#but it's less than what either of them spend on alcohol and weed in an average month

[cesium-sheep]

I'm so good at shopping, although yes it does take me days I am very adept at exceeding a target number of items within a set budget that are all likely to be worthwhile to the recipient. even though basically the only christmas shopping I do is for my partners because we do daily stockings like one would do an advent calendar, and everyone else gets handmade stuff cuz I can't afford to buy them anything nice so I just pay in labor instead lol (and even once I can afford to buy them nice things I make good stuff they can't get elsewhere so I intend to keep doing it, just with nicer materials. and maybe little bonus bought presents thrown in when I see things they'd like.)

[kremlin]

@wikwalker hi sure yes anything to give me an excuse to procrastinate the post i should be writing right now. here are all teh drugs and how to manage them. you can trust me, a drug addict

first of all: https://www.erowid.org/ , erowid always

don't be afraid of drugs, if they're the right drugs, you should do them since they will be a blast regardless and overcoming fear is also good (but outside the scope here)

OK to do as much as you want: alcohol - social benefit greatly outweighs health effects, no reason to avoid if predisposed to abuse since that'll happen sooner or later. what can i say? don't be a fucking dork. when you start drinking, really overdo it as much as possible without dying and get a few real nasty hangovers under your belt so you know how much is the right amount to drink.

weed - innocuous enough to be fine but will make you stupid in the long term. make sure to only buy from a real drug dealer and never some legal institution. cut it out when you're a "real adult". don't smoke weed and watch TV routinely, go out and do things so you naturally grow to hate it. good to go through this as early as possible to minimize the time you spend as a cringe weed enthusiast

i guess those are the only two.

ok to do infrequently (annually): "lsd" - or whatever it is, probably not lsd, blah blah blah, if it works and is sold on blotter its fine and won't make you go nuts or whatever. opt for a better psychadelic imo. see psych rule at bottom of section

mushrooms - better than acid since you know what they are. rule of thumb is to always do more than you think you want. minimum 1/8oz. see psych rule at bottom of post

dmt - if you somehow have a dmt hookup you don't need to be reading any of this. lasts 10 minutes which leads to tendency to way overdo it, don't do this, my favorite webcomic artist is permanently crazy from exactly that. using a crack pipe is also not the uhhhh most dignifying-feeling thing to do either. it's harder than you think.

mdma - for use at electronic music event or rave. overuse causes brain lesions or something.

coke - wait until you're in your 20s, have maxed out your roth IRA for a couple of years in a row, and havent missed a car payment in a similar timeframe. better still if you've worked a very shitty low paying job and know the value of a dollar. if you still find yourself buying candy you're not ready. too expensive to be worth it to get hooked on. know that you are VERY ANNOYING to anyone who also isn't high. don't fuck around with the guy selling it to you. avoid discussing or thinking about business ideas. you can't afford to make it a habit + kinda turns you into a piece of shit after a while, but at least a very interesting one

ketamine - another sick drug that rules, but save it for a special occasion. don't try and go into the k-hole your first time

rule for psychedelics - you get one good strong trip a year and that's it, make it count, always opt for doing a bit more than a bit less. but don't make it a habit, otherwise you turn into a very stupid very annoying "hippy" style cliché and believe in ghosts, aliens, crap like that.

ok to try once prescription opiates/benzodiazepine (xanax), valium, this kind of shit - worth trying so you can go "holy shit, this stuff is way way way too good to ever use responsibly" and then never do again. especially if you're white. for some reason we just can't handle this shit. if a doctor prescribes it to you, idk, that's your call to make.

ayhuasca - this is just dmt in a different form. do some other psychadelics a number of times before you do this. once you realize the whole "substantial visual hallucinations" thing is made up, its time. do exactly this: -buy root online (legal). receive box of dirt -boil dirt into "tea" (read erowid for exact recipe) -take over-the-counter anti nausea medicine or anything that will give you a stronger stomach -drink tea (its nasty as fuck, get it down quick) -have someone bigger than you keep an eye on you for the next five hours. -have the experience, which is absurdly intense, has no bearing to the real world, etc etc. don't be a bitch and throw up, if you do it'll only last an hour or so. again there is no way to provide a consistent description of the experience except that you will meet god. you only ever need to do this once and never again. trust me

peyote/salvia/etc - try em if you want, you'll never ever want to again afterwords. these are drugs for idiot teenagers too lame to get real drugs. imagine being very very sick from poison and utterly terrified at the same time. No good

whippets/nitrous oxide - just find a dentist that uses it and don't bother creating hundreds of pounds of trash on your floor for this crap that lasts ten seconds. you have to understand the extremely short timeframe coupled with the cost makes zero sense. go to a phish concert parking lot and do some people watching -- you do not want to be these people. only use is as a motivator to get routine dental exam. also if you somehow manage to make it a heavy habit your fucking legs stop working, no shit, but they start working again once you quit.

don't ever do heroin/meth/pcp - is is truly a mystery why you should never do these 🙄

synthetic weed/k2/shit from the gas station - it is so funny that they sell this as "weed that won't pop you on a drug test". its not weed. it is some dubious chemical sprayed on yard waste. smoke it to have a terrible time and go nuts. only buy drugs from legitimate drug dealers!

kratom - anyone's guess as to why this is legal but it's heroin for pussies. its still heroin

dxm/cough syrup - do you ever wonder why it is exclusively teenagers robotripping? it's because it sucks ass. is like a cheesegrater on your brain in terms of health effects with repeated usage. you're better than this king

inhalants - these are at the bottom of the list for a reason. do not huff gas. don't huff paint. do not consume computer duster. not fun + fastest way to make yourself a complete, uh, (word i can't say anymore) and then dead

not listed quaaludes- unavailable due to no longer being manufactured. these ruled apparantly

sincis2c - unavailable due to not existing, i just made this up

amphetamines - cannot provide objective take here. they're my albatross, lifelong (posted 4:55am natch)

[0xstarzx0]

Don’t write it it stinks of toxic love

[PART3]

synopsis: Rafe presents an offer to Y/N that's more than tempting.

[English is not my native language❗️❗️] TW: insult, sex mentions, stalking, weed, alcohol, Racism .

______________________________________________ [PART2] —————————————————————————

Y/N 

The week had passed so quickly that you hadn't been able to forget the conversation you had with Rafe.

Nate wasn't mean, he was clingy and somewhat annoying, but it didn't bother you too much.

"Y/N, are you listening to me?" Your roommate Lana looks at you exasperated. "No, I mean yes, sorry, I was lost in thought."

She sighs and throws herself onto your bed. Crossing her arms on your chest, you look at her. Lana is a pretty girl, she had passed the cheerleading squad exam and was quite pleasant. She doesn't leave her clothes lying around, so for you everything is fine.

"Are you going to the party tonight?" she asks, sitting down. You snort and start drawing again. "Hell nah." Lana stands up and sits next to you.

"Why? It'll be an awesome party! Alcohol everywhere, weed, and music blasting!" She laughs.

You give her a desperate look.

You hate parties, hate is a weak word for what you feel.

Your first and only party went so bad that you've never been to one again.

"Parties aren't my thing." You shrug. Lana sighs and forces you to turn towards her.

"Yeah, cheerleading isn't your thing either, dancing isn't either, football isn't either, and you hate alcohol!" She says, shocked. You laugh "What's wrong with that?"

"Everything!" she says, throwing herself back in her chair.

You start drawing again. "I'll pay you if you come." Lana says, looking at your drawing. You put down your pencil and sink into your chair.

"Shit, are you that desperate?" you ask with a laugh.

"I'll pay you a hundred dollars if you stay the entire night." "One hundred and fifty and I'll stay for three hours." The blonde laughs bitterly.

"The party starts at eight and ends at six in the morning sweetheart." You grimace, stay until eleven o'clock at night? No thank you.

"Alright. I'll pay for all your art supplies for a month. It's been two years since you've had the same ones, you should change them."

The offer is tantalizing, your mother couldn't buy them for you. When your father decided to do his come out and kicked you and your mother and brother out. You ended up living in a shelter. Therefore, buying art supplies wasn't really your mom's top priority.

You bite the inside of your cheek. Lana smiles and bounces around. "Get dressed, we leave in less than an hour!" She cries out as she exits the room.

You sigh and go to get some clothes from your wardrobe.

✯

After ten minutes of searching for clothes, you had decided to wear a leopard print long skirt with a black top. Your hair was slicked back into a low bun with baby's hairs.

You and Lana were sitting in the backseat of the cheerleading captain's car.

They were all singing "Toxic" by Britney Spears.

God, these girls sing so badly. How much more comfortable you'd be in your room writing cheesy romance stories while listening to rb&nb instead of being here, having to listen to privileged daddy's girls sing horribly.

You look out the window when you feel your phone vibrate on your thighs. You look at and see a notification from Nate.

"Are you coming to the party or am I coming to spend the evening with you?"

You sigh and think about a response, saying yes would be an invitation for him to come spend the evening with you, and saying no would mean "Come to the house." At least for Nate

"Sick, bed, throwing up, alone."

You type these four words and send them to him. You are interested in Nate, but not in the same way he is interested in you

It would be a lie to say you didn't feel guilty. But what could you do about it?

The queen bee of the cheerleaders stops in front of a huge house, its lights of all colors and students more or less drugged out.

You get out of the car and Lana takes your arm. "We're going to take a drink to celebrate!" She says, trying to drag you into the house. You frown and shake your head.

"I don't drink." Lana looks at you pleadingly. "She's so lame. Would you rather have a bucket of fried chicken?" Said the captain.

You give her a crooked look and frown. "What this bi-" Lana nervous laughs and puts her hand over my mouth. "Klhoe that's a little racist."

Klhoe rolls her eyes. "You can't say anything anymore." She goes off, rolling her ass. Ass that don't exist.

Lana removes her hand from your mouth. "Slightly?! For you, saying that to a black person is only slightly racist?" You shout, Lana signs for you to lower your tone. "You shouldn't be mad at me, you should be mad at her!"

You breathe loudly and enter the house, needing a drink.

NATE

Nate inhales the smoke from his mouth, putting his phone in his pocket. "Yo dude, why are you making that face?" asks Vincent, Nate's new "best" friend.

Nate sighs and takes a hit on the joint before passing it to him. "Y/N-" "Again her?!" interrupts Vincent.

Nate glares at Vincent. "Yeah, man, I swear she's not like the other dumb ones who are only worried about their bags! She's educated, beautiful, and God, have you seen her in a bikini?!"

Vincent laughs and passes the joint to his teammate. "Tell me?" Vince asks. Nate settles comfortably on the couch. Just the thought makes him hard.

"Her tits overflow, limit they say hello and her ass fuck! all moves every time she takes a step. I remember when I saw her, I wanted to take her doggy style. Hmm yeah." Nate leans down on the table to get a line. "She’s got such a big ass that the bikini doesn’t hide anything."

Vincent laughs before doing a line himself. "You sharing?"

"Dude, I'm planning on making her the mother of my kids, shithead." Nate isn't lying, he really means it.

If it didn't work out with Maddy, there's no way it's not going to work out with you, and that, Nate is convinced of.

RAFE

Rafe listens without interest to a girl telling him her life story. She has a pipe mouth but that's about it.

She is not at all the type for Rafe, Rafe likes to show off his wealth and life, but when others do it, it's not interesting.

The girl whispers some enticingly sweet proposals to Rafe.

Shit, she really wants to get fucked.

She pushes against Rafe's pants. "Join me in Connor's bedroom in five minutes." She nibbles on his ear and leaves.

Rafe smiles. She was clearly pathetic but still pleased to know that she will wait for him with her legs open.

The kook weaves through the people to create a path to get to the kitchen.

Rafe arrives in the kitchen and heads towards the fridge when he sees a girl talking to another. "Come on, it won’t hurt you! It’s just vodka!" says a small blonde. "Fuck you Lana." Says her friend, closing the fridge.

His eyes widened, if having dirty thoughts just by seeing you was a crime then hell, he would be sentenced for life.

Rafe didn't particularly like you, but he was still quite interested in you to put you in his bed. But one of the reasons why Rafe was really, really interested, was because Nate love you.

He moves behind you, his hot breath on your neck instantly awakens your senses. "Boo"

You turn around, ready to hit the perv behind you but Rafe catches your hand before you can. "Hey...? What's your name again?"

You sigh and glare at Rafe. "My arm, dumbass." Rafe looks at you annoyed.

He's so tempted to insult you, but if he does, he won’t be able to use you as a weapon against Nate.

He sighs and lets go of your arm. "You came."

You massage your wrist. "Not for you." Rafe nods and casts a glance at your friend, Lana?

He doesn't know, but she's as red as a tomato. "Do you mind if we have a few minutes?" Rafe says to the blonde.

Lana nods and leaves, despite you telling her to stay.

"So, what do we do?" asks Rafe as he looks at you. "We?"You ask, frowning.

"Listen, uh-," you cut him off. "Y/N" you answer coldly. Rafe shrugs like he's saying, "I already knew."

You roll your eyes and start to leave. "Hey wait!" Rafe follows you. "You don’t want to get sucked by a girl who wants to?"

Rafe steps in front of you. "Listen Y/N, I really need your help to calm down this bastard Jacobs. He hasn’t stopped sending you messages, right?" You don’t answer and cross your arms.

You have several times seen your panties disappear or even felt observed. It could have been a weird guy, then one day you found your panties in Nate's bedroom.

Even if you don’t want to believe it, he could be the weirdo who is stalking you.

"What do you want from me?" You cross your arms over your chest.

"I just want you to spend the evening acting like something is going on between us. Nate will see us and-"

"Nate is here?!" you blurt out, looking around. If he sees you, he won’t leave you alone. "Stop panicking, he won’t see you, he's upstairs getting high."

You calm down and look at him. "People will talk, they'll see you with me and bam, not only will your popularity increase-" "I don’t care about that." Rafe gives you a mean look. "Shut up, everyone wants to be popular."

"Y/N I really need you. Do I have to pay you to get you to agree?"You look down at the ground. "Nate better leave me alone." Rafe smiles, "I knew you weren’t a slut."

You roll your eyes and start to walk away. Rafe follows, putting his hand in the dip of your back. "Take your fucking hand off me." Rafe takes a hurt look. "You gotta be realistic honey." A guy from the football team comes to high-five Rafe. "Yo man, I’d like to introduce 

Y/N." The guy looks you up and down.

Instinctively, you press yourself against Rafe.

Something in his look worries you. Rafe notices and leads you away. "Avoid him, he has the nasty habit of slipping stuff into girls' drinks." You freeze.

"And if he decides to spike my drink?!" Rafe shrugs, "I’ll defend you."

______________________________________________

PART4

taglists 🏷️ (

@annhearttihaehe

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[etherealeddie]

Woodstock ‘99 - Part 1

Rockstar!Eddie Munson x Reader

Story Summary: A hopeless romantic hippie meets a roughed up metalhead at what is supposed to be beautiful, peaceful, music-filled weekend. But even amongst all of the chaos, there may be some peace. 

Part Summary: You chase love all the way to Woodstock ‘99, hoping to find what your parents did in 1969, but you find yourself stuck in hellish crowds and reaching for any hands to pull you out. 

CW: Use of weed, maybe some alcohol, rough crowd, but I think that’s everything. Let me know if I missed any!

Authors Note: This was originally going to just be a one shot but I got a bit too into it and decided maybe a short series was better!

Word Count: 1.2k

You grew up with two very interesting parents, to say the least. From a young age you were taught kindness, peace, and love, and learned quickly in school that most people were not raised with these same values. 

It’s like you came out of the womb with a flower crown on, singing Imagine by John Lennon. None of that was really surprising though, you’d been the love child of two hippies who met at Woodstock and lived in a van.

It wasn’t until you were a toddler that they decided settling down in a house was a more stable environment for a kid. They chose a small trailer, in a small town, in the big state of Arizona, and you loved it. You loved having a room and space, and you loved being able to spend time with your parents without motion sickness and seatbelts. 

By the time you were 10, you could recite your parents' love story word for word as your mom told it, and you told everyone. 

“My mom had just broken up with her boyfriend and hitched a ride to Woodstock in ‘69 just looking for new friends and community. My dad says he was friends with someone who was friends with Janis Joplin, but I think he was just there to sell weed!” You’d say, giggling to your 5th grade teacher. She would smile along, knowing she should have a talk with them about what is and isn’t appropriate for kids your age.

You’d been so obsessed with their meet-cute that you’d only dreamed of having your own. So when Woodstock ‘99 was announced, how could you not get a ticket? You weren't going to pass up the opportunity to experience the kind of love and community your parents always talked about, and maybe find some more like-minded friends. 

Sure, the bands this year weren't the kind of bands you’d really associate with Woodstock in your head, but they couldn’t be that different from ‘69. Maybe you’d be a part of a new kind of movement, something to better the world. That’s what you wanted most. 

So July 19th of 1999, you piled into your parents' old van-home with a few of your friends, ready to be enlightened and experience what your parents once had. The 35 hour drive was long and grueling but you and your friends didn’t seem the least bit distressed. It would be a long journey, switching drivers every few hours, talking about the excitement ahead, and what you all expected out of the weekend.

━

Once in the venue, you realize it’s an old air force base. There are no flowers, little to no healthy grass, and a LOT of people. You try not to let that bother you too much, it’s just the venue. It doesn’t mean the people and experience are going to be any less fulfilling.

You and your friends quickly find a spot to pitch the small tents you brought and begin to walk around to get a feel for the weekend ahead.

Navigating between people, with your best friend Avery in toe, hunt for the bathrooms and vendor area so you would be able to find them quickly later.

“I can’t believe we're actually here. Like really here.” She says, smiling wider than you’ve ever seen her smile before.

“Me either, honestly. I know he’s not until the last day, but I am so excited for Willie Nelson, it’s going to be so good!” You reply, trying to politely push your way through the throngs of people ahead of you.

“Yeah, but Korn is tonight. That’s going to be absolutely killer.” Avery says, silently thanking you as you reach your hand back to hold hers so you don’t lose each other.

Avery didn’t grow up like you did. She was a lot more “city”. She was more into rock music and was most excited for Korn and Metallica, and although you shared the same values in humanity, you showed it a bit differently. 

She liked loud and proud activism. You liked peaceful yet impactful activism. But at the end of the day, as long as you were fighting for the same thing, did any of it really matter? As long as positive change was made, who cares if you hugged it out or screamed into the faces of oppressors. 

━

You and your friends smoke a joint or two and sit on the outskirts of the large crowd for most of the concerts throughout the first day. Avery is hellbent on pushing herself as much to the front as she can for Korn, and she's taking you with her.

The set change is about 20 minutes, and the crowd separates a bit, making it easier to move forward, but it's still a pretty tight squeeze. Avery holds your hand so tight you think she may break your wrist. 

You manage to get pretty close to the front, maybe 10 or 15 people ahead of you by the time you see Jonathan Davis enter the stage. Avery freezes, wide eyes on him, she screams. 

You quickly put your hand in hers, knowing keeping track of your friend is your only goal for the entire set. You didn’t know much of Korn’s music anyway, just a few songs she’d played for you over the course of your friendship. 

The show goes on, and the crowd is getting rowdy. Mosh pits opening in every corner, people screaming and throwing things, and it’s not necessarily bad, you just aren’t ready for it. 

A small pit opens right next to you and you see Avery get excited, she smirks, and before you have a second to say anything, she runs into the pit. For the few minutes she’s moshing, you see her body multiple grown men and you breathe a sigh of relief. You know she can handle herself, but these people are far more aggressive than you had expected. 

As the set comes to a close, you can feel the energy and buzz of the audience. It’s much more abrasive and driven than you can handle, but there's no way to get out of this crowd easily, so you and Avery stay put, arms intertwined to keep together.

The next band is newer. They’ve been around for a few years but had just signed onto a label, and this is probably the biggest show they’ve ever played. You’ve heard of them from Avery before, she had seen them once before in a much smaller venue, maybe 50 people, and she said they were “pretty okay”. 

An announcer comes out onto the stage, grabbing a microphone and yelling.

“How incredible was THAT, you guys?” He yells, earning cheers and excitement from everyone around you.

“Hope you all saved some energy for this next group. They're new on the scene and ready to rock. Everybody, this is Corroded Coffin!” He yells again as the 4 members come out and you’re frozen as the lead singer hits centerstage. 

If he’s nervous, you can’t tell. You take in his appearance completely. From his ripped jeans and battle vest, to his long curly hair. 

Eddie Munson, although you don’t know his name yet, is the prettiest man you’ve ever seen.

[lediableblanc-amoureuxdechats]

Sense and Other Specific Headcanons

What does your muse smell like?

Shea butter, black soap, leather, the vaguest hint of expensive tobacco, Maison Margiela Replica Jazz Club/Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille/Blu Atlas Atlantis (the scent depends on the day and what he's doing). Lingering scent of food seasoning if he was just cooking.

What does your muse’s hands feel like?

While well moisturized and soft with immaculately maintained fingernails kept short and well rounded, there is still somewhat noticable scarring on the palms from early explosions he didn't intend to make. It is not so pronounced as to be shocking upon contact but it isn't completely smooth either.

What does your muse usually eat in a day?

It really depends on the day. Usually breakfast consists of some type of protein and carb combo, his preference being some type of skillet and beignets with coffee. Lunch may end up being skipped with how busy he is, not that he's going to admit that to anyone. But if he is eating it's likely to be something easily carried on his person like a sandwich. Dinner is often his own cooking, dirty rice, jambalaya, gumbo- something he was able to make a lot of, freeze a portion of, and not have to make daily especially on days he's too tired to cook. But that doesn't stop him from making other cuisine, or occasionally ordering Doordash when he wants some variety.

Does your muse have a good singing voice?

He has a good baritone singing voice, but you're not likely to catch him singing unless you're close.

Does your muse have any bad habits or nervous ticks?

He has quite a few, many of them stemming from ADHD. He's terrible about remaining perfectly still unless it's vital for a job or mission. He is far more comfortable with something in his hands to play with than without. The accent is affected to a degree as part of his persona- yes it's natural, but he absolutely plays it up and uses the third person speak to distance himself from people he doesn't know well. He can speak without it. He depending on the stressor and degree of stress will use nicotine, weed, alcohol, gambling, sex, or a mix thereof as coping mechanisms. The degree and first choice is dependent on where in the timeline he is at. He also falls in love with his whole ass heart at the drop of a hat.

What does your muse usually look like/wear?

Depends on the day. It could be anything from just a tank and gray sweats with a messy bun, to his X-Man uniform with the leather duster, to a dress shirt and jeans, a tux, hoochie daddy shorts and a crop top, a catsuit for less than legal forms of income...nothing. Seriously depends on what he's doing.

Is your muse affectionate? How so?

Extremely affectionate. He really said "I'm taking all the abandonment issues and I'm going to make it so no one can feel like I did that to them". Gifts, lots of physical touch, so many pet names and teasing and spending time with the people he enjoys. He is so extra.

What position does your muse sleep in?

Usually in whatever position that will afford him the ability to jump out of the bed with a weapon in his hand and an exit facing him. Very often that's on his side or stomach with a hand under the pillow or hanging off the bed. This is usually switched up when he's in bed with someone but that doesn't stop him from still being mindful of those things.

Can you hear your muse in the hallway from another room?

Absolutely not. If he doesn't want to be heard, you will not hear him. He's capable of sneaking up on people with heightened hearing. Now if he's purposely making noise as to not startle you, sure. But that's not habit for him and honestly even when requested he forgets because it's so ingrained to not make noise while moving.

Tagged by: @brooklynislandgirl

Tagging: feed my curiosity y'all

[sularis]

TW/CW // very detailed descriptions of drug abuse, death/suicide, insinuation of SA and DA

I happen to find myself in a minimal margin of people that actually see all the wrongs in it. And there aren't a lot of us left.

Throughout my life, I think I'm safe to say I saw everything. Grew up on the least secure street in my city and, if you know something about those, you know just the kind of people you'll meet there. The poorest, the most forgotten by their government kinds of people happen to live in there and I was one of them. And so was my mother and her mother, unfortunately. My grandma ended up there after her husband left them without a house, after his gambling addiction left them penny-less and his alcoholism left him jobless. She couldn't divorce him, so she was forced to raise her seven kids in there and it made her a bitter shell of the person she was always supposed to be.

And there's my mother. As the second eldest, she was made to be a second mother to all of her siblings when hers was busy. She was the only one of her siblings that didn't make it out and that was only because of him. The one that hurt her. She was only fifteen. She gave birth to me when she was sixteen, only because her mother didn't let her abort it. At times I wish she did, for either of us sake. Albeit, it's no use thinking about "what ifs" now. She never blamed me for anything even if she wanted to, I couldn't bring myself to do same myself. She did her best, but living in a place like that, I couldn't be saved from everything.

There is no actual drug that has no drawbacks, they just might not be seen as obvious as others. I have tried a bunch in my life and am still in recovery from few, but even when I saw myself in the mirror, at the peak of my heroine addiction, wasting my life away and spending so much on it, keeping myself from relapsing when trying to fight with the drug was always the hardest thing to get through. Anything before it and after it is pretty easy, especially with a good support system, was easiest thing ever, but trying to recover... I was down to kill someone if it meant that I could get another dose of one thing keeping me alive in the next hour. Every cell in my body was testing me, yearning for more while also yelling at me to stay strong. It really is easier said than done. Once that period of time is past, though, you can only look back at it with a shiver. At least for me it's like that.

That's why I never wanted to do anything with the new drug. The premise is promising, but getting addicted to it sounded always too easy for me. And indeed, it was easy to get addicted to it, I've seen it happen firsthand with my closest friends and I've seen the consequences of trying to cut yourself from it.

When I was twenty-one, past most of my most hardcore addictions and only recreationaly smoking weed from time to time, a friend of mine brought it to my apartment, which I shared with my best friend, Julie, during one of our movie nights we did weekly. He explained what it was and was selling it so hard that a lot of our other friends present took it almost immediately, including her. They tried to talk me into taking it too, but I firmly said I was good with my joint, but they can feel free with explaining the experience to me. Not even five minutes have passed and the drug already kicked in. Everyone that took it described the experience as the "happiness they haven't felt in ages". With tears of happiness in their eyes, my long time friends described how their anxiety suddenly ceased to exist and that they didn't feel trapped at all. It was great to hear friends, who have attempted a few times before, say that the urge is gone, like it never was there. For a moment I even thought that maybe I was wrong, maybe it actually was a miracle in working... Up until they started talking where they can get it from and how much it costed. The price alone freaked me out. A gum pack?! And its such a new thing, it has to be unrestricted too. And when he said that he get it from a dealer that I used to take my addreall from, I made it clear to myself I will never even think of taking it. But Julie immediately asked him for their contact detail.

"I'm having my finals soon, the stress will kill me!" she explained when I tried to stop her "I'll cut it once I'm past them, alright?"

I shouldn't have said alright back to her. For the next month she took the drug every few days during her studying sessions and, as much as I hate to admit it, she was the best version of herself at that time. She was always cheery and happy, she didn't let the work consume her like she would before in stressful situations and even kept the same positive outlook on life when I brought a new boyfriend home. That's how I try to remember her: happy, like never before. Once her finals were past her and she knew she did astonishingly well on them, she kept her word and stopped taking the drug. A few days later, she started feeling something was wrong, right about the time that it was said to stop working. It started with nervous tick attacks out of no where, she could be relaxing to a nice book when suddenly a weird level of anxiety got to her and she had to put it down to physically pull one of her hands away from her arm, because she started gripping it so hard that it really started to hurt. Panic attacks became a daily norm rather quickly after that and they could last for so long that we needed to take her to hospital so they could give her a stress reliever, other than the drug that she got addicted to in the first place. The stress would keep her up at night up until she passed out, just to be awoken five minutes later to a sleep terror. Not even her comforter was able to ease her struggle and very quickly her health started declining to point she couldn't even talk to me or recognize me anymore. A lot of her hair had fallen out, her eyes were constantly the same shade of bloody red, she was way thinner too. And at that point, it's only been a week after she cut the drug off. She vomited constantly, couldn't eat at all and whenever someone tried to talk to her or touch her, she would start shivering and crying. She looked like a skeleton wearing a human bodysuit, but no matter what, I hoped that she could get through this, so long as we would be around her. Me and my boyfriend, that is. I assured her we wouldn't leave her whenever I could, but I suppose it wasn't enough.

I went out with him once, left her unattended. I thought I proofed our apartment enough so she couldn't harm herself, as I've seen her playing with a knife around her wrist recently, but it wasn't good enough it seems. She opened the window. We lived on eighth floor. I didn't see it coming. I should have, but I didn't.

I promised myself to not let anyone I care for touch that drug ever again. I was included in that promise too. I grew to despise it very quickly. But everyone else seemed to love it, so much so that it became legal and even normal for a person to take. We became the weirdos for not wanting to get it instead of my antidepressants. But I couldn't ever not think of the drug and see Julie slowly dying in front of my eyes, because the negative emotions the drug blocked before, came back to her with force she forgot how to deal with. She got used to not have to work around her stress and anxiety, so when she was exposed to them again, she didn't know how to fight them, she didn't remember it. You'd think that just two months without any sadness or anxiety wouldn't be too long to forget it completely, but either it was that easy or the drug also helped to skip the process.

Nevertheless, I needed to move away from the place that brought so many bad memories. We found a pretty nice place for two with my boyfriend and tried our best to move on with life. Which was really hard when no longer than a month after that, he admitted that he's been taking the drug himself. I didn't even notice it because he was taking half a normal dose, so he could still feel negative emotion, just less than normally.

I lost my shit at him. I yelled and insulted him for doing something that has such dangerous consequences for withdrawing. He yelled back that he had it under control and wouldn't ever go as far with it as Julie did. I cried that he betrayed me and I couldn't even look at him in disgust. He growled that it was my fault that he started taking it in the first place, that I was such a downer after Julie's death that it started to rub off on him and that I could only blame myself for that. I told him to leave my house and never return. He slammed the door as a goodbye.

I was in a very dark place afterwards. I lost two closest people to me in such a short amount of time... I couldn't help but feel guilt and regretting every single choice I made up until that point. I shouldn't have invited that friend to our weekly movie nights. I should've been more stubborn in what I was saying when she asked about the dealer. I should've lock all the windows. I should've talked to him about my past with drugs more. I shouldn't have blown up in his face so badly. I should've called and apologised afterwards. It was already done. I couldn't blame them, they probably wouldn't either.

The drug hit mainstream and was as important to people as insulin is to a diabetic, which meant that its price skyrocketed. It was harrowing visiting my mum just to see our street become a graveyard for those who couldn't relearn their coping mechanisms quick enough. She was keeping strong, though, and promised me that she wouldn't take it either, although it was suggested to her before. I was glad to at least have her on my side and stayed with her for a while. It was always comforting to be held in her arms and I really needed that at the time.

It's been around a year since everything took place. I'm holding on, surprisingly, though my friend circle became very sparse. There barely are people who don't take the drug at all left and I learned that trying to befriend someone who uses it regularly, feels like I'm talking to a robot made for the company that sells it. I became an outcast, but that's honestly better than any other option I considered.

My life's been going pretty okay-ish when I suddenly got an invite from my ex. It was a short message asking if we could meet up around 3pm at once our favourite restaurant in the mall. I probably would've dismissed it if not for one detail. It was worded like a cry for help. I tried asking why did he want to meet up like this after a year of no contact, but he simply said that he will explain when we meet face to face. I agreed to meet him.

I arrived a it early just to get accustomed with the place again. I used to avoid it, but now, it felt like a brand new place. He arrived at point 3pm and when he sat down in front of me, I almost didn't recognise him. Back when we used to date, he presented himself like a punk, with coloured hair and piercing everywhere he could possibly put it, but now... He looked like a middle class bachelor that plays tennis biweekly. His face also changed. You could see that his face muscles have been so used to smiling that they naturally curve upwards, even when he wasn't smiling. His eyes, though, they told me everything i needed to know.

"Hello, Sam, it's been a while, haven't it? How have you been?" he asked me politely.

"You... I-I, I've been... alright. I've been alright" I answered trying my best to keep it together "Why... did you ask to meet me, Casper?"

He put on a wide smile in response, trying his best not to make the corners of his mouth shake so much in pain. It was a terrifying scene to look at.

"I just... wanted to... Haha. Crazy story, actually, I was just sitting in our bedroom with my... my fiancee!" he showed me the ring on his finger, his hand was shaky and nails bitten to the shortest they can be before reaching the skin "She was angry...with me. Silly me, I accidentally knocked her makeup brush on the ground, so she... screamed at me... loudly... And then fell asleep!"

"Oh my god" the smile he was wearing just made it more depressing to listen to "Are you... okay? Is that why you wanted to see me?" concern filled my voice and I could see his eyes start to water.

"Hah! Don't worry. She only does that when she's... of the drug... you know the... one. She's, often. Off it. But I... I don't know! I just went on my phone and decided to text you after that, haha. Silly me!" as he finished he took a small box and poured out three tablets of the drug he was very clearly on right now. Without any hesitation he started taking one after another and then pouring another two out of it.

"Wh-wh, ah, C-Cas, hey hey hey!" I grabbed him by the wrist to stop him from taking so many of them at once "Stop! You, y-you can't take this much at once, this is--"

"It's the only way they are able to work now" he cut me off, his voice sounded desperate, the smile was gone of his face "I can't... not... take them. I feel the emotions coming back, I cannot... Sam... Please" he pulled his sleeve up as much as he could to show me the endless bruises and scars he wore in secret. I was horrified. "She does this... when her pills stop working. She only takes them when she has to go out, otherwise... I can't not take them... or I'll feel it all... Sam... help me...."

I was mortified at every single word I heard and even more as I saw him once again become this happy-go-lucky person, once the drug kicked in again. This wouldn't stop if I let him just go. The drug made him numb to her abuse, so he could stay and be happy with her even if all he was was an accessory to her. I couldn't let him be killed because of this drug too, even if it was in a different way.

With tears rolling down my cheeks, I got up and hugged him tightly. Like I used to when we were together.

"Ou, jolly!" even though happy, his voice was shaky "Don't mind if I do, too" he hugged me back, and for a minute I felt like I had him again. When I let go, his face was wet too. He couldn't stop crying "Oh that's... a reaction, surely."

"You're coming with me" I said seriously and took him by his hand.

"Oh! We are we going?" he asked innocently, following as I led him out of the restaurant.

"To safety. Anywhere you can be safe."

Year 2025. A new drug was recently discovered that makes you unable to feel negative emotions for a few days without any drawbacks to your health. It’s easy to produce and costs like a pack of gum. Everyone takes it. But you absolutely don’t want to.

[je-suis-problematique]

*inhales* *exhales* So. Addiction.

Triggering topics below the cut.

We were addicts long before we ever touched street drugs – we've been abusing Klonopin for years before the street drugs came along and it's a medicine that was prescribed to us at age 17 if I'm not mistaken. The body is 26 right now.

I don't know what started it if I'm being completely honest. I think it was instantaneous once we figured out Klonopin gets you high, we just.... started craving it I guess. Chasing after it. Because when we were high on Klonopin it didn't matter that we were victims of CSA and domestic violence, it didn't matter that we were bullied everywhere we went, it didn't matter that we started thinking about death at age 12 or that our closest friend ended up becoming our biggest abuser (besides all the adults in our life). It didn't matter that every waking moment was pure Hell, because when we were high on Klonopin we didn't feel any of that. We didn't feel stressed, anxious, suicidal, triggered, angry, or afraid. We felt.... at peace. Happy, even. Giddy. It made us more social, more bold, less meek, less frightened. For a few hours while the drug was in full effect we weren't a prey animal anymore. And that felt AMAZING. But quite frankly I don't remember when abusing Klonopin became an actual habit or when we went from 0.5 mg to 30 mg per day. It just happened at some point. At some point we became so dependent on Klonopin that whenever we didn't have any on hand we'd feel awful. In the past we'd substitute the pills for booze, and that developed a whole new habit of its own. First it was pills OR drink, then it was pills WITH drink. Weed, too, whenever we could get any. We'd usually pilfer some from our drinking buddies, we'd rarely if ever buy it ourselves, so it wasn't too-too often that we smoked pot, but it would still happen here and there.

It was contained, at first. But then we started day drinking, and then we started going to work high/drunk, and going to important meetings high/drunk, and generally just spending more time being under the influence than we did sober. We'd pop an obscene amount of pills or drink a bottle and a half of vodka every time we felt a vaguely uncomfortable emotion. The slightest inconvenience would become a good enough reason to get wasted – we just couldn't cope with life sober. The fact that we were in an abusive/toxic relationship at the time was not helping, either. It was abusive/toxic on both sides in the sense that we hurt them and they hurt us but that's exactly it, SOMEBODY was ALWAYS getting hurt, and that would be considered a normal Tuesday morning. Just existing at home felt as if we are being chased by tigers at all times. It was stressful, it was bad, and it lasted for literal years, so, we had a reason to use every single day. And that's exactly what we did. And try as we might to hide it from our partner system, you can't really hide the stench of alcohol or the fact you slur your words when you speak and can't type coherently. They knew. And it made our relationship with them worse than it already was since it became the subject of many arguments and fights but no matter how much we fought, we didn't even THINK about quitting. We didn't really want to.

The decision to start using street drugs was mine and I made it while high off my ass on Klonopin already. It was the middle of a Thursday night and I felt like the Klonopin high was not enough, I needed something stronger to feel satisfied. So I downloaded Telegram, which is where most people in my city get their drugs from, and blindly searched for someone who sells that sort of stuff. I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, I've never spoken with dealers before, I literally just typed the word "Cocaine" into the search bar to find some groups that I immediately joined without thinking before starting to chat people up. Somehow that worked though, because several verifications that I'm not a cop later, I had 2 grams of Cocaine in my hands. I did a couple of lines, got the high I wanted, felt good about myself.... And then reality hit me like a bus. I just impulsively purchased Cocaine from some dude I found on Telegram. It TERRIFIED me, to think I reached a new personal low. So I called my social worker in the middle of the night, still high mind you, and told him everything. The next day he had me locked up in a psych ward.

I was in the hospital for 3 weeks before I was discharged and during that time, the fear I had about what I'd done.... dissipated. I made peace with what happened and actually thought of buying from that dealer AGAIN, because I liked the Cocaine high. I was hooked. And the moment I returned home I just went berserk. I bought a little bit of everything, eager to try every flavor of high there is. We still had money at the time so funds weren't an issue and honestly I wasn't even thinking about going broke when I bought pretty much everything the dealer had to offer and it was EXPENSIVE. THOUSANDS of NIS went down the drain while I was shopping around for the best high, TENS OF THOUSANDS even. I even made him get me some Cyanide because I was beginning to plan what I thought would be the "perfect" suicide one of those coming days. Soon enough I was completely broke so I started taking loan after loan after loan. Our debt to the bank alone stands at 100K NIS at the moment, all thanks to our drug habit. Good thing we managed to get a lawyer for that. But anyway.... Fentanyl was it.

I didn't really like anything I bought until my dealer suggested I try smoking Fentanyl so I did, and as I later found out from fellow addicts in rehab months later, I overdosed on it that night and passed out. It's a miracle I woke back up at all but as you've probably learned by now my self-preservation skills are shit so I tried it again. And again. And again and again, and kept overdosing on it, again and again, until I learned the right way and the right dose to smoke per-use. Fentanyl was like a miracle drug for me because it did everything Klonopin did only better. Stronger. So I kept buying more and I kept using it, hiding it from everyone except for two friends. The only friends I have, really. THEY knew everything, but my social worker didn't, my doctors didn't, my now-ex didn't. I mean, my ex probably GUESSED or ASSUMED given my history but I don't think I acted that weird or anything while being on Fentanyl. It made me calm and elevated my mood but that's about it, really. I was still able to function, still able to speak and type. I didn't sway or stumble when I walked and I was mostly alert. So I don't really know if they knew at the early stages.

I tried to quit once before the big detox. I was okay at first but once the withdrawal symptoms hit me I broke and bought more drugs. It took me another while to try again but the second time I went with the detox 'till the end. I even kept the hospital blanket I was given when my social worker took me to the ER as a sort of reminder of the Hell I've been through to quit Fentanyl. The detox was.... traumatizing, to say the least. Imagine you're experiencing both hot and cold flashes at the same time, you're sweating profusely, you're shaking like a leaf for no reason, you vomit everything that you try to ingest to the point you can't even keep water down, you're shitting yourself, everything hurts, you're blacking out, AND you have to go through all of this alone at the ER for hours where the doctors and nurses mostly ignore you because your country's at war and the injured soldiers are more important (and your social worker just left you there with 15% battery on your phone). Yep. I was on the phone with my friends half the time for moral support just crying and sobbing repeating the phrases "I'm scared" and "I want to die" like a broken record whenever I wasn't busy puking. I was exhausted when I got back home the same night but still couldn't fall asleep so I just watched animated films until morning came.

We stayed clean for 2 months after the detox but Zed, God bless her, relapsed and dragged the rest of the system back down into drug use. I avoided the front like the plague knowing this though I won't lie, I may have partook in it too once or twice myself and just don't remember I did, even after making my big promises not to touch drugs again and all. I may have snorted a powder or taken a pill but I managed to MOSTLY stay clean, personally speaking. Right now we are about a month clean from all substances and we're managing to keep it up, mostly because we owe our dealer 4K NIS and just can't afford to buy more drugs even if we wanted to. We've decided to block him and not pay the debt so if we disappear one day we've probably been murdered or something.✌️Just a heads up. I'll probably talk about our time in rehab in a separate post since this one is already long enough as it is, but.... just know that I won't have anything positive to say about that experience either. If you've read the whole thing then, honestly, thank you for taking the time to read about our journey. It means a lot, especially when we feel so isolated as of late. Cheers to you.

– Chris

[yyxgin]

lee felix’s guide to hating you

— ♡ FIC BANNER MADE BY THE AMAZING @chogiwow !!

pairing: lee felix x fem!reader genre: college au, tutor au ; fluff, angst, slice of life, slow burn word count: 21 k warnings: mentions of alcohol, mention of weed, swearing, bad family relationships

a/n: this story is very briefly inspired by jaemin’s drama ‘the way i hate you’ :) also this idea has been in my mind for such a long time, so i’m happy i finally managed to write it. this is also my longest fic so far, i hope it’s worth it. uhh yea enjoy <3

taglist: @feyregels​ @missskzbiased​ @hyunyin​ @koishua​ @crispy-chan​ @rindomo​ @soulssung​ @thatrandomoneinthecorner​ @90shermione​ @chogiwow​ @creatichee​ @freckledberries​ @hyunnies-stars​ 

There’s a list of things Lee Felix knew before applying for college-- and that is: 1) he really, desperately needs a degree for his grandparents to value him as an equal adult, 2) college in young adult movies seems like fun and partying and alcohol really does sound like his wettest dream, 3) he doesn’t need to work for another 4 years, which is fun and 5) he is really, horribly bad at studying.

Here’s a list of things Lee Felix, however, did not know before applying for college, and even though it’s fairly shorter, it hits you in the guts deeper, and that is: 1) studying for college means never ending chapters of insomnia and 2) he is always going to feel like the second choice for everyone. 

You see, girls don’t like Felix that much. Well, that’s a lie-- girls do go after him, tell him he’s cute and his freckles are adorable, but that’s only after they find out there’s no use in chasing after his best friend Han Jisung when he gets himself a new significant other. Boys don’t go after Felix either. Why, you may ask? Read the paragraph over again-- just change the word girls to the word boys. It’s as simple as that. He’s always the second choice, the back-up plan. It feels silly to drag his grandma into this, really, but the truth is, he’s a second choice in every aspect of his life, and that, too, includes his big (and still growing) family that treats him as something less than a human just because of the fact that his grades aren’t as good as his cousin’s are and he doesn’t have a degree in biological science, although he’s too young for that and his college years only started. It’s hard, living in his shoes.

What is Felix, however, really good at? 

Cheating.

Yeah, well, you see-- it’s not funny to be the outcast of the smart Lee family and it’s also not enetaining in the slightest to be the only single one at family gatherings (read as: weddings, because every single one of his relatives decided to fuck up their life with marriage in the past three years for some unknown reason). So Felix does what he’s the best at, and that is going by his favorite life motto: fake it ‘til you make it. 

He cheats on every single one of his exams and believe me when I tell you he’s the top of the class just because he’s the best cheater in town. Good cheating techniques equal good grades and suddenly, Felix’s life seems much brighter when he spends his sleepless nights with creating cheat sheets instead of studying and copying essays written in korean, translating them to english and submitting them as his own because no one will ever notice-- his degree is within the reach of his hand and he can already feel all the grandmas of the family clapping in joy, maybe even wiping away a stray tear on his graduation ceremony in a few years with bouquets of flowers in their hands and expensive watches in their gift bags, ready to welcome him back into the family.. 

What he doesn’t expect, though, is the cute little saying of ‘every lie has short legs’ he swears he heard sometimes in his linguistic class before, coming to life right in front of his eyes as the professor of his Biology class makes him the assigned tutor of the sweet Y/N Y/L/N, because, well, he clearly doesn’t know anything-- what’s he supposed to tutor now? 

The best cheating techniques?

The freckled boy sitting in front of you looks at you with furrowed brows and you wonder what’s the matter with him. Is there something on your face? Are you not dressed appropriately for the occasion? I mean, it’s only a tutoring session, so you didn’t put that much effort into it, but judging from the casual outfit enveloping his body, he didn’t really try to look fancy either. So what was it with him that made him stare you down as if you had horns on your head?

“Shall we start?” he asks once he’s done staring, voice sounding determined. You wonder if he sees the hints of nervousness on your face and if he notices the way you shrink in your seat in the mention of biology, but you guess he doesn’t know you that well to know that you fear the subject as much as you fear dying. 

“Yeah, sure,” you nod, scooting closer to the edge of your seat so you’re not so far away from the table. Felix-- your new biology tutor-- is sitting opposite of you and it’s quite difficult to read the text book once it’s upside down, but you don’t dare to mention it to him for a reason that’s unknown to you as well. It’s like you don’t want to overstep any invisible boundary on your first tutoring session, and telling the person that is teaching you to turn around the text book so you can actually see and learn something seems to be one of the taboos in your eyes. 

You take a quick glance at the waiter that just stopped next to your booth and smile, opening up your mouth to order yourself a meal. “Can I get you anything else?” she asks.

“No-” Felix offers her with a shy smile, but you cut him off with a voice a little higher in the octaves, not wanting your tutor coming in between you and reaching your biggest goal you’ve set for yourself.

“Actually, yes. Could I please get the chicken wings? With fries?” you ask, trying to look as innocent as you can, smiling at her in politeness. You ignore the confused look Lee Felix is offering you from the other side of the table. You mentally send him a signal to tell him to mind his own business, watching the waitress leave with a nod and a polite smile. 

“Okay, now we can start,” you nod at him and focus all your attention to the boy with sandy hair in front of you.

“O...kay?” he answers, obviously trying to bat away his rising confusion, because ordering yourself chicken wings on your tutoring session is prohibited now, apparently. “So,” he starts, sighing and scratching the back of his neck, “what do you not understand from this section?” 

You nervously chew on the bottom of your lip. Well, that’s a sweet question, you think. It would have been much sweeter and much easier to answer, though, if you understood at least a bit from the things you’re supposed to know. You went to university with the urge to prove something to yourself, but the only thing you’re proving to yourself right now is the fact that you are actually kind of useless, when it comes to biology.

“Just like the… whole thing, actually,” you nod, trying not to look as defeated as you feel and also trying not to burst out in a manic laugh as you always do when you feel slightly nervous about anything.

“Cool, cool, yeah,” he nods, taking a deep breath in, turning the textbook around and sighing, “I don’t think I can help you with that.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” you ask, confused. 

Lee Felix is the top of the grade. He is the best at biology, he is the best at chemistry, he is the best at his farmacy class. You’re sure he’ll be a fine biochemist in a few years, when his college times are over. Lee Felix is the smartest boy in your biology class and you are, coincidentally, quite the opposite on this spectrum. Which is exactly why your teacher managed to make Felix tutor you in his free time. You weren’t surprised at the fact that the blonde boy agreed to this-- he was quite the sweetheart, really. All the girls in your class fawned upon the way his freckles shined in the sunlight and the way he opened the doors for older professors. He was quite the boy you would want to introduce to your parents. Not quite the one every girl goes after, but the one that you would want to settle down with after your college years are over.

So why is he, the sweet, but also smart boy that agreed to tutor you, now telling you he can’t help you?

“It’s just.. I’m not really good at this section, I mean-”

“Felix, you’re the top of the class. Of course you’re good at this section.” you mumble, gazing deep into his eyes, trying to search for an answer.

“I-” he says and takes a sharp breath in, stopping himself in continuing his train of thought and just opting to shrug, not giving you a proper response either.

You feel like someone just punched you in the gut, and that’s when you realise-- here it is again. Another person that doesn’t believe in you-- another person that needs proving that you really can do it, you just need a little push. You can see it in his eyes that he doesn’t think you’re smart or bright enough to pass the exams, you’re not good enough to get good grades. It’s nothing new to you, but it still haunts you just the same.

“Is it because you know I can’t do it?” you bluntly ask, sighing. 

“No! No, no, I never said that-” he says, almost panicking with the way his hands fly into the air hurriedly, waving them around as if it was meant to calm you down. 

“You’re acting like it, though. I promise I’m not stupid- well, maybe I am, but-”

“You’re not stupid! It’s me! I’m the stupid one here.” he says, effectively silencing you with his words as you stare at him, dumbfounded. He’s joking, right?

“How can you be stupid when you get only the best grades? Felix, if you just don’t want to waste your time here, tell me, but don’t try to hide behind poor excuses.” you roll your eyes, feeling frustrated at the boy’s antics. Does he really think you’re that stupid that you can’t see right through his lies?

“I cheat.”

You blink a few times as if to reset your brain, gazing at him with pure confusion written in your orbs. He cheats? No. That’s a lie. A person as good at biology as Felix can’t cheat. All his exams are on 100% and he never makes any mistakes. He’s the epitome of the smart kid. The little Einstein. The prodigy. There’s no way it’s all cheating.

“No.” you shake your head in disapproval. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying! Look, I genuinely, really want to help you. I really do. The thing is, though, I don’t know how to study. I make cheat sheets and I use them at every exam and every test, that’s why everyone thinks I���m super smart, but that is really not the case,” he shakes his head, staring into your eyes with his wide open in honesty, wanting you-- no,-- needing you to understand. “I would tutor you if I could, really, but I just don’t know how to,” he sighs finally, acting like he’s just given birth or ran a marathon, exhaustion written all over his face.

“So why did you offer to tutor me, then?” you ask.

He takes a moment for himself to collect his thoughts, before he speaks up again. “Well, I didn’t really want to get caught. You see, I would never turn my back to anyone. Really. So I thought I could at least try to learn something? So I could help you? But I failed, as always, so I’m just coming clean in front of you and you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

The moment the last sentence leaves his mouth, you notice the apparent fear in his eyes, realising that he just shared an information with you that nobody really knows. It’s a secret he’s been hiding and keeping from everyone just to appear as the smartest one-- fooling everyone, including you. You feel even more stupid now, under his gaze. You feel played. You came to the tutoring, hoping to finally get a grip, when all you get is a person that is stepping all over the sandcastle of your fragile dreams, kicking every little piece of sand away with his lies. You know you shouldn’t feel so invested in this. You shouldn’t feel so hurt. But somehow, you still do. 

“So you just told me you are lying to everyone and cheating on tests and you want me to keep it a secret from everyone?” you ask in disbelief.

“Yes.” he nods, eyes hopeful. He’s been lying for the last year as if his life was depending on it and now he wants you to do the same-- keep quiet in front of everyone.

“And what do I do when the professor asks me why I’m not getting any better? Huh? Ever thought of that?” you leash out, harshly chewing on your bottom lip in nerves. “I want to pass. And I want to do it fair and square.” you get out in between your teeth.

“I didn’t… I didn’t think of that yet, but-”

“Leave.” you say, looking him sternly into his eyes.

“What do you mean, leave?”

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. And you’re clearly not here to teach me anything, so you can just take your things and leave.” you spit out, crossing your hands over your chest.

“You leave, then,” he mutters, looking rather offended. You’re not sure why he’s the one hurt right now, but you guess that’s just how men and their egos are, there’s nothing more under his hurt eyes and shattered self-esteem.

“I ordered food, I’m not leaving.” you calmly respond. Once you say this, you’re reminded of the little quest you made for yourself. Never once did you feel silly for taking it so seriously in front of your other friends, but now, in front of Lee Felix with freckled dusted cheeks, you feel almost invisible as you realise why you even ordered the chicken wings and how you’re going to write a yelp review about them later.

Well, someone has to do it, and if not you, then who will, right? It’s the only valid way to find out who makes the best chicken wings in the town and not even your traitor-tutor is going to stop you now, when your list is only getting shorter and shorter. 

He stares at you for a few moments, dumbfounded, before he sighs and accepts his defeat. “Okay, I’ll just have to text my roommate to pick me up,” he admits.

You nod, just in time the server comes back with your food, offering her a welcoming smile. “Fine. But don’t even think of talking to me from now on. I’m not interested in more lies,” you spit at him, scowling as you take a look at the plate of chicken wings sitting in front of you in their full glory. You sense a very bad review, judging from the way the chicken wings look nothing like wings, rather full on small chickens dipped in oil, but dive in nonetheless. 

“Why do you have to be so dramatic?” he asks, voice coated in disbelief.

“Because I was scammed!” you yell out, mouth full of chicken, not caring a second about the way you might look in the boy’s eyes. Yes, you could have at least swallowed before speaking to him, but did you do it? No. No, you didn’t. 

“Oh come on-”

“Don’t even try arguing with me!” you spit at him-- quite glad that this time, it’s not literal-- and huff out in annoyance, when the door opens and a short boy with a bucket hat on steps into the bistro, the red fabric of the seats of the booths contrasting with his shoes in a way that makes you feel captivated, your eyes refusing to tear themselves away from him. 

The boy is taking quick steps to your booth and you almost choke on your chicken wings as you admire his full glory-- tanned skin and car keys in his hand, but his eyes meet the boy sitting opposite of you and that’s when everything clicks. This is not the boy of your dreams, this is Han Jisung. Your tutor’s best friend and roommate-- also known as the resident heartbreaker. You shouldn’t feel weak in your knees when you look at him, but that’s exactly what happens and you won’t feel ashamed about it. Well, not now, at least. In a few hours when you’re lying in your bed? Maybe. But I’ll tell you then.

“Yo, dude, I texted you like five minutes ago that I’m waiting for you outside, what are you still doing here?” he asks, furrowing his brows at his roommate and slowly moving his eyes to you, scanning you up and down, leaving your heart to do the stupid cartwheel you haven’t felt since, like, middle school. 

“We were in the middle of an argument, so I didn’t hear my phone ring.” Felix answers, glaring at you with spiteful eyes. You almost prepare to kill him with yours, but you focus on wiping the oil from the corner of your mouth and smiling heavenly, trying to look like a lady in front of your new visitor.

“Was Felix being absolutely unbearable again?” he asks you, surprising you with his subtle way of engaging you into the conversation.

You giggle, rolling your eyes slightly. “Yeah. You know him too well, don’t you?”

“Unfortunately,” he admits, looking defeated, when he moves his eyes to Felix, looking rather sulky on the red seat in front of you as you chat with his roommate, when Jisung’s tone of voice changes into a more worried one, speaking up again, “does she… did you…?”

“Yeah,” Felix just nods. 

Jisung sighs, sitting down next to his roommate, pushing him a little so he has more space in the booth. “What are you supposed to tutor her anyway?” he asks.

“Biology,” you mumble sooner than Felix gets the chance to speak up, motioning to the textbook still sitting at the table in front of you. 

The boy takes a look at the papers, his face changing from a focused one to a one more lighter, his eyes scanning the papers with ease. You notice his mouth moving a little as he reads the words under his breath, catching yourself from staring when you feel Felix’s eyes burning into the crown of your head, snapping you back to reality. 

“You know… maybe I could help you with that.” he says, looking like a business offering you a deal that you’re sure involves something illegal. He looks like a focused squirrel with his cheeks puffed out a little in what you sense is pride, something in his eyes glowing as you nervously chew on your bottom lip.

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course. I’m actually quite good at biology, to be honest. Well, not as much as Felix over here-” he jokes, scowling when the blonde boy punches his arm, “but I think I could tutor you a thing or two.”

“What’s the catch?” you ask, nervously watching him. Something in his composure is telling you he’ll want something in return, but you don’t know what yet. You’re quite sure you’ll sell your soul for the adorable boy in front of you if he asked you to, but it never hurts to ask beforehand, right? 

“What do you mean, what’s the catch?”

“Like… what do you want in return?” you muse out, taking a bite of a fry, noticing how soggy it feels under your teeth.

“Woah, you spend 15 minutes with Felix and you already think there’s something illegal behind everything? I’ll let you know, I’m better than that.” he scoffs. “I’m just doing it because I see how miserable you are. And I also don’t want you to tell on my buddie over here.” he adds, smiling warmly.

You take notice of the way Felix’s eyes grow twice their size and how Jisung’s knee lightly bumps into his under the table. It’s subtle, but you think that maybe this is when you fully fell for the short boy in front of you-- when he offered to save his best friend’s ass by helping out a lost girl with biology. And who are you to say no now? I mean, you need the tutoring nonetheless. Who cares if the boy tutoring you is someone else? Maybe it’s even more appealing to you this way, but you’ll never admit that out loud.

“Okay then, sure.” you nod, grinning from ear to ear, feeling satisfied.

“Great. Now, give me half the fries and we can arrange our next tutoring session,” he smiles, “oh, and I’m Han Jisung, by the way.”

He winks. 

You should be disturbed, but strangely, you’re not. You grin back at him, offering him the soggy fries you’re sure you’re going to give a really bad review in the evening, watching his composure change into a more laid-back one, engaging you in a conversation and slunging an arm around his best friend’s shoulders.

Lee Felix remains silent. He feels it once again-- he feels the loneliness of being left out. 

And he’s sure it won’t be the last time.

Lee Felix knows damn well how it feels to be the third wheel. He’s hung out with Jisung and his potential love interests multiple times, he’s even been on double dates with the said male, yet, he always somehow ends up being left out. So why does it still feel the same? Why does he still feel that restless feeling in his stomach, the emptiness in his chest, just like the first time? I guess you never get used to some things and emotions are one of them. No matter how much you argue that you know a feeling so well it doesn’t even surprise you anymore, it still hurts the same. That’s funny about emotions. Sometimes, they can’t even make you numb.

“Hurry up dude, the bistro closes in an hour and half!” Jisung rushes the taller male (not tall, just taller. Don’t misunderstand.) with his car keys in his hand, twirling them around his fingers in a nervous manner. Felix notices his roommate has put some effort into his outfit today, considering the lemon supreme shirt enveloping his body that he saves only for special occasions, yet, Felix doesn’t realise why he had to put it on when they’re literally just going out to eat some soggy fries in the bistro close to their house. He doesn’t ask, though. He doesn’t want the car key stuck in his forehead. He also doesn’t know why they have to rush so much, since they have an hour and half left before they close, but again, he doesn’t dare to say it out loud. 

Felix quickly puts his shoes on and rolls his eyes at his roommate. “I’m ready,” he announces.

Jisung swiftly takes a bottle of cologne from the table in their small hall (it’s so small they don’t even have a mirror in it, because there was no use in taking mirror selfies when all you can see on the picture is your phone case due to the fact that the room is too narrow for you to move further away) and sprays his body wit hit, efficiently confusing his roommate. “You wanna smell great for the waiter there? Because from what I remember, he was a stoner-”

“Oh, shut up. You never know when you’re gonna meet someone cute, am I right?” he asks, grinning from ear to ear like a cat, taking his backpack with him and opening the front door, “gotta look and smell presentable at all times.”

Felix wonders if this is why everyone always goes after his best friend. 

No, he thinks, it cannot be the cloud of cologne hanging around his body. It’s heavy and it makes Felix cough a little, but he tries to mask it, because he’s fairly sure Jisung won’t pay for his fries today if he doesn’t. And Felix is a simple man-- if he can get something for free, he will do anything to achieve it.

They arrive at the place in a few minutes and Felix can already feel his mouth watering at the thought of the salty fries and cheeseburger he’s going to get himself, joyfully skipping inside the bistro and waiting in the queue. Jisung follows him, standing next to him, efficiently covering the smell of the oil and all the good things on this earth-- read as fast food-- making Felix scowl. The boy behind the register, is, in fact, Na Jaemin-- the resident frat boy. Felix’s heard all about him from the girls staying at the dorms and to be honest, he’s quite glad he doesn’t have to live the stories of getting caught with weed at Jaemin's party on his own. That, and the fact that hot water runs in his apartment. Na Jemin might have the weed, but he surely doesn’t have that in his college dorm room. 

“Three milkshakes, two large fries, chicken wings and a cheeseburger, please.” Jisung orders, confusing Felix in one sentence. Since when is his best friend a bottomless pot for food? Is he really going to eat all of that?

“Coming right at you. Anything else?” Jaemin asks, voice considerate and polite, still turned on his customer service mode, even though Felix is sure him and Jisung have had shared a joint or two on one of his parties before.

“No, that’s all. Thanks, man,” Jisung answers, leaving with Felix right behind him. 

“Who’s gonna eat all of that? I hope you know you’re paying, and before you protest, yes, I did purposefully leave my wallet at home-” he rambles, still moving, when his train of thought is cut off by a person in his view.

You are sitting there in your full glory, smiling brightly at the boys approaching you. You’re dressed nicely, he notices-- you look like you put some effort into what you’re wearing. You don’t look that much different, but he can still see the slight changes you made to look neat. You’re glowing, Felix notices. You look excited.

“Hi, Y/N,” Jisung greets, taking a seat opposite of you. He doesn’t even give Felix an answer, he doesn’t even give him an explanation. He’s left there only to take a seat next to his roommate after collecting his thoughts, chewing on his bottom lip.

The conversation never moves his way. He is silenced. Felix wonders why he was even invited, watching the people behind the window laughing with their friends, happy to order some tasty food and have fun on this Thursday evening. He watches his friend and his classmate have fun-- well, as much fun as a tutoring session could be. You’re laughing at every single one of Jisung’s jokes and he swears Jisung’s eyes never leave your face, even when he’s explaining something to you. He wonders why Jisung didn’t tell him where they’re going. He wonders why he even had to come.

Lee Felix knows how third-wheeling feels. Yet, it still makes his little foolish heart hurt just the same every time.

You nervously chew on your bottom lip, cracking your knuckles in a habit your friends always scream at you for, waiting for your tutor-- well, he’s not really your tutor anymore-- to appear in the bistro on the other side of the town. You admire the decorations for a while, liking the way it looks modern here and the purple led lights make the whole place look aesthetic. You can already imagine multiple college kids going here and taking instagram pictures to look cool. It’s nice and you’ll definitely include it in your yelp review-- it won’t make it more stars, though, if the chicken wings don’t taste like heaven.

You tug on the sleeves on your hoodie, as if you were trying to make yourself disappear. I mean, you do feel embarrassing. You feel pathetic that it had to come down to this, but you guess desperate times call for desperate solutions. You’re not here to look put-together anymore. You’re going to show him your full glory and although you regret it a little, you still have a little spark of hope in you that Han Jisung-- the boy you, admittedly, were crashing on real hard right now, won’t find out.

Felix comes into the bistro in his full VSCO boy glory, as always. He is wearing a jean jacket and his freckled cheeks are dusted pink, you’d almost think he’s blushing all the time. He doesn’t quite fit the aesthetics of this futuristic looking bistro, you notice. The retro places you’ve been to so far fit him much more-- his sandy hair contrasted well with the yellow walls and red booths. It was starting to get a little repetitive, though, you must admit.

“Hi,” he greets you as he takes his seat, smiling at you with what you can only describe as a feeling of full uncomfort. You wonder what made him feel this way about you, but you don’t dare to think of it twice as you focus on the main quest of the day-- forcing him to teach you his ways.

“Hello,” you smile. 

Felix notices how natural you look-- it feels like now is the first time he’s seeing you in your full glory. You aren’t wearing your neat clothes for a meeting with Jisung and you’re not too casual like you were at your first ‘tutoring session’ either-- you’re just you. The way he doesn’t even see you in classes. He likes the fact that no one else than him can see you like this-- he likes the fact that Jisung is nowhere around, yet, he wonders why is that, exactly, since the two of you seemed to be hitting it off quite well so far.

Felix hasn’t been with Jisung when he last tutored you. He figured there’s no use, he’s going to get ignored all the time anyway. 

“So… what’s the matter?” he asks, folding his hands into his lap. He dares to take a quick look at you, noticing your worn-out shirt and dark circles under your eyes, worry washing over him. Did something happen? Was Jisung a jerk to you? 

“Well, I sort-of have a little problem,” you mumble out, tearing your gaze away from him. You seem shy for the first time in front of him and he wonders why. He doesn’t understand your sudden change of behaviour. This isn’t the you he’s used to. “Well, turns out, I am really stupid.” you propose, leaving Felix to gaze at you in surprise.

He chuckles. You swiftly look up at him with piercing eyes telling him to stop, and he almost does, but your face looks too adorable when it’s scrunched up like that, so he only giggles once more. “You’re not stupid.”

“I am!” you whine out, finally letting your whole shy facade fall, exposing the true you once again right in front of Felix’s eyes-- direct and fierceful. “Even Jisung’s tutoring isn’t helping and I feel so stupid with him! And I don’t want him to think that I’m stupid, even though I am, and I just… I can’t pass my exams like this, so I need your help.” you say, eyes big, looking almost pleading.

“And I am supposed to help… how? Exactly?” The confusion is written all over his face, and it almost makes you frustrated. You knew he must be smart, if his cheating has been so good he’s getting through college with straight As, but really, is he really that smart if he can’t read in between the lines?

“Help me cheat.” you quickly get out, biting down on your lower lip just as you say it, as if you were regretting it.

The silence that overtakes the two of you feels like it’s slowly going to eat you up alive, angrily biting into your skin. It feels heavy and suffocating, your palms sweating as you watch Felix blink at you with mouth agape, breathing in and out. You pray for him to make up his mind soon, or else you’re going to run out of the bistro without a yelp review, tearing the skin of your cuticles as you see him blink quickly a few times before shaking his head in disbelief, clearing his storage.

“You want me to help you cheat?” he asks for clarification, furrowing his brows at you.

“That’s correct.” you nod, chewing on the inside of your cheek. You haven’t been this nervous since you took your college entrance exams, and that shows a lot, considering you used to say that has been the most difficult experience of your life so far.

“Because Jisung…. isn’t tutoring you well enough?” he asks again, making you roll your eyes in annoyance.

“Hey, don’t put the blame on Jisung! I’m just stupid, that’s all.” you say, looking down into your lap, because his gaze suddenly feels like he’s judging you and you really don’t feel like maintaining eye contact with him when you’re under pressure.

“If you don’t stop saying that, I will kick you.”

“You wouldn’t dare-”

“I would and I will-”

“Okay, but is that a yes, then?” you look up at him with hopeful eyes, resembling a puppy just a little too much, and, well, Felix can’t just reject you now, can he?

“I.. guess…?” he says, watching your face light up in joy as you clap a few times in excitement. 

“Great! Can we start today? We have to start today! I brought my text books and papers and sharpies and-” you are cut off by Felix’s face lighting up at the sight of you, his eyes looking warm and admiring. You quickly shake away the excitement before it goes too far and you actually go to hug him or something, taking a deep breath in and out to calm yourself down.

Just in that moment, the server appears with two servings of chicken wings and two large fries, making Felix look at you in confusion. 

“I ordered you food, since I thought we’ll stick around for a while..” you mumble, seeing him eagerly nod and take one fry into his hand, biting down on it with a face full of pleasure. 

“Perfect. Just let me eat a few of these and we can get right into work, I promise,” he mutters with a mouth full of food, prompting you to take a bite yourself. It doesn’t taste the worst-- the bistro you went to after prom last year was definitely worse than this, but still, you don’t think Felix’s face quite resembles how the food tastes. He looks as if the Queen of England made it. In reality, it’s just a soggy fry. 

“Why do you always order the same thing? Aren’t you tired of eating the same thing over and over again?” he asks suddenly, examining your face with real interest. No one’s ever noticed your eating habits before, just shrugging off what you order every single time. Your little fast food experiment has been a secret so far, even though it wasn’t that hard to cover it up-- nobody really cared until now. 

You feel blush creeping on your cheeks as you shrug, feeling a little embarrassed for like the hundredth time today, when you reply to the boy in front of you. You know his secret, so it only feels valid for him to know yours. “I have this experiment… like, I try chicken wings and fries at every single bistro, restaurant and fast food chain in the town to find out which one’s the best…” you mumble, looking into your plate instead of facing him out of the ugly feeling of patheticness creeping up your back.

“Oh, that’s cool!” he exclaims, pointing his fry your direction, a response you didn’t quite expect, “Where do they have the best ones so far?” he asks, genuine interest painting his features.

“Oh,” you get out, feeling your lips unvoliteraly tug into a smile, “I don’t.. I still have a few bistros and the McDonald’s on the highway out of the city left, but I’d say the best ones so far were at Wendy’s. I didn’t quite like the chicken wings there, though, so…”

“Hmm,” he nods, deep in thought, “we just get food at where’s the closest.” he says, munching on a chicken wing. “I guess we could pay a little more attention to the food from now on, because after eating this, I’m never going to eat the food from the bistro right in front of our flat again.”

“Yeah, that bistro’s really awful. I only gave it around 2.5 stars, I think-” you say, before you realise you just spilled out another secret to him, feeling your cheeks heating up. 

“2.5 stars? What, do you write yelp reviews or something?” he asks, clearly amused by your accidental spill-out.

“And what if I do?” you defend yourself, glaring at him with fake annoyance. No man will ever make fun of you because you write yelp reviews. Not Lee Felix, even though he seems too nice to actually make fun of you because of something, not anyone. 

“That’s cool, though! Those help so much when you travel,” he says, eagerly nodding at you with big eyes and an adorable grin plastered on his face, making you feel understood and happy with just the sudden sign of acceptance. Turns out your little weird obsession isn’t as embarrassing as you thought it was. Or Lee Felix really is the sweetest guy walking on this earth. Either one is fine in your books.

You stay there for a few hours and Felix teaches you the basic cheat codes-- never meet the teacher’s eye, never finish your tests too quickly, always forcefully pick the wrong option before scribbling it out and putting in a correct one to not seem too suspicious. He even takes a piece of paper from you and scribbles down the basic cheat-sheet making structure. 

He feels good with you. He feels useful. He knows he shouldn’t be teaching you this, but really, is it really doing any harm? We all have to go through college somehow.

Yet, all evenings always end the same for Felix, with a bad feeling in his gut and a fake smile on his face hiding the true meaning behind his actions. He’ll never be the first choice and you remind him even today, after you leave the ‘tutoring session’ with a quick hug to the male, lowering your voice so only he can hear when you pay him your goodbyes.

“Don’t tell Jisung, okay?”

Of course. It’s all because you don’t want to look embarrassing in front of his best friend.

It goes all how you planned it to-- you’re sitting at your next tutoring session with two males in front of you. One of them is your supposed tutor and one of them is a boy that’s helping you pass your exams for real. You’re into one of them, even though you shouldn’t. You wonder how you even ended up in this mess. You swear you were a good student in high school, always submitting your assignments on time and making sure your tests were on 100%. It was kind of fueling your ego, in a way. You had no other plans in your life to hold on to, no dreams to dream, so you reasoned to do the only thing that you were good at-- getting good grades. You had to prove to yourself that there was a reason, a meaning behind your life. You had to prove to yourself that your existence was valid.

You watch Jisung with interest. You pray to god that he doesn’t catch you in your act, because that would surely be embarrassing. You don’t want him to find out that you’re just fine with cheating, because that meant your tutoring sessions with the male would end and there was no other reason for you to see him. You knew Han Jisung wasn’t interested in you. You were sure you’d see it on him if he was. And even then, you weren’t interested in only a short relationship without any good point. You liked Jisung, but you didn’t like his reputation. One week wasn’t long enough for you to waste your time on him and get your heart broken. You weren’t sure if he was a player, or if he just wanted to desperately find the one by trying all the possibilities, but you weren’t going to find out. 

Felix watches you with interest in his eyes-- but you don’t notice. He prays that Jisung doesn’t find out about your secret little ‘tutoring sessions’, because that would mean he wouldn’t have a reason to hang out with you anymore. And Felix really doesn’t want that to happen. For some reason, he doesn’t want you to ever frown. And he’s sure that’s exactly what would happen if Jisung cancelled.

It doesn’t click to him what’s happening inside of his little, foolish heart when he sees you smile at Jisung and his stomach fills with worry. 

It doesn’t click to him what’s happening with him when every time Jisung subtly takes your hand in his makes his insides twitch in frustration. He thinks it’s just because of the fact that he’s third-wheeling again, like all his life, and maybe that is partly true, but it’s not the whole reason behind the cloud around his head.

It clicks only when him and his roommate are back home, sitting at the dinner table with the left-overs from the new bistro you three went to, munching on the chicken wings and another pack of soggy french fries and the cola they had in their fridge.

“So… what do you think about Y/N?” Jisung asks suddenly, making Felix furrow his brows in confusion.

“What should I think? She’s smart, I guess…” he mumbles, mouth full of food, not quite grasping the full meaning of his roommate’s question. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jisung quickly nods in approval, “she’s getting really good. I mean, you can still see she’s having some troubles when I’m tutoring her, but at least she always gets good grades on tests now,” he says, biting down on another piece of chicken wing. Felix feels a wave of pride wash over him after hearing the words-- of course you’re doing well on exams. It’s all Felix’s doing. You’re a quick learner, when it comes to cheating. 

“Yeah, she’s good,” he says. 

“Well,” Jisung suddenly starts, meaning to sound nonchalantly, but only sounding like he’s determining his biggest life secret in front of his friend instead, “I like her.”

Felix almost chokes on the piece of chicken in his mouth, trying to play it off with a small chuckle. “Oh? You do?”

“Yeah. Should I.. Should I ask her on a date or something?” he asks and Felix swears he can see his friend’s cheeks reddening a little, even though the last time he’s seen Jisung embarrassed was when he accidentally called their Math’s teacher mum in eleventh grade. 

“You don’t date, though,” Felix opposes.

“That’s not true-”

“Two weeks long relationships aren’t relationships, Jisung.” 

“Not my fault they’re never the one! It gets boring after a while, Felix, I can’t just-”

“Why are you even asking me this?” Felix suddenly cuts him off, glaring at him. He doesn’t know why he’s reacting in such a way. It’s not like it’s the first time Jisung is going to date someone for two weeks just to break their heart, it’s not the first time they’re going to run after Felix a week after just so they can still be around the one that broke their heart. This time, though, he does not want to see another heart get broken.

“Jesus, chill, man… I was just asking, since you two seem closer. Did she mention anything about me? Is she dating anyone?” Jisung asks, eyes lighting up.

Felix could be an asshole. He could tell Jisung that you’re already dating someone, he could tell him to back off and that you’re not interested. However, he does not do that. Instead, he does the quite opposite. He pushes his best friend into asking you out, he tells him he should try it, because that’s just the kind of person he is. Besides, he knows you’re into him. Maybe the smile on your face could make him forget about the fact that you’re going to get your heart broken. 

“Sure, go for it.” he shrugs, “I don’t really care anyway.”

“Fine, then-”

“I’m gonna shower.” Felix says, quickly standing up from his chair and moving to the bathroom, quickly escaping the conversation.

Only then he realises what he feeling in his gut means, only then he notices the way his sigh feels like the weight of the world is sitting on his shoulders and he can’t breathe any time you’re around Han Jisung. 

He realises he likes you. 

And clearly, you don’t like him back.

Emotions are something you never quite get used to. Even the emotion of feeling rejection, the emotion of always being behind his best friend’s shadow. Lee Felix is always just the friend. Never the love interest. This time, though, it feels even more heavy, because in a way, you seem way more special in his eyes than the people that went after him just to get with his best friend.

This time, he does not want to see another heart get broken. Because it’s your heart we’re talking about.

And to prevent his heart shattering to even more pieces, he has to do something.

He has to stop liking you.

As soon as possible.

“Y/N?” 

“Mhhm?” you ask, raising your eyes up from the cheat sheet you’re creating with Felix’s help, the grease of the fries you’re eating glistening on your chin. You’re with him in a yet another crappy bistro, trying yet another soggy fries, and even though there’s nothing special on you to a stranger’s eye, Felix’s heart can’t help but run twice the speed of light. 

“How do you stop liking someone?” he mumbles, furrowing his brows a little, deep in thought. 

“Oh, do you like someone?” you ask, and Felix momentarily lights up at the thought of you caring if he’s interested in someone, but when his eyes meet yours and he notices them glistening and lightening up in curiosity, he realises it’s just because you’re happy for him. As a good friend should be. 

“No, no,” he quickly shakes his head in disapproval, snickering to himself, “I’m just asking. Because, think, what if, hypothetically, there’s someone who is into someone else. Easy, right? But what if their best friend likes the same person? And you know you shouldn’t like them because they’re into their friend as well? What is there to do at that point?” 

You scan his face for a few seconds, thinking to yourself. “Hmm,” you start, “I guess you have to start hating them. So the feelings disappear.” you nod, satisfied with your answer.

“How’s that possible?” he asks, scoffing.

“Well, I don’t know, since it’s all hypothetical anyway,” you giggle, focusing back on your cheat sheet. Your notes are getting smaller and smaller and Felix notices the improvement in your small lettering, making your cheat sheet less noticeable. You’re learning quickly.

“Oh come on,” he whines, kicking your leg under the table, “talk to me. How can a person start hating someone? Give me a tutorial.” 

“Well, since you really need to know,” you roll your eyes, putting away the pen from your hand and resting your back against the seat of the booth, “there are a few steps you can take.”

“For example?”

“Well, you have to stop hanging out with them, first thing’s first.” you start. “Because if you don’t hang out with them, you will eventually hate the fact that they’re not near, which will, logically, make you hate them instead.”

“Is that really logical, though?” Felix asks, furrowing his brows at you. In his books, this made no sense at all, but you seemed pretty satisfied with your answer.

“Of course it is! Then, you have to find something about them that you can hate. Anything. Find even the smallest thing, and blow it up in your mind until you hate it. Easy, right?” 

“...I don’t think that’s helping at all,” he says, tone of voice unsure. 

“Of course it is! You’re just refusing that it can be true, because you think I’m stupid.” you stick out his tongue at him, focusing on your work instead.

He kicks you under the table, making you scowl. “Ow! What was that for?”

“I told you that if you’ll make that comment again, I will kick you. So I just did right that.” he says. “Besides, your ideas are stupid. Not you. There’s a difference in that.” he smartly points out, making you roll your eyes at him.

“So, who is it that you like?”

“No one. I told you, it’s hypothetical.” he glares at you.

“Right,” you nod, sighing, “well, I’ll just stick to that, since that means Jisung doesn’t like anyone and I still have a chance.” you smile at him, obviously missing out on the way your words just punched him into the gut. Felix laughs it out, kicking you in the shin instead.

“Right. Of course you do,” he nods. He wishes he didn’t mean that.

You two remain in silence for a moment, while you get back to your work and Felix pretends he’s playing a game on his phone. You don’t notice the way his eyes scan you over, admiring you, once in a while. No one ever does. He guesses this is the perk of always being just the friend. The one people are friends with just because they want something from him. The one that gets taken advantage of. He chooses not to think about it more. Maybe if he did, he could hate you over it, if he wasn’t so used to that feeling anyway. 

“We should hang out on the weekend,” you say, taking him by surprise.

“Oh?” he mumbles out, “with Jisung?”

“No?” you furrow your brows, “look, I know I look like I’m obsessed with him, but I actually just want to hang out with you alone as friends once in a while, you know.”

“We’re hanging out now, though.”

“It’s midnight, Felix,” you point out, “and we’re working. I want to hang out with my friend, like a normal person, you know.” you shrug.

“Yeah…” he says, when your words resonate in his mind like a broken curse. ‘Don’t hang out with them.’ Don’t hang out with her. You have to hate her. He has to start hating you-- there’s no other way. And so, he turns to taking your words into consideration. He can’t meet with you if he’s not ‘tutoring’ you. There’s no way. “We’ll see. I’ll tell you if I’m free.” he smiles warmly instead, because truth be told, he’ll never tell you no to your eyes. He’s always been a bit of a coward. And he also doesn’t want you to frown. Ever.

“Great!” you smile. 

And when Felix comes home that night, at 2am in the morning when his roommate is already asleep-- not knowing of your secret meetings, he lays down in his bed and repeats your advice like a broken mantra. He can’t like you. He has to hate you.

Lee Felix’s guide to hating you: 1. Don’t hang out with her. Only meet her when it’s necessary. If you don’t meet her, you’ll start hating her absence, resulting in hating her altogether. 2. Find a small thing about her to blow up so much you start to hate it. 

That’s not difficult. He hates that you like Han Jisung. It’s a small mistake, a small flaw, but he’s ready to blow it up so much he hates you for it. He hates that he’s not the first choice. He hates that you don’t like him.

Maybe he would hate you more if you were dating his best friend for real.

Lee Felix’s guide to hating you: 1. Don’t hang out with her. 2. Find a thing to hate about her. SUCCESS! 3. Set her up with Han Jisung.

Now, this plan is bulletproof, isn’t it?

Felix unexpectedly breaks the first step of his guide only a few days later-- on a chilly friday afternoon, when his body is hurriedly skipping to the edge of the town centre only to meet with you. Just for the record, though, Felix didn’t intend to break the promise he gave to himself. He really wasn’t going to hang out with you if he didn’t specifically need to, but, well… you called Jisung to hang out. Felix’s heart almost skipped a few beats when he was added to a three-person big group chat with you and his roommate and at that point, he wasn’t going to reject an invitation to the fare in town, because he was fairly sure Jisung didn’t like rollercoasters and he wanted to see you laugh your ass off at him in front of everyone. Is it a little spiteful? Possibly. Does he care? Not that much.

Besides, it’s only one time. It will never happen again!!

He finds you with your black leather jacket on, stepping from one leg to the other, looking around like a lost puppy. Felix mentally curses at himself for not coming sooner so you wouldn’t feel so alone and awkward in the mass of people, when he realises he’s already 15 minutes late because of his afternoon class and his roommate is nowhere to be found.

“Thank god! I thought you were going to bail on me as well,” you call out when Felix is close enough, smiling at him.

“Where’s Jisung?”

“He texted me like 5 minutes ago that he can’t make it today. Something about his mum being in town? I’m not sure,” you furrow your brows, “at least you’re here now, though.”

Felix is met with the realisation that he’s left alone with you again, mentally cursing at himself. This surely does not look like a plan to hating you. It looks like a bullet-proof plan on how to fall even deeper for you, with how your stray hairs are flying around your head and you adorably scrunch up your nose and sniffle from the cold. 

“Should we go?” he forces out of himself, looking at you hopefully.

“Yeah!” you nod, striding a few steps in front of him like a happy school girl excited to go to school for the first time. Felix can’t surpass the gentle smile forming on his lips, shaking his head in disbelief. You look so cheerful and so joyful, making his heart swell with how easily you manage to make him feel so young again. 

He follows you gladly, managing to match his speed with yours, almost forgetting for a moment that he’s not on a date with you, almost forgetting about the fact that you like his best friend and the smile you’re giving him is nothing against the wide grin you offer to his roommate.

“Let’s go on that one!” you cheer, taking Felix by the hand and tugging him your way, not once giving him the opportunity of letting go as you drag him all around the fare. You remind him of his younger sister with how excited you get about the smallest things and he realises he wants to protect your heart from the world just as much as he wants to protect his little sister’s. It’s not the same feeling, though. The affection he feels for you is different. 

Felix doesn’t find it in him to tell you no whenever you tug him on another ride, even when his legs are tired and his jaw hurts from smiling. He finds himself wanting to capture your image into his brain forever, imprint the happy memory in there so he can find it and look at it whenever his heart feels lonely. For the first time in ages, he forgets about everything. He forgets that he’s just the friend, the other choice. He completely forgets that Han Jisung was supposed to be there, at his place, sitting next to you on the ferris wheel as you watch the night city under you with cold cheeks and frozen bodies.

“You must be sad that Jisung isn’t here with you right now. That would surely feel much more romantic than sitting here with me,” Felix says bitterly once the reality hits him for a second, once his heart is unsheltered for a short moment and your eyes meet.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” you roll your eyes, “Jisung can’t be romantic. Besides, if I really wanted a date with him so badly, I wouldn’t have asked you to come with us, would I?” you smile at him, swinging your legs forward and backward, focusing your eyes somewhere into the distance again.

“Well, if you really want to go on a date with him, you can just ask him, you know?” he mumbles, playing with the dead skin on his thumb.

“So he can stand me up and go on a date with his mum again? I don’t know, Felix, is that really worth it?” you giggle, not noticing the way you’re messing with the boy’s head, not noticing the way a small spark of hope lights up somewhere in the deep pits of his stomach when you mention not wanting to ask his best friend out. 

“I don’t know, is it?”

“I’ll have to think about it.” you muse out, and the spark is gone. Of course it’s not that simple. 

Felix just nods and grins at you. The chilly air helps him hide his red cheeks when he thinks of how embarrassing his thoughts must have been in the past quick seconds. He focuses on your face, on the way your eyes crinkle up a little when you stare somewhere far into the distance and your hair flies a little with the breeze. The ferris wheel just reached the top, so he has plenty of time to keep admiring you from so close, but somehow, the moment still feels so short and he wishes he could stop the time. He wishes he could stop the time so he didn’t have to face the reality when he comes down from the ferris wheel. He wishes he didn’t have to see you fall in love with his friend, he wishes he didn’t have to act like he doesn’t care at all. 

“Thanks for helping me, by the way. I wouldn’t have passed my exams if it wasn’t for you and that… that would be really hard on me.” you get out, locking your eyes with his sincerely. He sees your eyes shining even so high above the ground, convincing him the sparkles really must be the stars, when he takes a deep breath in and responds.

“It’s no problem, I get it… I mean, it’s what you gotta do. What we gotta do, when we want to pass. And graduate,” he chuckles. 

Does he really want the degree, though? Or does he just need it to feel like he has some worth? Does he want to graduate or does he just want his parents to value him as an adult, does he really want to continue working so hard on passing or would he just be so much happier if he just dropped out. And saved himself so much stress. He should have known he was never smart enough for college.

“Yeah. I despise the smart kids in our class. I wish I were them,” you scoff, “I despise Jisung, in a way, too,” you add after a dramatic pause.

“Jisung?” Felix furrows his brows.

“Yeah,” you nod, like it’s the clearest thing in the world, “I mean, he’s smart enough to pass. He’s… he’s got his life figured out, in a way. He’s just fine. Getting all the girls and the guys, getting good grades, going on dinner dates with his mum on Fridays,” you giggle, “I mean, I want that. That sounds nice.”

Felix huffs, staring into the distance, “I guess you’re right.” He knows damn well how jealousy feels. 

“I came to college to prove to myself that my life has some worth, but I guess the only thing I prove to myself is that I can’t even pass my exams without help.” you sigh, sounding defeated.

“Hey,” he nudges you a little with his foot, “don’t say that. Life isn’t about grades, degrees and that shit. Of course you have worth and value.” 

He sees you smile in defeat, leaning your head on his shoulder. The feeling of acceptance, pure understanding washes over the two of you, when you gently speak up again. “Try to explain that to my brain.” 

He lightly giggles. “I’m trying, as you can see.”

You look up at him from his shoulder, scrunching up your nose and leaning closer to him, whispering. “It’s not working.” you laugh.

“I know it’s not easy,” he shakes his head, “I’ve been trying to tell that to my family for the past 21 years.” he slips out. Something about you makes him spill out even things he’s never told anyone before, but he finds himself not caring as you approach his eyes with pure serenity mixed with melancholy.

“Is it all because of your parents?” you ask, “the cheating, I mean.”

Felix feels his eyes giving him out, so he chooses not to look at you anymore. “I mean, I would have dropped out long ago if I didn’t have to feel so worthless around my family then. Every single one of my cousins is smart, has a degree and earns a killing. I’m just me-- living from the money I earned over summer, trying not to lose my mind with biology.”

He hears you humming next to him, your head moving as you nod in understatement. The ferris wheel is slowly reaching the bottom again and Felix finds the fact quite relieving. He doesn’t mind having deep talks with you, he just fears he might spill out something both of you don’t want to hear.

“I’m glad you came with me today, Lix.” you smile at him once the two of you reach the bottom, “wanna hear a secret?”

“Spill it out,” he dares you, grinning.

“I only invited Jisung because I thought you didn’t want to hang out with me alone.” you confess, quickly turning around in your spot as you jog a few steps in front of him, carelessly, as if you just didn’t make Felix’s heart stop and insides twitch in excitement. He prays and hopes it’s not just you giving him false hope, he wishes it’s not his mind playing tricks on him. 

“I-” 

“And now that I know you don’t mind being around me, do you wanna go to the dog cafe with me next Wednesday? You know, the one I talked about.” you turn around, flashing him a smile worth a billion dollars, taking him by surprise as his breathing hitches and he doesn’t find it in him to reject you ever again.

“Sure.”

Second step of Lee Felix’s guide to helping you: find a small thing about you he doesn’t like to blow up so much he starts hating you altogether. 

He was so sure that he found the small thing just a few days ago. He thought that the fact that you like his best friend could be enough for him to start hating you. He could sit on that thought for long enough to pick it up to the smallest pieces and over-analyse it to the point he could start hating you. 

And he tries to do just that-- he lies awake at night thinking of how every single person he’s ever been interested in slipped right between his fingers just because of Jisung’s existence. He wonders why he’s never good enough to anyone, why he always has to be the second choice even for tutoring (even though it’s not even tutoring, but we won’t talk about that anymore). He thinks of how you’re so foolish to think your relationship with Jisung is going to last, because Jisung’s feelings never stay the same for long. He over-analyses the smallest things he notices on you when you’re in Jisung’s presence until the point he’s almost sure he can do it, he can hate you for it just a little, in a way, but then, the thought flies right out of the open window as his roommate crashes into his door in the middle of the night.

He startles awake, sitting up at his bed, watching the short male going in with much difficulty, sitting on his bed without a word.

“Jisung?”

“Lixie, I fucked it all up, didn’t I?” Jisung whines, laying down on the bed next to his friend. Felix doesn’t think it’s only due to the late hours of the night that his friend’s words aren’t making any sense, but he doesn’t dare to put his finger on it until he makes sure for himself.

“What are you talking about?”

“Y/N.”

Your name coming out of his lips hits Felix like a baseball bat, hurting in all the right places, as the young male finds it in him to continue the conversation.

“What about her?”

“She asked us to hang out together. And I didn’t go. I know it wasn’t my fault, because my mum was in the town, but still, I feel so bad, because now it must look like I’m not interested in her and that I don’t care and I really don’t want that, you know?” he stummers, making Felix realise his friend talks a lot when he’s under the influence of alcohol just the same second Jisung’s breath catches in Felix’s nose, only proving his point. 

“You didn’t fuck it up, don’t worry.” he muses. And it’s true. Jisung could never truly fuck it up with anyone. Even his exes always crumble up around his feet, wanting attention even after getting their heart broken. Will it be the same with you?

“She must think I don’t like her. And that’s horrible-that’s- that’s- I like her. Very much,” he whines again, getting closer to Felix and wrapping his arms around the blonde’s torso in a wave of affection that only washes over him when he’s drunk.

“Sung-” he stutters, desperately trying to push him away, but even though Jisung doesn’t look like it, he is a strong individual when it comes to involuntary cuddling. Felix can never escape his arms.

“I think she’s special, you know? She’s like- I can’t explain it. It’s like with her, I actually want to try. I want to ask her on dates and love her and give her my heart, because you know, I never dared to give my heart to anyone. And no one’s ever made me feel truly special before…” he mutters, forcing his nose to Felix’s neck, “I’m rambling too much, aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Felix sighs, nodding. He doesn’t battle his arms anymore. Jisung is his friend, at the end of the day. He can hold him when he needs it.

“Sorry.” he says shortly, sighing as well. The room falls into silence and Felix’s head spins again, his thoughts spiral like a tornado and the eye of the storm is you-- standing there with that stupid smile on your face and he once again realises that he needs to hate you in order to shelter his own heart, because you’re like a hurricane when it comes a to a person’s emotions.

The fact is, though, he could never hate you for liking his best friend. 

Han Jisung is too likable for his own good. His heart is too big for this world, and truth be told, he’s been sharing it with everyone for such a long time now, he deserves to find someone he’s willing to give his all to. 

He could never hate you for liking Jisung-- the boy who smiles at everyone in the halls, the boy that offered him to live in the flat his parent’s bought for him in freshman year, the boy that helps him hide his cheating secret every day. He could never hate you for liking Jisung, because he himself knows too well how much of a treasure his dear friend is. 

He gets it. He gets why people always choose Jisung over him. He could never blame you.

“Sung?”

“Hmm?”

“Ask Y/N out to the dog cafe on Wednesday. She'll love it.”

Felix could never hate you.

Step three of Felix’s bullet-proof guide to hating you is quite simple and actually the only one he completes with success. Setting you up with Jisung on a date is easier than he ever imagined, considering the fact that his roommate decided to finally take things into his own hands and call you on a date after the drunken weeping episode in Felix’s bed. 

Jisung invites you on a date to the dog café in town. The two of you go on Wednesday and although Felix feels like he just gave his roommate a piece of him, an invitation that was never meant for him in the first place, he feels at ease, because at least one part of his plan is working. He could never hate you, but at least now, it will be easier for him to ignore his growing feelings for you when you spend all your time with Jisung on dates and ice cream runs. He only has to ignore his feelings in school and at your ‘tutoring’ sessions. He wonders how long these will be a secret in front of your new boyfriend. Jisung’s not your boyfriend yet, but Felix can only imagine how short the time he isn’t is going to last. 

Felix does the stupid mistake of opening the instagram app in the evening, when he’s curled up in his bed with an embarrassingly big bowl of popcorn on his bed side table, serving him as his depression food. He sees your post show up, an adorable picture of you from the dog café, a big golden retriever in your lap as you giggle at its face. The picture is candid and looks like the kind Felix would like to keep as his lock screen if he had the chance. He’s sure his best friend took it for you not only from the fact that you went out with him tonight, but also for the fact that he’s tagged in the post’s description with a big blue heart emoji. 

He could stop staring at the picture if he really wanted, he could mute your posts and pretend you never existed to shelter his poor heart. He could do everything in his strength to cut all his ties with you. That would make it so much easier for him, wouldn’t it?

But he doesn't. And maybe he doesn’t even want to-- he’s used to the pain anyway, isn’t he? The bitterness, the feeling of being pushed away, ignored and left forgotten. 

He was supposed to be in Jisung’s place now, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that he isn’t-- maybe it was never his place to claim anyway. 

Felix stares at the picture for minutes, wondering of how things could be if you only didn’t fall for his best friend. Or if he came with you today. Who knows, maybe it wasn’t too late for him to ask you on a date. Maybe he could still change your mind. Felix likes to give up on things too quickly, though, and that is the curse that will follow him his whole life. 

Lee Felix is good at cheating. He is insanely good at it, he would also say it’s the only thing he’s ever been good at. Pretending.

It’s his time to shine again. It’s time to pretend he doesn’t like you, pretend you don’t hurt him, pretend he isn’t in love with his best friend’s crush. He’s been always the best at cheating and now it’s time to cheat his way out of liking you. 

Sounds easy, doesn’t it?

“You must be really hungry, if you’re planning to eat all of that in one setting,” Felix mumbles, watching you as you eat yet another plate of chicken wings in yet another pointless bistro in town. Felix wonders how you even know about all of these, since the one you’re both sitting in right now, in the middle of the night, looks rather lonely. It doesn’t even seem that welcoming-- it has graffiti on the walls and the seats are a little torn on the edges, but you don’t seem to care as you munch on the chicken, eyes big when you stare back at your companion.

“I eat a lot when I’m stressed,” you mutter in between your bites, mouth full. You look natural like this and Felix realises this is you in his mind-- cheeks full of food, that little wrinkle in between your brows when you look at him, eyes staring big into his like a loyal dog. This is how he knows you, in your rawest form, and this is coincidentally, also, how he likes you the most. He loves and treasures every single version of you, but your late-night meetings feel of different kind of intimacy to him that he’s sure he’s going to think of even when he’s old and his college years are dusty like an old polaroid picture.  

“Stressed?” he asks, tone of voice a little more worried than usual. Felix always worries about you. Even when you quietly take out your cheat sheet from under the table and write your answers down. He doesn’t fear being caught-- he frankly doesn’t care that much, but he knows that you are having a battle with yourself and he really doesn’t want you to feel like you lost. He didn’t know it was so easy to put someone else first when you worry for the future. 

“The finals are coming up.” you clarify, the words coming out a little bashful and smitten.

“Oh.” he nods. 

You’re both quiet for a while. It would be cheesy to say the silence was comfortable, and Felix knows, he’s seen enough teenage dramas to know these words are used in situations like this, but the truth is, there’s no other way to describe it, and he understands that now. Your determination shines through all your edges and he’s glad you’re doing what you can with the resources you have. You’re not exactly studying for your Biology finals, but it’s still as hard and as stressful as that. It can feel a little embarrassing at times, but there’s no other way around it. You have to battle your enemy, even if it means the game is not fair.

“And those chicken wings are fucking good, dude,” you mutter after a while, offering him one of the paper baskets the server brought you a few minutes ago, looking rather stoned and not interested in your presence at all.

“Don’t tell me this rotten place is winning your chicken wings and fries contest,” Felix snickers, taking a bite that, to his surprise, actually tastes the best out of the amount of fast food chains and restaurants you’ve brought him to. You should never judge a book by its cover and this bistro is clearly one of the examples.

“I have only one place left to go, so we’ll see then, but I guess it might just be the top place right now,” you muse out, a wide grin decorating your features as you glance up at Felix that watches you scribble down your notes on a mini piece of paper.

“Wanna go with me there? After the finals, of course. We can celebrate if we pass,” you point out, licking your lips in nerves, “I don’t think I’ll need these ‘tutoring sessions’ anymore then, but I still want to hang out sometime.” you say, putting air quotes around the words tutoring session, looking at him with expectations in your eyes.

“Oh, sure,” he agrees, nodding. “I have to be there when you finally declare your last yelp review.”

You only laugh at him and shake your head, eating some more as you look down into your notes again, lost in work. “I still don’t get how you can do these so fast.”

“I already know what’s the most useful. You don’t have to copy the whole textbook on there.”

“You can never know! What if I’ll need it all?” you exclaim, only making him laugh harder.

He points his eyes out of the window, watching the empty parking lot. You didn’t come in your car today, telling Felix your house is close anyway, and Felix doesn’t dare to drive his car anywhere unless he doesn’t need to. He has a little bit of a trauma since the last time he drove with his dad and he almost ran the car into a tree, getting a shower of swear words and exclamations from his dear father, so he only drives his small white Renault when he needs to go home. Which is, coincidentally, next week. 

“I really don’t want to go home next week,” he sighs.

“Your family is still onto you for the smallest shit?” you ask, tone of voice sympathetic.

“Yeah. Can’t wait to graduate so I don’t have to listen to them talking about a degree anymore,” he rolls his eyes, “I only have to find myself a partner so my grandma can shut up about me being single all the time.”

You softly laugh, making Felix look at you for a moment, his heart skipping a few beats when your eyes meet for a little more seconds than usual. “I’m sorry. You can always text me, though, if you need anyone to talk or gossip with.” you say, averting your eyes from his.

“You’d have to be on your phone 24/7, then. My mental stability comes down by 70% when I’m back home and it’s already only on 15% now,” Felix snickers.

“Oh, I don’t mind. I’ll be staying here anyway.” you say, giggling.

“You’re not coming back home?”

“No,” you shake your head in disapproval, quickly glancing into his eyes before speaking up again, “it’s my parent’s wedding anniversary, so they’re going on a holiday. There’s no use in me coming home if I’m just going to be alone there anyway,” you shrug.

Felix hums, nodding in understatement. “That makes sense. I’m sorry you can’t meet your family on holidays, though.”

“It’s okay,” you say, “I see them often anyway. One Christmas won’t kill me. I have a whole season of Game of thrones to catch up on anyway.” you light-heartedly laugh, sounding like Felix’s favorite song. He smiles with you, shaking his head in disbelief at how positively you can always see the world, when he glances out of the window for a moment again, only to be met with a surprise. 

There are white flakes of snow falling from the sky and something in Felix wakes up-- something he’d call happiness, maybe even joy, when he quickly shoots up from his seat and calls you with excitement coating his voice, “Y/N! Y/N! Come on!”

“Come where? Felix, what are you-” 

He doesn’t let you finish as he takes you by the hand and tugs you on your feet, tugging you out of the empty bistro out into the dark parking lot, admiring the snowflakes falling onto the ground and every surface in his sight. He sees some stick into your hair, making him giggle as his outstretched hand dusts them off subconsciously, when he starts running around like a happy child, laughter coming out of his throat filling the silence.

“It’s snowing!” you exclaim, when Felix reaches your body frozen in its place again. He reminds you of a golden retriever when he jumps a little in his place, his feet happily crouching in the snow. You laugh at his antics when he starts acting like a little boy, this side of Felix being so new to you, yet you can’t help but feel your heart swell with admiration when he asks you to catch some snow into your mouth.

“Felix! That’s disgusting!” you refuse, laughing.

“Oh come on! It’s just water!” he cheers, leaning his head back and opening his mouth wide, waiting for the snow to fall into his mouth. 

“But it’s unhygienic and dirty! You have to be kidding me!” you still reject his idea, standing your ground firmly as always in your life so far, when a face of a boy looking like an angel takes you by surprise and his big eyes plead you in a way that makes you drop all your grudges and all your beliefs down, rolling your eyes when he pouts, leaning your head back as well and opening your mouth with a loud ‘aaaa’ sound to satisfy his foolish heart.

Once you both feel a snowflake hitting your tongues, you look at each other with your tongues out, laughing at how stupid the other one looks, pointing to your tongues. You shake your head. “It melted off, you stupid!”

“You did the same thing!” he bursts out laughing, bending over in the force of his emotions. You watch him with a wide grin plastered onto your face. It feels like watching a movie. You don’t think you’ll ever have a brighter memory with the boy in front of you, with his cheeks red from the snow and smile so wide it hurts both of your jaws.

You instinctively take his hands into yours, looking down on your feet as you start going around in a circle with him, going quicker and quicker as you watch your footprints in the snow mixing with his, the dry skin of his hands making you feel strange. You laugh out when your head starts spinning, looking up at him to find him already staring at you with stars in his eyes, when you wonder,

isn’t this how love is supposed to feel?

All of his life, Felix had thought that family gatherings could always either go two ways, and that is: 1) a normal, boring meet-ups where your grandma asks about how school’s going, when you’re going to finally find a partner and another one of your cousin’s announces their engagement party, or 2) the actual engagement parties-- every single family member including the senile grandma from mum’s side gets drunk and you don’t have to think about more fake reasons why you have yet to lose your virginity.

You see, Felix is wrong in a lot of things. And this was surely one of them-- it’s the December 27th and he’s sitting in his grandma’s old kitchen, the wind blowing through the cracks of her window and the sweets on the table have already melted from the heat being too high, because his aunt is always cold and they can’t compromise. That sounds fine, even usual, Felix would say, however, the fire lights up a few moments later when his head starts to hurt from all the talking and he begins to dissociate a little too much, meaning that his grandma now has to shift her attention from all of his other relatives to him, because how dare he stay quiet on a family gathering where he has nothing to add to the conversation, right?

It starts off as usual, the answers to these questions digged deep into Felix’s brain since the first year of college. He doesn’t even bat an eye when he answers the questions directed at his studies and grades, telling all of his interested relatives that he’s working hard and it’s paying off. Nobody complains or disagrees-- his grades are awesome. His degree is here soon. Felix almost thinks he’s over with when his grandma laughs at a poor joke that comes out of his mouth, but that was only a bad prediction as he moves on to questions about his love life, which are, believe me or not, much more boring and much more ego-hurting for the blonde.

“Do you have a girlfriend yet, Felix?” she asks, tone of voice sounding rather interested, but don’t believe her-- it’s only an act. She’s ready to laugh into his face when he gives her the answer she’s hoping for.

“No, not yet, grandma,” he mumbles, averting his eyes from her wrinkley face as soon as possible. He really doesn’t need to look at her any longer to know she’s silently judging him on the inside, because that’s just how his grandmother is. 

“That’s such a shame… I wonder why… You’re such a pretty young boy, aren’t you?” she mutters under her nose, tone almost whiney, “what about your roommate? Jisung, was it?”

Felix takes a deep breath in, closing his eyes for a second to calm his rising heart beat. He could have predicted questions like this coming, because the conversation always somehow diverted to his roommate even when he was at home with his family. It’s crazy, how everyone just seems to adore Jisung much more than their own family member. 

“He’s.. Yeah. He’s always with someone, you know him. Not now, though, now he’s single,” Felix nods, explaining.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll find someone soon,” she admits, “he’s such a gentleman. And so handsome as well, isn’t he?” she asks, his aunt from her right side nodding quickly at the mention of Han Jisung. 

“He always has so many people around him, he’s so charming. If only you were more like him, maybe then someone would date you as well,” his grandma says calmly, not even noticing the way her words cut deeper and deeper into Felix’s heart, kicking him and punching him like a boxing bag, “you should try to be more like him.”

Felix bites down on his lower lip, rolling his eyes. Frustration coats his voice once he speaks up, the built-up anger living inside of him like an animal kept well in its cage. He doesn’t want to let it out, because he fears what it might do once it’s free, but he still retorts to a dig addressed to his grandma, huffing in annoyance. “Should I send Jisung home instead of me next time?”

“Oh no, Felix, what are you even saying right now?” his grandma looks rather offended, eyes twice their usual size as she glares at him.

“Well, since you like him so much.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was just saying that-”

“Leave it.” Felix says. 

The atmosphere is too heavy now, all eyes on him as if he was in a circus, watching him just moments before his breaking. He realises he no longer feels welcome in this place and maybe he never did, he just chose to ignore it by now, because that’s what he always does when a problem appears-- he chooses ignorance. Ignorance is Felix’s best friend, and although it may sound like he’s running away from his problems all the time, it’s always worked so far. He’s just protecting his heart, building walls around it. 

He doesn’t want to fight. He hates conflict. So, even though he’d like to snap, even though he’d like to leash out like an animal, he doesn’t. He steps back-- as he always does, taking the car keys from the table and escaping the house, hearing the calls of his mother after him. He doesn’t bother to say goodbye, he doesn’t even bother to look back nor take the Christmas gifts his grandma brought for everyone. 

He sits into the small white Renault he drives once a year when he comes back home, starts the engine and speeds up to the limit, driving away from all of his problems. He doesn’t want to hear their complaints, he doesn’t want to listen. It’s the best this way. He wants to ignore the words that came out of his grandma’s mouth, but he can’t find it in him as he hears them resonate in his head over and over again. 

He’s the second choice even in his own family. He’s a joke to everyone, isn’t he? Just the side character, the one that never gets the spotlight. It hurts, it hurts him so much, but he pays no attention to his blurry vision, because even though he’s fairly sure no one from his family would miss him, he doesn’t want to drive off the road and kill himself with his escape.

He parks the car in front of his and Jisung’s flat after a few hours. He’s fairly good at it, considering he never drives, and mentally puts up a middle finger to his dad in his head for screaming at him so much. He was in a much calmer headspace when he was driving with his dad than he was now, yet, he didn’t manage to drive anyone over. 

Putting his feet into the cold, empty apartment, turning the heating on and plopping down on the sofa, he once again realises how lonely it feels. Not only because of the feeling of abandonment the dark flat resonates, but also due to the fact that it truly feels like now, he’s all alone in this world. The silence screams louder than any words ever could, his ears lowly ringing without any sound in the small room, which makes him wonder if he’s truly the only one that has to spend his holidays pretty much alone. Maybe it’s his fault that he’s fucked it up with his family, who knows-- but that’s a topic for another overthinking session of his, when he decides to let it go once his eyes meet the snow silently falling down behind the window. 

The dark mixed with the white balls of fluff in the air remind him of you. Your bubbly laugh, the feeling of your skin on his when you held his hands and danced around with him in the snow. He feels a smile growing on his face, despite everything he’s heard today, his fingers involuntarily texting you to see if you’re doing anything and if you can hang out with him today. 

He meets you at the door a few minutes later, your nose runny from the cold and hands dry, smiling at you with a sense he can only describe as belonging, because he realises, maybe you feel just as lonely as him on holidays and suddenly, he no longer feels sorry for leaving.

“Why are you even here, Lix? Shouldn’t you be at home?” you ask him when you’re taking off your shoes and hanging your coat on the hanger by the door. He bites down on his lower lip to suppress a bitter chuckle. 

“Christmas got cancelled this year.” he shrugs. 

It’s not like he doesn’t trust you. You know better than anyone what his struggles are-- he asked you to keep his secrets numerous times. It’s just that now that you’re here, it’s like his soul finally feels calm and he no longer wants to whine about his grandma or his aunts anymore. It’s just you and him and the empty apartment. If he was anyone else, maybe he’d try to get into your pants. He’s just Lee Felix though, and he’s absolutely, wholeheartedly in love with you, he realises, and believe me, it kind of takes him over the edge, and so he doesn’t try anything. 

And you look at him in understatement, no other questions asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s all a capitalistic holiday anyway,” he shrugs.

You follow him into the living room and he throws the remote control into your lap, telling you to choose a movie before he comes back with popcorn. 

“If you don’t pick anything before I’m done, we’ll just watch Venom, I don’t care,” he says, seeing you adorably scrunch up your nose at him in response. 

When he comes back and you’re waiting for him with Howl’s moving castle paused on Netflix, he can’t help but grin at you. He places the popcorn on the coffee table and notices himself staring onto your body next to his far more often than the TV and wonders if he really drove away from all of his problems or if he just drove away from one problem to another, because now, it’s getting really hard to focus on staying away from you. 

And when you shiver and curl up into his side, placing your head onto his shoulder, he can’t help but jolt at the contact, staring at you in surprise. 

“It’s cold,” you mumble, pouting.

Felix smiles. He rolls his eyes at you, even though on the inside, he finds you absolutely adorable, taking a blanket from the side of the sofa and putting it over your cold bodies, tucking you both in. You feel warm against his side, your hand resting on his chest. He wonders if you can feel his quickening heartbeat, his stiff body and the nerves rising in his heart. Everything else disappears, the fight back home long forgotten and Han Jisung left somewhere home with his own family, the weight of your body overwhelming him when you fall asleep and that’s when he stops and thinks,

isn’t this how home’s supposed to feel like?

The halls of the university building are empty as Felix stands right in front of the closed door, silently pacing around the corridors and bumping his knee up and down. He just got his final’s results and even though his soul was supposed to be at peace, he finds himself stressing over you, currently sitting in the room behind the closed door in front of him, getting your final’s results from biology back. The professor decided to split your class into two groups for the finals so you can, quote, ‘focus better when there’s less people around’ and even though you managed to cheat on your exams without any problems, he still wonders if you did well and if you passed. 

Once the voices behind the closed doors get louder and louder, he figures it’s near the end of your lecture and he can finally see you again and ask you how you did. 

The last time he talked to you without the stress of finals breathing onto your back was back on Christmas break-- more than a week ago. Ever since then, you two have been meeting in the middle of the night again, preparing for your upcoming tests. You didn’t really manage to talk a lot about anything else and even though Felix didn’t mind, he still missed your mindless rambles and weird jokes you used to crack when you weren’t stressing your mind off. 

The door opens and reveals people coming out, a few of them wearing a toothy grin on their faces as they glance on the paper in their hands, a few of them frowning as they pin their eyes to the ground. It’s not easy to differentiate the ones that passed and the ones who did not do that well and even though Felix feels sorry for them, he wonders why they just don’t cheat their way out of bad grades just how he does. It’s not that hard. It just takes a lot of practice. 

Once he finally sees your face, a big, toothy grin decorating your lips, a big stone falls off his heart, a weight lifts itself from his shoulders, because frankly, you wouldn’t look so happy if you failed, right? You’re not a total psychopath.

“How did you-” 

His words are cut off from his mouth, all air kicked out of his body once he feels you so close, the soft skin of your lips pressed up against his in a happy kiss. He’s startled, to say the least. His cheeks are reddening in the instance and he doesn’t even know if time stopped or if it’s just the rising anxiety and excitement in his chest, but he bites down the confusion and kisses you back finally, closing his eyes and bringing you close by your shoulders. The kiss is a little sloppy and messy, but he doesn’t mind-- all that’s occupying his mind right now is you, your sweet lips, your mouthy kiss, your excited hands creeping up around his neck, your bag that fell to the ground next to his feet, your exam paper marked with the big red A+ flying around the two of you when you let it fall from your grasp, your hair tickling his cheeks, you, you, you.

There’s only you. In the air he breathes, in the ground he walks on, in his hands and on his mind. You’re everywhere. Intoxicating.

You pull away from him after a while, grinning at him. It still manages to startle him a little-- how just the small gesture can light up his whole world, how your smile can make him feel like he’s the luckiest person on this earth. He sees stars in your eyes and he wonders who put them there, hoping to be the one, believing he could finally be the one, with how you look at him and hold him in your arms-

but it’s Felix’s life we’re talking about. There’s only you, you, you and maybe somewhere, far away in the distance, there could even be him, but who’s always there for sure is Han Jisung.

Han Jisung staring at the two of you from the open door, mouth agape in shock. Han Jisung with trembling hands, Han Jisung with his books clutched close to his chest as Felix’s heart drops and reality finally hits him. You were never supposed to be his to kiss. You were supposed to be Jisung’s-- his roommate’s, his best friend’s -- you fell for him long, long ago and that’s how it’s always been. 

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, to comfort his dear friend that looks like he’s heart’s being broken, but he finds no words in him to console his actions. He feels bad, he feels so, so guilty when their eyes meet, but he doesn’t manage to say anything before Jisung turns around the corner and leaves. 

The sound of Jisung’s quick steps is the only thing resonating in Felix’s mind like a bell, a signal for him that he fucked up, he did a really, really bad thing. 

His insides clutch and eyes water in the empty college corridor when he wonders,

is this how it feels to break someone’s heart?

You kick the small rocks beneath your feet, gazing into the distance. The cold in your bones makes you shudder, your eyes trailing around the neighbourhood so foreign to you, putting your hands into your pockets so you shelter your fingers from the frozen air. You think how this place looks exactly as you imagined it to-- tall apartment complex and a single big tree in front of it, the cars parked in the driveway obviously having their spot as the neighbours have lived together for a long time to know not to park anywhere else, because it’s more efficient this way. 

You’re waiting and waiting, hoping to see the one you’re waiting for soon, because you doubt your confidence will last you for any longer if you don’t talk to him now. You could lie and tell yourself it’s okay and that you’re not nervous at all, but after Jisung ran away the other day and his roommate followed him a few moments later, you feel nervousness creeping into your skin after not seeing or hearing from Felix for three days now. 

You remember him telling you that he likes to go for late-night convenience store runs every evening to get his favorite snacks. It wasn’t hard to find out where he lives-- it’s the 21st century, for god’s sake. You asked a friend of his friend and here you are, waiting  for him to appear in the door of his apartment complex, ready to talk to him about the events of this week.

Once you hear the door opening, you feel your head snap to its direction quicker than the speed of light, knees almost getting weak at the sight of Lee Felix standing there, confusion written all over his face once his eyes meet with yours. The frown forming on his face only deepens your stress as you wonder if he didn’t want to see you today, which, considering the fact that he’s been ignoring you for the past few days, might just be the case, but it still makes your heart break just a little when you hear him sigh once he makes his way over to you, the sound of his sneakers on the ground being the only thing heard in the middle of the night.

All the snow has melted-- as if all the bright things have left just in time with it, leaving you sad and cold, the clouds of your breath hitting the cold air being the only thing reminding you of the weather as you feel your body heating up in his presence. 

“Can we talk?” you ask, voice steadier than you expected it to be.

“I- I mean,” he starts, a shaky and husky voice hitting your ears, signaling that he probably hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time now, “you’re already here, so I guess…”

You nod at him, averting your gaze quickly to the ground, when you realise you suddenly don’t know what to say. You try to search for words, yet none come out of your mouth. Your mind is blank and it seems like his presence took away all your vocabulary, but deep on the inside, you know damn well that if you don’t speak up now, you won’t have a second chance and you really have to get it now.

“Why- why…” you mutter, “why did you leave without saying anything the other day?” you ask.

The silence is overwhelming as you start to hate the sound of your own breath, opting to hold it for a few seconds as you await his response. 

“I mean, isn’t it obvious?” 

You shake your head in confusion, finally meeting his eyes again. “No.”

“Jisung… Jisung saw us. I didn’t feel like it was right,” he explains, cracking his knuckles in a nervous habit you noticed in him a long, long time ago when he first tried to teach you how to cheat in class without getting caught.

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“You two like each other.” he says bluntly, taking you off-guard.

The moment these words come out of his mouth, you realise not one, but two things. One of them is fairly new to you, the fact that Han Jisung liked you back was something you never knew you could experience, but even though you should be flattered, you realise it no longer holds a meaning in your heart. The second thing is connected to the first-- and that is, Lee Felix doesn’t know that you like him now. His foolish, silly mind convinced him you were still in love with his best friend, his confused and frustrated brain didn’t let him realise that for a long, long time now, the freckled boy in front of you has been the only one you thought about when you were falling asleep at night.

You don’t even know when it happened. You guess it just did. You wondered how it’d feel to know what exactly made you fall for Felix, what that moment was, but something inside of you is telling you that maybe, it was even more wonderful this way. Unexpected, but totally reasonable.

“Why would I be kissing you if I still liked Jisung?” you ask, the fear of directly confessing to him and getting rejected creeping up in your shadow.

“I- I don’t know-”

“Exactly.” you cut him off before he rambles and manages to find a stupid, silly reason in his head to justify his wrong expectations. You know how he is-- if he overthinks things hard enough, he’ll surely find an answer. There’s none, though, so you don’t dare to give him time to think about it and ponder on the thought for any longer.

“But that doesn’t matter now anyway,” he shrugs, putting his hands into his pockets.

You wonder what’s going on inside of his head right now. You wonder if he regrets what he’s done-- if he wants to turn back time and never let you kiss him. The nerves make you bite down harshly on your bottom lip and you only catch yourself when you feel iron in your mouth, quickly licking your own wound on the surface of your mouth and take a deep breath in. 

“Why?” you ask. 

“Why would it?” he says, eyes boring into yours.

“Because… I thought it meant something to you? I mean, it meant a lot to me, at least. That’s why I’m even here in the first place,” you chuckle airly, feeling your throat get dry.

“I’m not saying that it didn’t, I just think it had no point.”

His words feel like knives thrown into your chest, like a fire burning the pit of your stomach. You feel your legs getting weaker at his arguments, your fingers harshly tugging at the skin of your cuticles hidden in your pockets. You don’t trust your voice to sound steady this time when you speak, but you don’t care. Maybe it’s time to show your real emotions. Maybe it will change Felix’s mind.

“And why is that?”

“Because people like you don’t date people like me. You’re supposed to be in love with Jisung. You’re supposed to be dating him, he’s supposed to date you. You’re too good for me anyway.” he shrugs.

“Is this all about Jisung?” you ask, eyebrows furrowed.

You watch Felix sharply inhale in and out, averting his eyes from your figure. The distance between the two of you is unnatural, as if to singal how the two of you are slowly drifting apart. You see him fold his hands on his chest, preparing for what he’s about to say.

“It hurt him, back then. And I hate that. He loves you and I just.. I can’t do that to him, when I know  how much he cares about you.” he says.

Love is a strange thing. You hear Felix say how much Jisung loves you, but is that really true? Does Han Jisung even know you? The real you?

Does Jisung know how you look with your mouth full of fries and a greasy forehead? Does he know how you look when you’re stressed out of your mind because of finals? Does he know your favorite bistro, does he know your favorite movie? Did you cuddle up with Jisung on the couch just because you wanted to be close to him, comfort him and tell him you’re there just a few days after Christmas? 

Or does he just know the self you put up in front of him when you went to meet him? The put-together you that cares even about the sound of your own laugh, not wanting it to sound ugly in his ears? 

Han Jisung can’t love you. He doesn’t even know you.

And you never loved him-- just for the same reason. The feelings you had for him were merely a feeling of attraction, so far away from love.

But now you know how you feel about Felix, how his smile lights up the world and how his presence makes you feel understood. How even the silence with him speaks louder than a million words, how he knows you like the back of his hand and how he treats you like his closest friend. You know that what you feel when you’re with him is stronger than anything you ever have and although it used to scare you for a moment, now you’re ready to embrace it and live with it, if he lets you.

Lee Felix doesn’t tell you he loves you. Maybe you can see it in his eyes.

Why does he have to put everything above love? Why does he care about Jisung more than you? It’s breaking your heart. 

“Felix… I’m sure he’d understand. He’s a good person. I’m sure he’d want you to be happy.”

“Y/N, you don’t understand-”

“He’s a grown adult!” you yell out, the built-up emotions coming to the surface in the form of frustration, your words sunding spiteful and angry. Maybe you are furious, maybe you are full of fire right now, but it’s all because of the boy in front of you and the things he refuses to let himself enjoy.

“Why do you even care about it so much, huh? I was your fucking second choice all along anyway!” 

You look at him in shock, your eyes watering at the sight of the frown sitting on his face. Something inside of you breaks and you think it’s safe to say it was your heart, choking you up as you shake your head in disapproval. 

“Felix-” you protest, but there’s no use.

You see him turn around on his heel, opening the door to the apartment complex and leaving. It feels like you’re losing him, it feels like he’s gone forever. He turned his back on you, refusing all the love you were willing to give him, all the love you were offering to him right here, your heart in your hands.

He gave up on your love.

People in movies go out to party after a break-up to get drunk and numb their feelings. They either go to the club or go to a stupid college party, which is, coincidentally, your case today, but you’re not here to get drunk tonight. You’re not here to drown out your feelings and numb your pained soul-- you’re simply here to try to have some fun.

Your mum told you long, long ago that happiness is a choice. You could argue with her and tell her that depression and heartbreak aren’t a choice and that they, by themselves, are causing people the most sadness, but you had to give your mum a point. If you don’t choose to try, if you don’t do anything to at least try to stimulate your own brain, you can’t expect happiness to find you by itself. That’s just, sadly, not how life works, and you weren’t going to drown out in your own tears just because of Lee fucking Felix, because if you weren’t worth trying for him, he’s not worth any of your tears.

You appear on Lee Haechan’s end of the semester party. You have A+ finals to celebrate and although you would be much happier to drink to them with the one that basically helped you get through the semester, you won’t pass the chance to socialize. You worked hard and you did a good job-- you deserve a party. Alcohol truly isn’t the best for your brain, but you will just decide to call it selfcare. It’s not like you’re getting blacked-out drunk tonight anyway.

You manage to have small talk with a few people from your class. Though it’s not exactly what’s stimulating your brain, you don’t mind it. You barely know these people and you couldn’t care less, but you guess this is the downside of socialising. 

The alcohol in your veins doesn’t give you a chance to loosen up, though. You only feel your body warmer with the beer hitting your system, but your feelings still taste of salt, your brain not cooperating with your grandiose happiness plan and you think the people talking to you notice, since no one really tries to keep you in a conversation long enough when you start to absently nod at them and pay zero attention to what they’re saying. You don’t blame them, though. You’d probably do the same in their place.

Your feet move their way to the front door when you decide that maybe your mum wasn’t right, completely ready to go home and pity yourself for a few more days before coming back to life, when a familiar voice calls you from behind, making you freeze in your spot.

“Y/N, long time no see.”

Han Jisung watches you with glossy eyes, yet he tries to look nonchalant at the sight of you. It doesn’t feel like his heart is breaking when he sees you right here and there, chewing on your bottom lip, more or less, it feels numbing to his heart and his head. It’s like he expected it all from the start-- the outcome that once so surprised him. But after all this time he spent overthinking and dwelling on the memory of seeing you kissing his best friend, it made sense to him. 

“Jisung…”

He can see your eyes growing worried when you watch over him and he mentally slaps himself for not handling his emotions with more care back then. He could have spared you a lot of pain and trouble if he hadn’t reacted in such a way in the doorway of your classroom, but the truth is, Han Jisung hadn’t really known just how much a true heartbreak feels and nothing could ever prepare him for the physical pain numbing his chest. He didn’t know it could hurt so much. 

He doesn’t want to worry you. You are still his friend, after all, right? That’s all you always have been and he should have understood it from the first moment he saw you gaze at his friend so lovingly in the university halls one day. He thinks you, yourself, didn’t even recognise the emotion in you when you watched over Felix with so much care, with so many stars in his eyes and a big grin on your face. He could never compare himself to Felix.

He doesn’t want to worry you anymore, and so he decides to talk to you like a friend would. You looked like you could use a friend tonight.

“How have you been?” he asks, smiling at you. He hopes his eyes convey the emotion he feels-- how after all this time, he still feels comfortable with you and desperately needs you to do the same. He can’t lose another friend. Not to love. 

That happens every single time. Truth be told, Jisung used to have a problem with differentiating true love from platonic feelings sometimes. He used to think he falls out of love just as quickly as he falls in, but the truth is that it was never even love at all. Sometimes, it was just pure admiration. Feelings for a friend. And he managed to ruin all his friendships just because he started dating them. 

And then, he just kept searching and searching for the right one, because no one ever felt right. No one ever made him feel loved, no one ever made him feel love. It felt suffocating, but so, so addicting. He could never give up on trying to find love.

And then he met you. And it finally made sense-- it finally felt right.

“I’m… I’m fine, thanks,” you say, smiling at him with that smile that still, admittedly, made his heart race and swell with love. He’s not afraid to call the emotion by its name. It doesn’t feel wrong. He used to think he wants it to stop, but the truth is, it still feels nice. 

Love feels like loneliness sometimes. It’s a bittersweet feeling. But it’s still so, so addicting.

“Are you sure?” he asks. He knows you. He knows when something’s wrong.

He also knows your eyes have been searching for his roommate for the past few minutes of your conversation. He knows you want to meet him and avoid him all at once, love him and leave him-- it was a paradox. 

He knows his roommate way too well, though. He knows he can’t fall out of love with you. He knows, though, that he’ll never act upon it. Lee Felix has always been the sweetest person in this whole entire world-- putting the needs of others before his own. He can’t keep doing this to himself.He can’t keep doing this to you.

“I think you know the answer, Jisung. Why do you keep asking, then?” you bitterly snicker, going around him and escaping the noisy house. Jisung doesn’t know if you want to leave, if you want to escape his presence, but he can’t leave you just like that, and so he follows you outside, seeing you sitting at the doorstep, as if you were waiting for him.

“You don’t have to think of me, you know that, right?” he says once he takes a seat next to you, watching your expression change into a pained one. 

“It’s… I don’t know. It’s complicated. And Felix- he doesn’t think it’s right. I can’t force him into anything. It was his choice anyway,” you mutter. Jisung sighs heavily, the feeling your words on his chest heavy and solemn. He hates the fact that he is standing in the way of your happiness. He hates the fact that he is the problem, the invisible wall keeping you two from each other. 

“It’s simple, though.” he shrugs.

Your eyebrows furrow in confusion, a heavy sigh escaping your lips. He takes it upon himself to explain before you begin to tell him that it’s not, opting to open your eyes on his own.

“You two are in love with each other. So you should be together. Isn’t that simple?” he asks, smiling at you subtly.

You scoff and shake your head. “He gave up on us.”

“Did he, or did he just do what he felt was right?” Jisung argues. “You can’t keep hiding from each other. You can’t keep trying to ignore your feelings just because I like you. That’s not fair for either of you.”

You don’t argue with him this time. He wonders what’s going on inside of your head at the moment, with your eyebrows furrowed and your bottom lip trapped in your teeth. You look just like all the times he watched you during your tutoring sessions-- focused and lost in thought. It will feel weird to not see you in that way anymore, but he has to try.

The same way Lee Felix always tried for him.

“You’re too sweet, Han Jisung. What a shame our timing’s off.” you say, bitterness coating your voice. He looks up at you again, wondering what your words mean. “I used to like you back then, you know,” you smile.

Here it is, the strange emotion again. The emotion of almost physical pain, a hand squeezing his heart, a knife stabbed into his back. It feels like his world is crumbling down on him, because he’s stupid-- so stupid. He could have had you back then. He could have been with you all this time, only if he wasn’t late. He missed his biggest chance, the biggest opportunity, the happiest time of his life. All because he was too hesitant. 

He didn’t deserve you anyway.

“But now your timing’s right with Felix. Don’t waste that,” he says, biting through the pain.

Because the truth is, if anyone deserved love, it was his roommate. The one that refused you for him, the one that rejected you for him, the one that set him up on a date with you even though you invited him in the first place. The one who gave up on his love only so he wouldn’t hurt his friend. You could say that Jisung was too good for this world, but Lee Felix is the one that deserves the whole entire world, in his eyes.

Maybe these two were just too good of friends. Caring about the other one twice as much as about themselves. And that’s exactly why Jisung will get over this-- he’ll push you to his friend. So he could be happy, finally. 

“Jisung, I don’t know-”

“Do it,” he cuts you off, “reach out to him again. Try it. For me.”

y/n: meet me at the 8Bistro at 9 

Felix can’t believe himself when he finds his legs moving to the direction of the bistro at the edge of the town. He knows it’s the last one on your list, the one you invited him to so you could celebrate your finals in and he finds himself wondering if he could have gone here with you earlier only if the two of you didn’t share that kiss back then.

That damned kiss he couldn’t stop thinking about for the last few days-- even weeks, every time he opened his eyes in the morning and closed them when he was about to sleep. It kept following him like a curse, a thing he couldn’t escape, as if it was testing him like the snake tested Eve in paradise. Foreign fruit. 

You’re sitting there already when he arrives, fingers playing with each other as you gaze at the door in expectation. He sees your usual order already on the table, assuming you got here early, but it’s untouched as your knee bumps up and down under the table and you bite down harshly on your bottom lip.

He takes a seat, allowing himself to look at you again after such a long time. It feels like it’s been ages, yet you still look the same to him-- the same beauty that hit him when he first met you and shared his biggest secret with you.

“Why aren’t you eating? You have to finish off your list,” he mumbles awkwardly, motioning to the food at the table.

“I wanted to wait for you.” you say. Your voice is quiet, almost shy, when you speak to him. He wonders just how much he fucked up that it made you act this way. He knows it’s probably a lot, but considering he’s sitting here right now, he can still fix it.

At least he hopes so. 

“Did you.. Do you want to talk to me about something?” he asks, nervosity filling his veins as he feels his hands form a little swimming pool with just how much he’s sweating.

“Yes,” you nod, taking a deep breath in and out. He wonders if you’re just as nervous as he is. The answer is probably yes, considering your tense shoulders and restless legs, but he doesn’t comment on it as he watches you begin speaking again. “I wanted to tell you that I’m- I’m in love with you. And that it’s for real, and it’s for you and no one else,” you start, quickly wetting your lips and continuing again, “and I know you must feel like a second choice, or like you weren’t important to me at all, but that’s not true.”

“You helped me so much, really, but the more I hung out with you, the more I realised just how wonderful you are. And how your heart is so big, how you’re fun to be around…” you ramble, taking Felix by surprise with your heart-felt monologue, “and that Jisung is not the one for me, because, well, it was just.. it was just a crush. I didn’t know him. He didn’t even know me that well. Crushes… they don’t mean anything. They’re silly. But what I have with you, Felix…” you say, drifting your eyes away from him for a second,

“I know you. The real you. And you know me. You’ve seen me at my worst. You’ve seen me struggle and you know exactly how to help. You know me and I know you and the feelings I have for you are much more than a silly crush. I love you, Felix. And I don’t want to just forget about us.” you complete and Felix swears he can feel his eyes watering at your words. He chooses not to speak up, afraid of his voice breaking, afraid he’s going to embarrass himself in front of you. His emotions got the best of him and right here and now, no one else matters. 

It’s you. You that feels like home, you, the only girl he’s ever loved. You, the only girl that ever loved him back, you, who he foolishly rejected. 

You’re everywhere. In his veins, in his heart, in his foolish, stupid mind.

“Felix… I don’t want you to give up on us.” 

He looks up, seeing your sincere eyes and a look full of worry. You seem so wonderful to him, even now. You’re everything he’s ever dreamt of, a home without a roof and walls. With you, he feels at ease. He trusts you. He’s never felt this way for anyone before.

He watches you and he hears your laugh, he hears your whines when he used to tease you so much. He hears the sound of your memories when he chased you around in the snow. He hears the opening song of Howl’s moving castle, reminding him of the warmth he felt when you hugged him so close that evening.

He used to want to hate you. He should have known that could never be the case.

You’re all he needs-- all he wants. You’re everywhere he looks, in every beauty of the world and in everything that’s dear to him. 

You, you, you, you.

And so he decides-- it’s time to change his plan.

Lee Felix’s bullet-proof guide to loving you: 1) hold her hand, 2) get rid of the guilt, 3) lean in and kiss her.

“Does that mean you’re giving us a chance?” you ask, hopeful eyes glaring at him with millions of stars in them, sparkles swimming around in perfection.

“We’ll talk after you eat. You have a yelp review to write,” he laughs.

“Feli-”

Lee Felix’s bullet-proof guide to loving you: 4) shut her up by forcing french fries into her mouth.

“I love you too.”

[airlock]

oh, you know what? I'm fully nerd sniped. here, I'm giving you all the full analysis

ranked from least to most likely to narc!

-Micaiah. I reiterate: she used to be in a gang. yes she's kind of an idealist in ways that don't always mesh with that lifestyle, yes she's willing to enforce shitty policies when she finds it necessary -- she still knows what the rule of the street is, come on.

-Celica. I know what some of yall are thinking; she's moralistic, and pretty bullheaded about it. thing is, though, she strictly follows her personal morality, and is willing to be an absolute gremlin to accomplish this. so no, she would not sit there like a proper agape karen at you and your little puff of smoke.

-Dimitri. he may be straight-laced and weird about progressive ideas, but he also has a very gentle touch about it all. he's patiently tolerated a lifetime of Sylvain and Felix's shenanigans; weed is not going to perturb him. he'd just kinda sit next to you and start asking questions from a place of genuine curiosity. you could even get him to take a hit! (do not do this. do not do this. you don't want to find out what Dimitri is like under even the slightest influence.)

-Marth. he'd just be all "uh, sure, I guess?" about it, the way he gets about, say, Astram threatening to kill people if anything happens to Nyna, or the concept of secret shops. nonplussed, but not to the point of taking action against it.

-Corrin. I haven't played Fates, but Corrin is, as far as I hear, not much of a fan of taking hard stances. they miiiiight narc but the likelier outcome is they won't feel strongly enough either way to do anything in particular.

-Alm. big toss-up here. he's kind of a goody two-shoes, but it's also just as likely that he's already been spending this whole time zooted on some insane country strain with a ridiculous name.

-Edelgard. if there's one thing maaaybe stopping her from being a narc, it's her contempt for authority figures that aren't her. so she might still her white womanly hand, but strictly only out of distrust for the police. and no matter what, you're still getting an earful about wasting your potential or whatever

-Sigurd. I know, I know; he went to college, and he spent at least 25% of his time there doing acid straight off Eldigan's penis. thing is, though, he's since moved onto the part of his life where he just wants to pretend like none of this ever happened and he's a regular, proper, heterosexual man. and he's more than willing to narc in order to sustain that chimera for himself

-Lyn. do not test Lyn's judgemental streak. if she scents anything less legal than a spicy vape rig on you, you will not only be narced on openly, but also subject to a furious tirade about the sorts of vicious criminals who run the drug trade.

also, here's the ones who aren't in the poll too, because fuck it, I'm all in now. these are unranked, though

-Seliph. probably would narc. definitely would be a little bitch about it. doing it behind your back and everything

-Leif. hahahahaha his name is leaf weed is leaf amirite fellas. anyway, the actual answer is, approximately 50% of the people he hangs out with are addicted to meth and he hasn't narced on a single one of them. he doesn't even think marijuana is a real drug

-Roy. would not narc -- he's not only open-minded, but actively so, unlike the more "uh sure I guess" types we've covered previously. don't expect him to totally let go of things without the odd comment about potential health impacts of extended drug use, but if there's a risk of cops, he's a good man in a storm.

-Eliwood. I hate to admit it, but, yeah, big narc this one. he would, at least, first try to talk you out of doing drugs 1-on-1 before resorting to the cellphone.

-Hector. doesn't know what weed is, but if you let him find out, he'll take to it like a duck to water. this man has been guzzling shitty teenager alcohol for so long, he was already sick of it by the time he came of age

-Eirika. naturally inclined towards narcing, but you could talk her out of it without much difficulty. just give her a chance to understand!

-Ephraim. would not narc, but would bring it up later, around the wrong kind of company, very unsubtly, so it's effectively the same thing. plus you're never safe from him inventing some superdrug that he's totally on in order to try and one-up you

-Ike. he's like Marth about this pretty much, just grumpier. so he's not going to narc, but he is going to, say, knock hard on the door and go "hey, keep it outdoors at least, man, you're stinking up the whole goddamn room"

-Chrom. don't be fooled by his florida man tendencies -- this is a man who runs a neighborhood watch. and no one told him to do that. he's among the premiere narcs around here for sure

-Lucina. I'm not too sure, but I'd hazard a guess that she's been thoroughly disabused of any habit of judging what people might do to get through the day. y'know, one apocalypse later

-Byleth. knows what weed is; never found out that it's illegal someplaces. unable to narc by default

-Claude. obviously not naturally inclined to narc, and is probably on at least two types of wild shit himself. he is not, however, above blackmail, so don't let your guard down too easy

-Alear. unfortunately this heavily depends on who got the first chance to explain what weed is to them. best case scenario it was Pandreo. worst case scenario it was Céline. or Vander

Once again, based on viewer suggestion

[yinses]

college au! headcanons

gojo satoru, geto suguru & nanami kento

rqst: college au for nanami, geto and gojo?

a/n: so i divided it into three categories to help keep my head straight. honestly almost straight kicked gojo out of college bc i couldn’t decide on a major for him. the jjk discord server is heaven sent for my sanity. ty everyone again 🌺

last time i should have to post these. hoping everything is fine now. 

gojo satoru

MAJOR

—he starts off undecided for a long time. the fact that he’s on scholarship allows him to be more flexible with his classes given that he’s not responsible for costs. he grew up with expectations from his family but university is suppose to be his opportunity to spread his own wings and grow from his experiences.

—so he tries a bit of everything- sciences, music and social studies- anything to prompt a spark. (took a business class once and made a point to sit next to nanami everyday just to annoy him) by his second year he’s getting as frustrated as his counselor because if he doesn’t decide soon he’ll be a potential 5th year senior.

—he’s overthinking it but gojo wants to invest in what he believes will make the most significant impact to his ability. his counselor takes those crumbs and runs with it.

—he gets steered towards political science and actually excels at it (that advisor gets a raise). surprises most of the class with his analytical skills because they thought he was just a pretty boy- surprise he’s beautiful and smart.

—develops a vested interest in governmental policies. might run for president one day idk. brings donuts to his early am class. doesn’t share.

SOCIAL

—he’s not the jock per say, but as the star athlete of the basketball team, the school likes to take advantage of his image to draw in sponsors.

—his face is plastered all over the auditorium whether they’re in season or not. sometimes it’s not even to promote basketball, gojo is pretty and they’re not afraid to use it. which also makes him one of the most recognizable faces on campus.

—due to his student athlete contract, he’s not allowed to sign autographs freely in the event they’re attempted to be sold as quick cash. but yikes, he can barely walk to class without someone stopping him for a picture. to the best of his ability he tries to laugh it off, poster boy image and all, but it gets pretty fucking old and annoying quickly. especially when it makes him late for his next lesson and the instructor shows no sympathy.

—his height didn’t only help him get into basketball, but its also convenient when it comes to shouldering politely through the student masses. his golden rule is don’t make eye contact. the busier the crowds the easier it is for him to pretend like he could’t possibly have heard them.

—gojo doesnt scout fraternities, fraternities scout him. but he’s not interested in the slightest. as an athlete he already gets into any social circle he wants without the additional effort. that and he doesnt think he could tolerate an alpha male trying to exert his dominance without barking back.

—loves to show up to parties but always arrives late enough to the point where they don’t think he’s coming. it helps him slip in when he wants too. he’s a connoisseur of all alcohol varieties and a master of beer bong. he’s not necessarily the life of the party but his presence is kind of hard to miss.

RELATIONSHIPS

—he gets too much attention to date casually. most potential suitors are in it more for the benefits they receive than him anyway. he’s got enough on his plate with career indecisiveness and games to try to pursue anything serious before third year.

—he’s not completely celibate though. he tries to keep the same partners as long as he can. not only to keep himself clean and safe but because he often goes into an agreement to keep it casual. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. either way he gets coined as a ‘heartbreaker’ before the end of his freshman year. frankly the rumors obscure most of the truth and give him more freedom. people always expect that he’s with someone even when he’s not, which helps keep his invasive teammates off his back.

—gojo can easily graduate without securing something tangible but there is still a window for potential.

—you’re both his consistent classmate and occasional friends with benefits. its the former title that keeps bringing him back around. he cant exactly avoid you without subjecting himself to 8am classes. it helps that the sex is good too.

—he can text you an offer to study together for the next test and roll over after an hour and wreck you for the rest of the week. its hard to tell who gets addicted first but he does appreciate the way your skin looks when youre wearing his marks.

geto suguru

MAJOR

—he’s a STEM kid, particularly interested in bio-genetics to improve overall health. he believes that simply becoming a physician just keeps the issue at bay and his goal is to eradicate the problem at its source.

—since high school he’s been cataloging different programs across the country before deciding what he wanted and putting all his efforts into it. so it’s no surprise when he gets in.

—geto doesn’t need counselors but they’re required so he listens to them prattle on about using university as an opportunity to explore. this man came in with more college credits than most sophomores, he knows what he wants.

—always on-time to class and never misses an assignment. also that kid who goes above and beyond, even on the simple stuff. he rarely gets teased about it, not even behind his back. geto straight up scares some people even when he’s smiling.

—not afraid to correct teachers when they’re wrong. in fact he lives for it.

—he’s the one who graduated early and starts his master’s program before most of his age group declare their own majors.

SOCIAL

—he tends to frequent the same circles- handpicking his acquaintances out of class rosters, clubs and honor lists. he’s less in it for the friendship and more so to scout for potential research partners.

—met gojo in one of his science electives and literally carried him through the class. they somehow end up friends but only really hang out at each other’s places- bunch of chill movie nights and pizza.

—there is no interest in fraternities, but he does join university funded clubs that allow him to further his research. they give him unique access to labs, take him on trips to different conventions and have an alumni list a kilometer long for future collaborations.

—the man does not party but he will occasionally slip into quieter bars to ease some of his frustrations. he actually enjoys karaoke thursdays , not to sing for himself but the drunken antics of others bring him some amusement.

—smokes weed occasionally, but only his own product. it helps him relaxand fan out the stress. he never sells it but sometimes gojo nicks some of his stash. given that he gets drug tested often, geto doesn’t know how the athlete never gets caught.

RELATIONSHIPS

—not interested in seeking out relationships in the slightest. the man has a plan and he’s already married to it.

—he’s not completely immune to sexual advances though and occasionally splurges but none of the friends with benefits crap. he’ll hit it once and stay celibate for the rest of the year easily.

—you might be able to squeeze in as his fellow lab partner. remain invested in the work and not him and he’ll start noticing the little details of your company- the way you subtle perfume lingers on his lab coat hours after you’ve adorned for the day, how he knows you have to keep your hair up for safety precautions but he thinks about running his fingers through it daily and your mind, damn, he wonders what else you can come up with when he has you laid out on his sheets.

—if he’s interested, geto won’t hesitate to broach the topic. he’ll ask you out for coffee and when you try to bring up research he’ll be upfront about his attraction. ultimately if you start dating the two of you are an absolute unit- not that you weren’t before.

—you’re the one variable he didn’t plan for but he’s glad to have added you to the equation.

nanami kento

MAJOR

—he was made for the business world, brought by a CEO who raised him to inherit the company. administration major marketing minor.

—takes initiative in all his classes and is often coined as group leader for projects. mostly keeps to himself  and only speaks up when prompted or disagrees with something.

—he takes the earliest sessions possible because it means less people more often than not. doesn’t really care if its in the front, middle or back but always sits near the edge.

—doesn’t really want to but it looks good on his resume so he joins the marketing team where they present mock business plans for competitions. they win a lot. nanami honestly doesn’t care. but again it looks good.

—it only took him a brief summer internship to learn that he found nothing satisfying about board meetings and macro management.

—he decides to invest in law school to handle the company from a legal standpoint instead.

SOCIAL

— sort of like geto, only wants to make friends on a need be basis.

—he would rather keep to himself but knows the benefits of socializing so he interacts with his frequent classmates when he can- through study groups or car pooling to seminars.

—he does join a fraternity, its the same one his father did (and uncles, cousins, whatnot. its a generational thing). its geared towards bettering future leaders. they focus building resumes, charity events and run the organization like a proper business. nanami gets elected president by his third year and runs two terms.

—the only parties he attends are networking events- full of wine and fancy horderves. wine is plentiful but he’s always nursing a scotch on top of his headache. if one more person squeezes their stocks into a conversation he’s going to personally take down the whole market

—zero interest in college party life. spends some of his downtime at the campus theater watching old time movies and classic plays.

—he’s the coffee shop hoe. he wakes up early sometimes just to sit by the window and read some casual literature. has his own thermo that gives him free refills to cart to class. do not talk to this man before he’s had his caffeine.

RELATIONSHIP

—he probably has a high school sweetheart that he’s still clinging too, whether on the same campus or long distance. it helps him because he can’t really see himself pursuing a relationship while focusing on school.

—he’s been with you long enough that you understand his ambitions and won’t feel bested by them. the two of you have a system- starting the day off with sweet ‘good morning’ texts before class and ending the day with long conversations as you digest the last 12 hours.

—nanami is independent but he is thankful to have you to rely on when classes start to overwhelm him. the two of try to escape briefly for the weekend when you can. often going to near by reservations just to get off campus

—other times the two of you will cuddle close on your dorm bed, his long fingers combing through your hair while he reads over some notes for class.

—sometimes you have to be the one to tell him to take a break and to enjoy life while he can. even if that means dragging him the events and concerts hosted on campus. he resists at first but you can see the tension ebbing away as the night comes to a close.

—the two of you start living together in your senior year just because you can. he insists on buying a house. not only because he can afford it because it can be rented out after graduation. always the business man.

[1engele]

daybreak | sal fisher x fem!reader - 8. solo

Previous | Next

[warnings: underage drinking, smoking, weed, near death experience?, crying]

"never have i dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul." — You leave the roof late in the night. Sal had gotten up and retreated into his apartment a little while earlier—but you'd decided to stay and make sure he didn't come back there.

Three days pass. They all consist of fleeting glances and irresolute tension. Things remain the same with the group dynamic, except for between you and Sal. Neither of you seem to know how to continue from that conversation on the roof. No one else notices, though. They'd never suspected anything from the beginning, it seems.

The beginning of your involvement with Sal involved a little bit of buildup and then a snap which resulted in a sexual encounter (or two).

Now it was a bit different. Now things were a little less lighthearted.

It's a Saturday—you'd planned to spend it inside as usual. That's until your phone starts ringing.

You flip your phone open, read over the contact, and answer the call.

"Hi, Ash."

"Y/N," she starts. You hear the excitement to continue in her voice. "There's a party tonight."

"Oh?" You get up from your seat on your bed.

"Some stoner Larry has connections with invited him and said to bring friends. He wants to bring us—save for Todd. He doesn't do parties."

"Wait," your eyebrows furrow. "Me?"

"Yeah!" She says from the other end of the line. "It'll be fun. Cmon."

You bite your lip nervously, anxiety knotting in your stomach. "I don't know. I've never really.."

Ashley is momentarily silent on the other line. She must be contemplating what to say to convince you. "Sal's coming too. Parties aren't necessarily his thing, either—so maybe you guys could try it out together?"

You open your mouth and then promptly close it. Something inside of you suddenly really wanted to go to this party. "Um... alright. Okay."

"Cool! What're you gonna wear?"

You look toward the drawer that contained your clothes and bit your lip. "Not sure yet. I'll update you on that."

"Okay, don't forget to text me! See you at eight."

The call declined from the other line. The phone that held the phone to your ear slipped into your lap. You pressed your lips together and tried to ignore the familiar feeling of sickening nausea and anxiety.

You don't rush yourself on getting ready for the party, because the time you're due to be done won't be for a while.

You take your time with the hours you have. You shower, take your time on eyeliner, mascara, and lipgloss—and finally decide on what you'll wear.

You decide on a square neck white cropped tank with short sleeves and your nicest pair of light blue, slightly washed out jeans. You slid on your favorite, sort of chunky white sneakers over white socks.

It isn't long after you finish when Ashley calls and informs you she's arrived at the apartments and Larry and Sal have already joined her out in the car. You give yourself a once-over in the mirror and then leave the apartment.

Your mother was nowhere to be found. She's either at work or drinking with her coworkers.

Once you've opened the door and climbed into the Ford Fiesta, you immediately realize your predicament—Sal is the only person in the backseat with you.

The drive there is decently long and painfully tense. Neither you nor Sal know how to speak to each other, so no words are exchanged beneath the heavy metal music emitting from the radio.

When you finally arrive at the party, it's recognizably crowded, drunken teenagers are flowing from the front door, in and out, and there's a good amount on the lawn. The newest radio hit is playing on a considerably loud speaker, and the vibrations are notable even from a distance.

"Woah," Larry says, staring at the house as Ashley pulls onto the side of the road. "Didn't realize he was so popular."

You all exit the Ford Fiesta and cross the road. You cringe as you watch someone vomit onto the grass, and another person ripping from a bong in the wide open.

Smoke flies into your face and your eyes as you enter the home. You cough, waving a hand as you blindly follow after your friends.

Eventually, the four of you find yourself on two couches directly facing each other. You on one, Larry and Ashley on the other. Sal is stood to the side.

Larry materializes a bottle of Fireball that you guessed he stole from someone on the way in, opens the cap with his teeth, and takes several gulps.

"Where did you get that?" Ashley laughs over the music, pulling the sleeves of her lavender sweater over her hands.

"Stole it," he looks to Sal and directs the bottle toward him. "Want some?"

"Sure," Sal replies, to your surprise—taking it from Larry's grasp and walking away and in your direction.

"You're drinking that?" You ask him, testing the waters.

"No, actually," you watch Sal round to the other side of the couch to linger behind you. "I'm limiting him. He'll thank me later."

Once he's out of your field of vision, you tip your head back and gaze up at him—your perspective on him being upside down. Your gaze zeroes in on the bottle of Fireball he's clutching in his hand.

"Hey," you say, meeting his eyes. "Give me some."

It was time to give him that excuse—the excuse to break the ice.

He leans in a bit, gesturing toward you with the bottle. "You want it?"

A grin pulls at your glossed lips. Instead of reaching for the bottle, you open your mouth and tilt your chin up.

Sal looks on for a moment but laughs once he realizes what you want. Everyone else at the couches seem decently distracted with each other and the overall environment—so he doesn't seem to worry about it too much.

He reaches his hand around and towards your neck, gripping your jaw in his fingers and holding you firmly. You feel his cold rings press into your skin when he tips your head further back just a bit—and then steadily pours a shot-amount of Fireball into your mouth with his other hand.

Sal stops at the right time, looks on as you pull back and sit up, and cautiously watches the back of your head as you assumedly swallow the whisky. But when you turn a bit in your seat to peer at him over your shoulder, you're holding your mouth closed and pressing a closed fist to your lips while soundlessly giggling.

"What?" He laughs, a hand moving to the top of the couch. He leans in a bit. "Can you not swallow it?"

Your shoulders shake slightly as you continue to laugh. You shake your head up and down.

"Do you need to spit it out?" Sal asks, his tone warming into concern.

You shake your head from side to side. You meet his eyes and swallow, gasping as the liquid slides down your throat and burns all the way down. You cough, the flavor of cinnamon and what tasted like Big Red gum overloaded your senses.

"God," you breathe out, giggling all the while. The alcohol is gross but you're feeling good. "It's not great."

"Yeah, that's why I'm holding Larry off, so he won't be puking his guts out later."

You look up to the boy, who's sat on the arm of the couch opposite to you. He's busy talking to some equally stoned guy, so you can't manage to catch his eye—but you catch Ashley's.

She had this look of astonishment on her face.

Had she been watching what happened? When Sal poured Fireball in your mouth?

Your face grew hot thinking about it.

Sal wanders away from you again, and you find yourself drinking more than you should. Eventually, your rationality disappears.

It's been a few hours and Sal hasn't seen you for a while. So when he hears about a girl wearing a white crop top walking across the roof of the house, he feels like he's going to vomit.

It takes him a record time of 6 seconds to get out of the door and onto the lawn. Upon looking up at the roof, his suspicions are confirmed. He shoulders past multiple people to place himself near the front of the crowd and gazes up in horror.

"Sal!" You yell, gesturing toward him with something between a wave and a point. "I'd recognize that hair anywhere!"

Multiple heads within the crowd turn away from you and towards him. He puts aside his social anxiety and the wave of unease that washes over his body and tries to focus on you. "Please come down," he rushes out, raising his voice just enough for it to be audible over the crowd.

You laugh like he's told a hilarious joke and he quickly realizes his mistake. That's the worst thing he could've told your intoxicated self. You move toward the edge of the roof, shaky and uncoordinated. "You want me to jump?"

"No!" He exclaims, his hands flying up, fingers splayed. "No. Don't do that!"

"Holy shit!" He hears Larry shout from somewhere closer to the front door of the house. Sal guesses he's just now catching wind of the current situation. Moments after, both of his brunette friends are at his side.

"What the hell is going on?!" Ashley yells, verdant eyes glued to the sight before them.

You lost your balance once again, but this time a bit worse—your foot catching on a shingle on the roof and effectively knocking the red solo cup out of your hand. It dropped onto the downward slope of the roof and the liquor inside of it spilled down the side.

Whenever Sal witnessed the toe of your white sneaker catch onto that shingle, he felt as though his very soul had been ripped from his body. Immediately after he watched you regain your footing and stable yourself, though—his heartbeat calmed to a steadier pace.

"I'm going up there," he stated beneath the chatter.

Both Ashley and Larry's heads whipped toward him.

"You'll kill yourself!" Larry exclaims incredulously. Ashley opens her mouth to assumedly second Larry's statement, but Sal cuts her off by walking away.

"Not before she does," he mutters, pushing his way through the density of bodies and forcing his way through the front door. His senses are disoriented like he's been submerged beneath water as the volume of the music scratched at his eardrums and pulsed the innards of his skull. Adrenaline courses through his blood like a drug whilst he shoulders past both mindlessly drunk and carelessly high teenagers.

Sal doesn't spare them a second glance, but their unconcern does remain in his mind. The fact that they're continuing their lives while he feels as though something that's growing into something of importance in his is about to be taken from him... it's mind-numbing.

He's never been an optimistic person, he's always tried to view things in the way they're most likely to happen—and all that's beneath that two-story house is a long drop and concrete. If you fall, you'll break your head open and you'll die.

He finally makes it to the stairs. He makes a break for it then, tripping over his own feet multiple times. Anything could happen in this amount of time, and he knew no one else was going to help him.

Sal's thoughts grow more and more disordered as he navigates the dark halls of the house. The music seems to have only grown louder, the deafening mixture of guitar and drums taunting him.

He remembers the window on the outside of the house. Sal estimates which room it would be, locates it, and approaches the door. He turns the knob, but it doesn't fully rotate.

The door is locked from the inside. Of course. Who would have a party and leave the bedroom unlocked so people could fuck all over your comforter?

He bites out a curse only he hears and prepares himself to force the door open.

Sal grabs the doorknob tightly, prepares himself, and rams the side of his body into the wood. He doesn't even feel the pain, just does it again, and again.

He goes until that half of his body is numb.

The door finally budges, and he wastes no time entering the room. He doesn't hesitate when he reaches the double-hung window he'd been seeking. He grips it at the bottom and pulls it up and open, clenching his teeth together painfully.

Sal stares out at the vastness of the night, the golden streetlights, and how they shine down on the crowd of people below him. They all seem to be looking at the same place, up, but not at him—and he can only swallow thickly.

Carefully, Sal moves to sit on the windowsill, gripping what was above him tightly, his legs outside. He then ducks to leave the room and shivers as cool air hits the front of his neck.

He starts walking the roof, steadily—like his life depends on it. Because.. it does.

Or yours. Yours depends on it.

"Y/N!" Sal calls as he finally reaches a point where you're in his line of sight. Momentarily, he's worried he'd scared you. But you turn your head, meet his eyes, and smile. Despite that, your face spells fear all over it. Something must have sobered you up a bit while he'd been inside.

"I'm going to come to you. Do not walk towards me!"

You blink lazily, because you were drunk, and nodded. You shivered, hugging yourself. It didn't seem to do much, though. Your arms were bare.

"Fuck," he breathes, gazing down at the fall that could await him if he misstepped and immediately reverted his gaze. Blood rushes between his ears as he steadily makes his way towards you.

"Please don't fall!" You suddenly exclaim, your hair tussling in the breeze. A strand blows over your face, so you quickly raise a hand to move it back in place.

He looks up from his feet and stares you in the eyes. "I won't," he affirms, you and himself, continuing across the roof. "Just stay put, okay?"

It doesn't take long to get over to you. He's mostly sober, so it isn't hard on that part. What's difficult is calming his steady heart.

He's not scared of falling. Not necessarily scared of injury or death. But he is scared of not making it to you.

Once he's at an arms reach of your shaking form, he reaches out a hand, palm facing the darkness of the sky.

You seem to read his mind, slowly grabbing his hand. Sal maneuvers your joint hands to where your palms press together and your fingers are interlaced. He doesn't know if it's the blood rushing through his ears or the distance from the ground, but it's as if everything below becomes very quiet.

You meet his gaze, your pretty eyes glossy with tears. The eyeliner you were wearing had just begun to collect beneath your lower lash line.

He squeezes your hand and leads you to be in front of him.

It's not long after that that he's gotten you off of the roof. Sal watches you slip through the open window before turning toward the density of people beneath him on the ground. He breathes in as he catches both Larry and Ashley's eyes—he can't read their expressions, but he wouldn't be surprised if there was shock written all over it—and then ducks back into the window.

As soon as the window is shut and it meets the windowsill once more, Sal whips his head toward you. "Y/N-"

Before he'd saw your face, and the language of your body as you were sat on the edge of the bed, he was going to scold you, and then go downstairs and find you some water and sober you up—all of that falls down the drain when he sees the stream of tears falling down your face. Every time you blink, more drop—quickly staining your cheeks with black makeup.

"Oh," he breathes, suddenly speechless. "Y/N-"

You attempt at taking a breath in, it seems—but it's a failure because it hitches and turns into a shoulder-shaking sob.

"I'm sorry," you cry, roughly dragging the tips of your fingers beneath your eyes. This only smears the running mascara further. "I'm just drunk."

Sal momentarily feels like breaking down in tears himself, that's how much this entire ordeal stressed him out. He approaches your trembling body and crouches down in front of you.

"Hey," he says, softly. "It doesn't matter whether or not you're intoxicated. Your feelings still matter, okay?"

You sniffle, still attempting to wipe your tears away, and reluctantly nod. "I'm sorry," you try again.

He places his hands on your knees and squeezes them firmly. "It's okay."

You jerk into a sob, leaning forward and pressing the side of your face on his shoulder. You slowly tuck your arms beneath his and cross them over the expanse of his back, palms flat on each shoulder blade. The convulsive gasps were hard to stop, making it hard to breathe.

Sal breathed out softly against the prosthetic, raising his arms and encasing them around your torso.

He didn't wonder about the reason for your tears. Assuming things wouldn't help you anymore.

"I don't know why I did that," you whisper, quieting yourself to swallow your saliva. "Maybe I do. I think I was trying to prove something to myself."

He finds himself holding you tighter, your chest pressed to his, feeling your heartbeat through the fabric that separated you both—oddly enough, even at this moment, it reminds him of that night in the car. You had been even closer to him then, though.

"It was stupid," you murmured. "Why would I do that, after what we had talked about last night?"

"What if we jumped together?" he remembers saying.

"Some things can't be explained," he replies earnestly. "You don't need to know why you did what you did. It was stupid, though. I'd probably walk across the roof of a two-story house for you again, but.."

You pull back and meet his eyes, your face wet. The majority of your makeup had been cried off and your lipgloss had been smudged.

You must've sensed his examination, breaking the visual contact and sniffling. "I know I look ridiculous right now."

Sal smiles. He knows she can't see it, but maybe she'll hear it. "I don't think so," he murmurs, looking off to the side. "I think that's a bathroom. You can clean up in there if you want."

You follow his gaze and then return your eyes to his and laugh a bit. You still sound drunk, he notes. Obviously. He'd poured a good amount of Fireball into your mouth and watched you drink plenty of other things.

"Feels kinda weird using a stranger's bathroom," you laugh, your breath hitching from the earlier crying.

Sal rolls his eyes humorously, gripping your knees tighter as he pulls himself off of the floor. "The guy who lives here is Larry's friend—and a stoner. I doubt he'd mind. And if he does get mad, I'll take responsibility for it. I forced that door through, anyway.."

Your gaze swivels toward the door, which is not shut but mostly closed. When he glances to where you're looking, he notices it seems a bit.. crooked.

He inwardly cringes. "I'll pay for it. Come on."

Sal follows you into the bathroom. You seem reluctant to enter first, so he does, opening the door and reaching to the side to turn the lights on. They do what they're supposed to—eventually. They're momentarily unresponsive before becoming alive—the illumination brightening the room with a dull yellow hue.

You step onto the tile and began to search for whatever it was you needed. You kneeled at one of the cabinets below the sink, opened it, and ducked your head lower.

"Oh!" You exclaim quietly, reaching in and pulling out two things. A bottle of half-empty makeup remover and a bag of some cotton rounds.

"Maybe he has a girlfriend?" He hears you say to yourself, standing up, nudging the cabinet closed with your foot, and placing the things you found beside the sink.

Sal reaches over and closes the door. He'd rather not have to witness the sight of some drunkards wandering in and fooling around on the bed.

"Lock it," you say. "I'd rather no one- no one see me like this."

His hand was already on the doorknob, so he just reaches down a bit and locks the door.

He watches you struggle a bit with the bag of cotton rounds, trying but failing to open it, so he reaches forward and delicately plucks it out of your grasp.

Sal slides the makeup remover over and pats the place on the counter it was previously. "Sit."

You peer into his eyes inquisitively but waste no time hoisting yourself up and onto the cold surface.

After that, he plucks the bottle of makeup remover off of the counter and douses the cotton round in the liquid. He reaches forward from the distance that your knees created between the both of you, but you spread your thighs and press the heel of your shoe into his lower back, pulling him in so he's between your legs.

Sal doesn't see it suggestively, because you're drunk—but he's glad you asked him to lock the door because, with his luck, Larry or Ashley would find their way into the bathroom and get all of the wrong ideas.

The firmness just beneath his navel presses into the edge of the counter as he cups one side of your face and began wiping away at the eyeliner and mascara and everything it messed up.

"Thank you," you say sweetly, blinking at him with appreciation in your eyes. "Where'd you learn how to do that?"

He remembers a silhouette. Her back was turned to him, golden hair cascading just past her shoulder blades. He remembers blue eyes that looked a lot like his own staring into a mirror, a hand which adorned a wedding ring wiping away makeup from the day.

"Read it on the label of the bottle," he replies, meeting your eyes and looking away.

As he's finishing up, he hears a rapping of knuckles against the locked door. He tosses the used cotton rounds into a trash bin in the corner and then locks eyes with you curiously.

"Occupied," he calls out, still looking at you. The knocking only gets louder, which makes you laugh.

"He said it's occupied!" You yell over the unintelligible music downstairs, your words breaking into a giggle. You press your knees against his waist, and he doesn't even realize it when his hands meet your thighs.

The knocking ceases, fading into a voice. "Is that you guys in there?"

Fucking Larry. Speak of the goddamn devil—that's what he would've said if he'd come knocking sooner.

The both of you seem to be thinking the same thing, locking eyes in terror. You quickly get off of the counter, and Sal unlocks the door and swings it open.

Sure enough, he's standing there—in all of his glory and highness. Larry blinks, the whites of his glossy eyes tinted red. He looks between the both of you before speaking. "Why were.."

"I had to pee," You choose to deadpan.

Sal feels himself grow even paler than he already is. "I came in.. after.. that."

Larry intakes a mouthful of whatever is in the red solo cup he's holding in his tan, lanky fingers, and swallows thickly. "Okay," he croaks, instinctively cringing as the alcohol passed through his chest. He gestured the cup toward you. "Uh..crazy stunt you pulled up there, huh?"

Sal saw your face shift in his peripheral vision. "Huge lapse of judgment," you reply.

"Nobody could tell who you were, so don't worry about that," the brunette smiles a bit. He returns his attention to Sal. "They've started playing country," sure enough, Sal hears the sound of a banjo from the speakers downstairs, effectively punctuating Larry's statement.

"Yeah.." Larry mumbles, sipping his drink and looking up and through his eyebrows. "Ash said to come find you guys so we can leave."

It doesn't take much, after that.

As you're leaving, Larry pulls the door open and furrows his brow at the condition of the hinges. "Wow. How old is this thing?" He mumbles.

Sal hears you snort.

The three of you descend the stairs, skirting past countless teenagers standing on the steps drinking or smoking. Sal makes the mistake of letting you fall behind and feels you stumble and smack him in the back. It's easy to steady himself, quickly gripping the railing—but he's concerned about you, so he turns around.

A guy with a cigarette balancing in his teeth is eying you with frustration pulling at his features. His gaze pulls from your face and down your body absentmindedly.

"Watch it," he murmurs.

"Sorry," you breathe, jerking your head away and meeting Sal's eyes worriedly. Keep walking, you express in the hues of your eyes.

Sal reaches forward and interlaces your fingers with his as he'd done on the roof. He makes a show of it, too—so the guy with the cigarette sees the rings on both of his hands. Sal gives him a distinct look when they lock eyes, rolls his jaw, and lets you lead him down the stairs, instead of the other way around.

By the time you're all nearly shot from weaving through the multitude of sweaty bodies and navigating through plumes of smoke thicker than fog, the three of you find Ashley petting what he'd assume is the host's dog.

No one questions it.

"You good to drive?" Larry asks, placing his cup on a nearby surface.

"Oh, yeah," she rises from her crouch beside the dog. The animal walks away, his golden tail wagging excitedly at the next person who would give him pets. "A gross sip of something put me off of drinking tonight a while earlier. And, uh.. the whole roof thing dried me out."

You sigh. "I'm sorry about that. It sobered me up, too."

She shakes her head, a wispy strand of light brown hair falling over her face. "It was stupid, yes, and I hope you don't do it again, but all that matters now is that you're safe."

Ashley blinks kind green eyes at you and smiles, reaching forward, taking your hand, and leading you away. Sal hears you laugh and follow after her as both of you head for the front door.

He turns to look at Larry once he loses sight of both of you in the crowd. He examines Sal with bleary dark eyes and looks as though he's about to say something, but he doesn't get to.

Even over the blaring country music, Sal hears a yell and then some fearful shouting. He whips around toward the sounds, which were toward the front of the house.

Red and blue flashing lights shine through the windows.

"Shit!"

"Ah, fuck," Larry groaned, nimbly wrapping his fingers around Sal's wrist and dragging him into the density of the panicked crowd. "Did you see where they went?"

Sal shakes his head. "No," he knows you're intoxicated. Panic settles in. He chews his lip, his eyes desperately scamming for a girl wearing a white top squared at the neck—you. "Y/N's had a lot to drink, Larry. If the police-"

"Don't worry about the Five-O, let's worry about the girls," Larry replies absentmindedly, keeping his firm hold on Sal.

"They must've gone to the Ford," Sal shouts over the music, which, for some reason, is still playing. "We were leaving anyway. I'm sure they're in the car."

Larry releases Sal and motions toward the back of the house. "There's a back door. I'll text Ashley and tell her to drive down the block and we can meet them on foot."

It was an agreeable plan. Waltzing out of the house and walking straight up to the car wouldn't be wise.

Larry does what he'd said he'd do. Turns out, Sal was right, they had made it to the car moments before the police had rolled up. Ashley informed him it was two squad cars and four officers. Seemed like overkill for a house party—but he wouldn't know. He didn't do this often.

When Larry was on the phone, Sal was very tempted to ask about Y/N, but refrained.

On the way to the back door, they crossed through the kitchen. Larry snatched an unopened bottle of alcohol of a brand Sal didn't recognize and carried it along with him for the road.

As soon as they made it out of the house, they both made a break for it, running between houses and into multiple different backyards on their way.

They slowed down once they were at a measurable distance from the party, gasping for air. Sal panted against the prosthetic, placing his hands on his knees and slowing his gasps into slow breaths, attempting to calm his racing heart.

They stood on the side of the road, the music in the distance (albeit a lot quieter) still pounding into the night.

Sal lowered himself down onto the curb. Larry joined him, raising the bottle he'd chose to bring with him to his mouth, and opened the steel cap with his teeth. He spits it onto the road and gestures it toward Sal.

"Bottoms up," he said, bringing it to his lips and taking several gulps.

Sal rolled his eyes playfully, eyebrows rising as Ashley's Ford Fiesta cruised down the road and slowed to a stop in front of them. He stood up from the curb and pulled Larry off of it as well.

They entered the car, sliding into the backseat. Larry continued to down the beer he'd found as Ashley turned around in her seat.

"The night's still young," she says. "Any ideas of what we could do?"

It's really not. Sal's a bit disoriented so he doesn't know what time it is but he wouldn't be surprised if it was 3 AM.

You then turn around in the passenger seat and grin mischievously. "Let's go to the lake."

Oh, great.

[seongsangi]

just catching up

YOOO this is the first smut im posting... lemme know how yall feel pls

pairing: jaehyun x reader

summary: you’ve had a small crush on jaehyun since high school but haven’t seen him in three years. you guys reconnect at a party and things go from there...

word count: 7.4k+

genre: smut bro just smut

warnings: drinking and smoking (PLEASE be responsible when doing either/or)

In the back of your mind, you've always had a little thing for Jaehyun. You first met him in high school, where you had a few classes together over the years. You and him never developed into anything other than classmates, as he hung out with a different crowd than you did. Not a bad crowd, just not the same friend group. You usually stuck to your own circle of friends in high school, and so did he. In class, you would gravitate towards each other for group projects or help each other with assignments and homework, but you both never went beyond that. It's not like you had an undying love for him, but you couldn't deny that he was smart, funny, always willing to help when you were confused, always managed to make you laugh or put a smile on your face when class got boring, and was extremely attractive as a bonus. Outside of class, you'd only see him in passing; maybe you wanted to get to know him a little better, but you weren't sure if he felt the same way, so you never acted on it. After graduation, you both went to different colleges. You stayed in the same state whereas he moved away, and your small crush eventually faded.

It is now your junior year in college, and you still kept in contact with some of your friends from high school. It's winter break and they wanted to go to a New Years Eve party tonight to ring in the new decade. You were excited, you wanted to go out and have a little fun, maybe get a little drunk to celebrate acing the long finals you had to take. As you made your way into the house, your friends scattered around, saying hey to people they haven't seen since graduation. You headed straight for the kitchen to make yourself a drink, no time to waste. You wanted to start off light before getting too fucked up, and you were so glad you weren't the designated driver tonight.

Drink in hand, you walk around the house and recognize so many faces from high school. You never really talked to these people, but your graduating class wasn't that big so you didn't have to really know them to know them. The party was in your hometown, where you all graduated and people came home from college for winter break. There actually weren't very many people you didn't recognize. You exchanged greetings with a few and chatted with them just to pass the time, but the music was so loud you couldn't really hear much of what they were saying.

A few mixed drinks in, you found a spot in the corner of the living room, looking around for your friends to make sure they were okay. Parties weren't really your thing since you were still a bit awkward around people and didn't socialize as much as the rest of your friends. Being alone wasn't that bad either, as long as you had something to keep your mind buzzing. As you scanned the room, the front door opened and the party got even louder as people began greeting the crowd that just walked in. Jaehyun and his friends seemed to steal the show, and you couldn't keep your eyes off him. Clad in an all black outfit, you could tell he got much taller and more muscular since the last time you saw him. He walked in with four other guys you recognize as part of his friend group, but his smile alone lights up the room, at least to you. You suddenly feel a bit shy, but you don't know why. He hasn't even said a word to you and you feel butterflies in your stomach. Three years doesn't seem like a long time, but he definitely looks even more attractive than before and you start to wonder what he would look like without his clothes ­ — wait, what the fuck? 

Why were you thinking of him in that way? He literally just walked through the door and you're already fantasizing about him. You make your way through the crowd, away from Jaehyun and out to the patio where you can calm yourself down a bit. You try to talk yourself through it, yes he's good looking, so good looking, but you haven't talked to each other in a while and there's no telling if he's even the same person from high school. You shouldn't be thinking of him in that way without even having a proper conversation with him. It was just a simple crush, so why did your mind jump so far ahead into getting in bed with him and letting him have his way ��

"Y/N?" The sound of your friend calling your name brings you back to your senses. "We're about to take shots, do you wanna come back inside?"

You shrug the indecent thoughts you're having about Jaehyun off and down the rest of the drink in your hand before hurriedly following her back inside to the kitchen. You're definitely tipsy by now, but you're in the mood for more. There are several shot glasses laid out, all filled with Henny to the brim for the taking. It burns every time you drink it, but it's a good burn and hits quick. You grab a glass off the counter and turn to face your friend when you almost collide with the person behind you. You realize it's Jaehyun, and he's beaming down at you with that perfect smile that makes your heart race a bit.

"Sorry, I didn't know you were behind me," you say, taking a step back.

"Y/N? Hey, it's been so long!" he replies, grabbing his own glass and raising it to yours. You clink glasses and take the shot; without fail, it burns like it always does. You wish you had something to chase it with. He offers you his can of Coke, noticing the way you grimace. You gladly take it without thinking and hand it back to him, throat feeling much better after.

"How have you been? How's school going?" he asks, leading you away from the kitchen and back out to the patio where only a few other people are hanging out. You look around for your friend, but she's already made her way in the opposite direction. You weren't sure if you wanted to be alone with him so soon. Your mind was already racing with thoughts you couldn't seem to control.

"I've been good, my classes were kind of hard this semester and I'm just so tired of school but at least we're on break right now, it's much needed. What about you?"

"Tell me about it, I couldn't wait to come to this party. I've pretty much just been staying at home with my family since I haven't been home in a while." You and Jaehyun continue the conversation, talking about your majors and what classes were the hardest for you both this semester. You can feel the alcohol kicking in the longer you talk to him, your head starts to get heavy and you're smiling at everything he says, not that you can help it. You catch him staring at you as you talk about the class you enjoyed the most, listening intently while at the same time you could swear he was checking you out, eyeing you up and down with a look you couldn't decipher. You sit on the edge of the table behind you, hands gripping the edge to help you balance yourself. You're a bit wobbly now that the drinks have taken effect. He notices you're tipsy and chuckles, asking if you feel okay.

"I feel great," you say a bit too happily, making you both laugh. "Actually... I kinda wanna take another shot." He raises an eyebrow at you, seeing as how your legs stumble a bit as you start walking, but doesn't stop you as you make your way to the kitchen and take one of the glasses left on the counter. You pour yourself another shot, turning to look back at him and nodding your head for him to take one too. "Only if you want," not trying to pressure him. He smiles and raises the glass so you can pour him one. A few mixed drinks and two shots in and you feel unstoppable. You've always been kind of a lightweight compared to your friends, so you decide to chill out with the alcohol for now, not being the best at holding it down in the end anyway.

The music is much louder inside than it is outside. Jaehyun steps closer to you and leans down. "I don't know if you smoke, but I figured I'd ask anyway. Wanna go upstairs?" He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of rillos, trying to be discreet from others so they don't ask him to share.

"What, just me and you?" You say with a little tease, leaning on the counter obviously enjoying where this is going. You haven't smoked in a while, but you can definitely handle your weed better than alcohol. Granted, you don't need either of them to have a good time, but you surely do when you have both, so why not spice things up a bit?

"Yeah, just me and you," he replies with a smirk of his own. "I was gonna use this on my own when I could find a time to get away from my friends, but I think I'd have more fun with you."

You can't help but feel a little giddy, was it the alcohol making you feel this way or was it the fact that you're about to spend time with him in a way you never have before? Maybe it's the way he's looking at you so intensely like he could eat you up right here in this kitchen with all these people around? Maybe you were just imagining things, but you could feel the mutual attraction you both have for each other. You decide not to get too ahead of yourself and just go with the flow. You push yourself off the counter, sauntering through the kitchen, looking behind you and waiting for him to follow with a playful smile. You don't even know the layout of this house, but you head for the stairs where you think there would be less people. Jaehyun stops and talks to someone for a bit, presumably asking if he could go upstairs. You wait at the steps, taking in his figure and the way the black shirt he's wearing hugs his chest and arms so perfectly. He's definitely been putting in work at the gym, you note to yourself. He glances at you as you're waiting for him to finish his conversation. You're getting a bit impatient and mouth for him to hurry up, which makes him boast a chuckle, finally finishing the conversation and following you up the stairs.

"Someone's eager," he says as he leads you to the room at the end of the hallway.

"You have no idea," you reply, a bit under your breath but you know he heard it.

The room you walk into has a bed sitting in the middle, with two huge windows on either side of it and a desk in front of the window on the right. Neither of you reach to turn on the light, seeing as the room is still pretty lit with the moonlight shining through the windows. You don't know whose room it is but you're glad they let you come up here. You felt more comfortable not being around a bunch of people you didn't really talk to in the first place. There's a bathroom to the left, which reminds you that you need to break the seal.

"Hold on, I gotta use the bathroom first." Jaehyun turns on the fan in the room and sits in the chair at the desk, cracking the window open and pulling the blunt and lighter from his pocket.

You check yourself out in the mirror, admiring the way your hair and makeup looks tonight. You wipe your lipstick off, not wanting to get it all over the blunt you were about to smoke with Jaehyun. The reality of the situation hits you. All of a sudden, you're alone with him in this room and you're about to get high with him? How did things move so fast? Not that you were complaining, but you sure did feel very nervous. You felt even more intense butterflies in your stomach, looking towards the bathroom door knowing he would be out there waiting for you. You take a deep breath to try to calm your nerves. You remind yourself you came here to have a good time tonight, you weren't about to ruin the night for yourself.

When you walk out of the bathroom, you notice the way the light is shining on him from the window. He looks so damn good right now and he's not even doing anything, how does he do that? He looks up at you and puts his phone in his pocket, grabbing the blunt and holding it out for you to light it. You realize the bed is too far away from the desk for you to pass the blunt back and forth, so you have no idea where to sit. He makes a move to stand up and let you sit in the chair but you stop him.

"No, it's okay, you can sit there," you assure him. You sit on the edge of the desk, glad that it's big enough so you're not too close to him. You're in a very intimate situation with him already, but you don't know if you could handle being any closer to him than you have to be. You take the first few hits, letting the smoke fill your lungs before it becomes too much. You start coughing, it really has been a while and your throat is getting dry already. He hands you a water bottle - where did that even come from? You pass the blunt to him as you take a sip and he chuckles. "You've smoked before right?" he asks as he takes a long hit.

"Yeah, it's just been a while. I stopped cause I started nursing school."

"Oh shit, should you even be smoking right now? What if they drug test you?" he asks, worried you might get in trouble.

You laugh, thinking it's cute that he's worried about you. "No, they don't do random tests, just once before you start the program." He nods, handing it back to you. You feel like it's too quiet with just the two of you and grab your phone to start playing some music. As the minutes pass by, your head starts to feel lighter and lighter, just the way you like it. Your eyes get droopy and you're staring at him for a bit longer than you should be in between hits. He hasn't noticed yet, but you can't keep your eyes off him. You don't know what's coming over you, he hasn't made a move or come on to you in a way that would make you think he's into you, but you can't help but let your mind wander about the things you'd let him do to you. You let your eyes trail across his body, watching the way he leans on the desk, muscles flexed perfectly in that shirt. He blows smoke out the window and leans back in the chair, facing you with his hand outstretched, handing you the blunt. In that moment, your eyes move to his thighs, spread out and looking like they're inviting you to come sit in his lap. You squeeze your legs together, trying to ignore the urge to take him up on the invitation you imagined he was giving you.

He clears his throat, snapping you out of your thoughts, but the way you're looking at him with those hooded and lust filled eyes doesn't go unnoticed. You try to shake the thoughts away and take the blunt from him, which has gotten a lot smaller and harder to hold. You can't bring yourself to make eye contact with him any more, way too shy to do so after he caught you staring at him, so you stare out the window, watching as a few people leave the party.

Jaehyun takes the opportunity to look at you - really look at you since you've been together in the room. He can't deny that he's been attracted to you, even before he saw you at the party tonight. Sure, you went to school together and didn't talk much outside of class, but he was excited to see you everyday in the period you had together. You were smart, one of the smartest in the entire graduating class and always on top of your work. It was something he admired about you, being so hardworking and studious. He would choose you as his partner every time there was a group project, not because he knew you would do a good job but because he wanted to spend as much time with you as he could. You always looked so cute when you were confused on an assignment, but you never noticed the way he would look at you. You didn't hang out with the same friend group, but he'd catch himself looking for you in the hallways or in the cafeteria. He wanted to catch a glimpse of that beautiful smile on your face, undoubtedly his favorite thing about you. He didn't know if you felt the same way about him so he never said anything and just let the years pass by.

He didn't expect to see you at the party, but as soon as he did he knew his crush for you had never really gone away. He saw you standing by yourself out on the patio, wondering if he should go out there and say hey. But before he could, your friend called you back inside to take a few shots and he took the chance to "bump" into you. He wasn't going to let the opportunity get away from him again.

And now here you are, sitting on the edge of the desk looking absolutely gorgeous. Doing nothing but doing everything to him at the same time. You were wearing a short black skirt that hugged your figure in all the right ways, which definitely became more voluptuous since the last time he saw you. The low cut crop top you wore had him imagining all the marks and hickeys he would leave if he had the chance. He couldn't keep his eyes off you, taking in the way your thighs were splayed out on the desk, ready for him to kneel down and spread them open, making you feel so good you wouldn't want him to stop. The thought of taking you right here made him clench his jaw and he could feel that his pants were getting too tight. He didn't want to rush anything in case you weren't feeling the same way.

But when he caught you looking at him in the same way he devoured you with his eyes, he knew the feeling was mutual. The words were unspoken, but the look told him everything he needed to know. You were both hesitating, trying to control yourselves, unsure if the next step should be taken just yet.

"Jaehyun," you call out to him, trying to get his attention. "I think it's out."

"Just put it here in the ash tray, I'll throw it away later." He watches as you step off the desk, stretching your whole body after sitting for so long. His eyes trail over your lower body, loving the way the skirt you're wearing rides up as you stretch. Such a simple act starts to get him riled up, and he's thinking about what you'd look like if the pesky little skirt wasn't in the way.

"How do you feel?" he asks, knowing you're already pretty high by the way your eyes are red and hooded.

"I feel great," you reply, and you can't help but laugh out loud, both of you knowing you're already gone.

"That's good, I'm glad you're having fun. You know, I'd rather be here with you than with everyone else downstairs."

You don't know what he means by that - does he want to stay up here? With you? Just the two of you? Your body starts to burn up, indecent thoughts making their way back into your mind. You don't know if he means it in that way or if he just doesn't really enjoy the party, but you're afraid to ask.

"I think it's nice to get away from everyone for a bit. It can get overwhelming. I know my friends are gonna be here for a while so I guess we can stay here for a bit..." you trail, not wanting to sound too desperate to be here with him for a little longer.

You sit back on the desk as he leans back in the chair again, silently inviting you like he did before. You don't know if he's doing this on purpose or if he's really that oblivious, but you wish he would just get the hint that you're feeling him. But you don't know if he wants you like you want him. You both stare at each other intently, waiting for the other person to do something, anything, make a move and let it be known.

He's looking at you with an unreadable look and you're afraid that he doesn't really want to be with you, just that he wants to get away from the party. You can't keep the staring contest going with him, so you grab your phone to change the music.

Suddenly, he leans forward and takes your phone out of your hand and throws it on the bed behind you, leaving you stunned. He gets out of the chair and stands right in front of you, looking down at you as you crane your head to look at him. When did he get so fucking tall? You feel tiny under his glare, looking at him innocently, not sure where things are headed but you sure as hell don't want it to stop. He rests his hands on the edge of the desk, trapping you in between his arms. You tense up, noticing how close his hands are to your thighs and you want nothing more than for him to touch you.

"You're a tease, you know that?" he says with a smirk.

"A what?" you reply nervously. His hands slowly slide up and down your thighs, bringing out the goosebumps from how cold his hands are on your warm skin. Your body is on fire now and your heart starts to race. It's harder to keep eye contact with him now under his smoldering gaze but you can't look away.

"You heard what I said. You're a tease. I see the way you look at me, but you haven't done anything. It's making me crazy watching you hold yourself back." His hands firmly grip your thighs now, pushing them apart so he can stand properly between them. This is the closest he's ever been to you and you don't know what to do or how to react.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you lie, looking anywhere but at his face with that stupid smirk he's got on. He knows you're lying, and you know he knows, but you're too shy to admit it.

He steps away from you, "Okay, I won't push you if you don't want to." He makes a move to head out but you're panicking now - did you just ruin it? Of course you want him, you've wanted him since he stepped inside the door tonight. Now you know he wants you, so why aren't you reciprocating?

You grab his hand before he gets too far away, pulling him back to face you. "I didn't know if you felt the same... so I didn't say anything..." you say, scared that he'll actually leave you hanging.

He resumes his position between your thighs. "Look at me," he says, voice much deeper than it's been all night. You're trying to read his expression, and you can tell he's been holding back too. You take a deep breath - it's now or never.

"Do you .. want me?" you say, holding your breath in case for some reason he doesn't and has just been toying with you.

"I thought you'd never ask," as he crashes his lips onto yours, holding you by the waist and deepening the kiss before you could catch your breath. You can't keep up with him, he's fighting for dominance and all you can do is give in. Your hands grip his shirt as your lips mold together, your neck starting to hurt from craning up so much. His hands move from your waist to your neck, supporting you while wrapping one hand in your hair. He tugs at your bottom lip, before pulling away slowly, lips barely touching as you stare at each other. You're breathing hard, trying to make sense of what just happened. He's still got that damn smirk on his face and you can only look at him, eyes begging for more.

His hand is still wrapped in your hair but he decides to test the waters a bit. He tugs a bit, earning a small sound from you.

"Do you like getting your hair pulled?" he says against your lips. You feebly nod, his grip now much firmer. You're pulling him further and further under your spell, and he loves it. His lips move down and he tugs your head to the left so he can place warm kisses on your neck. His free hand rests on your thigh, squeezing you so close to where you want him most. His lips feel like fire on your neck, his fingers are teasing the hem of your skirt and you can feel your panties getting uncomfortably soaked by his small actions.

His lips trail further down your neck, spreading hot open-mouthed kisses across your chest. He lets go of your hair and pulls your shirt down, exposing a part of your black lace bra. He kisses the top of your breast but doesn't quite reach where you want his lips to be. He's left plenty of marks across your chest already and leaves a dark hickey on your breast before putting your shirt back the way it was.

"Who's the tease now?" You're frustrated at this point. He pulls back a bit to look at the marks he left on your chest and neck, obviously proud of himself. He's going too slow for your liking, so you feel brave enough to take your shirt off yourself, loving the way he's eyeing you as you unhook your bra, letting the straps fall off your shoulders but still holding the bra up. You spread your legs even further apart and Jaehyun swears he could throw you on the bed right now and have his way with you. But he wants to take it slow and make you beg for it. He wants to see you writhing with pleasure underneath him, needy for his touch,

"Take your shirt off, Jae" you fake pout at him, knowing he's just as eager to get the real party started.

"You take it off for me," he says, knowing you'll have to let go of your bra to take his shirt off. He wants to see all of you and he wants to see it now. You reach for him and run your hands underneath his shirt, caressing his toned abs and reveling in the way they feel under your fingers. Your bra falls completely off at this point and you throw it on the desk, pulling Jaehyun's shirt off soon after. If you thought he looked good underneath the moonlight before, he manages to look even better now. You can't believe this is actually happening. You tug on the waistband of his pants, pulling him closer and wrapping your legs around him.

"You're so pretty, baby" he says, looking into your eyes before he kisses you again. You grab his face and deepen the kiss, taking charge this time, wanting him to know how much you want and need him. He suddenly hoists you up and you yelp, holding onto him by his neck. He throws you on the bed, knocking the wind out of you. He grabs your ankles and pulls you to the edge of the bed, kneeling on the floor. You sit up on your elbows, watching Jaehyun as he tugs on your skirt, silently asking if he can take it off.

"Do whatever you want to me, Jaehyun." You don't know where this bold statement came from, but you've got this playful look in your eyes and Jaehyun is ready to make you regret saying that.

"Fuck, you're so hot. You don't know what you do to me." He takes your skirt off, leaving your panties on. He spreads your legs and starts kissing your inner thighs, sending tingles up your spine. He maintains eye contact with you, inching closer to your core, making sure you watch his every move. His large hands keep a hard grip on your thighs and you're getting wetter with each second. Your hand slides down your body, squeezing your breast as a little tease for him, rolling your nipple between your fingers. He continues to leave kisses on your thighs, ignoring where you want him most. You slide your hand under your panties, making sure Jaehyun is watching you this time.

"This is what you do to me," you tease. You're so wet, you can hear the slick as you rub your clit, making Jaehyun growl, listening to you pleasure yourself. If he wasn't going to do anything, you'd just have to do it yourself. Your other hand pulls your panties to the side, exposing your dripping core to him. His eyes become darker as he watches you slide two fingers in with ease. You're so riled up and wet, you don't even need to be prepared. You finger yourself as he watches in between your thighs, giving him a show you know he can't resist. It makes you feel good, knowing he's watching you get off to him. You close your eyes and imagine it's his fingers in you, touching you instead. Better yet, you imagine he's pounding into you nice and slow. You can't wait for him to stop teasing you and to touch you where you need him.

As you're imagining him fucking you, you bite your lip and moan his name softly, trying to turn him on even more. Jaehyun loves the way you look right now. Legs spread, panties to the side, marks all over your neck, chest rising as you breathe hard imagining him inside you right now. He watches your fingers move in and out of your core, your juices coating your fingers and your sex. He thought he could tease you, but you're doing a better job at it than he is. He can't wait any more.

While you're lost in your thoughts, Jaehyun quickly removes your hand from your core and brings it to his lips. He licks everything off your fingers, loving the way you look at him with those innocent eyes. His own eyes roam every inch of your body before he kneels back down. He decides not to take your panties off - there's something so sexy to him about keeping them on. He pulls them to the side and replaces your fingers with his own.

You can't help but let out a loud gasp when he pushes two fingers in. They're much bigger and longer than your own, reaching your sweet spot better than you can. He curls them in a 'come hither' motion as he pumps them in and out, making you buck your hips up from the pleasure. Your elbows are about to give out from sitting up for so long. Suddenly, his lips attack your clit and you fall back on the bed, unable to keep yourself up any longer. Your thighs close in response to him licking and sucking your clit.

"Spread your legs baby, I wanna make you feel good." You don't know if you can keep them open, but you try to do what he says. As he continues pleasuring you with his fingers and his sinful tongue, you let out soft moans and whimpers.

"Fuck, Jae you're so good," you say breathlessly. Your hands are gripping the bedsheets so tightly, needing something to hold on to. When he slips a third finger in, you moan even louder, feeling so full.

"Does that feel good?" You can only whimper as a response, too immersed in the pleasure he's giving you to get your words out. He pulls his fingers out and licks long stripes up your core, spreading your juices all over his tongue and chin. He's watching you intently from between your thighs, seeing the way you can't control yourself and noticing how hard you're gripping the sheets. You say something he can't really make out, and he stops his ministrations for a bit, asking you to repeat what you said. He loves how he's only finger fucked you and ate you for a bit, but you're a mess for him already. 

"I want you," you say louder, opening your eyes to look at him. He knows what you mean but he wants you to really beg for it.

"What do you mean baby? What more do you want? You have to tell me." Fuck, how's he gonna call you a tease when he acts like this? He stands up, wiping your wetness from his chin but keeping his fingers on your clit, rubbing in circles. The pleasure on your clit is too much and you let out another loud moan.

"You sound so good moaning for me, I love it." "You're killing me Jae," you cry, so frustrated that he won't get the hint.

You grab his hand, pulling it away from your clit. You move to get on all fours, facing him at the edge of the bed and pulling his fingers into your mouth. You taste yourself on him and lick every inch of him clean, moaning when you see the way he's looking down at you. You look so sexy and so fucked out when he hasn't even properly fucked you yet.

He pulls his hand away from your mouth and caresses your cheek, thinking of all the ways he wants to ruin you. You nuzzle your cheek into his hand, enjoying the soft touch of his palm. The soft touch doesn't last long before he's gripping your hair again and pulling you up to look at him.

"I wasn't done with you yet. You're so impatient baby girl." You whimper when his grip on your hair tightens, but your pussy clenches, loving the way he's talking to you and being rough with you. You reach for him, palming him through his pants. He's so hard but he's been focusing on pleasuring you, you just want to return the favor.

"But I want to make you feel good too," you bat your lashes at him, unbuttoning his pants slowly. He doesn't stop you, so you keep going, pushing his pants and boxers down, his dick springing forward. He's bigger than you imagined and you lick your lips, ready to take him in your mouth. You grab him from the base, slowly pumping your hand up and down his member. You stick your tongue out for him and slap his dick against your tongue, showing him how needy you are to suck him off, and he can't say no to that. He moans softly when your warm mouth wraps around his tip, sliding down his length until you can't take any more. You can only take half of his dick, so your hand continues to pump and you bob your head up and down, trying to make him feel as good as he did with you.

He's lost in the way your mouth wraps around him, sucking him like no one has ever done before. Your pretty lips wrapped around his dick, leaving a trail of spit is definitely a sight to see and he wishes he could keep this image of you on your knees for him forever. He doesn't want you to stop but he wants to finally be inside you, giving you what you've both been craving for.

"I'm gonna cum in your mouth if you keep going baby," he throws his head back and closes his eyes, hands gripping your hair harder and guiding you up and down. You pull him out of your mouth with a pop, slapping his dick against your tongue again and looking at him with doe eyes.

"Are you gonna fuck me now?" You can't hide the playful tone and excitement in your voice.

Jaehyun loves how eager you are for him, and he wants you just as bad. He pushes you back onto the bed, climbing on top of you and kisses you. You wiggle your panties off, both of you now naked and turned on beyond belief. He trails more kisses along your chest and breasts, finally taking a nipple into his mouth. He sucks and plays with both breasts, biting down and making you yelp.

"I'm gonna fuck you so hard baby, you won't want me to stop. But I wanna hear you beg for it first." You can't believe he's still teasing you, he's insufferable.

To make it any more obvious you want him, you spread your legs wide, letting him get a good view of your wet core. You touch yourself again, rubbing your clit as he watches you incredulously.

"Fuck me please, Jae? I want you so bad baby," you say in your best sultry voice.

He moans, going crazier for you and enjoying the way you're begging for him. He pushes your legs towards your chest and slides himself along your slit, gathering your juices before he pushes in slowly. You both let out a sigh of pleasure as he continues to ease in.

"Oh fuck, you're so big," you cry out, not used to him being in you yet.

"You're so fucking tight," he moans, holding himself back in case he hurts you. He makes slow, shallow thrusts, trying to take it slow and enjoy the way your core grips him perfectly.

"Harder," you whisper, but he heard it loud and clear. He grabs your wrists and pins them above your head, pulling out to the tip and pushing back in quickly. His hips snap against your thighs quickly, making you moan loudly, the hard thrusts making you see stars. You bite your lip, trying to quiet yourself before someone hears. But with the way Jaehyun is fucking you, that seems almost impossible to do.

"You like that baby?" he says above you, knowing you absolutely love it. He watches as he moves in and out of your core, slick with your juices and making it easier to slide in and out of you, giving it to you just the way you like it.

He slaps your thigh and you whimper. "I asked you a question."

"Fuck, yes I love it," you moan, feeding his ego and making him fuck you even harder just to hear you cry out for him. He watches you as you squirm underneath him, hips meeting his own thrusts. He leans down and sucks your nipple, biting a little less than gently, shooting even more pleasure through your body. His hands grip the back of your thighs tightly, pushing them towards your chest to keep you wide open for him.

"You're such a little slut for me, aren't you?" He whispers in your ear, your moans sounding like music to him.

Instead of answering his question, you grab one of his hands and place it over your throat, begging him with your eyes. He smirks and gets the hint, gripping your throat to give you the pleasure you wanted. Your hand holds onto his wrist as your mouth falls open and moans pour out, loving the way his hand is pressing against your throat. He pushes his thumb into your mouth and you suck on it without thinking, giving him your best bedroom eyes.

"You're driving me crazy, I can't get enough of you."

He pulls out quickly and grabs your hips, flipping you onto your stomach. He pulls your ass up, making an almost painful arch in your back and you rest on your elbows as he slides back in.

He fucks you relentlessly, making your eyes roll back. The new position has him hitting your sweet spot with every thrust, and you can't stop telling him how good he feels and how you love it when he fucks you. He grabs a handful of your hair and pulls your body up, hips still snapping into you roughly. The grip he has on your waist is sure to leave marks but you're too fucked out to care.

"This pussy was made for me wasn't it? You're taking me so well baby girl," his grip on your hair is painfully delicious, and you turn your head to look at him. He's sweaty, brows furrowed, eyes full of lust as he watches the way your ass bounces with every thrust he makes.

"Anything for you daddy," you say with a playful smile. Something snaps in Jaehyun, and he pushes you back down onto the bed, fucking you even harder than he has been. You didn't think it was possible, but he's proving you wrong. You're on the verge of crying from how hard he's pounding into you, the pleasure getting too much as he brings you close to your high.

"You can take it right? You're my good girl," he leans down, pressing kisses to your back.

"Make me take it," you say without missing a beat. He feels so good in you and you don't want him to stop. He slaps your ass hard, and you're caught off guard, letting out a loud moan. He can tell you like it, so he does it again, even harder this time. That's definitely gonna leave a mark.

"I'm close baby," he moans, feeling the way you tighten around him, signaling that you're close too. He flips you onto your back again, sliding back in and rubbing your clit. He whispers sweet nothings in your ear, trying to coax your high out of you. A few seconds later, you feel an intense orgasm rush over you as Jaehyun continues to fuck you. The overstimulation on your clit has you bucking your hips up, unable to take the sensivitity.

"Ah fuck, I'm gonna cum, your pussy feels so good."

"Cum on my face," you tell him, biting your lip at the thought.

"Get on your knees," he demands as he pulls out, waiting for you to sit on your knees at the edge of the bed. He steps down from the bed onto the floor and pumps himself quickly, saving a mental image of you with your tongue out, waiting for his cum like the good girl you are.

He closes his eyes and moans loudly as he reaches his high, his release streaming down your face and some landing in your mouth. He watches as you swallow what you can, in disbelief of how perfect you are.

"You look so pretty with my cum on your face," he says, taking in your fucked out state and that beautiful smile you give him.

As you both clean up and get dressed, you hear a knock on the door.

"Y/N? Are you in there?" You can tell it's one of your friends and you're dreading what she might say when she sees you in the room with Jaehyun. He gives you a quick smack on your ass before you open the door.

"What were you doing?" She asks, eyeing both of you up and down.

You and Jaehyun look at each other and smile as he wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you closer to him.

"Nothing much, just catching up."

[dangerouslyallaboutdraco]

Story of us

A/n: Angsty, post-Hogwarts and slightly r13 towards the end. 

The history between Y/n and Draco was... complicated. There was something between them that their friends just couldn't understand. On paper there was no reason for them to dislike each other as much as they did, she was a pureblood Slytherin who grew up very similarly to him and also had to change her views like Draco did after the war.

They shared trauma and multiple parallel life experiences but they just didn't get along. Pansy and Daphne never got it, why Y/n had that look of disgust on her face once Draco finished talking.

Blaise and Theo thought it would get better after they left Hogwarts and didn't spend all their free time together, but still, Draco rolled his eyes whenever she walked into the room.

Now they were adults in the wide world, jobs, partners but the tightknit friend group stayed close. Friday nights were always time they spent together, reserved for clubbing or a pub night out or even sitting on Blaise and Pansy's living room floor.

Tonight it was the latter. With a G and T (her favourite muggle alcohol) in her hand, Y/n sat on their couch next to Pansy who had had a lot more than her to drink.

Just as the boys had taken out their hidden stash of weed, Y/n spoke up. "I'm going to go outside." It wasn't that she was opposed to weed, she just didn't like the smell and the boys always insisted on smoking so much they couldn't see out the windows.

Blaise and Pansy's apartment had a beautiful wrap-around balcony. While Y/n and Draco were both fair wealthier, they both received substantial graduation gifts that went a long way to getting an apartment in a good part of London.

They had been together since the last year of Hogwarts, all of their friends watching them slowly grow closer over the year until they realised they were in love.

It was beautiful and while 17-year-old Y/n envied them, she always wanted to speak at their wedding.

As soon as she opened the balcony door the still night air hit her. While it was colder than inside, the sweet smell of the summer air made it a nice contrast.

The sun was just setting in the distance and the sky was the most beautiful golden, pink colour. It was the time Y/n always liked to look out her window at during the war, knowing there was peacefulness at the end of the day always made the long days feel slightly better. The way the warm light danced over the water, dancing on the walls of the usually dark dormitory.

Standing out on the balcony, where the world was right and falling into place felt a lot better. Like nothing could get her down.

She was off in her own world, not noticing when Draco opened the sliding door and walked out next to her.

"Shit Draco!" She shrieked once he put his hand on her lower back. She ignored the tingling feeling in her stomach as she glared at him.

Draco stepped closer to her, maybe too close for her liking. "You could really do with some weed to chill out." He told her, holding the joint closer to her face. "This stuff is the shit, just fresh from my guy." He continued to tell her.

Maybe she would have been interested in Draco if he were less cocky, less rude and a bit more sensitive. Something in his bad-boy image had developed over the year that meant she liked him less.

"Do you always insist on speaking like a druggy?" Y/n asked him, watching him carefully as he looked over the railing with his joint.

He retaliated quickly. "Do you always insist on being such a tight ass, Miss Goody-two-shoes?" He couldn't understand why she always seemed to spoil their fun, ever since they were sorted into Slytherin. 

She just rolled her eyes at him and stared out into the distance. While he was no longer disturbing her silence he was still disturbing her peace and alone time. 

She didn't feel like arguing with him either, it was just too much effort. Draco stood there, smoking his joint while Y/n gazed at the skyline. 

“Why are you even out here?” Y/n snapped at him, suddenly feeling annoyed by the smell of his smoking. 

“Because I can be, what even is your problem with me?” He was definitely going to find out how she felt now, pushing her to the limits made her snappy. 

She rolled her eyes at him, obviously annoyed. “We faced pretty much all of the same challenges in life, but you just became a failure and it really annoys me.” 

“Well, you’re just a slut who hooked up with several guys at school, none of which liked you for any reason other than your body.” Draco’s words did hurt her quite a bit, it wasn’t like she didn’t know he hated her but hearing him say that the people she’d been intimate with never actually cared for her hurt. 

“Fuck off, Draco.” She told him, carefully. 

The look on his face showed her that he was not going to stop for a second. “Just because you don’t like the truth, bitch.”  

“Just leave me alone.” She told him, turning away. 

Draco couldn’t stop winding her up now, it just brought him too much amusement. “Or what, Y/l/n, will you sleep with me like you did every other guy?”

Y/n turned around and put her hand up to slap Draco’s cheek. It wasn’t as hard as she could have hit him but it was the hardest she ever hit anyone. There was a loud sound as her palm contacted his face. 

Still stunned and with her hand in mid-air, Draco snatched her wrist. There they were standing in a face-off, Draco’s slim finger wrapped around her wrist and suddenly there was not one sound. Both of them staring into each other’s eyes. Although Y/n felt threatened, never one to back down from a challenge she scrutinized his eyes.  

Draco was seeing red, his least favourite of all the colours. He was like a bull staring down where he was going to charge. The colour of hatred, blood, anger and passion.

The passion she felt for him, it was surging from where he was touching her. He was the energy source that filled her usually with range but now it was amour fou. 

In a moment Draco released his grip on her hand and moved his hands to her cheeks. Unlike his prior roughness, his thumb stroked along her cheekbones softly and carefully like he was afraid to break her as he lay his fingers under her jawline. 

His softness was a complete shock to Y/n who was still gazing into his eyes. The cold fingertips were more gentle than she’d ever expected, dancing across her jawline with such care. She wasn’t sure she’d ever experienced a touch this delicate. 

There they stayed for a few moments, taking each other in. Both of their minds were on the other, brains frenzied trying to figure out how this had happened. Draco was sure he was infatuated with her perfume, obsessed over the perfect blend of coconut and vanilla that was all he could focus on.

Before either of them could think about the consequences their lips were pressed together in a heated kiss. The passion radiated off them, electricity circuiting through them. And it finally felt, for both of them, that every little puzzle piece fit. 

Eventually they lips parted, their eyes flickering open. Draco was an inch from her face, not believing just how beautiful she was. He held his hands on her face tighter not wanting to let her slip out of his grip. 

“Draco Malfoy, I am 100% in love with you.” Y/n slowly let out. She’d just kissed her arch-enemy so there was no point in not being truthful. 

He smirked, that cute little smirk that had only ever annoyed her from across the common room. “Damn it, y/l/n!” He exclaimed with mock anger. “Now we’re going to tell our kids that mum said ‘I love you’ first.” It was odd for Y/n to see him like that as they were usually at each other’s throats. And now he was thinking about their very distant future.

She smiled to match his. “Just tell me it back, you dork.”

“I am 110% in love with you.” Draco counted. “Do you want to come back to my place?”

Y/n’s face turned to worry. “This isn’t a joke, is it?” Usually, this isn’t the type of shit he would pull but she’d never know. 

“No, no, no.” His fingers were back stroking her cheeks. “I am really sorry about what I said, believe me, I’ll never say something like that again.”

Something in Y/n knew he wasn’t lying. There was no chance he didn’t feel the same passion he did in the kiss. “Well, you could take me to dinner before you try and get into my panties.” 

Draco let out a light laugh, blowing air right onto her face. “Whoever said I wanted to do that, you flirt?”

“Don’t act like you don’t want to fuck me.” The chemistry between them was electric and hot. The pair looking into each other's eyes with desire.

“Let’s go before I do you right here.” Y/n looked at him with challenging eyebrows. “Do you need me to prove it?”

 Y/n pulled back from his grip on her face, leaving Draco standing there like an idiot. “Hurry up then.” She said, looking back over her shoulder with a smile as she went to open the patio door. 

[bunni-teeth81]

Slender bros rewritten by me

Cause I want character development

(This is mostly Offender, trender, and Splendor. Also if you like Slendey/slender dad you might not wanna read this cause I do not make him a good guy in the slightest)

Possible tw for mention sexual assault, pedolophilia, necrophilia, and zoophilia!

To start off, Offender is not a rapist, he isn’t a pedo, and he doesn’t fuck animals

He doesn’t do anything without consent, plain and simple. Him being all those things was a rumor started by someone he fucked in the past who got caught cheating. They said Offender forced them and the rumors have escalated since with his legend.

He actively avoids children cause he doesn’t like them. So he literally couldn’t be a pedo.

He doesn’t hate kids, he just prefers to not be around them.

He won’t fuck someone with kids unless the kids are out of the house and somewhere safe.

He’s wary about fucking 18 and 19 year olds and usually doesn’t

Occasionally if he sees a kid sad while he’s on a walk or whatever he’ll give them some daisies or something. Though they kinda just appear near the kid. He doesn’t actually go near them.

Though he will fuck old people. He has no problem with that. But he will go gentler cause they’re frail

He likes animals, but not like that. Like.. ew

He has a kind of respect for the dead, even people he’s killed to eat, so he’d never do that. Also it goes back to the consent thing. They can’t consent so he ain’t gonna fuck them.

He’s pansexual.

He’s very kinky, obviously. He’s willing to do pretty much anything in bed

He prefers to top but he has no problem being pegged-

Has tried every drug there is.

Usually just sticks to weed, alcohol, crack, shrooms, and the occasional LSD

Bath salts fucked him up majorly and he will never do them again.

He works for trender, who has a whole ass company (will be touched on later)

He helps trender make clothes for more alt styles (punk, grunge, goth, emo, all that good stuff) and he helps with lingerie (masc and fem. trender makes both. Offender tests it out and gives feedback on what could be added or changed)

He also finds models for Trender (there’s really no qualifications to be a model, you kinda just have to want to be one. Trender, his assistants, and other models will help fill new models in. And they never have to wear something they don’t want or pose a way that makes them uncomfortable. also theres do discrimination when it comes to models, any one of any race, body type, gender (or lack there of), sexuality, and age to an extent (depending on the clothes being modeled and (if parent permission is needed if they get it)) are welcome)

He also does side jobs like art (he does realistic art) plays piano or violin for songs, every so often he’ll join a strip club. Definitely has an OF.

He learned piano from his dad. Their dad made them all learn piano. His dad was very against him learning violin but his mother let him learn it (she knew how to play)

Their parents kept them pretty reserved from the rest of the world (particularly humans) for safety reasons. The brothers didn’t find out they were the only ones of their kind till they were like teens and went hunting for the first time.

Their parents suddenly disappeared when they were teens. They still haven’t found them and have no idea what happened to them.

Zalgo killed them cause the dad was constantly fighting him, so was the mom but less so.

There were originally 5 brothers, but one got murdered (It was Tenderman. Who wouldve been the oldest, then slender, offender and trender are twins, then splendor)

They don’t know how tender was murdered. All they know is they can be murdered. They still haven’t figured out how tho.

They do know that they can regenerate any part of their body (teeth and nails grow back almost instantly, limbs take longer, they can just put their head where it should be and the bone, muscle, skin, tissue and all that will pull back together, skin can either regenerate in about an hour or two or a couple days depending on the size of the wound. Their organs can regenerate but it takes like a month.)

Drugs don’t effect them the same way they do us. Our massive hangovers that put us out of commission is what happens after they do LSD. A regular hangover for us is what happens when they do coke or a drink shit ton of alcohol.

Offender has the highest tolerance, then it’s trender, splendor, and Slender has the lowest cause he hasn’t done drugs.

Splendor has tried them but doesn’t like doing them. He doesn’t drink much either.

Trender will do them every so often, usually with Offender. He either drinks or smokes a blunt usually. Shrooms are for special occasions, and LSD gives him major anxiety so he doesn’t do it.

Trender and Offender were the only ones to try bath salts. They don’t know what happened. Splendor says they disappeared for a month and murdered a shit ton of people. They almost got caught. And at some point Offender ate a whole ass headstone and took a chunk out of a mausoleum

Slender hunts whenever the hell he wants, he doesn’t care about being caught

Offender hunts every couple of months or so

Trender hunts about 2 times a year. He spreads out his food pretty evenly

Splendor hates hunting and usually Offender or Trender will do it for them. They’ll maybe hunt once a year.

Human food to them is like sweets to us. They can’t live off it but it’ll keep them from starving. If they don’t eat human for about 3-4 years they’ll start to starve, but the process is slow and would probably take a while to actually kill them

Trender, Splendor, and Offender try not to get caught or make suspicions rise. They just wanna live their lives.

The amount of people they consume and how long they stay in their human form determines their power levels.

Slender is the most powerful, then Splendor, Offender, and Trender is the least powerful (but they’re all still mega powerful)

Slender is never in his human form and consumes humans whenever he wants so he has nothing holding back his power

Splendor may not eat human much but they’re rarely ever in his human form. And if they are it’s not for more than an hour usually

Offender is in his human form about 50% of the time. He’s in his normal form at home or hunting and any other time he’s human so-

Trender is in his human form like 90% of the time since he spends most of his time at work (he’s a workaholic to the highest extent. When it becomes really bad is when Offender will step in and be like “hey let’s grab a drink and chill out”)

Offender and Slender’s relationship is like Raph and Leo’s from tmnt if their relationship was genuine hatred and violent

Splendor tries to med their relationship and makes times where they all hang out and have dinner together but to no avail

This is the only time Slender can be seen in his human form. He doesn’t want to go but for some reason he does

Slender is stuck in his ways

Their dad hated humans with a passion, and Slender looked up to their father and wanted to be exactly like him so the hatred rubbed off

Slender blames humans for his parents disappearing and Tender’s death. Tender was the brother he bonded with the most

Splendor used to be a really emotional kid and their father hated that so now they bottle up everything

Their mother tried to help as best she could

V support

Trender’s company is a fashion company that produces just about everything

And the sizes go up to 4 or 5 x

And the prices are reasonable and don’t go up with the size

Trender really doesn’t give to shits about money. If he could he’d just give everything he makes away but unfortunately he needs some money to produce what he makes.

He makes kids clothing, teens clothing, adults clothing in every aesthetic you can think of. Rarely will you see basic shit from him

He makes jewelry (real and fake (for the kiddies) and specifies very obviously which is which so someone doesn’t accidentally buy the wrong one)

He makes shoes!

His prices are usually around 10-25 dollars for clothing, sometimes 30 if it’s a specific brand (like Gorillaz or something. He doesn’t work with brands like Victoria secret, brands that have sweat shops, things like that. He doesn’t support them whatsoever)

His business is huge but he always listens to the people and tries to improve. And all his products are made ethically. He tries in every way possible to produce good products without polluting the earth more

Splendor usually only hangs around babies-young adults. They help them through rough home lives, trauma, and helps them find joy. They do everything they can to make them feel better

Splendor is the one who takes care of Sally. And they feels incredibly guilty for not being able to stop what happened to her, or punish her uncle himself.

Animals and mystical creatures are drawn to them and their home. They go to it for shelter and safety, as well as some food. But because Splendor isn’t always there they have a nymph friend there to look after everything.

Slenderman is the only one with proxies

Splendor is demisexual and bi, leaning towards men

Trender is queer and demisexual/demiromantic

Slender doesn’t love anything. Ever.

Trender gets annoyed easily but rarely ever gets pissed pissed (like original face altering pissed) if he does it’s either cause someone did something to his brothers or his models. And the unfortunate soul who did such will never be seen again afterwards

Offender doesn’t really get pissed pissed cause he usually either bottles it up or makes a joke out of it. It’s really only if something happens to his brothers that he gets pissed pissed.

Splendor has a list of people they wish they could rip to shreds. All of them parents. But they don’t want to do that to the children. They only intervenes and gets pissed pissed when the abuse gets physical or sexual. When it’s physically they’ll give the parent one change to never do that again. They’ll scare the shit outta them but won’t hurt them. If it’s sexual they kill them. Plain and simple.

Splendor started wearing pokadots to make the kids happy. Trender hates the suit but doesn’t comment usually

Splendor’s black hands are a skin disease their species can have. The skin is black and kinda ridged.

Splendor wears gloves because of their skin disease. the blood stains and they can’t get it out. Also they’re very insecure about their disease

Splendor put the bells on their tendrils so their movements didn’t scare the kids. They would always know when he was moving and where he was moving to so they’d be more comfortable. It was painful but it was worth it

Slender was in the woods when he was younger and almost got attacked by humans, but his mother came and saved him. (Her tendrils could be used as a shield)

Eden is not related to the brothers.

But eden looks a lot like their mother, so much so that Spendor legitimately mistakes her for their mother.

Slender’s human name is John (splendor had to come up with it on the spot leave them be)

Offender’s human name is Dimitri and I’ll die on this hill

Splendor’s human name is Faer

Trender’s human name is Quael

They can change their physical appearance to be fem or masc. like their body can change.

Slender doesn’t give two shits about pronouns

Offender doesn’t care but he/they/xem works

Trender goes by he/him

Splendor goes by they/them

(Im including Slenderwoman now so uh... 🤷)

Her hair is her tendrils.

She’s not part of the Slender bro family nor does she know they exist (though eventually she will. She’s way younger than them so)

✨Lesbian✨

Has met Slenderman tho. She hates him

Like genuinely hates his guts

She hates almost sharing a name with him.

Prefers to go by her human name; Eden

As long as you don’t use the pronouns he/him she doesn’t care.

She just kinda... appeared at the ripe age of 4? (She doesn’t remember anything past 4 so that’s what if feels like to her.)

Splendor is a switch and you can’t change my mind

Trender is also a switch

Slender doesn’t get any cause he’d kill them, purposely or not, being radioactive and all.

Eden is a top but can bottom is convinced

Offender, Splendor, Trender, and Eden can all control their radiation output so they can glitch tech when they chose and won’t hurt anyone

Slender could but doesn’t want to 🤷

They can be killed by their hearts getting impaled. The reason they don’t know that is because the skin will heal, but the heart can’t.

Offenderman’s real name isn’t Offenderman. That name was dubbed to him when people believed the rumors of him. But he kept it. He can’t really explain why but he did. And now he forgets it’s not his real name sometimes. Though he does prefer to go by Offender/Smexy.

Splendor calls him Offendy and he’s the only one allowed to do so

Trended has four arms, plus his tendrils. He can hide his second pair of arms like his tendrils but it takes energy

Getting their limbs/tendrils cut off only stings to them. They’re only in full on pain when their organs are involved

Eden’s blood has healing properties.

Someone can be turned immortal by being injected with one of the brother’s (or Eden’s) blood in large amounts. It’s extremely painful though.

Doing it slowly can ease the pain, so doing it over a week’s time nonstop will get the job done.

The injected person will be very weak after it for a couple days. A week. 2 weeks in worse cases.

The only one who’s done this is Splendor. They were dating a guy for a very long time and they told him about the procedure and he wanted it. After gaining back his strength he left Splendor. They’re not entirely over this even though it happened a long time ago.

They (mainly Offender and Trender) had to track him down and kill him. (Ya know, heart stuff)

That’s when they figured that’s probably how they could get murdered 

[deathlikelead]

Contact Buzz

Summary: Fiona and Iggy get buzzed at the neighborhood bonfire.

Ship: Fiona Gallagher/Iggy Milkovich

Warnings: Drug use, alcohol, depictions of foreplay, not sfw

Word Count: 2.7k

Read on AO3

The noise should be the first thing that draws Iggy’s attention since it sounds like an end-of-the-world party is taking place a few blocks away from where he’s walking home after his beer run.

It’s not the noise though, it’s the smell. Whoever it is has to have the strongest weed imaginable, and Iggy wants in on that. He only notices the noise once he gets closer, dozens of people whooping and hollering, the dark sky illuminated by the giant plume of flames in the center of them all.

Mickey's boyfriend - the first redheaded Gallagher kid, Iggy can’t remember his name. Evan, Aaron, something monosyllabic like that - is carrying one of his little brothers on his back near the flames. One of their neighbors is waving his shirt into the smoke above the flames then pulling it back to inhale. It looks like the whole of Wallace Street is here, dancing around and shouting along to the song that’s playing loudly over someone’s speakers.

It’s chaotic, and where there’s chaos, there should be Milkoviches. Though he has to admit he doesn’t look very hard, in the quick glance he does give, Iggy notices a distinct lack of anyone from his family.

When he gets close enough, he wades into the crowd. He sets his pack of beer down on the first tailgate he comes to, and a joint appears in his hand as if by magic. He doesn’t know who it was that gave it to him, and they’ve already disappeared by the time he looks up to watch the fire after taking his first hit.

If he could smell it from three blocks away, Iggy’s surprised the cops aren’t here already. Then again, he heard that Fiona Gallagher maybe had a thing with one, so maybe she pulled some strings or some dick that allowed the whole neighborhood to come out and get a contact buzz together.

Iggy’s lived in the Southside his whole life, but he can’t spot a whole lot of people he thinks he knows. Even less he would consider friends.

He takes his magic joint with him and goes to hop up to sit next to his beer in the bed of whoever’s pick-up. He rips the box open and tugs a can out to pop the top on, drinks about half of it before the other side of the truck is dipping down under the weight of someone hopping up to join him on the other side. Iggy looks up, curious, around his beer, lowering it and belching as he makes eye contact with Fiona Gallagher.

The action makes her laugh for some reason, and then before Iggy can process, she’s leaning over and snagging the half-empty can out of his hand to down the rest of it. Iggy isn’t sure what to do with that, but he smirks at her as he goes for another one, asks, “Why you guys burning a giant pile of weed?”

Fiona helps herself to one of his beers, taking several swallows before shrugging. “Had too much. Needed to get rid of it.”

That answer makes Iggy roll his eyes, the gesture almost exaggerated in its obviousness. “Well shit, could have just brought it over to our house. Could have gotten rid of it for you no problem. And would have wasted a lot less.”

Fiona makes a face that Iggy thinks is half disbelief, half amusement. “Meaning what? That you and your brothers would have smoked it all?” And well… yeah, okay, that’s exactly what Iggy meant. But he can’t let her have the last word.

“No, my sister too, don’t be sexist. You should know her. Mandy, about 5’8”, totally banging your brother. Ringing a bell?” Iggy may know a little more than he’d like about Ian and Mickey’s indiscretions, but he isn’t about to make it public knowledge. Too many ears around that might remember overhearing it in the morning. Besides, he didn’t know if Fiona knew. Not his business.

For a second, Fiona looks like she’s about to say something, but after a moment of introspection, she instead finishes her beer and makes a grab for the joint Iggy’s still holding between his fingers. He’s already got a nice buzz going, and his reaction time’s a little slow, so she’s already got in her grip by the time he tries to grab it back. The world tilts off its axis a little bit when he tries to lean over for it, so he gives up and just lets her have it. “Grabby bitch, aren’t you?” he asks, though there’s not any heat behind the words. He sounds as happy and fuzzy as he feels.

Fiona coughs out a smokey laugh around the joint between her lips. “Not sure a Milkovich has any room to talk about ‘grabby’.”

Iggy hums at the dig, but well it’s true. Iggy wonders if he’s really obvious, or if Fiona has mind-reading superpowers. Both seem equally likely.

“Whatever. You may got a yuppie boyfriend buying you whatever you want now, but seems like you’ve got a little southside klepto left in you.”

Fiona takes another hit, nodding to him along with the beat of the music as she blows the smoke away from him - like it would make any difference if she blew smoke in his face at this point. The action makes him laugh. - “Don’t got a boyfriend. Not that it’s your business, fuck you very much.”

Iggy raises an eyebrow at that but leaves it to her to elaborate as he holds out his fingers, making a lazy gesture for the joint. He doesn’t care that much, but he’s pretty sure that girls love to talk, and he doesn’t have anywhere better to be than here - beer, free weed, hot girl as company, and all. Fiona doesn’t elaborate though, just watches him finish off the joint as she’s working on another beer he didn’t notice her stealing.

Once the joint burns down enough that it’s burning his fingers, Iggy squashes it out on the tailgate next to his thigh. There’s a hand around his wrist. Iggy blinks, trying to push through the weed haze settling over his brain, and he realizes that the hand belongs to Fiona, who has hopped down off their shared seat. “Come on, come dance with me.”

Fiona tugs Iggy up close to the blaze that’s going strong, stinking up the empty lot and all the surrounding neighborhoods. There's a lot of bodies thrumming to the beat of the radio around them, but it’s unreasonably hard to focus on more than one thing at once.

Whoever grew this weed knew what the fuck they were doing.

And right in front of everyone, Fiona presses her back against Iggy’s chest and starts rolling her hips against his. Iggy chooses that sensation as his one thing to focus on, resting one hand against her left hip and trying to roll along with her. It takes a moment, but he thinks he gets the hang of it. At least Fiona is laughing, twisting around to wrap an arm around his neck and continuing to grind against him, belly to belly.

Iggy thinks they must spend the entire night dancing pressed against each other like that, but when Fiona pulls away, pulls on his wrist, and tugs him through the fog, he’s surprised to find it’s still dark around them. They’re further away from the fire now, the noise and the heat fading into the distance, the memory of them already faded under the buzzing in his brain.

Fuck, whoever grew this - Kevin, someone said Kevin - really did know what he was doing.

Fiona drags Iggy back to the truck, grabs another beer for each of them, and then again grabs his wrist and tugs him further away from the party, and starts down the block.

Iggy is pretty sure that the house she pulls him into isn’t hers, but he’s never been to hers either, so he can’t exactly swear to it. Fiona kicks her shoes off and flops down on the couch comfortably, grinning up at the ceiling.

He must look confused because, after a moment, she tugs herself into a sitting position and turns to face him. “Are you just gonna stand there all night?”

Iggy blinks. Takes a moment to collect his balance, then makes his way around the couch to sit down next to her. “This your house?” he asks because he’s thinking about it.

“Kev and V’s. too many people at mine.”

Too many people for what, Iggy isn’t sure. He fidgets with the tab on his can of beer and relaxes back into the couch. The two of them sit in fuzzy silence for long enough that it startles Iggy when Fiona is back in his field of vision, up off the couch to turn up a stereo across the room. He’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. “You were more fun when we were dancing,” She declares as she crosses the room and snags his beer, only to set it on the end table and pull him to his feet again.

There's no hesitation from Fiona, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing up against him again, swaying to the end of the slow song playing on the radio. There are fewer things to be distracted by in the pitch black of a stranger’s house than there is at a weed bonfire block party, so while dancing with Fiona is still what he focuses on, Iggy can pause for a moment and think Holy shit.

Fiona Gallagher is dancing with him.

A few hours ago, a few minutes ago, he's not sure, but not long ago, she’d been grinding on him.

The memory of it is hot, and Iggy finds that he’s sliding his hands up under her shirt now. Fiona leans into it, a carefree smile on her face. When the song ends, she pulls away from him and tugs the shirt off. Iggy’s brain short circuits and Fiona has the nerve to press back against him, asking, “This cool with you?” with a smirk on her face.

He manages to stop staring at her chest and pick his eyes up to meet hers long enough to confirm, “Yeah.” It makes her laugh for some reason, and that sound excites him, as does the tone of her following demand of, “Okay, then take yours off, too.”

Having happily gone back to his staring, he doesn’t quite pick up on the actual words, so Fiona decides to help him out, hands coming to either of his hips and tugging upwards on his shirt until all Iggy has to do is lift his arms. He doesn’t see where it is that Fiona throws his shirt too, but he’s not sure that he cares anyway.

He had been expecting her to press into him and start dancing to the beat again, but instead, she’s standing in front of him, undoing her shorts. She struggles a little, buzzed and uncoordinated, but looks up at him once she’s freed of the button, the zipper falling open so that he can see her panties. “You really are just gonna stand there and stare all night, aren’t you?” she asks, laughing when it takes him an inappropriate amount of time to drag his gaze back up to hers.

“No.” He decides, though he still makes no move to do anything but stare.

It's becoming increasingly obvious to Fiona that she’s going to have to guide him through every step she wants to take here, and though the thought makes her roll her eyes, she’s not entirely opposed to it. “Right,” she answers, playful sarcasm dripping from her tone as she steps over to him, repeating the unbuttoning and unzipping with his jeans. Again, she grabs his wrist, this time guiding his hand to her waist and finally resuming their grinding to the middle of a new song playing on the radio.

She thinks he’s starting to get the hint by the time the song ends, so she steps back and shimmies out of her shorts. She stays quiet, looks contemplative at something behind Iggy for a moment.

Kev and V have a ridiculous spiral staircase, and Fiona is not a hundred percent sure that Iggy wouldn’t lose his balance and break his neck on it if she tried to lure him up it. Hell, She’s not a hundred percent sure that she wouldn’t break her neck if she tried to go up it. But after a moment of consideration, she looks back at Iggy and decides she likes the idea of being chased. Kev and Veronica do have a really comfortable bed…

She taps Iggy's chest to get his attention, a suggestive look spreading across her face when his eyes meet hers. “I’m gonna go upstairs. Last door on the right at the end of the hall.” Fiona doesn’t wait for a response, but she does reach up behind herself to unclasp her bra and shrug out of it so she can drop it on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. It takes more willpower than she would be happy to admit to force herself not to look back to see if Iggy has caught on that he’s supposed to follow her. When she’s halfway up, she hears the staircase creek behind her and grins.

----

Iggy still feels remarkably fuzzy when he wakes up. Not high, but not exactly not high. It’s mixing wonderfully with the hangover from his beers - Where exactly had he left those? - and making his mouth taste like his head feels, like cotton and fuzz and pressure.

There’s sunlight streaming into the room he’s in, and it smells like flowers, leaving him a little unsure of where he is. He pries his eyes open and looks around, but from where he lays on the bed, he still can’t distinguish where he is. All he can see is an unfamiliar wall, with an unfamiliar window and an unfamiliar dresser pushed against it.

Downstairs, there’s yelling, but there’s also the scent of food, the promise of which is enough to get Iggy to drag his ass out of the comfortable bed. He looks around helplessly for a minute, but unable to locate his boxers, he decides to dig in the dresser for a pair instead.

“In my bed? In my fucking bed, Fiona? Actually,” the yelling gets louder as Iggy approaches the stairs and starts to make his very slow way down them. “Actually, in my house at all? You couldn’t have picked anywhere else in Chicago to take your dirty white boy to hook up?”

Fiona is sitting at the counter with her head in her hands and her back to him, while a very animated woman moves around the kitchen. The woman - Victoria? Has to be something with a V, since everyone calls her that. - hip bumps the great weed curator out of the way of the stove so she can plate a couple of eggs and some toast to bring over to Fiona. “We’re gonna have to burn the sheets now, you know that, right? And for fuck’s sake, Iggy Milkovich-”

Whatever secondary rant she’d been preparing to launch into is cut off momentarily by the question her husband asks after turning around and catching sight of Iggy. “Are those my boxers?”

Iggy looks down at them, shrugs, then looks back up with a dopey grin. “Yeah. Sorry, man. Eggs?” He comes to join Fiona on her side of the little breakfast nook, grinning and digging in when a confused, hesitant-looking Kev sets a plate of eggs down in front of him.

Beside him, Fiona and V have started up again, so he looks up to Kev and asks through his mouthful of eggs, “Are they always this loud when they gossip?”

Neither one of the offending gossips quiet. Either they didn’t hear him, or they just didn’t care.

Kev looks exasperated. “You have no idea, man.” He sets his spatula down next to the stove and reaches behind his ear as he comes to lean across from Iggy. “Joint?”

[the-melting-world]

Strength | Side B: “Chasing Dials”

Art by @ligiawrites

~ In which a secretive barhand brings in the new year…

The Trio Appearances: Kipling | Khleo | Ozy

Arcana LI appearances: Asra | Nadia | Lucio | Valdemar

Track Origins: “Chasing Dials” by Blanco White

Not sure if this is the right track? The full album can be found here: Strength

Khleo is Non-binary and uses she/they pronouns interchangeably

cw: alcohol, implications of vampirism, mentions of blood

~  2.3k words

***

Fireworks broke and rained hot glitter over the southern border of Center City and Goldgrave. A handful of bartenders were off duty and on the move.  

Khlee von Heine walked among them. She was the only one who hadn’t taken the time to change out of her work clothes. Her coworkers were loud, merry, and prone to recklessness as they stumbled from one pop-up bar crawl to the next. 

“Another year,” Gabe managed to roar over the next round of fireworks. “Can you believe we fucking did it?” He took a deep swig from the communal growler. The night was far from young and the barhands had lost track over how many times they refilled it. Gabe reluctantly handed it off to the next coworker so they could say their piece.

Khlee hung back in order to stand under a wooden arch whose sign was eclipsed in dead vines. But Khleo had committed its message to memory years ago.

Der Biergarten.

The plot of land overgrown in weeds and other invasive species was still up for sale, to Khleo’s relief. Though it was out of the way on most of her delivery routes, Khleo did her best to stop by every now and then. Just to make sure no one had bought up the property.

The barhand checked to see that her coworkers were distracted as she stepped up and snatched a flyer with the lot info off the gate. She folded it up and quickly tucked it in her pocket before the arm of a good friend looped around her neck. 

Basil leaned on Khleo as he pressed the convex surface of the growler against her sternum.

“Your turn.”

Khleo playfully shoved him off of her, but kept the growler. She took a sip. Basil and the other barhands chided her — she was supposed to make a toast.

“Fine. Fine.” Khleo held up the bottle. “To progress.”

They made a show of peering into the depths of the amber glass. “Maybe this year we’ll get lucky and actually make some, yeah?”

Someone snatched the growler out of their hand. Gwendolyn? Max? The streets were too dark to tell.

Khleo’s friends were off. They blended in with the city’s bar crawlers as they chased down the next booze cart. People wanted refills that night, not whatever Khleo was about to say next.

Later when Khleo had returned to her apartment, she traded her work clothes for something softer and more comfortable. Then she dug through the pocket of her discarded jacket and retrieved the folded up flyer.

It was a short walk from her kitchen to the bedroom. There was no bed frame or vanity, just three lumpy mattresses stacked on top of each other that she rescued from the alley when she first moved in.

The room was already small, but it felt even more congested thanks to the uneven piles of text, of which there two types — loose leaf recipes or pages ripped out of cookbooks and cheap serial novels with depictions of bejeweled dragons on the covers.

The only piece of real furniture around was an antique dresser, the drawers of which were broken and jutting out like crooked teeth.

All except one.

Khleo took a deep breath before crouching and using both hands to work the bottom drawer open. Like always, it did not come quietly, but with a little patience and a lot of swearing, Khleo managed to pull it out.

Most of the drawer’s contents belonged to her late adoptive father, Hans von Heine. However, it was an unmarked jar that Khleo reached for. She screwed it open and tucked the flyer for the piece of real estate between old flyers and newspaper clippings back when the garden used to host events. The jar had cash in it too. Whatever Khleo could spare went into the jar. Most of it came from what was left of her tips after paying rent, bills, and whoever she needed in order to keep certain people off her back and out of her business.

Khleo sealed the jar and did her best to ignore the tightness in her chest as she struggled to get the drawer to shut all the way. Once she had, she found that her breathing had become more than a little unsteady. It only got worse when she heard the fireworks going off outside.

Khleo shut their eyes and leaned their forehead against one of the crooked drawers, trying not to dwell too much on where they were this time last here. As it turned out, they were right here, drunk and crying at the foot of this very dresser.

Khleo curled up on their side. Yes, tonight their head was buzzing from the alcohol, somehow both heavy and light. Yes, the tears had found their way to the surface again. Khleo was never one to hold them in as long as they could find the space to spill them. 

Things would be different this year, Khleo told themself. They would make sure of it this time.

***

(Lucio’s POV)

Lucio hated the smell of this place. Rotting and damp. It was hard to believe that they were still in Vesuvia.

“You always have such a sour expression on your face whenever I come to feed. Why so, my Count?”

The silky, sardonic voice belonged to Lucio’s host, Quaestor Valdemar. 

“Don’t call me that,” Lucio snapped. He wanted to fold his arms and stifle some of the shivers running up his back, but he couldn’t as long as he was hooked up to Valdemar’s device.

“My apologies, Lucio,” Valdemar corrected themself coolly.

Another shiver climbed up Lucio’s neck as he bit back the urge to say, I don’t want to be called that either.

“Tell me, what plagues you?” They added with a chuckle. “Don’t you like your living arrangement?”

Ever since cutting a deal with the scientist turned demon, Lucio had been living out his days in the lowest cellar of the Lazaret. When he was first brought back from the Devil’s realm, he had been too weak to demand anything else. At the time, all he cared about was that he was alive and wouldn’t be devoured by the courtiers.

Lucio glanced at the tube looping around his forearm, its transparent pathways already inflated with his blood.

But at what cost?

Lucio grinded his teeth. It was too late to consider that now. 

This was how it always went anyway. Lucio would be presented with an opportunity — a way to improve what he could not on his own. He would leap at it, no questions asked.

Why, after all this time, after all those treacherous dealings could he not bring himself to stop and think things through?

As the last of Valdemar’s toll left his body, Lucio started to wonder what his mother might say about all of this. But he’d rather eat another shitty bargain than go down that road right now.

“Your contribution to our arrangement hasn’t been as satisfying compared to when we first began.”

“What are you trying to say?” Despite his nasty tone, Lucio was grateful for the distraction. “My blood’s not tasty enough for you?”

“It used to be,” Valdemar said. “I’ll be honest with you, Lucio, I agreed to keep you around as an energy reserve primarily for that reason. The notion of devouring you in one sitting and having to share with my dear contemporaries was not nearly as attractive as the possibility of having your flesh to dine on whenever I needed to during this indefinite campaign in your current reality.”

Lucio hissed as Valdemar unceremoniously removed the needle from his vein. He wasn’t sure how to react to what he had just heard. Thanks to Valdemar’s mask, all Lucio could read from their expression was the growing crow’s feet at the corners of their blood red eyes.

“So?”

Valdemar applied a cotton wad to the puncture wound and dug it in with their thumb.

“Ow! Hey – Owie!” Lucio yelped.

“So, my Count,” they sweetly clarified as they kept up the pressure, “I need you to find a way to restore that vitality you once possessed. Technically, you’re in peak physical health. I don’t know if you’ve looked in the mirror lately, but the evidence of your tussle with the plague has all but disappeared from your eyes. Your hair has been growing…” they took a moment to scan their critical gaze over the pale blond patches clinging to Lucio’s jaw. “You could easily blend in with the citizens.”

Lucio swallowed. “B-blend in? Why the devil would I want to blend in?”

Valdemar made a less than human sound as they peeled back their mask and bared their needle-sharp teeth at the former Count. 

“Right now you taste like a boneless, gutless, gill-infected inferior breed of mackerel. And I prefer to have rare, mercury-rich, vinegar-glazed bluefin tuna. Captivity is poisoning your blood. So I’m giving you permission to get out there in your beloved city and find a way to sweeten it.”

The Quaestor gave Lucio a not-so-gentle shove in his chair. They replaced their mask as they straightened up. The former Count’s eyes widened as he covered his hand over his arm. The last thing he wanted was to piss off Valdemar. But he didn’t know the first thing when it came to what they were asking him to do. 

“What happens if I can’t, erm… make my blood taste better? What if spending time in the city doesn’t work?”

The Quaestor sighed, their emotions back in check. They were already half occupied with cleaning their instruments and storing the sacks of Lucio’s blood in a portable cooler for later.

“Then I will have no choice but to invite my courtier companions over for a nice potluck dinner.” They glanced up. The crow’s feet were back. “And you’ll be the forgettable appetizer that no one asked for.”

Later, when Valdemar was kind enough to row Lucio across the stretch of water to the mainland, they suggested, “You should find some people who are very healthy. Outside of captivity, fish are the most robust when they’re in competition with other capable anatomies.”

Lucio hugged what was left of his royal uniform – a tattered speckled cape – around his shoulders. He grumbled, “Would you, for fuck’s sake, stop comparing me to a fish, Quaestor?”

Unperturbed, Valdemar said, “We’ve arrived.”

Lucio lowered his hood and blinked out at the morning overcast sky. His top lip curled into a distinctive snarl as he recognized where they were.

“Not here. Anywhere but here.”

Valdemar gestured to the nearest dock. “Get out, Lucio.”

The former Count wanted to blot out the images of the slumped architecture and purge his nostrils of the stale watery stench. 

“Not the Flooded District. I can’t stand this place. Can’t you see that it’s a failure that I don’t need reminding of?”

“Lucio, don’t be so foolish,” Valdemar said almost tenderly as they nudged him out of the boat. “The entire city is your failure. Much of which is hard to see. Oh, but it’s there. Now go on,” they said as if encouraging a child at the fairgrounds, “go find someone healthy. I’ll come to retrieve you in a fortnight’s time.”

Lucio couldn’t believe he was watching Valdemar row off into the mist. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air was so bad that he just ended up coughing. 

Even though Valdemar had been correct about Lucio’s appearance, looking nothing like he did in the days when he was the Count, he still found himself trying to crowd off his features with his hood any time a resident passed him by on the floating, rickety streets. But to his relief, no one seemed to know or even care about who he was or might be. 

As soon as Lucio relaxed his shoulders and began walking with more confidence, the inner walls of his stomach suddenly contracted. Then he remembered. He had just given blood. Lots of it. Usually, the Quaestor supplied him with something to eat, but this time they hadn’t.

“Damn them,” Lucio hissed. He cradled his abdomen like it was made of glass as he tried to make his way towards some kind of common plaza. He had no money, but perhaps he would be able to find a dumpster to rummage through.

He was passing by a narrow alley when he caught a glimpse of the impossible out of the corner of his eye.

A lion.

Its coat was creamy and short all over. Its size was nothing short of mythical. 

Lucio was tempted to shout at the two idiots occupying the alley with this beast on the loose, but they seemed both aware of its presence and entirely calm about it.

One of them was slumped against the wall of the grimy building. Despite their threadbare attire and weary expression, they were smiling at the other. 

“No, Khlee. Please don’t. You’ll be late for work.”

The person squatting before the first seemed to be focused on the task of sewing up what appeared to be rips in a heavy cloak. Even with their short jacket, Lucio could detect the shape of their arms. Their brown curls had enough volume to hide most of the details in their profile.

“Nah. I’m already late. This’ll only take a minute.”

There wasn’t much time to take in the rest of their features before the big cat stepped up, blocking Lucio’s view of them.

< Can I help you? >

Lucio ran. He nearly tripped over himself getting out of there so fast. But he didn’t go far. He gripped the edge of a building and poked his head out, waiting for the lioness and her human to emerge. When they finally did, Quaestor Valdemar’s words from earlier echoed in Lucio’s mind.

Go find someone healthy.

Well, the individual strolling confidently down the street with a full grown lion at their side was definitely looking like the healthy sort.

At the moment, Lucio wasn’t really thinking about what would happen to him if he failed Valdemar’s taste requirements.

Right now, his stomach was hurting. 

If the body of this lion tamer was any indication, they knew where Lucio could find himself a meal.