#bad cop worse cop and sorry cop | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jnnul · 1 year ago

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ric flair drip

a/n: oh my god. it's finished. i've finally written all of her. i genuinely don't know how to explain the relief i feel right now. it feels strange writing this after writing and healing myself through writing this. i hope that anyone in college who's feeling the way y/n or jaehyun did knows that you can and will grow from it. heartbreak is inevitable and so is growth. quick note: feedback, comments, etc. GREATLY encourage writers! if you felt any sort of way (in a good or bad way!) about this fic, pls leave feedback!

word count: 20k

tags: college au!, frat boy!jaehyun x girlboss!y/n, honestly it just a dissertation about modern love and how people nowadays love each other, there's a lot of soul searching in this one, i poured my heart and soul into this please love her the way i do warnings: mentions of sex, underage drinking, and general college shenanigans! also explicit mentions of oral sex, uhhh foreplay and sex

HONESTLY, NOTHING ABOUT JUNG JAEHYUN IS REMOTELY APPEALING TO YOU. you hate the perfect boy act he puts on, you hate his need to impress everyone and everything, and you really fucking hated his dick.

because if it wasn't for his dick, which you were sure is just as perfect as the rest of his stupid self, you wouldn't be awake at inhumane hours, listening to your friend recount their sexcapades.

"oh my god, and then he did this thing with his tongue and i swear, i'm literally never going to be able to have oral again. he's fucking ruined me. i'm genuinely going to just make every guy i fuck put a jaehyun mask on from now onwards just to recreate it," sia yoo, unfortunately one of your best friends, quips dreamily. she yelps when roseanne park, your roommate and singular other voice of reason, throws a pillow at her.

"you sound like a fucking psycho. as in needs to be checked to a mental facility psycho. as in if i hadn't heard worse when you got with johnny suh, i'd be calling the cops right now psycho," roseanne says and easily ducks when sia winds up to throw the pillow back at her. fatima khan, sia's roommate and mother friend extraordinaire, pouts sympathetically with sia as the two of them turn to you as if you would fall on their side.

"sia, baby, honey, love and light of my life - i'm really sorry but i'm with rosie on this one," you say and sia puts on the most theatrical frown you she possibly could before she cocks her head curiously.

"rosie's got a reason for judging jaehyun since she doesn't even like men all that much. what's your excuse, y/n? you like men, judging by the way you were getting railed to next week by that freshie park seonghwa. you've never gotten dicked down by jaehyun."

you're half-tempted so tell sia that it's not fucking weird that you got with seonghwa, considering the fact that you're only a sophomore yourself but you're even more tempted to remind her that even though you were no stranger to a good time, you never recount your stories.

in fact, the only reason why the other three (well, you suppose rosie would know regardless given that you literally live with her) know about your sex life is because you choose to tell them whenever you felt like it. and usually, it was more than three days after the encounter.

you loved your friends, you really did - and sia was notorious for getting into one night stand rehash sessions at ungodly hours, so this was nothing new - but for some reason, every time jaehyun's name came up in the conversation, your skin would prickle with irritation.

maybe it was the fact that every single person around you seemed to be infatuated with him. or the fact that he was just so effortlessly good at capturing the attention of everyone in the room, no matter where he was.

or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that you knew that if you looked too closely into the deep end, you'd fall right in with no life jacket. and jaehyun was an endless ocean.

+++

maybe you had given jaehyun too much credit, you lament. maybe jung jaehyun's as deep as a fucking kiddie pool. you know you're wrong because you were in the same english literature class and the man had been published because the professor liked his prose so much, she had submitted it to a literary journal.

and they had accepted it.

but as you stare at him across the lecture hall, burning holes into the poor guy's skull, you sure think he's stupid. because there was no way in fresh hell that jung jaehyun was in an introduction to east asia class. as a south korean.

people begin settling into their seats as you mull over the possibility that jaehyun had fucked so much, his brain had fallen out through his dick. from the stories of his more than above average size, it was definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

just as you're send a very judgmental text to fatima, who was supposed to be taking the class with you but had had to switch last minute when one of her major required classes opened up, jaehyun gets out of his seat to stand at the front of the room, next to the professor.

you realize belatedly that the people jaehyun had been so animatedly speaking to were none other than bambam and ten - two people who most definitely were in this class. and of course, they had chosen this class over all the others because oh my god, jung jaehyun is the uta for this class.

in hindsight, it makes sense, given that jaehyun is a east asian studies minor and a stellar fucking student. but it doesn't make the text you were about to send fatima any less humiliating as you realize your attempts to undermine his character were desperately failing. you try to backtrack on your phone, deleting the winding paragraph you were about to send her when your thumb slips, accidentally sending a half written message.

you: jaehyun is fucking

you're sure the statement will be true within the next couple hours (the jung bed at the nct frat never seemed to stay empty for too long - and that was just from orientation week last week) but it felt almost blasphemous that you would send a text so crude to your friend when you insisted that you couldn't stand his guts.

or what lay between them, really.

three gray dots appear on your screen as you half-heartedly listen to your professor drone on about how he went to china, became a changed man, and now taught about the wonders of east asia and its exoticism. his name was paul but the class could refer to him by his 'enlightened name' - lao ma. even jaehyun rolls his eyes behind the professor's back as all of the asian kids in the classroom begin to eye each other warily.

if this class wasn't so easy, you're sure the population would've shrunk to a quarter its size based on the weirdness of the professor on its own. or maybe not, if it meant that people got to stare at jaehyun's gorgeous face for an hour and a half every monday morning.

mommy tima 🤍: honey, i think whatever sia's got going is contagious. mommy tima 🤍: aren't you the one who hates him? mommy tima 🤍: he really lives in your mind rent free, huh.

you scoff under your breath as you type furiously, vaguely registering that you definitely need to check the syllabus for this class later because you have not been listening to a word the professor has said this whole time.

you: first sia's got cooties or a raging std that's what she's got going you: second he's my fucking uta you: as in i am going to be forced to see his face for an entire semester mommy tima 🤍: drop the class then, babe. you: can't this is too good for my gpa & the prof's a freak you: it's a gpa cushion and a circus in one go

you tuck your phone away when you see that jaehyun is coming up the aisle on your side with a packet while the professor is on the other aisle on the other side with the same packet to hand out. jaehyun probably wouldn't care that you had your phone out during lecture (syllabus week was just an excuse for college kids to get drunk during school days anyway) but it was the principle of the thing.

"here you go - oh, it's stuck together," jaehyun says as he stops at where you're sitting. his tongue slips out as he thumbs at the packet to give you one instead of three and suddenly, your treacherous brain takes you back to sia's rambling the night before.

and then he did this thing with his tongue...

you're shaken back to reality when you realize that you're staring at a blank wall, with a pink packet in front of you, and jaehyun has already reached the back of the classroom.

fuck. shit. bitch.

jaehyun had seen you stare at his stupidly handsome face and then some. he was your ta. oh my god, what if he docked points on some test because he thought you were the creepy stalker type.

damn you, sia yoo, you curse in your head.

+++

"damn you, sia yoo!" you yell over the blaring music that's so loud, you can feel the vibrations in your skull. there absolutely no reason you should be caught dead in a frat on the friday of syllabus week but sia had made it her mission to make sure you had a going out rate of at least 80% this school year, given that you were prone to trying to skip out on weekends out last year.

not that you didn't like going out - you actually really liked going out with your friends. you just took a little more inertia to get to the energy levels of actually going on.

sia just nods at you lazily as she bounces to the beat of another shitty remix of 'what you came for' by calvin harris and rihanna. you never understood why frats always found the worst remixes of classic party bangers but anything flew after you had enough alcohol in your system so the music would recede to the depths of your mind in a couple cups of whatever the fuck this drink was.

especially since you were a full sunshine drunk; whenever you were drunk, you became the life of the party and would always be found in the center of the room, regardless of the music. sia was a flirty drunk and you really couldn't remember the last time sia actually spent the entire weekend in her own bed. props to her stamina, honestly.

rosie was a mix of you and sia in that she would become so much more bubbly but the second she found someone she wanted to spend the night with, she went after them with no hesitation.

fatima usually played the role of sober mommy when you all went out. although she was never one to miss out on a good time, when she did get drunk, she much preferred it to be within the confines of the four walls that she shared with her roommate and the people she trusted the most - you, rosie, and sia.

which is why when rosie abandons you for her on again, off again fuck buddy (miyeon cho) and her fuck buddy (yugyeom kim), you're not surprised at all.

"that's going to be an interesting story in the morning," you say, nodding to where rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom are all heading upstairs together. fatima nudges you to look at sia, where she's pressed up against none other than johnny suh (or the love of her life, prior to jaehyun, apparently).

"that's going to be an interesting story in the afternoon," fatima counters. you turn to her with furrowed eyebrows, as if to question the timing. "i don't think i've ever heard of a girl leaving johnny's bed before 3 o'clock the next afternoon."

your jaw hangs in shock as you watch your friend wrap her arms around the tall man's neck, whispering something into his ear when he bends down to kiss her collarbone.

"are all of the nct boys secretly porn stars or something? how can they all be that good in bed?" you gape, waving at sia when she turns around to wink at you and fatima as her and johnny are bustling out of the door, undoubtedly to the nct frat house.

"they test us as part of rushing," says a low, velvety voice behind you. a hot rush of shame runs up your spine for two reasons: a) you were able to recognize jung jaehyun just from his voice and b) he heard you gossiping about his frat brothers' sexual prowess.

you exchange a look with fatima before whipping around to meet jaehyun eye to eye. he's wearing a plain black t-shirt and lightwash distressed jeans but he might as well be wearing designer trash bags for all you care. what you do care about, unfortunately, is the almost slutty way his v-neck dips to show off the beginnings of the planes of his chest.

you feel no better than a victorian man and it takes fatima a poorly concealed cough to break you out of your thoughts. fuck, you'd done it again. you really needed to stop getting caught up in jung jaehyun's pretty face. and body. and that stupid smile.

"haha. very funny. sounds like something straight out of a cheesy porno sponsored by viagra or something," you say, rolling your eyes. smooth. very smooth. normally, you like to think that you're proficient in the witty banter department but something about this boy made you almost feel dumb about your comebacks.

jaehyun cocks an eyebrow, and you're distinctly made aware that even with platform sneakers on, jaehyun is a good head taller than you when you have to look upwards to notice the motion. "you seem to be well versed, y/n. you make it a habit to stay up to date?"

you flush at the thinly veiled euphemism at your x-rated movie watching habits before clearing your throat. "i'm more of a fan of practical study, really. i am a scientist, after all."

you're aware that fatima has slipped away from you to talk to another friend, park jeonghwa, and also the fact that you are slowly beginning your descent into drunkenness but you can't seem to bring yourself to find the caution in it all. it's just jaehyun, after all.

jaehyun hums, bringing the solo cup in his hand to his lips to take a swig. "you're a biomedical engineering major, aren't you?"

you balk at that. "wait, wait. you know my name and my major?"

jaehyun nods slowly, seemingly stumbling for a moment before he gains his self-confidence once more. "you don't know mine?"

"you're literally my ta. i know you're an east asian studies minor and your name because you told the class," you say, recovering quickly. it was a really good thing you were a quick thinker because you were lying through your teeth.

you knew jaehyun's name, minor, and even major (computer science) because of his notorious reputation, not because he was your ta. but the last thing you wanted was to give him the satisfaction of asserting his popularity on campus.

"anyway. what was that you were saying about 'practical study'?" jaehyun's eyes twinkle in the dim lighting of the cramped basement you were in and you had a feeling that if you were any more inebriated, you'd be diving headfirst into jung jaehyun's bed as long as he looked at you like that.

but fortunately (unfortunately?) you're sober enough to make mostly intelligent decisions - which just means that you're not going to jump headfirst. maybe feet first but not headfirst.

"wouldn't you like to know," you sing-song, leaning into jaehyun's body enough to smell the mix of woody pine, fresh water, and vodka that seems to emanate from him. jaehyun watches you as you lean over him to grab another solo cup from the assortment that some lower ranked frat brother had been forced into bartending.

you down the entire drink in two swigs, patting away the stray stream of alcohol that had dripped down onto your chest. you don't notice the way jaehyun's eyes follow your hand down its descent to your chest. but you finally feel like your element, and in a moment of sheer idiocy and liquid courage, you enter the growing throng of bodies behind you, beckoning jaehyun to follow you.

you're not 100% sure what you want from him, honestly. you want to have a good time, and you're sure you'll have one with or without him. but something about the way jaehyun follows you like a puppy into the mess of people makes you feel like a zap of electricity has hit your body.

and if you're being completely honest with yourself (as you usually only are with ethanol in your system), you really didn't hate jaehyun. you had no qualms with him as a person, even if you hated the consequences that came with a night with him.

it's when you're in the middle of the crowd, with jaehyun looking at you with those hooded eyes and hands tucked into his pockets when you realize what you want from jaehyun jung.

you want him to desire you the way that his mere presence makes people desire him.

so you do what you do best and just let go. it's ric flair drip by metro boomin that's playing - a song that's definitely not the one to get down to. but the bass fills you up in a way that never hits the same outside of a sweaty frat basement so you can't even bring yourself to care.

"i'm tryna fuck you and your bestie," you sing along with the near hundred people surrounding you. jaehyun is still looking at you with an eyebrow sitting higher and an appraising expression; something that somehow manages to get under your skin.

in a moment of passion, you manage to hook your fingers into one of jaehyun's belt loops, pulling him closer to you. you're aware that you've painted yourself to be jaehyun's next conquest if the way that the girls next to you look upset means anything, but you couldn't care less.

especially when you're this close to the bane of your existence. the song switches to something a little more what you need (under the influence by chris brown) and you look up at jaehyun through your lashes and in that moment, jaehyun knows what you're offering him through your gaze.

a challenge.

+++

jaehyun never really meant to take on the role of nct's resident whore. in fact, jaehyun had been planning on doing the exact opposite when he came to college.

although it was unbelievable now, jaehyun jung had originally just been a very strange, nerdy, and sweet boy. he never got up to much trouble, kept to himself most of the time, and was known for...nothing, really. he was sweet and bubbly but he wasn't exactly running with the popular crowd.

in fact, jaehyun was kinda forgotten all throughout his schooling. it was easy to forget about jaehyun, as though he were some visage in a dream that everyone shared.

it hurt.

so when jaehyun finally hit his growth spurt in senior year, started going to the gym, and his voice no longer cracked every other sentence, he felt like a whole new person. like he was finally the main character in his own life.

it felt so fucking good to look at the same girls who had smiled at him pitifully and have them melting under a single wink. the summer between high school and college had been wild, with more stories than jaehyun could really even care to keep track of.

but when college began, jaehyun was fully intending to return to flying under the radar with his new upgrade in personality, appearance, and wardrobe. with a face like his, however, doing so was about as easy as trying to pass professor yoon's intro to bio class - nearly impossible.

slowly but surely, jaehyun morphed back into the personality he had adopted that summer and surprisingly, it wasn't as foreign as he thought. he was still a good student and wasn't a stranger to having to skip out on hanging out with his friends to study.

but having a new girl in his bed every other day? that was definitely new. a new revelation, but a welcome one nonetheless.

and in that, jaehyun was used to people using all sorts of tactics to get with him. playing hard to get, with coy smiles and flirtatious winks. or the bold ones, who told him straight up that they wanted to spend the night with him. even the downright horrifying ones who tried to pretend like they were blackout drunk in hopes that that would 'attract' him. spoiler alert? it didn't.

jaehyun originally thought you were of the 'hard to get' caliber. the type of girl to say that she wasn't like other girls and that's why he should get with her instead. so initially, when he approached you at the party after seeing you in his class, he was mentally preparing himself for the whole pick me speech.

but it was something about the way you looked at him.

it was like two halves of your mind were battling against each other. on one hand, you looked like you wanted to fax jaehyun straight into the fiery pits of hell with high speed shipping. on the other, it also seemed like you wanted nothing more than to ride him until the sun came up. mixed with a little bit of curiosity, confusion, and downright anger with yourself for all the emotions, you looked like the perfect cocktail of firebrand that jaehyun couldn't help but become intrigued by.

so when you were laughingly talking to your best friend (jaehyun's frat brother kun was half in love with fatima, which meant that jaehyun was more than well acquainted with her) about him and frat brothers, he took it to be the opportunity he needed.

and when you're looking at him like this, daring him to make a move, almost as if to make your mind fall one way or another about drawing a conclusion on him, what is jaehyun to do but to make good on the challenge you've offered?

he watches you for a moment more, trying to commit the memory of what you look like when you're this carefree and happy, before taking the micro-step it takes to get so close he can smell the citrus and apple cider that you seem to always smell like.

"i promise you i can fuck you better than johnny," jaehyun says, a corner of his lips tilted up as your eyes flutter the closer he draws.

"johnny's your 'bestie'?" you say, and jaehyun can tell that the last threads of your resolve are starting to snap by the way that your hand is now pressed against his chest.

"that's what you're curious about right now? the dynamics of the nct frat brothers?" jaehyun asks but he knows that this back and forth is exactly you need right now; the time to decide if you can take the plunge. or if jaehyun's worth your time tonight.

"as i mentioned, i'm a scientist," you say, and even as your voice stays stable, your fingers seem to leave burning trails against jaehyun's skin as they dip and feed into crevices of jaehyun's body that he didn't even know existed.

"hmm," jaehyun manages to eke out when your fingers lace into his hair. he's not sure how you manage to find every single sensitive spot he has but he's fairly impressed by the way you catch his breath hitching as you work your other hand up as well.

"hmm? cat got your tongue, jaehyun?" you say, making sure that jaehyun looks straight into your eyes as you lean impossibly closer. "you know that sia's with johnny right now, right? girls talk - especially with your best friends. which means that if you can't make good on your promise, i will find out."

jaehyun feels like he's sweating like a pig but thankfully, you don't notice, too busy making him sweat. he clears his throat once, and then twice to make sure that his voice doesn't give out.

"that right?" he says, and you roll your eyes, letting go of him and stepping back. you seem to appraise him for a moment (and jaehyun is unnaturally nervous about what you will decide) before grabbing his hand and leading him to the door. you only pause to flag down fatima, who takes one look at your intertwined hands, and waves the two of you away.

jaehyun blushes like a schoolgirl at the way fatima flashes him a catty smile.

"i swear to god, jaehyun, if you're all talk and no game - or if you're gonna sit still and look pretty the whole time - i will literally blue ball you. i don't do pillow princes," you throw over your shoulder as the two of you make your way to the nct frat. jaehyun knows for a fact that the nct frat will not be a quiet place tonight by the number of dresses and pants he sees in the foyer and leading the way up the stairs.

he says nothing, even as you're quite nearly storming up the stairs with a certain level of urgency, almost as though if you were to slow down and think about just exactly what you're doing, you'd turn around and leave right now.

jaehyun definitely can't let that happen.

so the second that he gets you into his bedroom (he had to rock, paper, scissors with doyoung to get the room tonight), he shuts the door and locks it behind him. he turns around to see you looking between the two beds, as if trying to guess which one was jaehyun's.

he mentally pats himself on the back when he sees the fresh sheets on the bed. reaching where you stand in less than a stride, jaehyun turns you so that you're facing his bed, and you squirm to turn to meet his eyes even as his hands are on your waist.

"what is with your hands?" you ask harshly and jaehyun blinks as he looks down.

"what do you mean? they're on your waist," jaehyun says softly, and once again, he's hit with a wave of citrus and apple cider. you simper at him, grabbing his wrist and moving it incriminatingly downwards.

"what am i? a virgin? put them somewhere useful." you whisper the last part and it's as though jaehyun has just woken up.

"you know," jaehyun begins, sliding his other hand downwards to sit comfortably on the curve of your ass. "if i didn't know any better, i'd think you were trying to rile me up. i wonder..."

he doesn't finish his thought, instead pulling you close so that your hips are pressed against his. he can hear the gasp that you're desperately trying to conceal, coughing uselessly to the side. a devilish smirk grows on jaehyun's lips and for the first time in a long time, you're sure you're going to be up all night.

+++

you were, in fact, trying to rile him up. you had heard all the rumors about jaehyun and johnny, about how one night with them was like one night in heaven. hell, you'd had first hand accounts from sia yoo about exactly what it's like to be in bed with either of them - multiple times.

so when jaehyun had fronted with such a cautious attitude when he realized what you wanted, you were almost offended. if you wanted to take control and fuck a man's brains out, you could do that with anyone. why would you fight against your own mind this much to get with him?

but seonghwa park. changkyun im. even kun qian, before you discovered he was head over heels for fatima. jung jaehyun.

these were all people who put you in your place. the way you wanted to be. it just seemed as though jaehyun might've needed a little more persuasion to get there.

so yes, you were riling him up. was that such a crime?

by the way jaehyun's looking at you right now, his breath hot and heavy on your neck and his eyes dark with a feeling that you can't describe but resonates with you on a deeper, more primal level.

"you know, after you got with kun, he wouldn't shut up about it for a week," jaehyun says, pressing kisses down your neck, pausing when he reaches your breastbone. he eyes your corset top with a discerning eye before reaching behind you to pull the lace strings that were precariously holding your top for a week.

"yeah?" you ask, threading your fingers through jaehyun's thick hair as he makes quick work of your top, leaving it pooled on the floor as his lips find your chest as though he couldn't be physically parted from it.

"yeah. even after he met fatima, he said that you were the best he's ever had - that's a big reputation to live up to when you're in nct," jaehyun says, his voice breathy and deep as he walks you backwards so that the back of your knees hit the frame of his bed.

"hmm. what can i say? i know what i want and what i want is usually lots of fun," you say, letting jaehyun unzip your jeans, pulling them down and kicking them off when jaehyun moves too slowly.

"i know. god, after knowing that you and kun were going at it, i swear everyone was jerking off in their room for an hour. even winwin wanted to go for you today. you're an unpredictable woman; no one knows where and when you're going to show up to one of the parties so everyone has to take their chances when they get them," jaehyun says, tugging his shirt off and throwing it somewhere behind him carelessly.

you nearly melt when you see jaehyun's uncovered top, eyeing each and every hard ridge of his body, reaching out to touch him. his chest is almost soothingly warm as your fingers memorize each and every aspect of the planes of his chest, almost worried that they might disappear if you let go.

jaehyun looks at you amusingly as he lets your fingers dance across his body, focusing on tugging your panties off to discard them where he's sure he's going to have to search for them later on.

you pout when you see the difference in clothing but jaehyun just gently pushes you backwards so that your back is against his bed, leaving your pussy exposed in away that makes you feel absolutely mortified. you move to gain some level of privacy back but jaehyun is too fast, gripping onto your thighs incriminatingly as he raises an eyebrow.

"don't think that i'm soft just because i'm being nice to you now, pretty girl. i know you don't like to listen but don't hide from me. i will not let you have any fun if you try to hide from me," jaehyun says, his voice dropping a full octave. you suppress the shiver that runs through your body (and that simultaneously delights jaehyun) as you nod softly.

he seems satisfied by the way your body melts and rewards you for your submission by licking a wet strip up your pussy, one hand snaking up to touch your nipple while the other one keeps your thighs open.

jaehyun is slow at first, exploring each and every hidden crevice of your body but as he feels you get wetter and wetter, he can't seem to stay soft for too long. he continues to press his lips against yours but the moment you try to grind your hips against his lips, he pulls away, his tongue darting out to taste your essence on him.

you almost whine at the loss of his hot mouth on your pussy, and you're embarrassed to realize that in front of jaehyun jung, you are no better than your best friend in falling in love with the way he moves.

"you're not going to cum from my tongue, baby," jaehyun says, practically ripping the belt out from where it was caging his jeans. "especially when i know that your pussy is magic."

"you say that, jaehyun, but you're being so fucking soft. if i didn't know any better, i'd think you're in love with me," you snort, trying to catch your breath. jaehyun freezes from where his boxers are hanging so low on his hips, you can see the muscles in his pelvis tense angrily as he looks at you dangerously.

"my fucking bad for making sure you're wet enough to take me," jaehyun whispers, pulling close to you. his eyes turn even darker than usual and a small spark of excitement ignites in your chest when you realize that you've finally reached it - jaehyun's breaking point.

"sounds like you're scared, jaehyun. you know what? you know why kun was so good? because he wasn't scared. he wasn't scared to fuck me like he was trying to break the bed," you retort, and saying kun's name is when jaehyun finally snaps. he tears his boxers off as he pushes you so that you're further up on his bed.

"y/n, i'm not fucking joking around. if you want me to stop, say it now. just say the word, and i'll pretend like this never happened. because i swear to every god in existence, if you let me, i'll ruin every other man for you," jaehyun says and his knuckles turn white from how hard his clenching his fingers to keep himself from pouncing. the thought is almost cute if you weren't desperate to be fucked into next week.

"if i wanted you to stop, i wouldn't have said kun's name, would i?"

that's all it takes. no sooner do the words leave your mouth, jaehyun's on top of you, every inch of his body fighting to claim yours. he's not sure what it is about being with a bratty girl but every time a girl tries to challenge him, jaehyun can feel his excitement grow as his mind runs wild with ways to prove you wrong.

and with a girl as beautiful and sexy as you? he was going to have the time of his life.

time of his life he does.

+++

when jaehyun wakes up, he's almost happy. almost because he has bruises on his hips from how hard he had pounded into you, a litter of hickeys across his chest, and freshly washed hair from when you had enticed him into taking a shower with you.

inevitably, it led to another hour in the shower that jaehyun had spent having his soul sucked out from his dick, eating you out under the shower, and seeing you cum twice just from his tongue.

if only he had woken up with you still in his bed, jaehyun would've actually been happy.

realistically, jaehyun had no clue what he was expecting. after taking a shower, it had taken you a total of five minutes to fall asleep in his arms, wearing nothing but jaehyun's oversized t-shirt and your panties.

there was no pillowtalk, no heart to hearts, nothing. no discussions of having whatever happened last night happening again. no trying to get to know each other better.

not that you had ever been obligated to do so. if anything, jaehyun was far more obligated to do so, after practically declaring that he had wanted to get with you since last semester - which he had been completely serious about.

but with his reputation, regardless of what he had said last night, jaehyun's almost 100% sure that you would've disappeared by the morning.

he's so caught up in his thoughts that he almost misses the bright pink post-it note on his neatly folded shirt on his desk in the corner of the room.

9.5/10. if you see sia, tell her she was right about your tongue. see you in intro to east asia on monday.

jaehyun's half disappointed and half happy. disappointed because you'd never left your number or anything and happy because at least he knew that you weren't going to completely avoid him whenever you ran into each other next.

he shakes his head as he folds the post-it note and throws it in the trash can next to his desk.

jaehyun jung may not have started college with the intention of becoming the resident fuckboy but he still had a reputation to maintain. he had fucked countless women over his time at sm university and he had no intention of falling for any of them.

he was not about to get soft-hearted or soft-dicked by a girl he was with once.

even if she was really good in bed. like really really good. like good enough to make him think about the other boys she's been with and if they'd made you feel as good as he did.

fuck. her. which jaehyun had already done. which meant that he needed to move onto the next step of the day before his head exploded with all of the implications flying around in his mind about their relation to each other (nonexistent) and if you were thinking about him like he was thinking of you (you weren't).

he pads out of his room, passing doyoung on the way out, who claps him on the back and says, "you finally got with y/n?" jaehyun doesn't know how doyoung knows but it strikes him that neither of you are very subtle people and you had caused quite the scene leaving with him last night.

similar reactions are offered to him by everyone he passes. he's not really sure how many of the boys you've been with but jaehyun can feel his street cred go up by at least a decameter with the way some of these pledges are looking at him.

in fact, everyone is looking at him with a new look of respect in their eyes until he reaches the kitchen, where yoo sia and johnny are sitting, practically eye-fucking.

jaehyun was very used to seeing johnny's friends in the kitchen the next day, neither of them ready to really say goodbye each other yet but for some reason, knowing that sia was your best friend and seeing her with johnny sets jaehyun's stomach into a series of knots that he was sure he was going to have to unravel when he had his head on straight.

"she already left?" sia says, finally breaking her stare from johnny's. jaehyun shrugs, digging around the fridge to see if they had any coffee. they didn't (none that wasn't expired anyway) so he has to settle for a caprisun.

"she had somewhere to be," jaehyun says. he wants to ask sia if it's normal for you to leave that early. it can't be if sia seems surprised that you'd left before the clock struck ten. what did that mean? what does that say about jaehyun? oh god. what if you hated it. what if you hated it so much that you didn't want to spend a second longer with jaehyun.

he cringes as he locks eyes with another shiny eyed pledge (jaehyun thinks his name is jungwoo) and tries to shake his head to clear any and all thoughts of you. he was pussydrunk. that was the only explanation. he just needed to dick down someone else and then he would get over whatever little infatuation thing he had going on.

"really? hmm..." sia says finally. jaehyun turns to see her looking right at him and suddenly, he's transported back to the previous weekend, when sia had been wrapped up in his sheets.

+++

"why did you start fucking around like this?" sia had asked, her chest still heaving from their previous illicit activities as she wraps herself tighter in jaehyun's sheets. jaehyun pauses for a moment as he catches his breath, pulling on his boxers as he thinks. he throws the shirt that sia's grabbing at, still not sure how to piece together his thoughts.

or why he wants to tell sia the truth. maybe it's because no one's ever asked about it before, but jaehyun feels strangely vulnerable as sia watches as he clambers back into his bed, her expression pensive and uncharacteristically wise.

"i don't know," jaehyun says honestly, laying over the covers as he feels his face grow hotter under sia's unrelenting stare. "i think it's because i wanted to know what it felt like. to know what it felt like to be wanted for a night instead of just being in the sidelines as the guy with the potential. just the guy that people brought along as the friend of the hot guys that kept him around."

sia doesn't say anything, instead turning so that she was lying on her back. jaehyun turns to look at her, to see if he could decipher some level of understanding from her silence. really, he knows that he should feel embarrassed about confessing his insecurities to a girl that he's hooked up with two or three times but he can't bring himself to for some reason.

maybe it's because he knows that she wouldn't say anything about it to anyone. or because he knows that she's head over heels for johnny, whether she'd admit it or not. or maybe it's just because for the first time, someone had asked something about jaehyun just to get to know him as a person, rather than trying to get him in their bed.

not that he really minded that - it just made him feel like it was all a lot more transactional than he was used to. he had been a romantic once upon a time. when you grew up with the nickname of 'valentine boy', it would have been stranger if he didn't have some sense of romance.

but jaehyun's penchant for romance disappeared almost just as soon as he realized that no one else was yearning for a pure type of love like he was.

and yet, it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. turns out that jaehyun's a very adaptable man. if he wouldn't find love in this decade, then perhaps it would be lust that he would have to settle for.

"then again," he begins, gaze darting over to where sia had slipped on his t-shirt as she tiredly begins to settle down in his bed once more. "isn't that what everyone is doing nowadays? looking for a warm body for the night, instead of a genuine connection?"

sia snorts at that, turning so that she was facing jaehyun now. "don't tell me that you're one of the boomer types. the ones who always go around peacocking about how they were born in the wrong generation and that they're one of the 'good guys'. i might actually leave right now if you are."

"no, no i'm not. well. maybe a little bit. but i don't know why that's so bad to be honest," jaehyun acquiesces finally. sia rolls her eyes, but even she goes quiet for a moment. once again, jaehyun's reminded that this is sia yoo - a girl who routinely wakes up in someone else's sheets every saturday (although it was johnny's more often than not) and as sexist as it was, someone who carried a reputation for it. even jaehyun was surprised to find that she was such a deep conversationalist.

of course, he mentally berates himself soon after but he can't help the thought. for him, sia was just the girl he would get with a couple times. a good time. the fact that that's the only role she fulfilled in his mind made him feel disgusting inside out as he waits for her response, vowing that he would work to change his mindset. or maybe just change personalities altogether. ick.

"you know one of my best friends? y/n? the one who got with kun before he decided to go clean for fatima?" sia says with a careful tone. jaehyun nods, not trusting that he wouldn't say something dumb after his sudden realization of his flawed thinking.

"this is something she always says but it's honestly pretty simple: love is however you want to define it. humans spend so much trying to find labels and definitions for things that just might not have or need them. for such an advanced species, we spend so much time concerned about how to put a feeling into a box or how to classify a thought instead of rejoicing in the fact that we had such a beautiful feeling in the first place."

"for people in this generation, the old school love is hard to find because they've got so many other types of love that weren't allowed back when old school love was big. it's a different type of freedom to love someone on the weekends but never to fall in love with them. maybe we're just romanticizing hookup culture but who's to say that we can't? maybe we're all more romantic than we want to admit. maybe when we fall into the sheets with someone we barely know, we're looking for a fragment of love to satiate our heart in ways we didn't know it needed."

jaehyun doesn't know what to say to that so he just pulls her closer to him and she lets him, throwing her leg over his as they fall asleep, closer to each other than they had ever been.

+++

you're not sure what had compelled you to leave so quickly that morning. you usually like to get the boys who sleep with to at least cook you breakfast before you left (for compensation of being terrible in bed, if the situation so called for it) but for some reason, every instinct in your body had pulled you to leave.

you had waken up at nearly 5 in the morning, a mere two and a half hours after the two of you had fallen asleep, gathered your clothes, and were about to leave when you turn to look at jaehyun, still snoring away peacefully, his arm crossing his body to rest on the empty space next to him that you had occupied previously.

you had a feeling that you're going to lament leaving this early after psychoanalyzing why you were leaving so early later in the day but for now, if your gut was telling you to leave, you were going to heed the precautions.

but even as you're about to leave, you find yourself turning to jaehyun's desk, sparse but somehow still a little messy as you rummage for a post-it note and a pen to write with. you grin to yourself when you find yourself successful (and endearing somehow that jaehyun has bright pink post-it notes).

you pass a brother on the way out (undoubtedly a freshman who had received the short stick of the duties tonight) but you wave him off when he offers to walk you home. dangerous? most definitely. but you really needed the time and space to yourself and the short, almost ten minute walk back to your apartment would offer some enlightenment.

spoiler alert: it didn't. no matter how hard you wracked your brain to come up with some version of a logical explanation, you realized that there was just simply no way to do so.

and something about that frustrated you. you knew it wasn't a big deal. jaehyun was just a hook-up. a one night stand. and yet...something wasn't fitting right in your mind. so you start to think in the only way you know how, collecting all of the pieces of information you did have.

a) you just had sex - mind-blowing sex with jaehyun. he was everything you expected and more when it came to a sexual partner. b) you didn't develop feelings for him. sex comes fifth on the list of things you subconsciously (or now consciously, since you've spoken it into existence) have when looking for a potential boyfriend. first comes personality, then intelligence, then ambition, then looks, and then sex. you didn't even have a conversation long enough to figure out if jaehyun had more than three brain cells to piece together. c) jaehyun jung had confessed that he had wanted to get with you since last semester. did he mean with you-r body or with you?

you shake your head as if to physically shake the irrational thoughts in your mind out and press your id against the scanner at the entrance of your apartment building, rubbing your fingers against your temples as you get into the elevator to reach your apartment.

unlocking the door to your (empty) apartment, you decide to shelf the thoughts for some time when your head wasn't pounding and collapse on your bed, thanking the lords you'd had the sense to take a shower at jaehyun's.

and the last thing you remember is the smell of jaehyun's shampoo in your hair as you drift into blissful, dreamless sleep.

+++

you're not surprised to feel a weight on your bed when you wake up the next morning. you blearily open your eyes to make out sia's general figure, rosie and fatima undoubtedly chatting quietly in the kitchen.

you vaguely piece together something about fatima having kun over but him sleeping on the couch and you try to push down the guilt that creeps up into your brain as you realize that you had left fatima alone at the party. a party where all of you knew a lot of people (and the outcome was just as everyone had thought it would be) but the principle of the matter stung nonetheless.

you push aside the thought - along with the idea that you should probably apologize to fatima when the cottony feeling in your mouth started to subside - in favor of looking at sia, who is strangely quiet as she watches you gather yourself. for her boisterous personality, sia yoo could see through anyone to the extent of theorized telepathy so you don't even bother trying to hide anything from her.

although, it really is hard to take her seriously when she's got hickey's littered across her neck. well. you suppose you don't look much better at the moment.

"you left before 10 o'clock," sia says simply. you don't pretend to not understand what she means as you nod, pushing yourself up on your bed as fatima and rosie also enter, rosie handing you a glass of water.

"i know," you say softly. "but i want to hear about everyone else's nights right now. i just don't know that i'm in the right headspace to think about why i left so early - i'm not even sure i know why i left so early."

sia says nothing for a moment, watching your face, almost as if she were trying to read your very essence. but she relents, reaching out to hold your hand briefly before completely switching up, speaking animatedly about her very adventurous night, leaving you to simmer in your thoughts.

had sia always been this smart? probably. who's to say that she wasn't, after all?

turns out that sia and johnny were actually going to go on a date on wednesday, after realizing that their chemistry extended further out of the bedroom than either of them had expected. sia was through the roof, obviously, given that she had been thirsting over johnny (although more in a sexual sense than anything else) for so long.

rosie, miyeon, and yugyeom also worked a lot better than any of them had thought so you were sure that you were going to lose your roommate to the other '97 liners more often for the foreseeable future.

fatima was the only one who had a pg night, with kun coming over to her apartment and just chilling together the whole night, eventually having him sleep over since he was too tired to walk back to the apartment that he lived out (it was on the other side of campus, given that he moved out of the nct house pretty late into the semester last year).

"speaking of kun, when are you guys gonna make it official? i mean after this year, you guys are going to only have one year together before you guys graduate," you say, bunching your comforter before letting go. it felt weird saying that. especially in regards to your friends. theoretically, you had all the time in the world together.

but all the time in the world wasn't enough when it came to these girls.

fatima sighs before getting up, wringing her hands together as she thinks. "i don't know. i mean kun's graduating a year early so i really only have this year left. i - i know how much he likes me. i know that he wants to do this right way. go the whole nine yards."

"but...?" rosie says, elongating the syllables as you and sia look at her patiently. fatima shakes her head, getting up to walk around the room, six paces enough to take her from one side of your room to the other.

"i just don't know. kun's great and honestly, i really think that's the one. or at least one of the ones for me. but i just don't know if my parents would be okay with it. i mean my parents are great! they give me so much freedom and honestly, i'm really thankful that my parents allowed me to find religious and spiritual freedom on my own, without ever trying to shove it down my throat."

"but at the same time...how can i betray their trust in me by dating someone who is so far from my religion? like. kun is a great guy but he's not muslim. and sure, i don't follow a lot of the stricter things in islam but i - i have god in my heart. and i don't know that god would want me to start a family that doesn't follow islam. especially since i can see that in my future with kun and kun - i don't know that i could ask kun to convert to another religion for me."

the room is silent for a little bit after fatima finishes, with her collapsing in your bed next to you. rosie and sia exchange a look with each other, and then you, as they both decide to leave the room, leaving you to console fatima.

you were always the most philosophical one out of the bunch anyway.

"look, fatima, i can't pretend to know what it's like to have that kind of mental burden and i really can't understand what it's like to think about the future and be concerned about the impact on the world you might create. i read about something the other day though - did you know that kun means 'manifesting' or 'believing' in arabic?" fatima looks at you with disbelief written all over her face, shaking her head.

"how did you know that?" she asks and you just shrug, nodding at the 'islam for dummies' book you had bought in hopes of understanding a little bit more about one of your closest friend's religion.

"that's not the point. but fatima, you are the single kindest, most beautiful person i know. and i have faith that you will choose what's right for you, not what's right for the people around you because you know better than everyone that the only person who can judge you is god. and no one - no one - on this earth has the right to take that peace away from you."

fatima is silent before wrapping you in her arms, the soft material of her hoodie comforting you and lulling you back into a sleep that's dreamless and calm.

+++

jaehyun doesn't know what to expect when he walks into intro to east asia on monday. should he say hi? wave? start a conversation? should he acknowledge that he spent the better part of his weekend wondering if he would lose his fuckboy status if someone realized just how down bad he was for you?

probably anything but the last one was a good idea.

jaehyun was not in a good state of mind. he was a hot 19 year old man with a near perfect gpa (a whopping 3.98 only because he got a singular a-), a not so terrible set of dimples, and a killer body. and yet he was walking around like how he had been prior to his enlightening summer.

it's almost freeing but also humiliating to think that one night in bed was enough to make him start an entire philosophy but that was where jaehyun was at so who was he to question anything, really?

in fact, jaehyun is so caught up in what he would name his new branch of philosophy (loserism, with a lot of inspiration from zeno) that he doesn't even realize that you've already walked past him and taken your seat.

third row, first seat. you're putting your bag down next to your chair, pulling out your laptop, tossing your hair over your shoulder when it falls in your face. jaehyun tears his eyes away, knowing that this was not a good look for him.

if jaehyun really wanted to pursue you, which he was sure was where all of his jumbled emotions were eventually going to lead him anyway, he knew for a fact that you weren't going to be interested in having to take the lead. especially if jaehyun wasn't even sure that you were interested in the possibility.

but that's a struggle for another day. what was it that stephanie laurens said? that all women want sometimes is a little old-fashioned loving?

that was, in fact, the opposite of what sia had said you were really into but jaehyun had a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn't mind handing the reigns over in the decision making process portion of a relationship, or the courtship, if your time together this weekend alluded to anything.

jaehyun almost misses the beginning of the lecture, where professor ma (no one actually calls him that besides himself) was going into some of his favorite places to stay during his time in china. and while missing any portion of professor ma's lecture was of no crime, he also almost misses the way that you're looking straight at him, faking a yawn when jaehyun finally locks eyes with you.

professor ma was known for giving stellar recommendation letters (which was why johnny had coerced jaehyun into ta'ing for his class in the first place) but he was such a pain in the ass.

jaehyun has to keep from laughing out loud when he sees your exaggerated gestures to show how boring you were finding the professor's lecture to be, pulling himself together in time for him to finally be able to take a seat in the back of the classroom, professor ma having asked him to take attendance for the some two hundred students in the classroom. by hand.

he almost drops the piece of paper that you slide into his hand, subtly slipping it into the pocket of his basketball shorts as makes his way up the flight of stairs to the tenth row, dropping his backpack on the floor next to him, in a rush to open the delicate piece of paper in his hands.

there's only three words on the piece of paper and a series of dashes and yet jaehyun knows that this is all he needs. this is all the signal he needs to know that he wasn't imagining the chemistry or the tension between the two of you. and fuck what anyone said about his 'reputation'; it was jaehyun's turn - the old jaehyun's turn - to get the chance to experience the relationship he had always been dreaming of.

he rereads the little piece of paper before smiling and tucking it into his pocket again.

earn the rest. 9__-___-____.

+++

johnny suh is getting whiplash from his best friend's actions.

one day, he's asking sia yoo if her best friend usually leaves her one night stands by the time they wake up. then he's throwing said one night stand's notes into the trash can before leaving for some frat meeting or another.

the next day, he's carrying another note from the same one night stand he can't seem to get out of his head.

jaehyun doesn't tell johnny anything. he really doesn't need to at this point. johnny suh is a senior in college and he's pretty much seen it all. he's also the vice president of a frat - which means that even if he didn't have all the experience that he did just because of his seniority, he definitely seen it because of the sheer number of stupid decisions frat brothers will find themselves making when they think they're going to either a) get drunk b) get high c) get their dick wet.

johnny knows it's all in good fun (fun that he's definitely not opposed to) but jaehyun's always been a little bit of an enigma when it came to all of it. he was good at the drinking and alright at the getting high and absolutely fan-fucking-tastic at the getting his dick wet.

it was the goddamn dimples. everyone always fell for the dimples.

and sure, while jaehyun had had crushes before (johnny could read his little like no other), they'd always been fueled by the hormonal rush of adrenaline and testosterone pumping through his veins. in fact, johnny's not sure that jaehyun had had a proper crush on anyone at college after getting fucked over in high school, where johnny had also gone to with jaehyun.

not that johnny had really known jaehyun. he was quieter and kept to himself more then. didn't really hang out in the same crowd as johnny.

he knows that's not necessarily true. johnny had, truthfully, just completely overlooked jaehyun. like a lot of girls had until jaehyun had finally started to grow into his features.

but johnny knows jaehyun now and he also knows that if jaehyun had never met gianna lee, jaehyun wouldn't have ever dove headfirst into the deep end of shitfuckery and sleeping around with every breathing body in sight.

cliché story of course. college boy becomes a fuckboy after having his heart broken by a girl in high school. johnny's almost 100% positive that sia's shoved at least two or three novels like those in johnny's face, with the same exact plot.

but what is life but a series of clichés after all. and honestly, did it even matter? it was real. it happened to jaehyun. that was all. end of story.

so johnny doesn't even say a word when he sees the post-it note in jaehyun's trash can. he's silent as he watches sia and jaehyun talk and jaehyun fall into a period of overthinking (and jaehyun knows he's overthinking too because johnny can see him shake his head even as he continues to stare at the 'people' tab of intro to east asia).

and johnny finally decides to break his silence when he sees jaehyun with a new post-it note, although this time it was a much more tame blue post-it, and a pensive look.

jaehyun slips it to johnny to read as they're sitting at the local starbucks, with johnny filling out some paperwork for the job he was signed on for as soon as the school year ended and jaehyun studying for the organic chemistry exam he had coming up the next week.

he doesn't say anything when he passes the note but johnny can see him sideye-ing him to catch his reaction and it's all he can do to keep from letting a little smile slip through.

he hands the piece of paper back, watching as jaehyun immediately stuffs it into his backpack, and for some reason, he's really not sure what to say. if sia were here, she would know exactly what to say, and how to say it. she had a way of saying things that were a little too straightforward to feel good but also obviously coming from a generally good place.

it was one of the reasons why johnny had thought it would be a good idea to make it official with her. sia yoo was nothing like what johnny had thought - and the thought simultaneously frightens him and comforts him.

"you plan on asking her out on a date?" johnny says lightly, sliding his laptop over to pretend to look at his phone casually. in actuality, he's typing furiously to sia (one of the few people that johnny trusted or consulted when it came to advice giving) about what was happening.

johnny is not very surprised when sia's gray bubble appears, disappears, and then appears again only to say, "yeah, i know."

he waits for a more elaborate response. or even a more sia-like response but the more that he talks to her, the more johnny is learning that sia is more unpredictable than she really seems to be.

and sia yoo seems to be completely out of the box.

johnny shakes his head, as if to physically get rid of the thoughts of her from his head, unsure why he was thinking of her when he was supposed to be helping out one of his boys.

"yeah. i think so? i don't know. i mean we had a good time and we definitely have chemistry. but we literally just had one night in bed and that's it." jaehyun furrows his eyebrows as he realizes that's not just it. "well, there is the fact that kun was walking around singing her praises. and i know that fatima wouldn't be friends with kun or y/n if she wasn't sure they're both good people. not to mention the fact that i've always thought she's kinda hot. but it's always been superficial. even us spending the night together was really nothing more than finding each other hot or trying to figure out if the talk around town was real or not."

johnny takes a sip of his americano as he lets jaehyun's words sink into his own mind. jaehyun rests his heads on his arms crossed in front of him and johnny knows exactly the set of thoughts that's running through jaehyun's mind because they were the same as johnny's when he had decided to ask sia out on a date.

is it worth it? is it worth possibly getting my heart strung up on someone again just to face the possibility of breaking it again?

so johnny offers the only advice that he really has.

"talk to roseanne. girls' fiercest protectors are their friends and something tells me that talking to her will make you fall on one side or the other."

+++

the next time that jaehyun sees roseanne is a complete coincidence. he really only meant to say hi to one of his homies, yugyeom, on the way out of the library and hadn't expected to run into roseanne or miyeon at all. especially not a singular day after johnny had suggested that he seek her out in the first place.

he watches as yugyeom thumbs the rip in miyeon's jeans as he continues to talk to jaehyun about something jeongguk had done the previous weekend. and then he sees miyeon press a kiss to roseanne's cheek as she gets up to fill up her water bottle.

jaehyun didn't think he would understand that dynamic at all but whatever floated their boat. who was he to judge? he had watched the barbie movie and was still having a crisis about his masculinity and was actively searching out his one night stand's (were you still just his one night stand?) roommate and best friend to fix it. to be fair, he didn't really fully understand the barbie movie, to the chagrin of doyoung's girlfriend nairobi but that was besides the point.

yeah. jaehyun was really in no position to speak. wow he had a lot of things to work on internally. the more he talked to the women in his life, the more he was realizing this. again. not the point.

roseanne takes one look at his face and then exchanges a look with miyeon and then yugyeom before standing up and walking towards the exit, looking at jaehyun questioningly when she realizes that jaehyun hasn't moved an inch. jaehyun hurriedly bids yugyeom and miyeon goodbye as he rushes after her.

the two of them linger outside of the library and roseanne just raises an eyebrow as she appraises jaehyun. and for some reason, jaehyun stands up straighter, and she just sighs, a small smile playing on her lips.

"let me guess. 'who makes people work for their number? what is this? sprinkle sprinkle type of stuff?' or maybe 'this is kinda cringey, isn't it?' or just a sweet and simple 'what the actual fuck?'" roseanne says nonchalantly, listing out each possible question jaehyun could have come to ask.

"would it make me a bad man if i said yes to all of the above?" jaehyun asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. roseanne shrugs, crossing her arms across her chest.

"not really. i don't think so at least. it's a fair set of questions that even i asked her the first time a guy came up to me asking who the fuck my roommate thought she was," roseanne says. she takes sees the look of confusion on jaehyun's face as she continues, "you're definitely not the first person to ask me that but you are of a selective few. y/n usually doesn't let people get this far in the first place. and secondly, she doesn't really tell us much about people she's interested in until much later."

"she's a strange person, if i'm being honest with you. there's just something about her that makes her so captivating and invisible at the same time. she'll capture the attention of everyone in the room but if you talk to her, she'll make you feel like her best friend. she seems like an open book, and an even more open friend. and you feel so close to her within a conversation and then you end the conversation, you realize that even as she spoke, she revealed nothing about herself."

"i'm her best friend and i could tell you very confidently that i didn't know a single thing about her truly until recently. it made me frustrated at first. like i was a shitty friend or something. but the closer to her i got, the more i realized that she's always been a great friend but no one's been a great friend to her. she's very selective with the people she associates with - not just people she lets herself be seen with but people she confides in."

"this whole thing is a defense mechanism. she'd be caught dead before she'd ever admit it but she just hasn't been loved in the way that she's loved and now she's more guarded for it. i'll tell you this jaehyun, but if you want to give up, do it now. she says she's just going to give you her number if you earn it but once you get all 10 digits, know that she's gonna give you her heart."

"it seems like i'm violating girl code by telling you all this but like i said, even if you were to ask y/n, she would say the same thing. not in so many words but still. like i said. she's an open book and a closed heart. she knows you're gonna ask me and so she only tells me something that she would be okay with you hearing."

jaehyun, who had been listening quietly and patiently the whole time, cuts in with a quiet voice. "isn't it exhausting to live like that?"

roseanne looks at him strangely, as though she was truly seeing him for the first time. jaehyun doesn't know if he's offended or relieved that she'd done what he'd done to sia - made assumptions based on his appearance. he lands on neutral. it's human nature, to try and make proper guesses about who's gonna act like what.

the ancient art of preventing heartbreak, jaehyun supposes.

"maybe. i don't think so though. it's gotta be a different level of relief knowing that no one's gonna talk shit about you because a) no one knows you well enough to do that or b) because you're so careful with who you trust that you know they'd never betray you or even c) they can only talk about what you put out into the world. it's why censorship is so effective. people can only talk about what they know. there's few people who will ignore what they see to find what they can't see tangibly."

"are all of y/n's friends secretly poets or something? why the hell are you guys all speaking cryptically like you're all freemasons or some shit like that. i can't tell if i find it cringey or cool," jaehyun says, cocking his head.

roseanne lets out a real, full bellied laugh at that, clutching her stomach as chuckles escape her. jaehyun's not sure what he's said that's so funny but he knows for a fact that she's not laughing with him, but at him.

"why is it cringey, jaehyun? why would it be cool? it's just what it is. we're just girls. you'll see us at the party next weekend, drinking our weight in alcohol. we'll have the conversations about makeup and dresses and having fun and our future and our past. there's nothing like freemasonry, i promise. it's just so amusing to see men get alarmed by the thoughts that girls have been wrestling with since they've been twelve. the duality of man, i guess," roseanne says finally, once she's caught her breath.

jaehyun doesn't know how to respond to that so he elects to save the remaining tatters of his dignity by just not responding at all. if there's one thing he's learned about you, it's that you surround yourself by women who are not hesitant about putting him in his place. and he's oddly thankful for it.

"i have one last question. well, two last questions, actually," jaehyun says when he sees roseanne turning around to head back inside, still wiping the tears from her eyes from laughing too hard.

roseanne turns, a knowing glint in her eyes even before jaehyun asks his question.

"how many guys have talked to you? and what's the highest number anyone's ever gotten to?"

roseanne is silent and just as the silence begins to turn awkward, she promptly turns on her heel and begins to walk away. she opens the door to the library before she seemingly changes her mind and looks back at jaehyun.

"two guys have talked to me. you're gonna have to ask fatima about the second question though. and jaehyun? the next number is 6."

96_-___-____.

+++

jaehyun finds fatima not soon after his conversation with roseanne. he's sitting in the nct house, watching johnny pace back and forth in his room, trying to figure out if what he was wearing was too casual for a date to a bowling alley.

it was way too formal, in jaehyun's opinion. but he was just going to wait for johnny to finish panicking (even if he would never admit that he was, in fact, panicking) to figure that out on his own. seriously though, who wore a button down and slacks to a bowling alley?

then again, he was going on a date with sia yoo so really, anything was fairplay when it came to that girl. she was a whirlwind of literally everything that could possibly go into a human being. she was a maximalist to the fullest, seizing every opportunity she could to make good memories, pressing forward with a sense of perfect clarity and sobriety that most people would be scared of.

the type of girl who was the main character of any story that she would feature in. sia was the type of person that people who trip and fall over themselves trying to have a good time with that she practically promised. she walked around with fairy dust in her fingers and a strange sense of wisdom that felt like she could read you like a book within a singular meeting with her.

jaehyun knows that she's the most intimidating out of all of the girls. out of you, roseanne, fatima, and sia, she was hands down the most frightening because even though she could read everyone else, no one could really read her.

then there was roseanne. she was the wet dream of every girl alive - the reason why straight girls lamented that they were straight and still falling a little bit in love with her. she was hot, flirtatious to the extent of making everyone wonder what they were when she gave them even a split second of attention, and so incredibly full of life. it doesn't surprise jaehyun that she had become exclusive with miyeon and yugyeom. for some reason, he feels like she just wouldn't have been able to settle for liking one person at once.

she was a little too much for just one person to be able to handle. she was like the human personification of a leather jacket wearing, motorcycle driving, woody cologne smelling wattpad trope. jaehyun understands her appeal all too well.

and then there was fatima. she was kind, sweet, kept to herself, and always offered a helping hand to those around her. jaehyun understood why kun had fallen so hard for her within two minutes of meeting her. she had an air about her that made you feel like she was someone who truly cared about you, even if you didn't know her and she didn't know you all that well. she was the type of girl who was always forgotten in the novels about warriors and princesses. the girl who was often reduced to nothing more than the main character's best friend.

until you met a girl like her in real life. fatima was still a little forgotten, and jaehyun knew that. guys often overlooked her in favor of her 'hotter' or 'wilder' friends, which is admittedly what jaehyun had thought at first. but she was just so genuine and clearheaded. she protected her peace in a way that was so unusual for young, college-going students. not to say that sia, roseanne, or you weren't genuine or anything like that. but fatima was the type of girl that jaehyun knew was perfect for kun. the girl that he could go home and know that no matter what he had done in his past, she would love him all the same.

and there was you. smart, strangely private, and a series of contradictions housed within one heart. jaehyun wracks his brain, trying to gather everything that he knew about you and yet, he comes up empty.

frustratingly empty.

jaehyun vaguely registers the fact that johnny has finally changed and is getting ready to go. he knows that he should say something about how johnny should just be himself and that sia liking him is completely up to her, regardless of what johnny were to do. but when he locks eyes with johnny, he realizes that johnny already knows.

so jaehyun just claps him on the back as he heads back to his room, his mind spinning as he tries to think of everything that he knows about you. and he draws a blank every fucking time.

he knows superficial things about you. maybe it's because he doesn't know you like he knows your friends. he hasn't talked to you as much as he's talked to them. but how does he not know you? he's been wanting to get with you for so long. he wanted more than just your body. he wanted your charm and your appeal.

was it just your body? is that all it was? is that all jaehyun wanted? somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to believe that. he doesn't want that for himself. logically, he knows that gianna's impact on his life shouldn't be extending this far. he knows that he shouldn't want or have to fight himself this hard but you're not making it much easier for him.

when was the last time jaehyun wanted to get to know such an enigma of a girl? gianna lee. and he wants nothing to do with a girl like that ever again.

and yet, here he is. falling into the same trap all over again.

jaehyun's so caught up in his own thoughts, feeling himself starting to spiral when he bumps in fatima and kun, who are equally caught up in a conversation with each other.

"oh, my bad," jaehyun mumbles, ready for fatima to brush past him but she doesn't, looking at jaehyun and then kun.

"hey man, we're headed back to my place. why don't you come back with us?" kun offers, and jaehyun just nods blankly, as he starts to follow them out of the nct house. kun stops at the entrance where he picks up a textbook from yuta, who had been borrowing it for the last week, before the three of them make their way out.

"how are you, jaehyun?" fatima asks with a sweet smile as they pile into kun's car. somehow, jaehyun doesn't want to give her a generic, insincere answer.

"i'm...okay. i'm just okay. confused but okay," jaehyun says and fatima seems alright with this answer. kun pulls out of the 'driveway' of the frat house, exchanging in a quiet conversation with fatima about what they were planning on eating for the night, leaving jaehyun to simmer in his thoughts.

gianna lee. there was a name that he thought about almost every day and never all at the same time. the girl who had made him and broke him. the girl that jaehyun had trusted with his heart and made him regret ever doing that.

the girl who had been the first love of his life.

+++

gianna was a year younger than him. smart, so incredibly sweet, and yet someone that no one could confidently say that they knew. she was the type of girl who could slip under the radar as easily as her friends seemed to always stay on top of.

she ran in the same circle as jaehyun had in senior year, right when jaehyun was beginning to blossom into the man that he was today. she had always been kind to him, if not a little withdrawn, even when he was a skinny boy with proportions that absolutely did not seem to match each other.

jaehyun didn't even know her well enough for her to break his heart, honestly. jaehyun had liked her even before having a proper conversation with her. he knew how left out she felt in her own body. even though he couldn't imagine a more gorgeous girl, he knew that she didn't feel that way about herself.

he knew that she always compared herself to her friends. her well-accomplished, 'main character' best friends who were the talk of the school. and her. no matter how intelligent or kind or put together she was, no one really looked at her the way that jaehyun did. she knew it.

even jaehyun couldn't place why he liked her so much. maybe it was the fact that he was somehow comforted that a girl with so much beauty could feel the same way as him. maybe it was the fact that she had always held the same smile for him, regardless of what he looked like. or maybe it was even the fact that one time, she had held his hand as she pulled him across the street, running to catch up with their friends who had already crossed.

jaehyun just remembers looking at her dyed cherry red hair falling into her eyes as she laughs, pulling him forward to where the rest of their friends were standing. and as he breathes in the smoke in the air and the raspberry scent of her perfume, he just knows that he really, truly likes gianna lee.

gianna lee doesn't like him the way that he likes her. he knows that. logically, jaehyun knows that his feelings are truly unfounded. he really has no reason to like gianna the way that he does. and yet, there's a part of him that holds onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, she'll turn around with those big eyes and upturned lips and say that she likes him the way that he likes her.

so he continues to look at her first when he makes the friend group laugh. he always slips her a napkin when he's getting one for himself when they're out getting milkshakes. he offers to help her with apush when she's stressing about a test the next week.

the closer he gets to her, the more jaehyun realizes that really, she was nothing like the image of her he had conjured in his head. she was every bit sweet as he had thought but she was argumentative, competitive, and all too obsessed with perfection. she always needed to be right in an argument, always had to win, and always had to make sure that she looked flawless doing so.

jaehyun doesn't realize it, of course. he's so obsessed with his glazed over façade of her that he just continues to let her win the arguments even when he knows that she's wrong. and she lets him wrap his arms around her when she gets an 89% on her test.

he lets her walk all over him and she lets him act on his feelings.

it was a toxic, parasitic relationship that neither of them were truly happy in. when gianna asked him out, jaehyun hadn't felt like fireworks were going off in his stomach. he felt like he had won a prize at a marathon. like he'd won a medal.

gianna wasn't a medal. she was a flawed, beautiful human being - every bit gorgeous and horrible as jaehyun and every other human being was. but jaehyun had won, hadn't he?

he hadn't. and it took so long for him to realize that by the time he'd realized that gianna had really only taken to him out of pity, he was so far in his own head that he didn't know how to leave her.

eventually, the summer before college rolled around and gianna had taken it upon herself to do the nasty deed of breaking up with him. it had been an amicable split, as far as their friends were concerned.

but none of them had ever truly either of their friends. so what did they know?

what did they know about gianna finding comfort in her ex's arms? what did they know about her grades slipping at the end of the school year? what did they know about her having to excuse herself at a meeting for her internship to sob in the bathroom as she realized the true fallacy in the way she had acted? what did they know about the way she had to reconstruct herself bottom up? nothing.

what did they know about jaehyun spending every other night with a different girl, trying to ease the ache in his heart? what did they know about the obscene number of hours at the gym, not sure how to combat the sudden numbness after girl after girl? what did they know about the fact that jaehyun could not physically stand the smell of raspberries anymore? absolutely nothing.

no one knew anything until jaehyun had finally come to college. it was once he joined the frat and met guys who were so alike and different from him at the same time that he finally opened up about gianna.

only to doyoung, kun, and johnny but people nonetheless. everyone had gone through something similar - while for some it happened at college or back home, they all knew the pain. some of them were more in the fault than others but pain is pain and a paper cut bleeds the same red as a gunshot wound.

which is why when kun sits him down on the couch and fatima hands him a cup of iced tea to save them all from the sweltering heat as august makes a last stand against september's winds, jaehyun spills everything.

gianna. his past. his insecurities. everything. he knows he shouldn't. logically, fatima had nothing stopping her from going and telling everything that jaehyun had told her to you, but for some reason, jaehyun thinks that she won't.

she doesn't.

+++

fatima knows that jaehyun was going to talk to her about something like this. it seemed that all of the nct boys came with some level of trauma like this. she wasn't sure what it was about every single boy she had met in college (although, granted, they were either her friends' conquests or kun's friends - a very interesting group of very intertwined boys) having their hearts getting ripped to shreds. sometimes it was of their own volition but they all seemed to be some level of hurt either way.

so when jaehyun spills his heart out on kun's carpeted floors, she's ready with a well-rehearsed speech. he's one of six boys she'd already had this same exact conversation with (kun has a bad habit of picking up strays) but when he looks at her with such raw anguish in his eyes, she falters.

she looks to kun, who's looking at her with the same question that she knows jaehyun is asking.

"how do you know when to choose between your head and your heart? because my heart is so fucking scared of getting attached to someone again. but my head knows that i can't push everyone away because i'm scared."

fatima is quiet, searching for the right words. she's about to say something when kun speaks up, looking determinedly at fatima.

"you learn to choose you. instead of choosing between your head and your heart, just choose yourself. at the end of the day, you and y/n are good people who aren't trying to hurt each other. you're both trying not to get hurt. and honestly, maybe you'll realize that you both are better off as friends along the way. maybe you just realize that you don't want to be with someone right now. or maybe you find someone who makes you feel like you're safe and loved when you're around them, whether you're in love with them or not." fatima looks at kun with a soft smile, reaching out to hold his hand gently.

"you have to choose yourself, jaehyun. trust me. the more you start thinking about what is best for the people around you instead of thinking for yourself, you'll look back fifteen, twenty years down the road and see everyone but yourself in your life. don't do something because gianna and how she made you feel. don't let your past define your future," fatima says, and jaehyun can feel the tears prick his eyes. he blinks determinedly, trying to make them disappear but when kun sits on one side of him and fatima on the other, he starts losing his battle against his emotions, finally letting himself mourn the innocence he had once had.

he buries his head into fatima's shoulder and for some reason, he feels as though kun and fatima would be amazing parents. because jaehyun doesn't remember the last time that he had felt this safe in an embrace.

"and jaehyun? the furthest anyone has ever gotten is five numbers. you're at three. it's your call from here. do what you want, not what you think you need to do." fatima taps his shoulder gently and lets him cry for as long as he needs to.

963-___-____.

+++

jaehyun gets the next number from you. after his conversation with fatima, he's sure that if he wants to go any further than this, he needed to talk to you first.

it's strange. he's earning your number but it feels like jaehyun's somehow earning himself back. and when he finds you again, he knows that you can tell.

even johnny could tell. when he had come back from his (successful) date with sia, the first thing he had said was, "wow. you look so...light."

jaehyun hadn't said anything but 'thank you' but it was enough.

johnny had just smiled at him and recounted the date, stating that he was going to ask her to go on another date this saturday night. jaehyun doesn't mention the fact that nct is throwing that night because johnny already knows.

and honestly, sia is a junior and johnny is a senior. they've been to their fair share of parties. one party being missed wouldn't be life changing for them. but skipping a party as the vice president of a frat and a girl who was sought after as a sweetheart for six frats meant something nonetheless.

he hadn't expected that they were to get that serious that quickly but it was a refreshing change. even fatima and kun were starting about talking about talking to fatima's parents to get their blessing for their relationship. her dilemma was no secret and it seemed that the conversation between the three of them had served to help them through their own issues as well.

there was just something in the air, jaehyun had supposed. august turned to september in the week that jaehyun had wrestled with himself, eventually leading to seeking you out.

it had been at the nct party, actually. you were standing with some of your acquaintances, all of your friends having dispersed to do what they were going to do. jaehyun had been on the other side of the room, convincing bambam that it was most definitely not a good idea to try and pursue soyeon jeon if he wanted to make sure that he woke up with all his limbs intact the next morning.

you had met his eye, raising an eyebrow before continuing your conversation, all thoughts of him seemingly out of your mind. jaehyun looks between bambam (who has gone from trying to get with soyeon to jumping into the pool) (that pool had not been cleaned in a full six months) and you. he just finds jungwoo, one of the pledges, and hands him a very drunk bambam.

"do not let him do anything dumb. i'm counting on you pledge," jaehyun called out over his shoulder as he weaves through people to get to you.

"jaehyun! hey! long time no see," hailey whitfield says, throwing herself in jaehyun's arms. jaehyun looks at you, where you're staring straight at where hailey's body ends and his arms begin. jaehyun tries to push her off of him. once upon a time, jaehyun would've been behind happy about getting with her again - she was so good with her mouth. but now, he has no intentions of giving you the wrong impression.

at least until he has a proper conversation with you so that you knew where he stood with you. and where you stood with him.

"hey hailey, sorry i've gotta get to my friend," he says, not even looking at her as he pushes off of her, resuming his threading through the crowd to where you're standing. you look at him, unimpressed, but jaehyun knows you well enough to know that three numbers are enough to make you feel a certain way if jaehyun was fooling around with other girls.

which he hasn't been. not a single night. jaehyun jung's bed has been empty for an entire two weeks, something that doyoung and nairobi have been taking full advantage of.

even some of jaehyun's friends had started asking if he was having problems or something but he had brushed them off. he definitely wasn't having problems, if hailey whitfield was any indication. but he felt like it would be doing you dirty if he had someone in his bed while he was talking to your friends about you.

so he hadn't.

he knows you know. he knows that you know he's talked to sia, roseanne, and fatima. he'd figured that you'd find out either through them or just by him. he can tell by the look in your eyes that you've read him thoroughly.

so he really doesn't feel bad about pulling you away from your friends, taking you upstairs to his room. finally, doyoung had promised that they would go back to nairobi's place on the condition that jaehyun made sure that no one would try to fuck on his bed. he promised, knowing that the only person who'd be coming up here would be him. he needed to talk to you tonight. if he knew anything it was that.

but once you're sitting on his bed, watching him pace back and forward, he's lost everything he's been wanting to say. where does he even start? with gianna? with the questions he has for you? with the number? where does he begin?

jaehyun looks at you, where you're watching him with a small smile on your face and suddenly, it doesn't matter where he begins. you'll listen to it all. he knows that much.

"why do you want me to work for your number?" jaehyun asks. you look at him curiously, tilting your head as you piece together an answer.

"are you sure you don't know the answer to that question?" you say, folding your legs so that you're sitting criss cross on the navy covers.

"i do. but i want to hear it from you, y/n. you know what all your friends say about you? that they didn't properly know you until a full year of friendship with you. but they said that you never lie. so i want you to tell me," jaehyun says, chest heaving by the end of his ramble. his eyes turn soft as he watches you become more and more solemn and he steps forward, sitting down on his desk chair and swiveling it over so that he was sitting directly across from you.

you pause for a moment, searching for the words before saying anything. "i've never been in a relationship before. so i don't have the trauma that could come from something like that. but i know what it's like to lose your heart to someone. and i know that it hurts. i want to be loved in the way that i never thought i could be. so the number thing is just an excuse for me to get to the point where i won't feel guilty about liking someone."

you shrug, smiling but not allowing the smile to reach your eyes. "it's a good way to make sure that the guy knows what he's getting into either way."

jaehyun nods at that. he knew that much. it feels different hearing it from you though. when you're the one saying it, jaehyun knows that it's real. raw. not coming from people trying to protect you because they know that you're far too soft to truly come at him guns blazing.

somehow, he likes it. he likes that you're much softer than you seem. that you're a lot more vulnerable than you come off as. and for some reason, jaehyun hopes that you never perfect the art of becoming standoffish.

"hmm. you've never been in a relationship before?" jaehyun says finally and you nod, shrugging once more. a shadow of bittersweet nostalgia crosses your face before you're back to your soft smile and guarded yet curious eyes.

"nope. part of it was on me; i've got high standards, if you can't tell. and the other part was that i've always wanted someone who fascinates me. of course, i wasn't all that appealing to men because i spent so much time trying to beat them at the only thing they were good at - ego-boosting themselves but they weren't interesting. none of them were people i really wanted to get to know," you say, unfolding your legs.

jaehyun likes the fact that the tips of your toes are the only part of your feet that touch the ground from how far back you're sitting on the bed. in an act of boldness, jaehyun moves forward to sit next to you, right where you're sitting. his feet are flat on the floor, he realizes.

he doesn't know why he's noticing things like this but he is and something about that frustrates him, frightens him, and tugs at his heartstrings altogether.

"you're heartbroken, aren't you? boys like you always seem to be a little hurt," you say, tossing the words into the air like rose petals. they're recklessly thrown but they're somehow beautiful in the way that blackened roses are always beautiful.

"yeah. i was. i think i will always mourn who i was before that. i was so naïve. but i'm not him anymore. and i think i'm realizing that i'm actually okay with that." jaehyun says the words just as carelessly as you do but once they're out in the open, he realizes that he's being completely honest. he turns to you with a strange look though.

"boys like me?"

you smile and nod at him. "boys like you."

you stand up, walking to where jaehyun has a corkboard with a shitload of scraps and photos from the past two years. you don't mention the fact that none of the memories that he has on the board date from before senior year. you don't need to.

"boys like you who've never been loved completely. boys who think that they need to listen to what the world says about how they should be acting or thinking. boys who are hopeless romantics but what would the world say if they knew that these boys just wanted a little bit of love? what would they say if they were looking for warmth in an empty and cold bed?"

jaehyun hates that you're right. it's the college boy tragedy. condemned to never be able to completely heal from one bad experience and then always breaking hearts to collect enough pieces to build themselves a new one.

he didn't want to end like that. even if it wasn't with you, he was ready to grow past it. he didn't want to end as a heartbreaker.

"boys like me...and you like a boy like me?" jaehyun asks. he doesn't know why he does. this is the first proper conversation you've had with him when both of you are decidedly sober. you want to deflect the question but if he's being honest, that's a sign for you to be just as honest.

"i don't know. from what my friends say, and what i know about you as a person in class, i know you mean well. and honestly, i've always just been the type of person to like someone past things like the books they read or the way they dress," you say, still looking at the memories jaehyun's pieced together over the years on this board. "i feel something around you. and i don't know you well enough to know that i like you as someone more than a friend but i'd like to at least have the chance to get that far."

that's all jaehyun needs. he gets another number that night.

+++

jaehyun waits for you outside of intro to east asia, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for you to make it out of the classroom. you're the last one to leave, knowing that technically, you and jaehyun weren't allowed to see each other while he was your ta.

jaehyun had never really pegged you as someone with so much respect for the rules but you had argued that it was mostly about the principle.

he'd learned a lot about you that last weekend. you and him had stayed up all night, talking about nothing and everything under the sun until the sun itself rose, eventually falling asleep in a tangled mess of limbs and conversations.

he learned that while you didn't like the rules, you often followed them as long as they followed your own moral code. that you would die for your friends and that had landed you in many bad friendships when people would use that to their advantage before you'd met your friends in college. he learned that you were super close with your family, and that they were quite literally the best friends that you could always rely on.

and he learned that you wanted to see him again. on a date. sometime soon. so with no real way of communicating with you outside of social media (and he somehow felt like sliding into your dm's was corny and somewhat of a copout), here he was. waiting outside of the classroom like he was ripped straight from a 1950's romance movie. he even had the letterman jacket on to boot.

"oh my god, you scared me," you say, pressing a hand to your chest as you quite nearly bump into jaehyun. he smiles, readjusting his backpack on his shoulders as the two of you start walking.

"you knew i was waiting for you outside, didn't you?" he says, pushing the side door open to walk towards the parking lot, where he's convinced kun to let him borrow his car for the day.

"yeah but i didn't think you would be literally outside the door," you murmur, checking your phone to see the rest of your day's schedule. you had purposefully blocked off three hours of your schedule to hang out with jaehyun, which you were sure to regret later on when your organic chemistry class kicked your ass. but that was a later issue.

"well, i couldn't text you where i was so i figured i'd wait in plain sight," jaehyun retorts, opening the passenger door for you without a word. huh. that was the first time a man has ever done that for you. and jaehyun did it as though it were second nature - like it was a given.

you don't know why something so small means so much to you but you're alright with it. you're alright with just appreciating it.

"that's fair," you say. another number's on the tip of your tongue as you watch him get into the driver's seat but jaehyun beats you to the punch.

"don't give me a number. not yet," jaehyun says. "not that i don't want one. but i just...me waiting outside your classroom or opening your door isn't enough for a number. even if i don't get all ten, you've got to up your standards."

you don't know what to say to that so you don't say anything, turning on the music and letting the melody of chemtrails under the country club by lana del ray fill the rainy september afternoon sky.

+++

when jaehyun pulls up to a run down diner, you're pleasantly surprised. although you're not much of a sucker for romantic places, the fact that jaehyun is somehow makes you happy. it makes you happy that he still sees the beauty in places like these. and when you look over at him, dimples threatening to show as he breathes in the air of misty fog and the smell of milkshakes and burgers, you're so tempted to kiss him.

so you lean over, looking at him with a twinkle in your eyes once jaehyun has parked.

"can i kiss you?" you ask, mere inches from his lips. jaehyun just looks at you, and from this close, you realize just how beautiful his eyes are. they're dark, darker than anyone else's that you know. and yet, it feels like you could fall in and never regret it.

"please."

it's all you need. and it's all he needs because as soon as word slips from his lips, he's pressing forward, his lips against yours. he's soft, you register vaguely. nothing like last time. nothing like how he'd kissed you like he could think of nothing but absolutely ruining you.

jaehyun is soft. like the feeling of slipping a cold hand into someone's warm jacket pocket. he kisses you like he's scared of ruining you. ruining this. and you're absolutely addicted to the feeling.

the feeling of knowing that he could just claim you instead of trying his best to claim your heart. no matter how fucked up it was that you were even thinking that someone could 'claim' you. he wasn't like that and you could work with that.

he pulls away from you, eyes still closed as he sits against the drivers seat, his head against the headrest. you watch him, a silly and childish smile on your face - although you're not really sure why it's there in the first place. but who are you to knock anything?

there aren't many words to exchange as the two of you make your way into the diner. jaehyun had opened your car door again. this time, you just offer him your hand and you're strangely alright with just how safe you feel with his hand locked in yours.

the diner seems as though time has frozen still here.

and everything about the date seems the same. it feels as though time has frozen still - almost as though the two of you are in a little bubble with no one but each other. it's a feeling you haven't experienced in a while. a feeling you don't think you've ever had because of a boy.

it feels...almost scarily comfortable. it doesn't feel as though there are fireworks exploding for every word that jaehyun says. but it does feel as though that there's a hot mug of cocoa that's been handed to you on a cold winter night. and that feeling, the feeling of warmth spreading through every corner of your body, is the feeling that you know is good for you.

so you listen to him, watch him speak animatedly about basketball or a book he read, chin resting in your palm as you find yourself falling deeper and deeper.

jaehyun gets two numbers that day.

+++

it doesn't take much longer for jaehyun to get the rest of the numbers. soon enough, you're more than happy just to spend time with him the way that you spend time with your friends. you feel as though you've made a good friend out of someone you'd thought that you wouldn't even be able to get along with.

"you know, when i first met you, even before i knew you, i really didn't like you," you say, taking a sip out of your latte. the seasons have changed, fall giving way to winter. the november air bites your skin every time someone opens the door to the tiny café the two of you were sitting in.

jaehyun smiles, nodding as he leans back in his chair. "i know. i could tell by the look in your eyes."

"the look in my eyes?"

"yeah. the one that said that you wanted to get to know me. to figure out my deal even if you didn't necessarily want to find out for sure. kind of like you wanted to be the one that said 'aha!' at the end of a movie, even though you weren't sure of the ending at all."

you look at jaehyun for a moment before laughing, shaking your head as you laugh. "you're even starting to talk like me now."

jaehyun pauses before he nods, smiling with you. "yeah, i know. you've rubbed off on me in a lot of ways."

"i've improved your music taste, that's for sure," you snort, taking another sip out of your latte. "i still can't believe you didn't like ric flair drip when we met."

"it's not that i didn't like it and it's still not that i like it now. but i guess i just have a good memory associated with it now so it's growing on me," jaehyun says. your eyebrows furrow as you try to recollect what good memory he could possibly be referring to.

"oh my god. the night that we met! i was trying to get in your pants with ric flair drip," you say incredulously, shivering when someone opens and closes the door once more. jaehyun hands you his hoodie, leaving his arm extended silently when you protest.

you don't know why you still bother trying to protest with him when you knew you were going to lose. you put the sweater on as jaehyun starts talking, letting the scent of clean water and pine trees swaddle you softly.

"honestly, i think i was more than you that night," jaehyun says, as he looks at you with an incriminating twinkle in his eyes. "that was around the time that even taeyong said that he wanted to see if kun's vivid descriptions were true or not. and i wasn't about to let him get the opportunity to get to you before i did. i don't know why. i felt almost protective over you. but not in a good way. in the type of way where i wanted to show you how good i could make you feel - more than anyone could even begin to think of making you feel."

the previously cold café begins to become a lot hotter than you were feeling before, clearing your throat as you try to let the moment pass.

"how did we even get here?" you say, fanning yourself delicately. the move only serves to work against you when you fan yourself so that the scent of his cologne on his hoodie only gets stronger in your mind.

jaehyun leans back, letting you switch the conversation. he'd bring it up to you later in the night, anyway. besides, for someone who puts on such a strong front, it's honestly a little fun to see you squirm at the slightest implications from jaehyun.

"but, uh, jaehyun. i've been meaning to ask you something for a while," you begin, fidgeting with the wrapper of the straw in front of you. jaehyun tilts his head as if to question what you have to say as he waits patiently.

"what are we?"

now jaehyun is truly confused. was the past month of going on dates not clear enough? jaehyun wasn't going on dates with anyone else. oh my god. were you going on dates with other men? is that why you're asking.

"i thought we were dating?" jaehyun says, phrasing his sentence more like a question than a statement. "i mean i'm not talking to anyone else and i kinda assumed that since i'd gotten all ten numbers, neither were you."

you hum, unable to stop the silly smile on your face.

"good. that's just what i was thinking too."

+++

honestly, everything about jaehyun jung is appealing to you. from the way that he engulfs you in a hug when you're up late studying. or the way that he convinces you that you have a virus on your laptop just so that he could spend more time with you 'fixing' your laptop for you. or the way that he sits with you and your friends, patiently listening and offering advice wherever he can (or honestly, is just allowed to speak).

you're so glad to see him like this. as your boyfriend of four and a half months (you hadn't let him make it official until he was no longer your ta), you've seen him grow in ways that you'd never thought. jaehyun was every inch the stupid, naïve fuckboy you'd thought him to be in the beginning. and he was also every inch the hopeless romantic with a little too much love to give for a scarred heart.

so you heal together. you help each other when you quite literally can't handle the pain and together, you grow. he's more confident. not just in the way that he looks - but the way that he speaks around people. the way that he educates himself. the way that he communicates how he feels.

and he helps you everyday. he shows you what it feels like to be loved the way you love others. he shows you that you are worth the princess treatment. and most importantly for you, he loves the people around you the way you love the people around you.

kun and fatima find their happy ending. fatima had spoken to her parents and while they took some time to warm up to kun, his soft demeanor and the way that he loved fatima so completely and sincerely eventually won them over. fatima even met kun's parents with equal success, although kun's mother kept asking when fatima and kun would get married.

(their wedding was already in the works by both fatima's mother and kun's mother. you were beyond elated to go to both the traditional muslim ceremony and the traditional chinese ceremonies.)

johnny and sia ended up going out on a couple more dates before realizing that they probably just weren't meant to be a couple. they loved each other as friends and were probably always going to hold a special place in each other's lives but it just wouldn't be as each other's significant others. johnny was already starting to retreat from the frat boy lifestyle after meeting a girl at the library one day. and sia had finally met someone who could handle her crazy personality with a sweet smile, bringing her back down to reality whenever she went a little...too lively. you're looking forward to meeting him over summer, where the four of you and your friends were going on a vacation together.

roseanne, yugyeom, and miyeon still haven't put a label on their relationship. but you've caught roseanne falling asleep in yugyeom's arms more than once (one too many times than rosie cares to admit) so you figure that it's a good thing that they've all found each other. as unconventional as their relationship might be, they all mesh together so well that you can't even find it in yourself to question it. all's fair in love and war.

jaehyun and you frequent the diner as a favorite date night spot to visit, although you're upset to hear that they're remodeling the entire establishment for favor of a new, more 'modern' atmosphere. although how modern a diner could get was a little bit of a strange notion. but as people change, so do the winds.

and when you walk into the diner the next semester, hand in hand with jaehyun, you're a little comforted to see that diner is now a speakeasy (in true 1970s fashion) with three words written in blinding rhinestones against the velvet background. of course.

ric flair drip.

#jnnul #nct fic #jaehyun fic #jaehyun fluff #nct fluff #jaehyun smut #nct smut #nct 127 fic #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 angst #jaehyun angst #nct angst #nct x reader #jaehyun x reader #nct 127 x reader #jaehyun imagines #nct imagines

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silkscream · 1 year ago

Text

possession

venom!peter x silk!reader

ੈ✩ synopsis: peter parker is not himself when he falls into your universe. it must be a curse that he finds himself tethered to you. the darkness inside him has never wanted anything more.

ੈ✩ genres: strangers to lovers, hurt/comfort, angst, slow burn

ੈ✩ cw: smut (18+ only minors dni), unprotected sex, slightly dubcon, biting, masturbation, violence, gore, self-harm, angst, codependent relationships, slightly ooc peter

ੈ✩ wc: 10k+

ੈ✩ a/n: this is post-nwh. i’ve been working on this for months and i finally feel comfortable posting it even though i still have a love/hate relationship with this story. hopefully i’ll muster up enough energy to make a part two because i certainly have more in store for them. (i miss peter so bad)

ੈ✩ playlist | ੈ✩ masterlist

Peter wakes up with a sharp, throbbing pain in the back of his skull. Maybe if he was lucky, he had completely knocked the wind out of his frontal lobe. Maybe he’d woken in the middle of a coma-induced dream state. As he blinks his eyes open, through the haze of the world around him, his environment pulls itself together. What he sees isn’t familiar.

This isn’t his room.

Maybe this isn’t his body, either. He hopes it isn’t, but he feels the sting of a side wound like an electric shock when he stretches his upper body slightly.

He scans the walls in search of clues. He knows he’s not in danger – at least, he doesn’t think so – considering that he’s in a girl’s room and not a cavernous dungeon. His vision is dreamlike, blurry, still. When he squints at his surroundings, he can see posters on the walls and books stacked in every corner. He shivers when he realizes he’s looking around the room without his mask. Where the fuck is it?

When Peter looks down at his body, he notices how it stings and frowns at the few rips of lycra on his suit that showcase bloody wounds underneath. The bruise on his cheekbone throbs along with the tension headache that plagues his temples. He can taste copper in his mouth from his split lip.

“You’re awake.”

The voice startles him. Everything is still sensitive, his joints and wounds and the act of occupying his body. The sound of someone else’s voice in the room triggers enough adrenaline in him to shoot out a web in the direction of the bodily presence that enters.

You frown, cringing at his attack, but you don’t look as startled as he would expect. He widens his eyes when he sees that you’ve dodged his webs completely. Sitting up, he winces from the sharp pain on his side.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Reflex.”

“Yeah, I can tell.”

He doesn’t know what to do other than stare. Quite frankly, he didn’t expect to have to entertain a stranger tonight, nor did he think that his identity would be compromised in the presence of one. He’d barely remembered what had happened before he’d gotten knocked out. All he could recall was pain and the taste of blood in his mouth. Glancing at the slenderness of your fingers, he realizes that he doesn’t even remember your hands pulling him toward safety.

“You took my mask.”

“Wanted to make sure your face wasn’t broken. I didn’t take any pictures or call the cops if that’s what you think.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” he asks cautiously.

“I'm not particularly fond of them. Unless you want me to test how much ransom a loose Spider-man is worth.”

He blinks at the name, considering how ironic it is that you are the first person to see him in his most vulnerable state since his world changed for the worse. You, this unassuming stranger, who happened to have enough kindness to lug his body into your home.

He’s on edge. Of course, he is; he feels as if he’s been kidnapped, but the acuteness of his senses feels differently than they do when his body knows a threat is in front of him. Instead, it feels like the kaleidoscope of neurons inside him collects together in clear recognition. Like he knows you in his soul alone.

“How did you– how did you even get me up here? I was in an alley, and then–”

“And then I carried you back to my apartment.”

He narrows his eyes.

“Don’t see how that’s possible,” he mutters.

You surprise him by shooting a web from your fingertips to grab a water bottle from your desk and having it recoil into your hand without much effort.

Oh.

He asks you your name, and you tell him. When you ask him the same, he shifts uncomfortably and doesn’t answer you. You don’t take it personally.

Christ, he needs to leave now. But he’s transfixed by your big eyes and your curious stare, and he begins to wonder about you in the same way, as if you are the wounded butterfly he’d picked up on the street instead of the other way around.

You’re fucking weird, Peter’s decided, because, after this, you don’t ask him any more questions. Not anything that deviates from your concern about his wounded state.

You’re rather casual, which surprises him. You make him a cup of tea, lend him some of your oversized clothes (they fit him perfectly), and force him to stay on your bed so you can attempt to tend to his wounds. (He doesn’t let you.)

Naturally, he watches you wash your dishes and he plays the interrogation game, and you let him. You tell him that you’re in Brooklyn. You negate the idea of him swinging back to his house despite how much he insists. When he asks why, you’re hesitant.

“You’re probably safer here,” you sigh, almost impatiently.

He doesn’t argue when he feels the ache in his bones again.

“How is it that you’re like me?”

“I was also bitten by a radioactive spider.”

“Shit. There was another one?”

You don’t answer. God, your nonchalance freaks him the fuck out.

Why aren’t you fazed? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Maybe Peter will fake you out and flee, and he’ll forget all about you. He’ll never come near you again. But then there’s the warmth of your voice, and he stubbornly refuses to give in.

“I’m too fucking tired for all this interrogation, okay?” you exasperate. “You can take the bed. Or the couch. I don’t care. Just pick one.”

Why the hell are you letting a stranger crash at your place?

He doesn’t register it coming out of his mouth. You scoff.

“I’ve been through worse. And you’re barely a threat.”

Peter should feel offended, he thinks, but mostly he’s fascinated by you. He doesn’t blame you for your crabbiness once he sees the clock on your wall read 2:45 am. There’s a nebulous pause between the two of you now, so you make the first move by turning away from him and rummaging through your drawers. You throw an oversized t-shirt and sweats toward him that he catches immediately.

Without a word, you leave the room, which leaves him confused. He thinks that maybe you’re coming back eventually, washing up in the bathroom, but after twenty minutes of examining the knick-knacks and pictures on your wall, your absence is louder than ever. He frowns when he steps out and sees your sleeping figure on the living room couch. Shit. You were serious about him taking the bed.

He peers at you again, eyes adjusting to the room's pitch-black darkness until the window's blue moonlight allows him to see your face. You look peaceful, at bliss, almost.

Peter should just fucking leave. He contemplates this for over an hour as he lays in your bed, frowning at the ceiling because he’s not letting himself succumb to your weirdly kind offer of staying in your bed as a complete stranger.

Yeah, there had to be something wrong with you. You’d probably taken him in to use for human meat to sell on the black market or something. The whole girl-next-door thing was definitely a facade. It was.

Fuck you and your pretty eyes and pretty hair and how he could smell it everywhere in the room regardless of whether or not you were in it. Fuck you and your soft sheets and obnoxious amount of pillows.

Of course, once Peter is done ruminating, the sleep he has in your bed is the best he’s had in fucking weeks.

Your bed smells just like you. Like your sheets are fresh out of the laundry with a hint of something citrusy. Peter can barely open his eyes, but the sunlight from your window annoyingly beams onto his bruised face. The warmth licks his face.

He can hear the barely-there pattering of your light footsteps in the hallway. The hissing of a kettle. He emerges from your bedroom cautiously like a wild animal released from captivity. Your back is turned to him as you hum something nonspecific, some song he thinks he might’ve liked when he was in high school, but he doesn’t remember the name of it.

“Good morning, Peter,” you murmur, looking up and turning around when you notice his presence.

He furrows his brows. There’s a gleam in Peter’s eye that you can tell is untrusting. Like he’s expecting you to attack him.

“I never told you my name.”

Your gaze softens with sympathy. For some reason, you utter a soft apology.

“You already knew about me, but I didn’t know about you,” he accuses, arms crossed. “Why?”

You sigh. “Have you heard of the multiverse, Peter?”

No. No fucking way.

In a panic, he makes his way toward the front door of your apartment, but you beat him to it with two hands on his chest to block him.

“Peter! Peter, stop–”

“What the fuck is going on? Where am I?”

He doesn’t realize that he feels short of breath, chest heaving as he clutches you by the shoulders. He also doesn’t realize the extent of his super-strength, though you don’t complain or flinch from the contact.

“I’ll explain if you just calm down,” you reply, your voice still calm. Even in crisis, you’re still so fucking soft, so placid, and Peter isn’t sure if the fact is comforting or terrifying.

Something catches in his throat when you place your warm palms on his cheeks, an embrace too loving and nurturing for a stranger like him to deserve. The entire gesture rewires his brain instantly. Despite his ragged breathing, he stills and nods slowly.

“You’re on a different version of Earth. Okay? In this version, I’m the one who got bitten by a radioactive spider. I’m Silk.”

“I’m not supposed to be here.”

It comes out more like a question than a statement. You shake your head.

“No. I don’t know how you got here, but I promise you’ll be able to make it back. There’s a lot of us–”

“I know about the multiverse. I’ve– I’ve met other versions. Of myself.”

“You have?” you raise an eyebrow.

He hesitates. His brown eyes search yours, scanning your face until his gaze falls through you to fixate on your collarbone instead of your eyes. He blinks with a glassy scrutiny that bleeds with anxiety.

“I fucked things up on my Earth, and now no one knows who I am. No one knows who Peter Parker is, I mean. But why do you know who I am? How did you find me?”

“You know there are other Peters. I’ve met other Peters. After the multiverse nearly collapsed, the Spider Society was created. As a preventative measure, so that shit doesn’t happen again. All of us have the same story, and fucking it up fucks everyone else up, to put it simply. That can be something we can unpack for later. And I– I felt your presence. And I wanted to keep you safe, so I took you in..”

“There was something out there last night when I fell through. I don’t even remember how I got here. It was like waking up inside of a dream.”

The bewildered look in Peter’s eyes has you nearly as panicked as he is because you recognize it all too well. You’d seen it in the mirror yourself when you had first got bitten by that damn spider, however, at that time, you were fifteen and alone.

“What thing?”

“Something… dark. Amorphous. I don’t know.”

You frown. Your hands are still on him. His face feels like it’s on fire.

The thing inside his body screams at a frequency he can’t understand. It’s so loud that he can’t even hear himself think.

Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.

Shut the fuck up.

Peter jumps and takes a step back. When you try to move in tandem with him, he doesn’t let you. The voice in his head has a rasp unfamiliar to him, and it wants to overtake him. Fuck, is he hallucinating? Is he being fucking possessed?

Get out. Get out. Get the fuck out.

I don’t have anywhere else to go, Peter.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY BODY.

Look at her. Fucking delicious. We have to devour her. Now. NOW. NOW.

He won’t remember it later, but he runs through your bedroom door to the window, fumbling on the hinges until he nearly falls off your fire escape. When you relay this to him later, he’s bewildered, shaking. Too afraid to touch you. Too afraid to be in your apartment at all. Unsure of his memory, considering his lack of ability to recall any of this.

And yet, the warmth of your touch drinks him in, and he thinks that if he’s going to be trapped in a different universe than his own, he’s comfortable being in yours, under your roof. After he blacks out, your face is the only thing he can remember when he dreams.

The nightmares wake him up this time. He remembers the horrors of the night before you had found his mangled body in the alleyway. He remembers the pain, the glitch in the atmosphere that had seemed to have his body bursting through the seams, and the black entity that consumed his skin and stuck to it like glue. He remembers what it felt like to be transformed. He just doesn’t remember by what.

When Peter’s lids flutter open, he sees that his environment is sterile and sanitized. You make eye contact with him, and his honey-brown eyes darken, almost spiteful. The longer you look at his face, the more you notice he looks like a child.

He attempts to get up from the bed, but he’s restrained to it. He groans quietly, sucking his teeth.

“You’ll be out soon.”

He doesn’t say anything, though the grimace on his face says a thousand words. Instead, he scoffs.

Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.

The voice in his head is faint and raspy, though, unlike the other times, it’s barely there – much more muted than before. It comes as a passing thought, so nonchalant and quiet that Peter almost convinces himself that it’s something he hears echoed from the hallway nearby.

Your expression doesn’t falter. You merely watch him with curious eyes. It makes his skin hot.

“What happened?” he finally asks.

“You don’t remember?”

Peter doesn’t shake his head, nor does he look confused. He stays neutral as if he’s testing you. His jaw clenches.

“You fucking scared me, you know,” you mutter. There’s an exhaustion to your voice. How long has he fucking been here?

“Tell me.”

“It’s like you weren’t in your body,” you breathe. “Your eyes were all dark and you were trying to run away from me. You passed out after trying to jump off the fire escape. I thought you were trying to kill yourself, Peter.”

He notices that the edge in your voice is languishing, full of a distinct type of worry that he hasn’t felt from anyone else in ages. No one’s known him in over a year. But here you are, from a different universe, sitting across from him in this room with a face that almost looks like it’s about to be ruined with tears.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.”

“Why am I here?”

“I don’t know what happened. The tests they ran on you – it’s nothing we’ve seen before. Or yet.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We use a device to send our Spider-people home based on your DNA. Or the spider you were bitten by since that’s what tethers you to your Earth. We thought you might go home and transport back to your universe, but you didn’t. The system fucking went berserk after scanning you.”

Peter’s first instinct is to say I’m sorry, but he knows that would be stupid, and the parasitic thing in his body shuts him down. He clamps his eyes shut to find darkness under all the harsh fluorescent lighting, but the hint of something sinister shakes his body in a way he can’t explain. He briefly remembers the moments before he allegedly tried to jump off the fire escape of your bedroom. Your soft eyes. Your hands on his face.

Your hand touches his now, and it makes his whole body jerk.

(Your warmth reminds him of someone else’s, and for that, the thing in him wants to fucking kill you.)

Miguel doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with Peter, either. He has other shit on his plate, like chasing misfits through the multiverse.

Peter gets tired of the tests. It’s not like they’re doing anything because every so often, the thing inside him is lecherous and makes him feel disgusting for reasons beyond him. You are the only thing that keeps him calm. It’s like a manifestation of some curse cast upon him, a plague of a punishment.

In between the tests, he stays at yours. You don’t talk to him much because of your hours at the office, and when you’re home, you mostly eat dinner in silence. Sometimes Peter cooks and has dinner warm for you before you get home because he’s impatient and knows how to make a few basic meals from living alone in that dingy apartment.

It’s mundane. Comforting. In some stupid, twisted way, Peter wants to keep it. Keep you. Even if he won’t admit it.

He doesn’t have to be Spider-Man on your Earth, and no one knows his identity. He almost feels like a housewife from how he dotes on you in small ways without you asking, this domesticity he’s adapted just because he can. His injuries have healed, and he works on yours instead.

You reject his help because you’re used to it. Still, he hovers by the bathroom door when you bind your wounds.

He watches you with bated breaths, bottom lip sucked in his teeth. You have no qualms about the pair of eyes on you – at least, you don’t show it.

“That shit’s gonna get infected.”

You roll your eyes without looking at him. Your nimble fingers work on patching up the cut under your breast instead.

“I know what I’m doing,” you huff.

“You didn’t even put Neosporin on it.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t have Neosporin in this universe?” he asks, an incredulous expression on his face.

You shrug.

“Again, I know what I’m doing.”

“Maybe I should be out there with you on patrol.”

Your head whips around then, studying Peter’s face. He stares back at you with a seriousness that doesn’t break. You narrow your eyes.

“We’re working on getting you home, Peter. I’m not dragging you into my shit.”

“You dragged me into your shit the moment you took me in.”

You grimace, saying nothing. Your lack of response annoys him, but more than anything, it chips away at his ego.

Maybe you regret rescuing him. The thought brings dread to his chest, guilt riding up in the caverns of the space he holds for you, which has grown bigger and bigger as the weeks go on. He thinks that if the two of you had met in different circumstances, normal ones, perhaps the two of you would be friends.

He’d been alone for far too long. The scrubbing of his identity already turned him into a shell. The old Peter would’ve been much more proactive about this situation. He certainly would’ve been less fucking moody. But he knows there’s no one to accuse him of not being his usual self because nobody knows him anymore, except you.

Peter is so fucking bored of staying in your apartment. He needs something to keep him going, whether it’s crime or college. Cooped up in your home, he feels like nothing at all.

Sometimes, that feeling subsides when you’re home with him all domestic. He agrees to your movie nights despite protesting your incessant preference for horror. He likes how you curl your lip in a smirk when you tease him for being so damn jumpy.

While your relationship is mildly symbiotic, the thought of you permeates him more and more, usually at night. He has dreams of you that he’d be ashamed to relay when he’s awake. The thing inside him lurches, wants with so much zeal that he has to take measures to calm it down.

One night, when you return from patrol, your Silk suit ripped at your bicep, hip, and the space that’s supposed to cover your ribcage. He lets you patch yourself up like you always do without words other than an annoyed gruff.

Peter can’t get the sight of your bloody wound out of his head, the exposed skin under your breast. Even the tightness of your suit allures him more than it should, which is fucking ridiculous. It’s nearing five weeks since he dropped into your universe. He should be used to you by now.

“You good?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh-huh.”

You know that’s not true. Peter looks like he’s seen a ghost. You don’t pry. You stopped doing that weeks ago.

The second he leaves your room, he runs the shower on cold.

You want it.

“Shut up,” he growls under his breath.

Peter has never wished for a lobotomy, and certainly not as much as he is now.

You want her. Take her.

Shivering does nothing for him. He turns the water up to hot, nearly scalding, just as he’s convinced himself to like it. The thing inside him is consuming him, getting closer and closer to his point of breaking, and he knows it. Every moment he can’t be around you for more than a minute, he knows it.

The only thing that satiates the feeling is to take action himself. To truly quiet that dark, venomous desire, he has to touch himself for release, and he’s ashamed that you’re the thought at the apex of it every single time. Each time he reaches his peak, he can almost make out the figure expanding over his own, a viscous black substance that seems to breathe over his veins. Once he comes to bed with you, it’s gone.

The stupid urges make him feel animalistic. It’s never been like this.

Images of you with your suit ripped at the seams and flashes of your bare skin reel in his brain constantly. It’s embarrassing. He’s not fucking sixteen.

You bother less with pleasantries now that it’s been nearly two months since he fell into your universe. After the initial shock of his situation, of course, he’d had a billion questions, to which you attempted to answer to the best of your ability. Proactive as ever, he’d opted to go to the Spider Society himself on several occasions without you, attempting to understand what could be keeping him tethered to your universe, and to no avail.

After those trials and tribulations, he’d become withdrawn.

“Wanna watch a movie?” you try one night. He shrugs. It’s an answer to most of your questions now. It’s starting to get fucking annoying.

“You mentioned you like Star Wars, right?”

“Sure,” Peter mumbles.

“I’ve never seen the prequels.”

It’s the only thing that brings light to his eyes in maybe a week, you notice. The only other times you see that lightness is when you catch Peter in secret moments cozying up to your cat, Ferris.

(Weird name for a cat, he’d remarked. You tell him you’d watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off the day you found him in the alleyway.)

Now Peter is settled on your couch with a soft black t-shirt clinging loosely to his frame. Maybe he doesn’t mean to be on the complete opposite side of the sofa, but the distance feels more apparent to you than it should. Ferris purrs in Peter’s lap. Traitor.

You pretend you aren’t fixated by the slight freckles that decorate his nose. Or his collarbone. Or the way that he smells just like you because he hasn’t bothered to ask you to buy him soap for himself.

You get bits and pieces of Peter’s personality over time. You learn that his favorite Thai dish is larb, just like you. He’s incredibly smart, which isn’t unlike you, but you certainly give less shits about the scientific aspect of the multiverse than he does. He has a guilty pleasure for sugary cereal. He loves the Velvet Underground. He has a freckle under his abs on the left side of his body. He’s annoyingly persistent in helping you patch yourself up.

When you hear the sound of your name in his voice, you wince.

“You zoning out already?”

“Huh?”

He gives you a look and you can’t help but giggle.

“You didn’t even hear anything I just said.”

“I was having flashbacks,” you shrug, blinking back at Natalie Portman on the television screen instead of Peter’s eyes. “To my Padme Halloween costume.”

“That’s stolen valor!”

“I was twelve, dipshit. It was on sale at Specter Halloween and there was nothing left.”

“Spirit Halloween?”

You furrow your brows.

“Oh my god. Nevermind.”

For some reason, this reaction makes you pull the fleece blanket from his body. You mumble a rushed apology to your cat, who scrambles off of Peter’s lap in an instant. Peter is quick to pull the blanket back immediately until the two of you end up in a tug of war. You see a flash of grinning teeth.

“Peter!” you squeal when he yanks the blanket so hard that you nearly fall off the couch.

“Why do you have so much energy– dude!” You’re almost in his lap but he’s faster than you. You are so close to using your webs on him.

A flush of heat spreads over your cheeks when he has you pinned to the couch, arms above your head with the blanket now forgotten on the floor. His knees are on each side of you, so squirming does nothing for your cause.

“Relax,” he gruffs.

You can’t tell if his eyes shift in darkness or if it’s just a trick of the television light. The warmth emanating from his cheeks matches yours. The way his legs are spread above yours is vulnerable, and so is the way you’re looking at him, and – fuck, can you stop looking at him like that?

You feel the grip on your wrists loosen as he shuffles to his feet, nearly tripping over the discarded blanket.

“We need more popcorn,” he mumbles.

Fixing the mess of your hair, you peer at him through the dimness.

“That was the last bag.”

“I can get some more then.”

He pulls on the hoodie that’s draped over the armchair – your oversized hoodie, in fact – and it’s clearly too tight on him.

“What? It’s late. Are you – are you hungry or something? I can make you food.”

“With what?” he snaps. “We haven’t been able to go grocery shopping yet this week.”

“Well, it’s too fucking late for that now.”

Silence permeates the space between the two of you. The seconds that pass feel so long. There is no void in Peter’s head, only the sound of a disgusting, gnawing desire. Grotesque wanting. He wishes you would just leave so he can scrub himself raw in the shower like he usually does.

She smells so good.

“I’ll get some stuff from the bodega. I need– I need air, anyway,” Peter stammers. “Should swing around and stuff. I’m holed up in here every goddamn day.”

The comment stings. It’s not your fault that he’s stuck here like a stray cat. He knows that, so he feels guilty when his words come out with more bite than he intends. He can’t stand to see the way your bottom lip trembles slightly as you look away from him, mumbling something of a useless apology even when you both know you have nothing to apologize for.

You flinch when the door slams behind him.

You don’t see Peter the next morning even though your keys hang right next to the doorway. The window by your bed is left slightly ajar, so you assume that it’s meant for him.

It’s fine. He had already expressed his cabin fever to you, so it makes sense that he’d be out exploring the city. (This is what you tell yourself throughout the day, even though you can’t stop feeling an ache in your gut.)

Your day is mundane, but they always are, you suppose. Maybe they haven’t felt as such since you had company every day. Peter’s absence is so much more apparent than it should be. You haven’t been without him in a bit. Even at your stupid day job, he occupies your mind, and the mere knowledge of his absence sears a hole in your heart. It feels pathetic. Maybe he’s home. Maybe he’d come back after you’d left for work.

When you get home in the evening, he’s nowhere to be found. You pretend that it’s nothing to you. You still make dinner for two.

Once you’re settled for bed, Peter is on the other side of town at a random bar. It’s a miracle he gets in without an official ID and all, not to mention his boyish face. A raven-haired girl who skips the line takes a liking to him, plus she seems to know the bouncer. She’s attached to Peter like a moth for the rest of the night.

She’s daring and touchy, with a sense of humor that’s too over-familiar to appear charming. Peter doesn’t have to do much except nod and smirk to seduce her, downing shot after shot just so he can feel a buzz instead of irritation whenever the girl has her hands on him. On the dance floor, the shape of her body slightly resembles yours, maybe. She reeks of over-saturated vanilla, like the inside of a Victoria’s Secret.

When he fucks her in her lavish penthouse, he can only think of you. He thinks her apartment is boring, lacks character, and looks soulless. It’s nothing like yours. It doesn’t even begin to contain the same warmth. Peter feels similarly about the girl, but he’d had enough shots in the bar to ignore that emptiness. For now, he feels full with his cock inside her, hearing her whiny pleas and soft moans as her face gets buried into the mattress. He only cums when he thinks of your face.

It’s not enough.

Shut the fuck up, Peter screams in his head. Shut up.

Though, we’re hungry, aren’t we?

No.

Peter groans, digging his teeth into the girl’s neck as his fingertips press into the curve of her waist. He shuts his eyes, breathing rapidly as his body relaxes on top of hers. None of her sweet nothings registers in his brain. He holds off the violence in his head until she’s fast asleep, to his relief, because then he can return to you.

___

You’re wide awake when Peter fumbles with your bedroom window at three in the morning. He nearly trips next to your bed, but he braces himself, landing his hands on the softness of your rug.

You hear him sigh. Maybe you’ve become too attuned to him. Every movement he makes is a small earthquake to you, so present and real as he unravels even when he’s just taking a few steps toward you. Maybe you’re imagining his breath behind your neck. Maybe you’re dreaming and you wish for it.

He assumes you’re asleep when he crawls into bed with you. This is only the second time. The first time, he’d had a nightmare on the couch and you had offered your warmth. At the moment, he’s inexplicably warm as he wraps his arms around your waist.

“Where were you?” you whisper.

“Out.”

“You smell like a high school girl’s locker room.”

He snorts, tightening the grip he has over your middle. You feel his breath tickling the nape of your neck.

“Okay.”

“You gonna answer me?”

“Why does it matter? ‘m a big boy.”

“It matters when I’m responsible for you and I don’t know where you are.”

“I was always going to come back.”

You don’t say anything to that. You think this is too intimate, but you can’t help but admit to yourself that it’s what you need. The touch of someone else. The feeling of warmth enveloping your body.

You haven’t felt him this close to you before, at least when you’re this hypervigilant. Stretching your back slightly, you decide to turn to face him. Your body curls naturally into Peter’s without a second thought.

You notice the way he bites the inside of his bottom lip subtly. It’s dumb, how rapidly his heart beats now that you’re looking right at him. You pretend you don’t feel it from being so close to him, but it makes your heart elate.

Peter closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see your face. It’s not like the action helps him calm his heart down, because fuck, you’re so warm and soft and pliant in his arms. He’s gotten good at quieting the voice in his head lately but he’s still afraid of it consuming him.

“Goodnight, Peter,” you murmur.

He pretends he’s asleep. It takes everything in him to keep up the facade until he knows for sure you’ve passed out inches away from him.

___

When Peter wakes before you, something primal pushes his senses into overdrive. You smell so fucking sweet. It’s like the universe wants him to eat you.

She’s right there on a platter for you. Just for you.

He’s good at restraining it. Sucking in his teeth, his eyes scan the curves of your waist to the soft edges of your lips.

Despite his restraint, he can’t be in the room with you right now. Certainly not in the same bed basking in your warmth. For fuck’s sake, what were you thinking, allowing him into your bed in the first place?

He already knows the answer – kindness is what fuels you—your altruism. When the mind gets the best of him, Peter curses at your character when he’s alone. Sometimes he’s on a random rooftop bombarded by thoughts of you. Sometimes he’s in your shower.

If anything, you were perfect, so perfect that Peter couldn’t stand it. So warm and pretty and pleasant that even the way he touches his cock doesn’t dirty the image he has of you in his head. You’re too pure, even when you use your nasty tongue against him, even when you fight him.

The slightest showcase of your bare skin doesn’t help the cause. Peter retreats to the couch again even though you tell him that you don’t mind the space he takes up in your bed. He can’t tell you he’s doing it for your safety.

Even so, he’s so attuned to you that he hears your midnightmare whines in the night as if you were right next to him. And when he guards your bed like a dog while you’re asleep, he tries not to focus on the shape of your collarbone. Of course not. He convinced himself that he was lonely, fucking pathetic. He tells himself that the mere sight of your exposed neck and the pout of your lips does nothing to him at all.

Peter comes with you to headquarters. The other spiders are sympathetic to him, often over-friendly. He sticks to you like a lost puppy.

“Did Miguel figure out anything yet?”

“Huh?”

“About getting me home.”

You raise your eyebrows in surprise, though your expression neutralizes once you look away. It was stupid to hold any value towards Peter. This is what you tell yourself, at least, so you must remind yourself that his questions aren’t out of left field.

You refused to face the reality that you’d grown attached to him, that his presence had felt normal to you after he’d stayed with you for more than two months.

“Still working on it,” you reply, giving him a sheepish smile.

You feel guilty despite telling the truth. No tests could decipher why Peter was immune to being sent off back to his universe. No updates to the technology had worked, either.

(You don’t really know what he’s still doing here, especially considering how quiet it is at headquarters today. You’re only really there to assist Margo in perfecting the gizmo that helps Miguel verse-jump.)

“I got you lunch, though. And feel free to leave whenever you want, I might stay late.”

You drop a paper bag in front of him. The contents reveal a Cuban sandwich, bread smooshed flat with extra pickles. His favorite. You’d remembered his long rant about missing Delmar’s.

The gesture is sweet. You’re sweet, even though you’re a hard shell to break.

The voice in his head is louder than usual today. Once you’re in a separate room, he feels immediately desperate for your presence, and he can’t tell if this is one of his usual emotions. The moment he fell into your world, besides feeling possessed, the emotions he experiences within his body are unlike him. Stronger, desperate, on the brink of detonation.

“I’m sorry you’re stuck here,” you stammer after clearing your throat.

“I’m lucky,” Peter shrugs. His eyes don’t waver from yours. “That you’re the one taking care of me, I mean. You’re kind for letting me stay.”

For keeping me. Do you want to keep me as much as I want to keep you?

The smile you give him is saccharine as you flush. He wonders if it’s fake, secretly full of vitriol. Perhaps he’ll find out when the both of you are home.

He decides to give you space for the rest of the afternoon. After boring himself with floating in and out of random stores in Manhattan, he returns to your apartment in the evening, jiggling your bedroom window open even though you had given him a spare key.

None of the lights are on except a glow emitting from behind the bathroom door, left open slightly.

Your eyes shoot open when you hear the creak of the door. In the dimness of your bathroom, the only thing that helps you see Peter’s face is the dozens of tealight candles you have around the bathtub.

He gulps, mumbling an apology as he looks away.

“You’re home earlier than I thought you’d be,” he murmurs.

“I was having massive brain fog all day so I came home early,” you tell him. He nods in understanding without saying anything. He doesn’t know why he’s lingering.

“You clearly haven’t figured out the concept of a front door.”

He blinks at the wet sheen of your collarbone, how the candles flicker an orange light across your face, and then he looks away again.

“Sorry. Force of habit.”

“Well, you should try it. You have a key,” you snort.

Peter’s heartbeat races. God, you smell so fucking good. Like citrus and sandalwood and sunlight. There’s no way he’s going to be able to sleep next to you tonight.

TAKE HER RIGHT NOW. FUCKING DO IT.

“Uh, I’ll leave you be,” he rasps, accidentally slamming the bathroom door closed.

He knows you’ll be annoyed about it later, but he unlatches your bedroom window again to get outside and feel the fresh air. He doesn’t know what to do with his energy, with the gnawing in his body, so he tries to get his breathing even on the roof of your building.

“Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off,” Peter mumbles in succession, straining his body.

On the concrete of the rooftop, he lies down and stares at the evening sky, trying to think of literally anything else, but he can’t. He knows that your existence isn’t a curse, that whatever it is that’s plaguing him is deep within his body, but he doesn’t know how to exorcize it.

In a frenzy, he rips his suit from his body because the thing inside him is begging for stimulation. Thoughts of you flood his brain. Every angle of you, every memory, every scent. You would be surprised to know how much he’s memorized about you considering how rarely he likes to make eye contact.

And God, your eyes. How would you feel if you were watching him right now? Would you be disgusted? Would you be as disgusted as Peter is with himself?

It takes a minute or two of palming his dick before he finishes just from thinking about you. He groans lowly, animalistic, and there still isn’t any relief despite the mess he’s made on his suit.

YOU’D FEEL BETTER IF IT WAS HER.

Fuck you.

Why is he so goddamn flustered? He’s literally slept next to you. And it isn’t like he saw anything when you were in the bathtub. Just your bare face, your wet shoulders–

Fuck, he’s hard again. Peter doesn’t think he’s been this hard in his entire life.

It doesn’t take long for him to cum again even with all the overstimulation. You’re probably wondering where he is, too. He hopes to God you aren’t in your room so he can sneak back in quietly and get changed, maybe throw in a load of laundry so he doesn’t give himself away.

This is so stupid. So, so stupid.

Luck is on Peter’s side when he crawls back into your apartment. He hears you humming from the kitchen and the smell of onions and garlic wafts under his nose. He strips quietly and changes into new clothes.

“Pete?”

Sighing, he follows the sound of your voice. The smile you give him is nearly blinding.

“Where were you?”

“Uhh, checking the mail.”

“For half an hour?” you raise a brow.

He shrugs. An excuse makes its way into his mind.

“And I went out to look for cat food. We ran out. I couldn’t find the, uh, brand Ferris likes, though. Sorry.”

“Wow,” you give him a hint of a smirk. The cat in question jumps onto your shoulder as you bend down to get a pot from one of the lower cupboards. “You hear that, Ferris? Seems like Petey cares if you live or die.”

You coo at the small tabby, who meows in response. Peter rolls his eyes, feigning annoyance.

“And you still haven’t figured out how to use the front door. Do you need a live tutorial from me or what?”

Peter bites the inside of his cheek as he sits down at the island, watching as you pour crushed tomatoes into the pot. The sight makes him awfully nostalgic. You’re the first person who’s cooked for him in years.

“Let me be,” he huffs, the hint of a chuckle in his voice. “And you’re gonna get cat hair in the pasta sauce.”

“No. Ferris is so well-groomed.”

“Not when he sheds all over my clothes.”

“You should be thankful he likes to roll around in your dirty laundry pile. That means he likes you, you know.”

Silence stews in the room, save for the sounds of boiling water. Peter takes the liberty to unlock your phone and put one of your playlists on the speaker.

He clears his throat. “You need any help?”

“Nah, it’s just pasta,” you shrug. “It’s the last we have, though. Wanna go on a grocery run tomorrow?”

“Of course. The fridge is pitiful.”

“I don’t need your attitude when I feed you every day, Parker.”

You smile in jest at him and of course, he avoids eye contact like he usually does. Over the weeks, you’ve been accustomed to him acting like another stray kitten, but sometimes, you wonder if there’s something about your presence or personality that makes him keep you at arm’s length. Not that you should care what a stray thinks about you.

Peter wishes he could act normal around you instead of constantly being on edge. Again, it’s not your fault. If there was a way he could make it up to you, to let you know how much he’s grateful for you, he would. Every time he thinks about it, his body takes over and shame is all that’s left.

The bowl of pasta you put in front of him smells heavenly and looks like a page in the cooking section of the New York Times.

“Help yourself to seconds, big boy.”

His eyes flash to your face, but you’re busying yourself with putting wet cat food onto a small plate for Ferris.

You both end up eating on the island together. You don’t take a seat next to him, choosing to stand up across from him. Instead of conversing, the music continues to play quietly from the speaker, and you scroll mindlessly through the emails on your phone.

“I can feel you staring at me, you know.”

“I wasn’t,” Peter replies, defensive.

“You were,” you snort. “Which is funny because usually you refuse to make eye contact with me.”

“That’s not true.” (He’s lying through his teeth.)

“It’s okay. I’m not offended.” (Okay, maybe now you’re the one lying through your teeth.)

Peter scoffs, looking away, of course.

“Thanks for dinner,” he mumbles.

He looks down, collecting his bowl and utensils. He decides to busy himself with the dishes, taking yours wordlessly without looking at your face.

“You don’t have to do that,” you say softly. He shrugs.

When you say his name, you’re right next to him and he feels like he might choke on nothing. Sure, he senses your presence in proximity to his own, but there’s nothing to stop you from getting close to him.

“You’re always on edge around me.”

He doesn’t reply, even though he knows the sound of running water from the kitchen sink isn’t enough to drown out the tension between you two.

“Peter,” you try. Ugh, now you feel whiny.

“Hm?” He feigns ignorance as he glances at you, turning off the faucet.

“I– I just want you to be comfortable around me.”

“I am,” he lies.

You don’t know what to say to break through the invisible wall he’s put between you two. He doesn’t know how to tell you that the distance is to keep you safe.

Your shoulders sag in defeat as you turn away from him and it conjures a new ache in his chest. Peter is often too caught up in his agony to notice how it might affect you. He can notice the frustration that radiates off of you – he’s not stupid. But the clear disappointment in your body language is so much more apparent than it ever was before.

“I think I might go to bed early,” you tell him, your voice just above a whisper. “Thanks for cleaning up.”

“Of course.”

The door to your bedroom shuts quietly.

Despite his constant uneasiness around you, Peter feels petulant now that you’ve left his side. Especially with the guilt of making you feel alienated in your own home. The trouble of explaining any of this to you feels like a burden more than anything, and you were already dealing with the burden of him staying in your apartment like he was haunting the place.

Ferris slinks between Peter’s legs, purring. He climbs up his legs the same way he does to you and Peter welcomes him into his arms.

“You shouldn’t be nice to me, either,” Peter whispers, stroking the cat’s fur slowly.

After Peter finishes cleaning up the kitchen, he settles on the couch for mindless television while Ferris settles on his lap. It doesn’t take him long to feel his eyes heavy-lidded, and although it should be easy to fall asleep on the couch, his body itches for your touch. Trying to sleep on your couch makes his limbs feel like they need to stretch every other second. So he surrenders and falls into your bed like he usually does. Like how you expect him to.

He dreams of you. He often does.

Usually, he never remembers once he wakes up, which is probably the safest option. At the moment, the dreams are too visceral to be considered dreams to his subconscious.

At the moment, he thinks the silkiness of your skin has to be real under his fingertips. It has to be. It would only make sense because your scent is so fucking strong, so alluring. It permeates the entire room, along with the subtle smell of sex and desperation.

Peter can see your pink mouth parting. The way your back arches. The way his name sounds when it comes from your throat, babbling its way out of your mouth, so sweetly. So fucking innocently.

It’s all rudely interrupted by the darkness that he’s attempted to keep away for so long. A black cloud that envelops the both of you, until the cloud is tangible, until it feels like a substance that could drown you.

Where his senses only uttered your name and acknowledged your sweetness is now replaced by an insatiable hunger. One that is partially his, partially from an entity that could break you in half without a second thought.

Now, the entity clouds him. Consumes his entire body until he’s nothing but a vast monster with sharp teeth with you underneath him.

The look on your face is full of horror. Your naked body shudders. Peter wants nothing more than to comfort you, but he knows he can’t, not when something black and viscous has obscured his entire body.

He is not in his body when his teeth graze the skin of your shoulder, biting hard enough for blood to trickle out of your skin. Your scream is the only thing that he can hear, maybe other than his own, once he sees your mouth spit out blood.

And then, darkness.

___

“No, nonononono, no, fuck, please–”

It all happens so fast. He doesn’t know what he does to you that makes you drop dead so quickly, and for fuck’s sake, his arms are still not his arms.

“Peter!”

A shake in his universe breaks him apart. When he opens his eyes, he sees yours, wide and shocked and bright despite the darkness of the night.

You’re in your bed and so is he. And you’re holding him, unscathed. There is no black gore adorning his arms.

“Peter, it’s okay,” you shush him softly.

One hand strokes his hair while the other is splayed with fingers stretched across his warm cheek. You’re more than concerned by how shaken he looks. Like he’s in shock. You’ve never seen him like this.

“You’re okay,” he says. It’s a whisper. It sounds like a prayer.

“I am,” you nod. “I’m fine. I want to make sure that you’re fine, too, okay?”

His lashes flutter when you stroke his cheek. His breathing is heavy like a newly discovered beast, but you know that you don’t have to tame him from the way he keens to your touch.

“I–I thought–”

“Shh, you don’t have to talk about it. It wasn’t real, okay? You just had a nightmare,” you coo.

You can feel the way he swallows sharply and the way he struggles to breathe through his nose. He winces when he realizes that you’re wiping away a tear from his cheek.

“I was– I was terrible–” he stammers, gasping for breath. “And you–”

“Peter, it’s okay. It was just a dream. It’s okay.”

“You aren’t safe with me.”

His eyes are wild. He’s so earnest when he speaks that maybe, just maybe he could be telling the truth.

You ignore it even though the way he says it breaks your heart.

“I am safe with you. And you’re safe with me, right here,” you try. The sound of his voice has tears brimming the corners of your eyes, too, but you don’t notice. You just want to get through to him. You swallow your anxiety. “We’re safe together, I promise. I would never let anything bad happen to you.”

He scans your face frantically until his eyes zero in on your lips. His senses are flooded with you, like he’s an animal ready to pounce on his prey, but he tries to hold back. His breathing turns shallow and he can’t help but stare at your bottom lip quivering, feeling the warmth of your palms against his cheeks.

TAKE HER. TAKE HER. TAKE HER.

He’s not sure what the motive is for him pressing his lips to yours, whether it’s the demon inside him or the desire festering in his body. Peter knows that they’re one and the same.

To his surprise, you surrender your mouth to him immediately. His tongue slots into between your lips without effort as his hands clasp your body with his innate strength, ranging from your hips to the undersides of your breasts.

You didn’t expect him to kiss you, but now that he has, you don’t think that you want him to ever stop.

Your hands graduate from his cheeks to the back of his head, pulling at his brown tresses as his hands roam your body with more fervor than anyone else has given you.

You’ve been intimate with other people before, but they were always so careful, so timid with you. Maybe sometimes they were rough, but your mind was too checked out to notice. But now, the mere touch of someone else’s fingertips on your hard nipples has you squirming in your bed, making your breath hitch. Already, you feel the warmth in your core.

Peter discards your shirt (nearly rips it off) with ease as you whimper, enabling him, neither of you saying a word at all. You grab at Peter’s shirt to tug off, which he does, but when you pull at the waistband of his sweatpants, he takes your hand and slams it above your head with fingers interlocked.

Look how fun this is, Peter. Don’t you want to ruin her? Fuck her pretty little face?

Peter groans at the thought of you gagged with his cum, but he can barely fathom even taking out his cock yet. Well, he can, and although he’s thought about you like that, he doesn’t want to move too quickly. In contrast, his body seems to be moving faster than his brain.

He never thought you would want it as much as he does.

You whine when you feel Peter’s fingers creep under the waistband of your shorts and underneath your panties, immediately feeling your wetness. It pools into the fabric as he rubs your slit incessantly, making you mewl eagerly as Peter’s teeth suck on the skin of your jaw.

“F-fuck–,” you whimper, limp in his arms, preening to the feeling of his tongue on your clavicle.

You’re so fucking wet, he could devour you in one bite if he wanted to. He could make it painless for you, but that wouldn’t be fair, would it? You wouldn’t feel any of it, none of the agonizing pleasure that should build up between your thighs from his touch alone, and he wants to see it all over your face so fucking badly.

Do not tease us. We have an appetite to fulfill, don’t we?

I’m fucking getting there, hold on.

Sure, the monster in him wants to devour you, kill you, swallow you whole in a snap. But Peter wants to enjoy it. Wants to enjoy you. So he attempts to quiet the deep voice inside of him.

He still has your wrists bound in one large hand while his other grips your thighs hard, discarding your bottoms in the process. When he opens his eyes, he sees you splayed naked for him with a wanton expression on your face, nearly drooling.

He also sees that somehow, he’d taken off his sweatpants and boxers, hard cock swelled up and aching as it grazes your folds slowly.

Peter thinks he’d like to finger you, go down on you, and see how his touch makes electricity spark within your abdomen while your face contorts. He wants to see all your features twist into a sweet expression of pure pleasure, but he’s too fucking impatient. Maybe that’s the thing inside him speaking, so hungry and urgent that he can’t tell if he’s suppressing a being or his desires at this point.

He doesn’t know what currently guides his instincts. They’re all blinded, flooded by thoughts of you. As if there’s nothing else on Earth he could want, ever.

That could be true. It probably is. But that’s something he can unpack later.

For now, he can only be influenced by the sound of your voice begging his name. He swallows down the sound of it with his tongue in your mouth, drinking in your whimpers as he bites on your bottom lip.

“Please,” you beg, lifting your hips to meet his length desperately as you squirm underneath him. “Need it— need—”

“Need me, huh?” Peter rasps. He touches his forehead to yours, hands still clutching at your wrists above your head.

“Yes.”

“So fucking clingy,” he mumbles against your mouth. You arch your back at the mere feeling of his cock prodding against your wet folds and it drives him fucking insane.

For once, the voice inside his head is only yours. He feels grateful for it.

“Were you planning this the whole time, huh? Wanted me in your bed from the beginning, didn’t you? Admit it.” He’s all teeth when he taunts you. He wonders if you’d let him spit in your mouth if you weren’t so busy pouting.

“Y-yes.”

“So fucking cute,” he sneers. “Pathetic, too.”

You don’t recognize the wrath in his voice — it’s unlike him. Even when he’s been pissed off with you. But you don’t have it in you to question it, because the darkness in it sounds like silk and crushed velvet, and the feeling of his hot breath against your neck makes you want him even more.

In the darkness, Peter’s eyes look otherworldly. Dark and bottomless, the devil incarnate.

You moan his name once more and whiplash meets the senses.

With a shaking exhale, you take the stretch of him, all of him, wincing the slightest bit as he bottoms out. It stings until he slides out just to thrust himself back in again, the resolve blatant on your face as your mouth falls in surrender.

Usually, you’d be embarrassed. It takes a bit for you to let someone in like this so intimately, and even when you’ve done it with other men, you were at least a little intoxicated.

Right now, you’re merely blissed from drowsiness, borderline euphoric from Peter’s proximity. You wouldn’t be able to admit it out loud — you knew the sweet sounds falling from your mouth were enough. Even when Peter had first settled into your bed tonight while you were asleep, you subconsciously curled into him like a moth to a flame.

Peter cups your breast in his hand harshly to latch his mouth onto your nipple, sucking and biting just to hear you whine. He’s rougher than any lover you’ve had before, so you aren’t exactly sure if he’s being sadistic with the amount of teeth he’s using. The feeling of his canines against your flesh is like nothing you’ve felt before. You’d never thought it would be a feeling you would get so fucking addicted to.

He fucks into you harder now, pulling up your legs so that his large, calloused palms are bruising the skin of your thighs. One leg ends up hitched over his shoulder so that he can thrust into you from a deeper angle, one that makes your eyes roll back into your head.

“So fucking good for me– so fucking good–”

Your hips shake when Peter inevitably reaches your sweet spot while his hand that isn’t propping you up is focused on stimulating your clit. You’re fucking brainless, listening to his filthy praises.

“Peter! Aah– oh my god–”

He’s obsessed with the way you’re rendered speechless, how you’re lifting your hips just to meet his, how you’re so obedient when you whimper his name. He’s obsessed with you. He thinks this might be another dream.

Sloppily, he nibbles at your earlobe and laves his tongue from your jaw down to your throat as he fucks into you with ease. His pleasure is a rubber band about to fucking snap. Your hushed breaths and whines nearly tip him over the edge, especially when he can feel you sucking in him so tightly.

“Cum for me, fucking cum for me,” Peter growls. “I know you can do it, baby. Can feel you’re close.”

He’s more intense with his thrusts now that he’s trying to coax your release, and truthfully, he can feel himself following you right after.

“I’m– I’m gonna–”

Your voice falls into a staccato of moans that dissipate into Peter’s wet mouth. Your nails dig into his back as he nearly melts into your body.

His frantic thrusts begin to slow, his hips sloppy against yours as he groans against your neck. His mind is in such a frenzy that he thinks he might just devour you. It starts with his fingers wrapped around your throat. He revels in the sound of your voice choking on your moans.

Peter nearly smothers you with his hand over your mouth, while he bites incessantly at your neck and shoulder. The sweetness of your voice, desperate and wanton for him, is quickly replaced by something darker in his mind. A voice dormant inside him that awakens with the threat of contamination. He’s in his nightmare again, but with the aid of your body to remind him of bliss. Of power.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, fuckfuckfuck–”

His body is so fucking heavy on top of yours, suffocating you with his desire. His teeth bite down hard enough on the juncture of your neck to draw blood, and he ignores your cry. The frenzy of war and lust and intoxication in his head is too fucking much. It’s his own personal eclipse.

His warmth spills into you. He feels his cum in between your bodies, overflowing out of your soaked cunt and onto the bedsheets.

It takes a moment for Peter to notice that you’re crying. He knows it should hurt him. He knows he can’t stand the sight of tears flowing down your delicate cheeks because of him. But he doesn’t feel anything at all.

In a way, both of you are changed.

You had leaped off of a precipice the moment you let him into your bed.

Peter furrows his brows at your tear-streaked face, body stilling with shallow breaths. He cups your face in his warm hands and kisses you sweetly like a lover would and not a monster.

For some hellish reason, you kiss him back.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #spiderman x you #peter parker fluff #peter parker smut #peter parker angst #spiderman x reader #mcu!peter parker x you #tasm!peter parker x you #tom holland x you #tom holland x reader #tom holland smut #peter parker x you

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shapelytimber · 8 months ago

Text

Hellsing wives !!

the end of Hellsing is my roman empire

[PRINT] - [COMMISSIONS]

Bonus sketch, process and rambling below vvv

I don't usually share my sketches, but this one was cute :))

Hello welcome to my rambling zone, I have the bad habit of taking notes during the night because I'm an insomniac- enjoy ! And remember everything here is just my opinion written at 5am

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about Seras, because on one hand there is a lot I hate about her character :

-I *hate* her design. She is sexualized in a way that makes me really uncomfortable

-She is always the character that brings the worst part of the show (especially in the beginning) : the humor (and misogyny). She is treated as both the audience surrogate, and a comic relief, and that's a mix that do not work for me (and if you add the fact the humor doesn't make me laugh, and that she is more often than not treated as a pair of boobs and not a character- well it's hard for me to take her seriously)

-she was a cop (acab). And Alucard doesn't let me forget that because he calls her "police girl" the whole fucking show.... (But I can't complain about that because I kind of liked the pay off-)

-I find her romance with Pip boring (mainly because I find Pip boring I'm sorry), even tho I liked where it went. But if I find the man more interesting dead idk if that's a success.

-Her last apperance will always enrage me. After all her character growth, after you thought the writers *maybe* respected her a bit more..... One of the last thing you see from her is a panty shot. How to spit in my face for enjoying the ending ig

But on the other hand, despite all that.... The end of her character arc was kind of sick and she gets a lesbian ending lgkgkckgj so 5/10 character could be worse ig

But the shit that gets to me about all of that... is that I know Hellsing can pull off great women characters !! Integra is *right there* !!!

All of this to say I like doing fanart of mid medias I love because I get to fix some aspects of the original I didn't like <3

PS : I know Alucard is "dead" during the 30 years after the final, but you can decide if he is the dog or if they adopted a dog that reminded them of him :)

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xxchumanixx · 4 months ago

Note

I know it says requests closed, ok? But i'll leave this here until you take requests ❤️

also i looove your work sm

can you do one with tim bradford x fem!reader with a lot of angst, hurt to comfort something bad? like the reader gets hurt, kidnapped something very bad outside work.

the reader is lucy's best friend and tim's gf, maybe the reader being a rookie at the same time as lucy

and the reader gets in some trouble and it becomes progressively worse but she didn't say anything to anyone bc she's a cop and think she can handle it?

but in the end it's like really bad and tim is desperate looking for her, and his world crushes when he finds her?

something similar to 2x11 (that ep broke me into pieces and the scene with tim and lucy buried my heart right in hell) but his desperation is waay worse bc it's about the reader and he loves her

lots of love ❤️

Breaking Point

Tim Bradford x fem!reader

Warnings/Tags: a lot of angst, hurt, mentions of blood, fluff

Word count: tba

Authors note: Hello love, omg it's been soo long I'm soooo sorry! This is not proofread yet, but I hope you'll like it! Love you!

Also, don't know if anyone else has that problem, but every time I make something fat or cursive, it changes the whole text after a few seconds. This happened after an update, and it's SO annoying!

OMG

Anyways, enjoy!

Listen, I know what you might think now.

Okay, maybe I don't. But to get captured and tortured wasn't your intention when this started.

Hell, of course it wasn't.

But you couldn't have predicted this either.

Neither could you have predicted how an encounter with a certain gangster would end - with you doing whatever he says.

At least he had the decency to only let you make his wrongdoings disappear.

It all went good.

That was, until one day you said no to him. It took him ten hours of his patience to kidnap and torture you, leave you for every cop to see what a shitty job you had done for this city.

And to your fellow colleagues.

You had only graded p2, together with Lucy and John. Lucy and you were best friends; it had instantly clicked once you started your training together.

You had been the first to know about her and John, had helped her through the heartbreak and all that had followed.

She, in turn, was the first to know about you and Tim.

You had started dating when you were still a rookie - luckily not his, or else it would have made everything a lot more complicated.

So, when everything seemed to go perfect, it had to come some shit along the way. It just couldn't have stayed perfect, could it?

This shit was named Luis El Ferno.

A wealthy son of an even wealthier mafia family that had a thing for speeding and collecting tickets. Along with other things that piled up in his file.

And as luck had it, he sought you out to be the perfect candidate for blackmailing. So when the first picture of your almost naked form landed in your mail, you had the shock of your life.

The photo was paired with a letter, saying if you didn't do as he said, he'd ruin your career. And not only that.

He'd ruin you completely.

So you complied, hoping to handle this on your own. Tim was clueless, as was the rest of them all.

Things soon took turns, though, getting worse the more time passed. Then, when he wanted you to do more than just cleaning up his mess, you said no.

You told yourself it was for the better.

You were a cop after all. You could handle this, right?

Big mistake.

When he found out he couldn't threaten you with the photos anymore, at least not enough for you to give in, he let his men kidnap you.

They punched you and used you as their personal boxing bag. They didn't stop when you were pleading, and they didn't stop when you fell silent.

They only stopped when there was nothing left to beat.

And when you closed your eyes, you had never been more grateful for the comfort of nothingness.

----

"You have to be kidding me!" Lucy laughed, leaning back on the sofa. "No way! Tell me you're lying!"

You laughed with her, shaking your head. "I wish I was." you said. "It was so embarrassing! For a moment, I thought he'd let me walk back to the station!"

She laughed louder, biting her lip.

"I would have loved to see that!" she said. "I can imagine the look on Tim's face so clearly!"

You shook your head, smiling. "Yeah, you should have seen the way he tried to keep his cool." you told her. "The poor lady excused herself so many times that her puke was already dry when she finally was in the car."

Lucy doubled over with laughter, the glass in her hand shaking threateningly. "Oh my god!" she breathed out, wiping at her eyes. "Damn, I need that body cam material!"

Eyes widening, you shook your head. "God, no!"

She laughed even more at your shocked expression, wiping at her eyes once more. Oh, she would somehow get that footage, she was sure of that.

It was a night with your bestie, a tradition that had developed early in your training as a rookie. You would sit together, drink cocktails, and do whatever you wanted.

Painting your nails, watching sappy movies, or simply talking.

It was something you never would have missed out on. So, when you didn't show up that day and Lucy didn't get a message from you saying that you wouldn't make it, either, she started to get worried.

She knew you better than most people did, so she knew something must be wrong. Calling Tim, her fingers danced over the rim of her glass, nerves piling up.

"Hey, do you know where Y/N is?" she asked when he picked up, not wasting any time.

Tim frowned on the other end of the line. "I thought she would be with you?" he gave back, eyes scanning the living room.

Your things weren't there, so you must have been on your way to Lucy, right?

"Well, she isn't here, and she didn't text me." Lucy responded, causing Tim's frown to deepen. You were reliable, you wouldn't just cancel plans without telling her.

Let alone disappear.

"I haven't heard from her since this morning." Tim admitted, biting his cheek. "I mean, we had an argument, but still, she would at least text."

Lucy sighed, nodding to herself.

"I'm worried, Tim." she admitted. "If she didn't text any of us, nor show up..." She bit down on her finger, trying to get rid of the horrible thoughts swarming her mind.

Tim swallowed heavily. He already felt guilty for not checking up on you earlier, and the fact that they didn't know where you were, made it even worse.

"I'm heading to the station." he decided, getting up with the phone still pressed to his ear. Lucy nodded on the other end. "Okay, I'll meet you there."

He knew better than to argue with her. She'd do anything for the people she loved.

----

"Okay, one last chance." he whispered into your ear, causing you to shiver in disgust. His breath reeked of whiskey, his shirt of cigarettes. "I really don't want to rearrange that pretty face of yours."

You swallowed heavily but didn't budge. He wouldn't get you to let a corpse disappear.

Never.

He tutted, shaking his head disapprovingly. "And here I thought we were friends." he mused, brushing a strand of hair out of your face.

You jerked your head away from him, glaring up at him. "We're not friends, Luis." you told him angrily. He scoffed, the back of his hand connecting with your cheek with a harsh slap.

Your head whipped to the side, skin aflame.

Tears pricked in your eyes, but your anger only intensified.

"Do you really think you're in command here?" he seethed, harshly grabbing your chin to make you look at him, fingers digging into your burning flesh. "Dont forget who you're dealing with!"

You spit in his face in response.

Another big mistake.

You really should have listened to your mother never to get involved with such people.

Mothers always were right, weren't they?

Luis face became progressively darker, turning redder. He roared, and his fist made contact with your gut, knocking the wind out of you.

So much for the gut feeling.

"Maybe I should teach you a lesson." Luis grumbled, shaking his hand. "You little slut are stepping out of line, and I really don't like that!"

You swallowed, knowing what this man was capable of doing.

Or let do.

He whistled, smirking at you. Two men entered the large room that could have worked as bouncers - ex-military if you'd had to guess.

Luis turned his attention to the men, speaking extra loud so you wouldn't miss his words.

"This little whore needs to be taught a lesson." he told them. "Or two. She's dancing out of line, and I can't have that. Vladimir-" he turned to one of them and your blood ran cold.

Russians.

"You said your wrist ached, right? Maybe a little punching will help?"

Vladimir, the bigger of the too, chuckled darkly. "When did it not?"

His knuckles cracked, and your eyes closed, silently praying Tim would find you before it was too late.

----

"I want every available cop in this station." Tim spoke as Grey entered the on call room. His brows knitted at Tim's words, clearing his throat.

"Bradford, what is going on?" he wanted to know, all eyes on them. "Y/N is missing." Tim explained, thumbs hooked into his waistband, so his fingers wouldn't fumble with everything they got hold of.

Grey's brows knitted further before he nodded. "Are you sure she's missing?" he asked. Tim nodded, eyes downcast. "Yes, sir."

Grey hummed, clearing his throat again. "Okay." he said, swallowing. "Where was she last seen?"

They started to form a plan, checking your last locations. Your phone hadn't been responsive yet, not being able to be tracked.

They were checking out possible locations on a map, as Tim's phone suddenly rang with a message, then another. He fished for his phone, hoping it was you.

His hopes were heard.

Without further checking the message, he clicked on it, mind working overtime.

Then, his blood ran cold, and everything suddenly came crashing to a halt.

The message consisted of a photo and a text.

A photo of you, battered and bruised, blood staining your body and clothes. They were torn, your head hanging low.

Under the photo, the message read: "Your officer, Y/N Y/L/N, has done a very shitty job. Only fair for her to pay the price for it."

Tim could feel all eyes on him, the room suddenly eerily silent. His fingers trembled, his whole body trembled.

He could hear Grey distantly, asking him what happened. He could feel his hand on his shoulder, turning him towards him, but everything seemed to be in a blur.

Grey's gaze fell to the phone, and his heart stopped. "Oh god." he mumbled, a lump forming in his throat.

Lucy stepped forward, heart hammering nervously in her chest. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. "What happened?" she wanted to know, repeating Grey's words.

Neither of them reacted for a second, glued to the spot, eyes on the phone. Moments later, it clattered to the floor as Tim stumbled backward. Lucy took the opportunity to grab it, turning the display towards her.

She wished she hadn't.

Her breath got stuck in her throat at what she saw. She read the text a few times, mind running haywire. Her hands shook, and she had to place the phone down, or otherwise it would have fallen for a second time.

They could only hope you weren't as dead as you looked.

----

It was ugly.

First you found it strange, then funny that they were counting the amount of times they punched you.

They must have been paid for punches.

After the tenth punch, you fell silent. You had pleaded for them to stop only moments earlier, as they took turns in punching and slapping you.

Neither of them cared for your feeble attempts. It only seemed to spur them on.

Every part of your body ached by now, your numb mind telling you to be grateful that they weren't doing other things to you.

It felt like you'd been hit by a truck numerous times.

You weeped as a blow to your stomach knocked any remaining air from your lungs.

That was all you could muster now.

A small weep.

Your head felt like it was wrapped in clouds, vision blurry, and slowly fading. Your hope of getting out of this alive withering by the second.

How were they supposed to find you? How should they track you when Luis took your phone, most likely destroying it?

A punch in your face made your head spin, as everything seemed to blur together, dark spots obscuring your vision further.

And as you thought all hope was lost, you slowly sank into the comfort of unconsciousness.

----

Time seemed to tick in slow motion.

Tim couldn't keep still, he had to move, trying to match his racing heart.

The fear he felt cut deep, like a knife. It bored its way into his heart, infecting it with its poison. He had only felt such fear twice before - once when his ex-wife left him overnight, and the second time when Lucy was buried alive.

But it didn't compare to the fear he felt now. It seemed tenfold.

Grey had to calm him multiple times, or else he would have stormed out there, searching every building for you.

He would have done everything for you.

After what felt like an eternity to Tim, they were able to track the location where the photo of you was taken.

The photo that was glued to the back of his eyelids, not letting him think of anything else.

He felt guilty, an ugly feeling that crept into his very being, infiltrating all of his nerves, his bones, and very fibers.

It was the worst feeling of them all.

He blamed himself - blamed himself for accusing you of having secrets eatlier that day.

That he was right he didn't know then.

But he'd seen your change in demeanor, the way you would pull away from him.

It hurt him so much that he caused an argument.

One he was deeply regretting now.

He had to remind himself to pay attention, to wait for the signal to enter the warehouse they located you in.

How cliché.

When Grey gave the signal, Tim's heart stumbled before it doubled its speed.

Time to move.

They walked forward in formation before splitting, getting ready to bust the door open and head inside, facing whatever might lurk behind the heavy metal door.

When the door was opened, he was the first to enter the large room, eyes quickly scanning his surroundings, gun drawn, as he flinched at the sight.

Tim believed his heart had stopped.

If he hadn't been standing upright, he'd thought he'd died - even though that could have changed any second, as he stumbled towards you.

He couldn't tell if you were still breathing, your body hanging limp in the chair in the middle of the warehouse. Your face was bruised - badly, blood wherever his eyes reached.

They stung, tears threatening to push through. But he did his best to keep himself together, even though the gasp Angela let out as she saw you, didn't make it any easier for him.

Falling down on his knees in front of you, he let his gun clatter to the floor, fingers carefully brushing away the hair that was stuck to your bloody face. With trembling fingers, he tried to feel for a pulse, heart stopping when he didn't immediately find one.

He could feel the others stare at him, waiting for an answer.

"Come on!" he mumbled to himself, feeling again as goosebumps covered his skin.

There - it was weak, but it was there.

"She's alive." he managed to get out, knowing that the ambulance was already on the way. Relief flooded him, even though it was short-lived.

You seemed like you would give out any moment.

Nyla walked behind you, carefully cutting the rope that was binding you to the chair - the only thing keeping you upright, as you fell forward and into Tim's arms.

His body shook, but he did his best to suppress it.

He had to be strong for the both of you now.

He cradled you in his arms, biting his lip until it bled, all to keep the tears at bay. Praying to whatever gods may be above to let you survive this.

Losing you would have been too much. It'd have destroyed him irrevocably.

He could hear sirens, swallowing against the lump in his throat that seemed to get bigger as time slowly passed.

He could feel the stares, knew they were asking themselves what you must have done to deserve this.

Hell, he asked himself the same question.

And, most importantly, who did this to you.

Whoever it was wouldn't get far once Tim would have his hands on them.

He barely noticed when the paramedics almost had to pry you from his hands, getting you ready for transport.

He was in the back of the ambulance even before they had carried you in.

His numb fingers dug into his pockets, catching onto something. They gripped hold of it, turning the small object over in his hand, thumb brushing over the velvet.

A ring.

He had meant to give it to you, having noticed how much you had seemed to like it when you first saw it.

Now he wondered if he'd ever have the chance to give it to you.

Once you were settled, they took off, the look on Lucy's face surely going to haunt him for weeks to come.

It mirrored his own emotions perfectly.

Fear, helplessness.

Something he didn't feel often.

----

Steady, rhythmic beating was what brought you back.

An awful sound, yet it was the proof of life.

Your body felt heavy, mind dizzy. Your mouth was dry and you were sure you must have died and went straight to hell.

Blinking your eyes open, they were met by dim light, stars shining on the other side of the big window.

You swallowed, trying to get rid of the dryness. As your eyes slowly took in your surroundings, landing on Tim whose head lay on your bed, sleeping peacefully, it all came crushing back.

Tears flooded your eyes, soon the dam breaking. They ran over your face in hot streaks, your bruised skin stinging.

Hands shaking, you brought one of it up to his head, softly brushing through his hair as a sob spilled over your lips.

What you had done was nowhere excusable. They would fire you once they knew what exactly you had done.

You were sure of it.

Tim stirred, disturbed in his sleep. His eyes blinked open, and once they fell on you, he was wide awake, sitting upright.

He scooted closer with his chair, hands gripping your own. Seeing you cry broke his heart.

"It's okay." he shooed, thumbs brushing over the back of your hands before he brought one up, carefully wiping at your tear streaked face. "It's okay, you're safe now."

Your head shook almost automatically, tears and sobs intensifying. "No." you croaked out, sight blurry, and his brows furrowed. "No, it's not okay."

Your head fell back into the cushion, biting your lip as you shook it again.

"What happened?" Tim voiced the question he'd asked himself so many times. "Who did this to you?"

At first, you didn't answer, gaze fixed on the ceiling. When he was about to ask again, your mouth slowly opened.

"I fucked up." you managed to get past your split lips. "I fucked everything up."

Tim had to swallow, doing his best to stay patient. Whatever you did must have been so bad, that it resulted in this.

Clearing your throat, you took a deep breath. "Luis El Ferno." you said his name, blinking rapidly to will away another wave of tears.

The name vaguely rang a bell in Tim's head. He must have been someone they arrested before.

"After we arrested him a few months back, he-" you cut yourself off, fingers cramping around his. "He started to blackmail me with photos someone took of me... naked."

Tim's heart stuttered to a painful halt, eyes widening. Every single thought in his mind came to a stop as your words slowly sank in.

Blackmailed.

Photos of you.

Naked.

He swallowed heavily, that ugly feeling of guilt intensifying.

He should have noticed.

"He wanted me to erase things from his file." you continued, ripping him from his vile thoughts. "And when he asked of me to let a corpse disappear, I said no. Big mistake."

Despite the situation, you managed a humorless, dry laugh, but Tim wasn't in the mood for laughing.

No, he was far closer to breaking something.

Or someone.

"He let his guards 'teach me a lesson', as he said it. To show everyone what a shitty job I did. And he was right."

Tim's gaze snapped back to yours, having been glued to the blanket before. The chair made a nasty sound on the linoleum as he brought it ever closer.

Now he knew what you'd been hiding the past few months.

He would have done the same.

His head shook unbeknownst to him, and he wished he could take you into his arms, hold you close to shield you from all the horror in the world.

But you could barely move, your survival a sole miracle.

He brought your hand to his lips, unable to find the words to assure you everything would be fine.

He knew it wouldn't.

"I'm so sorry." you croaked out, biting your swollen lip as more tears fell. "I know I should have told you, but I was so scared. He said he'd end me if I told someone."

Tim swallowed again, bile rising in his throat at the thought.

Oh, how badly he wanted to have a chat with this man.

Though chat might not be the right word.

He took a deep breath to calm himself. Then his fingers dug into his pocket, taking out the small, velvety box.

He turned it over in his hand before slowly opening it, taking the ring out. It glittered in the dim light, reflecting it.

Your eyes widened at the sight, recognizing it. You had admired it through the jeweler's window, knowing you'd never buy it, because it was way too expensive.

Seeing it now, crushed your heart.

He bad bought it for you.

Tim wiped at his nose before he took your hand, slowly putting the ring onto your finger. It fit perfectly.

Then his fingers encircled yours, holding them tight as he swallowed.

"We'll do this together." he said, looking up at you. "Whatever might come, we'll do it together. I'll fight Grey on it if need be, but you won't leave the LAPD."

Fresh tears gathered in your eyes, blurring your sight. The love you felt for this man was indescribable. And you could only hope you hadn't lost him with what you'd done.

"I love you." he spoke, licking his lip. It tasted salty, and he noticed that a tear of his own had managed to spill. "I promise you I'll be there whenever you need me. We can do this, whatever may come. You and I."

You sobbed, overwhelmed by his words. "I love you, too." you managed to say, not sure how you deserved him. "But I don't know how we'll do that."

He bit his lip, and for the first time since you had been missing, he smiled. It was a small one, but it was a smile nonetheless.

"Let me handle that."

Tag List

@newobsessionweekly @laheysfilm @dhundhchrih @augustvandyne @rookietrek @nachofriess @dtftheavengers @wonderland2425

#the rookie #the rookie imagine #the rookie x reader #the rookie x u #tim bradford #tim bradford x reader #tim bradford x you #tim bradford imagine #imagine #tim bradford smut

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