear you had never seen him work so hard in his life… or at least pretend to work this hard. With a soft sigh, you walk into the office and stop in front of his desk, his eyes not once glancing from the screen.

“Late night?” The tone of your voice is dry, maybe a bit sarcastic. You weren’t used to this Roman, the detached, focused type. He had always been clingy, willing to throw his work down as soon as you had walked in.

Even standing directly in front of him, his eyes still never move from the screen. Moving his free hand from the desk to run through his already tousled hair, he hums softly, not bothering to give a full response.

Another sigh leaves your mouth and you turn to take a seat on the piece of foam covered in velvet they called a couch, there more for decor than actual comfort.

~~~

While your back is turned, Roman’s eyes glance quickly to you. The perfect image of a long day, he watched as you slowly dropped your bag without a thought. The whole day he had fought the urge to text you and watched the minutes tick past the planned reservation. He didn’t understand why he was doing this, pushing you away and trying to hurt you. Yet he felt like he was the only one hurting here.

As quick as his eyes lingered on you they were back on the screen, looking at the same report sheet he had been rereading for over an hour now. The sight of you settling on the couch out of the corner of his eye made his brows furrow softly. Why was he doing this again?

“Uh, ya know, Dad had me do some stuff.” He mumbles softly in response, his voice high in octave and almost tense. God, he didn’t even believe himself. He rips the hand in his hair down and begins to rapidly type something on the computer, trying his best to sell his stupid ‘busy’ act. You weren’t buying it, but it was unspoken that you and Roman never really did feelings — maybe that's why you were still so close.

~~~

Sighing, you pull your phone out and slip off the uncomfortable shoes you were wearing. It seems like Roman won’t be finished anytime soon, so neither will you.

The two of you work in a tense but comfortable silence, you clearing old emails and roman rapidly slamming keys. It was routine, though it didn’t keep you from noticing that what was once so familiar was now slowly changing. The silence still comfortable, yet more deafening than before.

“We had a reservation for tonight, did you forget?” Your voice breaks the silence, addressing the elephant in the room. Panning your view to roman, you can tell the question makes him squirm. The vein on his forehead bulged, his eyes widening ever so slightly at the screen.

You wait to hear some poor excuse, something around how it wasn’t his fault or to fuck off… but it never comes. Roman just continues to slam on the keys, the discomfort only growing on his face.

Sitting up, you nearly roll your eyes for what feels like the hundredth time of the night. You didn’t have time to waste sitting twiddling your thumbs to expect a coherent response from Roman when he obviously wasn't interested in giving you one. Slipping on your tight shoes, you grab your bag and rise wordlessly.

You look at Roman, hoping for something. For him to look at you, acknowledge that you were here for him. His eyes remained glued to the screen, though it seems like there is a deeply rooted panic there. 5...10…30 seconds go by and he does nothing.

The voice in your head repeating a mantra of fuck this over and over finally wins, and you turn to the door to leave. Though it hurt, you were tired of this back and forth. That, and your bed sounded much more appealing than the stone couch.

~~~

The second you leave Romans office, his eyes tear from the screen to your disappearing figure. The feeling of panic that had been bubbling in his chest all week started to explode into a deeper fear — you were walking away. He knew he deserved it, but still — what the fuck? Part of him thinks to leave you be and ignore your texts again, but his heart is screaming at him to follow you, chase after you and stop pushing you away like he had been for weeks.

He rises from his desk, leaving his computer unlocked and hastily makes it over to where you’d gone off to.

~~~

It feels like the elevator is taking forever on purpose. Maybe to taunt you for waiting for Roman, or maybe because deep down you had hoped he would come after you. Still, you waited for the doors to open so you could forget about today and the weird feeling in your chest at your best friend ignoring you. Why did it feel like you might actually lose him this time? Roman had seen you through your worst, and you’d seen him through his. But this dynamic was new, and didn’t feel like something you could recover from.

Finally, the high pitched ding breaks you from your thoughts, the doors sliding open to the luxury elevator awaiting you. Stepping in, you scan your badge and wait to be taken to ground level once again. Wine sounded good tonight, lots of it.

The doors begin to close, but before they can shut a hand is shoved between them, forcing them to open. Roman. He was there, face slightly flushed. It was funny, because Roman had never been the one to chase after you originally.

~~~

The sun felt hot – almost scorching. It was the end of June and finally it was starting to feel like summer in the hamptons. The backyard seemed to stretch on forever and was decked in long tables covered in lavish meals. This was a yearly event Logan held for his “partners” and their families — It was for the people who knew where the bodies were hidden. The whole ‘get away’ was to keep them close.

Though the event was mostly filled with adults, a few children were scattered around. A boy almost in his older teens, one a few years younger doing his best to fit in with the adults. An even younger boy with messy hair and big eyes, a young girl with fiery red hair, and lastly another girl who didn’t really fit in with the others. Yet that didn’t stop her from trying.

“Roman! Look at this – it's a worm!” You held out the stick with a worm dangling from it, the soft blue dress hanging on your tiny frame most definitely ruined. The wide grin on your face only grew as Romans eyes widened in disgust as he turned in the opposite direction. You would only start to chase after him again in response, as you had all afternoon.

This was a game between just you and Roman — you bugged, poked, nagged, and in response he would run away, gag, and ignore. For some reason your tiny brain just never got the memo that he couldn’t stand you. Things were easier back then. Innocent.

The sound of a loud bell stops you in your steps, Roman halting ahead of you. Dinner time. Placing the worm gently back to the ground you follow the children you came to know as the Roys.

The feeling of eyes on you from your parents and other bodies burnt like fire on your skin as you approached the dinner table. You hadn’t meant to dirty the dress, but running through the vast yard with the people you called “friends” had made you forget — forget that this was a performance, and that you needed to set a good example so that your family could stand out. Your mother would have words to say about this later.

Each child slid into their assigned seat at their own table away from the adult conversations happening at the other, longer table. You couldn’t help but feel a little relieved — you didn’t fully understand that whole world yet at the ripe age of 5, but you knew enough to be bored. Shiv felt the same way you did, her face more relaxed now than it had been at the sound of the ringing bell.

Roman’s seat was the one next to yours, and it was made obvious by the soft groan that left his mouth when he saw the tag of his name next to yours. Dramatically, he pulled his chair from the table, each action over dramatized and nearly throwing his body into the seat. Though the sour look didn't last long on his face as his eyes panned over to you and your dirty blue dress.

“Mommy and Daddy won’t be very happy with that, now will they?” The sour look fades from his face, a devilish grin replacing it. His tone is teasing and rude. It wasn’t anything new with Roman, though. The only attention he spared to give you was the more unpleasant kind. But it didn’t stop your obsession with trying to break him down and play with you.

You return his comment with a pout and look away from him, your hands finding themselves busy undoing the neatly folded table napkin at your place setting. Gently your fingers pull it apart, corner by corner. Finally you place it gently on your lap, your head high as you reply. “It was an accident. Maybe if you played nice, I wouldn't be messy.”

Roman was almost surprised with the response he was met with, a little smirk filled his lips. He couldn’t help but feel put in his place. He nodded to himself, taking the napkin and ripping the cloth out of its fold. Vastly different from the way you had done it with so much meaning. Maybe you weren’t as annoying as Roman thought.

The dinner was pretty tame. The children made soft conversation about various topics — the summer vacations they had planned, the extracurriculars, the movies they wanted to see. While the adults stuck to business conversation, how it always was and would be. It felt nice though, for once being around other children who somewhat understood your lifestyle. That, and it was a lot better than the company of your au pair.

After dinner, you find yourself with Shiv in the garden playing a game of fairies while running around the well maintained garden of roses. The sound of your feet against the gravel and shared giggles is all that can be heard — a pure moment of childhood innocence. Your dress slowly changed into one more brown than blue, Shiv’s own dress dirtying as well. It didn’t matter though, because for once you were just girls playing.

Logan’s booming voice rips you and Shiv from the moment. You can’t make out anything he is saying, but the both of you know it can't be good. You look to Shiv but her eyes are already on your face, wide and crystal blue. Then you hear it clear as day, the only word that mattered. Roman.

Looking around, you find a flower from one of the many bushes and pluck it gently, making sure to not damage any petals. You didn’t know Roman well yet but you knew well enough that this was normal. The sound of Logan's booming voice most times directed at him, as he seemed to always be the easiest target. Though, there was something about this time that felt worse than the others.

Without a second thought you run off, away from Shiv and the flower garden, carefully cradling the small white flower in your palm. The soft sound of sniffling guiding where to go, eventually leading you to the side of the oversized house.

There he was — sitting on the floor, knees to his chest, and a hand holding his cheek in pain. The spitting image of a kicked puppy.

This was worse than the other times.

Wordlessly you sit next to Roman, eyes not daring to look at him, but glued to the wall with ivy overgrowing. Before Roman can protest or run away, you bring the small white flower into view. A smile fills your lips before placing the flower onto his knee with all the care in the world.

That was the moment everything changed.

~~~

The elevator doors open fully and Roman steps into it with you. Your name falls from his lips as his hands comb through his hair for the umpteenth time that night. “Look– Fuck. Let’s just grab dinner, okay? There’s gotta be someplace still open and half edible around the block.”

You can tell he is trying his best to contain his expression and stay in control of the moment, but he's failing. Miserably.

His hazel eyes watery and nearly pleading, begging you to look at him and forgive him for being a total ass.

Looking him up and down, you hesitate. Maybe to make him sweat or to make him feel how you did all day, you weren’t sure.

“Wherever we go, I want hashbrowns.” You tear your eyes away from roman and click the button that would take you to the lobby. Immediately there is air in the elevator again, Roman’s pleading eyes vanishing. He always seemed to get his way with you.

[rekino2114]

Hmm, how about Asa mitaka being asked out on a date by one of her male classmates. And she overprepares like she did with Denji, though this time it goes better cause the Reader is an airhead that marches to the beat of his own drum, so he ends up dragging Asa to multiple different places and she ends up having fun.

First date with asa mitaka

Pairing:asa mitaka x male reader

A/n:I decided to do this in a non devil au cause my girl needs a break (sidenote but your relationship in this is literally the definition of black cat/golden retriever love. Just something I noticed)

I didn't realize i wrote this much until I reread it to color it but that should tell you how much I love asa and want her to be happy

Asa is an anxious person in general, especially in social situation and especially when it comes to romance. She never had a boyfriend and never really thought about having one, and she's very clueless to love as a result, so when one of her classmates (who she admittedly had a crush on too) asked her out on a date she freaked out incredibly hard.

Literally, every minor thing became a concern for her. What would she wear? Should she put makeup on? How much? Should she plan the date or leave that to you? Should she try flirting with you? (She quickly dismissed the last idea as she had no idea how to flirt, and it would make things awkward very fast)

She eventually figured out what she was gonna do and went to where she was supposed to meet you, which was a street near school. When she was there and didn't see you, her anxiety kicked in very fast. It felt like everyone was staring at her. Did you stand her up? This was probably all a prank, and she should have never accepted. After all, who would love someone like her? She was ready to go home and cry herself to sleep when a masculine voice interrupted her thoughts

"Asa! You came"

You quickly tackled her into a hug making the black haired girl blush intensely

"Y-Yeah obviously.....to be honest I thought you were gonna stood me up"

"Why would you think that? That's so rude I would never do that let alone to such a pretty girl"

Asa's cheeks basically caught on fire the moment she heard that and her brain struggled to think of a response

"T-thanks y-you look......h-handsome too"

"Aww thanks ok let's go now, we have a full day ahead of us, I promise you'll have a lot of fun"

"O-ok"

As soon asa answered, you held her hand and started dragging her around, which made her blush even more if that was possible

After a while, you two arrived where you wanted to go, which was an arcade.

"An arcade?"

"Yeah, you don't like it? I wanted to play some games with you but if you don't want to we can do something else"

"Oh no it's fine"

"Great let's go then"

You walked inside and started running around and looking at everything until you arrived in front of a cabinet and pointed at it

"Look they have DDR come on let's give it a try"

"Oh no I-I don't know how to dance"

"Neither do i, don't worry, you don't need to know how to dance to play, just step on the plates"

Asa started to think: if she said yes, there was the possibility she was gonna embarrass herself, but if she said no, then you would probably think she was boring and wouldn't like her something which she really didn't want to happen

"A-alright, I'll try"

"Great! I know you can do it"

You two started playing with asa actually having fun, the game was dumb but seeing you get so excited over getting a high score made her want to smile too, you eventually finished playing and continued going around

"*gasp* a claw machine! Do you want a plushie?"

"Oh no thanks, those things are a scam anyway"

You put your coin in before she even finished the sentence

"Come on it's fine, what kind of guy would I be to not get you anything, I'm a pro at this anyway"

"Whatever you say"

You spent.....way too much time and way too much money but eventually managed to get a cute plushie of a cat

"Yay!!! Finally"

As you grabbed it and held it to your date you quickly realized something

"O-oh sorry I never asked which plush you wanted.......do you like cats?"

"Yeah actually I love them"

"Oh thank god"

You gave asa the plushie and she spent a bit staring at it happily before turning to you

"If I may ask, why did you get me this in particular?"

"Well you just seem like a cat person, if that makes sense like your whole vibe screams I like cats"

"........is-is that a compliment?"

"Yeah I love cats, they're really fluffy and adorable"

Asa smiled and hugged the plushie tighter

"I agree, they're really cute"

".....you look cute when you smile"

"H-huh?"

"I mean you look cute in general but your smile is extra cute, it makes me happy to see you happy"

The black haired girl felt her heart flutter once more at your words

"T-thank you"

"Don't mention it, now let's go, the date is not over yet you know"

You two went (you dragged her) to a bunch more places to have fun, which asa actually did, which was a surprise to her because she usually felt more comfortable alone but in this instance she genuinely felt happy to have said yes when you asked her out, your positive attitude made her forget all about the worries she had before, she felt like she could just relax and have fun with you.

Eventually evening came and the date ended so you started walking asa to her home

"Ah that was great I had so much fun"

"Yeah me too........thank you"

"No thank you for accepting, I don't know what I would have done if you said no"

"......you cared this much about me?"

"Of course, you're so pretty and cute and fun to hang out with, I had a crush on you for the longest time, denji was pressuring me to ask you out for a while"

"Wow really? I-i just-it's still kinda hard to believe someone can like me like that"

"Don't say that, you're awesome asa and don't let anyone tell you otherwise not even yourself"

Asa felt like crying a bit, you actually loved her.......she had struggled with actually loving herself, the fact that someone else could say that to her with a smile on their face and with nothing but truth made her smile so brightly

"......thank you, thank you so much"

"It's nothing. Do you wanna take a selfie?"

"Hm?"

"I just wanna get something to remember this day. If we do actually become a thing, I would hate to have nothing of the first date with my amazing girlfriend"

"Y-yes alright"

"Great. Say cheeeeseee!"

You pulled out your phone and did a peace sign to the camera while making sure to get asa in the shot too, you saw her smile like she did earlier and you loved it

"This looks good, great smile, I'll keep it, but tell me if you want me to delete it ok? I'd hate for you to be uncomfortable because of me"

"Oh no it's alright"

"Amazing, oh hey isn't this your house?"

"Yeah it is, thanks for accompanying me"

"It's nothing soooooo.... second date when?"

Asa giggled at how enthusiastic you sounded

"I'll text you when and where"

"Great so we are having a second date"

"Of course, like I said, I had a lot of fun and would love to hang out with you again"

"Thanks so much, I'm really glad you think so"

You got close to asa and kissed her cheek which immediately got red, asa put her hand on the place you had kissed before looking back at her date who in the meantime was already walking away but turned back to wave at her

"See you at school tomorrow!"

Asa smiled before waving back at you

"Yeah see you"

[deathbyyoongx]

stuck with you; part 1 — myg

╭ parts: 1, ...

╭ word count: 5.2k

╭ summary: After your best friend Hoseok told you you could stay at his place for two weeks, you couldn’t help but be more than thrilled. A studio in the middle of the city, away from home, and close to every club you loved to go to? It couldn't get much better than that. However, when you heard the news his roommate's plans got canceled, you soon realized you had to spend those two weeks together with none other than Min Yoongi. It wouldn’t have bothered you if you had to spend two weeks together with a hot guy, but unfortunately for you, you already knew Yoongi from high school. 

And he absolutely despises your guts ever since.

╭ pairing: yoongi x brat!reader

╭ genre: smut, just smut, okay maybe a bit off fluff, can't help it

╭ warnings: enemies to lovers, angry/stubborn yoongi, y/n is an aboslute brat but that's the usual in my fanfics, ex-friends from high school, he hates you but you don't really know why, back and forth bickering, drinking, hair pulling, name-calling, hate sex (?), spitting, hickeys, slapping, voyeurism, being stuck with a hot guy that secretly would love to fuck you for two weeks, ...

╭ author's note: I had to put some fluff into it, I couldn't help it. It's the hopeless romantic in me. Also haven't reread it (24/08) I'm tired.

btw, use InteractiveFics for a better reading experience ;)

“Are you sure about this, Hobi? I mean, the man despises me.” Today was the day you would stay over at Hoseok’s shared studio apartment. It was only a few rooms away from a full-on apartment, which you were not complaining about. The plan was, that both Hoseok and his roommate Yoongi would be on vacation, which meant that you had this lovely space all for your own. But of course, fate had other things in store for you when you heard that Yoongi’s plans got canceled. His friend got a bad stomach ache after eating at some shady place downtown, pity. If this news had come to you a few years ago, you would be more than thrilled. Yoongi and you used to be good friends in high school, so the idea of spending two weeks with him wouldn’t be anything to worry about. But ever since college…things changed between the two of you.

“Look, I promised you could stay over and you’ve already adjusted your schedule to it as well, so he’ll just have to get used to it. And besides, it’s not permanent, I’ll be back in two weeks. He’s usually in his room anyways, so he won’t be bothered by you too much.” Hosoek explained, trying his best to reassure you about the sudden change of plans. “Plus, he agreed to it so-”

“Yeah, when he was still planning to go on vacation himself. But none of us expected his plans to be canceled because his friend ate a bad lobster.” You felt bad for the friend, but at least the doctors said it would be alright. But still, now you were in this sticky situation.

“Yeah, that's very unfortunate.” Hoseok said pitifully. “Plus, how bad could it be” That’s when you both heard the sound of keys unlocking the front door, which made you turn your heads at the same time. While Hoseok didn’t change anything in his behavior, you on the other side tried your best to stay cool and not to think too much about it. But god, did this make you nervous. Especially since it has been a while since you’ve seen Yoongi. The last time you saw him, he was rocking that bowl cut, which did look undeniably cute on him, but that was already five years ago. Where did the time go? Now you were both in your early to mid-twenties, so you knew that he wasn’t going to be the same boy from before. So when the front door finally swung open, you were captivated by Yoongi’s change of appearance over the years. Fuck. He was painfully beautiful. He grew his hair out, and the back of it even touched his shoulders. He traited his bowl cut for a middle part, and fuck, did it look good. And even though he was only wearing a hoodie and a pair of jeans, you noticed how broad his shoulders had become. Yoongi briefly looked up, and that’s when he finally noticed your presence. It was of short due because your eyes only met for a second before he looked back down. “Oh, good. I was just planning to leave-” Hoseok quickly spoke to defuse the obvious tension.

“Enjoy your holiday, Hoba.” Yoongi quickly said before locking himself in his room. 

“Very bad, alright.” Hoseok looked at you, almost apologetic that this was the situation you had landed in. “Make the best of it.” Was the last thing Hoseok said before hugging you goodbye. He grabbed his luggage and headed out of the door. You just chuckled to yourself. If this is how Yoongi wanted to be me, let him. You were going to enjoy yourself, whether he liked it or not. 

Day one went by faster than you expected. The best option for you was leaving that grumpy man alone for the first day, letting him slowly accept the situation on his own. You just went to the bar with your friends, enjoying the fact that everything was so near to you now. You still lived with your parents, but you were slowly earning enough money to move out. It was just a matter of time. That’s why Hoseok did you the favor to stay at his place while he’s on vacation. He only suggested it because he knew Yoongi would be away as well, not knowing that his plans were short-due. Besides the fact that out of all people you were staying at their place, it’s the fact his expensive vacation got canceled that made him extra annoyed. Leading to situations like you bumping into each other, saying ‘hi’ to Yoongi, and him completely ignoring your ass. Nice. But today was day two. Another day of playing another game of: will Yoongi finally speak one word to me, or will he act as if I don’t even exist? Let’s find out!

So there you were, sitting on the couch Tuesday morning, eating your honey cereal as you were watching one of your favorite shows. The sound of Yoongi’s door opening up made your ears perk up, making you turn your head to the right to look at his sleepy figure walking towards the kitchen. "Good morning." You greeted, but without any luck of getting a greeting back. You child. “Hope you slept well.” You turned your head back to the television as you listened to Yoongi grabbing something out of the fridge and heading back to his room. “Great talk.” You said in a sarcastic tone, mouth full as you heard his door slam shut again. You knew he was a stubborn little guy, but you weren’t planning on giving up. Maybe he still needed some more time to cope. Yes, that’s obviously the answer.

[10:18] y/n: Joonie

[10:18] y/n: Wanna go on a coffee date with me?

Namjoon was one of your best friends, who is conveniently enough also friends with Yoongi. You could always go to him for advice or just a good time. I bet he knows what to do with Yoongi, right? 

[10:21] Namjoon: of course

[10:21] Namjoon: I’ll pick you up around 12

“I tell you Namjoon, he just fully ignores my ass whenever I’m there. It’s like I’m a ghost.” As soon as you two sat down in the little café down the street and ordered, you started venting your heart out about this whole ordeal. “I’m real right?!” You started poking his cheek, making him scrunch up his nose and telling you to stop. It made you giggle.

“I just think he needs some time…maybe. He really started disliking you ever since college, you know.” Whenever Namjoon talked, he sounded wise. Even though he wasn’t that much older than you, he managed to sound like he had years of experience. “I never really knew why though, you two seemed to be good friends before.”

You took a quick sip from your coffee and quickly regretted it since you burned your tongue. “I know right?! It’s super weird. Besides Yoongi, is Hoseok the only one who knows, but he doesn’t want to tell me.” You sighed out of defeat and a pout formed on your lips. “I don’t remember having a fight or saying something inappropriate to him, so I have no clue what the reason is.” You took a moment to think and recollect your memories, but there wasn’t one that could indicate the reason for Yoongi’s sudden hatred towards you. You graduated high school one year after Yoongi, you went to college, and all of a sudden he stopped replying to your texts and avoided you at all cost.

Namjoon softly smiled as he gently placed his hand on your arm. “I know he’s stubborn, but he can’t ignore you forever. You’ll get through him one way or another.” His words were warm and sincere, making you feel more at ease about the whole situation. “Besides, you’re stubborn too, so I know the only option is for him to talk to you eventually.”

His comment made you laugh, ‘cause you knew it was true. “We’ll see.” You sighed. “I just feel bad for him that he needs to live with someone that he heavily dislikes. I wanna make it up to him, you know? One way or another.”

Namjoon thought for a second, stirring his little silver spoon around his coffee cup. “Maybe Hoseok’s knows what to do? You can always text him, he won’t mind”

A hopeful smile appeared on your face. “You’re right, but enough about me! How have you been? I heard you started writing a new book, that’s exciting!” After college, Namjoon started writing books. His first one wasn’t as successful as he hoped to be, but he had not lost heart, and luckily for him his last release was a hit. It’s kind of impressive how fast he could come up with new ideas. He also had a very poetic way with words, so to you it was just a matter of time until he got recognized.

“It’s going okay. I have a bit of writer's block, but I’ll get through it. And coming out of the house is fortunately one of the key factors of breaking it.” He smiled, his dimples shining through. The sudden buzz of Namjoon’s phone caught the both of you off guard. He fished his phone out of his bag, letting out an annoyed sigh as he read the caller ID. “It’s Jungkook, this is gonna take a while, sorry.”

Of course. Jungkook, your mutual friend, was known to keep himself busy with things that he knew he shouldn’t. You were just wondering in what kind of trouble Jungkook got himself into this time. 

Day two wasn’t as successful either, but you weren’t planning on giving up. Besides, Yoongi and you used to be friends. Weird, right? Yeah, sure, it was high school, but you didn’t expect him to change his demeanor towards you that much. Besides, what could you have done to make him hate you so much? That’s why day three, you decided to ask for some help. And hey, the third time’s a charm, right?

[17:41] y/n: hobi istg this man doesn’t budge

[17:42] Hoseok: It's that bad huh?

[17:42] Hoseok: Maybe ask him to drink with you? I’ve never seen him say no to alcohol

[17:43] y/n: bet

Now you had a plan and all you had to do was wait until he got home. You just had to ask him to have a drink and he will finally be nice to you, easy right? So tonight, you decided to stay home, trying to socialize with Mister Grumpy. You were patiently waiting for him to get home as you were watching TV again. It was already 22:05, so he would arrive any minute now. So hearing the magical sound of the keys turning in the keyhole made you as ready as ever. “Welcome home, you wanna-”

“I don’t know why you keep on trying, but if it wasn’t obvious yet, I’m not interested in talking to you.”

Excuse me?! “Excuse me?” If Yoongi’s first sentence wasn’t enough to make you offended, his cold tone only added to it. Yoongi however, just ignored you again. He took his shoes off, took something from the fridge, and just went to his room again. You just scoffed before you yelled “Look, it’s only for two weeks. Then you’ll have your precious Hobi back.” But the lack of response made you even angrier. “It’s also not my fault your plans got canceled, so no need to be so mean!” You just pouted in your seat, not sure what your next move could be, if you even had that. Should you just ignore the fact that Yoongi was ignoring you? Absolutely not, you still had 11 days left with that bastard. So when day three arrived, you decided on a different approach. 

“Yoongi, can you-“ And with that, he closed the door in your face. Nevermind. You thought if you were more direct, he would finally be less of a jerk, but alas, you were wrong again. The weather seemed to be in your favor, however. It had been raining cats and dogs ever since this morning, meaning you were stuck with one another whether he liked it or not. You planned to stay in the living room for the entire day, so whenever he needed to leave to get something, he had no other choice but to be in the same room as you. But Yoongi wasn’t naive, he knew what you were doing. So this morning he grabbed enough resources to keep himself fueled for the day. The bastard.

But there it was, a sign from above.

It was already close to midnight when all of a sudden you heard a certain man curse every curse word you could imagine in the comfort of his own room. Not only that, but the living room light suddenly shut off, leaving you alone in the darkness with the only light source being the one from your phone screen. But before you could fully comprehend what was happening, Mister Grumpy had finally left his room. “Did you turn the electricity off?!” 

You couldn’t help but scoff at his accusation. “First of all, I don’t even know how to do that. Second of all, how dare you accuse me of such a thing! I’m not that desperate for a man's attention…” You nagged. “The power just cut off. I bet it’s from the storm from outside, but maybe you haven’t noticed it since you locked yourself in your room all day.”

“I have a window in my room you know-“ A loud thunder interrupted Yoongi’s sentence. “Jesus.”

You placed your phone away, looking sheepishly at Yoongi who was wearing an oversized black shirt and gray sweats that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. “I guess you’re stuck with m-” But before you could even finish your sentence, Yoongi was already heading back to his room. Oh no, I don’t think so. You bolted out of your seat and jumped in front of Yoongi’s door, blocking his entrance. “Not so fast!” Even though his annoyed expression was enough for you to move out of his way, this was just a perfect opportunity that you couldn’t let go to waste. “You wanna drink with me?”

Yoongi scoffed at your suggestion, crossing his arms as he spoke to you. “Why would I wanna drink with you?” 

You forced a smile. “Because Hobi says you like drinking and we are gonna be stuck with each other for some time.” You explained. “Besides, because of the weather the internet is cut off. So I need some sort of entertainment.”

“So you only wanna talk to me 'cause you are bored.”

This bitch. “Ugh, stop being such a drama queen. You’re the one who keeps ignoring me.” How dare he imply that you were the reason you guys haven’t properly talked the last four days? “Now sit!” You said in a demanding way, making him well aware you weren’t planning on backing down tonight. Yoongi just did as he was told and placed himself down on the couch reluctantly. Pleased with your accomplishment, you quickly headed to the liquor cabinet, grabbing the first bottle that seemed decent to you. You placed it down on the coffee table, together with some glasses, but by Yoongi’s expression, you could tell he was not pleased.

“You got the wrong one.” He spoke softly.

“What?”

“This is the cheap alcohol Hobi picks for parties and stuff. Wait-“ You and Yoongi switched places, you sitting down on the couch and he headed over to the liquor cabinet. He rummaged through it for a few seconds, quickly swapping the previous bottle with another one. “Here, this is the good bottle.” As Yoongi placed the bottle down, together with himself on the couch, a good distance away from you, you couldn’t help but notice it seemed a lot more expensive than the previous bottle. 

“You ignore me for days, but at least I deserve your expensive liquor.” You say backhanded. It didn’t help the he-hates-my-guts situation, but hey, you couldn’t help it.

He just scoffed as he poured a drink for the both of you. “Need to enjoy a quality drink if I want to tolerate talking to you.” He handed one glass to you. “Here.”

“Ah yes, of course.” That made more sense. You accepted the drink, waiting for him to clink it. “To a lovely night.” You said, forcing a smile again. You noticed he did the same before you clinked glasses, simultaneously taking a sip from your drink.

By the way you scrunched up your face as you took your first sip, Yoongi quickly realized that you usually didn’t drink stuff like this. “Not used to the hard stuff, huh?” He said in a cocky manner.

“Absolutely not.” You said, face full of disgust. “But hey, if it makes you hate me less-”

“I don’t hate you.” Yoongi quickly added, cutting off your sentence. “You just annoy me.”

You just laughed as you took another sip. “I guess that’s something.” The more you drank from it, the better it got. “Why though? We used to be friends in high school, but ever since college you started to act…different.” Yoongi didn’t answer, all he did was shrug his shoulders before he finished his drink in one sip, quickly pouring himself another glass. He was hiding something, but you didn’t know what yet. “Fine, don’t tell me then.”

“The fact that you can’t remember the reason why, makes my annoyance to you even more justified.” Yoongi explained as he was swirling his drink around. “But I guess you do have a weird sense of memory. Like that one time, when you forgot what color rose I gave you, but you seemed to have remembered I cut off the thorns so you wouldn’t prick yourself.” He said slightly annoyed. “It was lavender by the way, but I also don’t think you remembered the meaning behind it.”

“Wait, you remember that?” After all those years, Yoongi still remembered that? It was a very early memory of you two, you were both 15 at the time. It was Valentine's Day at school, and since you knew neither of you would have a valentine, you decided to be each others’. He gave you that lavender rose while you gave him a weird videogame that he was into back in the day. You were slowly sipping that nasty drink Yoongi handed to you as your mind was lost in a sea of nostalgia.

He tried to brush it off, not acting as if it was anything special. “Just a random memory I have.” But he couldn’t. “Or maybe I just treasured our friendship more than you did.” There it was.

You forgot to tell Yoongi you were a lightweight, so the dramatic gasp you let out was partially that dramatic because of the alcohol. “That’s not true! You were one of my closest friends.” An angry pout formed on your face. “But then you started to act like a meanie.”

Yoongi couldn’t help but scoff. “Oh, I was a meanie?! You were the one that started forgetting about me ever since she got into college.” 

“Heh?!” You could feel yourself getting more drunk by the sip. “You were the one who started ignoring my texts!” Yoongi’s lips parted for a second, ready to snap back, before closing them again. He was saying too much. There was a reason for his change of behavior, but his pride was the reason he couldn’t say it. “Yeah, now you don’t know what to say, huh?!”

“Whatever.” Yoongi mumbled as he took another sip of his drink, finishing it as well, making him pour another one. He wasn’t planning on staying sober tonight, especially after exposing his feelings too much.

The alcohol was starting to get to you, because the longer you started at Yoongi, the cuter you found him. You also noticed his cheeks were redder than before, but you weren’t sure if it was out of embarrassment or because of the alcohol. Unlike him, you couldn’t handle your liquor that well, making you say things like “You know, you’d be a lot cuter if you weren’t such a dick to me.”

Yoongi stayed quiet for a second, swirling his drink again as if he were searching through all the possible comebacks to that comment. “I thought assholes were your thing?” He scoffed.

You tilted your head out of confusion, mixed with a pout on your lips. “What makes you say that?” 

“Well, by all the guys you’ve been fucking, I can tell there is a pattern-” 

“Are you slut shaming me, Min Yoongi?!” You gasped, a bit over the top maybe, but still justified. “Never expected that from you, I’ve never been so disappointed.” 

Yoongi’s face turned a pale white, not expecting for this conversation to turn out this way. “No, wait-” You crossed your arms and dramatically turned your head away from him. “That's not how I wanted to come across.” 

That’s when you started to overthink this situation, which made a grin appear on your face, making Yoongi even more concerned. “Wait…so are you being an asshole because you thought that was my type?” His eyes were wide and his lips were tightly pressed against one another. He truly didn’t know what he just got himself into.

“No, not like-”

“Waaait-” You moved a bit closer to Yoongi and words escaped your mouth before your mind could fully understand them. “So, you saw me fucking a bunch of so-called ‘assholes’ and thought, lemme do the same? Didn’t know you actually liked me that much, Yoongi.” You teased.

“I think you’re looking a bit too hard into this-”

“So you were not trying to be my type?”

“Not intentionally, no.”

“What if I said that you are my type though?” 

The words came out casually, but you didn’t realize how impactful those words were to Yoongi. “W-what?” he stuttered.

“And not because you suddenly became a dick to me, just for clarification!” You quickly added, we wouldn’t want any misconceptions. Maybe you shouldn’t have had that second glass, what even was that drink? It sure wasn’t anything like the cheap stuff you got at the bars. You looked up at Yoongi and you could tell the red of his cheeks wasn’t from the alcohol. “Hehe, someone’s flustered.”

Yoongi’s body language had changed, he wasn’t as relaxed as a few minutes before, which was understandable. He was more tense and you could tell he was nervous all of a sudden. “You’re just saying things now.” Was all he could say, almost like a defense, like he couldn’t believe you just said that, let alone mean it.

Your sudden laugh caught him off guard. “Why would I lie about such a thing? You know me better than that.” You looked up at Yoongi, his eyes almost as innocent as a deer. His gaze was fixated on you and even though his mouth was shut thigh, you could tell more than a thousand words were going through his mind right now. “Ah, you’re so cute when you’re embarrassed, Yoongi.“ You leaned in ever closer, surprising him with how little distance there was left between the two of you. 

He couldn’t help but look away, this was just getting a bit too much for him. “You don’t mean that.” He said under his breath.

You pouted again as your eyes were studying Yoongi’s features. The way his black hair fell, the fluttering of his lashes, the rosy color of his cheeks, he really was a work of art. “Maybe I can prove it to you?” Yoongi’s eyes slightly widened at your suggestion, making him turn his head back to you. It painted a smile on your face. “What’s going through your mind right now?” You teased, noticing you piqued his interest.

His breathing got heavier, and you noticed the quick glance he took at your lips before he fixed them back to your eyes. “The same that’s going through yours, I hope.”

A smirk formed on your lips as you looked at his. “Is that so?” Yoongi wanted to say something back, but he couldn’t. “Is that why you’re so nervous all of a sudden?” You moved your hands up to his cheek, slowly caressing it with your fingers. “Because a lot of dirty things are going through my mind right now.” Yoongi seemed to be starstruck, unable to make a move. “You really can’t find your words, huh?” That’s when you noticed…“But your little friend says more than enough.”Your eyes drafted towards the tent in his gray sweats, making you smirk out of satisfaction at the sudden surprise. You moved your hand away from his face, laying them down on his thighs. “Can I?” You asked as you slowly caressed your fingers on his thigh, just inches away from his ever-growing erection. Yoongi took a deep breath before slowly nodding, almost seeming like he was fighting himself to give in. His response made your eyes twinkle, and you moved your hands up to caress his aching bulge. Your eyes were still focused on his’ as your hands were doing it’s own thing. You loved seeing his reaction to you touching him. The look of annoyance slowly faded into pure lust. His breathing got heavier with every caress your hand made, making his dick twitch out of response. Yoongi’s eyes moved down at your lips, almost looking desperate to have them against his’. “If you want to kiss me, then do it.” You teased. You wanted him to give in to his desires. You wanted him to admit it to himself how much he wanted you right now. And oh, did it drive him mad. You could see the hint of frustration in his face, his pride and desires were arguing, but one was obviously the winner since it only took him seconds before he leaned in to kiss you. His lips hesitated a bit to move as they touched yours, but when you were the one to start the motion, he had no choice but to follow along. You felt his hand creep in around your waist, pulling you in closer. A raspy moan left his lips since your hands had found their way underneath his gray sweats. “Nice to hear you haven’t lost your voice.” You whispered teasingly.

“Shut u-fuck.” With circular motions, you spread his precum all over his tip before giving him a hard stroke. “Please, y/n-” You never expected Yoongi to moan your name so desperately, but here you were. The man who had been ignoring you for the last couple of days was now more than desperate for your undivided attention. You couldn’t help but chuckle as you pressed your lips against Yoongi again, the sweet taste of his liquor still lingering. For a brief second, you let go of his twitching dick, leaving the comfort of the couch to sit on the ground, just the right height for easy access. You grabbed Yoongi’s sweats at its hem, dragging it down, making his erection even more visible. You were surprised by his size, making you even more excited to touch him. Saying you never expected to be in this situation would be a lie since you’ve fantasized about it multiple times during your college days. But unfortunately for the two of you, that’s when Yoongi decided to start ignoring you…

Yoongi’s eyes were fully focused on you, admiring the view you had given him. You tucked your hair behind your ear before grabbing his cock by its base, giving it a slow lick from there all the way to the top, without breaking eye contact. You circled your tongue around his tip before fully taking him in, making him let out a long heavy moan, almost sounding like a sigh of relief. Your hand followed the motion of your lips, starting out slow. The sound of you sucking Yoongi off in combination with his heavy breaths filled the room, which for you, was music to your ears. Occasionally, he would let out a small whimper, making you ever so proud of what you were doing. Yoongi’s head was thrown back in his seat, unable to continue looking at you as his hair fell in front of his eyes. He was getting lost in the pleasure, moaning your name under his breath mixed with cuss words. You removed your lips from his cock, making him let out a moan out of reflex. You quickened the pace of your hand as you kissed the inside of his thighs, eyes fully focused on him. “Don’t stop-” Managed to come out of his mouth as his heavy breathing became full of moans, making it clear to you that he was getting closer. You wrapped your lips back around him again, making him let out a raspy moan. “Fuuuck-“ You felt Yoongi’s hand finding the back of your head, grabbing a fistful of your hair, moving your head even further down so he could enjoy the gagging sounds you made. “Just like that.” Like the good girl you were, you went along with the pace Yoongi had set for you, not caring that the tears in your eyes were ruining your mascara. “You’re taking me so well.” You looked back up at Yoongi, noticing he had his eyes back on you. How could your eyes look so innocently up at him as you were absolutely ruining him at the same time? “Where do you want it?” The twinkle in your eye and the lack of response as you continued to suck him off made it clear to him where you wanted it. He threw his head back again and the subtle twitch in his legs made it obvious he was nearly there. “Shit-I’m gonna-fuck-“ You made it hard for him to speak as you increased your speed, making it all harder for him to suppress his orgasm. A raspy groan left Yoongi’s mouth as you felt him filling your mouth with white ribbons of his cum. The feeling of it against the back of your throat made you whimper for a second, but you tried your best to clean it all up. But fuck, was there a lot of it. You tried your best to clean every drop of Yoongi, and when his dick left your mouth, it was already turning limp. You couldn’t help but smirk as you wiped the excess off of the corner of your lips, enjoying the view of Yoongi being absolutely worn out. Yoongi gathered the last of his energy to sit up straight, leaning towards you to kiss you again. “I wanna make you feel good as well.” He whispered in between kisses.

A menacing grin appeared on your face, however. “Hmh, no.” You whispered back before pulling away.

“Wait, what?!” Your answer made Yoongi snap out of his high, not sure why you would refuse his offer.

You stood up from off your knees, feeling them being red from sitting that long. “Maybe if you’re a bit nicer to me the next couple of days, I’ll let you. But for now, no.” You said nonchalantly and full of attitude, even though this didn’t seem to be in your favor, ‘cause shit were you horny. You walked away from the couch and towards Hobi’s room. “Goodnight, Yoongi.”

Yoongi was dumbfounded and confused for a good minute, not sure what just had happened. All he knew was that he wished had made you cum first.

[suqueenaryomen]

Sukuna's wrath & Yuji's Last Memories?

What really disturbs me and makes me a little worried is, when I reread the manga (hoping the translation is correct). So, if I understood correctly, Yuji apparently shows and shares his last thoughts and memories with Sukuna before he dies. Because it looks that way? Because Yuji's sentence where he said, "I thought I just wanted to show or tell you, even if I might be wrong." These sentences made me think. It sounds like he feels he is wrong in the end and later loses to Sukuna?

This means that everyone had the wrong idea about Sukuna all along (since some thought he was actually good or would become a good guy like Kurama or Meruem). Sukuna himself has stated that he has never been interested in anything or needed anyone in his life. This is now clearly evident again, as one cannot have proper conversations with him, negotiate, or reconcile. He seems like a personification of evil, like a sociopath or psychopath if you will, without clear reactions or emotions, which has been observed multiple times with other characters as well. They are masters in acting and manipulation! (The fact that Sukuna gets very angry confirms that you misunderstood and mistaken him). He is bored by these kinds of conversations and even feels disgusted, especially he cannot stand compassion. He does not need it and does not want it. For him, it is an insult! (And holy crap, now he is devilishly wild like a demon).

However, it is also possible that Sukuna will unfortunately be the one to show Yuji love (but well Yuji is the Main Character anyway). The whole conversation about love was something else the whole time. It was never about romance, but always about battle, who is the strongest, their philosophies, their worldviews, friends or even no connections, and who is right or even remains right in the end. Because Sukuna said he understands Yuji and yet he has no interest in it, he finds it disgusting, and to Kashimo he said he also understands love because we are loved because we are strong. (Because there, respect and recognition are gained through fear, power, etc.). But that does not mean that Sukuna will not get a flashback from his past. It is possible, but whether it will be a sad story? remains to be seen. Maybe it could be a sad story but then with this theme as an unwanted child or maybe even something with the theme of a monster? (and that starts as a child, cuz no normal baby eats another baby without any problems or monstrous abilities). Something good or evil can happen. Both are possible. I do not rule anything out! What I also can see is, he really don't like humans. It is definitely a real hate! That's why he eats them...

Also disturbing is that Yuji has just now finally awakened Sukuna's wrath. Perhaps we will see a new monstrous side of Sukuna with this ember of anger, where he uses even more of his abilities. (As Uraume said, he still has many secrets and is moody to reveal everything). I'm just saying, if the translations are correct and Gege has not yet finished his big plans for Sukuna and the whole story, it will get exciting again or even brutal soon.

Oh boy now he’s hella mad (*gritting his teeth*)

[salpho]

Current plans (rambles and ideas) for the DCTL redrawn project

First off, I just came up with that title on the spot and it works super well so I'll stick with that probably pffh. Follow the tag if interested in participating !! Anyways, here's my rambles.

I wanna do some more research on Chris Hastings. Fellow Bendy wiki staff have pointed out that he adapts the books rather than illustrate them, which I didn't realise had any difference beforehand. Basically means directing stuff like backgrounds, setting, etc from my knowledge. They sourced this user that seems to know a thing or two about him and his work, along with getting an early copy of the graphic novel. I'll do proper research and make a seperate post soon for this.

Moving onto the project itself, I've got some jumbled thoughts I'll try and make sense of-

I'll reread DCTL to understand the book properly, all work going foreward from there

Design work will start after this, all characters will have set, universal designs based off of canon, official (such as meatly's word), book descriptions and more, such as racecoding (I'll do justice for Thomas and Norman) and time period. I'll likely be designing them alone, but I may listen to other participant inputs and ideas to make sure they're the best they can be.

This novel will be drawn from scratch !! We won't base or reference anything off of the original graphic novel, we'll only be using the original DCTL book and its word.

Every page will act as a "map part", basically having one artist do an entire page/pages. Some may want to collaborate with others (such as one person doing the backgrounds with the other doing characters) for their pages which is more than welcome.

Newer/less skilled artists are more than welcome to offer to participate, please don't let your skill level or own perception of your art discourage you !! I'd love to give you all a chance.

I may be pinging those who said they'd be happy to participate once I make the call post. Once ready to make that post, I'll be starting a discord server for communication. This will also include a google doc or something similar so we can get full quality pages from everyone rather than compressed images from the app.

The project's novel will begin with foreword. This will include background for why it was started, clearly state it was made as a protest against the original graphic novel, Mike's view of minorities in fiction and will also state it was made because we care and love this series, and want it to do better. It will credit and link to the artist who drew the original and explain why we believe the artist was mistreated and should've had more time and pay. Stuff of that sort.

Every page will have the artist's signatures/@'s in the margins, and the novel will have a glossary of all who participated.

Things may change, we'll see, but these are the rough plans I've got so far. Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas as usual !!

[johnslittlespoon]

So, I've reread TAS about 6 times, maybe. With every read through, the story somehow gets better. Anyway, I gotta know: when Gale chooses the horror movie before their first kiss, did he do it with the intention of scaring John into his arms? I remember that cliché from media growing up. The guy choosing the scary movie so that he can wrap his arms around the pretty girl.

You write Gale really well, and he's doing the whole "we're taking this at your pace" thing. So I want to know if the scary movie was a calculated decision.

Also, thank you SO MUCH for writing this story; it is my current obsession.

okay gonna get into some TAS gale pov asks bc i have a few >:) but SIX TIMES???? i will literally never ever be able to wrap my head around anyone rereading my stuff, it’s so mind boggling and it makes me a little (a lot) teary wtf :’)) <33 that’s actually insane LMAO thank u this is so so sweet 😭💗 ok buckle in bc i had a lot to say oops

tbh i definitely had that cliche in mind while writing it, like as soon as i decided they’d be watching a horror movie, i knew they’d have the cliche ‘hold me i’m scared’ moment, because it would be a good way to ease into the first kiss. however i don’t think it was fully intentional on gale’s end, because really, i think gale would’ve been happy to sit through like a three hour documentary if that’s what john had wanted lol.

so i don’t think he was swaying john one way or another, but he definitely had zero complaints about having an excuse to hold john when he got scared ;) and obv at that point, gale’s not dumb (and john is not subtle lmfao), so gale was probably 99.9% certain john had feelings for him, and he was giving john every opportunity to do something about that, since gale was so stubborn about giving john space to figure things out for himself and make the first move. :)

another rereader i cryyyy <333 thank you, would also run thru a brick wall for u 😭💖 YES gale’s pov very much interests me, i’ve got a whole section for it in what i call my TAS masterdoc lmfaoo. i have a stupid amount of oneshot ideas now in his/other character’s povs that i’d love to get to at some point!

but also hey ouch thanks for hurting my heart <3 😭 i do feel like there were probably a few “oh no” moments for gale after meeting john, like the classic ‘i’m fucked’ realizations, and i think seeing him smile properly for the first time would be one of those. john’s so caught up in his own head half the time that he probably didn’t notice the way gale stopped breathing the first time he was on the receiving end of his sunshine smile :’)

i genuinely think gale’s internal monologue during that moment would just be ‘fuckfuckfuckfuck’ because really, what else can he do but fall head over heels? i’m sooo excited to dig into gale’s pov eventually, to get into how much he wrestled with himself and how he’d told himself never again after losing johnny, and then in walks this gangly, sweet, loud–mouthed college kid, and gale’s never been so happy to have his life turned upside down.

(john and gale actually do have a little bit of a conversation about this in ch11 because i couldn’t resist, but until that’s up, i leave you with the assurance that gale was smitten from day one and just trying to repress it for a multitude of reasons, but then the incident happened where gale saved him from the blind date, and it was all over from that moment on. the urge to protect john and to keep a smile on his face hasn’t left gale since that moment <3)

LOLL. definitely an admonishing “gaaaaale” moment. 

i’ve had so many questions in AO3 comments asking if i’ll write gale’s pov of the conversation he has with marge, and i 100% want to, it’s the first gale pov oneshot (aside from the smut i posted lol) i’m planning on writing for this fic. i’ll try to answer some of those other questions here just to keep them in one place:

i think marge definitely had her suspicions about gale’s feelings for john — she knows gale too well to not know when something’s up, but she also knows that gale comes to her about things on his own time, that she just has to be patient, it’s how he’s always been since they were kids. but there’s no way she wasn’t squinting at gale when she found out john had spent the weekend (multiple times) at his house.

the first time is one thing, because when gale explains that john had gotten wayyy too drunk and seemingly had some situation he didn’t want to go home to, she’d understand gale letting him crash at his. she sees how gale is with john at the beach after that, and it probably gets the wheels turning in her head, but she also knows gale to have a big heart and to be prone to taking strays in, so it could just be written off.

when she finds out that john’s been staying at gale’s every weekend after the incident with his mom, at the very least she had to have asked him who takes the couch just to watch gale squirm, which then confirmed her suspicions lol. after that it’s only a matter of time before gale spills it all to her, and her reaction will eventually be detailed in one of those gale pov oneshots :-) 

[hamsternella]

I always go back to your step brother sukuna fic. I love this trope with him and you did it perfectly. I've reread the scene where the two were in his room together more times than I can count 🥵I was wondering if you plan to do a part 2 sometime? 👀

Hello! First of all, thank you very much. The truth is that I wrote that fanfic a long time ago, but I published it mostly to get the idea out of my head. It was all the product of a fantasy I had; although certainly, at the time, I didn't bother to correct it. I'm sorry if the way it's written is strange or looks ugly. That's why. 😔

As for a second part, several people have already asked me for it. I think I should do a second part. It might take me some time anyway, since I'm finishing other writings—but yes, writing a sequel is a great idea. I'm going to put a draft aside to start it soon.

As I answer your question, a couple of ideas keep popping into my head. This thing of continuing old writings is exciting.

SECOND PART IS CONFIRMED, lol I've always wanted to say that

[moonstone-blues]

I know there's no chance of it being Canon but...

I'm so making Cassie Mike's daughter.

I actually thought I was so original with this idea when I came up with it as soon as Cassie said her dad was a technician but apparently a lot of people had the idea.

My Mike differs from Canon anyway so he and Henry survive the FNAF 6 fire.

One of the main things people seem to take issue with is the fact Mike can't reproduce biologically. Other people argue robot daughter or fazgoo or whatever...

Guys, she can be adopted. We don't need crazy FNAF reasons.

In my AU, she's Jeremy Fitzgerald's granddaughter. Cassie's parents died shortly after she was born and Jeremy wouldn't be able to look after her, getting older and needing care himself after the whole... '87 situation.

So Jeremy asks Mike to take her as his own. He's still grandpa Jeremy but he wants her to have a father. And who better than his friend? Someone who would never have biological kids of his own, someone who never planned on dating because of his situation?

Mike is reluctant, he doesn't want to fail her like he did his siblings but Jeremy and Henry manage to convince him.

And he LOVES her.

He does his absolute best, never hurts her, barely raises his voice, makes sure to give her nice things without spoiling her.

Generally, he's a good dad, a million times better than his parents were (well the bar is quite low on that one), he really just wants to be how Henry was to him. But that comes with its own challenges.

Mike works a lot, so Cassie gets quite lonely. She struggles to make friends in school and when she's at home, she's usually playing with her toys by herself, watching TV or rereading Mike's technician manuals.

That's all for now. Want to do some art for this so expect that when I can! And maybe my animatronic OC.

(Ha ha just realised my animatronic oc is called Cassy. Well, Kassy in Security Breach but that's a cool detail.)

[teddypickerry]

Hi! I don't know if you have open requests right now, but i just LOVE your single dad! Jess Mariano. I already love Alice so much. And i wanted to ask if you Please could make Jess (+Alice of course) meet reader. Thank you so much for all of your writing and no pressure to write this if you don't want to.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 !

PART THREE

in the SINGLE DAD SERIES!

pairings — older! jess mariano x fem! reader

word count — 2.3k

summary — in which jess mariano meets a woman in a bar…

a/n — i missed writing this series 😭 anyways this was kinda boring so iM SORRY!! i wasn’t planning on including a love interest but yk. anyways pls request more from this series because i truly love it. also don’t forget that i quite literally did not reread this at all so if it sucks then. well. fuck you.

A BAR REBRANDED FROM A SANITARIUM was an odd place for a bachelorette party, right? You'd think the fact that mental patients died in such an area would affect the liveliness of the now bar. But the darkness was hidden within the red velvet carpeted booths. Ones that looked like they hadn't been changed in decades — so there was a safe chance a serial killer's ass sat with yours decades later.

A group of six women sat around a dimmed booth. Party hats and wild attire matched their adolescence-like cheers. You would have thought they were the patients by their chilling screams. The one girl who watched over the other five, with her arms crossed as she watched her little sister unpack glittery bags with candied undergarments in them. As if that made them any more tasteful...

She watched with a tired expression, not exactly hiding how uninterested the party scene was for her. They'd just spent two and a half hours at a four and a half star restaurant that her sister's soon to be sister-in-law booked them a reservation at. She had to pay for a singular breadstick. She felt like some rich dick who went to the club... much like her grandparents. The group then spent the next hour in a club, before moving next door to the bar. The bar was a sectioned off area that lacked the loud party music and dancing area. But the classy atmosphere only matched the rich-kid her sister was marrying.

Her sister was twenty-one years old marrying her college boyfriend. She couldn't help but be envious. Not because her sister was getting married or that she had a "college sweetheart". But rather the idea that her sister was given a relationship from the universe. A man willing to marry her so badly that they couldn't even wait until graduation. They had to get married mid-semester and spend their spring break as their honeymoon. At some rich family villa of his, which would soon be her sister's... you can see why she lacked excitement yeah? It was selfish. She was the first to recognize it. But her sister had never shown any interest in being wed until she was at least twenty-six. She was one of those people with the plans. The ones who carried around their planners like they'd just solved world peace.

Her sister wasn't making a mistake... or at least she didn't think so. Or it didn't seem so. Her soon to be brother-in-law was a respectful guy. But he lacked any awareness in how the girls had grown up. They didn't have a house filled to the brim with white tiling and gold accent pieces. He didn't understand how she spent her whole high school career working her ass off to help her mom pay for the cost of living of their family. Maybe that was a deal breaker for her... but not her sister.

So, she stand here now twirling her glass as she watches her sister smiley scold her college roommates for gifting her a set of lingerie. Sometimes she wishes she'd gone to college. But this was not one of those times. She'd excused herself to walk over to the bar once more, looking for away to espace from the 'bride babe' headbands.

The bar wasn't exactly crowded but she lacked the room to comfortably move. But the group of men taking up the space, moved swiftly as she approached. Her bodycon dress seemed like a simple motivation. One she was not giving into. "Another, please, thanks." She told the bartender who shot her a nod and added it to his mental list. The group of young men (who acted like they'd never account for that title) slowly filed away as some approached her group. She didn't waste any time leaning against the bar as she waited. Desperately wanting to down a shot.

To her direct right, a man balancing a whiskey sour. He was tilting it as he glanced up at her, noticing her eyes locked on the drink being made. She was drop-dead gorgeous, which caught his attention like no other. He knew he shouldn't even be thinking that when a woman was supposed to be the last thing on his mind. But everything about her caught his attention. Which he'd never been good at comprehending, wanting to seem like such a tough guy. When in reality, he had a heart of surprise.

"Old fashioned?" He asked aloud when he noticed the bartender handing her the drink. Her eyes didn't even dart toward him as she remained where she stood, taking a sip of her drink. "I'm partial with a good bourbon myself," He spoke curiously. As if wondering if she'd take the bait. Her eyes finally caught his as she glanced in his direction, taking a sip of her drink without leaving his eyesight.

Boom.

He watched playfully with deep eye contact, his finger tapping his drink. She placed her drink back down on the counter and remained in the same spot. "Meeting someone?" Jess asked. He didn't want the cliche bar meet like he'd read in so many of his books. But this would be a one-time thing, right? If she even obliged. "More like hiding from someone." She spoke as she leaned onto the counter her gaze adverted to watch the bartender work. Jess didn't take his eyes off of her as he found them roaming, interested in what he was seeing. "Your ex? Bonnie or Clyde?"

She looked back over at him for that one giving him a look. He only watched her with a smirk falling on his lips, he liked her. "The sorority sisters," She matched his energy right back as she tiredly glanced over at the group of girls who hardly noticed her disappearance. They were now loudly laughing over a severely unfunny joke. Something about some girl in their dorm buying her boyfriend $500 pants that were ruined in a day. A humorous idea, lacking a reason for a 360 laughing circle. 

"They aren't no Helen Keller," One two many drinks led to this disastrous joke. Her eyes squint slightly at the poor joke, holding in a laugh. He, too, had to wince. "I am drunk." No, you're not, Jess. You just suck at picking up girls. Probably because your only influence is trapped within book pages.

"Okay be honest, how bad am I doing here?" He asked aloud something he'd typically never do without a few drinks in his system.  She bite down on her bottom lip as she pretended to think. "You're digging yourself a hole, pal. A ditch." He didn't waste any time nodding fairly as he finally lost his eye-sight glancing down at the bar before looking back at her. Jess crossed his arms and leaned onto the counter. She admired his approach which was shown when she took a seat beside him, her knees a few inches away from being pressed against the side of his thigh. Her attention was diverted to a book beside his drink. "On The Road?"

The man glanced down at his choice of literature before looking back over at the girl seemingly impressed. He watched her glance back over at her group which he could already tell was not her scene. "So what are you doing here?" Her lips finally revealed, her eyes still trapped on his while he raised his drink to his mouth. A sip was a dry term for what he took as he finally lowered his beverage revealing a smirk that had fallen on his lips. "Who's your favorite Beatle?" 

The woman's face remained the same, noticing the direct change the man-made in the conversation. "None," She quipped with a straight look like she was inspecting him for something. He was quick to understand she was a bright one. Her face, like her name, and her starry eyes were bright and memorable -- almost so that he had to examine her for flaws. Her cheeks only added to her appeal so he moved his attention to her messy hair which had clearly been an asset he was interested in. So, she was perfect like that. Transcendent if you will. "Everyone has a favorite Beatle, 'ya got Ringo then Le-"

"I don't." She cut him off like her duty. As if she owed him the power of not having to repeat four known names. He licked his lips at this with a firm nod eyes darting across the room. Her thoughts remained on his intentions. He didn't seem like a bastard or anything... his looks overpowered the rights for that. "Y'know, lad, if you just told me what was on your mind we could move on from this insatiable eye contact."

Jess nodded at her words with her head falling on her hand. "My girl... my daughter," He corrected when he realized how his choice of words could further affect their conversation. "Her Mom suddenly came into her life. Now Alice, my daughter, is all over her. When she wasn't there the past fourteen years of her life... so for all of it." He spoke aloud, despite if whether she was listening or not. "The woman's a madman... a hookup when I was seventeen and miserable over a breakup and my Dad. It's unfair." 

The woman listened to every single word intently. Her bad night seemed glorious at this moment as she watched him huff and turn toward her, half expecting her to dart at the mention of his messy situation. "That... sucks. I mean that really fucking sucks." She told him with sincerity ghosting her voice. Her words were something he needed to hear. Jess was finally grateful he opened up for once in his thirty-one years of living. "I'm Y/N by the way... if I know something personal about you, it's only fair you know my name."

"Jess," He responded while sticking out his hand with a thin-lipped smile. She matched his expression while shaking his hand firmly. The two pulled away hesitantly as Jess seemed to spark back into his almost-cocky demeanor. "So, tell me why you're sat over here with me. It's only fair, y'know." He cocked with a tilt of his head. Y/N was quick to nod at his words as she messed with her hair. "You looked really depressing, miserable actually." 

He chuckled at her words as a genuine smile took over his face. "Haven't we learned to not beat around it with one another... tell me. I'm listening." 

"It's dumb." She seriously told him before sighing, knowing he wouldn't give up. "The guy my sister, the one with the candy panties, is marrying is just... not for her. And if I try and tell her she gets pissed off at me. So it's safe to say I'm not exactly in the mardi gras mood here." Y/N looked over at the group once more.  Jess was quick to react despite the lack of emotion shown on his face. His features mute. "She looks like a kid."

"She is," She agreed before sighing. "Well, she's twenty-one. But that's still a baby— I mean come on, when I was twenty-one I would have laughed in my boyfriend's face if he proposed to me. She has her whole life ahead of her and I don't know..." 

"If my daughter came home from college and told me she was engaged I would go Hulk Hogan on the guy's ass." Jess reassured her of her sanity with his words. Somehow two emotion-lacking people shared their pressures in sensibility prose. Which both recognized and swore off by their drinks. Which was no excuse. 

His words were almost unheard as the bachelorette party began to cheer once more, followed by the sound of the club next door. Jess pressed his lips together before letting out a puff of air. "Let's get out of here," He told her... although his words were a prominent question that he was awaiting her answer for. Her drink balanced in her hands at his words with an unreadable expression. "Bold move." 

"Life's too short to be shy," He shrugged with his confident look and his eyes practically undressing her mind. Her eyes remained lost in his for a moment before a dry chuckle escaped her lips. "Trust me, I wanna. But as older sister... I gotta watch out for those annoying girls. Emphasis on annoying.”

"Responsible and admirable," He spoke with a nod while taking the final sip of his drink. "But unnecessary... we'll go somewhere quiet for a bit. I swear you'll be back here in an hour and a half." He was persistent which she easily saw coming. "Yeah? And where's that?" 

"I own a publishing company. We have this bookstore downstairs that's closed... quieter than a goddamn J.K. Rowling lovefest." Jess started continuing to attempt to charm her enough for her to stay as his company. "We can have a coffee and talk nonsense. I can promise you you'll be back here by midnight because I need to get home to my kid by midnight. My Uncle won't stay up any later." 

His demeanor changed while he attempted to convince her. He was full of truth and warmth while he anticipated her next move. Which he so desperately hoped would be spending the rest of the evening with him. "Is the 'I own a company' thing supposed to impress me?" She hinted at with a gentle smirk, one he matched instantly. "You haven't seen anything yet." 

"And why should I come with you?" She was just playing with him now. "First of all, you wanna get the hell outta here. Second of all, you wanna have some fun which I'm willing to give you. It's your game."

"Let's go," She stood up with him quickly following as he threw on his jacket and walked behind her. Jess's arm threw around her, they walked closely together. And it was safe to say... Jess and his parental problems were just an afterthought for about an hour and twenty-nine minutes.

[mrs-theirin]

quilllllll! hi, hello, i simply had to let you know that i've been slowly but surely re-re-rereading the road, the hidden truth, and you, and first of all, gorgeous, beautiful, touching, magnificent, imagine a rainstorm of chefs kisses raining down uponst you <3 but i got curious and had to ask...are there any cut scenes/fun facts/behind the scenes special features you might want to share with the class? 🥺 hehehe i just know /i/ always end up having a bunch of stuff like that once a project's done, and i'd LOVE to hear any juicy tidbits you've got!!! :P (either way, had to remind you how gorgeous this - AND ALL YOUR OTHER WRITING - is!)

we are somehow on the same wavelength as i was rereading it myself when i got this ask.....i'm onto you queenie......

all jokes aside THANK YOU i am always blown away when you compliment my writing, truthfully, it means the absolute world to me and i'm glad you enjoy what i put out. from the bottom of my heart, your support is greatly, greatly appreciated

that being said. well. as far as fun facts go. one fun fact is that this was barely my idea. that's well known at this point i think but you can thank @merrybandofmurderers for originally giving me the idea of a fake dating, roadtrip au. second fun fact is that i winged the HELL out of this fic. 19 years old staying up (apparently, since i checked the outline???) till 5 in the morning trying to get it done. winged the hell out of it. i had a broad idea, but i built the chapters based off of da2 quest names. so like. i had almost nothing planned. i took a da2 quest title i liked and built a modern au plot around it. great idea i think. poor execution LMFAO

no cut scenes or anything due to the rushed and unorganized nature of the original draft. there are things that i cut from the original in my rewrite, but that's because i felt like they weren't serving a real purpose. i also was super excited to change it so it was modern au but with elves and kirkwall and all that stuff. does it make sense orzammar is in new york? no. do i care? also no

i have been intending to write a follow up ever since the ORIGINAL story, but it just hasn't felt right yet. i know i want to do it. and i really hope i will do it. but for now it will stay in my drafts, lovingly titled "trthtay superbowl follow up". between that and the eden/varric wedding at skyhold fic, we could place a bet on which one gets finished first! (psst, it's probably the wedding fic. i've written more for that. unrelated but maybe expect that? soon? ish? don't hold me to that)

anyway, i'd say the biggest thing is that trthtay was my "i can do better" fic, truthfully. i was STUNNED when it got on a screenrant article (before it was even finished too?), i mean, i still have my section printed out in my dresser. it was exciting. but to see so many eyes on something i didn't think was of the quality i'd like it to be was stressful. i wanted to be great. i wanted the thing that so many people saw from me to be groundbreaking. and i really didn't feel like it hit that mark. i don't even think the rewrite hits that mark! there are things that i've written that i feel are better than both. but, there's a bright side to everything, and that's that even what i would consider one of my worse fics was loved. it was loved. it was enjoyed. not only by the author of that article (david caballero, there's nowhere i can message you on that site, but if you ever see this, thank you so so much) but by everyone who decided to click the link and give it a try. by YOU, one of my biggest inspirations and someone whose writing i aspire to match someday. i cannot thank you enough (you, personally, queenie, and you, plural, anyone who's read my writing) for giving me a chance and pushing me to be better

so. anyway. i'm sure you didn't expect your question to get an emotional response, but i think any conversation about trthtay comes back to that. to hope. to gratitude. it truthfully blows my mind that you love it the way you do. thank you thank you thank you. i'm glad i have you in my corner :)

[suffarustuffaru]

What is your opinion on arc 8? For me its such a mess (probably bc tappei improvised arc 7 and 8, they werent in the original plan), i hope it will end soon

i do agree with you there on otto development but im definitelyyy biased *sweats in becoming an otto blog someone save me from the hyperfixation* but in my defense otto arc 8 development was the result of a slow burn since arc 3-4 and otto's various side stories but even without the side stories it feels like the logical conclusion that his arc was leading up to, which feels pretty solid to me for the most part (side eyes otto apologizing to the girl who sent assassins after him.... side eyes tappei's fixation on shipping otto's brothers and then not even elaborating on how that'd even work as dynamics) but. anyway i digress

arc 7-8 ive followed since their conception via reading it chapter by chapter. unfortunately i did also get kinda busy with irl stuff while the middle of arc 7 was happening so i had to do catchup and also my memory is Pretty Bad. if youre wondering how i remember certain lore so well its only bc i have to reread/rewatch/use that info for writing things a lot which is the only reason why i remember it HAH. so. all in all. my memory of arc 7-8 is pretty shaky. i did read the beginnings of arc 7 and 8 via the polished translations though on WCT a while back while the rest was mostly like as each chapter came out.

rn ive started rereading arc 6 and i have several side stories i need to finish (ana camp side stories, the wilhelm-theresia trilogy, and ex 5 are top of my list right now). and then eventually ill get to reading arc 7-8 in their entirety so that i can 1. have more knowledge of it and 2. so i can have more fully formed opinions on it. so definitely i could try answering this question again once im done with that. no idea when that is bc im kinda a slow reader but ill do my best HAH. but i do have some thoughts now!!

(arc 7-8 stuff under cut + a single arc 9 mention)

arc 7-8 i do have a few mixed feelings about, namely louis's arc so far, but im really trusting the process here bc tappeis writing is just like that sometimes. you really need to be patient and definitely while i have things to criticize about louis's arc particularly i do hope that the catharsis of her character kicks in hard later so !! im interested in that.

but generally like. arc 7-8 are pretty solid. as expected of tappei. there were a lot of really really fascinating stuff brought up, a lot of interesting characters that we got to know (and im a really big fan of how much love tappei puts into a lot of the side characters, it really makes the world of rezero fleshed out). subarus arc continues to be interesting even if i personally really dont like that he adopts louis as spica While he looks like hes the exact same age as her, it really broke my immersion a bit.

but anyway yeah like. arc 7-8 was pretty good. like objectively, in my opinion, theres a lot to love, even though personally it did take me a bit to warm up to it in the beginning. i definitely think though that they do feel a bit messy as arcs. with arcs 1-6 they flow really nicely into each other - you can tell they were really planned out and tightly knit. arc 7-8 does something really new - throwing us right into vollachia - which is interesting, but i do think it does feel a bit less planned out, which makes sense bc according to tappei vollachia was a change in his original plans. this isnt bad on its own and we got two giant arcs out of it that were pretty fun. but there are points i feel that you can kinda Tell that it wasnt planned out. the slight reliance on the teleportation throughout arc 7 was like the first thing i noticed haah.

and my big worry after arc 8 is that like. tappei doesnt strike that perfect balance of still keeping vollachia and its cast relevant but like not letting them overshadow other matters that tappei needs to get to before finishing rezero. like i want vollachia to continue to matter after we've spent two really big and complex and busy arcs with vollachia, but i do want the focus to shift a little away from them gradually / bring up vollachia again later.

arc 9 so far in its 2 chapters at the time of me answering this ask has been really really good so far with wrapping up arc 7-8 while building up future conflicts. i do think however that since we spent time with vollachia this now comes with the expectation of branching out into kararagi and gusteko possibly - just bc we already know we're gonna spend a Lot of time in lugunica, as we have for a lot of rezero already, and we've spent a lot of time with vollachia, so narratively there probably needs to be some equality in that we should at least get a glimpse of other nations in the main route. so !! im interested in that possibility too and i think it would fit rezero well.

so yeah thats like. my personal opinion on arc 7-8 and i think reading through the whole entire thing wont change much of my opinions on the above besides me probably falling in love some more with the cast and understanding the story during this time period more deeply (and probably having more thoughts on louis and rem). i do hope that you reconsider your stance on arc 7-8 though anon!!! but if not thats totally fair too.

[rapmonie2047]

Away From Prying Eyes - KTH

pairing: kim taehyung x y/n 

genre: fluff, suggestive

rating: pg-13

notes: taehyung’s photoshoot for that random ass investing app should not look as hot as it does

plot: in order to get away from the crowds, taehyung decides to take y/n to somewhere they won’t be recognized on date night

A sigh leaves your lips as soon as Taehyung parks in front of your shared home. Taehyung looked over at you as he squeezed your hand he had been holding and slowly began to get out of the car. You were just disappointed. 

Taehyung had been busy for the last few weeks working on his album. He was at the studio all day and all night leaving no time for the two of you to be able to spend any kind of time together. Finally, a night opened up where you were both free, and Taehyung was determined to take you on a date. You both got dressed in your best clothes and excitedly headed to a new restaurant that you had been wanting to try. Everything was going great, until word got out that Taehyung was there. The restaurant quickly filled with lots of fans all trying to get a glimpse of BTS V. Due to how fast the situation was escalating, you and Tae decided to end the night early and head home.

The ride home was quiet. Both of you were going over the night’s events in your heads and wishing that things could have turned out a little differently. Taehyung was especially sad. He absolutely loved army and wanted to take every opportunity he could to spend time with them, but he was really looking forward to being able to relax and have one on one time with you. He had been feeling so guilty lately because of how involved he was with his work. There were so many days where all he wanted was to be with you, but there was so much to do, he just couldn’t. 

The two of you got ready and went to bed without saying much else. Taehyung stayed up all night thinking of the perfect way to take you on a date, and after hours of researching, he finally got the perfect idea. The morning came sooner than expected, and Taehyung rushed to get to work as fast as he could. He wanted to finish everything he had to do today early so he could spend the night with you and execute his perfect plan. As he was getting ready, he looked over at you still asleep on the bed. Damn, he loved you so much. He walked over and gently gave you a kiss on the forehead before leaving to work.

Today was your day off, so you just went about the day reading and cleaning up the house. However, at around 3 pm, you received an ominous text message from your boyfriend.

Taetae 🐻: 6:30. dress nice. be ready

Taetae 🐻: i love you

After being confused and rereading the message a few times, you realized that Taehyung was probably going to try to redeem himself after your disaster of a date night last night, but you were wracking your brain trying to figure out where he would take you. He wanted you to dress nice, which implies that you were going somewhere a bit nicer, but all the nice restaurants you knew of were places where Taehyung would get recognized the most. Anyway, you looked at the time and decided to start getting ready for this mysterious date night.

Being the over-thinker that you are, picking something to wear on short notice was stressful to say the least. You eventually settled on a baby blue silk dress, that showed off your body in a classy way, that you paired with some accessories that Taehyung bought you on your one year anniversary. Finishing up your makeup, you heard the front door open and Taehyung’s sweet voicing calling, “Darling, I’m home!”

You walked out of the bedroom and headed to where Taehyung was waiting for you. As soon as he saw you, his jaw dropped. You took his stunned silence as an opportunity to check him out. His outfit was fairly simple, but he looked absolutely incredible. Moments passed before Taehyung cleared his throat and shook his head, “You look absolutely gorgeous, baby.”

“Thanks,” you giggled. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

“Are you ready to go?” He questioned, looking around for anything else that you might need.

“Yep. Let’s go!”

In the car, Taehyung took charge of the music. His playlist consisted of classics from Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Chet Baker, and so on, providing a romantic environment to set you up on your date. Taehyung softly hummed along to each one as you admired his talented voice. Being as happy as you were to be with your boyfriend, you forgot all about the question you were asking earlier. Where the hell are we going? Taehyung chuckled from beside you, surprising you. You didn’t realize that you had asked your question out loud.

“You’ll just have to see when we get there,” he replied, grabbing your hand that was on your lap and kissing it. You blushed and looked away to see the city passing by in the window.

A few more minutes passed, and Taehyung pulled into a parking spot outside of an older, more run down building. Taehyung rushed out of the car and made his way over to open the door for you and helping you out of the car. “M’lady.”

You laughed at his cheesy words. “So what is the place?”

“Shhhh. You’re so impatient,” he smiled. “You’ll see when we get inside.” 

He held his arm out for you to take and led you into the building. As soon as you walk in, you’re greeted by the sound of a jazz band playing the classics you were listening to in the car. You gasped as you looked around. The room was on the smaller side, but there was space for a bar, some tables, and even a dance floor, where many couples had already taken claim of their spots as they swayed to the music. The couples were all on the older side, which meant that they most likely didn’t know who Taehyung was, and they paid no attention to you as Taehyung walked you over to table in the corner.

“Tae, what is this? Everything looks so cool!”

“I stayed up last night, because I felt so guilty about our date, and I found this place. I figured here we would have more privacy while still going out, like a normal couple would.”

“You didn’t have to do this, but thank you so much.”

“Of course, baby. I love you.”

Taehyung kissed your cheek before walking to the bar to get drinks for the two of you, leaving you with a chance to get a better look of the venue you were at. Across from you, at another table, a couple well into their seventies sat. You watched as they spoke to each other and looked at each other a love you want to have with Taehyung in fifty years time. 

You get lost making up stories for the couples around you only to get startled by Taehyung handing you your favorite drink. He sets his drink down and walks to the dance floor, starting to sway and sing along to the music, before reaching his hand out to you. “Come on, darling. Let’s dance.”

You take a sip of your drink before walking out to Taehyung and taking his hand. He takes his hand and puts it around your waist while you move yours around his neck. He starts to sway the both of you, softly singing along with the music into your ear. You close your eyes and listen, happy to be here enjoying your time with your boyfriend. You really needed this.

After some time of dancing, you and Taehyung moved back to your table to talk and reconnect. You talked about your friends, family, and jobs, catching up on all you have missed in the last few weeks. Just as you were in the middle of telling a story about your annoying coworker who messed on a project, Taehyung leaned in and kissed you. This kiss was deep and passionate. You wanted to keep it going, but Taehyung pulled away as quickly as he started it. He looked at you expecting you to continue telling the story, but you were too stunned by the kiss to continue. 

“So what happened to your coworker?”

“What?” you replied, shaking out of your daze.

He recounted the story before you were interrupted to try to get you to pick up where you left off, but your mind was still on the kiss. You wanted to feel it again. You needed to feel it again. You figured now was your chance and leaned in to kiss Taehyung with the same, if not more, passion as before. After a few seconds, Taehyung took the lead in the kiss, swiping his tongue across your bottom lip, getting you to gasp, before his tongue in sync with yours. He then started to rub his hand along the inside of your thigh, barely stopping before he hit the area you wanted him most. He pulled away. Looking around, you see some of the older couples looking your way.

“Tae, maybe we should go somewhere else.”

“Let’s go home, baby.” He got up and led you to the car, starting a long night of showing your love for each other.