#besides that was in the morning. I could do the math thing now (and i did) but can't finish it because i'm confused at some stuff
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sirenpearldust · 2 days ago
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Broken Doll - Chapter one
series masterlist ⋆ Chapter two
Pair: Azriel x reader, Eris x reader
Word count: 7.074
Warnings: violence, jealous boys, possessive characters, reader is not nice, Elain slander
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The music muffled the chatter of your classmates, but your focus was elsewhere. It was already 7:20.
You bit your nails nervously, waiting for him. He still hadn’t read your message, and he couldn’t afford to be late, not on the first day of school. 
You had math in the first period, the worst subject. Why did it have to be math on the first day of school?
You rubbed your temples, barely able to drown out the sound of your class monitor - Irina scolding Cass and Rhys, cutting through your earphones. Every year, it was the same, and every year, you wondered the same thing, how could they have so much energy, this early?
Turning away from the window, a familiar figure caught your attention.
“Why are you moping?” Eris asked, leaning in close with that familiar, cocky grin.
His freckles had darkened over the summer, standing out against his sun-kissed skin. His amber eyes studied you intently as you slowly pulled out your earphone. He smelled of cologne and an incoming headache.
“I thought gingers could only turn red. Whose skin did you steal?” you quipped.
Eris’s smile stretched into a wide grin before he reached over and ruffled your hair.
You smacked his hand away, hissing, “Fuck off!”
“You’re just a ray of sunshine in the morning,” he teased, clearly unfazed by your temper.
“I’m happier when I don’t see you,” you shot back, scowling as you tried to fix your hair. It had taken you an hour to have it the way you wanted and now this Gingerfuck had to ruin all your good work.
“Here, let me help,” he offered, leaning in with that smug grin still plastered on his face. 
Evil fucker you seethed internally. 
“No,” you said firmly, grabbing his wrist before he could try anything. You locked eyes with him, raising an eyebrow as if to say, I know exactly what you’re planning, and it’s not happening.
Eris rolled his eyes dramatically and let his hand fall.
Instead of leaving, he slid into Azriel’s seat beside you, his gaze fixed on you. His usual teasing expression softened as he watched you fussing with your hair. For a moment, a small smile played on his lips.
Before you could react, his hand reached out. 
Why did he have to annoy you so much? He knows Azriel doesn’t like it when he touches you.
You turned sharply toward him, ready to snap, but he simply tucked one stray strand of hair back into place.
“Thanks,” you murmured, still scowling. Fucker ruins it first and now helps.
Eris had missed you over the break, more than he wanted to admit to himself. 
For a few seconds, you both stayed like that, looking at each other. Time seemed to stretch as you got lost in his gaze, forgetting everything else around you. 
It was crazy how you had known each other since you were born. You went to the same elementary school, middle school, and now high school.  But there was still a small possibility he would be accepted into a different Ivy League than you. The thought of seeing Eris for another couple of years was starting to make you feel nauseous.
“Please don’t follow me to college,” you said, the words slipping out before you could stop them. Your intrusive thoughts had been louder than usual, and now you regretted speaking them aloud. You immediately looked at him, hoping he wouldn’t be mad.
“You do know that you’re the stalker who follows me around, right?” Eris said, smirking as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes glinting with amusement.
“You were born after me, remember?” Eris teased, his smirk widening. 
“You cried until I was in the same class as you, and then you didn’t let me have other friends. You always wanted me to be your only friend.”
You felt your face heat up, your old childhood habits suddenly being revealed. 
“Eris, I was a kid, stop bringing that up.”
Eris leaned in with a mischievous glint in his eyes, his voice low.  “Oh, but you were so sweet back then. Always clinging to me like I was the only person in the world you trusted. And now, look at you. Still can’t get enough of me, huh? What would your boyfriend think, his enemy being stalked by his girlfriend?”
But before you could deny it, the door opened, and Azriel stepped in. He was accompanied by a girl who came up to his shoulders. Her brown hair fell to her shoulders, and her big, doll-like brown eyes were fixed on Azriel as he spoke to her. When he finally looked up and saw you, a smile spread across his face.
Your boyfriend looked absolutely handsome, mouthwatering, honestly, it should have been illegal for him to walk around looking like this in the uniform. His black hair fell messily over his forehead, still damp from the shower he’d just taken. The dark blue uniform pants hugged his thighs perfectly, emphasizing every inch of his toned frame. You couldn’t help but stare, your thoughts drifting somewhere they shouldn’t before you caught yourself.
Eris was still watching you, and he could tell from the happy expression on your face, the one you didn’t often show around him, that Azriel had arrived. 
Azriels eyes quickly shifted to the seat Eris was in, his seat. His smile faded slowly, his jaw tightening as his eyes narrowed.
Forgetting the girl, Azriel quickly walked toward you, an annoyed expression on his face. 
Eris stood up, slowly turning toward Azriel.
You sighed, watching the familiar tension build. They were always at each other’s throats, never able to let anything slide.
“Hi, babe,” you said, walking past Eris before leaning in to kiss Azriel on the cheek. His warmth engulfed you, he smelled of leather and cedar. He kissed the crown of your head before glaring at Eris again.
 Children
Azriel had arrived just before the bell rang, but now you feared both of them were on the verge of beating each other again. You did not need a repeat of last year.
Leaning forward, you were about to intervene.
Irina suddenly stepped between them, clapping her hands loudly.
“Try fighting again, and I might kill you both. Don’t test me,” she warned, cutting off any chance of Eris’s snarky remarks. Then, glancing over her shoulder, she glared at Cassian and Rhys, who were still making noises in the front, oblivious to the tension in the back.
 “Sit down, both of you! I don’t want to explain again how you two monkeys got into a fight!”
Both of them listened to her, knowing any backtalk would ensure that their coach would find out and that they would bench out on some games.
Irina walked toward the new girl, greeting her.
Eris nodded, moving toward his seat right behind you. You sighed in relief as Azriel slung his shoulder bag next to the table and plopped down into his seat, still a little annoyed that he had to see Eris first thing in the morning.
Eris, never one to shut up, added, “Also, we’re coming over today.”
You turned in your seat, confused. “What?”
“Yeah, my parents want to have dinner with yours because of the deal they’ve sealed,” he explained casually.
“Oh, great,” you muttered, though you couldn’t hide the surprise.
“You should look happier to see me again. There are girls who’d kill for this chance,” Eris teased, grinning at you.
Azriel coughed, loudly. 
Eris ignored him completely, still smiling at you. You shook your head, silently telling him not to add anything else to the conversation.
A few seconds later the new girl walked up to Eris, her big eyes on him as she asked, “Is this seat taken?”
“Yes,” Eris replied without looking up from his phone, ignoring her completely.
 Liar
Your face must have betrayed you, giving away your disbelief at his blatant lie. 
She turned bright red, embarrassed by his obvious lie and glanced at Azriel. 
You gave her a soft smile and pointed toward the front.
“There is a seat free next to the guy with the black hair. His name’s Calix.”
She thanked you quietly, then quickly glanced at Azriel again before heading toward the front.
The bell rang, and just as everyone settled into their seats, your Math teacher walked in, signaling the start of the lesson.
• •
“Azriel, you need to explain this to me, I don’t understand it,” you whined, frustrated as you stared at the page of notes in front of you. Math was the one subject you couldn’t quite wrap your head around, no matter how hard you tried. Luckily, Azriel and sometimes even Eris stepped in to help.
“Sure,” he replied casually, packing the heavy books into his bag. After the last person left the room and it was just the two of you now. He slung his bag over his shoulder, he leaned in closer, kissing your forehead. You were thankful he was this affectionate, his thumb brushing over your cheek.
 “You’ve got a little something right here,” he said with a grin. 
You blushed deeply, the intensity in his hazel eyes made your heart race. His thumb lightly brushed your upper lip, and your eyes fluttered shut, your breath catching as the moment seemed to linger in the air.
He gently cupped your face, his breath catching as he leaned in, his lips softly pressing against yours. He kissed you slowly and softly, his touch slow and tender.
The initial sweetness of the kiss deepened as you tilted your chin, a silent plea for more. 
You gasped as you both couldn’t ignore the hunger and need. His hands found their way to your waist, pulling your body into his. The world outside disappeared, it was only you two.
Your hand rested on his chest, slowly trailing upward until it tangled in his hair. When you gave it a gentle tug, he groaned, the deep sound vibrating through his chest and against your body. You clung to him, breathing him in, the familiar scent of leather and cedar stirring something warm inside you.
It was hard to believe there had been a time when this was just a distant dream, and now here you were, kissing him for real. 
Before you two could go any further, Irina interrupted, slamming the door open and standing in the doorway. 
“You two!” she shouted, making you and Azriel jump apart. 
“No fucking in here,” she added, her Finger pointing accusingly at both of you. 
Azriel and you blushed, quickly moving apart. Trying to explain yourselves you both stuttered.
She waved her hand dismissing your explanation, she looked unsurprised at catching the two of you making out, but there was stress written all over her face. Her ash brown hair was tied messy, and her uniform was disheveled, like she had just been in a rush. It was as if she had run straight here.
“Now get out. I need to lock the room,” Irina ordered, her tone leaving no room for argument.
You both scrambled to gather your things and quickly walked out, hoping she wouldn’t lock you in if you took to long, something she definitely would do if given the chance. 
You and Azriel couldn’t meet her eyes, shame written all over your faces.
“Wait a minute,” she said sharply before either of you could make a break for it. 
Azriel’s grip on your hand tightened, his whole body tense, bracing himself for yet another scolding.
She took a deep breath as she adjusted her disheveled uniform and smoothed her hair as she spoke.
“Coach wants to see you, something about the games and your scholarship.”
Azriel’s eyes widened slightly. “Did he look angry?” he asked cautiously.
“No, he looked happy as a clam.”
Azriel exhaled in relief, his shoulders relaxing.
“Also, Y/N,” she added, turning to you, “Miss Norton wants to see you about the upcoming art exhibition. Congratulations your art was accepted. You are the last person that had been added”
Azriel smiled brightly, pulling you into a hug. “You did it,” he whispered, his voice filled with pride. “I told you there was nothing to worry about. Your art is too great to not be exhibited ”
You felt your cheeks warm, blushing slightly at his words.
He leaned in to kiss you, and you returned it softly, but then gently pushed him away as your eyes darted to Irina. “Sorry,” you mumbled, feeling a bit awkward under her blank, unreadable stare.
“No worries,” Irina said a slight corner of her lips quirked up.
 “I’m glad you got in. Miss Norton and Calix spoke highly of your art.”
You blinked, surprised, warmth spreading through you. That was probably the nicest thing she had ever said to you.
“I better go before I get another scolding,” he said, quickly kissing you on the cheek.
Irina looked at you and you waved before walking toward the art room, the path opposite from Azriel.
• •
Standing at the same spot, Irina took a deep breath before calling out, “Eris, come out. I know you’re there.”
Eris stepped out from behind the pillar he had been hiding behind, his face slightly flushed.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he mumbled, meeting her sharp gaze, with his own.
“You mean stalking the girl you have a crush on and watching her kiss her boyfriend, who happens to be your arch nemesis?” she shot back, crossing her arms.
“Who said I have a crush on her?” he retorted quickly. “She’s-”
Irina cut him off, her tone firm. “ I see the way you look at her. Both of them. And I see how you watch Azriel too.” Her eyes narrowed, and her voice dropped into a warning. “Just a heads-up if you have another conflict with Azriel, Coach is going to kick you off the team. You’ve been causing him way too much trouble, and so has Azriel. Don’t make things worse.”
Eris looked away, his jaw tightening, but he didn’t argue. Irina gave him one last pointed glance before turning and walking off, leaving him standing there in silence.
Eris wasn’t a pervert he had been there because he needed to know, needed to test the theory if he really had feelings for you. He’d read more than once that jealousy was the clearest sign of feelings like the ones he thought he might have. And he did get jealous, it was the only time he would admit to himself that he was envious of Azriel.
He was jealous of the way you looked at Azriel, the way your eyes softened for him in a way they never did for anyone else. He was jealous of the way you kissed him, how you would let him touch you and the way you naturally leaned into his body like he was the only pillar you could lean on.
But what haunted him most were the sounds you made, soft, breathless, completely yours and the maddening thought of what sounds you’d make for him.
Would they be the same?
Or would they be even sweeter?
The questions twisted inside him, they burned like a fire he wasn’t sure he wanted to put out.
He was plagued by dreams of you for a few moths now, dreams so vivid they felt like memories of a life he could never have. He dreamed of you as his wife, your laughter filling the air as you leaned in to kiss him, your touch soft and familiar. He dreamed of a child, a daughter with your eyes and your smile, who looked up at him with unconditional love, something he had yet to experience.
He didn’t know where this was coming from. Sure, he’d always been attracted to you, your confidence, your wit, the way you carried yourself, but this?
This was something entirely different. It wasn’t just attraction anymore, he could say it was an obsession. You had rooted yourself in his mind and no matter how hard he tried to push the thoughts away, they kept returning, stronger than before.
• •
You walked in silence, feeling a bit nervous as you approached the art room. The closer you got, the worse the feeling in your belly became. It twisted and churned, a mix of unease and anticipation that you couldn’t shake. Something was wrong, you could feel it, even if you couldn’t explain why. 
Before you could open the door it swung open, you were greeted by a wild-eyed Calix, who stood in front of you, his black eyes so dark and angry.
“Good, you’re here,” he said quickly, his voice tense. You were confused. 
What is happening?
Stepping in, you watched as Miss Norton smiled warmly at the new girl, laughing loudly at something she had said. She absentmindedly rubbed the new girls shoulder. When she noticed the two of you standing there, her eyes quickly shifted to you.
“Oh, thank God you’re here,” she said, adjusting her glasses.
“I’ve got some great news for the exhibition, but let me first introduce my guest,” Miss Norton began, her excitement evident, ignoring the angry look from Calix. 
She gestured to the girl beside her.
“This is Elain Archeron.”
The girl gave a shy smile, her big brown eyes never leaving yours. 
She blushed deeply as Miss Norton continued, “Before Elain switched schools her artwork was kind of famous I would like to display it at the upcoming exhibition.”
“Miss Norton this is impossible!” Calix interrupted, his voice sharp. He clearly wasn’t amused or excited about the news. Your expression was a mix of confusion and frustration, as you glanced between Elain and Miss Norton. 
You were equally shocked. Everything had been organized over the summer, and if you were accepted, everyone already had their spot. 
Miss Norton then turned to you, saying, “YN, you’ll need to share your corner with Elain , as you have submitted your art last.”
Calix spoke up, his tone firm. “I’m sorry, Miss Norton, but Elain’s art is way more different than the pieces that are meant to be presented for the exhibition.”
You felt your cheeks heat with anger.
How could she do that? You had worked hard on your own art, and now you had to share your spot with someone who wasn’t even part of the original selection. 
Miss Norton turned red, clearly flustered by the unexpected critique.
“We can make an exception this time, it would be a good idea to introduce her like this to the school,” she suggested, trying to smooth things over.
Calix chuckled frustrated, shaking his head, before fixing Miss Norton with a sharp, unwavering gaze.
The room fell into silence Calixs’s anger was evident to everyone by the way he huffed and puffed, he usually was quiet and kind, never one easily to anger. 
“I don’t see why you are so angry Calix I decide who is to display their art and I don’t think y/n minds sharing her spot. Right y/n? “ 
You couldn’t help but stare at her. Was she even right in the head?
How bold of Elain to take over your half of the space without a second thought and how could she speak to Calix like that?
He was the one who had to organize, book, print, and handle so much more work, work that she conveniently left for him while she lounged around like it wasn’t her responsibility. The audacity left a bitter taste in your mouth.
Calix answered for you. “She’s not okay. Nobody would be if things were changed last minute. Miss Norton, there are other exhibitions she can be a part of.”
“Calix, my word is final,” Norton said firmly, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Nothing is going to change my opinion.”
You caught the subtle quirk of Elain’s lips, a self-satisfied smirk that made your stomach twist. You had thought she’d just been dragged into this mess. But now it seemed she was far more of a bitch than you’d initially believed. That smug look on her face, the way she seemed to revel in the chaos, it was clear she wasn’t as harmless as you’d assumed.
“And now you two leave,” Norton continued, her sharp gaze cutting through you both. “I didn’t call you here to hear your opinions.”
Without another word, you followed Calix out, swallowing down your frustration. 
As soon as the door closed behind you, you let out the breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.
“You saw her smirk too, right?” Calix asked, his voice low with irritation.
You nodded, still fuming. “Is her art really that good?” you asked, needing to know if there was any justification for the favoritism.
“It’s good,” he admitted, but then added quickly, “but I still think yours is a way better fit, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He said taking out a cigarette to smoke.
His words soothed you a little, but the tension in your chest didn’t entirely fade. Elain’s smug expression was burned into your mind, and you couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the end of it.
• •
You cried a little in the bathroom, the frustration of it all finally catching up to you. How could this even happen? It felt so unfair.
Once you stopped crying, you stepped out of the stall, dried your mascara-streaked cheeks, and carefully fixed your makeup. The process was almost therapeutic, and by the time you were done, you felt a little better, lighter, even. Your eyes were still slightly red, but a few drops of eyedrops worked their magic.
Grabbing your bag, you packed up your things and made your way to French class, feeling a bit more composed, ready to face the day again.
You were eager to tell Azriel and your friends what had just happened.
As you opened the door, the sound of laughter spilled out. Mor, Cassian, Rhys, and Azriel were gathered inside, chatting with her, Elain.
You stopped in your tracks as soon as you saw her, Elain, sitting in your seat next to Azriel, her fingers lightly brushing against his arm while laughing. 
What the hell was she doing there? It was supposed to be your spot, your place next to him, and now she was acting like it was all hers.
“Hi,” you greeted the others, deliberately ignoring Elain as you placed your bag on the table in front of her, where her things were already spread out. Morrigan’s eyes met yours instantly, and without saying a word, you both understood-later. She could tell something was off.
Azriel, oblivious to the tension, immediately grabbed you into his lap, kissing you softly before nuzzling into your neck. His hand rested gently on your waist, pulling you even closer, as if he felt your need for his warmth and to ease any unease.
“ Now I miss Emory,” Morrigan said with a wistful smile, her voice light but her gaze still focused on you.
“If you haven’t met her, this is Elain,” Azriel said, gesturing toward the bitch with a small smile. “She’s new and the reason I was late this morning.”
You shot Elain a sharp smile. “We already met,” you said, your voice cool and laced with tension.
Elain met your glare with one of her own, not backing down. The two of you locked eyes, a silent battle brewing between you, neither willing to yield.
Cassian and Rhys sat next to each other, completely dumbfounded. They exchanged confused glances, clearly caught off guard by the strange atmosphere between you and Elain. They were unsure of what had happened to cause such an icy atmosphere.
Morrigan, sensing the tension and eager to defuse it, chuckled and said, “I don’t think Cassian told you about his crush, guys.”
Cassian’s face immediately turned red, his eyes widening as he shot Morrigan a look of disbelief. You and Rhys burst out laughing, while Azriel raised an eyebrow in amusement, completely oblivious to the situation that had just unfolded.
“Oh, here we go,” Rhys said between laughs, nudging Cassian. “This ought to be good.”
Cassian groaned, running a hand through his hair. “You better not say a word, Morrigan.”
But Morrigan only grinned, clearly enjoying every second of his discomfort. “Oh, I’m not saying a thing. But maybe someone should tell us who this mysterious crush is?” She shot a teasing look at Cassian.
Cassian leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. “Well, I have someone in mind.”
“Who’s the poor woman?” you teased, the others chuckling along.
Cassian smirked but didn’t answer. “Not gonna tell you. You’ll just see me kiss her, and then you’ll know.”
“It’s probably Irina,” Azriel said with a smirk, glancing at Cassian.
“That’s why you keep annoying her,” you added, high-fiving Azriel as you shot Cassian a teasing grin.
Cassian’s face turned a deeper shade of red, and he groaned, burying his face in his hands.
“You two are the worst,” he muttered, but the laughter from the group only made it worse.
Morrigan grinned,  “You could just ask her on a date instead of annoying her. We’re 18, Cass, not 6.”
Rhys smirked and added, ��Guys, he’s already planned their future together.”
Cassian’s face turning an even deeper shade of red as he threw his hands up in frustration.
“I’m not planning anything!” he protested.
Azriel chuckled, watching his friend squirm. “Maybe it’s time you stop talking about it and actually do something about it, Cass. It worked when I did. ”
You kissed his cheek.
Cassian sighed dramatically, slouching in his chair. “You guys are the worst.”
Elain smiled at Cassian, her voice saccharine. “She probably will like you. You’re so nice and funny, who wouldn’t like you?”
Cassian awkwardly muttered, “Thanks,” clearly flustered by the attention.
Morrigan and you exchanged a look. Rhys caught it too, his smirk widening as he picked up on the tension, he enjoyed the drama. You glanced at your watch, realizing you only had two minutes before your next lesson.
“Elain,” you said, your voice calm but firm, “Could you sit somewhere else? I’d like to sit next to my boyfriend.”
You knew she couldn’t refuse without drawing attention. With a quiet sigh, Elain gathered her things and wandered aimlessly, asking people around the room if she could sit next to them. You watched as Elain’s face turned red, her cheeks burning with embarrassment as she awkwardly searched for a place to sit. 
She looked flustered, rejected by the group she had so confidently tried to insert herself into. It felt satisfying, seeing her brought down a notch. She deserved it after everything, the smug looks, the attitude, the way she’d tried to claim space that wasn’t hers and the way she dared to touch your Boyfriend.
She finally plopped down next to Irina, who shot a quick, knowing look at Calix. It seemed she was told about what had happened.
You settled down next to Azriel, feeling a small sense of relief wash over you.
He was blissfully unaware of the silent victory unfolding in your head. You couldn’t help the small smirk tugging at your lips, one that Morrigan mirrored.
But you knew a snake like her would strike again.
• •
School finally ended, you and your group strolled out of the school together, the sun still high in the sky. You were lingering by the gates, waiting for Azriel to finish his advanced chemistry class so you could drive home.
As you leaned against the railing, you told your friends what had happened.
“Damn,” Rhys said, shaking his head. “Seems like you’ve got an enemy.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t know her before?” he added, raising an eyebrow.
“No, Rhys, I didn’t,” you replied with a sigh.
“She’s a bitch,” Morrigan declared flatly, arms crossed as she leaned against the wall.
“Mmh,” Cassian muttered absentmindedly, his attention focused elsewhere. He was turned slightly away from the group, scanning the area, searching.
“You searching for Irina?” Morrigan teased.
Cass ignored her and frowned instead. “Since when are Eris and Irina friends?”
“Huh?” you all turned toward the gate at his words.
There she was, Irina, walking and talking with Eris. The two seemed friendly with eachother, their laughter carried by the breeze. Irina playfully shoved him and Eris, for once, didn’t look annoyed. Instead, he spoke with animated gestures, his face lit up in a way you rarely saw.
It was so different from the usual guarded, cold demeanor he wore like armor. Both of them were at ease, carefree, and it stirred something unfamiliar in your chest. A tug, faint but undeniable, made your stomach twist slightly.
You couldn’t look away, even as you told yourself it didn’t matter. It wasn’t your concern. And yet, the sight of them laughing together lingered in the back of your mind.
You swallowed hard, trying to ignore the strange feeling. Why did seeing him like that with her bother you so much?
“Babe,” Azriel called, breaking through your thoughts.
“Huh?” you blinked, realizing he’d been trying to get your attention.
“I called you multiple times. Let’s go,” he said, his voice clipped as he grabbed your hand, leading you toward the car.
• •
After dropping off the others one by one, the car grew quiet, almost uncomfortably so. It was just you and Azriel now.
He hadn’t spoken much the entire ride, only offering polite nods or brief words as he said goodbye to your friends. 
You stared out the window at the passing scenery, but your mind wandered back to the earlier scene with Eris and Irina. Something about it still lingered in your chest.
Azriel’s silence, however, soon pulled your attention. You turned to look at him, taking in his features, the sharp angle of his nose, the perfect bow of his lips, the long dark lashes that framed his striking hazel eyes, and the dark curls that fell messily over his forehead. He was gorgeous, as always, but it wasn’t his looks that drew your focus.
His posture was tense, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel, and his jaw ticked with barely restrained frustration.
He was angry.
“Az?” you asked softly, breaking the silence. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer right away, his lips pressing into a firm line as if he was weighing his words. The tension in the air was thick, and it made your heart race in uncertainty.
“Nothing,” Azriel muttered.
“Please, did something happen?” you pressed, your voice soft but insistent.
He shook his head, his jaw tightening as he pulled the car over to the side of the road. Turning to face you, his hazel eyes burned with emotion. “Why did you stare at Eris like that?”
You froze for a moment. He noticed. Shit.
“Because of Irina,” you explained quickly. “He was talking to Irina, and Cassian asked if they were friends. That’s why.”
Azriel stared at you, his expression unreadable. He was clearly thinking it over. You reached out and took his hand in yours, squeezing gently.
“Azriel, I only love you. You know that, right?”
He sighed, but the tension in his shoulders didn’t ease. “I just don’t like the way you two are so close. It’s hard to ignore.”
You shook your head, your voice firm yet reassuring. “Azriel, I wish I could avoid talking to him altogether, but our parents are close. His mom has even slept over at our house before, our dads golf together and our Brothers are in the same clubs. I don’t like it either, how he talks about you, or our relationship. He’s arrogant, obnoxious, and so damn annoying.” You paused, your lips quirking up into a small smirk.
“I only love you. You don’t have to worry about the ginger.”
Azriel let out a laugh at that, a genuine sound that made your chest warm. You watched the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he chuckled, and your breath caught. He was stunning when he laughed, his worry fading away. 
He noticed you staring, his lips curving into a shy smile. “What?”
“Can I kiss you?” you asked, your voice soft.
Azriel nodded, his cheeks slightly pink. 
You leaned in, brushing your lips against his, and the kiss deepened quickly. His hand slid to the back of your neck, pulling you closer.
It grew hotter, more intense, as his free hand gripped your waist, and your fingers tangled in his hair.
You pulled away from the kiss, and Azriel let out a low whine. It wasn’t a sound you heard often, and it sent a shiver through you. His hand bunched the fabric of your white shirt, pulling you closer as he tried to capture your lips again. Both of you were breathless, his lips glistening with spit, and his eyes locked onto your mouth.
“Azriel, wait,” you managed, gently pushing him back.
He ignored your words, instead dipping down to press kisses along your neck. You gasped softly but pushed his hard chest.
“No hickeys, Az. I have to see my parents later.”
He groaned in protest, biting down lightly but just hard enough to make you gasp again. “Azriel,” you warned, your tone sharper now.
Suddenly, a thought struck you. “Azriel, is your mom home?”
He stilled, lifting his head to look at you. “No,” he said slowly, his brow furrowing. “Why?”
“When will she be back?” you asked, brushing your fingers gently through his hair.
“About six,” he replied, still confused. “Why?”
“Think, baby,” you said, caressing his scalp, your voice teasing but patient.
It took a moment, but realization dawned on him. His eyes widened slightly. “Oh.”
You nodded with a playful smirk. “Yes, Azriel. We can go to yours for a few hours.”
His lips twitched into a grin, and he leaned in to kiss your cheek as you laughed. 
He drove, his excitement now focused on getting home before the clock ran out.
• •
You were late. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 
How could you forget?
Your mom had called you multiple times, you knew you were in trouble. Thankfully, your sister had covered for you, telling your parents you were at the library.
Slipping into the house as quietly as possible through the back door, you silently crept upstairs.
From the hallway, you could hear your father and Eris’s father laughing loudly downstairs.
Your heart raced as you tiptoed toward your room, opening the door slowly and shutting it behind you with a soft click.
You turned around and nearly screamed.
There, sitting at your desk, was Eris. His long legs, in black pants, stretched out comfortably as he leaned back in your chair, a painting of yours held delicately in his hands.
His golden-red hair caught the faint light from the desk lamp, but his amber eyes were focused on the artwork.
“Eris, what the fuck are you doing here?” you hissed, your voice low to avoid drawing attention. Fucking psycho! How did he get in? Why was he even here?
He didn’t respond right away. He held one of your more personal pieces, a ballerina staring at her  reflection in a broken mirror. Her red, tear-filled eyes glared back at herself, mascara and tears streaking down her face. Bound in her hair were white feathers. Immense rage in her expression. It was a piece that helped you remember your pain and how far you’d push yourself to reach perfection.
“It’s beautiful,” Eris whispered, his voice softer than you’d ever heard.
Your heart hammered in your chest, faster than before. “Put it down,” you said, though your tone lacked conviction.
“Is it you?” he asked, finally looking up at you.
“Yes,” you admitted hesitantly.
Eris turned the painting back to study it for a moment before meeting your gaze again. There was something in his eyes, something vulnerable, something you didn’t expect.
“You’re incredible,” he said, his voice so soft it almost didn’t register. 
For a moment, you forgot to breathe. The words were simple, but the way he said them, the sincerity in his tone, made your chest tighten.
No one had ever said that to you before, not about your art. Azriel hyped you up sometimes, but mostly saw it like your parents, a silly hobby you could enjoy to keep you entertained. Even Miss Norton had pushed you away for Elain and saw it less then hers. 
But art was more than that, it was a lifeline for you, it was like a diary where you expressed your emotions.
You never showed anyone your personal pieces, not even Azriel. This painting, raw and emotional, was yours alone - until now.
Licking your dry lips, you asked, “How did you get in here?”
Getting up, his hands casually shoved into his pockets, Eris began to walk toward you. One hand slid out to push his hair back before ruffling it slightly. He chuckled softly under his breath, a sound low enough to unnerve you.
It was the quick shift in his demeanour, the way he was always unpredictable, it made your stomach tighten.
Even as you took a step back, he didn’t stop. His strides were slow but purposeful, his presence quickly filling the space until your back hit the wall.
Your heart raced, but you tilted your chin up, meeting his sharp gaze head-on. You straightened up, you weren’t afraid, it was your house after all, he could not intimidate you.
“I opened the door,” he said simply, as if it were the most natural, normal thing in the world.
You scoffed. “Why?”
“I wanted to see the reason,” he said, his voice low and deliberate. “The reason why your art is tucked away in some insignificant little corner if it’s not worth looking at.”
He lightly tugged at a strand of hair that had fallen in your face. Your jaw clenched, the anger bubbling beneath your skin. Every instinct was telling you to punch him, to push him away.
Before you could react, his hand brushed your throat.
Eris didn’t seem fazed, his gaze still locked on you, unblinking. He smirked slightly, clearly enjoying the way he riled you up.
“But,” he continued, softly brushing against of your neck, “it turns out it’s the best I’ve ever seen from any artist. Way better than that Archeron kid’s work.”
Your eyes widened as you grabbed his wrist, your pulse hammering beneath his palm. His tenderness was a stark contrast to the way he spoke to you and watched you. It was as if he was trying to see every emotion, every reaction from you, how far you would let him go. It was too intimate.
It made your head spin, he was testing your boundaries, and the next, his touch was almost considerate. 
It left you feeling unsettled, confused, angry at how easily he seemed to have the upper hand, how easily he could shift the power dynamic, the way he asserted control.
“How do you know about that?” you demanded, your voice barely above a whisper.
“Irina,” he said simply, smirking.
Of course. That’s why he was talking to her. He probably already knew about Cassians little crush on her and thats why he made her laugh for him. 
Manipulative fuck
“But don’t worry,” he murmured, his thumb still stroking the sensitive skin of your throat. “I’ll take care of it.”
“What?” you asked, confused and uneasy. His words sounded more like a threat than reassurance.
“Eris, what do you mean?” you demanded.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said, his smirk deepening.
“Worry about the marks your boyfriend left.”
Your heart skipped as his grip on your throat tightened ever so slightly. The room seemed to shrink around you, his intense stare rooting you in place.
Eris’ gaze darkened, he leaned in closer, his breath warm against your lips.
“Maybe you should Take a shower before your parents get suspicious of why you smell like that,” he said, his tone a little too sharp.
“You wouldn’t want them to find out about what you’ve been up to, would you?”
You clenched your jaw at his words, irritation bubbling inside you. “Don’t worry about me. Take care of your own issues. I’ll handle mine.”
“You’re so cute when you’re angry,” he taunted, pushing you further over the edge.
Without thinking, you slapped him hard. His head snapped to the side, his cheek turning bright red, and the sting of the slap echoed in the air.
Furious, you slapped him again, pushing him backward until he fell onto your bed. You crawled over him, straddling his waist as you glared down at him.
“Why do you keep pushing me, Eris?” you spat, your voice low and tense.
“Why do you always make fun of me or threaten me? What do you gain from it? I’m not a toy, and I’m not scared of you.”
You placed your hands on his throat, the anger in your chest burning hotter. But before you knew it, he had pinned you beneath him. His body pressed between your soft thighs, your skirt pushed up around your waist, and all you could feel was his weight, his part touching another and the heat of his breath against you lips.
You were beyond furious now, you pushed him again. Your hands gripped his shirt, your nails digging into the fabric. You heard the fabric rip as you tugged harder, buttons were flying, you were unable to stop yourself. You scratched him leaving red marks on his chest. 
He grunted, his eyes narrowed, his posture shifting to overpower you. You fought back, not willing to give an inch, your breath coming in sharp bursts.
The confrontation had escalated, your bodies tumbled down. His hand gripped your wrists, his touch firm as he tried to gain control, but you weren’t backing down.
“I won’t be treated like this,” you spat, words dripping with anger.
He stared at you, lips curled in a mocking half-smile. “You think I’m the problem here?”
“I don’t care what you think anymore.”
His grip on you tightened as he leaned in, pushing his hips into yours from behind, his voice low and controlled. “You started this, not me.”
Before you could headbutt him, the door suddenly swung open. Both of your parents stood there, frozen in shock, their eyes wide. Both of your mothers gasping loudly, the sound of it echoing through the room.
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Main Taglist: @bubybubsters @lilah-asteria
Broken Doll Taglist: @historygeekqueen @bubybubsters @lilah-asteria @onebadassunicorn @anainkandpaper
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clover-the-awesomest · 2 years ago
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A.
AA.
TRIPLE A BATTERY BECAUSE HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE FRIGGIN PHONE TEXTS AND THE FACT THAT DONNIE NEVER RESPONDED AND THAT LEO SPENT A MAJORITY OF THOSE 4 HOURS TEXTING HIS TWIN AND NEVER GETTING A RESPONSE AND STRESSING SO MUCH THAT FELL ASLEEP WAITING
...
There's no quadruple A battery...
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part 5
transitions are the bane of my existence
⇇ | ⇽ | index | ⇾
Keep reading
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asahicore · 3 months ago
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fast forward - pjs
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pairing. jay x fem!reader
synopsis. After yet another romantic disappointment in the form of one Jake Sim, you go to the well you’ve always believed to grant wishes and ask for your one and true love to appear. That night, you go to sleep in your bed but wake up in a strange house. When you head downstairs, you find a man washing the dishes and telling you your favorite meal is waiting on the table for you. You’ve spent hours glaring at the back of that head, you could recognize it anywhere—it belongs to none other than Park Jongseong, your high school sworn enemy... and future husband, or so it seems.
genre+warnings. high school au, the type of e2l where they never really hated each other to begin with, they act like they're academic rivals even though they're not particularly academically gifted, jay has a thing about german the language, sunoo and kazuha besties, heeseung is a loser, jake and sunghoon are assholes sorry, ive liz is german, 02z get into a white-boy locker-room fight, attempts at banter etc, they're a little bit silly
word count. 26.6k
a/n. had the idea for this listening to fast forward by somi LAST SUMMER... and only wrote it this summer and only posting it now <3 i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it !!!!! jay is an absolute cutie here pls love him as much as i do.... as always let me know what u think and remember to vote for @zreamy president in the upcoming elections, shes the only one i trust to beta-read and hence to run a country <3 no it doesnt matter that shes scottish put this woman in the white house
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There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.
Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.
You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.
Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied. 
Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.
There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.
You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade. 
“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face. 
You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around. 
“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”
The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”
One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”
“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson. 
You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.
Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.
You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.
“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”
As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.
And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.
“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.
Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.
But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.
You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.
“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.
Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.
For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice. 
You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.
But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot. 
You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.
“And that’s your business, because…?”
You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”
You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”
He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.” 
This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”
You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?
“I’m sorry?”
He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”
You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”
“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves. 
Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue. 
Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.
Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.
Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”
So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”
“I don’t-”
“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”
“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”
“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.
“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”
“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”
“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”
“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”
“At least you’re self-aware.”
The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.
“What are you-”
“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”
The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”
“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”
You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?
“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”
“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.
Then you see it.
Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.
The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.
Your heart sinks to your stomach.
You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice. 
Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone. 
“Y/N-” 
Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone. 
The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.
Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic. 
Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.
You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.  
But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked. 
You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”
Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”
When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.
You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.
--
For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.
Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers. 
The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe. 
The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.
It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.
A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.
You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.
Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there? 
You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.
Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right? 
You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist. 
The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie. 
Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”
Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.
It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of ���Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”
Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.
“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”
Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey. 
“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?
“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”
He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.
When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.
You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other. 
Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.
You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”
He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”
The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”
You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.” 
So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder. 
“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.
Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.
Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.
“This is so good,” you mumble.
Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”
You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.
“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”
You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?
But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”
Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else. 
“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.
He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.
But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.
As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.
“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.
“Hm?”
He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”
“No. I have… things on my mind.”
He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”
You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you. 
You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie. 
A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.
“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.
It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.
“Yeah.”
He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.
“...Jong?” you try.
“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.
You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.
“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.
“Will you be here in the morning?”
“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”
“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”
You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”
You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”
“I love you, Y/N.”
“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.
--
Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.
They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.
“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.
“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”
“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.
Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”
“Exactly!”
“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”
Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”
You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”
Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.
“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”
“Nowhere. Go on.”
“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”
“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.
“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”
Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.
“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”
“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”
“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.
“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.
“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.
“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.
“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”
You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”
“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.
“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”
Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”
“None taken.”
“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.
“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”
Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”
“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.
You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair. 
“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.
“She had a dream that she m—”
“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.
Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.
“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.
“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.
For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.
“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.
“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class. 
The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.
--
It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.
Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.
There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.
Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.
Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.
But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.
Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.
It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.
He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.
He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”
And your friends wondered why you hated him?
“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”
When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile. 
“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.
You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”
He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”
“No. Stop.”
“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”
This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.
Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up. 
If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.
At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.
Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding. 
“Jong, your textbook.”
He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.
“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.
“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”
“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.
He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”
Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.
Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?
You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.
He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.
You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.
--
As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.
Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life. 
“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”
You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.
“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom. 
“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.
And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.
You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.
“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”
He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you. 
So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together. 
Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.
He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.
For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”
--
you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined
kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start
you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that
sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being
you he’s not just another person!
sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings
you i hate u
kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason
you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try
--
“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”
The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”
“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.
“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.
Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”
You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”
He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.
You frown. “I don’t hate you.”
“Oh? That’s a recent development.”
“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.
His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”
“Back to hating.”
“Let’s start the assignment.”
You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.
Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”
“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble. 
He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”
“That’s not—”
“Let’s just focus on this.”
His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.
He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”
“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.
“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.
“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.
“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”
“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?” 
He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”
“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”
“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.
So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.
--
But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.
Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.
You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.
He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology. 
Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.
“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”
“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”
“Love? I know.”
“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.
“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.
“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.
“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.
“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.
“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.
“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.
“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.
“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.
“I never—When?!”
She shrugs. “The other day.”
You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.
“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.
“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.
In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”
Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”
“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.
You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”
They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.
“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.
You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”
Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”
You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.
No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”
“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.
“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.
“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.
“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.
“Aren’t you cold?”
Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.
“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.
“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.
“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”
“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”
You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”
He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.
You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”
“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.
“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
--
sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier
kazuha WHAAAAT
you KIM SUNOO.
kazuha WHEN?????
sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol
you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass
kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml
you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED
sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart
you were* and no we weren’t
sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his
kazuha sunoo…?
sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him
you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting
sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it
you …
sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of
kazuha cuuuute
you i resent these accusations.
sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will
kazuha ???
you SUNOO?
sunoo WHAT
--
Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.
Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.
You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.
Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you. 
Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”
Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”
Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”
That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.
The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that. 
Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.
He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”
“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.
You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.
“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.
He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight. 
Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple. 
It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them. 
He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”
But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”
Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”
You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.
He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”
Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”
“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.
“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”
“Y/N…”
“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.
The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.
--
jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension
you you idiot what did your parents say?
jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month
you boo-hoo
jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…
you … are you feeling better?
jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)
you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?
jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay
you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up
jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon
you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!
jong :) see you tomorrow pretty 
 --
The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.
You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.
His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.
Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.
In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily. 
In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?
A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.
College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.
May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.” 
Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.
In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.
But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…” you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”
Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”
You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.
As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.
You smile. “Never.”
So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.” 
It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.
It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.
But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.
You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.
I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting. 
But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.
You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?
“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.
“Give me five minutes!” you call back.
You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.
--
A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.
He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says. 
He’s still Jong.
You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside. 
It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.
When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.  
Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.
He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.
So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.
When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.
In any case, he’s hiding something.
The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.
Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is. 
Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely. 
It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile. 
Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?
Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.
--
From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.
With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year. 
Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.
But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. 
He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.
But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.
I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.
Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.
But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.
Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really. 
But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.
Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness? 
And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you. 
Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.
I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on… 
I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.
(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)
Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now? 
Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.
Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?
Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.
He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.
You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.
The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.
You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement. 
In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.
You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.
On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does. 
Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.
All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.
Until you didn’t.
It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.
He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.
So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.
Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.
And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley. 
Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence. 
He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.
You said so yourself.
He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.
Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.
And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.
When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.
But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?
You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore. 
So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you. 
He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?
--
It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.
Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.
Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles. 
You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.
When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.
“Did you guys sit next to each other?”
You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”
He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”
You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.
When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.
Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”
You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”
“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”
“Now?”
He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”
And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.
“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.
“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.
His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”
He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this? 
“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes. 
But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”
The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”
“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”
“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.
“Really.”
Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.
Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”
Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming. 
“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks. 
“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.
“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”
“I think I did, too.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”
Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.
He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”
Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.
Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now. 
“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”
“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”
You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”
“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”
You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”
He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”
“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.
“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”
“Fifty years, huh?”
He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”
There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.
--
The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls. 
The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.
You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?
It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway. 
Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.
You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.
“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.
You smile. “I am.”
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slightlymore · 1 year ago
Text
deadly kiss
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chief architect jaehyun x chief engineer fem reader
genre: office au, enemies? to lovers, dom x dom and trying to force each other to sub, romance, smut, fluff
warnings: +18, alcohol, language, explicit sexual content, oral fem receiving, fingering, random sir kink because i was horny like that, use of pet name baby for her during sex, gagging on fingers and sucking, light choking, raw, sex in office, creampie. 
words: 12k+
have this little something as I warm up back into writing. it was supposed to be longer and with some angst but it has been in my drafts for monthssss and I was sick of it ehaheah enjoy. if some of these things happened to me irl no they didnt :) 
────────────
Present, Monday 2 after the Kiss
That morning you woke up feeling the best you have felt in a hot minute. The sun was shining, the outfit you prepared looked good, you had no trouble putting on makeup that day and your hair looked great. Nothing could have disrupted such a holy morning.
Well, besides a pile of A3 papers on your desk. 
The sigh that escaped your chest as you stepped into your office sounded so defeated that your colleagues turned around in their wheeled chairs to check if you were okay. 
It’s not like you hated to have piles of paper on your desk. That was your job after all. 
It was the owner of those papers that made you roll your eyes so far back in your head that you saw green stars. 
“Can you kindly check these and confirm they’re okay? JJ :)” 
You stared at that yellow Post-it on top of the pile and the smiley face as if they committed a crime.  
“I don’t think you architects have any conception of math or physics,” you said, placing the papers on Jaehyun's desk maybe a bit too harshly. 
The man looked down at them with open palms then he prepared his cocky smile before lifting his eyes to look at you. 
He took his time with that: starting from the waist, going up slowly, shamelessly going over your breasts and finally face. 
"Hi," he tilted his head to one side and rested two fingers on his cheek. 
You rolled your eyes. 
"That project is halfway fucked," you explained, indicating the papers with your chin. 
Jaehyun's expression changed to a fake frown, going as far as giving you a little pout. "Oh, we can't allow that. Projects deserve to be fucked until the end. Just like yo-" 
You interrupted. "I swear if you continue that phrase, Jeong-" 
"Then what?" he interrupted you as well.
His eyes were dark. Eyelids low. But they were sparkling. 
You wouldn’t get intimidated. "I'll get you fired,” you said.
He chuckled. “That’s not what you said last weekend.” 
That’s right. It was all your fault. You’ve been bearing the heaviness of that fault for a few days now, in silence, and Jaehyun was just trying to make it even more difficult.
You leaned down slowly, looking around with circumscription but none of his crazy architect colleagues were paying attention to you two. If usually they’d be drinking champagne at 11 am discussing a building that breaks every law of gravity, they were weirdly dead inside that day. The project was probably kicking their ass too. 
Jaehyun stared at your cleavage underneath the dangling necklace you had around your neck before looking back up into your furious eyes. 
“Only because we made the mistake of kissing while drunk that Friday night, it doesn’t mean you can be unprofessional. Do you understand me?” 
The man’s eyes flickered and his cocky expression didn’t leave his pretty features. But he nodded once. “Yes, ma’am.” 
You straightened your back and cleared your voice, ignoring how that reply made your stomach churn. You blamed it on rage. Hearing his deep voice so up close made you irrationally mad. 
“Look again at that proposal of yours and the adjustments I made. I can give you a physics crash course if you need it.” 
“Really? Would you?” 
“I was being sarcastic. Do you think engineers in this place have time to babysit you little artsy people?” 
“Maybe I can give you something back for the effort?” 
You scoffed and crossed your arms, expecting some usual Jeong Jaehyun bullshit, like ‘a kiss’, ‘a date’, ‘my cock’. But he stood up and pulled down his dress pants on the thighs before getting the papers you gave him back and stacking them well together. 
“Like some artistic eye since you clearly lack that,” he said. 
You felt your jaw tighten at the insinuation. 
He got closer, his lips almost touching your ear. “There’s no need to be rude to me only because you think I’m attractive,” he lowered his voice, the little smirk never leaving his face. “I can play this game too.” 
You opened your mouth to reply but the swoosh he created by walking away made your hair get into it. 
“Thank you for the review,” he added already a few meters away. 
────────────
“It’s a theme park.” 
You licked your lips with furrowed eyes, your tongue still faintly tasting the hair conditioner. The meeting of the day was to announce the new project the firm was about to take on. One of the many you've been going crazy over lately. Of course, you had to be the one to take notes that day. You enjoyed the fair share of responsibilities your company had, but sometimes you really missed having a little secretary to do the little jobs for you. 
You sighed as your nails tapping on the keyboards accompanied the voice of the speaker. 
“There will be a few main rides we’ll be responsible for. Our engineers are great and I have huge trust in you all. For this task, you’ll have to work with the architecture team though.” 
Your typing stopped. A few of your colleagues murmured. Engineers were usually complete individuals. They could build rides for a theme park themselves with no need from the weirdos of the other office. They usually needed the engineers, never the opposite. 
“I think we’re capable of working on this on our own, sir,” you said.
The man sighed as if he expected the resistance. 
“This is just to ensure the theme park will also be-” he hesitated, “pretty.” 
The murmurs got louder. 
“Sir, you’ve seen my portfolio,” someone argued. 
“I designed a theme park on my own for my final university project and last year I-” somebody else added. 
The man lifted his palms like a tired father. “I know, I know. And your work is ideal. It is, however, very boring. Ugly colours. Mechanical innovation, yes. Is it interesting to look at? No. You’ll work with the architects. Meeting closed.” 
────────────
Jaehyun didn’t have to ask anyone why you all were mad as fuck after exiting the meeting hall. The rumour of the firm taking onto the project of a theme park has been whispered around in the CEO’s office for a few days now and he was lucky to have a charming personality and become friends with him. From the look on your face, you didn’t know and Jaehyun would have wanted to stop you and ask if you also wanted a coffee, maybe clown you a bit, but he didn’t manage to. He brought the white cup to his lips instead and blew the steam, going back with his mind to the Friday night, when you were doing the same. 
────────────
Past, 2 weeks ago, the Kiss day
“Coffee so late at night?” Jaehyun asked, getting closer to the drinks table. You were resting your red-wrapped hips on it, looking bored. 
“I had too much to drink already. Trying to sober up,” you replied and your voice came so muffled that Jaehyun had to stop and look at your face. 
You weren’t bored. 
You were completely drunk. Absolutely shit-faced. 
That wasn’t the most surprising part though. Everyone was drunk at that office party. Jaehyun himself was feeling too lightheaded for his liking. It was something else. 
“Are you acting cute right now?” he asked with a mix of shock and amusement. 
Your lips were pouty on the brim of the cup you were holding. You shook your head. 
Then you tried to take another sip from the steamy coffee but your wavering hand missed your mouth and the dark liquid slowly descended from your chin towards your chest instead. 
“Shit,” you looked down at your dress.
“God, are you okay?” Jaehyun was quick to grab a napkin. “Did you burn yourself?” 
He took the cup from your hands and put it on the table behind you before gently tapping away at your neck. 
“No, it was just warm,” you assured him. “It’s very sticky though. Poured too much sugar. I’ll go wash up,” you announced and placed your palms on his chest to gently push him away from your path. Jaehyun watched your back as you tried to walk towards the corridor but the way you were dangling to one side and then the other in your high heels made his anxiety go through the roof. 
“Wait, I’ll help you,” he wrapped your shoulders with one arm. 
You hummed as if appreciative and Jaehyun blinked a few times, squinting then relaxing his eyes to try and read all the signboards and see where the hell the bathroom was on that floor. He was also almost shitfaced from the suspicious wine the office brought, but also, he forgot his glasses home that day. 
What a couple of losers you two were. 
“Listen, I think we need to go down a few floors. I have no idea where the hell the bathroom is here.” 
You hummed again and leaned with all of your weight against Jaehyun’s chest. Your eyes were closed as if about to fall asleep. 
Jaehyun sighed, a little sarcastic “great” huffing from his chest. He let his arm fall from your shoulders to your waist for better support and he hit the lift button with his knuckles. It was fortunately already there and Jaehyun had to half drag you and half push you inside of it. For a moment he felt relieved, but then your weight pushed him against the wall and he had to wrap his arms around you again to not make you slide down. 
“Can you just hold yourself up for a second?” he felt irritated. 
But his expression relaxed as you lifted your face. Your half-closed eyes and open lips made him gulp.
“Can you smile for once? I really like your dimples,” you replied and poked one of his cheeks. 
Jaehyun was flabbergasted. The stuck-up, boring, and work-obsessed chief engineer was poking his cheek while her coffee-shined tits were pressed against his tie?  He felt like seeing you for the first time. 
“Ah, come on!” you added, grabbing his face with your hands and making him pout. “You never smile.” 
“I smile a lot, you just never look at me,” he tried to speak while your thumb was digging into his cheek. Unfortunately, he thought, but he kept that to himself. 
You tried to say something else but the ding of the elevator made Jaehyun look towards the opening doors towards a dark corridor. You turned his face towards you again and leaning in, you pressed a chaste kiss on his plump pink lips. 
Jaehyun’s eyes widened and although drunk, you looked surprised as well. “Shit, sorry,” you tried to take a step back but Jaehyun’s palms on your waist didn’t let you go. 
He slid one hand on your neck, right below the ear and pulled your face back to meet his lips again. You hummed, closing your eyes and firstly grabbed at his jacket before you finally decided to wrap his neck with your arms and abandon yourself in the kiss. Your lips tasted like sweet coffee and Jaehyun hoped it could sober him up as well because he felt suddenly very dizzy. And when you slid your tongue inside his mouth he almost moaned, letting his palms caress your spine before groping at your soft ass. Your body got even closer to his and he had to move just once to pin you against the elevator wall. You grunted and Jaehyun wondered if he pushed into you too harshly, but then you kissed him again as if you could not get enough and he relaxed, welcoming the leg you lifted on his hip. Your skin felt soft under his fingertips and it felt even softer under his lips as he started to kiss your jaw, going down your neck following the coffee trail and cleaning it up with his tongue until it reached the chest. Your eyes were closed and your hands in his hair were making his half-hard cock throb too much. With an enormous almost inhuman force he stopped, hands resting on both sides of your head, chest lifting and falling quickly. Your sensual gaze made him gulp and when you talked, he could barely hear it. 
“What?” 
“I said, what department are you from? Sales?” 
“I’m an architect. Jeong Jaehyun?” 
Your face fell so fast that Jaehyun had to take a small step back. 
“God,” you furrowed your eyebrows, “not an architect.” 
Jaehyun had to remain still for a few minutes after you left to process the whole situation. 
────────────
Past, Monday 1 after the Kiss
Monday morning came quicker than you expected and with it the memories of Jeong Jaehyun the architect’s tongue inside your mouth. The elevator you were taking was the same and with the corner of your eye, you could exactly pinpoint where he pushed you against the wall to give you the best make-out session of your whole life. You shuddered and looked away. You psyched yourself to forget everything the whole weekend, or at least, to stop worrying about it, but it was very hard when you knew you would end up seeing him at work. You tried to drink from the cup you were holding but the taste of coffee made your brain buzz with the memory of Jaehyun licking up the sweet and bitter liquid from the swell of your breasts as if he was doing it at that moment too. 
You really drunkenly kissed a coworker? An architect? Your university friends would probably laugh at you for the rest of their lives. 
You didn’t know much about him so you hoped that by not seeing him often every embarrassment would soon die out. 
But apparently, he knew a lot about you. 
The shoes you chose that day were flat and comfortable and you were quick to reach your desk and sit down, avoiding everyone that might have seen something. 
Clearing your throat you turned on your computer right before a shadow in the shape of a man could obscure the keyboard. 
You looked up and Jaehyun smiled politely, the head to the side like a little bird. 
“Good morning,” his voice was deep. 
You opened your mouth and you felt your glasses slide down your nose. “Good morning?” 
The man blinked at you for a moment as if waiting for something. “Well?” 
You slowly looked around, darting your gaze across the room to understand what the hell was going on. Was he there to talk about the kiss? Was he a little boy who thought you were dating? Did you promise something? Did you offend him and he was waiting for an apology?
“Do you need something?” you pushed your glasses back and gulped at his sudden chuckle. 
“Yes. The projects for today,” he replied with both hands politely extended towards you. 
“Huh?” 
You took in the view of the man talking to you. Wasn’t Jeong Jaehyun the architect dude with sick tongue skills, and that’s it? Why was he talking to you as if he knew you? 
Then you felt as if the gods themselves hit you in the back of your head. 
“You’re-” you covered your mouth with the fingers, “you’re Jisung?” 
The man’s smile disappeared to make space for confusion. He furrowed his eyebrows while thinking about what he could reply to that. 
“You do call me a different J name every time so, I guess that’s technically true for you.” 
You took off your glasses because you were afraid the sudden heat wave to your cheeks and chest could melt them off. 
“I thought you were-,” you started, “I thought you were some assistant. You’re the Architect team chief Jeong Jaehyun? The man that I kis-”, you stopped yourself. 
Jaehyun couldn’t conceal a sudden chuckle but you also saw the shadow of annoyance in his dark eyes. 
“You had no idea who I was all of this time we worked together? We talk all mornings and you hand me the projects.” 
You were too stunned to speak. 
“We’ve been doing this for months now,” he added. 
You felt your mouth dry. 
Jaehyun scoffed and placed his hands on your desk, leaning down as if having a secret to share. 
You gulped and looked around but no one paid you any mind. 
“You need Architects to make out with you for you to remember their name and face?” 
His whisper made your skin shiver and while you were previously looking at his eyes, you had to stare at his necktie instead after that phrase. 
“Why do you keep coming to my office? You have nothing else to do? Send some assistant over from now on,” you blabbed. 
Jaehyun straightened his back. 
“Okay.” 
You nodded as if you just somehow resolved that embarrassing issue. 
“You’ll come to my office starting tomorrow and hand me the projects instead.” 
“What?” your voice was louder than you expected and a few heads turned around. 
Jaehyun’s lips stretched in a lazy and cocky smile. “I’ll get them. For today,” he grabbed the pile of papers from your desk. “Thank you.” 
His back looked huge as he turned around and exited the office. 
────────────
Jaehyun was fuming. 
He threw the papers on his desk with such violence that two poor interns jumped in place with their little coffees. 
“Everything is under control. Go back to work and mind your business,” he barked at them. 
He forgot he styled his hair that morning and when he tried to pass one hand through the fringe his fingers got stuck in the wax. 
“For fuck’s sake,” he sat down and unbuttoned his sleeves instead, rolling them up. 
You really had no idea who he was. 
He was shocked, embarrassed, and so fucking offended. 
No, he felt humiliated. 
All of those mornings of him longing- no. He would not admit that to himself. All of those mornings of him working with you and you couldn’t even remember his name, let alone his face. 
Was everyone just a nameless and faceless pawn around you? He has never seen a more arrogant and rude person in his whole life. 
And the fact he was still burning with desire for such a conceited woman was driving him insane with rage. 
────────────
Your fingers were a bit trembling after Jaehyun left. That was possibly the most embarrassing experience of your entire existence. 
You rested your forehead on your palms and waited for a few minutes to see if you could get your shit together and start working. 
And you kissed. For fuck’s sake. 
The mewl that escaped your lips caught the attention of some fellow engineers who were kind enough to stop and ask if you had some sort of stomach ache. 
You lifted your head to look at them in the eyes and you realized you had no idea who these people were. 
Your parents have always told you to stop overworking yourself and start having a bit of fun too, especially in school. It shouldn’t have been such a huge issue, but realizing you made zero close friends or even acquaintances because you’ve been staring at your desk and computer for all of that time was a shocking realization. 
You cleared your throat and gave your coworkers the kindest smile you could pull off. 
“I am fine. Thank you very much.” 
The people whispered something between themselves and walked away with awkward nods. 
“She’s definitely sick. She smiled.” 
“You know when people are about to die and they change personality all of a sudden?”
“She never looked me in the eyes before. I felt like getting turned to stone after seeing Medusa.” 
You felt your glasses slide down your nose again at the gossip and you exhaled deeply. 
Jeong Jaehyun - and his tongue - made you realize people considered you the worst bitch in the universe. 
────────────
The HR secretary furrowed his eyebrows. 
“What do you mean, all profiles?” 
You were tapping your thigh with one fingertip in front of his desk. 
“I need all profiles of all workers in the company to choose the- uh- the best team for this huge important project, yeah.”
The young man wasn’t impressed but he wasn’t going to deny the desires of the notorious Chief Engineer. 
“I will send you the credentials to access the files, ma’am. Anything else I can do for you?” 
“Thank you. That’s all,” you gave him a small nod and turned around. “Actually,” you stopped in place and hesitated. “I know this is not your job but could you talk to someone and bring coffee to the Architets’ office?” 
The secretary blinked. “Coffee, ma’am?” 
You gulped down the irritation. “Yes, please. Don’t say it’s from me. Please.” 
────────────
“This coffee is a gift from Chief Engineer Y/N,” the HR secretary announced as he accompanied the interns carrying a tray. 
Jaehyun was groaning and extending his arms above his head when he suddenly heard the commotion. 
“I think she’s punishing us for something we did,” one person said, grabbing a cup of coffee and looking at it suspiciously. “This is also so expensive.”
“Well, even if she spit in it, I will drink it, you know what I mean,” another winked and got shoulder hit by his cackling friends. “What? She’s scary but she’s hot.” 
“She’d probably bite your dick off.”
Jaehyun got closer and stared down the iron tray. 
“You said Y/N sent this?” he asked the secretary who seemed just as baffled, Jaehyun realized. 
“Yes, sir.” 
“Did she say why?” Jaehyun grabbed a cup and smelled it. Normal coffee. 
“No clue sir. She instructed me to not tell you she sent it but-,” he interrupted himself and got closer. Jaehyun leaned towards him to hear. “-we need to track who’s giving what food to whom, you know. It’s right for you to know if perhaps something bad happens to all of you.” 
Jaehyun winced. The jokes about you being evil were funny only when he made them. 
“You don’t think she would actually do something to this coffee, right?” Jaehyun asked. 
The secretary straightened his back and although Jaehyun had no idea what expression he had on, the other man felt somehow intimidated because he stuttered a tiny “no, sir.” 
“Good. Why did she ask you to do this?” 
“Oh that, she came over to ask the profiles of all the people working at our company.” 
Jaehyun’s head was hurting. You were so convoluted. 
“Why?” 
“No clue, sir. She said something about making up a team.” 
You had no business reading the info of all of your coworkers for that. The idea of you wanting to learn more about him after the terrible interaction you had that morning made him roll his eyes in annoyance at how good it felt for a second. 
────────────
You felt like a thief although you got the info of everyone legally. You cleared your throat and started to scroll through all the profiles, mildly interested. You opened the first one and tried to read but then you puffed your cheeks and closed it. 
The J was in the middle and you pretended to have accidentally stumbled upon Jeong Jaehyun’s profile instead. 
Alright alright, you yelled at yourself in your mind. You were interested. God, his kiss was so good and his face, wow. You couldn’t forgive yourself for not looking at him once in all of those months. 
And you’ve been so rude to him. You shivered. 
Jeong Jaehyun 14 February 1997. 
You rolled your eyes. That birthday must have been made up. It’s impossible for a man like him to be a Valentine Boy. 
You tried to remember what you knew about Aquarius but your astrology knowledge was too limited so you hoped that would be compatible with your sign. 
Pause no. Why were you thinking about astrology compatibility? Maybe you were actually dying?
Tsk, graduated cum laude, the rascal. He wasn’t just pretty but also smart. 
Your eyes slowly darted across the page, eating up all the info the company could legally allow you to read and you had to admit that his projects had been insane even before coming to your company. 
And the ones he had under his belt afterwards? Well, they were all projects you also worked on. You felt sick. 
Were you really such a bad person?  
You sighed and closed his profile, starting to read the others. 
────────────
Jaehyun’s day has never felt longer. He thought he should probably go to the gym because the pain in his back was only getting worse and he should probably extend those muscles somehow. 
His brain was going over the menu for the dinner as well when he heard your voice in the main hall. He exited the lift and saw your smiling face greeting some of your fellow engineer colleagues. 
“Good work today, Minnie.” 
Poor Minnie smiled back as if the queen herself greeted her and almost tripped against the poor man who got blinded by your sudden kindness. 
Jaehyun stopped in place and sighed, trying to suppress the cackle. 
“See you tomorrow, ma’am,” the man added. 
“Have a nice evening, Yeonjun.” 
Jaehyun lifted one eyebrow at Yeonjun’s glossy eyes and walked over. 
He saw you sigh and turn around right into his chest. 
“I see you’ve done your homework.” 
You gasped and took a step back to be able to see him in the face.
“Do you remember my name too?” Jaehyun added with a cocky smile and you exhaled, crossing your arms on your chest. 
“Of course, I do.” 
Jaehyun buttoned up his jacket with a smile. “Good. Don’t forget to come to my office with the projects tomorrow.” 
“Listen,” you stopped him as he tried to walk around you. “I am- sorry for what happened this morning. I am very embarrassed about it.” 
You couldn’t look him in the eyes and Jaehyun had to tighten his fist inside his pants pocket at how cute you looked. 
“But-” you lifted your gaze on him. It was piercing. “-you have no right to treat me like this.” 
“Like this how?” 
“You’re punishing me.” 
Jaehyun opened his mouth then closed it at the accusation. It was true but he didn’t like for you to know about it. 
“I am not.” 
“You are.” 
“Coming to my office and seeing my pretty face is a punishment in your opinion?”
You put your tongue in the cheek with a scoff. “This. You’re- so cocky. You’re annoying.” 
Jaehyun’s dimples made an appearance. “You think I’m annoying? You didn’t know who I was after months of working together. That’s annoying.” 
“I apologized.” 
“Very insincerely so.” 
“I learned everything about you.” 
“Stalker.” 
You scoffed again, putting your hands on your hips. His everlasting smile was driving you nuts. 
“Alright. See you tomorrow, then. In your office. I’ll gladly hand you your work as you clearly burn with desire for me to do.” 
────────────
Back to Present, 2 weeks after the Kiss
The following days rolled on fairly easily. The annoyance and anxiety about going to Jaehyun’s office died slowly as you realized you only had to walk over, say hi, and place papers on his desk. 
If he thought you were rude by not small talking it wasn’t worse than not remembering his name and face after months of working together. 
Everything went back to normal and you started to be also decently popular in your office. Shocker, but if the chief is in a good mood and treats everyone with kindness, everyone works more efficiently. That’s the only good thing Jaehyun brought into your life. 
Well, that was until that day and the stupid yellow Post-it sticker on your desk. 
“Can you kindly check these and confirm they’re okay? JJ :)”  was still in front of you on your desk after the meeting about the Theme Park. 
There’s no need to be rude to me only because you think I’m attractive, was also still rolling in your brain and you wanted to go back to his office and yell that he was not attractive at all. He was just an annoying prick who had the upper hand because you embarrassed yourself in front of him once. 
But there were limits to all and he was starting to be too much. 
────────────
Jaehyun expected an Engineers and Architects meeting to happen at a certain point but he didn’t expect for it to be only the two of you. 
“So, I guess you’ve heard but we’re tasked to work together on a theme park.” 
You were alone in the huge meeting hall, one in front of the other, the large shiny desk separating you. Jaehyun looked at your white button down snuggly covering your breasts and the tiny bit of lace adorning your bra pocking out made him swallow dryly for the fourth time in one minute. 
“Yes,” he simply said. You moved and the shirt covered the lace. He sighed. “We can finally have a pretty theme park.” 
You rolled your eyes and Jaehyun wondered if you’d roll them the same way while he’d pound you into the mattress. 
His crush on you has been annoying him for a while now, but the recent development and the fact you didn’t even know who he was for a long time while he was under the impression that you might fuck soon has been a very low blow to his self-esteem. 
Now, he was trying to fight the attraction so badly but his cock had a brain of his own apparently because even if he found you arrogant and annoying, he really liked the soft side you showed him multiple times and that turned him on too much to ignore. 
“Engineers also have taste.” 
“Well you kissed me so I guess you do have a bit of taste, I’ll give you that.” 
You let the pen go and crossed your arms on your chest. “Can’t you keep it in your pants for one second so we can discuss this like normal adult coworkers?” 
“It is in my pants.” 
“You’re being inappropriate.” 
“You brought up cock talk.” 
“You brought up kiss talk.” 
“You kissed me first.” 
Jaehyun smiled at the victory and you leaned back in the chair. 
“Can we please stop talking about that and pretend it never happened?” 
“Actually you owe me another apology.” 
You waited with a lifted eyebrow. 
“You basically said ew architects after kissing me that night.” 
You scoffed. “And I stand by that. I’m not apologizing. Are baby architect’s feelings hurt?” 
Jaehyun licked his lower lip in annoyance. “Why?” 
“Why what?” 
“Why do you hate architects so much?” 
“Why do you hate engineers?” you resorted. 
“I don’t hate you.” 
“You do.” 
He lowered his voice. “I don’t. You want me to hate you, maybe.” 
“Why would I want that?” 
“That’s your homework for the day. Think about it.” 
“If you’re under the impression that I pretend to hate you because I secretly like you so I secretly would like for that to be the case from your part too, well, you’re wrong,” you smiled although you started to feel the muscles of your thighs shake ever so slightly under the desk. The building was almost empty and the lights were getting turned off one by one leaving you and Jaehyun alone in the huge room, faces illuminated by the blue screens of the computers and the constellation of lights of the skyline. 
“That’s a very convoluted thought. Of course, you don’t like me. You don’t even know me.” 
“You can stop rubbing that in. I know you now.” 
“Well, then it’s a matter of time before you start liking me.” 
“You’re so arrogant.” 
“I am arrogant?” 
“Well, I don’t have the presumption that everyone in the building is onto me.” 
“How do you even know I’m like that? You don’t know me.” 
“You walk around like you have a 9 inches cock.” 
Jaehyun widened his eyes for a second then leaned forward to laugh. His eyes closed and his perfect teeth shone on display. You realized he got whiskers when laughing hard. It pissed you off. 
“And if I do?” he tried. 
You scoffed with a smile. “That’s not human.” 
“9 is a lot, I’ll give you that, but it's not inhuman.”
“Well, I hope you don’t have 9 because I’d be worried about your lower back carrying that around.” 
“Holy shit, I do have back problems. You think it’s that?” 
“For fuck’s sake, Jeong Jaehyun. Please let’s get back to work.” 
Jaehyun stopped talking and you started to actually explain the new project. You both liked the little smile that remained on each other’s lips. 
────────────
Jaehyun was not at his desk that morning so you bit your lower lip, slowly putting down the files for the day. You had no reason to see each other or talk about anything else since both teams had to work on their share of tasks before meeting again but you just wanted to- you had no idea what.
You looked around and touched a few of his desk items before noticing his phone silently blowing up. You looked around the office to see if he was coming but he was nowhere to be seen. The walk around the desk felt natural but also stealthy and you hoped no one was looking at you. You sat in his chair and the jacket he kept on it smelled like him. 
You sighed. Ew men and their hot cologne, right? 
The phone’s screen had no time to turn off as text notifications rolled on the screen again and again underneath your gaze. You wondered if he was part of many active groupchats before realizing they were all private messages both from registered numbers and numbers with no name. 
You felt your throat itchy upon realizing they were mostly from women trying to chit-chat. You scoffed, staring the phone down. He was that popular huh? And he wasn’t replying to any of them? He was so arrogant-
“Fuck!” you whimpered, bringing one hand to the back of your neck and finding someone’s cold knuckles. “What do you think you’re-” you grabbed the hand and turned around. Jaehyun’s perfect eyebrow was lifted. 
“What are you doing at my desk?” he asked, interrupting your question. 
“I came to give you the files,” you stood up and looked at your hand still holding his fingers. You let them go in the same instant. 
He hummed and sat down before realizing you were still there. “Is there something I can do for you?” he turned towards you in his chair. 
You cleared your throat. “I need your phone number.” 
You had no idea why you said that but it was too late. You tried to maintain a neutral face.
Jaehyun’s expression didn’t tell you anything about what he thought. 
“You have it. It’s written on the file all workers have-” 
“Your personal cellphone number,” you interrupted him. 
The man’s eyes were piercing but you didn’t want to look away. Your brain was running quickly to make up some excuse about why you wanted it but he didn’t ask. 
He extended one arm to reach the pen holder and got one, clicking it. When he turned around he searched for your hand, the same holding his fingers before, and grabbed it gently, palm towards his face. 
“Why are your hands so cold?” you mumbled as he started to scribble on your skin. 
“Because my heart is warm,” he replied without missing a beat. “Also, I just washed them.” 
You rolled your eyes, watching him write his number slowly. His fingers were on your pulse and you hoped he could not feel how quick it was starting to get. Why was he writing on your hand instead of a piece of paper? And why didn’t you just take your hand away? Being around him made you feel and act stupid.
One strand of hair fell from his hairdo, obscuring his eyes from your gaze, but then he finished and looked up at you, the neck extended showing a single vein popping out from his tight collar. 
“There you go,” he added. 
You slid your hand from his hold and fought the urge to tighten it in a fist as if to hide something shameful. 
“Thank you,” you replied and exited the office. 
────────────
That night you were at your home desk, head in hands, trying to come up with a problem about the project you could text Jaehyun about. 
Everything could be an email and bothering coworkers outside of working hours was abhorrent, but he was Jaehyun and you didn’t care if he got mad at you. 
No. You wanted him to get mad at you. But why?
You couldn’t think of anything at all so you let your phone go and walked towards the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine. 
Last time you got drunk you kissed him, you remembered. The glass was cold and the wine fresh and you tried to drown the memories of his lips on yours because they made you shiver in embarrassment. Or desire? 
Your growling stomach communicated the need for a snack too but the only thing you could think of making were chicken nuggets so you threw them on an oven tray and hoped for the best. 
When Jaehyun heard his phone ring he was about to jump on the bed, kicking his feet and giggling before realizing he was a grown man with cock and balls. 
“Hello?” he talked into it calmly, after clearing his voice. He knew you'd call after that awkward encounter in his office and he paced the apartment the whole evening.
“Hey,” your voice on the other line sounded muffled. “You answer surprisingly well for someone that gets calls and texts from women 24/7.” 
Jaehyun smiled and sat on the bed. “So this is what it was about, huh.” 
You didn’t reply for a moment and he desperately wanted to know what expression you had on. 
“I’m calling because of an issue with the project,” you mumbled after a bit. 
“Y/N,” Jaehyun called calmly. 
“Yes.”
“Are you drunk?” 
“I am not drunk. I am working right now!” 
“Every time you’re drunk you think of me?” 
“I said I am not drunk.” 
Jaehyun kept ignoring you. “Well, you can’t deny it’s a weird coincidence.” 
“Fuck-” you suddenly said and Jaehyun stopped talking. 
“Oh, shit-” you repeated and dropped your phone, probably on the ground. 
“Y/N, what’s happening?” 
Jaehyun could not make sense of any of the sounds on the other side but it didn’t seem anything good. 
“Y/N, everything is fine?” he spoke again but you probably couldn’t hear him. 
“My fucking nuggets-” he heard your whimper as if far away and the moment the smoke detector went off and you mumbled something about a fire extinguisher Jaehyun got his shoes and ran outside his apartment. 
────────────
Your voice got cut off as soon as you opened the door after the endless incessant doorbell rings from someone clearly very panicked. You opened and his arms were so strong that your breath went missing and you were forced to nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck by the sheer force of his embrace. You’ve never seen him with soft unstyled hair and the worried expression underneath his fringe just made him even cuter. 
“You’re just-,” you heard Jaehyun’s deep voice on the crown of your head, “-so fucking stupid.” 
You furrowed your eyebrows but he went on. 
“So irresponsible. I am shocked at how you could have let your fucking oven burn when you have the brains to build a whole city.” 
“I was distracted,” you spoke softly into his shirt. It smelled like laundry detergent. His mix of insults and compliments weirdly made you giggle.
Jaehyun let you go and grabbed your face with both hands, finally looking at you frantically and squishing your cheeks. 
“I am okay,” you assured him. “Everything is under control.” 
The man sighed deeply as if slightly placated but the line between his eyebrows didn’t get smoothed out. And when he finally looked behind you and assessed the tragic situation of your burned-out oven covered in white foam he had to close his eyes for a moment to gather his shit. 
“It’s okay! It was an old oven anyway,” you turned around, trying to ignore that he was still holding your hand. 
“Your house could have burned down with you in it.”
“How do you even know where I live? And you called me the stalker?” you confronted him. 
“It’s written in your profile.” 
He let go of your hand and got closer to the kitchen, looking at the mess with hands on the hips like the embodiment of a dad. It made your guts tingle. 
“Sure. And you know all the addresses of all of your coworkers,” you followed him, resting your elbows on the island. 
“Of course, I don’t. I don’t like them. Stop talking nonsense and let’s clean this out.” 
You had no idea in what capacity you helped because at a certain point Jaehyun just gave you a glass of water and told you to sit down. 
You didn’t feel that well. 
Both because you were kinda tipsy and you went through all stages of grief putting out a fire, but also because he was there, and he said he liked you. Right? Jung Jaehyun said he liked you. 
And not only. 
"I know you're capable of dealing with this alone. You don't need my help but I'd like to help," he said as you tried to push him to the side and clean the mess yourself. No one talked like that before and a weird fuzzy sensation softened the muscles in your legs making you sit down. 
You sipped on the water without talking back, staring at the way his forearms were flexing while cleaning out your oven and the surroundings.
“No need to be meticulous. They’re coming tomorrow to change it anyway,” you tried, feeling awkward as no one did you any favours before. 
Jaehyun didn’t reply and you realized he looked very handsome when focused. Well, not that he was ugly when unfocused, but the way his jaw looked sharper and his gaze darker made you sigh and take another sip of water. 
“Is your hair bothering you? I can give you a headband,” you tried again. 
“You are bothering me.” 
You scoffed. “I am trying to be nice right now. Your hair is pretty long. Doesn’t it go in your eyes?” 
You were expecting some witty flirty reply back, along the lines of you pushing it back for him, but Jaehyun didn’t look in the mood. 
The truth was that you felt very embarrassed about the situation; as if you failed at something and Jaehyun was scolding you. That was new for you. 
“Fuck, this could have been a tragedy,” he mumbled, as if almost on cue. 
“I am sorry to have worried you.” 
Jaehyun stopped to look at you. “Why are you apologising to me? You’re the one surviving a fire.” 
“But I am okay. You seem much more shaken than me.” 
Jaehyun kept silent and when he stood up you realized he finished cleaning up the foam and the dark burning spots. You stared at the back of his head as he washed his hands in the sink. 
“Also thank you for being here,” you added. You didn’t know what else to do so you got up and walked towards him. Was a hug weird? Should you just shake his hand and call him a pal? 
His body stiffened a bit feeling your timid arms around his waist. “You’re still drunk?” he simply said, patting his hands dry with your kitchen towel.  You stopped and slid them away. 
“You said you like me,” you mumbled against his back. 
“Yep, still very drunk.” 
He grabbed your hands to be able to turn around and face you, resting his hips against the kitchen cabinet. 
“You said there were issues about the project when you called,” he added. 
You blinked at him. “You really want to talk about work right now?” 
Maybe he did. He was your coworker after all. And he certainly didn’t come over to “save” your sorry ass if you didn’t call him about it. 
Suddenly you felt very embarrassed. 
You kissed the man in an elevator after not even remembering his name and then asked for his number and now you wanted to make out with him in front of your destroyed oven? 
You gulped and took a small step back but your breath stopped as his hands holding yours grabbed your waist instead and didn’t let you move away too much. 
“I am buying some time,” he explained. 
Your voices got so low that you barely could hear him, but your gaze on his lips helped you understand what he was talking about. 
“Are you scared to kiss me again?” you asked. 
“Are you going to ask me to forget it happened Monday morning again?” 
His fingers were delicate on your skin for a moment you remembered you were wearing your pajamas. The thin top definitely didn’t hide anything from his gaze and the midriff being exposed to his knuckles made you shiver. 
“I won’t ask to do that if you don’t make it awkward.” 
“Fucking your coworker is always awkward.” 
You blinked at him as if suddenly realizing you were standing half naked between your hot coworker’s thighs (who was an architect!!) “I didn’t say I was planning to fuck. Just-uhm kiss.” 
Jaehyun smiled and your eyes darted to his dimples then back to the white flash of his teeth. 
“You think you’ll be able to stop after one single kiss?” 
You stepped back and crossed your arms on your chest to feign confidence but mostly to hide the tremor in your arms. "Try me."
Jaehyun took a moment to let his gaze slide on your features. “You get very cute when you’re drunk, you know that?” 
“Well, to quote someone, I guess the stick I have up my ass disappears.” 
“I can put it ba-”
You put your fingers on his lips. “You will not continue that disgusting phrase,” you warned. 
Jaehyun smiled wider and his lips rubbed on your skin. He kissed the spot then he kissed one of the fingertips. You inhaled, eyes trained on his gaze, unable to move away anymore as the room suddenly got sucked of any sound besides your own breath. 
He grabbed that hand and kissed your wrist, this time closing his eyes for a moment as if savouring it. You gulped. And when he locked eyes with you the shiver that went down your spine manifested in a little exhale. Jaehyun smiled again, a little curve on his plump lips you felt on the softness of your fingers. 
The kiss felt the same as the first one you exchanged in the elevator after he pulled you closer towards himself. But this time you took your sweet time, letting your palms feel his chest, the skin on his neck, the thick hair on his nape. He did the same, caressing your back with his knuckles, rubbing your thighs with his blunt nails, and grabbing your ass in your flimsy shorts. 
You whimpered in his mouth at the feeling and he hummed back, a low sound, almost a growl, your lips apart but tongues still swirling until you dove back in. 
“Can’t you be like this in the office too?” his murmur made your eyes open. He was licking his lips while his fingers intertwined with yours in a slow dance of pushing you back towards the couch. 
“You want me to get called by HR?” 
He flashed you a small chuckle. “That secretary is so scared of you by the way. He thought you poisoned the coffee.” 
The couch’s arm dug into your thighs and you sat on it, pulling Jaehyun closed by the waistband of his sweats. His eyelashes fluttered as you looked up at him, then again as you dragged your palm upwards underneath his shirt. 
“And you think I didn’t?” you tilted your head to the side. 
“I am still alive.” 
“Not for too long. I might suck the life out of you," you placed a single wet kiss on his hip bone making him hiss. “Take this off,” you tugged at the shirt. 
Jaehyun’s hum was low. “Shit. Ordering me around?”
You looked up. “Please take this off?” you changed your tone but you couldn’t hide the mockery. 
He exhaled amused and did it in a second, pulling it by the collar and throwing it on the ground. But you didn’t have time to do what you intended to because the torso you so desperately wanted to see disappeared from your sight - Jung Jaehyun Chief of the Architect Department fell on his knees, savouring the delicate skin of your inner thigh. 
You gasped at the sensation and the anticipation of what was actually going to happen made you suddenly dizzy. 
You wanted to grab his hair to support yourself, physically or morally, but his head jerked back and with the most angelic and devilish smile, he pushed you back on the couch. 
“You should be respectful,” you chuckled at the manhandling. "I'm a senior." 
Jaehyun grabbed your ankles with one hand as a reply while the other swiftly slid your garments off your body. “I will be respectful after I am done,” he murmured. “For now you will have to take the disrespect, I’m afraid.”
You tried to think of a witty phrase but your legs were being directed on his shoulders, his knees were on the carpet in front of you now and his voice came from between your thighs. Oh, and you were naked. 
Too much work for your brain. 
“Thought you were a gentleman.” You didn't like your shaky voice. You didn’t like any of this. Didn’t you make some kind of bet just moments before? You forgot anything you two said to each other already. 
“I am a gentleman who knows when to not be gentle.”
And you soon realized what that meant. 
You had no idea if other men's tongues have felt that velvety before or if you were just developing the fattest crush on Jeong Jaehyun the Architect as he was devouring you and making you biased. But fuck he knew how to eat pussy. And you made sure he knew that. 
Jaehyun hummed appreciatively at the praise, his deep eyes covered by his long eyelashes making you unable to look away. So you slid your hand in his luscious hair, pushing it away from his face and pulled a bit. His arms and back muscles flinched and he visibly enjoyed your breathy moans when he increased the pace of his tongue's movement. 
"Shit, Jaehyun-" you curled your toes against the smooth skin of his spine then gasped, feeling his long fingers rub your slick before swiftly sliding inside of you. It was wet and messy and loud and the moment he let go of your clit with a dirty plop to start kissing your stomach instead you knew that night wasn't going to end with just that. Should you stop him? Should you continue? Would you be okay tomorrow? 
"Where are you?" Jaehyun curled his fingers and you bit your lower lip. 
"I'm here," you replied against his wet lips, body rocking back and forth on the couch as he fingerfucked you, the veins popping on his bicep making you swallow dryly. 
"I need you to focus on me. What are you thinking about?" he leaned down to rub his nose against your ear before outlining it with his tongue. 
You shivered underneath him and your nails probably left some indents in his pristine skin. 
"About how much I want your cock inside of me," you exhaled. That was the truth. 
Jaehyun hummed deeply and his breath became more shallow. 
"And?" he kissed your neck slowly, so different from the pace of his wrist to make you dizzy. 
"And I'm thinking of the consequences," you curved your spine, raising the tone of your voice on the last syllables. "Fuck, Jeong, this is-"
"Yeah?" he came back to your mouth, letting you whimper your moans against his lips. "You want me to stop then? No orgasm, no consequences."
"If you stop-"
"Then what?" 
You shuddered, frantically palming his hard chest then going down to loosely grab his moving wrist. 
"Are you going to beg for it? I'm kinda curious to see you like that," he added. The roughness in his already deep voice sealed the deal and you couldn't do anything but let your head fall back and bite down a scream as you came around Jaehyun's fingers. It was too late. It was already too late the moment you pushed him against the damn elevator wall. 
He let you decide when he should stop moving his fingers and you felt yourself clench rhythmically around them as you desperately tried to calm down. His lips were on your throat and you realized that he was talking, murmuring something so sweetly that for a moment you wished for him to just hold you until you fell asleep. 
"Good girl," he placed a kiss on the tender skin, then on the corner of your lips as you opened your eyes to look at his gorgeous face. His cheeks and ears were dusty pink and it made your heart skip a beat. 
You pulled him down and kissed him again, slowly and deeply. Then he smiled, stopping your hand from reaching underneath his sweatpants. 
"Tonight is all about you," he whispered. 
You furrowed your eyebrows but the mind-blowing orgasm blew your mind so well that you had no reply. 
"Why?" Your voice was a quiet waver. 
"I don't want you to regret anything," he replied. "And I don't want you to think about the consequences." 
Somehow it made sense. Waking up tomorrow and realizing you let him fuck you with his tongue felt better than realizing he came down your throat. 
Were you really that proud? Maybe you did have a stick up your ass. 
"Don't argue with me," he gave you a crooked smile as he got up on his knees. 
"I'm not arguing with you."
"You have a specific look in your eyes when you're about to debate me." 
You crossed your arms on your chest mostly to cover up given the sudden disappearance of his body from on top of you. Then you sat up and closed your legs. 
"That's not true. You're making things up." 
Jaehyun collected his shirt with another smile and you stared at his long back and the way his sweatpants sat low on his hips. 
The fucking consequences. 
"I really need you though," you whispered. 
Jaehyun wore his top. "How do you want me?"
"Riding," you replied. 
He chuckled. "Of course you do. You can't possibly let an architect force you to your knees, can you?."
You curled your toes at his words. "No, sir." 
Yes, he fucking could. 
Jaehyun leaned down again to slide his hand on your jaw and almost kiss you. But he whispered instead. 
"I'll let you ride me if you keep calling me sir." 
────────────
You didn't notice when Jaehyun left your apartment that night. You thought that the way he took you to your bed bridal style and let you nuzzle into his chest would roam your brain the whole night and would prevent you from falling asleep yet you had the best night's sleep in months.
And you hated to admit it but waking up that morning you felt embarrassed out of your mind but you'd probably have crawled out of your skin if you actually fucked him until the end.
"Hope you got home well," you texted him. Maybe that was how adults did stuff. Maybe that’s what he wanted from you in the first place. Just fucking. Yet why was he so considerate? 
"Yes :)", he replied with his stupid smiley face a second after. Was he not busy? How did he even see your texts in the middle of the hundred he was getting? That made you almost kick your feet and you realized you were slowly descending into madness. 
"And I slept as well as you did after taking care of your gift," he added. 
You furrowed your eyebrows. "What gift?"
"My boner" 
You sighed so much that you thought you had turned into a horse. Then you had to pass one hand on your face as flashes of Jaehyun's hand fucking his cock while thinking of you entered your brain. 
"It was you who stopped me from taking care of it myself." He was driving you insane. Your coworker - an architect (!!!). 
"I wasn't blaming you :)" 
"You're a bit of a masochist"
"I'm everything when I'm with you" 
"Barf"
"Honestly I thought you wouldn't even want to talk to me today" 
"Well we both know that you have poor judgement" 
"Maybe I should have let you ride after all :)" 
"Okay byee I'm turning off my phone" 
"Or suck me well"
"I'm blocking this number" 
"Or let me blow your back" 
"Sending this to HR" 
"Andy, if you're reading this, the Chief Engineer let me fuck her with my tongue and she liked it"
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Texting and fooling around was one thing, but seeing his polished figure while sober and in the middle of the workplace made you almost have a panic attack.
"Good morning," you trilled, hands already pushing the files on his desk. 
"Hey," he lifted his face and gave you a warm but professional smile. 
"See you around," you nodded once and turned towards the exit hoping not to hit the glass door with your face. 
He let you go.
Then you came back the day after. And again. And again. No further exchange. Give papers. Take papers. See his face. Lose your mind at night with your hand between your legs and his name on your lips.
Then your name, pronounced by those lips you’ve been staring at as he pretended to sleep the previous weekend, made you stop in place and close your eyes. You swallowed and got ready to turn around. 
He was already there, standing right behind you and you inhaled his cologne as you took a step back. 
His shirt was open enough for his collarbone to peek through and the way his half-exposed arms looked, crossed on his chest, made you almost angry. 
“Would you like to have lunch together?” he asked. 
You lifted your gaze to meet his eyes the looked around his figure. Jaehyun smiled, tilting his head to the side to get in the middle of your gaze. 
“Don’t look at them. Look at me,” he added. 
“It’s easy for rumours to start forming,” you murmured, imitating his pose. Your fingers grabbed your arms perhaps a bit too hard. 
“It’s just a normal lunch.” 
“I don’t do normal lunches. It would look weird.” 
“At least you’re self-aware.” 
You snorted and turned around. “The last floor is always empty,” you only said as you walked away. 
────────────
Jaehyun didn’t actually expect you to be there. Somehow he thought the way your voice would waver when he was around, or the way you melted under his touch back in your apartment, the noises that you made because of him, all because of him, was just some incredibly orchestrated big joke. You didn’t try to speak to him after that weekend and you didn’t linger around his desk anymore. Hell, you didn’t even text him. 
He had to do something or he would go insane. 
Yet you were in the last room of the upper floor, sitting down on the only couch inside of it, staring at your little plastic container with your lunch and waiting for him. 
You were adorable. 
He had to stop in place before entering to gather his shit. 
Then he knocked two times on the glass frosted door and your head snapped. Your eyes looked so pretty that he felt his fingertips tickle. 
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” you replied. 
Jaehyun closed the door behind him and he could sense the way your spine tensioned. He wanted to pass his palm on it, he wanted you to curve it as he’d grab your neck to pull you up against his chest as he’d pound into you from behind again and again until you’d break. 
“What have you got?” he walked slowly and sat down. The couch was sturdy enough. He made a mental note. 
You looked down at your container as if seeing it for the first time. “Cold pasta. What about you?” 
Jaehyun licked his lips. There you were, looking at him as if hoping for him to devour you. 
"Don't look at me like that."
You closed your mouth. “Like what?” you smirked.
He exhaled. 
"Should I close my eyes then?" you giggled. 
Jaehyun opened his lips to breathe and your gaze fell on them.
"Do you know what would keep my eyes closed?" you asked with a lower voice.
The man's eyes darkened and a whiff of air dilated his nostrils as he leaned in and knocked the air out of your lungs. The kiss was rough and its rhythm erratic. His palms were on your jaw and cupping your head. Yours were on his chest, grabbing at his shirt. You had no idea where your food containers disappeared because suddenly your hands were full of him and your legs straddling his body as he plopped you on his lap. 
You opened your eyes a little when you felt him pull away to let you breathe, the air flowing between your lips still brushing against each other. You looked at them, they were flushed and plump and you desperately needed to taste them again. His gaze was on your eyes and his deep voice surprised you.
"You opened them again." His voice was so deep that you felt it vibrating in your chest. 
You met his eyes.
"I guess you'll have to keep kissing me, then."
His palms on your waist felt wide and so warm that when he slid them on your ass to pull you closer you felt like mewling. Close so close it was so close and you were at work. You were kissing at work. You were sitting on his lap, on his sexy black dress pants, fingers sliding in the slit of his shirt, feeling his chest, his neck, his jaw, his hair. Fuck. 
“We need to slow down,” you exhaled, pulling yourself away from him.
“Why? You’re afraid you’re going to cum too quickly?”
His arms wrapped around you even tighter and his amused and warm mouth attached to your throat instead. You felt your eyes roll back in your head as he nibbled on your skin, peppering wet kisses all over it. And when he scooted his hips forward, his palms on your ass pulling you closer until your chest hit his face, you inhaled feeling his hard cock underneath you. Jaehyun looked up, drinking in your reaction. 
“Show me how much you want this. Show me that you don’t care about the damn consequences.”
Like a spell, your hips started to move on their own, rubbing yourself on him. You were desperate, humping him like a mad woman and his choked moan as he let his head fall back on the couch, extending his throat, was the final thing about his maddening presence to fully break your mind.
"Does it feel good, sir?" you didn't hide the mockery in your tone, feeling your control sliding back in your hands. 
But then Jaehyun shattered it again.
"Ride me."
His eyes were two dark cuts under his scrunched eyebrows and his command made your whole center boil. You stopped your movements and you shuddered on top of him. 
His chest was expanding and shrinking under your palms and when you pushed into it to be able to stand his Adam apple shifted in his throat as he swallowed. 
"Undress me."
Your order made his tongue poke his inner cheek and you smirked, mirroring his expression.
Jaehyun sat closer to the edge of the couch to reach your body and your skin shivered with goosebumps the moment his long fingers unbuttoned your pants. His gaze never shifted away from your face and it made you boil with need. 
The fabric hit the floor and you scooted it to the side, the pant legs so wide your heels just passing through, leaving you and your naked and elongated legs for Jaehyun to touch with his wide palms. They were warm as they slid up your thighs, your breath hitching as you looked at his open lips, his own breath stuck in his lungs and released only when he pulled you towards him. 
You bit your lower lip, feeling his mouth on your stomach, and then you let your head fall back as his fingers trailed your sides, lifting your top until reaching your breasts. You lifted your arms and Jaehyun stood for a moment to help the fabric away from your limbs and before you could kiss him, he sat down, with your between his knees, and unclipped your bra. You gulped, helping yourself stand by placing your hands on his wide and firm shoulders. 
“This is so inappropriate,” you whispered, muffling a whine as Jaehyun kneaded your soft breasts, looking at the skin fill the gaps between his fingers. 
“Yeah? Is being naked like this in front of me making your sweet pussy achy and wet?” Jaehyun’s deep voice made your stomach shiver as he spoke on your skin, trailing open wet kisses down your navel.
You were about to reply, your hazy brain still able to formulate some snarky comment, but when his hands cupped your ass, and one slid to your thigh to lift it on his shoulder, your hearing flatlined. You felt your underwear being pushed to the side and his luscious tongue making you gasp. 
“Jaehyun-” you felt your legs suddenly wobbly and his grip on your body tightened, his mouth licking and sucking at your clit making you grab his perfectly coiffed hair and pull. 
His groan travelled inside of you and his blunt nails dug into your soft skin before he let you go, sporting shining lips and heavy breath. 
He didn’t speak, and he only grinned as he sat back on the couch, his arrogant face making you quiver almost as much as his tongue inside of you. He patted his lap. 
You scoffed trying to hide a laugh but before you could roll your eyes at him, his hands were on your waist, making you sit flush against him. 
“If you dare to roll your eyes at me, I’ll give you a real reason to do that,” he murmured against your lips. 
You kissed him, deeply and messily, grabbing the short hairs at his nape with one hands, and cupping his balls with the other, making him hiss. 
“Oh yeah?” you whispered back, massaging him through the tight dress pants he was wearing. 
His adam apple bobbed in his throat but his eyes shone with mischief. He nodded, not for one second intimidated. It infuriated you. 
So you undid his button and slid his zip down, feeling the wetness of his precum adorning his expensive boxers. 
“And yet, look who made a mess,” you cooed, sliding your hand underneath the elastic band and making him close his eyes and extend his neck back. 
“God,” he groaned. 
He was long and thick, his skin velvety and soft, hot with need. You jerked him with your hand slowly, swallowing at the thought of having him inside of you, splitting you apart. 
Maybe you made a sound, or maybe he saw your expression as you opened his eyes but he smiled faintly. 
“Come on, end this torture. You want me as badly as I want you, chief engineer,” he said. And you would have had another ounce of brat in you if only he didn’t say the following things. Just one word, and it made you dizzy with desire.
“Please,” he murmured. 
Your hand shook as you felt his bigger one on top of yours, directing his pretty cock towards your aching core. You let it go and Jaehyun aligned himself, lifting his gaze with a heavy breath to see your lustful expression as you sat on it slowly. 
You both exhaled, his deep growl and your higher pitched breathy sound, until you reached the base, his girth making you see stars. 
“Good girl, take it all,” he breathed out, letting you adjust. 
“Fuck, Jaehyun-” you gulped, feeling your skin hot, as you lifted yourself once before sinking deep down again. 
He hissed, “I know, baby, I know.”
The petname worked as a spell, throwing you into a fast haze, riding his cock as deep as you could. Jaehyun wrapped one arm around your waist, while the other hand raised to shove his fingers inside your mouth. 
“I’d love for the whole company to hear how good my cock makes you feel, pretty girl, but we don’t want a call from HR, do we?” 
You gagged on them at first, then sucked, trying to turn down the noises you didn’t even realize you were making. 
And when your movements became sloppy and you felt on the verge of losing your mind, Jaehyun’s hips snapped, thrusting up inside of you and making you fist his pristine shirt. 
“That’s it, baby, take it like a good girl.” 
You let go of Jaehyun’s fingers to whine, but then you choked again as his wet hand warmly grabbed your throat instead, making you steady yourself on his wrist instead. 
“Fuck, just like that,” he pulled your body even closer to himself, squeezing your breasts against his expensive wristwatch. It would probably leave a bruise and for some reason the thought of being marked by Jaehyun made you quiver on his cock so hard that with a few deep thrusts you came undone, shaking in his arms and calling his name again and again and again. 
Jaehyun’s warm breath tickled your face and his muscles were pumped with tension as he forced his hips to still, feeling your clenching walls tighten around him rhythmically. 
“Baby, I need to cum or I’ll pop a fucking vein,” he chuckled breathlessly, the hand previously on your throat cupping your face instead. 
“Then cum inside of me,” you replied, ears still ringing from the raging orgasm. 
Jaehyun groaned and snapped, drilling into you so fast that you didn’t have enough force to fully oxygenize your lungs, his arms tightly around your soft body and his face buried in the crook of your neck. 
The sounds were dirty, the tall windows of the small office were getting foggy, and you wondered how long you’ve been fucking like rabbits over your lunch break when Jaehyun’s hips stilled, lifted ever so slightly from the couch, deep inside of you, and you felt on the verge of another orgasm seeing him dig his fingers into your flesh. 
“Fuck-” he exhaled, and you bit your lower lip, whimpering as you felt his spurts of cum coating your insides. Then his hips moved again, prolonging his high as much as he could, the vein on his forehead showing you just how much blood was pumping inside of him. 
You’ve never felt like that and you’ve never seen him lose control just as much as you did. 
“Jaehyun- I think I’ll-” you pressed your palms into his hard chest and he rested back on the couch, looking at your with dark eyes and plump lips. 
“Give me another one, beautiful,” he murmured, his cock sliding out of your and his fingers collecting the cum before shoving it back inside. 
“Shit-” you closed your eyes, losing yourself in the feeling of his fingers pumping in and out of you and your spine curved making you bite your lower lip until almost tasting blood when he added his other hand, rubbing your sensitive clit. 
“I can’t-” you mumbled, “I can’t- please-”
“Yes, baby, cum all over my hands,” he urged, his gaze never leaving your face as if bewitched. 
And you did. 
────────────
You were grateful for Jaehyun not abandoning you in the office’s bathroom alone to clean up the mess you asked for but the one he did. 
“You know I can technically use my cock to take the cum out,” he tried again outside the door. 
You rolled your eyes amused. “I said, no thanks, I got it.”
“The tip is anatomically made so that a man is able to take out the cum a previous man-” he started to ramble but his words were cut off when you opened the door. He blinked staring at you and you noticed his ears were a dusty pink. 
“Do you always share fizzy drinks bottle cups facts when embarrassed?” you finished adjusting your clothes. 
He cleared his voice. “Do you think there would be sex facts on the cups of fizzy drinks? Also, why would I be embarrassed?” 
You crossed your arms on your chest for a moment, taking him in. 
“Do you perhaps have a little crush on me, Jung Jaehyun?” 
He scoffed, putting his hands in his pockets. “No.” 
You expected him to say that but the sudden confidence threw you off. 
He leaned in. “It’s not a small crush. I thought it was obvious.” 
He then straightened his back and opened the office door. “Come on, chief, I think we might get a call from HR anyway because we had a 3 hour long lunch.” 
You shook your head, trying to conceal the little giggle your body apparently wanted to let out. 
“You have too much faith in your skills. We went at it for like 15 minutes at best.” 
Jaehyun stopped in place and turned around slowly. 
You stopped too. 
And when he grabbed you and threw you over his shoulder, giving your ass a good spank, the yell and laugh that escaped you was probably heard in the whole company. 
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nariism · 6 months ago
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to the ends of our world — i. rin
academic rivals to lovers + "i could kiss you right now!" + "we fell asleep by accident and woke up as a mess of tangled limbs."
synopsis. all rin said was that he would help you with calculus. he didn't think he'd be waking up to your morning breath and wishing the moment would last forever.
wc. 1.6k
notes. kind of a highschool au where rin is out for the season because of an injury 🙏 also kind of a one-sided rivalry because rin is a loser :p
— for @itoshiexx <3 | event masterlist ✉️
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
I could kiss you right now.
Those were the last words you spoke to Rin almost an hour ago.
He's agonizing over it, really. He probably should have at least said something back to you instead of shutting you out like he does every time he feels himself getting too close.
Instead he's dutifully working through his calculus notebook.
If he focuses enough on perfecting derivatives, he can ignore the way your presence beside him has only gotten weightier. But it's hard to do that when the words are still echoing in his mind.
I could kiss you right now.
You're just as adamant on finishing your workbook, eyes glued to the page and attention completely devoted to making numbers dance.
When you asked him earlier in the day if he could help you with the new sets, he was confused. You'd always been the one to best him.
It irritated him. You reminded him too much of his big brother.
But then he saw your notebook. You'd hesitantly handed it over to him when you showed up at his doorstep with courtesy snacks and a bag of oranges for his mother.
(Which she gushed about, by the way. He felt like burying himself in a hole when she asked if you were dating.)
You'd been trying for so long to figure out the solutions that some areas of the page were torn where you had kept erasing and redoing the work. He even found things scribbled out in frustration.
He would have laughed if you didn't have such a grim look on your face. Rin was never one for humour, anyways.
He reluctantly agreed to help, though he was sure your other grades would make up for one botched math unit. It was the petty pride in him speaking—in reality, the way you looked like you were on the verge of tears was enough to send him into fight or flight mode.
He had never seen such a dazed, stressed expression on you before. You were the epitome of a model student—good grades, class representative, and friendly enough that no one ever wanted to step on your toes.
No one but Rin, that is.
He told himself he hated you. Goody-two shoes. Smiley. Obliviously and annoyingly cheerful. Successful enough to do anything you wanted to do, so long as you had the drive.
Everything Rin would have been if he hadn't injured his knee right before the football season started.
But what he thought he felt about you was a lie. He hadn't even realized it until you were sitting down on his bed, knee bumping into him as you lounged there criss-crossed.
He'd always just seen you as the person who sat in front of him in homeroom. Untouchable. He envied you, even though his grades were nearly as good now that he had all the time in the world to study.
Now, though, you're just as human as he is.
Rin can see your face instead of the back of your head. Your words are meant for him—thanking him, praising how easy his method for solving these equations is.
Then, you shattered his daydream.
I could kiss you right now.
You said it so unseriously, not even looking at him when you did. You had gotten to the end of your third page of work, conquering the math with ease now that you understood it.
It was your funny way of expressing gratitude. He knows you didn't mean anything by it, definitely. But it's been stuck in his mind.
And neither of you have uttered a word to each other since.
He nearly jumps out of his skin when you slam your pencil down in your notebook and shut it with an audible thud.
"Break time!" You sigh blissfully, though he isn't sure if you're talking to him or yourself.
You flop back into his mattress and he just stares in quiet disbelief while you scroll through your phone like you fucking pay rent here.
Rin debates whether or not to kick you off his bed so that he can finish his homework without distraction, or if he should just leave you be. Ultimately, he decides that it's too much of a hassle to deal with confrontation and silently goes back to doing derivatives.
He would feel bad shoving you away when you finally started talking to him, after all. And you look so at ease now, with your work almost done.
(Yeah, you started working at a faster pace than him with his method. You seriously piss him off.)
He comes to the conclusion that this is going to be a one-time thing. Rin hates the twist of despair in his stomach seeing you about to burst into tears.
He hates the peace that fills him when you're back to your smiling self even more.
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
Rin wakes up to warmth.
Groggily, he blinks the sleep out of his eyes until they adjust to the light of sunrise pouring into his room.
It's strange. He doesn't remember falling asleep at all.
What was he doing last night? He shifts a little bit and freezes when he hears the crinkle of paper beneath him.
Oh, his calculus homework. Did he finish it? It's due today.
He's just about to sit himself up to check the time and hope he has at least another hour to sleep before school, when he realizes much too late that there's a weight on his arm.
Rin gets yanked back by the arm that's pinned down, yelping quietly in surprise.
And then everything hits him like a goddamn truck.
Maybe more like a freight train, really, because he feels like he's about to have a fucking heart attack. Rin dares to turn his head, so comically slow that it's like life itself moves in slow motion.
Somehow in your sleep, you've become a tangled mess of limbs.
His arm is tucked under your neck—the culprit for making him whelp like a child when he tried to sit up. Your legs are twisted together and... Oh god. His free hand is resting where your hip melts into your thigh.
Panic rises in his chest because one, he's never had another person in his bed before. Period. And two, because there's heat boiling in the pit of his stomach and he's pretty sure he's about to keel over and pass away.
Just as he's about to shove you off the bed, realization dawns on him.
You look so peaceful when you sleep.
Your breath smells, and your hair has gotten tangled under the weight of his arm. You're muttering to yourself quietly in your sleep, and he's pretty sure he can see a bit of drool in the corner of your lip.
He so desperately wishes that his first thought would be to tease you about this until the end of time. Or maybe use it as blackmail against you, if you were to get a higher grade on the upcoming calculus exam because of his methods.
But instead, his first thought is that he never wants to move from this position. That he needs to savour this moment.
It's horrifying.
18 hours ago, you pranced up to the side of Rin's desk and asked if he could help you with the problem set.
All he said was that he would help you with calculus.
He didn't expect you to show up at his door right after dinner. And he didn't expect you to seat yourself on his bed before he could offer you the chair at his desk.
He certainly didn't think he'd be waking up to your morning breath and wishing the moment would last forever.
You've just been a bag full of mysteries. Rin hates mysteries. It's part of the reason why math works for him—no surprises, no ambiguity. There's always an answer.
Rin can't formulate an answer on why his heart feels like it's about to burst out of his ribcage.
You shuffle in his arms and suddenly the pounding in his chest ceases.
Is this what death feels like?
"Rin?" You murmur sleepily, shifting into his warmth as if this is something regular classmates should be doing. "What time is it?"
"I can't see the clock," he deadpans, though it's just a facade to hide how utterly enamoured he is right now. "It's behind you."
You groan, rolling over to check the time. He breathes a sigh of relief as you pull away but it gets stuck in his throat when you collapse back into him, your back against his chest.
"6:07," you tell him nonchalantly. And then you cozy yourself up in the blankets again, nice and warm, and go back to sleep.
"Hey," he shakes you lightly. "Don't just go back to bed, moron."
"We can talk about the homework later," you mumble as if that's what he fucking meant.
A million words run through his mind, parading to the tip of his tongue where they all fall off and die. He can't find them when you're slotting yourself closer and closer in your sleep, squeezing his arm against your cheek.
Eventually, he decides that it's not worth the hassle of getting up and having you see his flustered face right now. You'd never let him live it down.
So he closes his eyes and pretends that you're not just the person who sits in front of him in homeroom. Goody-two shoes. Smiley. Obliviously and annoyingly cheerful.
"I could..."
He swallows loudly, the words like molasses in his throat.
I could kiss you right now.
You're dead to the world, but he doesn't dare speak the thought into existence, anyway.
─── ・ 。゚☆: *.☽ .* :☆゚. ───
("Rin! 95%!"
You shove your paper into his face and he opens his mouth to snark back about it.
But then you leap forward and press a kiss to his cheek. Everything in his head instantly melts into mush.
"You're the best," you gush.
He just glowers at you with burning red cheeks.)
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soobnny · 2 years ago
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classmate au | sim jake
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❝ i’m sorry we only got 26/30 on this worksheet ❞
heeseung | jay | JAKE | sunghoon | sunoo | jungwon | ni-ki
jake…
oh jake.
student athlete and math genius jake
you’re in the same class but he feels so far because he hangs out with his rly pretty friends
u can only look from afar
he’s always a tiny bit late to class
always drawing attention to his pretty boy face 😞
at 7:30, the bell rings and classes start
at 7:31, jake walks into class late
but the teachers always give him a pass bc how could they not when he smiles at them like that and apologizes like that
even ur teachers are down bad
he probably becomes your class representative for that one strict teacher’s class bc they always have a soft spot for jake
u want the deadline of the homework extended? ask jake to message them
he sits in the middle seats
not too prim and punctual to be at the front
but still likes school enough not to completely goof around at the back
sometimes your math teacher lets you do quizzes and worksheets by pair
(it’s the only way some of you can get a passing grade)
by statistics and some type of sampling, you end up getting partnered up with jake
“hi, good morning,” he’d greet with his infamous smile
now you get why all the teachers swoon for him
he’s so cute. this is going to be a problem
this is going to be a BIG problem
you were already bad at math, and now there’s a big pretty distraction sitting next to you
though, tbh, you were also relieved when you heard your name with his bc he’s ltrly known as a math genius
he’s one of the students that teachers excuse for their math contests
and wait 😭 did he just say something to u? did he ask about a formula bc u honestly have no clue
“(name)?” he’d shake your shoulder gently and it’s enough to bring you back on earth
“sorry, did you ask something?”
“oh, i’m done … if u wanted to compare answers? or if u trust me enough?”
you trust him enough
he’s ltrly THE carry
jake will speedrun differential calculus like he’s writing the alphabet
uh oh.
why does he look so HOT with his pencil and the way he writes numbers
you’re going insane
you should never be paired with jake ever again
but by some twist of fate, you always end up as jake’s partner in numerous activities
lab work and experiments and communication reports?
“jake and (name),” the teacher would announce
ofc… typical of friends, they HAVE to push you around as you walk to your seat beside jake’s
while you’re of great help with anything else, you’re starting to feel bad about his literal carry in math tho
“are you sure it’s ok? i’m just rly horrible i’m sorry,” you’d apologize
he would just laugh and dismiss your concerns
“nooo, it’s okay. i’m fine! i can tell you didn’t get enough sleep last night”
(you spent the night binging a new show that came out)
your stomach doesn’t feel so good after that one.
who gave him the right to NOTICE things now???
when your teacher returns your paired worksheets, he has the GALL to apologize
a big fat 29/30 will be written on top and he’d say “oh i’m sorry we had one mistake 😕” like BOY SHUT UP !!!!
after your partner shenanigans, you’d start talking more in the classroom
he’d give u a fist bump if u bumped into each other in the hallways while walking with ur respective friend groups
sometimes even shout your name to get your attention only to wave at you
“why are you smiling like that?,” sunghoon would ask accusingly
and you know what? jake has no shame
“(name). she’s pretty cute, no?”
BYE absolutely no shame
so now, when he speedruns an activity, you’ll find him hovering around you until he starts to make conversation
if the teacher leaves early ?? suddenly he’s transported to the seat next to yours and flirting
being friends with jake is chaotic…. bc that would automatically mean being friends with HIS loud ass friends
pretty friends have upgraded to pretty LOUD friends
they’re so annoying too
“jake and (name), can you buy us water?”, heeseung would ask
WHY R U BUYING WATER FOR HEESEUNG
but jake’s already taking your hand and dragging you away bc he will take every opportunity to hang out with you alone
BTW computer science god idk i just got the vibes
during valentines that year, he codes you a little website please end me
mind you, you aren’t even together yet
he just codes for you as a friend 😂😂😂 as if anyone’s believing that
oh and he also avails those anonymous services so you’ll just be receiving flowers from the student council throughout the day
“oooooh, who are those from,” he would be smiling like it’d be so painfully obvious it’s from him
“do you like them?” NOOOOOOO he just wants to know ok!!! tell him you love them please
OK back to normal no more valentines
when class dismisses, you’d find him lounging around the basketball court with heeseung
sweaty….. wet hair…. oh dear
jake is a sight to see when he’s playing basketball
u usually sit at the bleachers anyway bc ur friends enjoyed watching
he is SOOOOO annoying esp now that you’ve grown closer over the months
he’d make stupid plays and draw attention to you 100%
“if i get this shot in, will you go on a date with me?”
cue the screams and the teasing and the fake vomiting as you’re pushed around
OFC he makes the shot
he’s sim jake, math genius AND student athlete
“so, tomorrow after class?”
“huh?? i thought you were joking??”
“what? no! have i not been obvious? i ltrly flirt with you evry chance i get??”
“well… idk! maybe you do that with everyone!”
“only you”
OK WISH I WERE YOU THEN 😒😒😒😒😒
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note. credits to user @.luvknow for the layout of this post! let me know what you think! please discuss these with me i’m crazy
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imnotasuperhero · 6 months ago
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To follow the compass (that beats in our chests)
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Wanda Maximoff x Reader.
A/N: Hello buddies. I honestly don't know how to define this, so let's say it's just an idea I developed in different chunks of free time I had and I decided to just put it out in the open and see if it was good enough considering the astronomical hiatus I've took. This was not proofread.
Let me know your thoughts!
Sipping on the hot, bitter coffee, you relaxed on the park bench enjoying the calmness of the Saturday morning, forcing your mind to stop thinking about the stressful streak you’ve been having for the last few weeks.
And the smile on your lips grew at the realization the cutest puppy came barking and wagging its tail, sitting at your feet as if it was your own.
“Hi, buddy!” You giggled as you scratched on its fur. “Yeah, you’re a good puppy, aren’t you?” 
“Sparky!” A nervous voice called and you couldn’t help the chilling wave running down your spine.
Looking up, you saw the most beautiful woman ever, walking rapidly to you, “Come here, boy,” she kept calling unsuccessfully.
“It’s okay,” you kept on your smile when she was in hearing range while you kept on petting her dog, as if trying to calm her.
“I’m so sorry, he never sprints at strangers. I don’t know what-”
“Hey,” you stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, really.” You guided her to sit on the bench, worried about her state.
Inhaling deeply, her green eyes stared at you with some spark you couldn’t decipher. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be,” you smiled kindly, sitting by her side. “I’m Y/N,”
“Wanda,” she nodded curtly, her attention on the dog sitting between you two, looking back with curiosity. But before you could comment on some random thing to say, her grunt called your attention.
“Are you okay?” Your attention focused on the woman beside you.
“I'm fine… it's just a small kick,” she rubbed her protruding belly.
“Oh,” you realized just now she was pregnant. “How far are you?” 
“It's pretty early. About to enter the sixth month,” she smiled softly and you could feel her beautiful smile being tattooed on your soul.
“Do you have a name, yet?” You asked curiously.
“I just found out it's a boy on Wednesday, so I still have to decide on a few,”
“There you two are!” a familiar voice made your words die on your lips.
“Pietro?” You stood up with your smile growing its size.
“Hey, Y/N!” The blonde man smiled equally excited as he hugged you tightly.
“Now I know why he seemed so familiar,” you looked at the dog at Pietro’s feet requesting to be petted.
“Now I know why he ran to you out of nowhere,” Wanda chimed in, taking one of the two cups Pietro had. “Thank you,”
Winking at the brunette, Pietro turned his attention to you. “Glad to see you’re feeling better,” his smile never left his face. “I miss you at work,”
“Oh, I bet it’s torture,” you giggled, rolling your eyes.
“It’s true! George is just… too much.”
“Poor Pietro, he can’t manage a teenager,” you mocked him. “I’ll be back on Monday.” You assured.
“But what he can manage is finding a new place for his sister to move into.” The blonde stated with a cheeky smile.
“Wait, what?” Wanda frowned at her brother as if had grown two heads.
“Well, it’s simple math! You’re still looking for a roommate, right?” Pietro looked at you expectantly, waiting for your confirmation. “And you can’t handle living with me anymore. Ouch, by the way,” he turned to his sister. “That means you can move in with-”
“Does she even want me to move in?” Wanda interrupted her brother’s rant, and you felt the pressure as two pairs of eyes set on you.
“As long as you don’t smoke and keep at least the common areas tidy-”
“YES! She accepts the deal.” Pietro grabbed your hand and shook it as if it was a deal.
“There’s a problem, though.” Wanda looked down to where her hand was placed on her belly bump.
“I’m not new to babies. It’s okay by me,” you shrugged and couldn’t help the heat on your face as those green eyes shone with something warm.
That’s how the very next night, you’ve found yourself sliding in bed after a well deserved hot shower, for all the hard work you’ve done helping Wanda move into the empty spare room in your apartment.
But just as you were about to drift into sleep, a chocked scream washed away every bit of sleep you’ve collected through the day.
“Wands?” You entered her dark room, setting your eyes on the sitting form on the bed. Her soft features illuminated by the moonlight.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she sighed.
“No need to,” you sat beside her on the bed. “Can I help you with something?”
At the tension levitating in the air, you insisted.
“I know I’m a grown up mother-to-be. But can you stay?” 
Getting under the covers, you opened your arms waiting.
“What happens in this room stays in this room,” the brunette joked as she settled half on top of you, and you couldn’t help the soft smile as you felt the extra weight on your side.
“Deal,” you refrained from kissing her head, wrapping your arm around her shoulders instead, allowing sleep to take over you once and for all.
Days and weeks passed, you’ve found yourself enjoying Wanda’s presence around you when neither of you were at work. Even more so when she took over dinner claiming she needed to destress from whatever case she had that day.
But for the last 4 days, Wanda had been assigned the night shift as she had to cover for a colleague and you sank deeper on the couch at the realization that hit you like a train.
So after a few minutes of wallowing in the newfound feeling, you stood up and walked to the kitchen, checking  on the food cooking on the stove.
Inhaling the warm smell you felt your chest inflate with joy. “Yummy,” you smiled as you grabbed the wooden spoon and stirred before tasting the stew. “Double yum.”
Moving to the cupboard you took a plate and stared at it for a second too long, deciding to grab two small containers instead.
As the floor-to-ceiling doors closed behind you, you granted yourself a few seconds to calm down, unbelieving the impulse that brought you here.
“Hi,” you greeted the first nurse you’ve found after the receptionist indicated where the pediatric floor was.
“Hello darling,” the nice old lady smiled at you. “How may I help you?”
“I’m looking for Dr. Maximoff, please.”
After checking on the screen, the big brown eyes looked back at you with a compassionate look. “She’s in surgery right now, but should be done in any minute.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll wait for her,” you faked your best smile, not being a fan of hospitals.
But before you could end up walking away from the stress the place provided you, a tap on your shoulder called your attention.
“Hi,” you smiled brightly as you took off your earphones.
“Hello yourself,” the brunette matched your smile. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought us dinner.”
“Oh, my. You’re the best,” Wanda’s arms wrapped around you and you felt the familiar warmth you’ve got used to. “I definitely need something after that O.R.”
“Was it an emergency?” You asked, following her to what you assumed was the common room.
“Sadly, yes.” Wanda took two water bottles before sitting down at the table. “Remember the girl I told you about yesterday?”
“The one with heart failure?” You took the containers and opened them, filling the room with the warm tasty smell.
“Oh, lord. Looks so good,” Wanda took a bite and smiled. “It is good,” she nodded to herself and you couldn’t help the giggles. “But yes, that one. Turns out she had a clog on her aorta so we had to operate.”
“Poor thing,” you pouted, it was sad to hear some of Wanda’s patients’ medical records. “So now her heart surgery has to wait.”
“At least another day, yes.” She took a mouthful. “What brought you here? And with food?”
“The apartment felt empty and I was bored,” you shrugged nonchalantly.
“You sure it's not the fact you miss me?” Wanda raised her eyebrow.
“Ehh, that’s just details.” You waved it off.
“And here I thought I was special,” the brunette pouted, making you purse your lips to avoid you from smiling.
The next few minutes were spent in a comfortable silence, which wasn’t strange to you both since you easily found quite the comfort in the other’s company. But that bubble popped when Wanda’s pager rang with a nine-eleven call.
“I’m so sorry, Detka.”
“No, don’t worry, duty calls.” You eased her as you took her hands from the picked up forks. “I’ve got it. You go save lives and I’ll see you at home,”
“I’ll make it up to you,” she pecked your lips and stormed off the room, leaving you frozen.
Caressing your lips, you tried to process the day’s unfolding. Where did that come from? Was it just a reflex or was it something she’s wanted to do willingly?
All these questions ran through your mind, slowly indulging the feeling that was hidden in a box, burning madly like a flame that could consume the restraints in any minute. And to be honest, it didn’t scare you, because if anything, all the pent up tension meant there was more in store for you and Wanda than just be friends.
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adoregojo · 11 months ago
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valentines - sae itoshi x reader
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yayyyyy I finished it, im free :3 im so freaking sleepy rn warnings: angst, very happy ending the chap before: one
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2017
it's been years since you last saw sae.
those 3 years without the elder itoshi felt unfilled, missing it familiar spark. visiting the sea doesn't feel the same without the reddish-brown boy alongside with you. his endless grumbles about how luck keeps running the opposite direction and it's always loss in the in of his road were now just a remains echoing inside your head.
it's not that his face wasn't rememberable anymore, in fact, his face was glued on every bug screen around japan. under the name of the japan prodigy himself. however his face was blurry and those big-screens always do him unjustifiably. pictures were good, but sae grew. oh how you wished you could have grew together again.
you missed his actual face, when he would reveal his rare unseen smile to you. even when he didn't smile, there was something there, your grandma always said that his eyes would go soft under the mention of your name. when actual emotions were still swirling in his heartland. now you looking at his face, his slime teal eyes were so..bleary.. sae looked like he lost all his colours.
you wished you could embrace him, just like you used to when you two were kids after he flunked his math test and the first thing he does is let you hug him and play with his hair, sae told you that he would never let someone else do that to him yet the word shameless was unfound beside you.
but now you were helpless. thinking about the great distance itself between you two was crushing.
you kept writing, and sae promised to write back. at least he did at first, within the next months his letters and calls were fading, draining each day, they were getting awfully dry to the point you felt he was just saying anything to make shut you down. but in the end he stopped completely. no matter how much you texted or called they were never answered.
yet you kept on writing, even when he didn't reply. you sent him birthday cards on his, remained him of yours as well. however he never responded. you write and send, write and send, write and send damn letters nonstop. at some stage you didn't know where to send them anymore. they were never replied to, never seen nor read.
soon your texts became green. and it felt like a door was slammed on your face.
you felt desperate, like a dog waiting for it owner returned. and you could feel the pity glimpses in everyone's faces, in school, neighbourhood, sometimes even your own grandma, except that she held more sympathy with it.
perhaps, the younger itoshi was the only one who didn't change much. just like you, sae stopped his communication with him as well. but he handled it way better than you did, the letters 'big brother will come back, he's just busy' fell out rin's mouth every time he senses you unhidden soreness.
you should believe in what he says, it's literally his brother. his own flesh and blood, his family. yet you didn't ease up under his words, if anything it worried you even more. you felt it, the wave screaming back at you that something bad will happen, something that'll change everything forever.
and you knew you were right when opened the door revealing rin with tears running down his reddened cheeks.
2018
rin never told you what happened that tragic snowy night.
all you could remember was him shedding tears like there was no tomorrow, they were silent yet so painful that you felt sorry for the boy. you always took rin as an unbending person, he was like sae but much more chill and dare you say more friendly?
you warped a blanket around him when he slept in the guest room, you never pressured him. never pushed him, thinking about it now, you should probably have. because you woke up to that bed soothed back all clean and empty the next morning.
and it felt like rin last strike of humanity was left dead under your roof.
rin changed, and everything changed with him. maybe you didn't, perhaps you grew doleful, dejected. waiting was hard, pouring down your soul. it felt like the sky was telling you that you were waiting for nothing, but to be truthful, not only the sky was implying that.
you saw how the younger itoshi would look at you when he saw you writing letters to sae. he said nothing and stood silent, yet his eyes were pleading with you to stop, to give up on his brother before he curses you for good. however, you were already cursed by sae a long time ago.
even when he left for that project, deep inside. he wanted to say something, to speak up. the words were on the tip of his tongue yet he kept on opening his mouth and closing it like a lost fish. then rin left without a word, leaving you to face the truth by yourself.
you found it strange when every time you were present in the tv room, the first thing your grandmother dose is close the tv or change the channel. it was weird, you never remembered her being a big fan of national animals shows. she always liked the news which was what she kept avoiding for a while for some reason. her protection wouldn't last forever.
a secret kept swimming around you, just walking around in the hallways was enough for everyone to either laugh or look at you with such pity. even the teachers? what was going on, what kind of secret could it be to impair you this much?
you wished to stay curious, to stay lost in your little circle of agony but not to witness the man that planted dead hopes within you was now cutting your roots of holden on faith.
you saw a picture of sae kissing another girl, and you felt your soul getting toured up by him.
like the world itself was laughing at you naiveness, how stupid you were. you felt used, the wasted years you spent waiting on someone who didn't even care felt like a pure burning betrayal. you got that light message, sae was basically telling you to get off his back, you were no longer needed.
you meant nothing that anyone could possibly overshadow you. you got tossed aside, a dusty memory that was never worth holding in the first place.
you stopped writing letters after that day.
2021
"nice having you back in japan, genius boy."
aiku laughed, but the man ahead of him didn't even spare a smile at him. instead he found the glass of drink in front of him more interested. the black head let out a sigh, he guessed that sae isn't exactly a man of change, he needs to stop letting his hopes up for nothing.
it's an understatement to say that aiku was surprised that the elder itoshi would even acknowledge his invitation for a night out at what he called a fancy bar. hell, sae probably didn't even like wine in the first place. yet he was here, looking around with his boredom eyes that never opened fully.
"soo, you finally opened your heart for your dear home?." aiku asked, taking a sip of his own drink. through the transparent glass, he could see the slim teal eyes peeking at him.
"what's up with that interview question? don't say you invited me for this." sae spat out, the place was awfully packed despite it being the middle of the night. and he would lie if he said he wanted to spend another second here.
"haha, once a stiff always a stiff. thought i would get a thank you for getting you out of your forlorn shell for awhile. i mean, look at those chicks, you sure you don't wanna catch yourself a little fun? heard you were left out on valentines eve."
the elder itoshi frown a brow, "you think you're my wingman or some shit? don't get too high of yourself just 'cause i went out here with you." scoffing, the reddish head crossed his arms.
before aiku could get a chance to reply, a sultry voice called. "you boys would like a refill?" the suffocating smell of her perfume was pocking sae's nose, which made him hard grimace in disgust. while on the other hand, the shaggy head threw a sly smile at him for some reason, he better not do anything stupid.
"not me, hun. but my friend over there would definitely like to. right, sae?" he should've knew better. he knew this fucker was trying to set him up with some, it didn't even need a rethink when his glass wasn't even half way empty.
sae could feel a vine running through his head when the high heels sound was lifted to his side. his personal space was getting tackled when the woman bend over with her breath that reeked of unhidden smoke and alcohol was tickling his ear.
"Oh? you must be a new one. we got specials for those." she breath out, her hand running down sae's arm. he had to stop himself from getting defensive at her sharp nails stabbing him through the fabric of his clothes. "you can request anything you please, even these lewd things going on your head."
her flirting was on death ears, he didn't even take a glimpse at her. nudging that man was like trying to punch a wall. sae told himself to ignore and she'll get the message and leave him alone already.
"c'mon now, whatever little sweetheart you clinging onto doesn't have to know."
and that hits a nerve, "anything you say? than I request you to step the fuck back you good for nothing tart creature." as soon as these harsh words come out, a loud gasp was heard. and sae couldn't find it in himself to stop the next words of coming out. "I came here for someone, not some harlot woman wiggling over me. go throw yourself on some pimp maybe you'll find a purpose inside their pants or something."
soon, it turns into a crying mess. and sae remains stiff. the only reaction he could give was sipping on his drink, he saw aiku trying to stop the women from running before stroking the bridge of his nose is disbelief.
"what the hell man.. you could've just told her to leave you alone."
"I don't like pushy people."
he hears a scoff, then aiku swaying after the other woman. sae could feel the eyes of strangers staring him down, not that he cares, not even about that woman who he sent crying, she can collect what's left from her dignity, if there was any in the first place. he was too busy rethinking why did he speak those words.
and why did was your face the first thing to pop up his mind when he said that.
it's been years, and he couldn't believe that he agreed to aiku's request, yet he'll never admit that he wanted any reason to step here again. any reason to see you again, he never thought he still had it in his heart to miss you. to be eager for you, he found himself bubbling with excitement like a little kid again.
sae can't figure why are you suddenly so heavy on his mind, was it the years of pushing you to the corner of his mind was paying off? even the tiniest things were enough to makeshift you in a way. it felt like he couldn't escape you, you were in everything and everyone. in the side planted flowers, in the little kids laughs, in the bright colours of the sun.
he wondered if you still think of him, if you still hold on him after seven years of being absent in every way possible. you turned eighteen without him, you probably had much more friends by now, maybe even changed your haircut, he remembers you rambling about how your grandma wouldn't let you change the same haircut for years now. sae himself doesn't notice the smile forming on his lips.
"wash that sappy face off, doesn't suit you." a firm voice stated, he didn't even have to turn around and see when he knew this tone like the back of his hand. lo and behold, his younger brother standing there.
"rin."
"shitty brother."
rin walked up to the table, his hands deep in his pockets. standing in such a filthy place made shift disgustingly. not even trying to hide his displeasure staring at both his brother and whoever walks by like a walking foul trash bags. or maybe that's just his natural face.
he didn't take the obvious abandon seat, instead he stood like he just needed a minute before taking his leave. "didn't expect you to be back, though you called this place unworthy of your presence." said rin, his eyes doesn't held them loathing anymore. but still a hint of unbearableness was there, that'll take some time to wash away.
"i have my reasons." he simply replied, he was never releasing his feelings.
"plus, what the hell are you doing here? and don't lie to me when you look like seconds away from throwing up." sae question,
"you need to get a assertive manager next time." rin shrugged, he wasn't planning on lying. the guy almost shat himself at the sight of rin alone. maybe he should work in his face expression.
"well, I know you aren't here for a heartwarming family reunion. so spit it out already." rude as ever, but the younger itoshi learned to not raise his hopes too much when it came to his brother.
rin doesn't reply to that, instead he reaches for his black coat pocket. lifting out some designed letter, leaned it carefully over the table for him to take. so sae does, playing around with the object, he sided eye his brother.
"a wedding invitation." rin answered before he could question.
"yours?" he asked in disbelief, that was not a face of a man getting married.
his younger brother started at him like he grew another head, "no?" he almost gagged, narrowing his eyes.
"then i have no interest in wasting my time."
"just read it you damn slacker." rin demand, he did not come all the way here for his older brother to act like a spoiled brat. he swore he's gonna shove that letter down his throat if don't stop yapping.
finally sae let out a dramatic sigh before opening the letter, whatever name it was, it better be worth it. and part of him wished he never opened it.
because his eyes uncontrollably traveled to your name, not even that he read the start nor the beginning. he wished it was a mistake, maybe someone else's name and it was all pure coincidence. his eyelids flicker open, he read it once, twice, and the world felt like it stopped.
"..it's in two days by the way.. and stop looking at the letter like that, your gonna burn it." rin words went from ear to ear. but sae managed to catch something in the lines 'in two days'
"two days?.. why am i getting an invitation now?" words came out mindlessly, he wanted to ask more, who, how and when. his mind was on track. sae never wished for something to be a sick joke like now.
"are you serious? be grateful you were even in the list." nevertheless, rin didn't like his question. is that really what he asked? not even about you? however, his brother colourless face spoke more.
sae didn't reply, he looked at the letter in his hand like it was his worst enemy. rin wished his brother wasn't a damn block headed maybe then he'll get his fingers on what's running inside his mind. so rin takes his leave, letting his brother handle the news by himself.
"woah, man. that girl just wouldn't stop crying. I'm starting to believe you're truly heartless." aiku let out breathlessly, but he was met of a new face of sae, it was the first time he say any other expression on his face. especially something..this emotional..
"dude, you okay? looks like you've seen a ghost."
maybe even someone as cold as sae could carry a fragile heart.
2021 February 18
it felt like the universe was laughing at him.
fate was truly the cruelest, out of any other day. it had to day, the day that was meant for you and him, just fir another guy to snatch his place like a piece of candy. he wished it was him, he wished he didn't come here in the first place. yet he was, surrounded with unfamiliar faces chit chatting around.
sae regrets stepping in here, he wanted to leave. to runaway. he doesn't want to face it, to face you walking down with another man that is not him. but he wanted to see you so bad, why did this feel like this is his only chance to see you ever again?
he felt aimless, and the people talking wasn't helping him either.
"did you hear? they're gonna rent a house on a beach!"
"oh my, they're so lucky. wished mine would have the same mindset."
fucking kill him.
"you actually came? thought you'd leave like the spineless coward you are." the voice of rin was merciless. and most of all brutally honest.
"shut up. I don't wanna hear it." sae waved him off, he didn't wanna hear it. especially his little brother berating him senselessly. deep down, he knew he deserved it. he was the one that stepped over your heart when he promised to take care of it. maybe he is a coward.
after he followed after rin, which took to long for his liking, he had to complain. "fuck you taking me to?" he spat out.
"be patient, don't you wanna talk to them?"
that somehow shuts down any chance of any other objection, it felt like ages before they got to the meant room. and for some reason, sae doesn't enter yet, he doesn't find the guts to.
"why did you even invite me to this?"
"me? invite you? you wish." rin jeered, his brother was definitely not in the right mindset to think such thing. "they invited you, if anything i thought it was better not to."
"I didn't even think you'd come, looks like you still got something in that frigid heart of yours. but it's already too late to come over your fears."
a ghost smile form on sae's face, at his own stupidity, at rin's truthful manner. at himself,
"i know that."
he closed the door behind, and slowly walked into the room. his steps were heavy they kept on echoing through the walls. announcing to the world what he was doing. it was a miracle he didn't fumble his feet on the way, and more of a miracle when he didn't faint at how beautifully you shone.
you quickly stood up, the white dress mimicking your movements. he was right, you did change your hairstyle after all, and oh, how you good you made it look.
"sae? you actually came.." you exclaimed. examining him from head to toe, he did change, more like he grew. he wasn't the same height as you anymore, his bangs were long gone. and he refused to meet your eyes. looking at everything but your gaze.
"yeah." he pushed out his lips.
it was strange, seeing the one he promised to marry get married to another one. his first crush, first crush, his first heartbreak, the first heart he shattered. all the memories of childhood came like a rush wave of air, and what lingered was your face at the airport, the day you said goodbye. the day he heard you sniffing behind him, yet he didn't turn.
perhaps because he knew out everyone, he would've gave up everything just to not see you a tear run down your face. or it would be him crying with and be a couple of crying mess. yes you got him warped your finger like that.
sae only knew a world with you, and he knew his soul stayed with you the day he left.
"it's been a while,"
"seven years, it's been seven years." the male corrected
"i know." you giggle bitterly. he knew you knew. you both knew but none spoke or mentioned anything.
"how have you been?" he had now idea of what to say or ask of you, that was your fucking weeding of course you're happy. damn, even his younger self wasn't that clueless.
"I'm good. you?"
I'm missing you terribly.
"good."
"that's good.." you shifted awkwardly, like you wanted to hide from him. was he making you that uncomfortable?
"can i?" stretching out his arms slightly, he was ready for you reject it, to punch him, to scream at him. but you nodded instead.
you lean right on his chest, his hesitate arm on the small of your back. when was the last he hugged someone? it was much easier when you two were kids. it sure felt warm, your cologne taking over his senses. he just didn't feel like fits the puzzle anymore. and it fucking hurt.
it didn't last long sadly, taking yourself out of his embrace. he doesn't want to let go, if he let go, you'll disappear. despite that he looked into your eyes, and suddenly he doesn't feel only half alive. you still got him warped around your finger like that.
"i need to go, it was nice seeing you again, sae."
he could only nodded, every step he took away from you felt like the world was draining it colors again, the universe was punishing him, because seeing you not sparing a glance back was truly painful.
the evening felt timeless, it skips to where he sat looking heedlessly at the ground. he didn't want to meant anyone's face nor attention. he bet that his was gloomy enough to scare off anyone who walks by.
one's begs to differ.
"well, well. if that ain't a face I haven't seen in a long time." an elderly woman said, the same old sly smile still glued to her face. she takes a seat beside sae, fearlessly nudging him to look at her.
"it's you."
"it's me, that old granny you used to call a hag." your grandma said.
"That was one time, and you spanked me for it."
"i sure did, always been a badass." she laughed, and sae found the invisible beam draw in it way to her face.
"look at you, you grew to a fine young man." he hissed when she pinched his cheek, almost as if she meant for it to hurt. he had rub the spot with a grunt.
"despite that, it's sad to say you disappointed me, itoshi sae." she spoke in a straightforward manner. almost like she was scolding him. and when say nothing she continues.
"I would've given you another spank but my grandchild would be mad, they still cares for you. always been." the lady sighed, "they never gave up on you, four years is a real challenge. every day they kept on writing to you, did you perhaps read them."
"every singer night."
"but you didn't respond to a single one?"
he doesn't replay to that.
"don't prove me wrong again. that girl you put your mouth on, why?"
sae's hand travel down his neck, trying to find the right answer. as if there was one. "i wanted them to give up on me. i just felt pushing them and everyone away was the right thing."
"so you became a selfish bastard that kills everything he touches? i knew you were dumb but not that dumb." she shook her head, he had concerned her swinging her cane over his head.
"it doesn't matter, it was already done." lies sliding down his throat. and he knew even a strong face wasn't enough to hide the truth. she could see him bare.
"maybe if you weren't that stupid, you'd have managed to keep the only person that could handle you. but I'm never wrong so i guess you two did end up together in another lifetime."
"but i wanted them in this one."
"too bad, too late." it felt like a sucker punch, he wished for her to actually beat him with that cane at least it'd be less hurtful and heavy. again the urge to leave was strong. and it was getting stronger when that man stood there, and when you walked he couldn't take his eyes off, he couldn't even blink. you never looked so breathtaking. and there he knew that his place didn't get stolen, but earned by someone else. someone better than him. someone that could make you happy and wouldn't make you hold on to a forsaken promise.
yesterday it was him proposing to you with his dead grandparents ring, today it was another one warping it around your finger. the image will hunt him to his death.
the him that promised, the him who kisses you injures, the him who saw you in sunset above the sea. was still there, that version was still swirling within him somehow. and it only shon with your light only. the light that will never be his anymore.
to sae you'll forever be his everlasting one in the stars.
"goodbye." he hopped he chose you in another life.
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lmao this is trash mb yall
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pedriache · 2 months ago
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Love ur work! How ab a lamine angst fic where things between them didn’t work out and now that he’s willing to try, reader is upset/confused bc why now
Toothache — Lamine Yamal.
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Pairing: Lamine Yamal x Fem!Reader
Summary: Lamine wanted to try again—to give you his all, but all you could think about was ‘why now?‘
Word count: 1.35k
Disclaimer/s: angst , second chances , crying , messy past breakup.
A/N: I love writing angst ^_^~
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Heavy breathing was what you heard the second you picked up the phone. You hadn’t bothered checking the caller ID, it was two in the morning and the call had woken you up from a deep slumber.
“Hello?” You mumble, clearing your voice to rid it of the sleep induced rasp.
“Hey, it’s me.” He didn’t need to introduce himself, you recognized his voice even if he whispered. Lamine wasn’t someone you could forget.
You were wide awake now. His voice shooting blots of energy throughout your body. “Lamine? It’s—“ You pull the phone away from your ear, looking from his caller ID, to the time at the top corner of your phone, “it’s two in the fucking morning.”
Lamine plays with the corner of his textbook, he’d been attempting to work on homework, but you were the only thing on his mind. “Yeah, I know.” His voice is quiet, like his mind was elsewhere.
Although you knew you didn’t have to feel concern, it was hard to ignore. “Are you okay?” You mirror his quiet voice, softening it to show your genuine care. Lamine’s heart felt heavy with guilt, he hated when you used that voice.
He knew he didn’t deserve the concern you’d always showed him throughout the years of knowing each other, let alone when you’d dated.
“Yeah, yeah.” He clears his throat, “can I come over?”
Your eyes fluttered shut. Not only were you exhausted, you also knew your parents wouldn’t like to see him showing up without their knowledge. “That’s not a good idea… we can meet elsewhere. I can come over, are your parents home?”
Lamine glances up from the kitchen table where he’d been doing homework, “yeah, but they won’t mind.” There’s a pause before he continues, “they miss you.”
Unnecessary. That did not need to be added, and Lamine knew that.
Rubbing your eyes, you climb out of bed, head tilted to the side to keep your phone next to your ear as you reached for a hoodie. Sliding on a pair of slippers, you reach for your keys on your desk. “I’ll be over in a few, do you need anything?”
You were always far too willing to comfort your ex. He’d called you like this many times. Mostly, he just needed your company, but sometimes he needed to talk to someone. For some reason, whether intentional or not, Lamine could only open up to you.
No matter how messy your breakup had been, you hadn’t been best friends for over a decade just to stop because he couldn’t put effort into an actual relationship.
“I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
The drive was only fifteen minutes to Lamine’s house. You hadn’t played music, an unsettling feeling coming over you. This time, something felt different. Lamine’s tone was different.
Unbuckling your seatbelt and locking the doors behind you, you make your way up to the familiar household—one that you had at one point, practically lived in. You don’t knock, simply opening it slowly and slipping inside. Taking your slippers off, you pad your way into the dining room.
Lamine was staring at his texbooks, head in his head with an annoyed expression, which softened the second his eyes flickered up to you. “You’re here.” He smiles slightly, and you forced yourself to return it.
“Can we make this quick? I have work at nine.” You pull out a chair beside him. “What are you working on?” You ask, though you knew the answer as you had the same textbook in your backpack at home.
“Math.” Lamine answers simply, his eyes trained on you, memorizing your face as if he would never see it again. And, maybe after tonight, he wouldn’t.
Looking up to meet his eyes, you give him a questioning look. “So… what is it?”
“I’m ready.” He stops, shaking his head. “I mean, I’m ready to try again. I want to make this work. I will do better this time.”
Your body felt light, like he’d knocked the wind out of you. Your brain flew into over drive, millions of questions slamming against the walls of your skull. He was ready to try, again? After five fucking months?
You almost scoffed. Almost.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Your bottom lip tugs between your teeth, a smile forming on your face—not a happy one, but one of disbelief. “Lamine. We—you have had about a dozen chances! I’ve given you five months, and each time you weren’t ready. Why now?”
He had to battle the thoughts telling him to look away, to cower in shame. He doesn’t get a chance to speak, because you are still going.
“I love you. I haven’t stopped, but—I was nearly healed and ready to move on. This is so.. it’s selfish!”
Lamine’s fingers played with each other nervously. His lips pulling into a deep frown. “I love you, too.” He whispers, but you shush him. “Can you let me explain?”
You tap your foot against the wooden floor, thinking. Your head hurt, shit—your teeth hurt. Your heart hurt, everything hurt.
This was what you’d wanted for months, so why didn’t you feel happy right now?
The small whispering of your name called you back to reality. Rubbing your face, you finally look back to Lamine. “Sure, go ahead.”
He began his explanation, weak attempts to find an excuse for his past behavior. His mouth eventually shuts, a long exhale leaving his lips. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He continues to repeat his apologies until your head falls onto the table out of annoyance.
Lamine watches you, taken aback by your dismissal. “I just want to show you I can love you like you deserve. Just one more chance, please?” His voice had thinned, little emotion showing other than desperation.
Shifting your head to the side, you glare up at him. “You make my life so God damn difficult, Lamine.”
He couldn’t stop the small twitching of his lips, “that’s not new.” His light hearted tone unfortunately had a small, almost unseeable grin threatening your lips.
“This is it. Okay? One, last chance. And if you fail, thats it.” You sit back up, “we are over, forever, if you mess this up.”
“I understand.” Lamine nods, eagerly. “I won’t let you down.”
Your eyes narrow at him before nodding as well. “Fine. We start new. You’ll take me on dates, ask me out, ask me to be your girlfriend. You will put more effort in than you’d ever had to put into anything before. No excuses, nothing.” Your rules were set and Lamine was more than ready to comply.
“Are you free tomorrow—“
“Nuh-uh.” You wag your finger. “You’re going to surprise me. And go all out. Pretend like it’s a fucking movie, I don’t care. Just.. show me you care enough so I can trust that you’re genuine about this—about me..”
Lamine agrees with a grateful sigh, “I will. I promise.”
“Can I go home now?” You look at the time on your phone; 4:04 AM. Your parents would be waking up in twenty-six minutes.
“Of course.” The boy nods, “goodbye.”
“Goodbye.” You hum, standing up and leaving the room without another word. A lingering sense of doubt flooding your heart the second you left, but it was overclouded by the genuine hope you felt for the first time in five months.
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likes , comments , and reblog’s are all appreciated. lmk if you’d like to be tagged in future lamine posts.
DTS , @halfwayhearted @sakashq @hrts4havertz @joaoflms @ar4ujos @spidybaby !
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annebaby · 1 year ago
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stargirl 𝜗𝜚
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hello everyone! im currently snowed in, so what else is there to do besides write? this was something quick i thought of, i hope you enjoy :)
warnings: mentions of sex (non-descriptive), possesive!coryo, fem!reader, use of Y/N, use of she/her pronouns, and i think that is all.
please let me know!
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she was an aristocrat, daughter of the president, grossly rich, delicately beautiful, the list could go on. she always slept with her pink silk pajamas, hair in a long braid, floral sheets keeping her warm. the only thing she desired was to go to the academy.
y/n ravenstill was lovely, when she was seen. her father kept her hidden from the world, preserving her innocence until he felt she was ready to be introduced to society. she was homeschooled by a prestigious tutor, one who was security checked every time she entered the home. y/n’s safety was always the upmost priority.
no one was really allowed to come visit her, but nobody really knew of her either. except for coriolanus snow, of course. y/n and coriolanus had grown up together, friends since they were children. so, when y/n batted her eyes at her father and begged him to let coriolanus in the house, he couldn’t say no. his little girl always got what she wanted.
now, the president didn’t need to know what is was that they were doing, but by the noises coming from y/n’s bedroom, he didn’t want to ask.
he felt comfortable leaving her with coriolanus. her father had known crassus snow, and he now knew tigris and coriolanus’ grandmaam. he didn’t feel the need to be so overprotective of his daughter when she was around her ‘friend’.
coriolanus was the only one at the academy who knew miss y/n. people knew of her but they didn’t really know her. not like he did. y/n was his girl. only his. he couldn’t imagine others seeing the way she looked at him, or the way she would look in her red uniform. even he can’t imagine how she would look in an academy uniform. the red would make the blush in her cheeks stand out, the uniform itself making her seem more within his reach.
he loved y/n, he really did. he loved the way her eyes sparkled when she talked about the new capitol fashion trends, he loved the way her long hair sat just below her shoulders when she would sit on her bed and talk to him. he loved when she would smile so wide when they solved a math problem that even he struggled with.
everything was perfect in y/n’s life. she loved coriolanus, she loved staying at home, she loved her silk pajamas and she loved her father. she always envied the other people her age though, how could she not? she fantasized about the academy, about all the students and the uniform and the cafeteria. she wanted all of it. so when she asks her father to attend the academy, she begs him with all her heart.
he was hesitant of course, not fond of his little girl being exposed to the academy students and their perverted minds. however, he is not hesitant when he calls coriolanus over to discuss the change with him. the president knows how coriolanus adores his little girl. he knows that he will keep her at his side and protect her.
he tells coriolanus that she will be attending the academy with him, and he will need to stay with her at all times. he arranges a car to pick them up in the mornings, her classes to be the same as his, and for a car to bring them both to the presidents estate after class. coriolanus insists on this, telling the president that they must ‘study’ at the end of every day.
y/n is ecstatic. she wakes up on her first morning of school, showering early and making every detail about herself perfectly clean and dainty. her gold pearl earrings are dangling, her braid pigtails are adorning with ribbons at the end, and her eyelashes are coated with a small amount of mascara.
when coriolanus exits the car to escort her, all he smells is vanilla. all he notices is the way her pink luscious lips pop when she talks to him, or the way her hips are swaying with a newfound confidence in her uniform. it’s entirely too distracting, but he must endure. after all, he is already promised her hand in marriage.
of course the academy can’t get enough of her. who could? coriolanus snow’s girl, with her pretty eyelashes and girly voice and innocent pigtails. she answers every question correctly in the class, quite possibly giving everyone, including coriolanus, a run for their money.
he doesn’t mind of course, anything for his girl. he holds her hands in the halls, pulls her seat out for her at lunch table, pulls her into empty classrooms to remind her who she belongs to, etc. she is his prized possession.
she knows this, too. she sees the way that clemmie, her newfound friend, looks at him in class. she notices arachne crane’s seductive change of tone when she speaks to him. she would do anything to make it stop, but their empty classroom fucking reminded her she had nothing to worry about.
she’s making great grades, making new friends, and she’s quickly climbing the social ladder. coriolanus is next to her through all of it of course, he’s already proposed to her 2 weeks before graduation. he’s promised her she’ll have everything, including the title of the first lady of panem.
not that it mattered to her anyway, she didn’t need any convincing when he asked her. she immediately told him a yes, knowing he didn’t like being on one knee for her. she knew he loved his power over her, and she admired that he actually let his guard down to get on one knee for her. it made her feel equally as powerful.
lord knows she had waited to feel powerful with him.
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beersangel · 6 days ago
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The silver lining ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪
pairing: quiteguy!matt x yapper overachiever reader.
content warnings: honestly just pure fluff and angst.
summary: Aven Brooks, a driven overachiever, and Matt Sturniolo, a quiet, reserved guy with a reputation for being rude, are paired for a school project. While Aven is open to working together, Matt is reluctant, but their forced partnership begins to reveal there’s more to each of them than meets the eye.
click here for the previous part.
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The morning air was crisp as Aven, Dakota, and Courtney gathered in the school auditorium for their early debate practice. Aven shuffled her notes, her focus already tuned to the arguments they’d prepared the night before. Courtney was pacing, practicing her delivery, while Dakota offered feedback between bites of a granola bar.
“Alright, Aven, your turn,” Courtney said, gesturing toward the makeshift podium.
Aven stepped forward, her exhaustion barely hidden beneath her determined expression. She delivered her points with precision, though her voice lacked its usual vibrancy. Dakota raised an eyebrow when Aven finished.
“Not bad,” Dakota said, “but you sounded like you were running on autopilot.”
Aven sighed. “I am running on autopilot. I’ll do better tomorrow. I promise.”
Courtney patted her shoulder. “You always do. Now, go survive the rest of the day.”
After practice, Aven made her way to her shared math class with Matt. As she slid into the seat beside him, she didn’t say anything, too focused on getting her materials ready for the lesson. Matt gave a brief glance her way, but, as always, didn’t speak first.
The class passed in a blur of equations and examples, the low hum of pencils scratching paper filling the air. When the bell rang, signaling the end of the period, Aven turned to Matt as he packed up his things.
“Hey,” she began hesitantly. “Are you free tomorrow after school to work on the project?”
Matt slung his bag over his shoulder, his face as neutral as ever. “Might be a bit late. I’ve got lacrosse practice.”
Aven blinked, taken aback. Matt Sturniolo plays lacrosse? she thought, her surprise almost slipping onto her face. She quickly recovered. “Oh, okay. That’s fine. I have some work to finish anyway, so I can get it done while I wait.”
He gave a small nod. “Alright. See you then.”
They parted ways, Aven heading to the library to knock out some assignments while Matt made his way to the locker room to gear up for practice.
⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪
The next day, after a rough practice session, Matt was in the changing room, pulling on his shirt, when he overheard Bennet and Williams talking in the corner.
“Man, I’m telling you, Brooks is like the one girl who hasn’t hooked up with anyone at school,” Bennet said, his tone smug.
Williams chuckled. “I bet I could change that. Give me until the end of the school year.”
Matt’s jaw clenched, his grip on his locker door firming. He didn’t say a word, but the harsh slam of his locker echoed through the room, cutting their conversation short. Without glancing back, he grabbed his bag and stormed out, his expression unreadable.
⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪
The library was quiet, the faint rustling of pages and the clicking of keyboards filling the space. Matt spotted Aven hunched over a desk, scribbling into her notebook with her face set in deep concentration.
He sighed softly, walking over and dropping his bag onto the chair across from her. “Hey,” he said curtly, taking a seat.
Aven looked up, startled, before giving him a tired smile. “Hey,” she replied, her voice heavy with exhaustion.
“How’s it going?” he asked, nodding toward her notes.
“It’s coming together,” she said, gesturing to the neatly organized pages spread out in front of her.
Matt pulled out his notebook, flipping to his own notes. “Good. I’ve got some sources lined up. You’ll want to check a few of them—I marked the ones I think are solid.”
Aven leaned forward, glancing at his pages. “Thanks. That’ll save us some time.”
Matt leaned back in his chair, watching her scan his notes. “You sure you’re good to keep going?” he asked, his tone more practical than concerned.
She huffed a soft laugh. “Yeah, i'm good”
He frowned slightly, tapping his pen on the table. “If you burn out before we finish this, that’s on you.”
Aven smirked faintly, glancing up at him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Just saying,” Matt muttered, turning his attention back to his notebook.
Aven stayed quiet for a moment, flipping through his notes, before breaking the silence. “So,” she said casually, “do you always tell people they look like zombies, or was that just special for me?”
Matt paused, his pen hovering over the page. He glanced at her for a second before looking back down at his notebook, his expression unreadable. “Special for you, I guess.”
Aven blinked, caught off guard by the blunt response. Before she could come up with a retort, he added, “It’s not a bad thing. Just… an observation.”
“Right,” she said, pursing her lips. “very..flattering observation”
Matt gave the faintest shrug, his attention not leaving his notes. “It was honest.”
Aven rolled her eyes, though she couldn’t help the tiny, amused smile tugging at her lips.
The rest of the session passed in relative silence, broken only by the occasional exchange of ideas or notes. By the time they finished, the library was almost empty, the faint hum of the AC filling the space.
“Same time tomorrow?” Aven asked as they stood, gathering their things.
Matt nodded. “Yeah. Don’t show up half-asleep, though.”
She rolled her eyes, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Thanks for the reminder. See you tomorrow, Sturniolo.”
He gave her a brief nod, watching as she walked away. Matt lingered for a moment, his bag slung over one shoulder as he watched her disappear through the library doors. He frowned slightly, tapping his fingers against the strap of his bag. Not that he cared, but he found himself thinking she really needed to ease up on herself. Shaking the thought away, he turned and headed for the exit, muttering under his breath, “Not my problem.”
ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ🐇་༘࿐
writer’s note: idk if this is good or not but I don’t hate it soooo, I hope u enjoyed it<3
- 💌
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translatemunson · 8 months ago
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these days I'm restless, work days are endless • ttfd
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chapter three of the tortured firefighters department
previous chapter | masterlist | next chapter
cw: fem!reader, afab!reader, no descriptions of reader, banter (because i love it), reader is a math and science nerd, chris and eddie are here, mentions of food, hints of mental issues, proofread by my bye-lingual ass (let me know if i forgot anything)
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LA was less of a stranger now. Who knew going to that dinner at Maddie’s would slowly bring you closer to the 118 family.
Late night texts with Maddie to make her company while Chimney worked and Jee was nowhere close to sleep were standard. Night shifts were smooth as butter if compared to day shifts in any state, you found out. LA of course had more hits and runs, overdose emergencies, abuse situations, but you could type their info while waiting for your personal laptop to run the latest dynamical system you were analyzing. 
And now your agenda also included occasional brownie deliveries to the 118 and leftover food pickup you were sure Bobby wasn’t cooking as an accident; a few talks with Athena, Bobby’s wife, about how they could improve response time inside the LAPD with a small system you developed for your old local police; helping Chris over Facetime with his math homework — because Eddie called you one day looking like he just had the worst day of his life, but he couldn’t just understand the process to the results of a simple equation.
It was nice to finally have a life besides PhD and work routine. But that would always be brought up or come in handy for helping.
That’s how you ended up at Eddie’s place on a saturday morning. When he texted you that Chris needed extra help with a math syllabus — that could bring him some extra points that semester —, you jumped on your car and said would gladly help.
“How is it going, kiddo?” Eddie entered the dining room and checked Chris' progress.
“She’s really a genius!”
“And you are the most dedicated student I had.” And you weren’t saying that just to make him feel special. Chris was one of those kids that really put in the effort and dedication to understand things — when they wanted to, of course —, it wasn’t his fault the math problems were too complex for his age. Maybe you could talk to Eddie about it, so he could let the teachers know that maybe taking it easy with the kids was a good idea. They didn’t need to also be traumatized by mathematics. “C’mon, you’re crushing those equations, Chris!”
“Do you need a refill?” Eddie pointed to your empty lemonade cup.
“Yes, please.”
“Can you help me with science?” Chris asked, now that he was almost done with his math exercises.
“Not my forte, but I’ll try.”
In another universe, you would’ve stopped your studies once you had the basic requirements for being a teacher — maybe middle or secondary school. You’d always loved classrooms, and it was the safest option if your Masters ended up on a dead end. You were glad to be where you were, but your mind sometimes wondered the ‘what if’s of being a school teacher.
Chris brought his science homework, luckily just some questions about animals that, because of all of your free hours in museums and science classes you took for extra credits during college, were easy to deal with. Once you talked about seeing the dinosaur bones in real life, he was mesmerized, avoiding blinking at all costs just so he couldn’t miss a single detail.
“Dad! She saw the dinosaur!” He almost screamed when you pulled out your phone to show him some pictures.
The doorbell hung as soon as Eddie entered the dining room. “Be right back, buddy! Don’t give him any more ideas, Brains!”
“Won’t promise anything.” I took you one heartbeat to cover your mouth and whisper, “I will check if there is any dinosaur in town and take you there for a visit. What do you think?”
“That’s awesome,” he whispered back.
“But for now this is a secret, ok?”
“Ok. Pinky swear?”
“Of course, kiddo.” 
Chris got up to pick his books about dinosaurs. Your mind started to list all the museums in LA and how many of them had really good replicas of them — or the real ones, if possible. Maybe you could get the tickets for Chris and Eddie and tag along as their tour guide. Or maybe you could check with Eddie if he needed a babysitter someday in the following weeks, so you could help and also fulfill your promise at the same time.
“Buck!” Chris screamed.
You turned around just in time to see Buck taking him off the floor with a bear type huge and messing with his hair. “My guy! What are you up to today?”
“I’m studying dinosaurs.” He showed the books in his hands.
“On a Saturday morning? Where’s the fun? How about video games?”
“Are you done with your science homework?” Eddie asked, closing the door.
“Yes! Brains helped me!”
As your nickname has been brought up to the conversation, Buck finally noticed you. You heard Maddie saying, countless times, that Buck had a soft spot for kids. But had a huge spot for Chris, with all his heart. After the tsunami — you’ve only heard about it, still not in California to experience the disaster first hand —, their bond only grew even stronger.
“Oh did she?” He smirked.
“Yes. She even promised me she will take me to see the dinosaurs.”
“Chris! I thought you would honor our pinky swear!” you shouted playfully.
“Ouch! Someone call 9-1-1, I’ve been betrayed.” Buck faked having a knife to his chest, and pulling it out.
You pretended to have your earpiece on and changed your voice until it sounded like you were in your job, saying “Sir, calling 9-1-1 without being in real danger is considered a felony, and the authorities will investigate you. Hope you look good in orange pajamas.”
Eddie rolled his eyes and Chris laughed. Buck was definitely not impressed, and he took Chris with him to play some video games. You busied yourself with organizing Chris’ books over the table and checking his equations one last time. You took your lemonade glass to the kitchen, intending to wash it before going home for some deep cleaning.
“Just leave it there, I’ll take care of it,” Eddie entered the room and opened the cookie jar. “Are you serious about taking him to the museum?”
“I was gonna talk to you about it later. Maybe? Only if you’re ok with it, of course. I can take him on my day off, get him some pancakes from my favorite restaurant, bring him back by the end of the day, safe and sound. Or you could tag along, I can pretend I’m a VIP tour guide, I might be able to pull some strings at the Caltech museum, they don’t have real dinosaurs, but their exhibition on life on Earth is really good. It’s not much, but they have a few things about dinosaurs.”
“Does next Saturday work for you? I might need to take an extra 12-hour shift.”
“Sure! The Natural History Museum will do the job just fine. I’ll pick him up and don’t worry, we can stay at mine until your shift ends. Anything works for me, really.”
“Great.” He noticed how you held your bag and checked the door from time to time. “In a hurry?”
“I think my job here is done,” you pointed to the two kids playing and screaming over some stupid video game. 
Lately, you’ve been avoiding Buck like the plague. He was just so annoying towards you every time you met and it was getting on your nerves. Your small encounters when you were at the firestation to drop off some baked goods, or when you went to visit Maddie and he was just leaving the place, were messing with your thoughts. 
It was easier to give him the cold shoulder and keep your distance than sitting in a quiet room with your mixed feelings about the younger Buckley.
“Thank you again, Brains.”
“No worries, happy I could help.”
“You sure I can’t convince you to stay a little more and grab some lunch with us?”
“I really don’t wanna disturb the vibes, you know.”
“You know you are practically family, right? Catching lunch with us on slow days, having some beers, teaching math to the kids.”
“Yeah, but I just… Maybe another time, ok? I promise.”
“You have to stop acting like you’re always on the run, Brains. Someday you’re gonna run out of breath.”
“I appreciate the advice, Eddie. Text you soon?”
“He’s gonna freak out when I tell him about your plans.”
You left the house unnoticed. Before hopping on your car and driving to your favorite grocery store, you checked your messages, hoping to clear your agenda for next saturday — pretty sure you had a night shift on friday, but with enough caffeine, you could pull an all-nighter. Not ideal, but it was your plan B.
“Hey! Brains!”
“Tired of getting your ass kicked by a younger boy?” You were still too busy with your phone to raise your eyes to Buck.
“Why are you almost running to get out of here? Schedule’s too packed?”
“None of your business.” You opened the door of your car and threw your bag inside.
“Oh so you are still mad at me for eating the cupcakes!” Oh yeah, the cupcake incident. That was one of the reasons why you weren’t staying more than one minute alone with Evan Buckley.
“What did you expect me to do? I bought them for me and Maddie, and you thought it was ok to eat them all. Alone!” You faced him, your chin up high. “You have no fucking clue how long I waited in line before the store opened that day, I had a really messed up shift and I needed those!”
“I told you I’d get more cupcakes!”
“No! I wanted my favorites! Your sister wanted those specific ones, she kept mentioning them for days! And you ruined it!” You held the door open, hoping you could leave the place quickly.
“I’ve told you I’m sorry, ok? What else do you want me to do, hm?”
“How about getting out of my hair? Leave me alone, Buckley. I mean it. I was starting to grow fond of the 118, but you are making it impossible to enjoy some time with any of them!”
“I was there first!” Buck was much stronger than you, and he successfully closed the door. He wanted another fight.
“Great. Text me your schedule so I can avoid being in the same room with you.” You tried to push his arm out of the door.
“Now you’re just being dramatic! C’mon, Brains, it was just some stupid cupcakes, I got Maddie some of her favorite cake after you stormed out of the apartment. I texted you I was sorry a dozen times.”
“Maybe you should start asking before eating something that isn’t yours.”
“I don’t know what happened to you lately, but it’s unbelievable you’re holding the grudge for so long. Brains, really, I’m sorry I ruined your plans with my sister. Can we act as adults now?”
“Who are you to tell me ‘Let’s be adults’ now? You ruined the only free time I had with Maddie that week. And you know what? I had a shitty shift with some really bad calls that day, but, unlike you, I don’t go on messing with things that don’t belong to me.”
Your real name slipped from his lips and you knew it was time to leave. You took the chance to open the door and throw yourself into the seat.
“I’m tired, Evan. I really am. Give me some space, I’m still recovering from that shift. You could’ve bought us all the cupcakes in the world that day, and I’d still be mad at you.” You started the car. “I need to go home.”
“I’m gonna find out why you’re still mad at me after one million sorry’s!”
“I wouldn’t waste any more breath. But you know what, good luck.”
As much as you hated it, Eddie was right. You were running away. And you just didn’t want to admit who was from.
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author's note: and she’s back for chapter three!!!! you all were a little shy on chapter 2, but ok, i’ll forgive you. there is a small blurb coming up this weekend, so stay tuned. also, you can request blurbs from the tortured firefighters department or just talk about it via my asks!!! also i’m almost done with 9-1-1 lone star and i may or may not be working on a crossover in the near future hihihi kay love you see y’all next week byeeeeeee (actually this sunday ok byeeeee)
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no-phrogs-in-hats · 1 year ago
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Baby Steps Part 4
Larissa x pregnant!reader
Summary: The third trimester leaves many twists and turns
Warning: Small breakdown
Read Part 3 here
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“Wow, throwing a baby shower really makes you realize how few friends you have,” you quipped as you sat on the couch creating a guest list. “Most of these people are our coworkers.”
Larissa, who sits beside you putting together the gift registry, chuckled. “I feel like we said the same thing for our wedding.”
“Probably,” you giggle. “We’re both very antisocial people.”
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“So, is it a gender reveal?”
That was the third time you had gotten that question since you sent out the invites.
“No,” you explained politely, pausing the grading on the final exams. “It’s just a baby shower. Gender reveals are so tacky to me, so Larissa and I agreed to find out the sex when it’s born. I mean, it’s already the beginning of June, so there’s only a couple months left.”
“You know, I saw this really cool gadget on TikTok! You should add it to your registry! Or maybe I’ll just buy it for you anyway.”
“Oh, I appreciate it, but, really, it’s okay. We’ve only put necessities on our registry.” 
“No, seriously, this is a need. I’ll send you the link.”
And, once again, someone was insisting on getting you something you didn’t need. On the gift registry you sent out, you had put in asterisks a message, specifically saying to not get anything that isn’t on the registry unless otherwise stated. Necessities were for now, fancy gadgets could be saved for later.
When your coworker left your classroom, you reclined in your chair, letting out a deep breath and placing your hand on your bump. “Boy or girl, this is going to be a long eighteen years.”
“Talking to them again?”
The sudden voice made you jump in your seat before you saw Larissa in the doorway. 
“I saw Grace coming out of your classroom,” she said, leaning down to give you a kiss. “Was she insisting on getting us that crazy baby gadget?”
“How’d you know?”
“She cornered me in the teachers’ lounge earlier. All I wanted was a cup of coffee, but instead I received parenting advice from someone who has no children and gets all their information from parenting accounts on social media.” Larissa pulled a seat up to your desk and sat beside you. “How’re you feeling?”
You bent over to rest your head on her lap, groaning when you felt her fingers dig into your back and begin to massage the knots out. “My back is killing me, I’m exhausted, I have to pee all the time, my tits hurt when I touch them the slightest bit, and I’ve had to refrain from snapping at multiple students because of how easily I’ve been getting irritated.” 
Larissa’s hand came to your face, fingers smoothing out a strand of hair and pushing it behind your ear. She smiled softly, “You’ve always been one to minimize things, darling, so that doesn’t really answer my question.”
“I’m fine, Larissa,” you huffed.
Larissa pursed her lips. “Mhm…sure…”
Her response was like a tsunami came crashing down on you and you stood up. Your lip began quivering, yet you had all the rage of a thousand angry men. “Well, how would you feel if you were creating a human being out of nothing, Larissa!?” Tears started pouring down your cheeks as Larissa sat there awkwardly, watching your outburst, saying nothing as you slammed the door to your classroom. 
“I’m in a terrible mood all the time! The slightest thing irritates me, but I don’t wanna make a big deal out of it because then I’ll be known as the overdramatic pregnant woman! Teachers have been pestering me about my birth plan! Like, why does it fucking matter how I’m giving birth!? That is between me, you, and the midwife! Not some random fucking math teacher on a Tuesday morning! Wednesday Addams keeps telling me all these weird and creepy facts about pregnancy and newborns! I’m sorry, but I don’t want to know that some babies lactate! And all I wanna do at the end of a long day is have sex with my wife, but my stomach is the size of a fucking cantelope and every position is uncomfortable!” 
You took a steadying breath, wiping away your tears–and smudging your eyeliner and mascara. Reaching over your desk, you grabbed a tissue. “I’m sorry,” you sniffled. “I’m just…I needed to get that out…I’m sorry…”
When you sat down, Larissa pulled you into her arms, her hands rubbing up and down your back. “Shhh…You don’t need to apologize, love. You’re doing so much–too much. You’re getting overwhelmed. This is why I told you to go on leave. You’re letting your blood pressure get too high and you’ve been very insistent on not having a c-section.”
You pulled away from her and wiped the underneath of your eyes again. “I know, but there’s only a few days left of school. I really didn’t need to take any leave.”
“You’ve always been one to work yourself to the bone.” Larissa leaned down and retrieved your purse from under your desk. Unzipping it, she pulled out your makeup bag and handed it to you. “Lunch is almost over, let’s get you cleaned up a bit.”
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The Nevermore graduation ceremony felt like hours. Being the head of the English department, you stood in a line with the other heads on the stage of the auditorium, shaking each student’s hand before they retrieved their diploma from Larissa. You were particularly proud to be shaking Wednesday Addams’ hand after seeing her rocky start a few years prior. But by the time the final student walked across the stage in their black and purple cap and gown (even Wednesday complied and wore a purple gown), you were dead weight on your feet.
The ceremony was moved to the Quad where refreshments were served and students could gather once more before moving out of their dorms. Maybe it was the fact that you were seven months pregnant, but the heat was almost unbearable. You had no idea how Larissa wore those dresses all the time because the simple breezy maxi dress you were wearing made you feel like you were doused in your own sweat. 
Your attention was turned behind you after speaking with a parent and you laid eyes on Wednesday and Enid. “Oh, thank you, Miss Addams…” A gift was handed to you, wrapped in blue and pink baby shower wrapping paper.
Enid, who stood beside her, bounced up and down on the balls of her feet with a bright smile. “The wrapping paper was my idea! It’s for the baby!”
“I would’ve gone with a different color palette,” Wednesday commented. “I can feel the skin on my hands burning off after touching that.”
“Black and white or blue and pink, it doesn’t matter to me,” you smiled. “Thank you, girls.”
“I saw it on TikTok and knew it was perf for you!” Enid squealed. “It’s this really cool–”
“Enid!” Wednesday hissed. “Don’t give it away.”
You giggled to yourself as you watched the two of them walking away, hand-in-hand as they muttered to each other.
“What’s this?”
Larissa’s voice startled you and you turned around. “Just a gift from Enid and Wednesday. I have a feeling we’re going to have two of those gadgets that Grace mentioned.”
And you were right. Weeks later, the baby shower went off without a hitch. Despite it being now late July and you being the size of a watermelon, you had never felt happier. You were practically on the verge of tears thinking about the entire situation.
Here you were, sitting beside your wife surrounded by your closest family and friends, opening gifts for the baby that would be in your arms in just over a month. You truly couldn’t ask for more.
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In August your parents decided to visit, assisting you and Larissa with anything you needed help with. Your father took your car to the shop to get its oil changed along with everything else you had forgotten about–you really weren’t liking this pregnancy brain. Now you sat in the designated nursery, once Larissa's home office, huffing and puffing in a cushioned rocking chair.
“Okay,” Larissa mumbled, “it looks like we put parts A and B together using wrench three–Mia have you seen that wrench?”
“Nope.”
“You know, we could hire someone to do it,” you sighed, watching Larissa, your father, and your sister attempt to put together the crib for the nursery. “I mean, the girl at Ikea said they have people f–”
You were cut off by Larissa kissing you on your lips, looming tall over you. “Darling, it’ll be fine. We can do this. All you have to do is sit here and look pretty. Can you do that?”
“I can do that better than anyone,” you scoffed.
Larissa smiled and leaned in for another kiss. “That’s my girl.”
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You were now a week over your due-date and you were miserable. You back ached, your breasts were painful to the touch, and the only thing you wanted now was to get this baby out of you.
“Are you alright, love?” 
Larissa’s hand came to your back as your breath stopped. You clutched the edge of the table in your hand tightly as a wave of dull pain started slowly. 
You didn’t want it to start here. You were in public, at a sports bar in Burlington with your family and Larissa’s when the pains started. 
“Yeah,” you breathed. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
The waitress, who was standing by your mother taking her drink order, paused and looked at you with the rest of the family. “Are you sure, sweetheart? The hospital is just down the road.”
“I’m fine, really,” you insisted. 
Larissa side-eyed you carefully. “I’m starting a stopwatch.”
“You don’t nee–”
“I’m starting a stopwatch,” she repeated, giving you the same look she gave troubled and disobedient students. “You're not having our baby in the car.”
You scoffed. “I’m not having the baby in our car, Larissa. Don’t be ridiculous.”
The rest of the evening continued, Larissa tracking your contractions against your will while everyone took their time looking over the menu and savoring their drinks. When the waitress came back half an hour later with the appetizers, a second, more painful contraction ripped through you.
“That was thirty seconds,” Larissa said. “Once they get to a minute long, I think we should go.”
“Larissa, I’m fine!” you groaned. “I’m sure they’re just Braxton Hicks.”
Putting a serving of nachos on your plate and hers, she shook her head. “You’re a week overdue, darling. I don’t think these are Braxton Hicks.”
You tried to ignore it, but Christ, you had to admit these were painful. You didn’t want to tell Larissa she was right, but a half hour intermission turned into a fifteen minute one, and a fifteen minute one turned into a ten minute one.
“They’re ten minutes apart,” Larissa muttered to you. “The last one lasted forty-five seconds.”
You smiled and thanked the waitress when she handed you your dinner, taking a small bite and answering Larissa. “Just drop it. We’ll go when my water breaks.”
“You watched the YouTube video,” Larissa said. “Sometimes the water doesn’t break.”
“We–” Your fork clattered onto your plate and the entire table looked at you as Larissa started the stopwatch. Through deep breaths you asked, “How long ago was–?”
“Seven minutes,” Larissa answered, placing her hand on your lower back once again and looking up at the waitress. “Darling, can we get two boxes, please? Thank you.”
“Take me to UVM,” you said. “Don’t take me to Jericho General. I have not heard good things about their maternity ward.”
“Sweet pea–”
“I said, take me to UVM!” you snapped.
Larissa, after retrieving her purse from under the table, took her keys out and took one of them off the ring. She handed it to your mother saying, “Here’s the house key. After dinner would  you be able to get the hospital bag and bring it to us?”
With a peck on Larissa’s cheek and yours, your mother took the key. “Of course. Now go. We’ll let you know when we’re on our way.”
Tag list: @gwenistheloml @barbarasstar @gwendolinechristierulez @furrysharkfart @yourgaeyisshowing
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featheredclover · 3 months ago
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September Rain
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Chapter Ten
Also on Wattpad
Read from the beginning
Chapter Nine>> <<Chapter Eleven
She settled against her pillow snugly. After the morning bus ride back to campus, she had crashed into her bed. Preeto had left to spend her afternoon with horses, and Mona was snoring beside her. God bless Sundays!
Kicking her feet under the covers, Khushi blushed. Her lips tingled , as she recalled the fervour with which he had kissed her.
She hadn’t said anything. She couldn’t believe it had happened. Arnav had always been a buzz under her skin. But she hadn’t dreamt of kissing him. 
Running trembling fingers over her lips, she flushed. 
Turning over, she pulled the cover tighter over her. The globe sitting on her bed side table caught her eye. With a sigh, she reached over and picked it up. He had gifted it on her thirteenth birthday.
A girl and boy with yellow raincoats, playing with paper boats under the rain.
She turned it over.
To my Khushi~ happy 13!~ Love, Arnav
She hugged it to herself. All these years with Arnav…and here she was mooning over him. He had kissed her, she thought with a wide smile.
What comes next? Do they date? 
Khushi frowned. What will change if they date? Will that ease and sense of home she had always known to have with him fade and disappear? Will they fight like Di and Akash bhaiya?
She sat up with a jolt.
No!
She wanted her Arnav to be just like before. She didn’t want their friendship to dwindle away, even at the prospect of something so…so beautiful.
Flopping back on her bed, she didn’t fight the blush as her thoughts went right back to last night, as sleep pulled her in finally.
————-
“Khushi!”
She looked up from her maths homework, glittered with pencil shavings.
“Arnav asked me to tell you he wanted to meet at 6” Preeto mumbled while unlacing her charcoal black boots, now marred with mud stains.
“Where?”, she asked , hoping the catch in her voice didn’t alarm Preeto.
“He didn’t say”, she frowned “He was weird today, I must say”
“Weird?” Khushi stood up, her legs leading her to Preeto as she wrung her hands together.
“Yup!”, she grabbed a towel “He fell off Basanti! Can you imagine? The calmest of horses! And when he stood up, he was just grinning like an idiot! Something was really wrong with Raizada today”
With a shrug, Preeto was off to shower, leaving Khushi with her thoughts.
Grinning like an idiot? That sure sounds a lot like her today.
————
The sun had lent a purple tint to the sky as it began to set. Lamps were flickering as the evening breeze sent a chill down her spine. 
Khushi tugged at her brown sweater as she hurried towards their stairs. 
He stood there, with his back towards her. His head bent, as if reading something.
She couldn’t bring herself to break the solace he was in. Or so she told herself.
Standing at the entrance, her foot hovered in hesitation. 
What does one say after a mind blowing kiss?
She had simply mumbled “good night!” and hurried off the night before. 
The swish of his shoes made her look up. His hair fell over his forehead, making him look like the eleven year old who had shared sodas with her.
She desperately wished she was funny at that moment. A witty line could have broken this awkward ice between them!
“You-you fell off Basanti?”
He let out a strangled laugh.
“Ya, she brought me back to earth really quickly”
She smiled, “She’s the sweetest thing! Only you could have done something to provoke her!”
“You are to be blamed!”
She stilled at his accusation. 
“I was thinking about last night”, he continued as she said nothing. His face pale, under the dim light.
“L-Last night”, she stuttered.
“Last night”, his voice bursting with strength, as he stepped closer.
“Yeah, um..it was..”
“Good?”,he held her waist in his arms, even as her breath hitched. 
With a raised eyebrow , he seemed like the devil reincarnated. A sexy one, she finished in her head.
“Yeah ... .nice”, she mumbled absently.
“Nice?”,he frowned.
His baritone voice made her skin erupt into goosebumps.
She shivered as he pulled her closer.
“We will have to change that review won’t we?”, he whispered before bending down to take over her lips.
A whimper escaped her as pure pleasure pervaded her veins. Her mind was reeling as he continued his onslaught.
Her hand fisted around his collar, as he tightened his hold around her waist.
She felt warm all over, as he deepened the kiss, his tongue invading her mouth. A muffled moan escaped her, but she was too entranced to be mortified.
She broke away for air, her heart pounding a mile a minute. But she found that he simply couldn’t stop. Showering pecks on her lips, he mumbled her name before kissing down her neck.
Her stomach swooped against the still unfamiliar feeling, as she jumped.
“Arnav”, she almost pleaded.
She felt his chest rise against her, as he took a deep breath. Resting his forehead against hers, he looked deep into her eyes. Seduced from the warmth his embrace brought, she couldn’t bring herself to untangle from him.
“Good enough?”, his hoarse voice belied the laughter in his eyes.
“Shut up”, she whispered before hugging him close.
The sky clouded over, hiding the moon, granting an illusion of privacy.
Tagging: @hand-picked-star @phuljari @msbhagirathi @thenainitaldisaster @thedupattaknowswhatsup @jalebi-weds-bluetooth @barshifan @andli @shiyaravi @chutkiandchotte @laad-governess @minpdnim @bigfatreader @arshiradio @simplycurlz @scorpio-smiles @bengudill @exosexosekai @0218fm @atomicmentalitytruimph
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httpsryu · 2 years ago
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kites : part 1
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pairing: kim minji x fem! reader
summary: both you and minji both decide to run for class president in order to prove one another on who's the brightest but it also happens to be the exact time a certain someone decides that her silly heart beats for the other
category: enemies-to-lovers(ish?), high school au
genre: slow burn(?), fluff, and angst tiny amount or not
warnings: competitive and jealousy, kind of makes you feel single ;-;
a/n: DKDKSKSHF i can't believe the yeji writing got a good amount of attention!
p.2 of kites
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the bell's tone rings all throughout the school which indicates that all students should've now gotten to their homerooms, prepared and ready to learn on another day of the week. 
everyone in the homeroom shuffles to their seats, patiently waiting for their teacher to arrive to the class. 
minji takes her gaze off the window beside her, resting her chin into the palm of her hand which was propped on top of her desk. facing towards the front of the classroom, she rolls her eyes upon seeing the back of you. 
watching you stack all your school materials neatly with the dumb bright grin of yours. 
kang y/n, otherwise known as another contender for the top rank of the school. 
for years and years, going back to even primary school, both you and minji concluded that the two of you would never be friends because of the academic rivalry between you too. even your birthdays were the same, although you didn’t want to admit she was older than you by two minutes. 
every subject was a tie between the two of you. while you aced in science and english, minji aced in math and social studies. 
everyone makes sure to not speak of minji’s name in front of you nor speak your name in front of her. it automatically and naturally became a rule in your grade. 
“i heard that today during social studies before the school day ends, each class is going to have a competition for who will run class president.” one of your best friends, rei leans over to your ear and whispers to you. 
from the girl’s breath, you let out a giggle and shove her back to her seat. 
hanni, minji’s seatmate and a friend of both you and hers confusedly follows the line of minji’s sight of vision. she wonders why minji is looking at you so intently. 
“bro, do you hate her or love her?” hanni asks, bursting the other girl’s train of thoughts. 
minji blinks, offended by the younger’s question. “what are you talking about..?” 
“hmm..” hanni thinks to herself, looking at the back of your head. “do you think y/n is dating her?” 
are you? 
wait-why does minji want to know so bad about whether or not you’re dating rei? 
“why would i care?” the older replies, trying to sound uninterested but deeply, a small part of her is curious and she somehow feels upset at the idea of you dating someone. 
the vietnamese playfully rolls her eyes, shrugging at minji’s response. 
“i just know someone who’s curious about her.”
before the other could ask of who it is, the door of the class abruptly opens with their first teacher walking in to start off the day. 
“good morning class!” 
and for the first time, minji couldn’t focus during the class period because she couldn’t stop wondering about the idea of you dating someone. 
her mind was filled with you and she hated it (no, she doesn’t). 
her eyes couldn’t stop staring at the pretty head of yours and she can’t help but feel some sort of envy…towards you or rei. 
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“i heard that today before the day ends, each class is going to have a competition for who will run class president.” your best friend, wonyoung says while the both of you walk towards the usual lunch table where you and your friends would sit. “you should run! you’re like the perfect candidate!” 
with your lunch in your hand, your mouth lets out a side smile at the idea. “i’m not really a fan of taking things in charge.” 
“but you’ll get a vice president too.” wonyoung smirks, shrugging. “who knows? it could be a pretty girl.” 
opening your mouth to say something along the lines of ‘i’m not dating til i figure out what i want to do after high school’ but, you close your mouth and halt at the sight of someone’s not-annoying-to look-at face sitting at the table. 
“i hope you didn’t mind me inviting them to sit with us.” jiwon smiles apologetically at which you smiled in response before she looks back down at the book she’s cramming info from for the english quiz in her class. 
wonyoung suddenly remembers about a basketball meet. “oh yeah, some tables are being used for some sort of sports thing and unfortunately, our rei is stuck managing it.”
oh. 
you scan the entire rounded table, looking for a place to sit until hanni waves at you, motioning for you to come sit next to her. “y/n! come over here!” 
“don’t worry, i’ll manage without you.” the taller standing besides you pats your shoulder before sitting down next to jiwon. 
you smile back at the australian-vietnamese girl before realizing the open sit near her is the one between her and minji. 
minji looks away, choking on her water in the process and spilling out of her mouth. 
“bro, you’re going to get her spot all wet now!” hanni exclaims, handing napkins to the other to wipe. 
minji’s eyes widens, twisting the cap back on the water bottle that almost took her life a few seconds ago. “bro! you’re not asking me to wipe it, are you?” 
“i’m not asking you.” hanni’s eyes got smaller, deadpanning. “i’m ordering you to, bro.” 
“she can sit perfectly fine in a wet seat!” minji argues back while still grabbing the napkins from hanni. 
there’s no way she’ll ever be caught doing that, especially for you. 
you let out a huff, walking to where they both stay seated. gently placing your lunch on the table, you yank the napkins from minji’s hand and started wiping down the water off the empty spot. “i’ll just do it myself.” 
on the other hand, minji looks down at her fingertips that grazed against yours. she felt sone sort of electricity from the sudden contact, wondering it was because of the slight wind coming from the canteen’s windows. for a slight second, she feels bad about not wiping down the mess she made but then again, she doesn’t care. 
upon sitting down between what seems like a tight spot than usual, your shoulder lightly brushes against minji’s shoulder, prompting her to hold her arm in place upon the touch. 
there it was again. the slight electricity shock from earlier. 
“sorry..” you mumbled lowly, only for you and her to hear as you scoot towards closer to hanni. 
the other girl suddenly doesn’t want you close to hanni. she dislikes it when the other wraps an arm around you, laughing as she excitedly talks to you about today’s event supposedly during the last class. 
for the first time, minji’s lunch doesn’t taste as good anymore and she finds herself drinking water only in hopes of it spilling again for your attention to be off of hanni and the others. 
meanwhile, one of minji’s friends and an acquaintance of yours, haerin quietly chews on her pizza while noticing that the older isn’t constantly talking about how annoying you are or how you were being the teacher’s pet by raising your hand first for a question as she normally would.
the cat eyed female glues her eyes on the body language of the older, noticing the way she’s constantly trying to divide her attention off of you talking to hanni and danielle between the hand of the australian-vietnamese resting comfortably on your knee. and haerin could’ve sworn she saw minji’s eyes slightly squint at the physical touch but she could be wrong.
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after lunch, you decided that before class, studying at the library will help out your grade in math. after all, you aren’t that terrible at math. it normally took you a while to grasp the concept. 
today? 
today is a different story because you’re stuck on a problem that’s taking you more than 5 times to do and you still haven’t gotten the answer. 
and although, the teacher walked through an example of this problem earlier back in the morning, it’s still doesn’t make complete sense to you. looking around the room for one of the tutors, a frown forms upon your lips once realizing that the tutors are probably out for for their lunch break. 
“do you need help?” a voice interrupts your movement from behind. 
whipping your head back at the familiar voice, you’re met with kim minji. 
’what did i ever do in my life for the universe to keep cursing me like this?’ 
the girl standing behind you blinks again, wondering why you still haven’t answered her. 
“it’s fine. i can solve it on my own.” you grumbled, turning back around and picking up your pen again to write in your workbook. 
minji huffs from behind you, feeling offended at the way you’re acting towards her. 
here she is, offering to HELP you and yet you refused her. 
“you’re not even starting the problem off correctly.” the girl scoffs, peering from where she stood while you start to hunch over to block the view of your work. 
with a blank face, you turn back to stare at her. “listen here kim, i don’t need your help. if you’ll excuse me, i need to get back to doing my work before class starts. so quit bothering me.” 
minji deeply inhales, trying to calm herself down from the attitude coming off from you. 
she can leave, yet, she doesn’t want to. 
“why won’t you just admit that i’m smarter than you?” minji asks, a smile tugging on her lips knowing what your reaction is going to be. 
is this girl for real? 
she watches as your face scowls, eyebrows furrowed as you open your mouth ready to explode off on her. and yet, she’s intrigued by how pretty you look even when you’re mad. 
“i’d like to say the same thing for you.” you stand out of your seat, trying to look initimidating but failing miserably once you realize that the girl you very much dislikes is taller than you. 
minji dryly laughs, putting a fake smile on afterwards as she leans closer to you. a bare few centimeters away from you and she swears that you two would kiss. but, she looks at you up and down while the feeling of giddyness is jumping in her stomach, which she figures is from the lack of appetite at lunch earlier today. 
“tell you what, y/n, how about we make a bet?” 
you roll your eyes, crossing your arms to hear what the taller has to say. (while trying to ignore the lack of space you two have) 
“whoever becomes class president is considered the brightest one.” 
you’d rather accept jungwon’s love confession than run up against minji.
however, knowing how much it’d feel seeing the girl’s face falter once ms. ahn announces you as the winner doesn’t sound bad at all. and on the plus side, maybe there will be a cute girl to be vice president after all. 
“deal.” you smirk in response. 
minji’s eyes gazes down at your lips for .5 seconds before widening her eyes and backing away. “i-um have to go now.” 
she brushes through her hair with her hand, rushing out the library while feeling her cheeks heat up. 
“…ok..?” you blankly says, shrugging as you sit back down in the seat you were in before.
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minji pushes all her workbooks into her backpack, throwing her pencil bag in after before she stretches out the stiff muscles from sitting at her desk for too long of the late night cramming school. she can’t wait to go home and get into bed, especially when her stomach still feels weird from you. 
“i’m going to get going now.” minji bids goodbye to some of the other students who are still trying to get caught up with other subjects. 
she earns a chorus of ‘bye’s’ and ‘see you tomorrow’, prompting her to scoot her chair in under her desk and slinging her backpack on. while walking to the door, she passes by your desk and wondered why you left earlier than usual. 
‘it’s not like i care.’ she rolls her eyes at how careless you were for leaving behind some trash on your desk. 
like the good student she is, she sighs, picking up the trash and taking it with her to throw out on the way home. carefully opening the door to not disrupt the others, she’s relieved to know that she finished her schoolwork duties for the night and can just head straight for bed once getting home. 
clutching on her backpack’s straps, she rushes to leave the school until she stops at the sight of you sitting on the bench of the playground across from school where many children would play at, no matter how dark it was getting. 
minji observes the way your charming face looks ethereal under the street lights, she feels the way her chest get tight all of sudden when you reposition your sitting position hence causing your side profile to be seen. looking down at your hands, she sees a milk box in your left and a math book in your right. 
without realizing, a smile is tugged upon her lips at how hardworking you are. 
“excuse me, noona?” a couple of young boys who looks about the ages of 8-10 comes up to you, having you put your book aside and smiling sweetly at the children. 
why does minji feels like the whole entire pavement just got lit up from your smile? why does she like seeing your smile? 
“is there anything you guys need help with?” you ask the little boys cheerfully.
one of the boys point at the tree. "our kite got stuck up there and we need help getting it down. is there any way you can help us, noona?"
you follow where the child's finger is pointing at, seeing a white kite sitting up in the tree looking lonely. truth be told, you couldn't reach it and yet you don't want to bring the children down.
"of course!" you nod, getting off from your seat and straightening out your skirt in case an accident happens like flashing some students at school.
the girl watching from the school's entrance feels herself getting wary about you. she doesn't want you to fall and end up breaking something. even the sight of you tip-toeing makes her cringe from the thought of falling.
minji knows that you'll end up getting the kite for the children though. you never give up! at least, in her mind.
she braces herself to run and catch you, seeing the way you start climbing up to grab the kite. her clutch on the backpack's straps are tighter and she feels her throat closing up in nervousness.
but hearing the boys cheering as you grab their kite brings her mind back to why you helped in the first place. seeing the way your smile perfectly paints across your lips as you brush your hair through with your hand, while handing the boys their kite makes her stomach flutter.
way worse than before.
kim minji isn't stupid, she knows what this means.
for the first time, minji realizes that she has a crush on somebody. not just anyone, you.
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asksksh, it's getting long so i'm writing a part 2 soon!
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spookytragedyshark · 2 years ago
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Jason Todd and The Ghost Zone
Danny just wanted to have time to be a kid. Ironically the closest he could act like a real kid was in the zone now. So, when he looks like a teen everyone respects it and gives him his space, but it is not the same. There is no one like him.
Now Ghosts know he is their king instinctually, so they cannot treat him like a kid not truly. However, the child ghost Infront of him who looks to be a few years younger is deafeningly out of touch with instinct and Danny can see why. He is absolutely covered in scars and seemingly unaware crying for his dad, Bruce. The kid is covered in what Danny can only descried as rotten ectoplasm.
Grabbing the kid Danny rushes to his ghostly home and summons for anyone who might know what to do. As it turns out the "scars" were wounds that the boy died with. Danny feels sick noting all of them. There are whispers among the ghosts before one steps forward.
"The corruption will be purged over time as long as he remines in the zone, but it will be more affective to stay with you as you are the very start of the zone."
Holding the boy helps a little bit but it takes days before he stops wailing and almost a week and a half before he is awareish.
The first thing the boy asks for is to see his dad. Danny is not sure if the boy is actually awake or not. "I promise as soon as you are healthy enough I'll look into finding your dad."
Through some misunderstandings Jason comes to believe Danny is a servant of the king of the ghost zone and has been lent kingly power to help in situations like his because "why would a king have time to deal with someone like me?" Danny almost corrects him but instead decides this is his chance to have a friend.
Danny trains him to use his powers and learns about who killed him. This joker must be sending off the corruption in waves. Ironically with corruption ingrained like that the man cannot die or be brought to the ghost zone. Danny explains everything to the boy and how often people change names after dying. So Jay has mostly healed, has control of his powers, and knows his obsession.
At first Jay hates it because rebirth and second chances really? How could he forgive the joker? Danny sits beside him "That man has had more than a few second chances you should not feel bad for not giving him another." The being that is the joker might not even be in his original body they discover. Danny knows that he will have to do something about all this but Jay needs him first and foremost and there is little he can do other than clean up the after math.
Jay does not tell him about being Rodin or how he died. He feels fiercely guarded on those things. Danny explains that it is normal to feel that way and that he only needs certain details to help him and to go to the right dimension and time period to see his dad and brother. Jay freaks out about the multiverse for a bit.
When Jay is recovered enough Danny brings him to his funeral. Jay sees them morn for him. They stay there well after the funeral..
Long enough to see Tim climb down from a tree and place flowers on his grave..
Jay asks Danny if he would also like to visit his own grave. Jay knows how important they are to ghosts. Proof they were alive and that they meant something.
"I do not have one. No one really knew or at least accepted I died. We sould look after your family for a bit something does not feel right" Jay would have cried at that but he had been crying the whole time anyway. He could not make himself visible not now at least. Danny said once that there was a possibility after he was completely healed.
Jay convinces Danny not to fallow any of the secret passages. Danny agrees to respect their privacy since they clearly are not evil. Jay panics and says that Bruce is Batmans sugar daddy and that his brother is dating nightwing. Danny just mumbles something about fruitloops. "You are well enough to say on your own for a bit. I'm going to go investigate the corruption do under any circumstances leave Gotham and always be back in the mansion by day light."
This becomes their normal every days they come to Gotham. Danny finds the voice of Gotham when looking for the source of corruption.
"you have greatly helped one of my knights. You my child will always be welcome here. What are you searching for?"
It is from Lady Gotham that Danny learns of the artificial ectoplasm. He destroys the artificial ectoplasm corruption from Arkham and immediately the patents get better little by little but the joker is not there so he can not stop him yet.
Jay sees Tim force his way into Bruce's heart. Jay sees how Tim views himself and wants to tear his hair out. Of course, he gets a baby brother, and his own death is what messes up Bruce's communication skills this time. Jay follows Tim home a few times and honest to God thinks Tim is an orphan for a few months because who leave anyone unattended that long.
"Danny I know there is no way for me to interact with the human world but is there someone, maybe the king who can?"
After Jay breaks down and explains the situation. "He checks their flight records to know if they are coming home and they never are." Danny sighs because explaining he is only half dead and kinda abandoned his home reality because of the government is not something he wants to do. but that's how all the cameras in the bat cave stopped working and Batman found his computer open to the Drakes flight records. Tim was adopted and Jay was almost ready to let go of his human life. Danny was so proud.
Then Jason was thrown in the pit literally ripped away from Danny. It was agonizing to be filled with corruption after almost being completely healed. Then there was his body always filled with rage. Then the old man and the ticktack that tried to convince him he was not avenged and to turn on his family. He saw what nightwing did to the joker. The joker was alive somewhere but had also been killed at lest twice since his death. The only reason he stayed and pretended to go along with it was to see if Danny would find him and get information on the artificial ectoplasm corruption in liquid form. Then there was their heir. He looked like Bruce. It took a while, but he found out yeah that kid was his brother. He slowly drove the kid away form the mindset that they put in him. He told the kid about the constant rage.
Then one night him and Damian disappeared.
Danny was livid. Jay was in pain. he saw what it was doing to him as it was ripping him from the ghost zone. Jason Todds grave was empty and Lady Gotham could not give him much information. Danny searched the planet, but he found more pits as they called them, and it was overwhelming even if they were thousands of years old. So when redhood and demon make it to Gotham and start taking out multimer offenders Danny does not find out till he feels a pull. In Wayne cemetery were Jason Todds grave used to be. They are holding a funeral for Danny Fenton.
The relief is Immedient because there is Jay, but then there's the flowers and acknowledgement. He did not even know he wanted a grave that much, but here he is so overwhelmed by his emotions. He accidently changes into human form and is crying. Jason older now the same age as Danny hugs him. Why is the 10-year-old glowing green...
Bonus:
Jason breaks into Titans tower.
"You are coming with me"
"why would i do that"
Jasion puts phone on speaker
"Come with me or the kid gets it!"
Damien in the tiny scared kid voice Jason helped him perfect
"Help me Help me Mr Robin"
Jason carries Tim like a sack of potatoes back to Gotham and throws him on the couch beside a chilling demon.
"were is the kid" He says
Damien giggles "Help me Help me Mr Robin'
"I thought you were a tiny adult what the hell"
"Nah he like 10 and its movie night. I assume you hit your sos botten so dick and Bruce and maybe Barbra should be here soon. Damian is picking out the movie first then you and then me and so forth so on." Jason takes off his helment and Gets a snack plater from the kitchen.
"Big bro do not hand Jay anything during the movie mk cuz the pit takes over if he gets emotional and just look at that" Damian points the corner with at least 12 TVs impaled by increasingly strange objects. "we have extras but the last one was the old care bears and he got to sentimental."
Bonus Bonus:
every bat ever to Damian "NO KILLING UNTILL YOU ARE 18"D
Damian never actual takes up being an assassin again.
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