#complaining about the plot of professional work

[dumpster-dive-reading]

So because I’ve been obsessed with MHA fanfiction for a little while, I decided to watch two of the episodes i haven’t watched yet.

Specifically, I ended up watching the “ultimate moves” episode and the Dorm episode. (I’m going to focus on the ultimate moves episode because that’s the one I find more interesting)

And after watching the ultimate moves episode, can I just say that the fanfic authors tend to do a better job writing Izuku?

Look, I get it’s just one episode of the show, but there are a lot of issues with that one episode, and I’m going to rant about them.

First of all, Izuku feels incredibly stupid in this episode. There’s a whole bunch of build up to the realization that Izuku can kick people. Holy heck, kicking? What a unique idea that I’m sure no one has ever had before. And the explaination for parts of it doesn’t make any sense. “If I’m afraid of breaking my arms, I’ll just use my legs”? Dude, breaking your legs isn’t a good choice either. Arguably, it could probably put him at more of a disadvantage in combat. What if you tried to not break your bones?

Second, the entire concept of the “ultimate moves” is honestly kind of silly. It feels very fighting-game instead of actually feeling like combat. I get it, the show doesn’t actually need to be realistic. The fights don’t actually need to make sense. It’s just that the ultimate moves are incredibly stupid. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the characters to try and utilize their quirks in new ways to test out different fighting styles? (Consider, iida using his engines to burn people as a last resort attack, Bakugo using just the sparks to start fires in stealth work, Hagakure body slamming people)

Like, what if instead of doing this weird ultimate moves training, they had different pro heroes come in and teach them about their fighting style, show the kids how to replicate a few key points, and then fight each other. It would be so cool to get lots of guest teachers, and we could get to see more of the pro hero’s that aren’t used enough.

Thirdly, there’s how Hatsume is depicted. A weird amount of it is sexualized, and it feels really uncomfortable. Especially considering that these are teenagers. Hatsume tends to be a pretty fun character to read in fan work. She’s so chaotic, and its amazing to see what people can do with her. But her presence in the actual show, so far, is kinda dissapointing.

So yeah, the fan work is better than the actual show.

[kat-luv-pt2]

Driving lessons

pairing: lando norris x fem!reader

plot: Your winter break is spent getting driving lessons from Lando.

notes: this is gonna be a series, i'll try to update regularly if the education system doesn't start absolutely cooking me again

It was lovely to be back in your hometown unless there was a constant nagging in your ear, which in your case there was, your parents always finding something to complain about, something you should do, something you shouldn't do, there was always something wrong. This year, it was not having a driving license. Now quite frankly, while in uni you never had much time and now that you were working full time, you once again didn't have time for lessons but also you never really needed one. Living in London there wasn't much of a point in having a car as you'd practically live in traffic and with the new congestion charge and petrol prices, it was much easier and cheaper to take the tube (although having to change lines regularly did set you back financially). But to your parents that didn't matter and they decided to solve "your problem" (which they created themselves) by getting you to spend your winter break, doing driving lessons. Of course they couldn't get a proper instructor but instead asked their neighbours if while they're son was back here, if he could teach you a bit of driving. Clearly your prayers were left unanswered, when you had found out that Lando had agreed.

You and Lando weren't close now, but you were very close for the majority of your childhood, spending days at the park, collecting blackberries from bushes, climbing trees and spending all your pocket money at fairs. He had even been your first kiss as a child, and you, his. When you started secondary school, you had slowly drifted apart, with the majority of your contact being occasionally going to and from school together and coming up with a lie about a school test when your parents' asked, because if his parents knew about a test, then yours did as well, and vice versa.

Now,  not only did you not want these lessons at all but definitely not during your break, and definitely not with Lando. Firstly, he's a professional racing driver, he DRIVES for a living while you can't even change gears, secondly, he could easily tell your parents if you didn't show up to the lesson or if you did very badly, and even though you are a grown adult, it still wasn't the best thing ever to get scolded by your parents, and you were here for a while. So you went to those stupid driving lessons.

[wanderinginksplot]

It's time to start treating creators like people.

FUCK, it hurt listening to Anthony Burch talk about the pressures he felt writing the campaign for season two of Dungeons and Daddies, especially when he said it was because he read too much commentary from people online. [Dungeons and Daddies, Teen Talk (Season 2 After Show), 41:18]

Yes, he's a professional writer/podcaster. Yes, professional writers are paid to write. Yes, you can hold them to a different standard... IF you're paying for the product. With a free podcast, we really need to work off of fanfic rules - don't like, don't read. Don't leave 'constructive criticism' unless it's specifically requested. And ALWAYS post like the creator is going to read it on their worst day.

Anthony is an incredible DM who was faced with a near-impossible situation. He had to write an entirely new campaign to be played by unfamiliar characters after an incredibly successful and beloved first season.

Anthony and the rest of the team could have given us a lazy, sitcom-esque second season of the same plot with the original dads, but everyone would have gotten sick of it. You all want to complain about the Marvel Formula, but when someone tries to break out into something new, everyone shits on them online.

So, yeah. It's time to treat creators like people. Especially when they're sharing their creativity and giving you hours of free entertainment.

[spamgyu]

urs // Mingyu Series - Part 1

"the best at being the worst... but fuck sake I'm already yours"

DESCRIPTION: she and mingyu were in no place to be in a relationship. she was his best friend's stylist and he was... well he was kim mingyu; something stable was not something that was ideal for the two – not when their careers are both at it's peak. PAIRING: idol!mingyu x stylist!reader GENRE: angst WARNINGS: mentions of alcohol, implied smut, stubborn protagonists, so many red flags you would think this is a football game, features the love of mingyu's life (jungkook) and all his other besties

NOTE: if you read INFRUNAMI, no you didn't. this has the same-ish vibes BUT this is the re-written version. many events, actions, and overall plot has been changed. (even if the intro/first part is very similar)

"How was LA?" Mingyu asked, rolling off her bed; reaching to put on the black sweatpants he carelessly discarded earler. It was nearly a month and a half since he had last seen her, been with her, and he was desperate to feel her touch.

He allowed her to greet him with a quick hi before he scooped her off the ground and carried her over to her bed; doing what they knew best.

"Eh." She shrugged, also gathering her items off the floor – dressing herself as if she hadn't just allowed him to ravish her body like an animal that hand't been fed for days. "It's not as hectic since I only have one of them to work with."

She was referring to their mutual friend - the God sent human being that introduced the two. Not that his intention was for his group's stylist to have this arrangement with his best friend, no - he was simply being polite.

It was in good manners to introduce two strangers to one another, especially in a setting that required socializing. Y/n did her best to maintain a professional distance between her and Mingyu; she was just a stylist after all.

Of course, she was only successful for about 6 months and once again it was all thanks to his best friend.

Having to spend nearly every waking moment with the seven boys; y/n couldn't help but develop a friendship with them. Sooner or later she found herself being invited to more parties, dinners, and casual hang outs where Mingyu seemed to always be in attendance.

Somehow, the brooding tall boy of one of the famous boy groups that was slowly making it's way to the top of the charts, had charmed his way in to her pants. She wasn't complaining, of course.

The sex was good. Amazing even.

She was just a girl with needs.

Needs which just happened to have been met by someone who should have remained untouchable. Not just for the sake of their friend group but her job.

There wasn't a clause in her contract that forbid this, some staff members in their very large company having their fair share of flings and relations with idols that seemingly played off being single to the public. It was more of her own choice, not wanting to do anything to jeopordize the once in a lifetime chance she had managed to land herself as BTS' stylist.

Through her title of four years, she had managed to not only secure a well paying job but opportunities throughout the fashion industry – slowly making a name for herself.

Y/n wasn't just a nameless stranger credited at the end of albums, along with other staff members. Those late nights steaming garments, prepping for shoots, and 15 hour work days were finally paying off.

"That's good." Mingyu hummed, taking a seat on her bed - leaning back as he watched her go straight to her suitcase.

Unpacking as if nothing had happened.

The two have gotten very accustomed to their arrangement; having it been nearly a year and a half since they made the agreement of being friends... with a heck of a benefit.

But of course, there were set rules to their agreement.

Despite wanting to keep their actions as completely physical, she and Mingyu cared deeply for the friendship they had managed to develop in the four years they have known each other.

These set rules were put in place to ensure that their friendship will remain intact if they so decide to go off and find their own happiness or satisfaction elsewhere.

Simple as that.

RULE 1: Let either one know if they are planning to sleep around or date - for safety reasons. RULE 2: No kissing outside of sex RULE 3: Keep things platonic outside of the bedroom. No flirting, no obvious touching, nothing that will make others uncomfortable. RULE 4: No feelings.

It was very easy for the two to stay within the boundaries of these rules, considering how busy they were with their careers. They had no time to catch feelings - despite their friends' warnings that this could end badly.

They were dumb but they weren't stupid. They were well aware of the consequences of their actions.

"How's comeback prep?" She recalled him mentioning this during one of their late night calls a few months back after one of Mingyu's schedules; claiming he couldn't sleep and no one else was awake to entertain him.

"Exhausting, we're doing twice the amount of practice because of our world tour."

"Oh yeah." Y/n paused, looking up from the items she carelessly discarded into her bag the day before. "When's the first show?"

"Three weeks ago." Mingyu chuckled.

This was a typical conversation between the two; especially when both of their schedules become equally as packed. He had no expectations for her to know his every single move, the same way he rarely knew what city or project she may be up to at the top of his head.

And if Mingyu was being honest, he was happy with this. They had no obligations to one another – not having to worry about anyone's emotions, what they were doing, having to give updates on their daily life.

It was low maintenance.

Just what they both needed.

"Which reminds me," Mingyu shifted in his place, digging into his pocket to pull out a small black box; earning a raised brow from her. "Here."

"Are you proposing to me?" She took the box from him, hesitantly opening it.

"Ha ha." He rolled his eyes. "Minghao and I were at a second hand store by the hotel and I saw those and it reminded me of you."

It was a vintage silver chain bracelet with two charms hanging off it; a key and circular pendant - a rare Gucci x Tom Ford collab to be exact. She had a knack for silver jewelry, especially stackable ones with multiple charms hanging off of them.

Minghao was on a hunt for a leather jacket that night, claiming that Japan had one of the best thrift stores for 2nd-hand designer items. Mingyu allowed his friend to drag him along on his little shopping trip, under one condition; dinner was paid for.

With no other member interested in browsing endless rows of clothing racks, Minghao agreed to Mingyu's terms.

Little did he know that it would be Mingyu that would score the best find of the night. It wasn't that he planned to buy her something, he was simply taking a glance at the glass case and there just happened to be something that looked like it would match his friend's style.

"How much was it?"

He waved her off. "I make what I paid for that in just two minutes."

She grabbed the nearest sweater she had just folded; throwing it at him with a laugh. "Dumbass."

"No but seriously, it was really cheap."

"Thank you." She smiled, getting up from the floor with her arms open wide.

Mingyu leaned away, laughing. "Ew, are you trying to hug me?"

"Come on, don't reject my love." She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up. Key word; tried. "Stop working out so much, you're too strong!"

"That's the goal, y/n." He refused to give in; flexing his bicep in attempts to loosen her grip.

"Are you- You're so insufferable." She let go of him.

Once their laughs subsided, they fell into a comfortable silence; Mingyu scrolling on his phone while she continued to unpack. He had no plans of leaving and she had no plans of kicking him out.

Mingyu and y/n didn't care to admit it, but they missed each other. After all, it was normal to miss your friend.

They didn't know how or when but somehow, in between the stories Mingyu told about his group's impromptu time in Rome and sharing her excitement for the new fall collections that were set to debut during Paris Fashion week, they found themselves cuddling. Her head rested on Mingyu's chest while she watched FRIENDS for the upteenth time whilst Mingyu watched the rough edit of their new music video - his free hand absentmindedly playing with a strand of her hair.

This wasn't breaking the rule; they were in the bedroom.

This was technically part of the benefits they agreed on.

"What's your plans for Chuseok? Is your mom flying in?"

She didn't grow up in Korea and had little to no family left in the country; making holidays like these isolating. Being a 2nd generation immigrant, she didn't have the slightest intentions of moving her whole life to Korea in the first place. But somehow, she was back in the same country her grandparents left to seek a better future for their family. Who would have known that the future of one of their grandkids was back where they began their lives together.

Y/n shook her head, silently answering his question.

In previous years, her mom made an effort to fly in to visit her and celebrate Chuseok and Christmas with her. But with her grandparents growing older, and due to her recent schedule alignment, she didn't see that it was necessary for her mom to visit for such a short amount of time.

"I'll probably just fly out around Christmas time." Her eyes trained on the television.

"Want to spend it with us?"

She raised her head and gave him a look. "Because that went so well last year."

Her mom left a day earlier than planned the previous year, leaving her to spend the last day of Chuseok alone.

Somehow Mingyu caught wind of this and invited her over to have dinner with his family. This of course sent his mom and sister over the moon; thinking and thanking the gods and saints that he finally brought a girl home. Despite Mingyu and her explanations that they were in fact just friends; the teasing and gawking went on until the two left.

"I'll tell Minseo to cool it with the teasing."

"Maybe." That earned a smile from him. "I said maybe! Jungkook and I are flying out to LA for another shoot right after, I might just spend the time getting the pulls ready for it."

He raised his brows. "All three days?"

"I also have to assist with Tae-"

"All HYBE staff have Chuseok off."

"Office is closed but I have keys." There weren't any rules about stopping by the company if it was needed. She was on salary after-all.

"Come on, you know you like my mom's cooking." He sang. "You haven't had a home cooked meal from a mom in a while."

"Maybe."

"Hard head." Mingyu rolled his eyes. He knew there was no winning when it came to convincing her to do something she wasn't too keen on doing.

For someone who worked in a fast paced industry that was constantly changing, she was very much someone who was not too fond of spontaneity. She needed structure, and she was definitely someone who had a 5 year plan written down in a notebook or her notes app.

Her job was the only controlled chaos she allowed.

"Butt head."

・゜゜・．・゜゜・．・゜゜・．・゜゜・．

"You look happy. Did you come from a special someone's place?" His best friend teased as he opened the door.

"None of your business." Mingyu playfully rolled his eyes at his friend; kicking off his sneakers before reaching down to pet the large dog happily waiting for him.

"Oh but when you want to know when we'll be back in Korea, it's all of a sudden my business." Jungkook chuckled, handing him a glass filled with a light brown liquid.

"Exactly." He smiled, taking a sip of the warm liquid. "Eugh, why is it warm? You have all this money but can't afford a working fridge?"

"Fuck off. It was cold earlier but you took too long to get here."

Mingyu received a text from Jungkook inviting him over to drink and hang out.... 3 hours ago. He meant to open the text, he really did - but he became a little too invested in Monica and Chandler's attempts to hide their relationship from their friends and completely forgot about the multiple notifications he received from his friend.

It wasn't until y/n received four consecutive text messages from Jungkook, begging her to share his best friend that he missed very much, that Mingyu realized he had left his friend on delivered. She practically pushed him out the door to get him to leave, claiming "He won't stop bothering me until you show up."

"My bad. Monica and Chandler are sleeping together." He took a seat on the couch, taking another sip - ignoring the temperature of the drink.

"Oh great, more friends that are fucking- Do people not believe in relationships anymore?"

"Hey how does your song go again? I wanna see it in motion, Monday Tue-"

"I got it. I got it." He interrupted his friend's medley of his two new singles. "You know, you and y/n are starting to have the same sense of humor, it's making me sick."

"Don't you like that? It's like I'm with you even if I'm not."

"I hate that she said the same thing to me." Jungkook grumbled. "Please, just date and put me out of my misery."

"Won't dating make it worse?"

"So you've considered it."

Mingyu shook his head at his friend's quick remark.

He wasn't boyfriend material. He was busy, barely even having time for himself; dating was definitely not in his cards right now.

Especially not with someone who he has grown very fond of. Fond; in a purely platonic way, of course.

Mingyu has tried dating before, and they all lead to heartache and headache; his busy schedule always being the root of the problem. He grew tired of fighting the same fight with different people and vowed that the next time he tried dating would be when his professional life had fully slowed down.

But with the current trajectory of his group's career, it seemed as though this was not in the cards anytime soon.

And Mingyu was perfectly okay with that.

Besides, he had y/n.

@thegirlwhoimagined @ohmygodwhyareallusernamestaken @f4iryjjosh @akeminy @yonabutnotyuna @tacosandbitch @vanillacheol @aaniag @bettybotterboughtabitofbutter @xbaekcult @alwaysalmostthere @ashkuuuu @morkswatermelonnnn @isabellah29 @lottogyu @bubbly-moon @lllucere @bo-fairykim @bubbly-moon @pluviophile-xxx @daegutowns @jenoxygen @niktwazny303 @aahvii

(for some reason it's not allowing me to tag some who wanted to be added to the perm tag list ... cries... pls check ur settings so i can for future posts)

[ipegchangbin]

— smudgeproof

sub!model!felix x dom!makeup artist!reader

There’s a new lipstick that claims to be make-out-proof. You, with your makeup expertise, naturally decide to test it on your model boyfriend, Felix: except he’s the one that gets to wear it. 

🏷 gender neutral afab reader (they/them pronouns, no specifics), smut, fluff, some humor, established relationship, porn with barely any plot. 

🏷 petnames “mommy” and “baby girl,” unprotected sex, feminization kink, slight oral and hand fixation, marking, butt plug (felix using), thigh riding, fingering (felix receiving), overstimulation, male squirting, lots of teasing, voyeurism mention, no specifics about y/n’s physique. 

w/c: 8.8k

a/n: happy (hopefully not late) valentine’s day! to celebrate, i finally present to you the long overdue felix-gets-fucked fic! based on my thought piece, this concept has been on my mind ever since. i kept rewriting this fic but i drew the header art so fast LMAO icb i finished it!! otherwise, enjoy!

18+ only. minors do not interact.

On slow days, you would often find yourself bored in the makeup store. Your boyfriend, Lee Felix, would probably be just as bored, sitting in the chair of his set. Your notifications were as empty as the barren shop.

After two aimless scrolls down your Instagram feed, you realized that you hadn’t posted anything recently and hadn’t texted Felix that day.

The afternoon sun brought in waves of humid air throughout the city, setting everyone back from a trip around the shops. You peered over at the conversation with your boyfriend as you thought about ways to kill time.

It wasn’t uncommon to go for a while without contacting each other. It had been years since you two became official, after all, and comfortable silence had become a given that you both simply indulged in. That didn’t take your mind off of the boredom, though, and your fingers itched to do something. They found Felix’s contact on your phone, bedazzled with an embarrassing nickname and profile picture. 

It stung to think that if you weren’t looking at his endearing profile, you would instead settle for some sort of creeping guilt of not posting anything on your social media page after a while. Either way, you shot him a message.

you: lix, wya? you: im bored as hell

Considering Felix’s work as a professional model, he would probably reply in less than ten minutes. You thought to turn your phone off and play with the freshly-cleaned makeup brushes on the makeup store’s vanity counter while waiting.

But this is Lee Felix, the sunshine of your days, and you didn’t have to wait any longer than two seconds.

lixie: Am at the shoot I told u about lixie: Bored too tbh LOL

Even if he typed in a silly way, you couldn’t help but love him.

He’d always been your go-to person to unwind and be yourself around. Starting as best friends gave you both a jumpstart to be comfortable around the other. People would say it worked a little too well especially since you two had become the most seriously unserious couple in the creative industry.

That fact made him understand you more than anyone else: you were both creatives. Your heart belonged to the artistic liberties of makeup and beauty, while his heart belonged to the ethereal realm of modeling and fashion. Your two hearts found each other, which was almost perfect for the adjacent businesses. He collaborated with you on makeup challenges. You came to his sets as his “preferred makeup artist.” He understood you whenever you ranted about stupid trends and declining engagement in your channels.

With that, could tell him about your uneventful day and equally uneventful social media pages, but you refrained from complaining more than dropping a passing mention.

you: idrk what to do there are no customers you: and i havent posted anything new you: but its not like theres much to do lixie: Well you’re the genius one here! lixie: Got art block or something?

The prompt response caught you off guard. Almost as if you have forgotten, this was Felix, and he always sensed whenever something was wrong.

As if he had some sort of radar or emotion detector, he always just knew how you were. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he had always been in the proximity of your face, observing your concentration as you put eyeliner on him before shooting. Maybe that connection stuck with him after years of being together, and it had remained strong to the point that he could feel it from miles away, staring emptily into the face of some other random MUA. 

Alas, you found yourself overthinking again. You would rather overthink about your relationship than your semi-abandoned creative efforts, though.

you: well i guess you can call it that. im just conscious since i havent really posted you: idk what to do next. ive done everything lixie: How about, “Boyfriend does my makeup drunk edition”? :D you: boring ! lixie: “Makeup tut but bf does my voiceover”? :D you: just because it got views doesnt mean its worth doing a fifth time >:(( lixie: I’m kidding LOL 

The scowl on your face reflected on the mirror sitting in front of you. You knew that if only Felix saw it right now, he would have lost his mind trying to turn it upside down.

You were right though. You two did everything.

My boyfriend does my makeup? Done, and he did an okay job at it. “The boy beat” makeup tutorial featuring Felix? Damn right he did. Boyfriend does my voiceover? It was so good that you guys did it four times and everyone fell in love with the deep timbre of his voice contrasted with his surprising amount of knowledge. Even if it was easy to collaborate with him, it was hard to create something new and unique. On the contrary, your audience fell in love with you two. It’s nice to watch a model and a stylist practice their art together.

Lost for ideas, you decided just to tease him instead.

lixie: So? No ideas in that pretty head? you: i got one thing in mind lixie: And what might that be? you: having you here you: in my arms you: to kiss up and call pretty :>

It was a thing that you usually did since you loved how he always reacted so pricelessly. He didn’t disappoint with his response, the notifications popping up not even half a minute after your last message.

lixie: HNDNSABNNDJS lixie: Don’t tease me unprompted!! lixie: ;__;

You’re so grateful that he’s always up to play with you.

You thought deeply — too deeply for a situation like this — and scanned the store shelves and storage room for ideas.

You wondered what he would be up to right now.

Felix was stunned.

Done-up in the most expensive face and hairstyle he’s rocked to date, adorned with an unbuttoned suit jacket that one could only dream to wear, he was supposed to look like the stunner. His pecs were only barely hidden and the midsection of his upper body was almost entirely exposed.

Instead, he was the speechless one. He wasn’t shocked by the cold air seeping through his revealing outfit, but his hair raised at your messages.

Your teasing usually should not affect him this much, but today, it was something different. The whole day, all he could think about was you. His mind went to your first meeting. Earlier, he got deja vu as one of the stylists applied lipstick on him. It felt familiar, the feeling of a senior stylist’s hand resting on his face as a brush glided along the perimeter of his mouth. All it lacked was the stunning view of your face in particular. It reminded him of the first time you ever laid eyes on him, and it was to check on his eyeshadow. You stared at each other for too long, exchanged numbers after the shoot, and the rest was history.

He was pissed, to say the least, that you weren’t the assigned stylist for the shoot this time. Nothing could ever compare to the focused look you gave him as you fixed the corners of his mouth with the smooth swipe of your pinky finger.

He craved that touch again.

“Yo,” a dragged-out sigh whisked through the air. “You’ll catch a fly in your mouth if you keep that jaw open.”

Felix looked up from his phone to find Hyunjin, his best friend and one of the junior photographers on set, eyeing his reflection in the mirror. He had his bleached blond hair half-up, tied messily to complete his so-called “intern look.” Most of the senior directors and photographers on set confused him for a model.

“Am I interrupting some kinda internal monologue sesh?” Hyunjin smiled, leaning behind Felix’s chair, raising a brow at him through the reflection. 

“No, I just—”

“He’s thinking about Y/N again.” Jeongin, their other best friend, popped from behind the vanity, carrying Hyunjin’s abandoned camera. 

The two were interns at the studio. Both were very bored art students looking for a job to pass the time by. Jeongin was there to work as a personal assistant and was mistaken for a stylist considering his fashion sense. His behavior around set proved otherwise, though, since he spent the entire day prodding at everyone’s business.

Felix was no exception as a victim.

“Imagine flirting online,” Hyunjin chuckled while reaching for the camera. Jeongin handed it out to him, only to swing his arm back, teasing the older.

Jeongin dismissed the frown on Hyunjin’s face and fiddled with the camera. “Yeah, cut your significant other some slack, they must be busy at the store or something,” he added.

“Nah, they aren’t.”

Hyunjin snagged the camera back. “Editing a Youtube video?”

“That’s exactly why they messaged me. They asked for ideas for a new video.” Felix sat back and redirected his eyes back to the conversation on his phone. The other two slowly turned their heads to each other.

“Wow! Did you hear that, Innie? They messaged him!” Hyunjin yelped.

“Lix didn’t message first? Unheard of!” Jeongin gasped.

“Cut it out, overdramatic cunts.” The accent made the last word roll off Felix’s tongue in a heavy and aggressive accent. “I want to help them this once. Shoo. Leave me be.”

“Oh, why are you getting all worked up, man?” The younger placed his hands on Felix’s shoulders and wiggled them.

Actually — why was he getting all worked up? Everything seemed off: he wasn’t the type to get annoyed easily like that.

He would have defended himself, but he thought it over. Not only had he been unusually sentimental while getting ready, but even as the day started, he was already rolling off to a rough start. He barely got out of bed, reaching out to you from the side and asking for longer morning cuddles specifically from you. He had been so clingy all day that the silence and afternoon heat killed him from looking forward to anything else but you.

A discussion brewed between the menaces as Felix thought about it. “Innie, you know, he couldn’t even hit the poses right. The director felt bad because our bro didn’t seem into it.”

Felix’s cheeks flushed upon hearing that. “No way, Hyune,” the other replied.

Oh god, Felix thought.

He swatted embarrassing thoughts away from his head to not get teased any further by his own friends. His thoughts — and something else — were hindering him from doing anything physically. The poor boy couldn’t even shift in his seat from embarrassment. It’s not that he didn’t want to physically fidget, he just couldn’t. His entire body froze, but he also just could not move by any means. It would be uncomfortable for him, and it wasn’t just because the clothes restricted him.

Something underneath his clothes would shift too and pierce his body with shockwaves. Before that could, though, his phone vibrated before he did.

you: babe! you: had a breakthrough so big i said eureka out loud in the store [you sent a photo]

Felix immediately opened the notifications and observed the sent messages. He opened the photo even before it loaded. When it did, he nearly melted in his seat.

You supposedly sent him a picture of a product that you found. By the looks of it, you probably thought of doing a product review of it, but that wasn’t the first impression he got from the picture. The first thing he saw was your face, winking with a toothy grin, your beautiful hand holding the product up next to your cheek.

God, you were all sorts of stunning to him.

lixie: OMHJYGOD YOUre so pretty you: dont look at me, silly! you: look at this lipstick. its so funny

For a moment, he didn’t listen. His eyes were still fixated on everything from your expression, to your features, to the nails that you just got done holding up the product. As if he had gone stupid, he had to blink and shake his head before formulating a reply that made sense.

lixie: LMFAOOOO THE NAME you: its not the name baby lixie: WHAT SHADE COLOR IS THAT LMAOOO  you: the shade looks fine, look at the label! lixie: What’s it say you: the label claims its make-out proof lixie: ??!!! LOL

Of course, he didn’t make any sort of sense whatsoever. His two friends watched him frantically type away, barely being able to process anything from the mere sight of you.

“Bro’s deluded,” Jeongin whispered.

“Bro’s fucking horny,” Hyunjin commented, squinting at his friend.

you: you sound so funny baby you: anyway i was thinking i should review it you: but can you join me? i wanna try something

It felt like something broke inside of him. A shot of excitement ran through his system, hitting down until his core — oh shit that hurt.

He tried to twist his lower half again, fidgeting in his seat, but it grew harder for him to do so. With tears in his eyes, he jolted up, attempting to focus on the conversation.

lixie: Sure, what do you want me to do? lixie: Won’t you just do an application and wear test thing? you: mmm i guess u can say that you: but im making it a lil different lixie: How so?

The intrigue bit his tongue and Felix attempted to swallow it. The staff around him were wrapping up the shoot, pushing equipment back in their places, and some started to leave as soon as the director announced the last “cut.” He, however, was glued to the vanity chair, shaking in anticipation.

you: im gonna put it on you baby <3

Felix’s eyes widened.

It didn’t matter how many times you placed makeup on him, nor did it matter how many times he joined you in your antics. There were too many things going on in his head that toyed with his thought process and everything that came with it. He didn’t exactly know why, but a knot formed in his stomach. He grew nervous and just knew that you were up to something sinister.

lixie: But how are we gonna do the wear test? I already got my face done and half the day has passed, I’m even done w my part of the shoot you: you dont get it ??? lixie: I don’t get it!! you: ill put it on you when you get here. and were not just testing how long it wears regularly, were testing what the label says you: ill be there in 10mins love you baby

He sat back, looked up from his phone, and his gaze zeroed in on his reflection, attempting to focus on the thought. How would you conduct a different kind of wear test? In terms of makeup, a wear test would simply be to spend a full day with the product on and to see if it still holds its place at the end of it. It had already been well past afternoon by that time and it wasn’t like there were many other things to do that could budge the lipstick aside from dinner. He always trusted your genius, but he knew that there was more to this.

Felix blinked, once, twice, and then stared.

Were you…going to test if it was really make-out proof?

The world around him seemed to dim — it did, since the studio lights were turning off and the senior stylists urged Jeongin to wake the model up from his short-circuiting brain to change out of the clothes.

That is if Felix could still respond before the horniness consumed him.

lixie: Wait lixie: Don’t tell me lixie: DON’T TELL ME lixie: You’ll test it by putting it on me lixie: AND THEN MAKE OUT WITH ME?????? [Read 2:50 PM] lixie: Y/N!!! Answer me!!! [Delivered, unread 2:51 PM]

The cogs in his head accelerated before banging to a full stop, clinks and clanks ringing through his ears at his very slow realization.

“Congrats, smartypants, you figured it out.” Hyunjin scoffed from behind him.

“Dude—wait, hey! Have you been watching me the whole time?!”

“You should be more secretive,” Jeongin giggled. “Get those privacy screen protectors or something. Now we know what poor Y/N has to deal with every day.”

“And stop getting your thoughts tangled in horny next time you text,” Hyunjin elbowed the poor model boy, fiddling with his camera as if nothing happened. “Don’t worry. Your secrets and online PDA are safe with us.” 

Felix’s face was washed without color. His jaw hung open both at his friends’ antics and your devilish plans.

“I’m looking forward to that review,” Jeongin added before walking away, teasingly pushing Felix’s shoulder on the way out. “Not that I’ll use it or anything.”

The two friends left the set side-eyeing and giggling at Felix.

—

It wasn’t long before you pulled up to the studio to pick your boyfriend up.

“Hi, darling.” Felix’s greeting and nervous smile lit up the quiet air and darkness of your car. He got in the passenger seat and immediately leaned in to kiss your cheek.

He was trembling. 

You had to laugh. “Hey, babe. What’s got you shaken up?”

“Long day.”

“That’s it?” You raised an eyebrow.

“Long because of you,” he said, scrunching his nose. “Kept teasing me.”

“Aw, don’t sulk, silly.” You cooed at him, “Save the pout for later, baby. We’re going home.”

Maybe it was the combination of inhaling your expensive signature scent and hearing the sound of your voice again that made him tingle all over. Maybe it had to do with the curling corners of your mouth that gave Felix all the information he needed in the world. Maybe it was the fact that you held the back of his seat as the car reversed, and the action looked undeniably sexy. 

Felix lifted a leg to cross over the other, but it only ever made him look more uncomfortable throughout the entire car ride home. Though concerned, you didn’t point it out, and instead continued to drive.

His chest was heaving and he internally scolded himself for acting like a bitch in heat.

The both of you arrived home sooner than expected.

The tunes that you played earlier in the car ride home stuck in Felix’s head. He wondered if the song choice of a sultry voice singing about “wants and needs” was deliberate. It was your playlist, and if you intended to include subliminal messaging, then it worked like a charm on him.

He had been worked out to the point he couldn’t face you. The moment he laid eyes on you again in your apartment’s living room, he shied away almost immediately.

You caught his averting gaze, though, and disallowed him from living it down. “Is there something on my face, baby?”

Baby. He could spend a lifetime just listening to you calling him that name. The way it sounded so natural coming from you made him melt. 

He also could not stop staring at your lips. You always wore a certain gloss no matter the occasion. Even if it was your signature, Felix couldn’t help but stare, and it didn’t make his situation any better. In fact, it got worse, and it felt like the straining in his pants could explode.

“Mm, ‘s nothing, Y/N.”

“You sure?” You prodded. “Your friends kept waving at me and they looked back at you earlier.”

“Ah, please don’t mind them.” He scoffed. “They were being cheeky cunts.”

“That’s a funny way to put it.”

“Anyway, how are we gonna do th-the…uh, the thing…?” Felix stammered, playing with his fingers instead of looking you in the eye.

“Oh, glad you mentioned it!” You hurriedly grabbed the three tiny boxes in your bag. “I got a bit excited over it. Look at this!”

There was nothing too remarkable about the boxes. They looked like basic products, but the huge bolded font on the product labels caught his eye. “It’s more of a stain or something. The label says it can survive five consecutive make-out sessions before a singular budge.”

“It’s…interesting, yeah.” Felix blinked. You chuckled, nodding at his reasonable reaction. “So…y-you’ll put that on me.”

“Yep.”

“And then we kiss.”

“Make-out,” you corrected. Your voice was clear and slightly stern, but the smile that formed on your face sent him in shivers.

The familiarity in your features contrasted with whatever stunts you were going to pull on him sent his head into a haze.

“Anything wrong with it?”

“No,” he shook his head.

“Lix, baby, just be clear with me.” You inched closer to him, bringing your hands to his plump freckle-spotted cheeks. “You don’t mind that I’ll record this and post it?”

“Of course, I don’t mind. I just…” Felix sighed.

“…Just curious, what are you planning to show in the video?”

“I’m gonna show the application, I’ll start by putting it on you.”

The heat rushed to Felix’s face as numerous thoughts clouded his mind as he visualized everything in his mind.

“We’re gonna kiss for a brief moment in the video, probably make out and do…whatever,” you winked shyly. “It’s only gonna be brief. Gotta keep it within community guidelines.”

One of your hands made its way down to his hip. You pulled him closer. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat from gulping back an otherwise embarrassing sound.

You had to wonder if he was hiding anything causing him discomfort there.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

Felix bit his lip. “A hundred percent sure.”

“If you don’t want—”

“I want…it,” he whispered under his breath. “I want you.”

He flashed a weak smile. He was incredibly excited, but he was losing composure and he didn’t exactly know why.

He was about to melt in your hands but you held him up and adjusted your set-up for the video with an equally beautiful smile.

—

Three, two, one, action.

The camera rolled and you felt the familiar rush of adrenaline surge through you. Impressively, you thought you would have lost your spark at content creation, but posing in front of the ring light felt refreshing.

“It’s been a long time coming y’all,” you waved, “but I’m back! And guess who I’m with!”

Felix stared at the camera for a moment, his eyes flicking back to you for a split second. It was his cue to wave as well.

“Ah, hi, everyone!”

“Still handsome and meek as always,” you teased. “He still has a bit of makeup on since he came from a shoot.”

Your hand ran down the side of his neck. You felt the goosebumps rise from his skin.

“Anyway, today I’ll be starting a series of videos covering weird products and their weird claims. We’re starting strong with this funky new liquid lipstick from…B.Me Cosmetics.”

Taking the tube out of its package, you examined it and showed it to the phone camera. You swatched a shade on the back of your hand. Differing from a bullet lip, it had a liquid formula that boasted a unique, pseudo-gloss satin finish. 

“It claims to be smudge-proof, make-out-proof, everything-proof. Can last five rounds of kissin’ and smoochin’ I assume.” You said many things that Felix didn’t even dare to process.

Felix simply watched your hands delicately hold the product. His gaze was fixated on your nails, fingers, and everything about you that wasn’t the lipstick.

“But oh no no, I’m not testing it on myself. Well, kinda, but Lixie over here is gonna be my test subject.” You swung an arm over Felix, dragging him down to the height of the phone, showing everyone his nervous yet precious face. He eyed up at you with what seemed to be hearts in his pupils.

“Let’s first see how this goes on, hmm?”

You walked a bit away to grab two chairs: one was velvety and comfortable, while the other was taller and had regular cushions. The first was the same chair your clients usually sat on, and the second was your working chair. You urged him to sit down, patting the seat as a signal.

The moment he sat down, Felix started trembling. His knees looked like they were about to give in and his thighs took a moment to settle onto the velvet.

“Everything alright?” You whispered.

He wordlessly nodded back at you. Unknown to you, though, he bit back a noise. He didn’t mind the sharp pulsing pain when he finally got the courage to look up fully, of course with the guidance of your thumb and index finger propping up his chin.

It felt like handling a little kitten in your hands.

“Which shade, which shade…” You took the other bottles out of the bold box packaging and waved them out in front of Felix’s lips. It either would have been a rosy nude color, a deep red, or a bright cherry pinkish-red.

You tapped the tube of the last color against your boyfriend’s bottom lip, watching his cheeks pout slightly at the action. You quietly settled on the cherry color, to Felix’s apparent delight.

“Would you look at that?” You cupped his face with one hand, holding the lipstick on your free one. You faced him towards the camera, relishing in the sight of his cheeks puffing up in your palm. “Call me biased or whatever, but his lips are some of the prettiest I’d ever seen.”

Before he could indulge in the praise though, you urged him to open his mouth. He didn’t prepare for any of this and not your next course of action.

You slotted the bottle in between Felix’s teeth and kept it in place even after unscrewing the applicator off. He bit slightly and carefully to keep the bottle in place without damaging it. If he were a nervous wreck then, he became overly anxious now. You, however, in full focus, took the applicator of the liquid lipstick and slid it along his top lip. The cold sensation of the new foreign product on his mouth made him squirm slightly, though you held him firmly in place with your hand.

“So fitting that his lips are shaped like a heart. He’s so kissable.” You smooched the air while cleaning up the perimeter of his lips, teasing him.

Wished I kissed you right now, huh? Felix could hear that in your voice and he let it echo in his pretty little head. Alas, he couldn’t retaliate nor speak back at all. He couldn’t even dip his head in embarrassment. Your eyes were trained on the brush you flicked, almost dismissive of your own flirting and it mismatched the smirk that adorned your mouth after teasing.

It was the exact kind of look he’s seen many times before. The exact look he fell in love with when you first met.

It’s the look he would get off to almost every night.

You finished off applying the lipstick and it was impressively smooth. You took the bottle from his teeth and sighed. The color made his mouth look irresistibly edible. It would take you three marathons and a trip to the moon to admit that you were starting to feel just as affected as Felix by the sight of his pouty mouth.

“Rub those pretty lips for me, baby.”

Only you could say those words to him the way that you do. Felix felt multiple urges rummaging through his system at once. He could almost cry from wanting to say something, to call out your name, to moan it, to whine and whimper, and melt in your arms as if nobody were watching. 

The eyes of the world were on him, though, and all he could do was comply. He rubbed his lips together and pouted them out with a smack.

“Good job, baby.” You rubbed his chin with your thumb. He felt fire surging within his heart.

He knew that you knew what you were doing. It was only you, after all, who knew how to push his buttons in the right places. Unlike Hyunjin nor Jeongin, it took you no effort and no risks to leave him a mentally jumbled mess; not agitated, but certainly needy.

You were still sticking to a mental script, though. “How does it feel? Chalky? Rough? Sticky…?”

“I-It’s smooth. Feels thin.” He felt his tongue almost twist in his mouth from trying to speak when he was physically weakening over you.

“Seems like a good formula,” you giggled.

He watched as you turned your back on him, explaining bits of beauty jargon that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. His vision seemed to blur as a need to satisfy the growing discomfort in his pants overwhelmed him. It all snapped away for a second when you switched the angle of your phone and pulled him up by his arms, leading him in front of the couch.

All of a sudden, you rubbed a circle around the base of his wrist. You looked up at him with eyes that demanded something from him. It was dark yet inviting as if he had just eyed down a wolf threatening to eat him whole.

The gesture was your signal that you wanted to fuck him then and there.

Felix finally didn’t have to keep to himself.

“Time to test how good it wears,” you smirked at him.

Felix’s eyes were focused on yours. He didn’t move an inch as your fingers crawled from his jaw to his cheek. You glanced at your phone, propped up on the countertop, to check if it was recording. When you looked back, your eyes met Felix’s red lips.

You were so glad that you picked that shade. The makeup line released a ton of colors and your mind folded into itself when you realized how many there were. It was almost overwhelming to choose a shade for your boyfriend: you wanted to see him with a pinky nude on his lips, but you also thought the dark berry shade looked pretty.

As a trained makeup artist, you had a knack for figuring out which hues elevated which skin tones. Of all people, you knew Felix’s skin would match the slightly muted, pinkish cherry satin stain.

You should know this. You’ve seen his skin flush many times before, that would be more than enough to be familiar with the hues of his delicious skin.

You were the reason why he would constantly blush, after all. His skin would burn under your slightest touch, but it would flare up until his freckles darkened each time you held him down on your hips and called him pretty. His cheeks would turn as red as the tip of his cock every time you squeezed it lightly. 

Before you could think of any more, you tapped your boyfriend’s cheek. His face burned into a shade not far from the color of his lipstick.

“Are you sure you want to record this with me?” You asked, eyes scanning his face for second thoughts.

Felix almost forgot that you needed a clip of the both of you briefly kissing. He nodded after a second, confusion snapping into realization as you smiled at him. He seemed to be lost in thought, too: maybe he was nervous, maybe he was thinking of the same things you thought about. Either way, he simply answered with a smirk and the faintest giggle.

“Yeah. I’m game.”

You were on a mission to prove that this lip product could not budge after an intense make-out session. Now, you — and maybe Felix — wanted to see if it could survive intense sex, too.

All it took were two inches forward: you grabbed his hands dangling in front of you and closed in. Your noses touched each other, the skin bumping softly before your lips slotted against his in the smoothest kiss possible. To his surprise, you started gently. He expected you to crash against his mouth. He expected you to rummage through the product sitting on his mouth right away, to test its strength as a long-lasting piece of makeup, but you didn’t.

Maybe he wanted you to be rough. He wanted it.

You could tell by the whimper he choked up behind the kiss. That, and his hands roamed around your arms and sides, pulling you closer.

“Getting a little excited now, are we?” You purred, pulling your face away from his. He hesitated to break the kiss, inching his lips closer to yours even as you talked.

“Sorry, s-sorry. Got a little carried away.”

You wondered what got him to be so clingy and affectionate. You’re well aware of him being loving and tender, but it’s another thing to have him smitten while you’re doing nothing special.

Little did you know that to him, everything involving you is special. Even the texts you sent earlier and the ones you sent before. He couldn’t stop thinking about them; who wouldn’t, especially when you were being such a tease?

He finally pulled his head back. “Smooth,” he whispered.

You thought to tease him. “The lipstick?” 

“No,” Felix chuckled, “I meant you.”

Your hands traveled from up to his toned arms until one of them met the nape of his neck — his sensitive spot. You often called him a little kitten for enjoying being petted on that spot a little too much.

“So, did it rub off yet?” Your boyfriend managed to squeak, still affected by your antics.

His face was impossibly close to yours and you could feel the heat in his cheeks growing the more that he smiled at you. You stepped back to observe his face: apart from the blush on his cheeks, the lipstick was seemingly left unscathed. By the look on his face, he observed your lips, and there were no signs of product transferring. 

He also just wanted to kiss it again.

You raised an eyebrow at the camera and shrugged. “I guess it survived round one.”

“That was round one?” Felix mirrored the look you gave your phone. “I thought we call that first base.”

Your head whipped back to him. He simply smirked back, feigning an angel’s smile.

You’ve dated him for a long while, and while he had always been silly, he had never been this way in front of the camera. You wondered if the shoot he did — or the staff he was with — earlier had anything to do with a sudden ego boost.

“Now you’re bold, baby.”

The nickname caused Felix’s smirking eyes into wide ones, the excitement writing itself everywhere on his face.

“Just wanna do more with you,” he teased back. “Do more rounds, test how much removes.”

He puckered his lips and pouted. It was a juicy invitation that you couldn’t turn down. Instead, you took it with a kiss — a deep kiss, one that made you inhale and caught him off guard.

It was still gentle and velvety. It felt like you both tasted clouds and nothing was in between. The hand on the nape of his neck ran up to his hair and back down almost instinctively, making Felix shake. Unable to focus on both the sensation of a passionate kiss, an overwhelming urge to breathe and process the suddenness, and the general feeling of being petted, his hands swung to your chest and squeezed.

“Ah! Felix!” You whispered loudly against his mouth, almost moaning at the sensation.

“Sorry! Force of habit,” he said.

“Gotta keep it PG, baby, I’m posting this.” He nodded assuringly at your words but his hands were crucially still on your chest, threatening to squeeze again.

After realizing this, he immediately attempted to pull his hands back, an apology dripping on the tip of his tongue. Instead, you surprisingly threw your hands on his wrists, caging his hands in place.

If that didn’t surprise him enough, you leaned in close to his face and kissed him once more. It was fiery this time; he felt your tongue darting at him while your teeth nipped slightly at his bottom lip before you pulled away. He gasped louder than he should have.

You giggled at his shock and nuzzled your face on his neck. “Sorry. Reflex.”

“But mommy—” Felix froze, realizing what he had just said. He didn’t mean to say that.

All the cockiness he displayed earlier fizzled out into thin air. You could feel the heartbeat in his neck thumping against your lips. From his eyes fluttered shut to wide open ones, you could see the embarrassment wash over him.

Sure, you two were doing something intimate, kissing and groping in front of the camera. He knew and trusted you enough to edit it out, but the idea that footage would have existed of him calling you that nickname…scared him. The camera watched him, the microphone picked up his low voice, and on the off-chance that this moment makes the cut, thousands of people would have seen it. 

He’d gotten used to the idea that millions of people could pass by his face and body, but it’s different when he’s exposing a bit of himself that he only reserved for you — his “mommy.”

“Y/N… Shit, I’m so sorry, I-I didn’t—”

“Oh baby, it’s okay.” You gave a reassuring look and a warm smile, shifting your position to hide his face away from the phone camera.

The pet name was his suggestion. The idea that you could hold this title as his dominant partner was something he never thought of telling you at first, but the moment he mentioned it, you indulged immediately. It was something so dear, so sweet, and soft, definitely making you less of an ominous presence to him in bed and more like a warm home he can return to. You loved it even if he didn’t expect you to.

Even while he’s embarrassed and fully vulnerable, he felt so safe, entrusted to the only one in his life that could take the title without judgment. 

“Call me that as much as you want. I won’t show it,” you whispered. Felix nodded but you didn’t miss the tears threatening to form in his eyes.

“Mommy…” He inevitably gave up and dipped his head in the crook of your neck. You petted the back of his head again and kissed the side of his head, calming him with hushes and soft hums.

Before he could melt at your warm embrace, you took a few steps back. Felix whined and hoped to hug you for longer, only to watch you press the button on your phone to stop the recording. You shut the phone off, looked back at him, and smiled with your eyes.

He always valued your respect for his boundaries and the fact that you always made his comfort your top priority.

“We’re not done,” you inched closer, “the lipstick’s still on there.”

Because if you two were going to fuck comfortably, you two were still going to fuck.

Taking his arms and pulling them towards you, you prompted him to wrap himself around you as your lips crashed against his. You held him by his waist — it was remarkably small, toned, and muscled but definitely made for your hands to take it.

With force, you hugged his waist and carried him slightly, pushing you both on the couch. You sat on it while he was essentially hovering over your figure, his hips just above your lap.

“Mommy—g-god,” Felix gasped, muffled by another nudge of your mouth.

As if your brain switched off, your hands started going on their own. One was trained on his hip and the other snaked up his side and cupped his face, making him tremble at the sudden yet soft movements.

You were focused on the kiss but you just knew he looked gorgeous.

Of all the clients you put makeup on, your boyfriend always turned out the prettiest. Maybe it’s because his eyes seemed to shine with certain shadows on them. Maybe it’s the way his freckles peek through the base products. In this case, maybe it was the plumpness of his lips that you loved, covered in a flattering shade of red. Maybe that’s what was doing it for you.

“You’re so cute, baby,” you said, pausing the kiss.

Felix pouted. The pigment on his lips accentuated the curves of his mouth. “Not as cute as mommy.”

“Hm, thank you. But you’re my cute baby.”

Sometimes, you wonder how you got this to be so vulnerable, so whipped for you. It didn’t take him that long to warm up to you with this side of him, a side he so dearly hid from the rest of the world. It’s like this doll was made for you.

“Mommy,” Felix dragged out a whimper as he called you by the title. “Making me needy.”

“Don’t get impatient baby boy,” you whispered, a kiss on his temple following your sweet words.

While rolling your hips onto his, you thought about it what you said. You thought back to the last night he fell into this extremely submissive role. He’d always been the one under you and you’ve always been the one in control, but during that one night — similar to this one — he shyly asked you to call him a certain pet name. You loved it, probably more than he did, and you figured he might want to hear you say it again.

“Or are you my baby girl for tonight?”

“Mommy!” Felix scolded. If his cheeks were already flushed, his entire face heated up with a warmth that you simply indulged in. His ears and the corners of his eyes lit up with a blush tone that complimented and accentuated the cherry color that lined his shy smile.

He enjoyed the pet name too much, and he seemed to be threatened with memories of the same night the moment you said it.

“What? Don’t want to be my baby girl? It’s okay if you—”

“I’m mommy’s girl! Yeah, I’m their baby girl!”

Almost all traces of bass in Felix’s voice left the moment he squealed his response to you. 

His eyebrows were slanting upwards like a needy puppy, his eyes sparkled as beads of tears sat on his eyelashes, and he wiggled his hips onto yours with a neediness you’ve seen many times before. He briefly whimpered again in a high pitch. 

Being called that for the first time was as special to him as it was to you. It still landed him punches to the gut every time you said it. You would wonder why he loved it even if he was incredibly comfortable in his masculinity.

Maybe it made sense like that, considering he was wearing makeup while sitting on your lap.

You kissed him again and praised him until he gave into the burning sensations he felt from your overwhelmingly smooth graces around his body. With fast swipes, you pulled his plain shirt over his head, only to clothe him again with nothing but the warm embrace of your arms.

He moaned, writhed, and whined, adjusting his position on your lap until his legs were slotted against one of your thighs. Once he found his balance, he rutted against your leg, letting out a sound that he couldn’t resist.

“Didn’t even undress you yet, I still have pants on, and you’re already riding me?” You smiled widely at him. Felix huffed, unable to think, inhaling so that he wouldn’t drool on your shirt.

Or your chest, now that you abandoned your top in a flash, leaving it even harder for him to contain himself.

You took his lips into yours again, this time licking and biting his sweet mouth, allowing his tongue to slide against yours. It was messy and sloppy, just the way he needed it. You wondered if he had been craving this for so long and just couldn’t tell you.

Nevertheless, the next step was to take the bottoms off of your lower half and his own, but he paused your hands from reaching onto his crotch.

“W-Want mommy’s off first,” he sighed. It sounded more like a question now that his voice was so high and his tone was so soft. He was far from the boy whose mouth went foul over his own best friends at work.

His head was far gone, you figured.

Felix helped you pull your pants down, careful not to disrupt the current position that you were both in, only slightly lifting yourself off the couch. He sighed once he saw you, bare and beautiful, rid of anything that kept him from being horny the entire day.

He wanted you so bad.

“Baby girl, tell me,” it was your turn to pause his hands from reaching you.

“Is something bothering you?”

“No…not really a-a bother…” He pursed his lips.

He figured to rip the bandaid off and just show you the source of his discomfort—or, as it seems, the source of his pleasure.

“Baby girl, you…”

He revealed a pastel pink lacy fabric covering his private area. He was wearing panties.

“I…I got them from a PR package…from th-that one underwear company…” Felix justified, stuttering from both extreme embarrassment and arousal.

“It was supposed to be yours b-but I…liked it so much…a-and I wanted to…”

You couldn’t help but notice the drool threatening to fall from his tongue, glossing his lips. Distracted, you didn’t kiss him. You licked his mouth and bit his bottom lip again. The blood under his skin rushed to color his lips, emphasizing the pink-colored stain.

As you bit his lip, your fingers found the band of his panties, toying with the pink lace before slipping under it. The flesh — rather, his cock — was hard and pulsing. Felix moaned. His chest heaved from being unable to process everything at once.

“Baby girl’s clit is so hard for me already.” You pecked his cheek and let him whine. “You’ve been needy since earlier?”

“Y-Yeah, but, ‘m…not finished.” He mumbled under his breath. “Got more…to show you.”

He pulled his panties fully down, allowing his cock to bounce up. You couldn’t help but notice something at the base, but your suspicions were confirmed when he led one of your hands to touch his ass.

“You wore a butt plug the whole day?”

Felix’s face flushed into a shade similar, if not deeper than the cherry red he wore on his lips. At your words, he felt like crumpling into himself. 

“It’s just for you. Thought y-you’d like it.”

All you could do in response was kiss him deeply and thrust your thigh up, hitting the plug deeper into his ass.

He moaned deliciously into the kiss and almost cried at the contact. It fucked with him — literally — the entire day and you made it all the better. Only that he had so little time to adjust before you gave him a dark look again.

“Mommy, what are you—”

He was shut up by you licking his mouth and your fingers filling up his hole.

“Your cunt’s so fucking wet, baby girl.” Your words left your system through gritted teeth, filtering your animalistic desire to ruin him even more than ever. “This pussy is mine and only mine.”

You bit his lip once more, sucking on the plump flesh before abandoning it. “Bet your toys can’t satisfy you as I do.”

“They d-don’t, mommy!” Felix was on the verge of tears, choking back sobs as your teeth found his jaw, peppering it with love bites lining his natural contour.

You started pumping your fingers up and down his ass, hitting his prostate with your fingertips over and over. “Can only take me inside your cunt.”

“Ah, god—fuck, mommy!” The delirious sounds escaping him as he scrambled to hold onto your body kept you going.

As if he noticed, he started grinding into the air next to your entrance. You took this as his usual sign that he wanted to please you too. Felix valued mutual pleasure and craved it as much as he craved the sloppy crashing of mouths on a couch.

“Take me like a good girl.” Your voice softened as you cooed. “Can you do it? Ride mommy’s fingers while fucking into me?”

He could only nod frantically, allowing the drool in his mouth to drop onto his cock. 

The lipstick probably looked so messy by now.

You held his cock, lengthy and hard, and squeezed it in your free hand. “This is mommy’s to play with.” 

Shoving it into your entrance, you curled your fingers deep onto Felix’s prostate, eliciting loud moans from either of you. Felix could scream from the sudden warmth enveloping his cock.

“Rub your clit against me,” you demanded, urging him to thrust his cock immediately. He complied only to start whining and crying out from the stimulation.

You leaned your head to the side and exposed your neck. With a subtle nod of your head, you invited him to bite your neck before his next thrust. Lightning bolts entered you when his teeth sunk into your skin for some semblance of comfort.

In turn, you kissed and sucked a spot on Felix’s shoulder. The biting sensation made him squirm away from you, but his noises only amplified when you latched onto a more sensitive spot above his freckled collarbone. It didn’t help that your fingers were practically exiting and entering his hole completely, filling and emptying him at a speed he almost couldn’t take.

The stimulation from all ends of his body caught up to him, release rumbling from his core up to his cock. He begged and pleaded and called your name multiple times as you did too. Felix readied for release but shocked himself when it came suddenly, almost without warning.

He started gushing just outside your entrance, the relief surging through his hips in waves: it had never happened to him before, but the slight amusement on his fucked-out face sent you over the edge too.

You came at the same time, your wetness coating the sides of your thighs and the cushions of the couch, the pool of both your juices mixing right under you.

It had to take you both several minutes to an hour of downtime before you both got up to clean. During that time, Felix held you close, trapping you in a warm cuddle.

“Y/N, I love you,” he whispered, his deep voice returning, calming you from your high.

You pressed one more kiss on his lips. “I love you too, Felix.”

Aftercare had to be a non-negotiable after the scene you guys painted all over the living room.

You made sure to offer Felix the softest bubble bath, massaging and soothing every inch of his skin, scrubbing away at the residue of the new lipstick.

You both found out, just before the bath, that it barely survived at all. It still stained his lips a shade of red, and the stains of love bites that he left on you stuck for a long while, but the actual product budged possibly within the third round of kisses. It barely held on when you started biting him.

The bedroom was full of giggles and the shuffling of your bodies cuddling close to calm yourselves down. Felix shared how he couldn’t believe his horniness that day, and you teased that he was being a hormonal girl.

He whined at that, kissed you good night, and fell asleep while huddled close to your chest. You calmly played with your phone, quickly editing the footage and clipping out the moment that he slipped into submission.

That was for your eyes only.

You posted the video and muted the notifications, kissed his forehead good night, and fell asleep.

—

“Baby, baby girl…” Your voice, although hoarse and deep from the blissful sleep, woke your boyfriend up. The clock on your bedside table flashed 9:00 AM in bright red, but the light from your phone shone brighter. “Look at this!”

“Holy…Y/N, oh my god!” Every trace of sleepiness left Felix as he jumped out of bed. “The video blew up?!”

You sat up next to him, chuckling in disbelief. “Let’s see what people are saying.”

“Why does the suggested search bar have…”

Men marked up. Men with hickeys. Men whining. It was clear that the video affected your audience in more ways than one.

“Silly,” you giggled, sinking into your boyfriend’s embrace. “Wonder how this thing got through community guidelines.”

Felix pointed at a comment. “Help. Someone’s asking about washing the stains off.”

The both of you cuddled closer. As the sunlight shone through your curtains and hit your figures, it highlighted Felix’s honey skin and the cherry stains that failed to wash off in the shower.

You turned your head to his and smirked. “Should we film an update video? What about a part 2?”

taglist: @toastyseungmo @hobihearteu @biddes-enthusiast @snow-pegasus @subby-kpop @myrandomthoughtsandhobbies @eggielix @hanniecheesecake @chrisbahng @laylasbunbunny @ppiri-bahng @he-they-heathen @chriscentric @svintsandghosts @sstarryoong

+ @imrllytootiredforthis @imsolovelylovely @beefis @sorikkung @lix-ables figured to tag since yall showed interest!

special thanks to @meivida, my ride or die, the big brain that inspired me to write this in the first place! they also took time out of their day to proofread it ^_^

thank you for reading ! consider reblogging and leaving feedback if you loved my work 💗 artwork and writing © ipegchangbin. no reposts and translations.

[drunk-on-dk]

[Teaser] Over the Country Club | Yoon Jeonghan (M)

pairing: best friend!Jeonghan x afab!reader genre/tags: fluff, angst, smut (minors do not interact), friends to lovers, a bit of unrequited love, a slice of life au, college au, post-grad au rating: 18+ (minors do NOT interact) w/c: ~3k TEASER (estimated ~15-20k for full fic, currently this may be my longest fic yet and it feels so good to really be writing again) warnings: mentions of alcohol (underage is not condoned), future smut

Summary: Jeonghan and you have known each other for as long as you can both remember. From the years spent working at the country club, to your university days, there has always been this aching feeling that neither of you can quite understand. Someone falls first, but the other falls harder.

A/N: Please let me know your thoughts on this teaser! I've been working hard to get back into writing in the new year and wanted to get comfortable with diving more into the plot. Things may change when the full fic is posted, but not much of what's in the teaser! I hope you enjoy it, and of course please message me if you'd like to be on the tag list for this fic!

I. 4th of July, the Summer Before the First Year of University

Just like every other high school student in your town, Jeonghan and you found part-time jobs at the oh-so-prestigious country club located in the next town over. One could argue it was practically a full-time job since most part-timers worked upwards of 40 hours a week due to how busy the club got during the summers. 

Not that you would complain about the hours; to be fair, you had to save up a substantial amount of money for the upcoming transition to college. The realization hit soon after graduating high school, you only had enough pocket change to fund some expenses,  which was not nearly enough to get you comfortably through the upcoming semesters. You had worked at the club most summers, but this year you took all the hours they offered. 

Plus, you’d be crazy to admit that summers working at the Lakewood Country Club weren’t some sort of fun. Plenty of your peers worked there, including Jeonghan, your longest lasting friendship due to the proximity of living next door to one another and growing up attached at the hip. 

Jeonghan worked as a caddie on the golf course. He’s gentlemanly in appearance, has just enough knowledge about what type of club to use at each hole, and has a never-ending spunk that entertains whatever group of golfers he’s assisting for the day. Jeonghan made decent tips working as a caddie, earning a couple of hundred dollars from some of his return golfers who specifically requested his assistance for an 18-hole outing. One could assume that most members of the country club were very well-off, or at least living comfortably. 

Luckily, you were stationed at the halfway house most days this summer. It’s located in the heart of the golf course, and the club consistently blasted cool air conditioning in the exposed, open bar area that was meant for golfers to stop by. Jeonghan, as scheming as ever, would ensure that his golfers stopped by for a quick refreshment at some point, knowing that he’d get to spend some time with you and help you earn some extra cash in tips from his already rowdy crew. 

You’d mix up some Manhattans or Old-Fashioned’s for the golfers, knowing the usual orders for each club member as if they had been engrained on the back of your hand (in hindsight, a freshly graduated high schooler should not have been pouring alcoholic beverages, but the country club didn’t care - your labor was cheaper than hiring a professional tender and you learned just the basics just fine). Nonetheless, your cocktails were a treat for the golfers who had been drinking beers for most of the course, most of them lukewarm or gone by the time they made it to the halfway house. 

Today is the Fourth of July, marking the mid-way point of your last summer before college. You had made your fair share of tips this summer working at the halfway house, especially due to Jeonghan’s consistent sourcing of clientele at your bar. It was a particularly hot day, one of the hottest of the summer and plenty of customers had stopped by, leaving hefty tips, feeling generous either from the heat or the holiday. 

Jeonghan approached the bar area with a heavy sigh, parking his cart hastily, but still had his typical mischievous smile etched onto his features as a crowd of familiar golfers followed behind him. Your nose scrunched in feigned disgust, a teasing smile mirroring his upon noticing just how tired and sweaty the group was from the relentless summer heat. 

Part of you thought he looked angelic from the way his sun-kissed skin gleamed, but you’d never admit that, nor would you dare to speak those thoughts out loud, not even to your closest friends who weren’t Jeonghan. However, the other part of you remembered he was just your silly best friend who smelled slightly like fresh-cut grass, sunscreen, and a hint of whatever remained of his tropical cologne. 

“The usuals?” You beamed, flashing your best customer service smile at the group, already reaching for the bottle of top-shelf whiskey displayed behind you. You received hoots and hollers along the lines of “Yes, please” from the group. Jeonghan slips behind the bar as you expertly begin to prepare drinks for the parched golfers. Normally, this was frowned upon, but Jeonghan had most of the country club supervisors wrapped around his finger. 

Jeonghan’s quick to sort through the fridge right off to your side, squatting and contemplating his options, but you have to smack his hand away from the cooler once you notice his deft fingers are reaching for a plastic shooter of whiskey.

“Y/N,” Jeonghan practically cries out, whining similar to a little boy being scolded, but he’s just your immature best friend who has a knack for trouble and stealing. You can’t always let him get away with everything. 

“You kleptomaniac, don’t you dare,” you joke, routinely preparing the drinks, laughing at the puppy dog eyes that are flashed in your direction and then back to the cold fridge. You bend down next to him, whispering quietly so that no one but Jeonghan can hear. “Wait until later, today’s manager has been keeping inventory of the alcohol as if they personally own it all. I can sneak some after my shift when I cash out.” 

Jeonghan’s pout morphs into a smirk, a devious glint in his eyes as he holds out his pinky finger. You comply, wrapping your pinky with his to silently promise that you’ll follow through later. 

“Meet at hole 12? Right at the hill behind the trees? It’s still the best spot for fireworks.” Jeonghan speaks as if it’s a secret mission - as if it’s not the same spot you’ve met to watch fireworks for the last few years working at the country club. 

“Oh, I thought we’d check out the views at hole 17 this year,” you roll your eyes mockingly, Jeonghan knows you’re messing with him, but it’s your smile that betrays your teasing, “Duh, Jeonghan. I’ll catch you there later.” 

“You know hole 17 is where Mingyu and Arin lost their virginity to each other last year,” Jeonghan pokes, settling on bottled water from the fridge and standing back up, towering over your own figure. You feel your cheeks flush, a bit flustered he’d drop that information so casually, and sure as hell hoping he didn’t think that you were suggesting anything. 

You didn’t see Jeonghan in that way, he didn’t see you in that way. Plain and simple. You two were only best friends and that’s how it would always be. 

“That’s gross, Jeonghan,” you scowl, willing away the blush that is still burning your face as you finish garnishing the drinks. “Don’t air out people’s secrets like that. That’s personal. Plus, why would I know that?” 

Jeonghan chuckles, shrugging as he helps you carry the drinks over to the golfers who have made themselves comfortable among the shaded seating outside the bar area, an outdoor fan helping cool them down. They all clamor in delight as Jeonghan and you emerge from behind the bar with the chilled drinks, quick to "cheers" each other before savoring the first sip of their beverages. 

There are smacks and sighs of delight from the group, your pride growing as they approve of the drinks, and gather up some cash for a tip. Jeonghan nudges you, urging you to accept the bills from Mr. Choi, a polite older man who continues to take care of Jeonghan and you each summer. He’s never been creepy, and he tips very well. You still feel slightly guilty each time you accept cash from him. 

“Thank you, Mr. Choi,” you speak graciously, accepting the tip, quickly shoving it into your pocket without checking the amount, and earning an approving thumbs up from the man as he takes another sip of his cocktail. 

“Save it wisely, Y/N,” Mr. Choi chimes, humming in thought, and eyes flickering between where you and Jeonghan stand. “Jeonghan tells me you’re both attending the same university in a few months. Heard you’ve both received a pretty good scholarship, even one from the club?” 

“That is correct, sir,” you nod excitedly. Not only had you both received an academic scholarship from your university, but all your years working at the club have paid off in a way you wouldn’t have imagined, earning a scholarship from the Lakewood Country Club members' foundation. “I am grateful to have received such an award. Don’t worry, I’ll make good use of it. I know Jeonghan will too. You’d never guess, but he’s a straight A student,” you tease, hiding your mouth only for Mr. Choi to see as if Jeonghan can’t hear you, and elbowing your friend in the rib cage, earning a pained groan from him. 

Mr. Choi nods in approval, a smile creeping onto his face as he chuckles at the dynamic between you two. “Glad to know my money is going towards two bright futures.” Jeonghan is pushing your bony elbow away, annoyed at your enthusiasm and teasing, further amusing Mr. Choi. “Jeonghan, make sure you don’t lose sight of Y/N during University, all sorts of partners will be chasing her. She’s intelligent and beautiful. Don’t want her forgetting about you now, do you?”

Jeonghan would groan if it wasn’t for the fact that it was Mr. Choi speaking to him. He has to restrain himself from shoving you away as well, knowing that Mr. Choi has inflated your ego a bit too much with his praise. Nonetheless, Jeonghan plays into it. “Nope, she’s stuck with me, so don’t even worry about it.”

You almost laugh out loud, reminding yourself to remain professional on the course as you fire back. “As if, Jeonghan couldn’t get rid of me even if he wanted to.” 

“Valid point,” Jeonghan grumbles, teasingly pushing you back towards the bar as if reminding you of your duties, sick of hearing the constant praise that only you’re receiving, even though there have been no additional visitors since Jeonghan’s entourage of golfers arrived. He’s quick to enthusiastically round up the crew, realizing daylight will quickly dwindle by the last hole if they don’t start back up soon. “Welp, we better let Y/N continue to work. Ready for hole 10?” 

The men are quick to gather, knocking back the remainder of their drinks, and returning to their carts as Jeonghan helps you clean up the finished glasses, your shoulders bumping into each other as you two push your way back into the bar. Mr. Choi sends a knowing look Jeonghan’s way, neither of you catching it as he wishes you a nice Fourth of July. 

“Thank you, Mr. Choi!” You wave to the man, bidding the rest of the golfing crew a nice holiday as well before turning to Jeonghan who’s finished carrying over the rest of the empty glasses. “Catch you later, Hannie?”

“Of course,” Jeonghan’s eyes lit up yet again upon hearing his childhood nickname, and is reminded of the nearing shenanigans later this afternoon. Maybe he’ll steal some snacks from the members gifting table for tonight. “I’ll see you then stay cool, Y/N!”

“You as well! Make sure to reapply your sunscreen,” you shout back, watching as Jeonghan hops in the cart with Mr. Choi and rolls his eyes at your nagging. Mr. Choi gets one final laugh before Jeonghan drives off, the entourage of golfers following closely behind. 

You’re finishing cleaning up the bar, pulling the cash from your pocket earlier and gasping upon realizing just how much Mr. Choi had tipped you. A five-hundred dollar tip. It was surely the most you’ve ever made in one round of drinks, absolutely unwarranted, and it made you feel a bit teary-eyed. You knew you couldn’t dare to return it, as Mr. Choi would definitely be offended, but you felt extremely lucky to have such nice members visit you at the halfway house, you’d have to thank him eventually. 

The rest of the day went quickly, and, much to your delight, you had made enough tips to support a chunk of your tuition and expenses for the year. Also, your manager had swapped shifts with another supervisor mid-day, who was not as hawklike. 

Leading up to the completion of your shift, you had snuck a pair of alcoholic shooters into your uniform skirt. Even in your attempt to be rebellious, you couldn’t just steal the shooters, using some of your tip money to cover the cost of the alcohol and you felt less criminal. You knew Jeonghan would tease you relentlessly about this if he was here, each shooter was no more than $3 each, but you had a knack for doing the “right thing,” or else you feared karma would get you in the long run. 

Upon reaching the end of your shift, you stopped back at the employee locker room to safely store your tips in your purse. The day had been hot, but it was cooling down now that night was approaching. 

Ultimately, you opt to throw on a sweatshirt, one that Jeonghan had purchased when you two had toured your university, which was the same one that he’d worn so many times that it’s the most comfortable piece of clothing you own. One that he couldn’t deny you of when you begged to keep it, secretly thinking that you looked cute in it even though you were practically swimming in the fabric. Disgusted that he’d even thought that, he dismissed you quickly and said you could keep it. 

The sun was setting minute by minute, meaning that Jeonghan’s shift would be finishing very soon, and you packed away the remainder of your items in your employee locker, double-checking that your skirt still had the tiny plastic alcohol bottles hidden away. 

After confirming you had said shots, you headed out to hole 12 with a spring in your step. It was a meeting spot you and Jeonghan had found your summer after freshman year of high school. There was a hill behind a bunch of trees that overlooked the valley where the main portion of the country club was located. No one was allowed on the course during after-hours, but this spot was so dark and secluded that you two hadn’t been caught yet. It was also the prime viewing spot for the club’s fireworks show, and it was your little secret. 

You were first to make it to the spot, plopping down on the hill and huffing in relief. Your legs ached a little from standing all day. The grass beneath you was dewy from the cool nighttime air, the humid heat from the day settling on the greenery, and it was almost enough to make you feel itchy. However, you don’t mind it, not when you have the fireworks show to look forward to. You would never mind the damp grass, especially not when you had a favorite summer tradition to share with your favorite person, your best friend. 

Jeonghan’s shift ended a bit later than yours, but he didn’t arrive at the spot much later than you. He meant to grab a bag of popcorn or something, but he didn’t want to leave you hanging for too long. 

Jeonghan tried to sneak up on you, but you’re too smart, too knowing of his antics. So when you turn around knowingly, with two opened Whiskey shooters in hand, he chuckles almost maniacally at your annoyed expression that doesn’t fully translate into your impish eyes. You two were one and the same. 

“What are you waiting for, Hannie? These shots aren’t getting any colder. Not when they’ve been in my skirt for the past hour.”

“Eugh, now you’re the one oversharing,” Jeonghan groans in disapproval, sitting down next to you on the grass, and gratefully accepting the shot regardless of your TMI comment. Your knees knock each other as you turn to face him, but a friendly touch isn’t foreign to either of you. “You’re the gross one, Y/N.” 

“Oh, shut up,” you giggle, holding the shot out in front of him and teasingly shaking the plastic bottle. You sing song, “The night’s not getting any younger either.”  

Nodding in acknowledgment, Jeonghan smirks and shares a few words, “Cheers to our last summer before we’re miserable college students. Cheers to fewer hours spent in the heat at this country club. Cheers to our everlasting friendship.” 

With his final words, you’re both knocking back your shots, groaning in unison as the spicy drink burns and settles in your stomach, instantly warming your body at the sensation. Your face scrunches up at the taste and Jeonghan can’t help but laugh uncontrollably.

“Stop it,” you whine, your voice a bit hoarse from the alcohol but smiling nonetheless. “You aren’t any better than me. Anyways, that's enough for me tonight.”

“True,” Jeonghan contemplates, but he’s quick to poke you. “But I didn’t struggle as bad as you did.” 

“Touché,” you hum, nudging Jeonghan’s shoulder excitedly as a warning firework darts into the sky, indicating the show will be beginning shortly. “It’s starting!” 

“Alright, alright,” Jeonghan is groaning at your bony elbow yet again digging into him, but he’s delighted by your excitement regardless, shoving you back as you begin to readjust for the show. “Calm down, it’s nothing crazy.” 

“No, Jeonghan,” you grin, turning your head to fully make eye contact with his wide eyes, joy flickering in your own as you peer at your best friend. “It’s nothing crazy, but it’s absolutely so special because once again we get to enjoy it here together.” 

Your emphasis on the word together almost makes him shiver, a foreign feeling rushing through him as you continue to gaze at him with those wild eyes of yours, gulping as he hesitantly nods, even though he wholeheartedly agrees it is special, but he’s not exactly sure why. “Very true,” and as if on cue, the fireworks show begins, relief flooding through him as you redirect your gaze and squeal in excitement. 

Jeonghan doesn’t understand why, but his heart pounds in his chest throughout the entire show. He thinks maybe it’s the alcohol (you and he rarely have dared to sneak alcohol before), maybe it’s the overstimulation of the fireworks, maybe it’s the thrill of knowing the golf course guards could spot you any year and escort you away, or maybe it’s the way your knee keeps brushing his thigh reminding him of just how close you two are. How much you are together here alone, just like every other summer. 

It’s a feeling he decides to ignore for the rest of the fireworks, letting himself lay back on the damp grass with you and listening as you enthusiastically point out your favorite fireworks, bickering with you when he thinks a different type of firework is prettier. 

It’s a feeling he continues to ignore as the finale comes and goes, chest fluttering at the way your eyes sparkle with golden reflections of the fireworks in the sky, and once again quickly redirecting his gaze to anything but you. 

It’s a feeling he tries his damnedest to ignore as you both continue to lay in the grass post-fireworks. Neither one of you making the first move to go home. Maybe you thought this would be the final moment of normalcy between you and Jeonghan before starting university, knowing that all friendships are bound to change with such a new chapter. Maybe he thought he’d figure out whatever it was he was feeling if he just stayed here with you a moment longer. 

It’s a feeling he struggles to ignore as you both fall into deep conversation. The one shot of alcohol makes you both loose-lipped as you reminisce on embarrassing high school stories. Reminiscing on your shitty boyfriend who broke up with you before the summer. Reminiscing on your years of friendship. 

It’s a feeling he no longer can ignore when you roll over, lips pouting and eyes teary as you start to feel emotional about your recent breakup. Something in him feels like it shatters when you ask, “Have you ever been in love before, Hannie?” 

[acewizardinspace]

People complain that the jedi don't act appropriately to being forced to use a slaver army, but they seem to forget that the jedi can't. Not just in universe (although yes, in universe there was nothing the jedi could do about this decision made by the senate) but narratively.

The jedi can't comment on the clone's slavery because the narrative won't let them! As a matter of fact, the narrative won't let anyone mention this! Literally no one calls the clones slaves seriously, even characters who by all accounts should feel that way because the narrative won't let them because they are fictional people created by a team of writers.

The clones aren't slaves in universe because the writers refuse to write them that way. Do I personally feel that this should have been a plot point? Yeah I think it would have been interesting! But they didn't!

Is it fun to explore this in fanfiction? Yeah it totally is! I know I would mention it in any fic I write in the future.

Does it make for good media criticism or analysis? No! This is just straight up not how you professionally analysis media. It is worth bring up in a discussion about the creators and exploring why they didn't bring these things up in the series. That would be good media analysis.

But as "proof" that some characters are bad this fails dramatically. Why? Because then you must apply this logic to every character, meaning not just the jedi are evil but actually every single character in the whole series, yes all of them, are evil. Once you do that you have successfully thrown away any meaning the original work had. It is all pointless now.

People confuse in-universe (watsonian) and out-of-universe (doylist) analysis. 'Why did no one do anything about the clone's situation?' is a shit watsonian analysis. But 'why the fuck did the writers write the clones like this?' is a GREAT doylist question.

Media analysis should add meaning, or explain meaning, or even describe why you feel the work lacks meaning, but it should never take all meaning away.

It is the same reason droids aren't called slaves. It would complicate the narrative and distract from whatever the writers were actually trying to say. The writers don't want to go there, so they don't.

[campingwiththecharmings]

for minigirl87

Hi, congratulations 🎊 on your 1 year anniversary. Could I request, please. Poe Dameron and the AU firefighter. I used to clean in a fire station and have a thing for firefighters, plus I could could easily see Poe as a fireman, lol. Take care ❤️

Some Like it Hot

For @minigirl87

AN: Another fic-aversary request! I know you sent this to me via messenger AGES ago and you probably don't even remember doing it but I need you to know that Firefighter!Poe has had me in a chokehold ever since lol. THAT SAID, I have no idea if this is what you were looking for but my muse is a whore (esp for Poe) so here we are. Absolutely shameless smut, very, very little plot. Hope y'all enjoy 😌❤️

(Un-beta’d)

Rated: M+ (this is smut so, i mean, you’ve been warned?) Words: 1,297 Pairing: Firefighter!Poe Dameron x Photographer!F!Reader Warnings: PWP, p in v, strangers to lovers, praise kink, please let me know if i missed anything. AO3

——————

Somehow, you’d known that it would end this way.  

Well, maybe not this exact way—with you fucking a smoking-hot firefighter in the dark room of your studio—but the second he’d walked into the room, you’d known something was bound to happen. Granted, you’d been thinking more along the lines of a coffee date or, if you were really lucky, dinner.  

The Universe had other plans, it seems (and who were you to argue?). 

His strong fingers grip you tightly as he fucks into you from behind, every powerful thrust of his hips all but knocking the breath from your lungs. A choked moan escapes you as he hits one of your sweet spots, cunt clenching around his (considerable) length and pulling a groan from between his lips. You feel so good, so full, the pleasure zinging through your body as he drags himself in and out of your slick heat.  

You don’t normally do this—this being fucking someone within hours of meeting them, without even knowing their full name—but there’s just something about this guy—Poe—that makes you wanna give him everything. 

It had started innocently enough, just lingering glances and a bit of flirting, but the tension had grown between you the longer the shoot went on. More than once, your gaze had lingered, unable to stop yourself from admiring him—with his leanly muscled body, chiseled jaw, deep eyes, and that stubborn curl that kept falling across his forehead. He could tell you were into him; you’d known by the way he’d looked at you. 

Normally, you were more professional while you worked, more respectful of the vulnerability of your subjects as you shot them. You’ve never felt this before though, this pull, this need, and it surprised you how quickly you’d thrown out all your principles for what you assumed was just a one-time thing. 

“Taking me so well, sweetheart,” Poe slurs, the pace of his thrusts faltering slightly as you flutter around him. “Fuck, feels so good.” 

You can’t help the whine that escapes you at his praise, your fingers gripping the edges of the counter he has you pressed against. You kind of wish you could see his face (you bet he looks stunning when he comes), but he’s hitting you so deep like this it’s a little hard to complain. 

He grunts when you flutter around him again, your fingers aching as your grip on the counter tightens. You’re so close, can feel the tension coiling inside you as he spears into you again and again. You push back to meet him and he moans, his cock somehow reaching even deeper inside you, electricity zinging up your spine. 

“Please,” you breathe, unsure exactly what you’re asking for. 

He seems to know though, adjusting his thrusts so he can lean forward and slip his hand between your thighs, calloused fingers immediately finding and circling your clit. You whimper in pleasure as a myriad of sensations race through you, your arms shaking as your body is pushed closer and closer to the brink.  

“You’re right there aren’t you, sweetheart?” he murmurs, his voice thick with his own pleasure. “You’re so close, squeezing me so tight—” 

All you can do is moan in pleasure, in agreement, the combination of his cock and his fingers making you feel almost drunk. 

“Need you to come for me,” he pants, more of a plea than a demand. “Need to feel you.” 

Without warning, Poe pulls you up from the counter so your back is flush against his chest. Your mouth falls open in surprise, a noise somewhere between a squeal and moan escaping as he grinds up into you, his thrusts slower now but no less devastating. 

“Oh fuck,” you gasp, head lolling back against his shoulder as he groans in agreement.  

He’s just as far gone as you, it seems, his thrusts a little sloppier now as he nears his peak.  

“Pussy feels like heaven, sweetheart,” he slurs, his mouth and tongue molten against your heated skin. 

You feel like you're drowning, like he’s suffocating you with pleasure. You need something, something to hold onto, something to keep you grounded. You reach back, plunging your fingers into his soft curls, gripping them for dear life. You’re so close, right there at the edge, the tension inside you wound so tight you feel as if you might burst.  

Another brush of his fingers against your clit is enough to send you soaring over the edge, your body shaking in his arms as your release slams into you. Poe’s groan is choked as you convulse around him, but he fucks you through it, mumbling words of praise and encouragement in your ear as waves of pleasure surge through you (“That’s it, baby, soak my cock. Oh fuck, yeah, just like that, oh good girl—”) 

He stills a moment later, spilling his thick, hot cum deep inside you, his strangled moans muffled as he buries his face in your neck. You relax a little as you come back down, the solidity of his body against yours comforting. You stay like that for a moment trying to catch your breath, the two of you panting and half naked in the middle of the room. After what simultaneously feels like two seconds and an hour, he pulls back a bit from your neck, leaving a gentle kiss at the top of your spine that makes something in your chest ache.  

“Okay?” he asks, his voice soft and a little raspy. 

You hum, nodding as you allow yourself to melt into him a little, your body going limp in his hold. He chuckles softly, tightening his arms around you and pressing another kiss against your neck. For a moment, you let yourself pretend, pretend that the two of you aren’t strangers, that this isn’t a one-time thing, that he’s yours (and you’re his). 

He slips out of you with a hiss, the loss of him dragging you back to reality. Your legs feel like jelly, but you manage to stand on your own, shakily pulling your clothes back on before turning to face him. Considering the position you were just in, it’s silly how awkward you suddenly feel. You lean against the counter behind you, chancing a glance up at him; the soft smile on his lips makes your heart skip a little. 

Ugh, he looks just as gorgeous in the red light of the dark room as he did when he’d waltzed into your studio hours ago. A part of you kind of hates him for it. 

Before you can say anything, he leans in, capturing your lips in a soft kiss. You sigh, eyes fluttering shut as you kiss him back, your arms winding around his neck. His hands settle on your waist, pulling your body against his as he licks into your mouth. You moan softly, completely lost in him, in the way he’s making you feel. When you part for air, he presses his forehead against yours, your pants mingling in the small space between you. 

“Go out with me,” he breathes, his nose bumping against yours. 

You huff a laugh at the request (demand?), fingers tangling in the curls at the base of his skull. He smiles again, his lips brushing over yours. 

“Probably should’ve asked that before, huh?” 

You laugh again, still breathless. “Better late than never.”

His laugh is husky and the sound of it makes something warm settle in your gut. “I appreciate you being so understanding.” 

You bite your lip, smothering your smile. “I know you’ll find a way to make it up to me.” 

He hums in agreement, a playful gleam in his eyes as he leans in to kiss you again. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

If you enjoyed this, please let me know! I appreciate every single reblog and/or comment. Thank you. 💖

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[50shadesofoctarine]

Why you should write that AO3 comment:

Hello! I am an AO3 author and professional fandom dipshit. This is an "essay" on why you should leave that comment on the fanfic you just read.

Table of Contents:

"Commenting is too much effort!"

"I don't know what to write!"

Do you want more fanfic?

Fan creators are human beings, not AI content generators.

You can count it as charity work on your metaphysical taxes.

"Commenting is too much effort!"

Yes, writing a comment takes energy. I'm an introvert, I get that. I have two counter arguments to this point.

AO3 comments are not the SAT:

This is a comment from my latest fic, Quantum Entangled.

Three words and a heart. It requires zero consideration, it isn't specific to the fic, it's something you could copy-paste, even. A comment like this is better than nothing. I'll let my reply from AO3 explain why:

"You know what, I appreciate this way more than you'd probably expect. The temptation to lurk is a strong one, both for social anxiety reasons and internet content-consumption culture reasons. But when people lurk, I can't tell that they've enjoyed the story. The more people that lurk instead of interacting, the more I assume that my work wasn't good enough, irrespective of the reader's actual feelings. So this was a very welcome comment to read. Thank you for indicating your enjoyment. I will endeavour to write more stuff for you to lurk on in the future. :)"

A comment like this, one that is as thoughtless and low effort as possible, is still a comment. Something that denotes a reader's interest. Because, and I can't be clear enough about this, I HAVE NO OTHER WAY OF KNOWING THAT YOU LIKED IT. Kudos and comments are my only window into the reader's experience.

Sure, I'd love more detailed and thorough comments on my work, but, if that expectation is the thing that's going to stop you from commenting at all, I'd prefer the bland copy-paste appreciation.

Onto my second argument.

Do you know what also takes effort? WRITING THE DAMN FIC:

You do not get to complain about being forced to type a congratulatory handful of words after reading that 200k slow-burn fantasy au. Do you know how many hours went into that thing? Do you? Because I can guarantee that it was A LOT. All that writers are asking for is a single emoji. A kudos, at the very least. Consider the effort that went into the creation that you've just experienced and give just a thimble full of it back.

Authors lay out a feast for you to devour. They're only requesting a "thank you".

"I don't know what to write!"

Like in the previous example, an AO3 comment can be as simple as three words saying that you appreciated it. Just an acknowledgement that you were there. It doesn't have to be fancy.

But if you want fancy...?

Here's one of my comments, from Tishae's Better Together.

Let me break it down for you.

"Stunning. This au is so well developed. I love how you managed to maintain tension after the point that they discover that their feelings are requited. This was brilliantly paced, and the action (esp the ending) was so engaging."

The comment opens with appreciation. (Think of it as a sandwich with love as the bread. It starts and ends with my enjoyment.)

There are specific details about what I liked.

"If I may ask, what was the crime that the Metatron committed? Maybe I'm bad at reading between the lines or maybe I missed something, but I'm really curious as to what dirt they have on him. Victimless? Bad enough for imprisonment, but not so morally reprehensible as to make Anathema reveal it? Did he embezzle? That's all I can really think of."

Continues with a specific question about the story and plot.

Shows that I was critically engaged and actively considering the story.

You don't have to have questions about every fic that you read, but don't be afraid to ask them if you do. I love it when people ask me about my work.

"Thank you for the delicious food. I honestly thought that you were going to have Crowley's final look be something in grey (black and white being the theme of the show, metaphorically representing separation/binary, so Aziraphale was uncomfortable with it due to the implications. Grey, symbolising unity/shades of grey as an idiom, would then be the biggest middle finger to the Metatron) but I do really like what you came up with."

Gratitude.

Thoughts about how I read the plot. (This is something I particularly love to read as an author. Please tell me what's going on in that funky lil' brain of yours!!)

"I'm hoping this comment provides plenty of dopamine. If the task activation and instant gratification parts of your brain light up, you might be more likely to write GO content again. Love your work, thanks for sharing it. I hope you gain 3 inches of metaphorical dick length. Please keep writing."

Encouragement to keep writing. (This is the best way to ensure that creators remain in the fandom)

A funny comment to sign off.

Now that you know what to comment, let's start on the real reasons why you should.

Do you want more fanfic?

Fun fact! Fanfictious Authoria are a species that sustain themselves entirely on a diet of brain worms, unfinished WIPs, and kudos. As one of the three fundamental food groups, removing kudos from the fandom ecosystem causes a complete collapse of the natural order. In times of unprecedented scarcity, entire populations of Fanfictious Authoria can die out completely. This means that the production of fanfiction, in that particular region of fandom, stops entirely, often causing major ecological damage, and the subsequent deaths of fan species in the same genus. (Like the Fanfictious Artia, or the Fanfictious Editour, both of which subsist on fanfiction based diets to survive.)

In conservation efforts, experts are imploring readers to donate kudos and comments toward any fandom region that they want to stay alive.

But I digress.

When I want more content, I tell the author. Ask and you shall receive; it's the best way to convince an author/artist to make more.

My comment on @mrghostrat's And They Were Streamers

You liked it? Then COMMENT! Not for the author's sake, but for your own. You want to see the ending of a WIP? Well, it'd be a terrible shame if the author gave up on it because they thought no one was reading... They don't know that you enjoy their work until you TELL THEM. They're not psychic, you have to help them hear you. Commenting on the things you like influences the creators of said things to attribute the act of making content (and, notably, making the type of content that specifically appeals to you) with the dopamine hit of reading your reaction. Treat them like Pavlov's dogs. Ring the kudos-bell.

Fan creators are human beings, not AI content generators.

They have real human feelings and real human egos. The contemporary attitude towards media engagement is skewed towards algorithmic, instant, and uncritical consumption. This is pumping straight gasoline into the beautiful lakes of our fandom ecosystem. Fandom cannot afford to treat its creators like mechanical text generators. We are not an unfeeling assembly line, only there to produce content. We are enthusiasts, engaging in our hobby. No fan creator has to show you anything. They are fully within their rights to keep their works hidden in their computer files, never to see the light of day. Every fanfic on AO3 is only there because someone had the grace to share it with you. You are not entitled to an author's work, just as they are not entitled to your kudos. We have a mutually beneficial arrangement. Do not forget your part in this symbiosis.

It's a problem that extends beyond AO3. Tumblr is a less enthusiastic place than it used to be. Fandom as a whole is drifting towards a consumption mindset. I, for one, am sick of it. Reblog things, like them, share them. Make fanart of fanart. Who gives a shit? Do the cringy thing. You don't have to cultivate your blog aesthetic. Be who you are, like what you like, and have enthusiasm about all of it. Fandom should be an expression of radical self acceptance. Embrace it. Leave essays about fics that you liked. Reblog the essays of other's when you see them. Exist in the mutual joy of seeing and being seen. You are not just an external observer, absorbing content from a distance. You are here too. Wave back at us. Say 'hi.'

You can count it as charity work on your metaphysical taxes.

My final appeal is a moral one.

Commenting on AO3 is just a kind thing to do.

You are your actions. Are you the kind of person who does the kind thing when no one is watching? When no one will care?

Fanfiction is a hobby, and I'm not here to guilt you about how you spend your leisure time. I'm only here to say that there is a kindness you could be giving the world.

If you are one of the people that performs this kindness, I thank you.

[heartkyeom]

fine line

figure skater!joshua hong x f!reader

synopsis: as a joshua fangirl, getting the chance to interview him as a teenager was an absolute dream. 10 years later with a flourishing career as a writer and a strained relationship with him, he wants to do a 10 year reunion interview about his path to the upcoming Olympics. there’s only one problem: you’re staying at his house and trying not to address your old feelings for him.

word count: 19.9k

tag list: @junhui-recs @bfwonu @huiranghaes

warnings: figure skater!joshua, writer/fangirl!reader, best friend!jeonghan, dad!seungcheol, smut, fluff, angst, some occasional skating jargon, this is a lot about the Olympics

a/n: y’all. this fic has been reworked over and over and over since spring 2022, it’s the longest fic I’ve ever done. it’s given me so much trouble and seen me through so many changes in my life. doing my final undergrad dance show, writing my undergrad capstone, finishing undergrad, and finding my first apartment. it is my baby and has grown as much as I have since march. thank you to the sports au discord for being so lovely <3 I hope you enjoy it as always and I hope you can feel how much heart I put into this! this is for @gyukult’s sports au collab + this is loosely based on the plot of the book “funny you should ask” by elissa sussman which I can’t recommend enough! title also inspired by the harry styles song ok bye lmao <3

Work isn’t particularly difficult, in your opinion. You’re used to hearing the people around you complain about how much their workload consumes them to a point of no return, but as you made your way into your first adult job as a writer, you tried to stop that from happening.

It’s not exactly easy when you have to navigate the entertainment industry while writing, but the idea of trying to craft new narratives about celebrities that the public is convinced that they know inside and out still excites you.

Even if you’re not exactly fond of whoever you’re writing about, the challenge still intrigues you. Thus, the conversations surrounding ideas for new profiles are always equal parts captivating and nerve-wracking.

“How do you feel about Joshua Hong?” Your manager asks. You look up to see her balancing her weight on the side of your desk, a neutral expression paints her face.

She knows this is a loaded question, all things considered.

“You know how I feel about him,” You blink at her before facing your computer again.

“I do, but I need an updated response considering the anniversary,” She persists. You sigh, swiveling around to face her again before responding.

“He’s great. I like him,” Your voice trails off, you try to nod to convince her, but it’s not working.

Your life has been so intertwined with Joshua Hong’s career as a professional figure skater that it’s hard to delineate life before and after him. He wasn't there, then one day he seemed to consume your life completely.

Before your start as a journalist, you ran a very well-known, albeit secretive, blog about Joshua Hong as a teenager. It was relatively harmless and safe for work, spare the occasional thirst posts sprinkled in. It mostly contained updates about the then emerging skater’s career, offering illegal torrent links for broadcasts of his performances that weren’t available worldwide and communicating with other fans about your love for him. Yet, some random post about him qualifying for the Olympics went insanely viral when you were 17, garnering over 1 million shares in under a week.

It was substantial enough to get his management's attention, and you had the opportunity to interview him not only for your blog but for a major publication for their Winter Olympics coverage series.

With two opportunities to write about him, you were able to fulfill the fan service pleas from your fellow fans for the blog and write a serious piece that made the general public interested in him from the perspective of a fan that knew the general timeline of his career.

The quick success felt like a fluke, but it led you to an undergraduate degree and a dream job as an entertainment writer at one of your favorite companies almost immediately after graduation.

He technically made your career, whether you wanted to admit it or not.

You’ve been trying to forget about the anniversary, but everyone in your life seems determined to bring it up whenever they see you.

“Well, we want you to do a 10-year reunion interview piece with him. That’s only if you want to,” Her voice was sympathetic, but you’re mainly focused on the number. It really had been 10 years, hadn’t it?

You were both incredibly established in your respective careers, him as a 5-time gold medalist with appearances at 3 Olympic Games, and you with a prolific image as a relatable yet incisive celebrity interviewer. It completely makes sense for you two to meet again, considering how much the first interview changed the trajectory of your lives.

It would feed into the nostalgia of Joshua fans that grew up alongside you as readers of your blog and new fans that clamored for any new Joshua content.

Yet, you weren’t exactly convinced.

“I mean, his team could’ve had anyone else write a big profile on him. We’re not the only website in the world with an entertainment section,” You fight the urge to bite your nails and instead choose to wring your hands together.

“He asked us to do it,” She admits.

You try not to look too shocked, but that definitely changes things. You were not close with Joshua whatsoever. Sure, he’d occasionally like your social media posts and wish you a happy birthday every year, but that was the extent of your relationship.

Your teenage self thinks it might be him looking for closure, wondering what might have happened if you stayed in touch.

Yet, you can’t let yourself dive back into the fantasy of him again.

You search for a response, but you can’t land on anything substantial. “What would I have to do?” You ask, you barely notice the unconscious habit of biting the inside of your cheek.

“Well, in addition to the profile, you can attend his practices and any private schedules he invites you to. It’s mostly up to the discretion of him and his team,” She offers and you nod. You’re good with that, you can watch him practice and go to a random professional event he’s booked for.

“He did offer something else, if you’re up for it,” She gives you a pointed look which makes you a bit hesitant.

“What is it?”

“He asked if you were open to staying at his house,” She smiled through her answer, but you’re sure your face was completely pale.

You didn’t know if you were more shocked or nervous at the idea of it. It was ambitious, considering that you haven’t spent more than a few hours in the same room with him at a time, much less stay with him.

You think you might die if you go through with it.

“He’s not serious,” You find yourself laughing in disbelief. You can’t even fathom the idea of being further sucked into Joshua’s life after so long.

“He really is. You don’t have to give me an answer right now, but within the next day or so,” She leaves your desk without giving you a chance to respond, but you revel in the opportunity to think about everything.

It’s a bit too much to wrap your head around, so much so that you don’t remember much else of the work day.

For the first time in a long time, Joshua Hong was all you could think about.

—

The more you think about the interview, the more it gives you anxiety.

All of the possible outcomes float around in your head during the commute home that you can barely enjoy the music blaring in your headphones.

Once you arrive home, you figure that you need a second opinion on the matter, so you decide to call your far more opinionated best friend for his input.

The phone only rings for a few seconds before he picks up.

“What happened?”

“Joshua wants to do this 10-year anniversary interview where I follow him around,” You sigh.

“No fucking way,” He burst into laughter, his giggles echoing loudly through the phone.

“Jeonghan, this isn’t funny,” You whine. He was probably the last person you needed to call, seeing as he almost never had a sympathetic response to your pain.

“It’s hilarious, and this is karma for trying to ignore his existence for the past 5 years,” He replies with a teasing lilt.

You hate that he’s right.

You were very proud of Joshua’s successes, in a “retired fan celebrating from a distance” sort of way. Yet, you tried to distance yourself so much from the blog that he inadvertently got caught in the crossfire. You cared about him so deeply for so long that you lost yourself in that, so you tried to cope with the state of your uneven relationship with him in your own little fucked up way.

You let out a frustrated sigh. “I just didn’t think he’d be the one to do it, you know? I thought I’d get a polite email from his assistant, not my manager telling me he wanted to do a profile.”

“That means it’s personal to him, then. That’s actually kinda charming of him,” You feel your phone vibrate, so you check the notification.

Joshua messaged you on Instagram, and from a quick glance at your lockscreen, it’s long.

Your heart drops to your stomach.

“Wait, he just messaged me,” You quickly put Jeonghan on speaker and opened the app without a second thought. You read his message out loud:

joshuahong: Hi! Not sure if you’ve heard my request yet about the anniversary profile, but I would really love it if we could make it happen. I know it’s been a really long time, but I think it’d be fun to do it again. You’ve always supported me from the beginning of my career, so it would mean a lot to me. I miss talking to you, so we would definitely be catching up in more ways than one. We’ll only do it if you’re up for it though, please don’t ghost me this time lol

“Holy shit,” Jeonghan fills the silence immediately. You were pretty much lost for words, but you managed to speak. “Holy shit is right,” You mumble to yourself.

You suddenly feel guilty for trying to bury him out of your life, especially when he clearly said he misses you.

Were you trying to set your boundaries by pushing him away or were you just being an asshole?

“I feel really stupid,” You hate that you want to cry. You can’t reckon with the fact that Joshua has wanted to reconcile for so long that he had to do this to get your attention.

At least, that’s what the selfish part of you thinks. You know the interview is so much bigger than yourself, but then again, it is a symbol of you and the years of effort you put into your blog.

“You’re not stupid, but you need to worry about what you’re gonna say. Are you gonna say yes?” He asks.

Admittedly, you do feel the pull to say yes.

“I think I might. Is that a bad idea?” Internally, you know the answer, but your insecurities need some validation.

He clears his throat before responding. “I think you’ll regret it if you say no. I think it’ll hurt you more to not have closure with him.”

You don’t think you necessarily want anything out of this besides becoming friendly with him.

You’d like to think that’s what would’ve happened if you didn’t completely ice him out.

“That’s true. It’s gonna be so hard to see him again,” A whine pulls your lips into a pout and you already know Jeonghan will protest.

“Stop talking yourself out of it. Who knows, you might end up enjoying everything,” he suggests openly.

“That’s possible. His house is supposed to be insanely big,” You shake your head at the idea of how a 27-year-old millionaire pro figure skater would be living, definitely far better than your current apartment.

“You can only know for sure if you say yes.”

“I know,” You figure you need a vacation anyways, even if it means facing some unresolved emotional baggage.

“So, you know your answer then. I need to get back to work, but don’t blow him off. Respond to him tonight or I’m not giving you the deluxe massage package gift certificate like I promised,” Jeonghan was not above threatening you into action, and this one had the right level of stakes.

“Fine, okay,” You huff out, already opening the Instagram app again to motivate you into typing a proper response.

You exchange quick goodbyes and you let yourself look, albeit for far too long, at the message again to gain some inspiration.

Before you know it, you’re sending him a formal reply.

you: Hi! You’re right about ghosting, no excuses for that so I’m sorry lol. I’ve thought about it and I’d be happy to do it, it’s been too long since we’ve talked. Let me know the timeline you’re thinking of and I’ll get my schedule figured out

You figure that’s just enough to ease your nerves. It’s not exactly as earnest as his original message, but it’ll work for now.

You even send a screenshot of the message to Jeonghan as proof for the sake of accountability and the state of your deluxe massage package gift certificate. You place your phone on your nightstand to avoid fixating on another response, letting yourself go fix dinner and get ready for bed without thinking.

It’s only when you’re about to settle into bed that you remember your phone. You reach for it and Joshua, who is somehow extremely prompt with his messages, sends you another reply 10 minutes after your message.

joshuahong: Great! We’ll start sorting out more details then. I’m really glad you said yes

He’s already trying to pull at your heartstrings and it’s working. Despite everything, Joshua has always been kind. He doesn’t just seem nice, like what most celebrities are assumed to be around other people, he’s always made sure you know he cares about you even if you hadn’t known what to do about it.

You type out another quick response before going to bed.

you: Of course, it’s gonna be a lot of fun

You hope that’s true, you hope that you’re not already in over your head with the situation. He still seems to have faith in you, so why not trust that instinct?

—

During pre-trip preparations, you found yourself talking to Joshua far more often than before.

The conversations didn’t go too deep of course, you couldn’t get everything out of him before you even had a chance to conduct the interview, but the harmless banter seemed to slowly bridge that treacherous gap left between you two.

You even thought it would make your first meeting less awkward, but that wasn’t even remotely possible. It had only taken a few days for the entirety of the trip to be confirmed by your workplace and his team, and the final itinerary made your head spin.

You would follow Joshua around for a week, primarily to his private daily practices in an effort to show his infamous dedication to Olympics training.

All while you stayed in his guest room.

You couldn’t get out of that obligation, no matter how much you tried to convince him that you would be perfectly fine staying in a luxury hotel room paid for by your employer. He was confident that you could get a better view into his life while staying at his house which you reluctantly agreed with.

His idea definitely didn’t cross any professional boundaries at all, none whatsoever! This is what he’d do as a friend if you were coming to visit anyways, right?

You were still slightly afraid to hear his voice, you weren’t exactly sure why, but you were hoping it would keep the image of him unchanged in your mind until you saw him in person again.

You knew you were heavily biased going into this situation, so why not protect your heart for a little bit longer?

joshuahong: Are you nervous about tomorrow?

you: Not really

joshuahong: Y/N, please don’t lie.

you: I’m not!

joshuahong: I’m kinda nervous to see you, though

you: Really? Why?

joshuahong: I think it’s been 6 years since I’ve seen you in person. That’s scary to think about

you: The passing of time is scary

joshuahong: Definitely. Promise to not be awkward?

you: I’ll try my best!

joshuahong: That’s not a promise!

you: Fine, I promise but you have to promise too!

joshuahong: I promise :) now get some sleep, I don’t want to hear you complain when you have plenty of time to get 8 hours of sleep

you: You’re so mean!! but you too, get lots of rest so you can give me a good show tomorrow

He doesn’t reply to that last message, only using a heart emoji reaction instead.

The weight of the trip suddenly sits on your heart, and the main objective of writing an exceptional interview is somehow the least of your worries now.

—

The flight to Korea is unceremoniously long, you have far too much time and anxiety to let yourself fall asleep. You go through all the Netflix episodes you downloaded for the flight, finish the book that’s been sitting on your shelf for ages, and write down some preliminary notes about what you’d like to cover in the interview.

You decide to keep your ideas vague so that you’re not overexerting your brain during the flight.

First, a general discussion of the Olympics. That’s the main appeal of the article, seeing what his main preparations are like and hopefully getting some better insight about his feelings surrounding everything.

The second is his recovery from his last Olympics injury. He landed the most ambitious jump of his free skate program completely wrong, breaking his ankle in the process. It was during the last event of his Olympics run for that year, and he still placed third in the men’s individual skate program overall, but it’s been a sore subject for him in most interviews he’s done since the incident.

The footage is as agonizing as you can imagine, but the fact that he finished the routine at all is stunning. You figure that you can get some in-depth reaction about that moment and the subsequent recovery, more than the extremely media-trained answer he’s given about it before.

Lastly, the prospect of retirement. He’s said almost nothing about his plans after the upcoming Olympic games, but Olympics experts are convinced that the news is looming over his upcoming appearance.

You knew better than to ask him outright about it because he definitely wouldn’t give you a straight answer. From watching his recent interviews, you realized that Joshua has a tendency to go into a subtle apathetic mood when the interviewer hits something he’s not comfortable with. You hope that you can breach the subject without things going completely south. This interview was supposed to hit some darker aspects of the state of Joshua’s career, but you never wanted to make him uncomfortable.

Other than those topics, anything else he wanted to divulge to you would be a bonus. You wanted him to have a reasonable amount of control over what would go into the interview, so you’re not opposed to adjusting your interview material if needed.

The thought of his reactions to your questions swarms your brain in a frenzy, but you know you’re getting ahead of yourself.

The flight lands without any problems and you’re still trying to figure your thoughts out by the time you’re picking up your suitcase from baggage claim.

You’re soon greeted by Joshua’s driver, a tall man who holds a sign with your name printed on it, nodding in affirmation when you confirm your identity with him. He’s distantly kind to you, but it’s enough to put you at ease for the moment. You’re escorted to a tinted black SUV with a gentle hand opening the back car door for you. Your suitcase is carefully stowed into the back of the truck while you click your seatbelt into place across your lap.

You don’t realize how tired you are until the car starts moving. You didn’t bother to orient yourself with the time once you got off the flight, but you figure it’s somewhere between late morning and early afternoon by the way the clouds create a gray atmosphere in the sky.

Nonetheless, looking out the window is enough to pull you into sleep, and you indulge yourself in a short nap, barely considering where you may be headed.

—

It turns out that Joshua wanted to meet you at his home rink first which explains why you were waking up to the sight of a massive stadium.

You were slightly annoyed that you weren’t at a stable location yet, your body started to feel vaguely sick at the constant movement of the car.

You’re grateful that the car stops for a moment, you’re hoping Joshua takes a bit longer than expected to come out of the rink so that your body can stop feeling off center.

Unfortunately, he’s quite prompt, you notice him walking out only a few minutes later. He’s accompanied by two other staff members, seemingly debriefing him on your arrival as you see one of them point to the car.

You suddenly feel acutely aware of how disheveled you look in your inconspicuous airport outfit, barely awake enough to make proper conversation with him.

He arrives at the other back car door quickly, opening it with a big smile.

“Y/N! Hi, I’m so happy to finally see you again,” He’s excited, settling into the backseat across from you, slightly more perky than you expected.

“Hi,” You wave back politely, pushing your voice up an octave to match his energy that is nearly impossible to replicate in your current mood.

“I’m sure you must be exhausted, it was a long flight wasn’t it?” His brows furrow slightly, and his concern is evident on his face.

“Yeah, I’m still pretty tired,” You offer him a halfhearted smile.

“Well, we can recover once we’re at my place. We’ll have time to catch up on everything,” He reassures you with a nod.

He notices you’re still out of it, so you don’t talk for the rest of the ride to his house.

Through heavy eyelids, you steal a few looks at him and he really is as pretty as you remember. His boyish features filled out his face much better now, although he was always handsome.

You’re not sure how long his practice day was, but it surely didn’t show in his features. He caught you looking at him only once, you tried to be discreet while he was looking at his phone, but he still saw you.

It seemed like he had a sixth sense to know when someone was looking at him which, if anything, made it a bit more embarrassing to get caught.

He let you off easy though, smiling at you before turning his attention back to his phone.

It was a tiny gesture, but it reminds you just how much he seems to notice you.

—

You wouldn’t say you’re best friends or anything, but talking to Joshua for an extended period of time has made you miss being around him in person. His energy has always been the same after so long.

“So you just casually stumbled into an interview with Dwayne the Rock Johnson?” He’s somehow fully astonished at your celebrity interview stories, you notice the sparkle in his eyes and his smile is radiant, but you think that’s just the alcohol creeping up on him.

You both agreed to a drink after coming back to the house, you chose wine while he opted for beer. This has made the mood considerably less awkward and you’re grateful that you both pushed past the mandatory small talk.

“Yeah, the interviewer before me canceled so I got more time with him than I intended. Then the whole viral interview video happened,” You wave your hand before taking another sip of your glass.

“You say that as if it’s normal,” He pushes his hair back, slightly exposing his forehead. That was surprising coming from him, considering that he is far more famous than you would ever be. Yet, you assume that it’s because he’s famous in a more traditional sense, so content creation was never a part of his job to begin with.

“Well, it is if you’re good at it, which I am,” You brag, receiving a hearty laugh from him.

“Look at you, big shot,” He playfully swats your arm. “You really made it, huh?” He’s fond, his glance is soft and yearning for more. It’s far too sentimental for where you wanted this to go tonight, but you play along for a moment.

“I did,” Your cheeks are slightly too warm as you avoid his eye contact with a small smile, but you still have control over yourself. You decide to take advantage of it.

“I want to get some stuff recorded for the interview if that’s okay?” You don’t know why you ask for permission to start interviewing, seeing as it’s the entire reason you’re here in the first place.

“That’s fine,” He straightens up a bit, he doesn’t seem too affected by the alcohol either which will make this a bit easier.

“We’ll keep it pretty light today, considering this is just the first day.”

“I’m good with that,” He chuckles lightly. You know he’s watching you struggle to figure out the best way to interview him. It’s too much effort to find your laptop which is somewhere tucked away in a carry-on bag, so you settle for your phone.

“Ok, so,” you fumble with your phone’s record button on the Voice Memos app for a moment, “tell me your general feelings about the Olympics coming up.”

“I’m excited, I missed being in full competition prep mode. It’s an indescribable feeling, but everything is coming together nicely which is all I can ask for on the 4th time around,” He had a vague joy in his eyes, but you didn’t want to scrutinize the answer just yet, it was only the first question.

“What does full competition prep mode look like for you?”

“My practice days are much longer than usual, so I’m in the rink most days from sunrise to sunset, if I can help it,” He smiles sheepishly. That charm seems like it’s going to seep through every response he gives you, so he can possibly get away with some things.

“What do you like to do to destress after such long practice days?”

His eyes light up at the idea and he readjusts his position on the couch. “I like taking a cold shower and catching up on reality TV, I honestly like anything trashy.”

You didn’t peg Joshua to be a reality TV person, but it’s the exact kind of pop culture talk that his fans will eat up.

“Okay, then which one do you prefer, The Bachelor or Love Island?” You ask curiously.

“Love Island, easily,” He replies immediately. He smirks and you nod in affirmation. You knew he had good taste, you figure you’d have to ask him about some other TV preferences later.

“Good, that was the right answer,” You shoot back. You decide to drink the rest of your wine instead of nursing it any longer.

“Asking the tough questions, clearly,” He’s way too smug about it and it makes you roll your eyes.

“Shut up, I told you we’re keeping it light! Unless you want to be asked about the future of your career while we drink,” Now it’s your turn to touch his arm, your hand intentionally doesn’t linger for too long though.

“I don’t, you’re right,” You know he’s not lying by the way he lets out a deep breath. There’s an unspoken tension at the thought of you bringing everything up.

“Okay, one more dumb non-skating question.”

“They’re not dumb,” He immediately catches your words and you blink at him, silently watching his face. He stares back, but his expression is slightly tender. Again, his face is almost too sweet for you to process. It threw you off this time though, so you have to look at the floor. You don’t even remember the question you meant to ask him, so you opt for a way out.

“Stop it.”

“What?” He genuinely looks confused, as if he’s not unconsciously doing the standard heartthrob boyfriend-esque banter.

“That was too nice,” You pick up your phone to stop the recording, still not facing him. Your body language is slightly more closed off.

“You act like you’ve never been complimented before,” He retorts.

You couldn’t say that it was different because he said it, you couldn’t give a shit if some random A-lister made you feel better about your work, but it was him.

“I’m not used to your compliments,” You indirectly emphasize him.

“Well, we’ll have to change that then,” He smirks.

That stirs something up in your chest, but you can’t quite name it. You decide it’s best to ignore it.

“Great. So are you gonna make me dinner or are we ordering somewhere?”

“I’m definitely not cooking,” He lets out a clipped laugh, shaking his head in disapproval. To be fair, he exerted more physical effort in a day than you’d do in an entire calendar year, so you weren’t exactly offended.

The night spun on with cheap pizza and varying levels of conversations. He even convinced you to watch Love Island, albeit one episode, until he decided he was too tired to continue.

He gives you a short tour of the guest room before retreating to his own room, and you finally get a moment to sit with your thoughts.

Joshua is friendlier than you expected and that was going to cause problems whether you liked it or not.

—

Although it was your first full day in town, the jetlag caught up with you almost immediately. Joshua mentioned last night that he would be at meetings throughout the afternoon, so you were grateful that you didn’t have to tag along.

Once you were thoroughly awake, you decided to investigate the house. As you suspected, it was far too big for him, especially considering he wasn’t home enough to enjoy it anyways.

The style of the house is typical celebrity fare, far too angular and minimalist for your taste. The shades of white, gray, and black that decorated his furniture and appliances were anything but inviting. It was all far too muted in your opinion and it made you miss the character of your apartment.

Besides a few framed photos of what you assume to be his family and friends along with some light decor, it looks like it could be plucked right off of a Zillow listing.

Even if you wanted to write some flowery prose about his house for the article, it leaves much to be desired.

“Are you settled in?” Your manager asks over the phone. She promised not to call you after this initial check in, but you figured she’d find other ways to be nosy about how things are going. She was a fan of Joshua, so her prying for extra details wouldn’t be completely unexpected.

“Yeah, everything’s been good,” You shared, completely nestled onto the couch with a blanket.

“How’s Joshua?” She inquires with a slight lilt.

“He’s doing well. We’ve already got some parts for the interview, but I haven’t seen him skate yet,” You recall the banter of last night with a small smile. You were both being friendly, it was completely harmless.

“Well, you still have a lot of time for that, but I’m glad you’ve made some progress. I’ll let you go, but let me know if you need anything.”

“I will,” You respond. You exchange goodbyes and go back to mindlessly scrolling on Twitter.

“Were you talking shit about me?” Joshua asks. You whip your head around to notice him watching you, completely unsuspecting in his business casual attire. You shriek in fear, clutching the blanket before reaching over to throw a pillow at his face. He narrowly avoids it with a massive grin on his face.

“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me,” You sigh, pressing a hand to your chest to check your racing pulse.

“I’m light on my feet.”

“Yeah, clearly,” You grumbled.

“You look very comfortable,” He teases, pointing to your current seating position with a chuckle. Your body is completely wrapped up minus your head. It probably looks quite funny by the way he bites his tongue with a childish smile.

“I am. How were the meetings?” You deflect the attention onto him instead.

“Productive,” He walks around to join you on the couch, landing next to you with a sigh.

“Anything worth breaking an NDA over?”

He rolls his eyes. “Absolutely not,” He scoffed.

“Worth a try,” You finally free your arms from the blanket, but you’re still wearing a hoodie.

“Why did you need the blanket if you’re wearing a hoodie?” He asks politely, pointing to your chest.

“I get cold easily!” You protest.

This oversized maroon hoodie was your signature writing piece, you absolutely needed to wear it for big projects or else you wrote pure shit.

You’ve had it since you started writing professionally, a random thrift store find that has given you incredible luck over the years. It’s helped you through many long nights of writing and editing throughout your career.

Thus, you put it on in an attempt to stir up some inspiration, but to no avail.

Joshua is charmed by this backstory though, nodding along with his head in the palm of his hand.

“You think it’s dumb,” You’re projecting onto him, without a doubt.

“No, it’s not! It’s actually very cute. You can wear it to the rink later.”

“We’re still doing that?” You grimace. He joked that he was going to take you out onto the ice, but doing it this early into the trip felt like overkill.

“Unfortunately, yes,” He pouts. “I’m forcing you out of the house so that you don’t steal my blankets.”

“Very rude.”

—

The rink is far bigger than you could’ve imagined. You haven’t been in many throughout your life, but since it functions partly as a stadium, it makes you feel even smaller.

He leads you to the check in booth to introduce you to the staff onsite for the day. If he’s coming to practice solo, he remarks that the employees only door is typically unlocked for him, and his suspicions are correct.

“Hey, man, it’s good to see you again,” Joshua embraces a taller man into a hug once he walks through the door. “Cheol, this is Y/N,” He glances between the two of you with a hopeful smile.

“Y/N, this is Seungcheol.”

“Hi,” You wave politely and everything starts to register for you. You’ve known of Seungcheol for a long time through Joshua’s social media, you knew they were longtime friends and Joshua was always open about being close with Seungcheol’s family.

“It’s nice to finally meet you. Josh has told me a lot about you, you’re always a hot topic around here,” Seungcheol smirks to Joshua’s dismay.

“Not in a bad way, everybody loves your writing,” Joshua tries to diffuse the tension with a short smile.

“Is Sumin here?” He switches the topic completely, looking around to the back door for any sign of life.

“Yeah, she’s just with her mom. I’ll go get her,” Seungcheol replies before heading further back into the venue.

It’s another minute or two before he comes back with a toddler in his arms, her eyes lighting up at the sight of Joshua. She squirms in Seungcheol’s hold until he puts her down, and she takes off running until Joshua catches her in his arms.

“Joshie,” she screams into his ear. He spins her around for a moment until she’s giggling uncontrollably. It was absolutely adorable, it even got a smile out of you.

“Hi Minnie, how are you?” He’s beaming from ear to ear at her.

“Good,” she nods decisively. He points to you before introducing you to her.

“That’s Y/N. She’s a good friend of mine, can you say hi?” He coaxes her with a gentle voice.

“Hi,” She waves and Joshua is celebrating her again with a small kiss on the cheek. He seems like such a natural with her, it’s as if she’s his own daughter.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you,” You wave back and she offers you a shy smile.

“I have to go, but I’ll just be skating out there with Y/N, okay?” He reassures her with a sweet pat to her hair before handing her off to Seungcheol.

She puts her head on Seungcheol’s shoulder with another nod. “Out there,” she points to the ice.

“Yep. Be good for dad, I’ll see you later,” He winks at her before leading you both out to the ice.

Your heart is warm from the entire interaction. He sits down on the bleachers and you land next to him, silently placing his duffel bag onto the ground.

He unzips it to reveal your skates. He ordered them before you arrived, promising that he would get you to skate at some point during the trip. You just didn’t predict it would be this early on.

“How old is she?” You asked, toeing off your sneakers before putting on the skates one at a time.

“Two,” He smiles fondly at the thought of her. “Cheol and his wife are such good parents, they were worried about being too young but they’re perfect to her.”

“So you’re her godfather, I assume?”

“Is it that obvious?” He scrunches his face. He turns his attention to his skates for a moment, quickly lacing them up and tightening them. You didn’t even notice him taking off his other shoes.

“Yeah, you definitely gave off dad vibes, but it was sweet.”

“Him and his family have done so much for me, I couldn’t say no. I also helped him ask out his wife on their first date, so it was inevitable,” He pushes his hair out of his face with a grin.

“They helped you adjust here, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll always be grateful for them. It started with discounted rental fees because I couldn’t afford to use the space, so I owe a lot to them. I pay them back in any way I can,” He nodded solemnly.

He has a deep sense of gratitude that is admirable, it makes you wonder what it’s like to be so deeply initiated into someone’s life that there’s no question if you’ll be there forever, it’s just a matter of what role you’ll play.

It made sense that Joshua knew the place so intimately, he was clearly a member of Seungcheol’s family. He grew up in this rink, watched his friends grow and start their families. It was a safe haven.

“Are you ready to skate?”

“Barely.”

“That’s the spirit,” He rubs your shoulder before standing up. You also stand up, albeit far more slowly, facing toward the ice.

You’ve gone ice skating multiple times in your life, but not enough to remember anything past the basics. You step onto the ice, but you already feel like the surface is going to give out any second.

Joshua notices you start to flail and rushes to place a protective arm around your waist. “Are you okay?”

“No,” You squeeze your eyes shut and are already considering admitting defeat. The idea of voluntarily skating with an Olympic gold medalist had to be the worst idea you’ve had in a long time.

“Do you want me to get you the walker?” He asks sweetly. There’s absolutely no malice there, but it still feels slightly patronizing.

“Joshua, that’s not funny,” You whine, anxiously looking down at your skates.

“I’m not joking, I’m just giving you options!”

“No, I don’t need it. I just got nervous,” You reassure yourself. That was the truth, it was mostly the shock of being on the ice again after such a long time.

“Ok, so if I let go, you’ll be fine?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m letting go. Just bend your knees if you think you’re gonna fall,” He slowly moves away from you, looking expectantly to see how you’ll fare on your own. His advice works and you find your balance without too much effort. You do remember how to move forward on skates, so you decide to impress him a bit.

You move easily, pushing your back leg out and to the side before alternating legs, making your way across the ice without much issue. He is visibly impressed, gasping at you with his arms crossed.

“You’re so good! I thought you were a beginner,” He praises you while skating over to your side.

“I am! I don’t know anything other than this.”

“That’s fine, then we can just expand on that skill today. Nothing crazy, I promise,” He calms your nerves with a gentle hand on your shoulder.

The skill in question is extending the standard forward movements into drawn out strokes, so it appears as though you’re gliding instead of walking on the ice. You would leave that back leg out for longer periods to create a more elegant appearance when you move forward. When he demonstrates the move, you’re mesmerized. No matter how many times you’ve seen him do the same moves, there’s still an enchanting quality to his skating.

He can elevate any move without much effort, but that is clearly from years worth of work and persistence into making his moves clean.

Joshua is an incredibly patient teacher, far more than you expected. There’s absolutely no frustration when you make a mistake, just a quiet encouragement to keep going.

When you unexpectedly lose your balance, he’s making sure you fall backwards so as to not injure your hands. When you’re visibly frustrated, he lets you take a break for a few minutes to regroup. There’s a level of care you didn’t expect, but then again, it’s Joshua. He couldn’t ignore your requests for help even if he wanted to.

You’re not ready to do full out spins or jumps yet, but you are instilled with a new confidence that you can at least try something new without getting immediately discouraged.

“Are you good with finishing up there?”

“Yeah, I feel good. I do need something from you, though.”

“And what is that?”

“Your best jump.”

“Best jump?” He looks back at the ice before facing you again, seemingly considering all his options. Despite all of your years of supporting him, you still didn’t know the difference between the jumps, but you figure it’s best not to ask for more explanation than this.

“Pretty please?” You flash a smile that he can’t deny. He lets out a quiet laugh and his eyes search the ground for a moment before he nods.

“Okay, I’ll do a quadruple jump combo, but only because you asked so nicely,” He sighs, squaring his shoulders for a moment.

“I appreciate it a lot,” You amp up the compliments in hopes that he doesn’t change his mind.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say,” He skates away from you to find a solid starting position. You move to a corner wall to observe and stay out of the way.

He takes a deep breath before starting his entrance, snapping through both jumps with ease. He landed evenly, coming out into a pose for you, his arms pointed up with flair before putting them down again.

“Very impressive,” You compliment him.

“It was, wasn’t it?” His breathing is a bit uneven once he comes up to you again. You smile at his cockiness, but it’s well earned.

He restrains himself from practicing any further or else he’ll be here for hours on end, but that’s not too different from most days. He tells you this is one of his shorter visits, somehow being here for under 3 hours is an accomplishment worth celebrating.

You both say goodbye to Seungcheol and Sumin before heading out to his car. You climb into the passenger seat while he adjusts his seatbelt. He decides to let you interview him while he’s driving although you were fine with waiting until you were back at his home.

“So this current practice routine is the most intense level you’ve been at in the past 4 years?”

“Yeah, I slowly had to work it up to this point after the injury. It was almost painful to slow down that much, but I needed to,” He focuses on the road while responding. You’ve opted for writing notes on your phone and recording at the same time.

“How did it initially feel for you to go through it?”

“I hated it. I didn’t break my ankle normally either, so it wasn’t just the typical advice of staying off your ankle for 8 weeks. It took so much longer than everyone anticipated and I had to genuinely stop everything I was doing,” He tightens his grip on the steering wheel to your slight shock.

“I’m sure it was frustrating to not be able to enjoy that podium moment either.”

“Right, it was as if I didn’t even make the podium. I got 3rd place, but it was so excruciating to even be up there, I didn’t feel like I earned it,” He looks visibly upset just recounting it to you. It hurts to hear just how insecure he became afterwards. In hindsight, it makes sense that he didn’t want to spend time discussing it. Back then, the radio silence just made you hope that he was taking care of himself, not feeling pressured to keep anyone updated. Why would he want to constantly relive and dissect that kind of trauma?

“Do you ultimately want to redeem that moment?”

“I hope so. There’s always pressure to constantly outdo yourself, but I just want to finish the routines safely. That’s all I want,” He nods solemnly and you automatically believe him. Although he’s safely finished the other competitions within a season, there’s still an underlying fear of things going wrong at the worst possible moment.

“From what I saw today, you’re being careful,” You assure him. It’s not wrong to say that either, especially when he was helping you with the execution of the moves earlier. When he was done showing you a certain idea, he didn’t linger in the pose too long at all. It felt like he was overly cautious if anything, but you didn’t want to shift the mood too drastically.

“That’s from all the paranoia, trust me. I don’t want to feel afraid to compete, I want to break out of that habit,” He finally glances at you for a moment.

You’re grateful that he seems to echo your internal sentiment. There was never an air of hesitation around his skating, he was always quite self-assured in himself, but you both know that never conquering your fears could indefinitely stunt your growth. He obviously needed as long as possible to rebuild his self image and confront his fears.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’ll find that courage again,” You place a hand on his shoulder. The tension settles almost immediately at your touch.

“You think so?”

“I know you will. It’s either that or withdrawing from the Olympics which just sounds like a lot of paperwork, honestly,” You joke.

“You’re right, it’s a shit ton of paperwork,” He giggles and readjusts his hands on the wheel again.

You knew that last part wouldn’t be used for your final work, but it’s nice to hear him joke about it all. You liked being there for him as a friend, even if you’d never know exactly what it’s like to be in his position. He deserves that kind of empathy that’s not hollow or backhanded, you figure that’s the least you could do for him while being here.

You could finally even out the foundation of friendship in this way, silently repairing all the mistakes you’ve made in the past in regards to your relationship.

He’s able to talk a bit more about his recovery before the end of the drive and you feel satisfied by the end of the night. Over dinner, it feels like everything is evolving, not just the article itself. He’s opened himself up a bit further and you’d like to treasure that.

—

“You don’t have to stay the entire time, you know that right?” He turns his glance toward you away from the ice with a smirk playing on his lips.

The infamous 12-hour practice day had arrived, and you were dreading it the most out of the week’s schedule. Yet, you were committed to being as involved in his daily life as possible, despite your natural aversion to waking up at dawn. You didn’t want to be one of those writers that holed up in their hotel room to write their assigned article. It was typically out of your control how much time you were allowed to spend with a subject, but if given the option to spend more time with them, you wanted to take it.

Since it was Joshua, you still felt obliged to play catch up on spending time with him in any way you could, even if it meant watching him from the bleachers for an entire work day. Plus, you were already at the rink this early, there was no use in leaving to do touristy things alone when you didn’t necessarily want to do that anyways.

“I know, but I want to,” You retorted. He gives you that “you’re gonna eat your words” look, but he still accepts your answer.

“Are you still up to be interviewed once you’re done practicing?”

“Yeah, I should be good,” He takes a deep breath once he replies, seemingly preparing himself for the painstakingly long day ahead of him.

“Okay, I’ll leave you to it then,” You wave at him and he returns it immediately. You head up the bleachers to find a good seat, ending up somewhere towards the lower half of the seating. You wanted to be in a good position where you could view the full scope of his skating, but also capture the details of his face. Your position ends up being perfect, it makes watching him even more fascinating.

He does most of his stretches further away from you, so you’re caught craning your neck to see him. His muscles are well defined, a fact that you’ve been trying to ignore as the bulk of his arms seem to fight against the sleeves of his shirt as he stretches his limbs above his head.

His warm-up is calm yet still dynamic to watch. His jumps are so effortless that your head spins just thinking about the physics of jumping up into a spin and somehow not falling on your ass as you land.

Yet, he lands them perfectly every time. You know that’s not possible, that there’s probably some small tweak he’d make to the way he entered a jump or a correction he’d make to the angle of his landing, but you were fine living in ignorant bliss of the technical aspects of his skating.

You wanted yourself to enjoy being a spectator, to not fixate on every single detail, and simply enjoy an elite athlete being good at their sport.

He takes a small breather but soon goes into his assumed short program. Most diehard Olympics fans would kill to see even a glimpse of his routines for the impending games, but like any other figure skater, the details are carefully kept under lock and key until the competition begins.

You try to savor the image of him without the full theatrics of the actual performance, and the sight of him is enchanting.

His short program music is a bombastic and dynamic classical piece that forces you to focus on every detail of the performance. It’s a triumphant number, one that exudes the confidence and charisma of an experienced skater that knows the nuances of the song like the back of their hand. You decide that it suits him perfectly as he expresses the power of the song through cutthroat expressions and sharp movements.

After running through the full routine a few times, you notice him stop to take an extended break. He skates back to your side of the rink with a smile on his face.

“Falling asleep yet?” He jokes.

“Not yet,” you return the smile, your cheeks practically hurt just looking at him. It’s nearly impossible to avoid watching him, he’s always had this magnetic charm on the ice that makes him hard to ignore.

“Good, I haven’t bored you yet. How’s the writing coming?”

You glance at your laptop on the seat next to you, accompanied by scattered papers on top of the keyboard. The writing was mostly on pause considering the unusual environment, you didn’t ever write with the same classical song blasting in your ears on repeat.

Also, he was skating, so every time you thought you got into a good rhythm with writing, your eyes drifted back to him gliding across the ice. The sound of his skates hitting the ice was hard to ignore.

“It’s coming,” You lie easily. A quick tilt of his head signals that he knows you’re bluffing.

“Lots of strategizing, huh?” He doesn’t let on though, pointing at your notes instead and you’re nodding slowly.

“You’re not an easy person to write about,” You give him a pointed look and he’s grinning.

“So I’ve heard,” You’re glad he has some level of self-awareness. You’re not trying to give writers who are purposefully uninformed about his career when tasked to write a meaningful piece about him any credit, but he was a somewhat difficult subject.

Not in the traditional ways, of course, he’s not storming out of interviews over small details, but he’s so polished that it’s impossible to get much depth out of him beyond his typical media-trained answers.

You always heard the same things about him from other entertainment writers. He was perfectly kind and respectful to work with, but you would have to try especially hard to break him out of his mold.

Even if you felt that you knew him, you didn’t really know him at all.

The thought sits in the back of your mind like an unwanted guest.

“That means you actually have to keep giving me something to work with,” You sigh, gesturing your hands out toward him.

“We’ll see,” He playfully eyes you up and down, but it has a serious undertone. You’ve made some good progress, but you didn’t want to torture him for details. It wasn’t worth being invasive of his boundaries just to make a better article.

He skates off without another word and he’s back in the throes of practicing the routine. After a bit more technical work on the short program, he moves on to the free program.

The music is drastically calmer, it creates a stark contrast to his first routine. It’s still classical, you’d have to inquire exactly what track it was, but the mood of the piece was much lighter. It was smart of him to represent the full duality of his skating abilities.

His movements are almost fairylike, his delicate spins are effortless to watch. This doesn’t undercut the power of his jumps though, still as dramatic as ever. This routine contains far more quadruple jumps than the short program, likely in an effort to show off his technical prowess.

He wasn’t called the “technical prince” for nothing. It’s a nickname that’s been floating around the fandom since your early blog days, first used when fans noticed that young Joshua’s technical scores at competitions were almost always perfect. It’s followed him for years, evolving to show how clean his technique is.

He’s the textbook example of a good figure skater.

Once he finishes the routine, you can tell his stamina is reasonably depleted. From your occasional glances, you can tell it’s quite taxing to do multiple quadruple jump combinations in a row, yet he pulls it off every time.

The rest of the day consisted of him alternating between the routines, cleaning up details that he wasn’t happy with, and practicing the execution of his moves until he finally seemed satisfied with them. After a while, you figure you can’t write much else for this portion of the article without interviewing him again, so you settle further into the unforgivingly cold seats to watch him intently.

“Y/N!” He calls your name suddenly, waving his hand from across the rink.

“What?”

“It’s time to go home,” He beckons his hand for you to come toward him. You don’t hesitate to pack your laptop and assorted notes back into your purse, rushing over to meet up with him on his side of the rink. You don’t exactly know how to process being included in the concept of his home, even though you know it’s a harmless statement.

By the time you reach the other side, he’s already taken his skates off and replaced them with sneakers, his leg anxiously bouncing up and down as he watches you come over. He’s sat toward the end of the bleachers and you can sense that his body is ready to get moving.

“I just have to get a few things from the locker room and I’ll be ready to go. Do you want to go back there with me?” He looks toward the lengthy hallway behind him before looking back at you in anticipation. You didn’t go the first day he invited you to the rink out of an abundance of caution, mostly for your own heart’s sake.

You could keep yourself under control watching him collect his things, right?

“Yeah, I’ll go,” You nod decisively. He gets up and leads you through the hallway until you arrive at a private locker room, the door is adorned with a small nameplate with his name on it. He downplays how fancy it actually is, but it feels like a miniature hotel suite. In addition to the dressing room itself, it also contains a full private bathroom and sizable closet.

“Damn,” you mutter under your breath, looking around the room and taking in the full scope of it.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice,” He adds. You’re still looking around and trying not to touch anything in fear of breaking something.

You turn around to voice your opinions, but you notice something else.

Joshua is shirtless. You weren’t exactly objectifying him, but it was definitely hard to not look at him. He’s taking a moment to wipe off the sweat across his chest, it feels a bit pornographic to keep looking at that point. The next time you look, he thankfully has a shirt on so your cheeks can stop fully burning at the sight of him.

He doesn’t notice your stare, but you do observe the shirts that fall to the floor when Joshua accidentally knocks his duffel bag onto the ground.

“I’ve got it,” You chirp, already reaching down to pick everything up.

“It’s okay,” Joshua hurriedly shoulders the bag back onto the bench, double checking that it’s not hanging off precariously like last time.

Your heads both come up at the same time, your faces only a few inches away from each other.

“Are you gonna move?” You inquire quietly. He stares back, obviously in no rush to fold. His glance is tempting, everything about him is tempting.

“Do you want me to move?” He counters.

Shit.

You didn’t want him to at all, the idea of him walking away makes you want to scream. The tension has been mounting the past few days whether you wanted to admit it or not. At first, you chalked it up to him just being a gentleman, but there was always a hint of something else there. His politeness toward his staff was completely different to the kindness he offered you.

The lingering glances on you when he’s cooking, his particularly fond smiles while you talk about something, and the soft touches all add up in your brain.

Now that you were in a different setting, it was crystal clear to you. If there was ever a sign, this was it.

“No,” You shake your head.

“Can I?” He asks and your heart has already melted into a puddle. No one ever asks you for a kiss. You’re not sure if you would’ve rejected him to begin with, but the tenderness leaves you enthralled.

You nod and he meets your lips with ease. He tastes better than you could’ve ever imagined. It doesn’t take long for you to move further into the kiss, pushing your tongue into his mouth. He accepts you and naturally picks up the pace, capturing your lips over and over again leaving you few chances to catch your breath.

“Shit,” You step back first and he’s clearly confused.

“Are you ok? We don’t have to do this,” His voice is far too worried for what you’re actually thinking about, poor thing.

“No, I’m fine, I just remembered that I didn’t get to interview you,” You pout. You genuinely feel guilty for not mentioning it before the lust took over your mind, but it still needed to get off your chest.

“That’s okay, we can just do it here,” He reassures you with a nod.

“No,” you caress his arm, “not here.”

It clicks once you start running your hand up and down his bicep, eventually resting your palm on the side of his neck. The gesture is enough to make him arrange his bag faster than you’ve seen him move the entire trip.

—

“God, you taste so fucking good,” Joshua moans into your ear, momentarily taking his lips off yours to catch his breath. You can’t even form sentences at this point, only quiet moans that show your dissolving restraint. He can tell you’re getting tired of holding back too, in fact it seems to bother him quite a bit.

“I wanna hear you,” He whispers again, he suddenly nips your ear in retaliation for being quiet.

It forces a whiny moan out of your throat, it’s embarrassing to bend so easily to him but his quiet humming on your neck is enough indication to you that he’s satisfied.

He insisted on driving you both home and for good reason, he was so helplessly horny that he couldn’t keep his hand off your thigh for the entire drive home. You felt him snake his hand underneath your skirt, but he didn’t go much further than that, his thumb idly rubbing circles on your inner thigh.

The moment you both walked inside the house, Joshua couldn’t contain himself at all against your lips, thus you were barely standing up against the door.

“Josh, please,” you breathe out. Your voice is weak, you can’t even pretend to have your guard up anymore.

“What’s up?” He barely gets it out before his lips are on yours again. You whimper into the kiss again, tapping your hands against his chest to get his attention. You manage to pull away to speak up.

“Please tell me you’re not gonna fuck me against the door,” You pant, looking up at him with a smirk.

He takes a deep breath and tilts his head to look at you intently. You almost think he’s angry until he suddenly picks you up bridal style, ignoring your startled scream with a smile.

He leads you upstairs into his bedroom and tosses you on the bed lightly, you lean back onto your elbows as he inches closer to you.

“You’re so fucking impatient, you know that?” He giggles at you, hands slowly prying open your thighs with gentle hands. You try not to hold your breath in anticipation, but the touch of his fingertips against your skin is already driving you insane.

“You made us rush home because you swore that you needed to get more material for the interview,” He speaks in a low tone, sliding his hands underneath your skirt again, but his hands stop at your hips, massaging the fabric of your underwear.

“I did, I mean, I do,” You stutter out, making eye contact with him. He laughs at your attempt to be coherent and hooks his fingers under both sides of your underwear. He decides to slip the entirety of his hands underneath, seizing your hips with outstretched palms. He yanks you down the bed in one swift movement, making you gasp.

“You kept teasing me with this skirt, ignoring me and acting like you weren’t already soaked for me back at the rink,” He palms the front of your cunt, confirming how desperate you’ve been for him. It makes you shudder and squeeze your eyes closed.

“No no no, baby, keep your eyes open. You’re gonna interview me right now,” He nods at you and your heart drops to your stomach. You’re already somewhat close to cumming, you’re convinced that a single touch to your clit would send you over the edge.

How the hell were you meant to interview him like this?

“Fuck,” You whine, hips already lifting off the bed to gain more friction.

“I know, honey, you have to focus. Can you do that or do you need my cock that badly?” He teases you with lustful eyes and you clench your jaw. You’re determined to prove him wrong, so you put your energy into contemplating a question to start with.

“I can focus, asshole,” You begrudgingly shift your hips to give him better access. You shake your head and come up with a question on the spot, eyes trained on his expectantly.

“What’s a common misconception about your public persona that you hate?” Your voice holds steady and he slides your underwear off quickly.

He hums to himself for a moment, deciding to graze a finger lazily against your folds. “I’m not a people pleaser or a pushover. People think me being a gentleman means I take all kinds of shit, but I don’t,” He slips two fingers into your core, a light smile plays on his lips when he feels you clench around him.

“So you think people in the industry look down on you for that?” You hear your voice lilt for a second as he finds a steady rhythm, curling his fingers instinctively. Your hips are rocking subtly and he clocks this immediately, he moves to cage you between his legs.

“I know they do,” He confirms with a lift of his eyebrows, “especially when I was younger. It fucked with my mentality a lot, but I know better now,” He adds when he sees your pout. He moves up to your chest, tugging your shirt up slightly. He moves back to let you take off your top and bra, but his fingers are still expertly moving inside your walls. The sound of your wetness is absolutely stealing your focus, especially when Joshua decides to force his fingers inside you even harder with low grunts.

He’s an absolute menace, you’re sure of it.

You only nod to his answer, but he disapproves at your silence. “Come on, you know the rules,” He moves up to capture your nipple in his mouth, eliciting soft moans out of you. Your orgasm is definitely on the horizon, the coil in the pit of your stomach is tightening with every bite to your chest.

“So I assume you channel a lot of frustration into your-” He hits your g-spot particularly hard, you let out a strangled cry that forces a tear down your cheek. You clamp a hand over your mouth, but Joshua is already pushing it off your face to leave a peck on your lips.

“Your skating, shit,” You whisper, you force his head back down to meet your lips in a heated kiss. Your tongue enters his mouth with no hesitation and he returns the kiss just as eagerly. He pulls back after a few seconds and leaves a kiss on your cheek.

“Definitely. People can say whatever they want about me, but I know I’m talented. I don’t have to resort to making shit up about my competitors to compensate for a lack of talent,” He laughs at the idea of being that desperate for attention. It makes your walls flutter around his fingers.

“You like it when I hype myself up, huh?” You watch him move to the crook of your neck, biting down hard on an exposed part of your skin.

“Yes, yes yes,” You slur out, eyes fluttering shut. He giggles at your temporary lack of attention before kissing across your jaw. He retreats back down to your thighs again, placing a finger against your clit.

“One more question and you can cum, I promise,” He nods at you and you return it after a moment, but it’s going to be an uphill battle to arrange your mushy brain into a proper thought.

“Do you think you’re the best figure skater in the world?” You sigh into the air, eyes rolling to the back of your head in frustration. It’s an absolutely loaded question, but you know his ego is massive right now since you’re in the palm of his hands.

His fingers still, the pressure remains deep in your core and he runs his free hand through his hair. The whole act would be far sexier than it already is if you weren’t seconds away from covering his fingers in cum.

He laughs quietly before speaking up again. “I do. We both know I am,” His voice is far too cocky for his own good. His stare is stone cold, he holds so much control over you that it’s almost unbearable.

“Now cum,” His nonchalance sends you over the edge instantly. Your high pitched moan goes completely silent, your mouth agape while your neck tilts back in an effort to regain control. Joshua slips his fingers out and moves up to your face, pressing them gently on your bottom lip. You suck them off immediately and watch him coo at you. “Good job, baby. Ready for anything else?”

“Can I take a nap?” You furrow your eyebrows at him, heart full of malice for his unexpectedly great oral skills, yet he’s still smitten with you.

Honestly, Joshua Hong was always gonna be great in bed. It’s not like you didn’t fantasize about having sex with him over the years, but you didn’t expect the prophecy to fulfill itself this easily.

Somehow, he got you all whiny and pliant when you didn’t expect it at all. It was annoying how well he could please you. You were slightly tired, but you didn’t want him to be a cocky shit on top of you again just yet. You needed to recover.

“Sure,” He finally got off the bed, presumably to help you clean up and your suspicions were correct when he returned a minute later with a damp washcloth. You started to sit up, but he made you lie down again.

Who were you to fight Joshua when he offered to tend to your shaking thighs and messy cunt? It was the least he could do after making you work for your orgasm.

—

The next morning, you’re shocked that Joshua is in bed next to you. He was always up and moving pretty early, deep into his morning routine while you were barely conscious.

You, on the other hand, were trying to treat this week partially as a vacation. When Joshua wanted to bring you along to his private schedules, you were still insistent on taking your time to get ready, much to his dismay.

Thus, you were grateful that he could actually slow down for one day while you were here. As your eyes adjusted to the sunlight filtering through the curtains, you realized this was the rest day placed onto his schedule for the week.

You look over to his sleeping form and realize that you’re deeply entangled with his body. Although you’re lying flat on your back, his head is tucked in the crook of your neck. You don’t dare to move your arms or legs though, as his body keeps you essentially trapped into place next to him.

Your minimal movements still stir him awake.

“Hi,” you whisper. He’s still forcing himself into consciousness, but he waves at you. You sit in silence for a few minutes, silently waking each other up with random touches on each other’s face or arms.

“We had sex three times last night, correct?” You ask out of the blue. He’s visibly confused at your sudden line of questioning.

“Not even a good morning?” He mutters, letting out a big yawn immediately after.

“No. I wanna know because I know you remember.”

“After that first part? I’m pretty sure it was three,” His voice is slightly hesitant, but you trust his answer considering he was dominant the entire time. You also wanted to know because it was becoming increasingly harder to deny how much you like him.

You have to admit, it was nice being able to have him like this, to watch him rub the sleep out of his eyes and cuddle without questioning if he wanted you back. He clearly did, even if his pride wouldn’t let himself say it. It was a matter of who would crack first, now that you’ve established the fact that you have undeniable sexual chemistry.

“How did you get me to go three more times?” This question is especially pertinent now that your muscles felt the aches to match that number. You can barely sit up against the headboard without wincing.

“You asked me to,” He put his hands up in defense.

You now remember that you did ask to keep going. The first time was standard, being called a cockslut during the second round made you go feral enough for a third, and the absolute filth of the last round knocked you out completely.

You were fucked, considering that you didn’t want to have sex with anyone else but only had access to said person for a few more days.

“Right,” You sigh.

“What are you planning to do today?”

“I’m gonna edit the article a bit, I’ve been putting it off. What about you?”

“Chores. I need to get a lot of things done, but remind me to run you a bath at some point today. Your muscles hurt, right?” He’s already out of the bed, stretching his arms above his head.

“Yeah, but I don’t-”

“No, I’m running you a bath. Us, technically since my muscles hurt too,” He raises his eyebrows at the thought of pampering himself, but he’s still insistent on the idea.

“Fine,” You bite back the rest of your response and he picks up on it immediately.

“No rebuttal?”

“No,” You pout, jutting your lip out to garner some kind of sympathy. He falls for it, approaching the bed again.

He leans down to leave a chaste kiss on your lips, his mouth naturally moving up to kiss your cheek as well.

“I promise it’ll be worth it, you’ll feel a lot better,” He softens his delivery for you and it barely hurts once he pulls away. He’s had that effect on you lately, his affection so irresistible that even the worst news has a slightly sweet aftertaste coming from him.

“Come on,” He taps his side of the bed to coax you up, and you slowly follow him.

The encouragement works though, as you’re both propelled into a productive afternoon. Joshua gets all of his chores done, somehow doing three loads of laundry and other assorted tasks while you’re editing.

Meanwhile, you’re firmly planted on the couch, trying to make the interview sound cohesive. You don't need to fully edit while you’re on the trip, that’s not even possible with what you have, but you wouldn’t feel right just leaving the entire process until you arrived home.

Joshua gives you an adequate amount of space, only stopping you to make sure you ate lunch or took a break from looking at your laptop screen.

They were welcome distractions, truly. If the process of trying to capture Joshua accurately in the article didn’t make any sense, it was nice to know the real Joshua was somewhere flitting around the house doing the dishes or vacuuming the living room.

Plus, it was nice to paint domestic scenes about him in your mind.

Joshua doesn’t take breaks much at all, this has been true for his entire career. He’s always competing, always performing, always doing someone a favor by being a guest of honor or special performer. It was nice to see him just exist, to fret over if he had enough laundry detergent for his next load and watch him sort his white clothes from his colorful wardrobe.

You wonder if these moments add up for him too, if he craves this kind of quiet domesticity at times.

He places a gentle hand on your shoulder and you look up at him.

“Can we take a bath now? Is it a bad time?” He worries, but you’re ready to pause.

“No, I’m ready,” You confirm. He helps you off the couch with a steady hand. You walk side by side on the way up the staircase this time, arms linked with hands untouched.

His master bathroom is just as simplistically ornate as you figured it would be. The bathtub overlooks the backyard, displaying a gorgeous view of the city skyline right above the trees.

The sun was about to set, so the view was even more picturesque than you could’ve imagined.

Throughout the day, your aches have been pressing at the back of your brain, interrupting your thought process multiple times, so much so that you don’t know why you fought him against this in the first place.

He opts for picking the right temperature for the water while he leaves you to pick out a calming scent to include in the bath.

You pick an expensive looking lavender bubble bath and he smiles when you place the bottle in his hands.

“I’ve been meaning to use this one, actually,” His eyes light up.

“Sure you have,” You sit down next to him, placing your head on his shoulder. You both observe the water slowly filling up the tub, he silently squeezes the bottle under the running water before retreating once the bubbles start to spread throughout the surface.

You both sit in silence just watching the water fill up, the sound of the faucet echoing throughout the room. Once the tub becomes noticeably fuller, he adds more bubble bath until the top is visibly covered with bubbles.

He insists on getting in first, stripping his clothes easily before settling into the tub slowly. You can already see the tension leave his muscles, especially on his face. His jaw loosens and he takes a deep breath.

He opens one eye and giggles when he sees you hesitate to enter. “Come on, I don’t bite,” He reassures you.

You move to take your clothes off in a few quick movements. He watches you with adoration, as if he’s never seen you naked before and he’d like to take it all in for a moment. Stepping into the tub isn’t too difficult, but when he suddenly pulls your waist down, the splashing startles you.

“Josh, you’re gonna get water everywhere,” you whine.

“You’re supposed to be relaxing, remember?” He pulls you flush against his chest. He punctuates his question with kisses behind your ear.

Right. You force yourself to take a breath and settle into his skin.

You know your skin is littered with light bruises from the night before and he seems to notice this, his hand silently tracing over the red marks before stopping near your collarbone.

Once he stops moving and you stop overthinking, the silence is perfect.

It’s not entirely silent, there’s still the hum of the overhead fan creating ambiance, but the dim lights pull you into the fantasy of it all.

You realize that you haven’t felt this peaceful in a long time. Perhaps it’s his presence or the fact that you haven’t sat in silence on your own in so long, but you want it more often.

You want him to envelop your life with his gentle reminders and caring gazes, silently telling you that there’s no point in working yourself to death if there’s no life for you to live outside of that.

“Joshua?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever want your career to slow down?”

He sighs so deeply that you feel it in your chest. “Is this off the record?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yes. I want to slow down so badly, it feels like my body is fighting back against how much I work sometimes,” His response is slightly pained, adjusting his body underneath you.

You pause for a few moments before speaking up again. “What’s stopping you?”

“I don’t-,” He hesitates.

“It’s okay,” Your voice mirrors the softness that he’s given you throughout the day. He gathers his thoughts for a second before trying again.

“I don’t know who I am as a person if I don’t work. This has been my entire life, if I get a few days to myself I feel like I’m going insane,” He sounds so tired of keeping up the charade, tired of being everyone’s perfect gentleman, just tired of it all.

“Have you told your team?”

“Yeah. After this Olympics cycle, I’m pulling back. I need to before it’s too late, you know?”

“Absolutely. I don’t want you to burn out even more.”

“I’ve been burnt out for ages, so what’s a little bit longer,” He chuckles bitterly. It felt like a poor response the moment you said it, but something in you hoped it wasn’t wrong to be concerned.

“So you’re gonna do the charity skate tomorrow even though you’re burnt out,” You predict.

“I mean, yeah, the skating itself isn’t the problem. I love performing, I’m just not built to keep going without consistent breaks anymore,” He reasoned.

It made complete sense knowing how quickly his career ascended once he entered the elite circuit. He hasn’t left the top 10 of the World Standings since his first full elite competition season which is incredibly hard for anyone to keep up throughout their career.

It’s no wonder that he’s tired of keeping an unmanageable pace.

“I’m sorry,” You whisper. You don’t know what else to say. What could you even tell him?

“Please, it’s not your fault.”

“Do you want me to put this in the interview? Or just write some filler paragraph about it?” You giggle through the last question and he's amused as well.

“Filler, please. I’m confident you won’t make me sound like a dick,” He plants a kiss on your cheek as a silent thank you.

“I promise I won’t.”

“I am excited for the show tomorrow though,” He shifts the conversation and it’s a welcome change.

“Anything fun planned for your number?” You asked.

From what you’ve read, Joshua’s rink held the annual charity skate event in order to honor the professional skaters who train in their facilities, allowing them space to perform routines that they may not have had the chance to otherwise. Notoriously, skaters were extremely flashy with their songs and costumes since there was significant creative freedom.

“Not really, it’s nostalgic of my old numbers.”

“Will I remember it?”

“Definitely, it made your ranking of my best performances forever ago,” His laugh vibrates through your body.

“That list definitely holds up, by the way,” You defend your teenage choices blindly, you definitely hadn’t seen it since you posted it, but it’s nice that he actually remembered some of the content you posted.

“I know you’ll love it,” He presses a long kiss on your cheek once again, but lingers against your face this time.

You’re back to silence again for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other,” You apologized. You can sense that he’s already shaking his head no at your words before you can finish your sentence.

“It’s just as much my fault as it’s yours.”

“You know I was avoiding you, though,” You clarified.

“I noticed that,” You could tell that he was smiling through the response, it makes your cheeks burn.

“I was definitely doing the same though,” He immediately follows it up. In all honesty, it was a relief that both of you decided to bury yourselves in shaping your respective careers. You were unintentionally coping in the same ways, silently hoping the other person was making better choices.

Alas, you were too similar for that to be true.

“But you know what?”

“Hm?”

“I’m really proud of you. I haven’t told you that enough and I feel terrible. I should’ve been there for you,” he replies earnestly.

After all this time, he was proud of you. In retrospect, you thought you were too obsessive or had unintentionally crossed his boundaries as a fan. Yet, that was never the case. He was always grateful that you supported him at every turn, so why wouldn’t he return that gratitude to you?

You didn’t need his validation, the initial interview all those years ago was enough to satisfy you a million times over, but he needed to express it.

You were eternally grateful that he acted on that need.

However, that last part of the confession urges you to sit up completely. You turn your body as much as possible to face him without splashing the water too much.

“You were there for me.”

“Leaving comments on your Instagram is not supporting you in the way you need, you know that,” He counters.

He’s right. You adjusted your expectations for Joshua years ago, you weren’t happy with how things were, but you accepted that your communication would always be limited.

You didn’t have the courage to talk to him, you figured things would never change. It wasn’t smart, you wasted far too much time refusing to invest in your relationship simply because of your own cowardice.

It seems he also became content with barely doing enough.

“I’m sorry for doing the same thing.”

“This can be a truce, then. I want us to be closer if you want that,” He holds out his hand and you take it immediately.

“I absolutely want that,” You're grinning so hard that your cheeks hurt. “So this means you want to kiss me again?”

“You have a massive hickey on your neck and you don’t think I want to kiss you again?” He’s almost fed up, but that smirk tells you otherwise.

“I’m just making sure,” You lower your head coyly. “Come here, babe,” He beckons you over, but he’s too eager to let you make the entire distance. He captures your lips with ease, placing his hand on your cheek. You steady yourself with your hand on his arm, leaning into the kiss with a sense of urgency.

It’s only a few moments before you pull back. “Josh, the water is so fucking cold,” You laugh through your shivers.

He reaches behind you to open the drain and kisses you again. You can’t help but smile against his lips.

The new uncharted territory you’ve forged with him makes your skin burn with excitement.

—

As soon as you arrive at the backstage area of the rink, Joshua’s whisked away by his stylist and assistants to the dressing room. You’re escorted to a VIP viewing area towards the top of the rink, a lounge with access to multi-view screens and a bird’s eye view of the ice.

Before the show starts, you familiarize yourself with the other figure skaters performing tonight. You’ve heard of all of them to some extent, having watched them in anticipation of Joshua’s performances in the past at invitationals and other competitions. Tonight was no different, as Joshua would be the last skater performing tonight.

The marketing team knew exactly what they were doing with that decision.

There were definitely fans of the other skaters dispersed throughout the stadium, but most people you saw were Joshua fans, carrying slogans and wearing merch with his name on it.

Some people even recognize you on the way up to the VIP section which throws you for a loop. They were mainly shocked that you were even at this kind of event in the first place, but it felt validating to be complimented for something outside of him.

Although the other skaters are highly entertaining to watch, your mind feels ready to see Joshua perform. Their performances are satisfying, but that particular spark is missing. It feels reminiscent of when you’d anxiously stay up to watch livestreams of his performances at 3 am, live updating your followers on the exact time when Joshua would be performing.

It was bittersweet to be able to watch him in person. It’s been years since you’ve watched him perform in the flesh, but the circumstances feel perfectly aligned.

“Performing Every moment of you, please welcome Joshua Hong,” The announcer’s voice booms through the stadium speakers and the stadium erupts into cheers. The sight of him waving to the camera is enough to leave the stadium in shambles, so his steps onto the ice are even more precious.

The pink top was the right choice now that he’s about to perform. He made you pick between a few options earlier in the day, but the sheer sleeves and pastel color match the mood perfectly. His side parted hair is neatly styled and light makeup highlights his soft features. The lighting really does his face justice as he purses his lips slightly, adjusting his head slightly down to enter his starting pose.

He moves a hand onto his heart and tucks his right leg behind his left.

As soon as the music starts, your heart clenches.

He chose this particular song, out of all his older routines. This song was in constant rotation throughout his first elite competition season, you could practically see it in your sleep.

When you watch him, you notice that the routine has barely changed either, the step sequences are just as smooth as you remember with delicate flairs of his new style.

The music is somehow more emotional than you remember, a sign that his artistry evokes such a vivid image that you can only think of him and this particular routine when you hear the song.

The execution of his combination jumps are flawless as always, and the audience agrees with loud applause every time he lands them. It seems as though he doesn’t have to try as he glides around the rink, a dreamy expression paints his face as he visibly connects with the lyrics.

He always transformed into a new character in every routine while still maintaining his own distinct style, it was something you deeply admired about his skating.

Before you know it, the song slowly comes to a close and Joshua stands in that final pose you remember so well, his face settling into a soft smile.

The crowd is absolutely obsessed with him, you look to see that many people were on their feet for a standing ovation. You immediately join in, looking toward his reaction. The cameras capture his shock, he’s pleasantly surprised by all the fanfare. He takes it in for another minute or so, looking up at the people in the stands with appreciative eyes. He finally bows his head and waves before skating off the ice.

When the entire group is called back onstage for final bows and the closing ceremony, he is once again dazzled by how intensely the crowd cheers for him once he’s introduced onstage. It’s precious to watch him try to shake it off with his hands on his face, looking to his fellow performers for a way to avoid the attention. He has always been appreciative of his support, always remaining humble in the face of his popularity constantly growing.

It doesn’t take as long as you expected for him to meet up with you. He asks you to wait in the hallway outside his dressing room, and he soon emerges; he barely lets you get a word out before enveloping you in a hug.

“What did you think?”

“I didn’t think you’d pick that one, honestly!” Your enthusiasm quiets when he kisses you and you suddenly feel acutely aware of the staff around you. He notices your shyness and pulls himself against your ear again.

“We’ll be alone soon, okay? I’m glad you liked it,” He punctuates his sentence with a kiss on the cheek. It made you relax into his touch and hold your hand while you were still in the venue.

Once outside, he lets go to briefly wave at the crowd of his fans before placing his hand on the small of your back.

You hear the gasps when he does it, but you don’t look back at the crowd. The judgment stays in your skin once you’re both escorted into the SUV, even when Joshua’s trying to get your attention with kisses to your hand.

“What are you thinking about, babe?”

“Nothing,” It’s easier to lie in the moment. He eyes you for a bit longer but ultimately doesn't question you any further.

You can’t tell him that everything feels especially temporary now. You know what it’s like to be on the opposite side of it as a fan, the initial feeling of seeing him make contact with a new romantic interest is always shocking. Neither of you owed them anything, you never had to reveal the depth of relationship if that’s what you both wanted.

He says he wants you, but that inevitable “what happens next” conversation hasn’t happened and you’re leaving in the next 48 hours. If there was any time to figure out the definition of your relationship, it was now.

Although the conversation in the bath last night was enlightening, you needed some kind of finality. You wouldn’t let yourself fall for vague promises anymore.

Will he make you a priority when his schedule is about to amp up even more?

If you needed to move on, you’d rather know now before you’re on another 13 hour flight left to your own devices.

—

You’re able to tag along with Joshua to his practice session with his coach on your last full day in town.

Although the conclusion of the trip takes up most of your brain space, it’s still interesting to watch his skating become informed by a new perspective. You couldn’t hear all of the critiques in detail, but it was enough to understand how Joshua’s energy was shaped through their leveled guidance.

He switched from his longtime coach once he broke his ankle, understandably citing that the old coach had pushed him to the point of collapse, no matter how grateful he may have been for his old coach’s support thus far.

The dynamic was far more supportive, you concluded. You were able to get more writing done, but your eyes drift to him more often than not.

He practices intensely for around 6 hours today, still a considerate amount of time considering the other practice days in his schedule. He didn’t appear distracted when you were watching him, but he was clearly eager to be alone with you again. He was practically pulling you into the front door once you arrived at his home.

He leads you upstairs to his bedroom before closing the door quickly.

“Kiss me,” His request is urgent, and you oblige despite feeling hesitant.

It’s best to just kiss him, to enjoy a good thing standing right in front of you while you have it.

He’s showing all his tells that he wants more than just kisses, cradling the back of your head, moaning into your mouth. It all still feels so enticing.

Yet, as always, he seems to notice something’s off before you can. He must notice the tension in your body that you tried your best to will away. He pulls out of the kiss and examines your eyes.

“Are you ok?” He’s slightly panting. You force yourself to close your eyes to steady your nerves.

“No,” you admit.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this, you know that.” He knows exactly what you mean by the way his shoulders drop. He looks nervous, not sure if he’s about to lose you.

“Why not? What would be so wrong about being with me?” He’s genuinely upset, fighting your answer almost instantly. Therein lies the problem, there’s nothing wrong about dating him as a person. It was simply the logistics that made everything far more complicated than your heart could bear.

“Nothing,” your voice trembles. “It would be great,” A tear falls from your eye and he’s already reaching up to wipe it away. You don’t stop him from touching your face.

“But I can’t be halfway across the world from you, I can’t watch you pretend to love me and then start dating someone else right in front of my face again.”

“You know dating Ara wasn’t my choice, I wouldn’t do that to you again,” His voice is strangely quiet.

Ara was a famous Korean actress who was practically a critic’s darling at this point in her career. She dated Joshua for 4 years, long enough for the Korean public to become absolutely enamored with the idea of them. The concept of Korea’s charming upcoming actress and Korea’s technical skating prince dating each other was obviously popular among netizens, so their sudden breakup was quite shocking.

Their conflicting schedules made it a perfect storm for them to stop speaking to each other.

It all ended very publicly, but somehow Joshua was still beloved in the end. He always was.

At a work gala he was the guest of honor for, he told you that he wanted to be with you over drinks. There were many kisses exchanged in a secluded hallway, promises linger against your skin and you thought they were real.

She was his plus one, but he insisted that they were just friends.

You trusted him, and their relationship was announced a few days later. You were crushed, it made you regret ever thinking you could be more than a fan who simply pushed her luck.

“You stayed with her for 4 years, you loved her,” You persisted.

“No, I didn’t.”

“She said you did,” It bites harder than you expect, but it’s true. There were numerous interviews of her confirming the depths of their relationship. Whenever she mentioned him, there was always long-term commitment implied.

“I promise you I didn’t.” He squares his jaw as he insists on it being false.

“Why did you lie? Why didn’t you just let me down easy? You do it with literally every fan,” You shake your head, knowing exactly what he’s been through. You’ve seen the death threats, ultimatums, and invasive love offers that he’s received over the years. If he could handle that with grace, he could at least give you a proper response.

“You know you mean more to me than that,” He begged.

“If I mean more to you, then you shouldn’t have done it,” You respond. It’s selfish, you know it is.

“You can’t be fucking serious! It was to further my career, you of all people should know that,” He yelled. His voice doesn’t deter you, it simply makes you more determined.

“You could’ve fought back like you’ve done at any other point of your career. You should have fought for me,” You try to yell back but your voice falters again.

“This is me fighting for you, I want you,” He pleaded, moving closer to you out of desperation. Yet, you avoid his eye contact to close your eyes.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” You griped, shaking your head out of frustration. You hate that he’s dodging the question. You’ve seen him fight over much less, you’re not sure why he can’t recognize that he could’ve tried for you.

“You’re fighting me over hypotheticals, shit that hasn’t even happened yet.”

“You had another reason,” You state unremarkably, finally opening your eyes again. It was never a black or white situation, not with him.

“What?”

“You stayed with her for another reason.”

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and internally resets before looking at you again.

“I didn’t want you to feel tied to me. I already knew what people were saying about you because of me, I knew you didn’t want me overshadowing your career. I didn’t want to haunt you,” He seems desperate to make you see his side of it.

“But you did, from the moment I met you. I knew I’d never be able to get over you. I built up a picture of you in my mind for years, and you actually fit it. I was stupid enough to think that my dumb luck would actually let me date you,” You confessed. You lower your head by the time you finish speaking.

He didn’t seem to understand that the dynamic would’ve always been uneven between you, but you were willing to risk it.

“Y/N,” He starts.

“I was fucking devastated that I still needed you,” you interrupt him, “I was doing perfectly fine, but I knew I would regret not doing this interview. I let you in one last time, to see if it’d be different than before, but you’re not ready. You’re still not ready and it was my fault for expecting too much of you.”

The silence is loud, you both have to process all of the feelings stirred up between you.

“I’m sorry.”

You’re not sure if that’s enough.

“Just indulge me for a second, do you love me?” You ask desperately.

He doesn’t speak. He looks torn, as if he wants to but something deep inside himself still hesitated to admit it. It confirms your worst fear, that even when there’s no other obstacles in the way, he can’t be what you need.

You scoff, wiping your face once again.

“Thanks for letting me stay here, I guess,” You walk back to your room and shut the door behind you. You unconsciously listen for any movement outside the door, to see if he would chase after you.

He doesn’t.

He does a variety of tasks in the kitchen, you hear running water and the sound of cabinet doors shutting, but he never approaches the door.

The kitchen light turns off and you hear his bedroom door shut.

You’re honestly glad he left you alone, but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

As you settle into bed, you remember that he wanted to drive you to the airport tomorrow.

You’d rather walk the entire way than let him see you like this.

—

Joshua is an idiot, all things considered.

It was right there, he had the chance to tell you everything and give you his entire heart, but the words were stuck in his throat. He can barely go to sleep that night, but he could at least send you off to the airport the next morning.

It was wishful thinking that the drive would be any less painful, but he could at least fulfill his promise of taking you there. Thus, he doesn’t expect the guest room to be empty when he stumbles out of his room to go make himself breakfast.

He’s suddenly on high alert, thinking of all the things that could’ve possibly happened to you.

His internal monologue stops when he sees a note downstairs on the kitchen counter. He picks it up and curses under his breath.

“Changed my flight, your driver took me to the airport. Thanks again for letting me stay. - Y/N”

The message feels so stiff, it lacks any of your personality. Yet, he couldn’t pity himself for too long, he had to find you.

He had no idea if your flight had already taken off or not, but he at least had a location. Your original flight wasn’t until late afternoon, so he figured you must have been really fed up to change it to a mid-morning flight. The anger you felt transcended your hatred of mornings, and that was enough to really get Joshua moving.

He decided to stick with the clothes he had on to minimize the amount of time in the house. He wasn’t sure if it was smart to buy an impulse ticket for a flight he wasn’t going on, but he did it anyway.

As he sat in his car, he wasn’t sure if he locked the front door, but the adrenaline made him forget altogether.

The drive to the airport was a complete blur, he was certain that he blew through a few just-turned-red lights in an effort to get there. Once he arrives, he is anything but discreet.

He thanks his lucky stars that he gets a short security line so that he can run through the airport to find you. He only stops to check the massive flight board for flights to your city before picking up the pace again, almost running into a few people on the way.

He just had to make it to gate 12.

He spots the gate out of the corner of his eye, almost missing it due to his haste. He scans his eyes quickly across the group of people to see if you could possibly be there.

He’s almost given up on searching for you, but just like the movies, he finds you sitting in the corner wearing that particular writing hoodie.

He knows whatever way he chooses to approach you, it’ll scare you. Yet, he opts for the least terrifying option.

He walks over, taking a small breath before speaking up.

“Hi,” It comes out far too hesitant, but it still gets your attention. You look up at him, evidently confused but annoyance shows up quicker.

“What are you doing here?” You’re not moved at all, he felt like an inconvenience.

“We need to talk. Can I sit with you?” He points to the empty chair and you stare at him for a moment. You quietly oblige, giving a quick nod. You didn’t reject him outright, so that’s a win in his book.

“I’m really sorry about last night. I should’ve told you how I felt,” His voice is hushed so as to not disturb anyone else around you. Most people were sitting further away, but he didn’t want to take any chances. You only look forward, not acknowledging him at all.

“I thought about everything and you were right to be worried. I haven’t shown you that you can trust me to commit,” He continues.

“Whatever you want to do, that’s fine. I just,” He stops his train of thought to take a breath.

“I love you. I should’ve told you the moment you asked me, I should’ve told you the first day you came to town. I always knew,” He finishes with a shaky breath. You both sit in silence for longer than he’d like, but it’s understandable. Your longtime crush lets you down then admits he’s loved you for ages, it’s a lot for anyone to process.

“Joshua?”

He turns to face you. “Yeah?”

“That was corny as fuck,” You let out a laugh, covering your mouth with your hand. He’s happy to see you smile for a bit, even if it’s at his expense.

“I know, I just needed to tell you before you left,” He laughs quietly. It covers up the temporary embarrassment he feels. No matter what you tell him, he figures that it was worth it to put everything on the line.

“I forgive you, though. And I love you too,” You smile through the reply and your voice is the softest he’s ever heard it.

The newness of it all makes him blush.

“Still can’t look at me, huh? Do I make you nervous?” He touches your shoulder in a silent plea for you to let him in.

“Fuck off,” You finally make eye contact with him and grab his hand, fingers automatically intertwined with his. You press the back of his hand to your mouth for a kiss. The gesture quiets all his lingering fears.

“I’m not relocating for you though, I like my apartment and my job,” You give him a pointed look.

“I wouldn’t ask you to do that. Plus I told you I’m trying to slow down, remember?” The realization hits your face and it makes him giggle.

“Does that mean you’re moving in with me?”

“It might,” He suggests. He thinks he’s a pretty decent roommate, but he’d change his bad habits in a heartbeat if it meant you were more comfortable.

“Not before the Olympics though. And you’d need to sell the house, right?”

“Yeah. Shit, you’re really getting ahead of me here,” He didn’t really consider all the details yet, especially thinking about how shocked his management team would be at the decision, but he knew you were too good to lose.

He lived enough of his life without you, and it was time to switch things up.

“Just making sure you’re aware of what all of this would mean,” You remind him. It was a completely fair critique considering how many directions his life was currently being pulled in.

“Of course, but I’m coming to visit before I move. Many times,” He’s already mentally planning out a schedule in his head, plotting out weekend getaways and week-long trips just to spend time with you again.

“You won’t have your own room though, sorry,” You sigh in fake concern.

“I think we can make that work,” He assured you with a smile.

“I still can’t believe you bought a fucking plane ticket to get past security to come find me. You’re insane,” You shake your head at him in disbelief.

“Your boyfriend is insane,” He stresses the term, “and it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t let you get away like that.”

You both talk for a while, just drinking in each other’s presence as a new couple. While you’re recounting your metal detector encounters, it hits him that he doesn’t know when he’ll see you again.

Everything keeps getting busier between the two of you, and the possible timeframe of him moving seems further and further away with each passing moment.

He desperately wants to slow everything down in his career immediately, for all of his responsibilities to be taken care of for him.

The boarding process begins and he’s wistful, he didn’t think it would hurt so deeply to let you go home. He pulls you into a tight hug, his head nestled into the crook of your neck. “I love you so much, baby,” His voice wavers.

“Don’t fucking cry, you’ll make me cry,” You whisper, curling into his body even further. It makes him smile despite the tears streaming down his cheeks.

“I’ll see you soon, okay? I promise,” He attempts to steady his voice, but it’s no use. The moment he has the love of his life, you’re already leaving.

You lean back and press your lips to his, you move as quickly as time permits. It’s not the kiss he wants, but it’s enough to sate him.

He pulls away first, kissing your cheek before standing back to get a good look at you.

“Now go, they’re about to finish up your section,” He pointed to the gate with a watery laugh, finally wiping his cheeks from the tears.

You wave one last time as your ticket gets scanned and you’re no longer in view.

He’s not ready to go back to an empty house, one without you sitting on the couch bundled up in his blankets, staring at your computer with squinted eyes. He’s not ready to fall asleep without you next to him and wake up the next day knowing you wouldn’t be up until midday.

You’ve worked your way into his life and he can’t picture another second without you in it.

He decides that whenever you’re available to talk on the phone, you would plan his first visit.

That was the only way he could cope with the time and distance that seemed impossible to cross.

—

The Joshua profile is edited and completed in due time, somehow without losing your sanity.

Joshua is always sending you his edits, many of which are rejected the moment he comments them. Yet, you promise him that he can have input on another piece.

Once it’s approved through final edits, the profile is received well, all things considered. While there are unavoidable critiques, it still resonates with fans and writers alike. It goes considerably less viral than your other content with him, but viral nonetheless. It gets another boost in attention when Joshua reveals your relationship to the public exactly two months after it’s posted, and people are now re-examining the profile for signs of love blooming in between the lines.

These recent post-profile interviews he did were keeping you company during your downtime after work. You’d find yourself watching them on your laptop in bed, craving the sound of his voice when he was caught up in practice. He told you to watch this one specifically when it was uploaded though, so you decided to listen to him.

“So we have to talk about your relationship and the article,” The late night host segues into the new topic and Joshua handles it with ease.

“Of course,” He’s nodding along.

“So you fall in love with one of your biggest fans and do this reunion interview after 10 years? What’s the whole story?”

“Well, she’s been a fan of mine for my entire career and we first met when she made this viral blog post about me qualifying for my first Olympics,” He recounts the story for what feels like the millionth time, but you still eat it up every time. He has an exact script that you can almost know how he’ll phrase it.

“We film an interview and that goes even more viral, like 20 million views or something crazy,” He stops to laugh for a moment and the audience laughs along with him.

“We met up a few times over the years, but I finally suggested we do something for the 10 year anniversary of the interview. That’s how it all came together,” He nods with a grin.

“That’s amazing, is there anything you want to tell her?”

He looks directly into the camera and takes a breath. “Just that I miss you and love you very much,” His voice softens and the audience lights up with applause. He blows a kiss to the camera before the host switches topics once again, moving on to more Olympics talk for the rest of the video.

The declaration of love is simple, he’s not the kind of guy to make these big sweeping gestures of love, but it’s more than enough for you. You send him a quick text approving of the video and your heart is extremely full.

He moves in right after the Olympics end, but he’ll have a chance to properly decompress from the competition. The anticipation is enough to almost drive you insane, but the wait will be worth it.

—

The Olympics are a complete blur, as expected. You try to enjoy other events during your time there, but the men’s individual skate is the only thing on your mind. Joshua tried to make things for you as comfortable as possible despite living in the designated Olympic Village. He always complained that he wasn’t able to see you by sending you lots of heartfelt texts, but you teased him that he just needed to focus on competition.

Joshua won the gold medal, as expected by numerous sports networks and prediction experts.

You knew he’d win too, obviously.

Although he performed last in the final group, moving his rank down to 5th before his free skate performance, his final showing put him 10 full points above 2nd place.

Your boyfriend, who has been swept up in podium ceremonies, post-skate interviews, and a celebratory dinner is finally alone with you in your hotel room and you intend to make the most of it.

“Congratulations,” You’re practically yelling in his ear as he smothers you in a hug, clutching the back of your head. He’s free of the costume and makeup from earlier in the night, even his team tracksuit was exchanged for an old shirt and shorts.

“Thank you, baby,” His response is muffled against your shirt. You pull away to admire his face for a moment before leaning in for a deep kiss.

He’s feeling just as desperate as you are, swiping his tongue into your mouth with ease. It’s been so long since you’ve had a chance to just kiss him, let alone see him for more than a few minutes at a time. There were still press circuits and endless events for him to attend, but for a moment he was simply your gold medalist.

You barely come up for air for the next few minutes, getting all of the long distance reunion induced kisses out of your system. You step away to breathe against his neck and collect your thoughts.

“I’m so proud of you, like I was fully sobbing in my seat after the scores.”

“You were?” He questions, eyes widening.

“Of course, you’ve worked so hard to get here after everything. It makes me wanna cry all over again,” You’re so fond that it makes your heart swell for him.

“My poor baby, crying her eyes out over me like the good old days,” He coos.

“Yeah,” You let out a shaky laugh and wiped a stray tear from your eye. There were no ways to describe how it felt to watch the love of your life succeed from so many points of view, in some ways your relationship is a time capsule of your adolescence.

Joshua is simultaneously the object of your youth and the promise of a better future.

The journey is never lost on you, all of the time spent learning each other all over again reinvigorated your spirit.

“I’m ready to go home with you, I’m just so tired,” He whispers. The collective stress of the past few years is catching up with him now that the hardest part is over, that sense of normalcy needed to come sooner rather than later.

“I know, love. Just a few more days and we can sleep in as much as we want,” You think out loud, but he seems to like the idea as you cup his face in your hands. The tension melts from his face the longer you stay still and he lets out a quiet hum.

“Can we cuddle?”

“Of course,” You would’ve wanted to do it anyway, but you couldn’t say no to him in this state.

Once you both crawled onto the bed, he naturally put his head on your chest. It doesn’t take long before you’ve both fully relaxed into each other’s touch. The silence is needed after nonstop stimulation from the outside world.

“Y/N?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.” He doesn’t hesitate this time, it's saturated with adoration for you. You feel the warmth on your cheeks and respond accordingly.

“I love you too.”

He sits up, staring at you with so much love in his eyes. He kisses you just to do it, but it’s perfectly fine by you.

You swear that you could live in this moment forever. There would always be deadlines approaching, endless amounts of work waiting for you, but these moments were too precious to take for granted.

There’s so much love for him in your body that it doesn’t know where to go, but you figure that you’ll find somewhere to place it within due time.

There’s no use in grieving wasted time when his love is nestled so neatly in your heart, allowing you to indulge in the infinite futures you’re able to build together.

He’s not going anywhere, there’s still time.

There will always be time.

[errihaienx]

HQ CAPTAINS : best things in your relationship ♡

(pre-timeskip , aged up characters)

quick disclaimer: these scenarios don't affect the original plot of the series. any information or events that contradict the original plot are purely fictional. (i do not own any of the characters) Please read the a/n at the end! <3<3

ꜰᴇᴀᴛᴜʀɪɴɢ: ʙᴏᴋᴜᴛᴏ, ᴜꜱʜɪᴊɪᴍᴀ, ᴋᴜʀᴏᴏ, ᴏɪᴋᴀᴡᴀ, ᴋɪᴛᴀ, ᴅᴀɪᴄʜɪ, & ᴛᴇʀᴜꜱʜɪᴍᴀ (ɪɴ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ)

ꜱɪᴛᴜᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ʙᴇꜱᴛ ᴛʀᴀɪᴛꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ʙᴇʜᴀᴠɪᴏʀ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʀᴇʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴꜱʜɪᴘ

He is very honest and open, he'll say everything when you ask him.

Satisfies your needs when it comes to affection, LOTS of cuddles and forehead kisses.

No Emo-mode Bokuto when it comes to serious discussions. He doesn't talk back to you and tries his best to understand you. He's a bit jealous though..

Respects your parents and grandparents so much! He often ask you to visit them.

"Babyyy can we meet Obachan? I loved the soup she made, oh my gosh let's get married now Y/n!!"

A relationship with patience and privacy

He's very patient, he's not the controlling type. He wants to make sure that he's not suffocating you.

He's also understanding, you often meet up with your friends and you end up going home late he understands it and fetches you to make sure you're safe.

Very consistent, when he was still courting you he gives you flowers and even now as couples he's still doing it!

"I kept on receiving flowers I don't know who gave them..... I just want you to know.."

"I sent them.."

A relationship built with trust, attachment, and intimacy

He's very touchy and wants you to himself 24/7

Very Faithful. he may look like some womanizer shit, but he's not, he's into you, only you.

He will always ask for your opinion about everything he does, and will make it as his guide. He trust you about everything

"Love I don't know if I'll still pursue volleyball, but I love the game itself.."

" You don't want to be a professional athlete?"

"I'm confused, I don't know. But I also feel like i don't want to abandon it.."

"You don't need to play the sport itself, you can work from behind the scenes."

"Damn, such a wifey material.."

A very open relationship, there are  circumstances that you will complain about his actions or doings and he will openly listen.

If he's really at fault he will adjust, if you don't want him to do this or that he will not do it.

Tries his best to understand you in everything.

Very appreciative, you know that volleyball is his passion and you give him time and space. He appreciates it a lot.

"I'm sorry I couldn't put all my attention to you, but please don't leave me.."

"Career over love, choose your passion and I'll choose mine."

"Baby are you breaking up with me again?!"

"You are my passion"

A very perceptive man

Misunderstandings don't stand a chance on breaking your relationship, even if you accidentally said something that is very different from what are you pointing out he will immediately figure out what you really mean

He's also polite, caring, and loyal.

He often help you with your studies, affirms you and is very respectful of you

"Please don't hesitate to ask for my assistance about everything, i don't want to see you struggling"

"I just don't want to bother you, you're already stacked up. i just want you to enjoy your extra time and be happy"

"I am the happiest when you rely on me."

TO MAKE IT SHORT,, HE'S PERFECT

Responsible and you actually sees him as the literal 'Husband Material' yes, more than just a bf material. Seriously, having him was the real deal!

Respects your boundaries

He's very attentive when it comes to you. He knows it when you're not feeling well, annoyed, happy, everything!

He often helps you with your studies

"Love, were you the one who prepared my presentation?"

"That was me. I wasn't sure if you were gonna be okay with me helping you, but... I wanted to help you anyway."

Study dates!

Very touchy even in public, and he can't hold himself back. he loves the feeling of being close to you

When arguing he's probably a bit headstrong but he doesn't talk back, he may be defensive at times but he makes it up to you. Whenever you two argue, he's all frowny not because he's annoyed that you're nagging him but because he's annoyed that he was being a 'burden' to you.

YOU. ARE. THE. PRIORITY.

He's famous at school and has his group of friends that he always hangs up with, he's such a party boy too. but when it comes to you, there's no hesitation. he'll decline any meeting with the boys and will probably say: "Bro I need to see my gf so bad, gotta go. I hope ya find your love life."

Bro is smitten

Hiiii! my lineup for what i'll post was piling up, and I plan to post drafts first(this was a draft a week ago!) before my requests. I'll be working on 4 requests! please once again, bare with me. i'll start writing the request in few days, and post it immediately after finishing them. for the anons who requested, i hope you'll wait until then. thank you very much! I finished writing the 'stuff' that i've been writing for a long time, and i'll post it soon! thank you so much for the support<3<3 i hope you all the best health!

[toomanythoughts4myhead]

A drop of poison goes a long way

Summary: More insight in Coriolanuses work life and the veil of what is going inside his past loves head is finaly revealed. Coriolanus is offered what he wants. Will it be his doom again?

Warnings: Coriolanus Snow and his brain; mentions of attempted murder, shooting, gun violence, prosthetic as result; Capitol people.

Pairing: Coriolanus Snow x reader

A/N: I am so sorry it took me this long to write this. December wasn't 🎄Decembering🎄 it was 📝Decembering📝. I hope you enjoy and I will try to be more on schedule. Hope yall enjoy.

[<-Prev. chapter][Masterlist][Next chapter->]

Coriolanus liked to think of himself as a sensible individual by Capitol standards, to say the least.

Then why has he been on the verge of ripping his hair out for the past day and a half?

Ever since Dr Gaul had presented to him his "fixed" songbird he has been in a state of mind unbecoming of the image he has built himself to be. He even had to cancel his lunch outing with Solicis Saddler, a hefty sponsor of the games with an odd bloodthirst for someone who was missing most of his natural teeth and had gotten a tacky golden replacement.

Dr Gaul hadn't allowed for him to take you home or stay long, not that he had been able to protest, eyes glued to your form like ot would set you on fire or make you crawl back in his arms. He didn't want to think about the consequences; he knew he had failed whatever test this was supposed to be. He should have remained stoic and proud, barely sparing you a glance. Instead, he gaped at you, hopefully with a closed mouth.

He had gotten used to troubling his mind with various plots and schemes before bed, usually that kept his mind at bay and away from you. Now, you came back in strutting to render him powerless over his own being. He felt stupid and weak, unsure who to hate more - himself or you.

He decides he hates you most.

After the encounter, he had gotten back in his car and gone to work, collecting himself now that you were out of sight. With the rise of popularity after the 11th and especially 12th game the making of the Hunger Games had become a lot more professional and lavish, the personal had expanded and even changed and added buildings to the office.

As a head game maker, he worked and operated over the main building, the center, and the gem of the whole operation. The building itself was in various shades of whites and blacks, and all in-between, a lot of the structure was from black and white marble with golden cracks. Coriolanus liked working there, in his expensive suits and office at the top of the building, overlooking the whole Capitol. he felt powerful, as he should. He was the one in control.

The main game makers teams were separated and had multiple departments that discussed locations, structures, finances, networking and so on and forth, anything needed for the games to run smoothly and be as entertaining as possible. He was the one who organized meetings and approved ideas and made sure they would also be reasonable by the almost limitless budget. This meant he technically worked only a few hours; the other time, he spent building ties and attending lunches and dinners that would benefit him. Technically, since he is the head and face of the operating, whatever helped him helped the community. So, no one complained or questioned him.

This day was horrible and he breezed by most of it, he felt that on the back of his mind he was reliving this morning over and over and decided its best not to interact with one of his best sponsors when not fully with hus mind. He had fumbled some excuse on his way back from work that he didn't feel good, which was partly true.

Now, the hot water of his shower was burning his skin as he increased it again. He didn't like the burning hot but thus was about discipline. I remember who he was now and for what eh stood. He wouldn't allow you to take this away from him again.

His sleep was troubled and came upon him way too late, his skin felt raw and sensitive from the waterx maybe he shouldn't over do it too much, he wouldn't like for people to notice. His carefully glided back curls were sticking everywhere, and he felt aggitated, but he fell asleep in the early hours of the morning. Not uncommon.

° ❄️ ° ❄️ ° ❄️ ° ❄️ ° ❄️ ° ❄️ ° ❄️ ° ❄️ °

In the morning, he felt better. He rose with the same confidence he had adopted and went out for a run. At least his stay in the districts had taught him discipline and instilled the need to train his body, something all the spoiled and often drugged up or obese people of the Capitol seem to lack. It made him stand out, with his sculpted torso and wide shoulders, strong but not intimidating brutishly so, he filled out his shirts and suits in way he never could back when he was barely eating anything with substance.

It had snowed again last night, surely a good fortune. His sneakers left imprints in the still not cleared up paths in the near park, his breath fanned over his face in clouds of white smoke, he could feel the chilling air nip at his sides through the thin running clothes he had. He felt alive.

By this time, his avoxes were up and on the go, tending to the apartment and the his work clothes and breakfast. He knew their routine like the back of his hand, and so they didn't dare step out of it; it felt good. Each day he got the same royal treatment, no back talk (or any talk for that matter), after a while even he didn't have to talk to them, they knew what to do, he would often limited himself to simple commands. It was a pleasant start to his day since he had to deal with pompous arrogant moneybags for a living.

When he reached the street on which his apartment resided the sun was starting to turn the sky redish. He felt a faint sheen of sweat on his doby and shuddered as his body started to cool down from the exercise, what caught his attention was one of his avoxes waiting for him at the threshold of the apartment. Coriolanus raised an eyebrow as he approached, straightening his back and slowing down his breathing. Judging by the unsure look on their face he knew something had gone wrong, they weren't supposed to be here.

"Could you explain to me what you are doing outside?"

The avoxe looked up at him with gaze that held too much fear, sure he had punished avoxes before but not so cruelly. A mere doubling of chores or less food had been all he had done, merely disciplinary shows of power. The same way a dog needs to be taught, so do humans. The avoxe passed him a note, an envelope sealed with red wax in the capitols symbol. A message from the Citadel.

Coriolanus lifted an eyebrow. Receiving mail isn't exactly an out of the ordinary thing, he doesn't think it's really worth it freeze his ass of and catch something over a letter, but his gnawing intuition told him it was something bad. The realization seeped through and he felt an unpleasant churning in his timach as he ripped the envelope and read the letter.

It would hardly be called a letter since it consistented barely two sentences but It made his head spin.

"Take this as an encouragement from the staff of the Citadel for all your hard work. We hope you don't mind we clipped your Songbirds wings a little."

It wasn't signed but it didn't have to be. Who else could have scared his staff this badly but Dr Gaul? The implications of the letter set in and he barged into his apartment way too quickly, almaot shoving the avoxes down the stairs.

Snow fells and littered his floor, making wet spots on his white rug, but it wasn't the only thing tainting his apartment. There on his couch he found you, sitting cross-legged and fighting woth the decorative bouquet of roses on the coffee table. Your gaze snapped to him, watching hiw with curiosity and a startled look in your eyes as he stared back with such intensity it made you feel uncomfortable.

The hospital gown he had seen before had been switched for a creame white knitted dress that reached your knees and black leggings with boots, semi-useful for the weather and surprisingly basic for the extravagant taste of the Capitol. In the natural light seeping from the glass wall your prosthetic arm looked too natural. You looked too natural, unchanged, maybe even bettered by some fancy Capitol equipment.

What surprised him most was the way you looked at him.

He had spend a long time going over all possibilities of interactions between him and you, he had imagined a cold shoulder, yelling, screaming, maybe you would even try to attack him. But you looked at him with admiration, your face brightened as you placed your warm gaze on him. Not lovingly like before, you didn't seem to recognize him fully.

He walked closer until your knees were a hairstarnd away from his thigh and stopped. He didn't know how to react, he could feel the grasp of control he wielded best at his own house. You just had that effect on him, maybe it was the puppy smile on your face.

As he approaches you stand up, now he can clearly see the white bow on your head, truly wrapped like a present for him.

"Dr Gaul sends her warmest regards. And im here to thank you personally for all you have done for me."

Coriolanus despote everything found himself even more confused. Sure, he had done a lot of you: kept you alive during the Hunger games, cheat in the Hunger games for you, carry out some duty in district 12. He hadn't imagined you'd be thankful for it now. His lack of response must have confused you.

"I am so very thankful you saved me from the districts. I would have been left for dead if you hadnt sent your team of doctors to help me." - you add with a sweet genuine smile and loving gaze.

What?

"Well i couldnt leave my girl for dead among these animals. You know I'd do anything for you." - he smiled back and went as far as to gently grasp your hand in a sweet gesture.

He is grasping at loose straws here. It was evident that your memory was very... selective and altered. He could somewhat force himself to imagine that it was all due to the incident, but he knew better. This was all Dr Gauls idea and work. He needed to figure out more of the scenario Dr Gaul had constructed for you. And to find out how.

You seemed to like the gesture, squeezing his hand into your smaller one. Your hands were softer, not calloused or rough from playing guitar or surviving, but soft and inviting. Your nails were even done, he had to give it up.to the person in charge of your presentation, they had truly went all in.

"It all happened so fast, the doctors never filled me in fully of what exactly happened." - he said feigning ignorance and worry.

"It was horrible. After i returned i wanted to see my family so bad, but everyone turned on me. They chased me down through the forest because i had managed to get a glimpse of what thwy want - wealth and power, even if briefly from the Capitol. My own family tried to shoot me." - you said and it visibly made you upset, your voice became more uneven, wobbling lightly with along with your bottom lip.

Your own blood? You had no living family, you'd said so yourself before. It appears the lab team had decided to do this in the most dramatic way possible.

He put his thumb on your slightly trembling chin, running his knuckles over your reddening bottom lip and coo at you sympatheticly, as much as he could.

"My poor girl, im so sorry it took us this long to get you back and kicking. Those people certainly did a number on your poor body." - he ran his free hand up on the prosthetic bicep, it felt colder to the touch, not as squishy as human flesh and fat, but surprisingly close.

You nod into the palm of his hand, looking at him with big watery eyes. This is amazing, Coriolanus thought. He had you right how he always wanted you, under his thumb and eating out of his palm. You were like a frail little fawn waking up after the cruel winter had passed, everything is different but so so familiar. He would be your guide, he will show you the right way, he will be your light and your dark. You will worship and thank him for taking your control and responsibilities away.

All hate seemed to be burried for now, this opportunity made Coriolanus too excited, to have his favorite toy back. You weren't the girl who had sicked a snake on him, no, that girl was dead, trapped in her own body but permanently erased. Whatever he had now was the perfect doll with your face slapped on it.

"Oh my precious lamb, welcome home."

He cooed and tried to keep the sadistic glint in his eyes from showing too much. He put his arms around you, big hands digging into the warm material of your lower back, the rose ring on his pointer finger scraped the material. Your cheek was pressed against collarbone, nosing at his neck. Even a few seconds in his embrace and the sickeningly sweet smell of white roses was clinging to your whole body. Even a few minutes were enough for his poison to take root.

He runs his hands up and down your back, keeping you close. It felt good, to feel your warmth again, it made something tick in his brain whenever he felt your warmer weaker body against his. Call it animal instincts or a sick mind, neither are too far off.

"Ive missed you" he croons in your neck, his nose bumps your pulse point and it makes your head feel lighter. You are alsmot too loat in each other, but the feeling of being watched makes you open your eyes to find a nervous looking older woman. You instinctively true and pull away from Coriolanuses tight embrace but he doesn't let up, his hands just dig deeper into the fat on your hips and sides.

"Where do you think you are running off to? Are you not happy to be mine?" - he asked with a mocking tone but the intensity in his eyes never wavered.

"Corio, there is someone her-"

"Just an avoxe, no need to be shy. She wont say a peep." - replied clamly and stood back to his full height, keeping you good to his side like an accessory. Your face was held to his chest by the back of your neck, the hold wasn't strong but you hadnt tried to break free either. It made your cheeks burn a tad bit. "What seemes to be the problem?"

The woman stood still and pondered how to explain it without actual words but the loud bickering of an old man that could be also drunk and rattle of metal made Coriolanuses breath hitches for a moment.

Solicis Saddler.

He had promised dinner at his penthouse to make up for canceling, to go over the future plans of the games to keep the bloodthirsty man at bay and his wallet open for all gruesome scenes. Judging by his pompous screaming and yelling at his staff he had taken the invitation to heart.

Coriolanus had completely forgot about this. And it made him feel like the ever-growing tower that was his life was tilting, he was getting sloppy. He needed to focus again. He won't repeat the same mistakes.

Pressed against him, Coriolanus could feel you flinch as the octaves kept on getting louder. He needed to apologize to his neighbors tomorrow for all the chatter. He gave your waist a squeeze and kept you locked to him.

"Let him in."

(Not my best but lemme cook chat, i.swear ill do better next time.)

[mysticheathenn]

What Career Path Best Suits You?

Hi, Hexlings!

This pick-a-card reading is for my Patreon Cosmic Stargazers and above. This pick-a-card reading is all about what career path best suits you and what will happen if you follow it.

This is a general reading, remember to take what resonates and leave what does not. This reading does not supplement your need to seek professional help.

Take your time when choosing your pile. Ask yourself the question and choose the picture that you can’t stop looking at. Listen to your intuition.

Extended Patreon Includes:

What Career Path Best Suits You?

What will happen if you follow the best-suited path?

Extra Messages (Careers that could be of interest)

MasterList

Patreon Link

Ko-Fi Donations

Pile 1:

What Career Path Are You Used To? Tarot: 10 of Swords, 8 of Swords, Strength, The Hermit, King of Pentacles

Pile l you may be used to careers where you feel are a dead end. Some of you could be the type to job hop a lot where whenever you feel you either get bored or you are feeling as if you are not growing or feel appreciated you tend to leave and move onto what you hope is better pastures but end up being something similar to your last job in environment, management, or even the position. It's like an endless cycle you keep repeating that you can't seem to jump off. You may also be the the type of employee where everything is piled on your plate because upper management knows that if they pass things to you things will get done and more. You are most likely that go above and beyond employees, if not beyond you may do a little extra on tasks if you have the time or feel creative to add extra stuff to something. I'm hearing you're the strongest soldier fighting all the battles. You may not complain much about these things because even though your pay isn't the greatest of what it should or can be, it does help provide you with the things you need (shelter, food, etc) and sometimes want (new clothes, trips, etc) Patreon Post Link

Pile ll:

What Career Path Are You Used To? Tarot: 10 of Wands, Death, Queen of Cups, 6 of Wands, Queen of Swords

Unappreciated by Cherish played in my head for your pile. You are used to careers/jobs where you are constantly feeling unappreciated, undermined, emotionally and mentally drained. I hear some people may even take credit for some of the work that you do at work. Overall I feel that your work environment loves to make you the leader of everything without giving you leader money. Example: Before I moved up in management and I was a front desk agent, my colleagues would always come to me as if I was the manager and not the manager themselves because management was either choosing not to be available, not helping, or knowing management doesn't know what they are talking about. Even though I wasn't getting management pay everyone including managers were coming to me for guidance but not giving credit to where it's due. This maybe your current position pile ll or at least environments where you have worked in. Not exactly the same example but examples similar to it. You are also probably used to repetitive jobs where nothing but situations change but everything stays the same so maybe retail, being a waiter, working at a call center, being an assistant, etc. Patreon Post Link

Pile lll:

What Career Path Are You Used To? Tarot: The Moon, 7 of Swords, 4 of Cups (reversed), Knight of Swords (reversed), 5 of Swords (reversed)

Pile lll you may be used to environments that are toxic all around you. Every time you turn around someone is being sneaky, conniving, secretive, moving behind the scenes to either level themselves up, make themselves look good, or plot against other people. You may deal with people who think they are your manager when in fact they are either in the same position as you or a level below you. You may also deal with businesses or corporations who like to cut corners and don't do things the right way. They trick and scam people out of more money or the same money but less quality in items/food. Example: I used to work at a subway where back in the day when the month of February was always $5 deal month our owner would tell us to not give everyone the full amount of meant so he could pinch on supplies. so if you bought a turkey sub instead of getting 8 slices you receive 6 and we had to spread them out to make the sub look full. Overall I am feeling the environment you are used to working is an every person for themselves environment. The "We're a family/team" kind of environment. This is very specific but some of you may even work for Chick-fil-A or corporations similar where they believe in doing things the "traditional" way or even fire people for one small mistake like not saying my pleasure to customers. You may work in fast food, retail, restaurants, warehouses like Amazon, Corporate, bank jobs, etc overall I am getting minimum wage or slightly above the jobs you may be used to. Patreon Post Link

Thank you for liking and reblogging my readings. I always appreciate you guys on here and on Patreon.

Stay safe and be blessed

[barbiewritesstuff]

Strauss blocked : Part 1

---

Am I bad at naming fics? Yes.

Welp this was supposed to be a 2k porn without plot and it turned into 8k words two part series... oops? I just hope it lives up to expectations :)

I just want to thank my bestie @Igg5989 for beta reading (and helping me write) and @ravensmadreads for giving me the inspiration fir this fic.

Tw: this is SMUT, IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 GTFO I DON'T WANT YOU HERE OR ANYWHERE NEAR MY BLOG. Age gap relationship, boss x employee relationship, p in v sex and all that good stuff

Taglist: @feedthemadness-sweetie

---

Section Chief Strauss was many things but when it came to working cases on the field, efficient was not one of them. She had tagged along under the excuse of performing personal performance reviews, assuring the team that she would not be getting in the way. She promised she’d merely be a ‘silent observer’ and to her credit, she had lasted an hour in that role before interjecting in every conversation and second guessing every decision any of you ever made, and because she outranked you all, her will was your command. 

“I think she showed remarkable restraint,” Spencer joked, trying to lighten your souring mood, “I didn’t think she’d last an hour,” he added.

“Did she really have to pull rank when I tried to order breakfast? Like why does she care that I like syrup on my french toast?” you asked, sudden rage exploding out of you with an intensity Spencer could never have predicted, “No, apparently ‘Girls my age won’t be thin and pretty forever, I should watch my diet before my sugar intake starts affecting things’. What a fucking bitch.”

Spencer flinched, “Yikes, I didn’t think she actually said that. I thought you were exaggerating,” he admitted.

“I didn’t even paraphrase,” you replied, looking straight ahead at the investigation board. It had been filled up pretty nicely and evidence has been coming in, but despite knowing all there is to know about the victims, their habits, friends, families and lives, you were not even close to figuring out who he is. 

And that was largely because Section Chief Erin Strauss wouldn’t let you. 

Somehow, she thought that because she couldn’t stand crime scenes and dead bodies, you couldn’t either. It was true that the crime scenes are brutal, and even Morgan came back looking a little greener than when he left, but this was your job. A job she wanted to review your performance for all while not actually letting you out of the station. 

You thought maybe it was because you’re a girl. The only girl currently on the field team because Emily broke her foot and JJ was off for her annual holiday and while Garcia was your constant companion on the phone, you felt like Strauss didn’t actually realise she was a real person. She never said thanks, or please and she kept hanging up while Penelope was still speaking. You took a deep breath, if you weren't careful soon enough you’d be the one they’d have to put behind bars. Or not, because with the way she was behaving you had a feeling Aaron wouldn’t mind giving you a couple of false alibis.

Because as bad as she was with you, she was worse with him. 

He was a good chief, kind and caring when he needed to be but professional and just the right kind of demanding. A few years ago you’d have added a couple more flaws to that descriptions -- bully, drill sergeant, the kind of man who found it easier to trust men than women even if there’s no reason for it -- but he’d grown on you. Your relationship with him has changed. At first he was just a boss, someone you’d go home and complain to your boyfriend about. Then, when Haley asked for a divorce and you got out of your own relationship after finding out your boyfriend wasn’t half as nice as you thought he was, you became friends.

And recently it had changed again. 

You had finally managed to schedule a night out with the girls after unsuccessfully trying to find a date for the seventh time that month. It had been fun, you had all danced, drunk and chatted until the early hours of the morning before calling it quits and returning home. Which is where you had been when Hotch happened to be walking by, or rather, you had been in front of your home when he happened to be walking by. You almost didn’t recognise him, he had shed the usual work suit for a casual pair of jeans and a nice shirt. 

“Hi,” he said, clearly not expecting to see anyone he knew so late -- or early -- in the day.

“Hi,” you replied hesistantly, not wanting to betray just how tipsy you were even as you swayed by your door

“You okay?” he asked, “Not too cold?” he added, helpfully pointing towards your dress. You looked down to see what you meant. Looking to have a good time and maybe bring someone home, you hadn’t dressed particularly sensibly for the time of year. In fact, you had chosen the shortest dress you owned, a golden number that showed off plenty of cleavage and left nothing to the imagination. 

You looked up, horrified to see him smirking.

“I -- err -- I locked myself out,” you said, hoping to get yourself out of that awkward moment by changing the subject.

“I don’t live too far away, you can sleep over. We’ll call a locksmith in the morning,” he offered.

“It’s okay,” you assured him.

Hotch frowned at you, “I’m not having you become one of those girls on Dateline,” he countered. You knew he wouldn’t force you, but if you refused his offer, you would officially kiss a night in a nice warm house goodbye as your only other option was your car. 

“Fine,” you acquiesced. He shot you one of his rare smiles, one of the ones that lit up his own face and that made the usual ball of nerves you felt in your stomach at the sight of one of the FBI higher ups turn into a horde of fluttering butterflies. He didn’t usually give them out easily and you wondered if this one was aided by alcohol. As you approached him, your theory was confirmed. Beneath his nice aftershave and his usually minty breath you could vaguely smell whiskey. Your drunken brain stored that fact for the next office secret santa, you just had to rig it so you’d pull his name. 

“Date?” Hotch asked after a few moments of silence, the click of your heels against pavement echoing through the night.

“Just out with friends,” you replied, accidentally bumping into him as you walked.

“Me too,” he said, “College reunion.”

It felt weird having him volunteer that much information. Aaron Hotchner was the kind of man who liked to keep his work and home life separated and rarely ever let anyone in. Letting the team in on details of his divorce had been as hard and painful as the divorce itself so you never imagined he’d happily volunteer information about what he did in his spare time. 

“I had too much to drink,” he added in a whisper, like it was a confession, “I get chatty when I drink,” he grinned at you. 

“I can see that,” you giggled at him. You hadn’t meant it in any other way than a statement but Hotch grew serious anyway.

“You can tell me to shut up if I annoy you,” he said, looking at the pavement. 

“No I--” you protested, part of you wondering if the reason he kept quiet wasn’t because of professionalism but rather because he thought people wouldn’t care

“I like chatty you,” you said and he looked up, smiling at you for the second time in twenty minutes, “I also like smiley you,” you added.

“Did you have fun?” you asked a little later, for some reason, silence with Hotch now felt opressive.

“It was nice seeing them all. It’s weird though, they’ve all changed so much that I barely recognise them. Like, I look in the mirror and I think I look pretty much the same, I mean older obviously, but like I look the same,” he said, “and then I look at them and --” he brought his hands up to his head and mimicked an explosion, “I haven’t missed them though,” he added with a giggle.

“No?” You questioned, looking at him curiously. 

“God, no. Pretentious assholes,” he replied with a heavy sigh. 

“Sweetie, you went to George Washington University,” you laughed, “Of course they’re all pretentious.”

“Fair point, Agent,” he smiled. 

“Y/n,” you corrected, “My name is Y/n when we’re off the clock.” 

“And mine is Aaron,” he replied

“Well, Aaron, can you tell me how far away we are from yours? My feet are killing me,” 

“Not too far,” he replied, “Do you see your college friends often?”

“Not the majority of them. We keep in contact, call sometimes but there’s only five I see regularly. They’re the girls I went out with,” you informed him. 

“Are they nice?” He asked, “My bunch are…,” he hesitated, “They keep making these underhand digs at those who they see as less successful. I don’t think I’ll go to the next one. It just feels like a dick measuring contest,” he said, then clapped a hand in front of his mouth once he heard you laugh and realised he had sworn, “Sorry,” he apologised, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’m trying not to swear because Jack is picking up on it. It’s not going great I keep fucking it up -- no wait! Shit! -- No! Fuck!” he exclaimed, accidentally letting out a swear whenever he realised what he had done. You couldn’t stop laughing and stopped for a moment, leaning against a tree to catch your breath. 

“I am polite,” he assured you, “pinky promise,” he added

“I believe you,” you grinned

“I am so polite that when I get home, I am going to offer you a coffee,” he said. 

“And I will accept,” you said, “I need to sober up, otherwise I’m going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow. And believe me, you don’t want to meet me when I’m hungover.”

“Eh,” he shrugged, “You’re young, it’ll pass quickly. I remember when I was your age, a hangover was just a headache, now? I have to take a sick day to recover.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating a little?” you asked

“Never,” he grinned, “Okay, maybe a little.”

“You are allowed to take days off, Aaron,” you reminded him, “You’re human, you deserve a break.”

He shrugged again, “What would I do during a break? Haley has divorced me, Jack’s only here one week every other week… I don’t want to spend more time in my empty house than I need.”

“You can go to the movies?” you offered, “Have you seen Avatar?”

“Can I be honest?” he asked, “Those blue people creep me out.”

“That is fair,” you replied, “I don’t like the hair,” 

“Yes!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air in victory, “They look like elephant trunks,” he added, “My house is there,” Hotch pointed to your left at a small white brick house. One that you had passed many times when you walked your elderly neighbour’s dog. Hotch opened the wooden gate and walked up the path, accidentally tripping on a badly placed stone.

“Watch your step,” he whispered to you. Clumsily, he fished his keys out of his pocket and tried to fit it in the door in the limited light of the porch lamp. Eventually, he got it in and turned it in the lock. It opened with a click. 

“It’s nice,” you said, stepping in behind him

“Liar,” he answered, flicking the light on, “It’s dark. Was. It isn’t anymore.”

“Well it’s nice anyway,” you said, looking around. Although the furniture looked old, it was nice and it looked expensive. On one of the rare nights you had gone on as a team, Hotch had mentioned briefly living alone in Seattle when discussing rent with Emily, and you wondered if this wasn’t one of the remnants of that time. 

“Do beer goggles work on furniture too?” he joked. You stuck out your tongue at him and he grinned. 

“I thought you were polite?” you said, reminding him of his promise.

“Right! Yes! Would you like a coffee?”

“Milk and sugar please,” you answered, trying to undo the straps of your shoes and failing, wiggling your feet out of the heels instead. You’d figure out how to unclasp the buckle in the morning, when you were sober and your feet were killing you less. 

“Do you like DC?” he asked, handing you a steaming mug of coffee a few minutes later. You nodded, taking a sip, burning your lip in the process. Hotch saw you wince and bring a hand up to your mouth and immediately moved to your rescue.

“I am such an idiot,” you said.

“Don’t say that,” he frowned, grabbing your hand by the wrist and moving it away from your lip, “Let me see.”

He leant towards you, staring intently at your mouth. Your head swam more with every second he spent close to you. At work it was easy to keep your all consuming attraction to Aaron Hotchner at bay. He was your boss and maintained a professional distance at all times, preferring to call you Agent, and never asking anything for information about you beyond what he needed to know to feel like you could do the job. But with him so close to you, it was easy to allow yourself to close the gap between your mouths and kiss him.

To your surprise, he returned the kiss eagerly, slipping his tongue into your mouth and battling yours for dominance before seemingly regaining his composure and pulling away.

“We should stop,” he said, then, he hesitated, “Should we stop?”

“No, definitely not,” you answered, pulling him back towards you. Seemingly convinced, Aaron let his hands wander over your body before tapping the side of your thigh. Almost automatically, you jumped up, wrapping your legs around his waist and rolled your hips against yours. Hotch groaned, blindly stumbling his way towards the sofa where he placed you down on your back. He joined you on the pleather furniture, towering over you with a mischievous grin as he removed his shirt in one smooth movement and unbuckled his belt. 

“Like what you see?” he asked and you gulped. Although you had spent much of your private time imagining what Hotch looked like without a shirt you had never managed to get it right. His soft but toned dad bod seemed even more attractive in person. You raised one of your hands up in the air, gently grazing his skin and tangling your fingers in his chest hair, Hotch closed his eyes and sighed.

“Care to undress me?” you asked, Aaron’s eyes fluttered open as he came back to reality. He looked at you, eager and impatient underneath him and he smiled. He bent down, grabbing your dress by the hem. You lifted your waist up and allowed him to shuffle it upwards, slowly revealing what you kept underneath. 

You silently thanked yourself for wearing nice underwear, because you wouldn’t have wanted to subject Hotch to the panties you usually wore for work. Instead, you had chosen a pretty lavender set comprised of a bralette and a thong, which Aaron seemed very pleased with as once his eyes landed on it, he seemed unable to think rationally, luckily for you, the animalistic part of the brain the lingerie had turned on seemed more than happy to take over. 

Hotch pulled off your thong and shed his trousers and boxer shorts in less time than it took for you to blink. Seeing his erection jump free of his underwear and bump against his pelvis was enough to tell you that Aaron would be bigger than any man you had ever been with. You hesitated for a second, wondering how he would ever fit.

“Do you want to stop?” he asked but you shook your head, shuffling more towards him instead to make the message clearer, “I’ll be gentle,” he assured you. 

One of his hands came to touch your core, gently grazing the sensitive skin before allowing his thumb to rest by your clit. He rubbed circles around it, enjoying every whimper you let out before giving you what you wanted and rubbing your bundle of nerves. The moans that fell from your lips were like music to his ears. He desperately wanted to fit himself inside you, but he wanted to make sure you were ready for him. 

He rubbed you faster, with every touch you could feel the coil of pleasure in your tummy tighten and soon you tipped over the edge and came with a pornographic moan. Exercising all self control, Aaron brough a hand to his cock and jerked it a few times, letting the fingers of his other hand wander down to your aching core. He slipped one finger in, savouring just how tight you were before adding another one. He pumped them in and out of you, stretching you out, adding fingers until he felt you were ready for him. 

Hotch lined himself up with your pussy, gently pressing himself in. You happily swallowed every inch of him and when he bottomed out, he let you adjust for a moment before thrusting himself in and out of you at an accelerating pace. You felt like heaven gripping him so tight that he was sure he wouldn’t last very long. Luckily for him, it didn’t seem like you would either. 

Your hands were clawing at his back, leaving scratch marks that stung deliciously every time Aaron hit that spongey spot inside you, and your moans kept getting louder, spurring him on as he bottomed out and slammed himself back in until he could no longer keep himself from coming. With a groan he spilled himself inside you, triggering your own orgasm. 

You stayed in each other’s arms for a few moments, catching your breaths before Aaron pulled out of you. He smiled at you, leaning down to leave one last kiss upon your swollen lips, leaving your relationship forever changed. 

Part of you wondered if anything had leaked. The both of you had been careful not to speak about it, in private or in public, but you worked with the best profilers the United States had to offer. It was possible someone had figured something out. Or, although you didn’t think she ever would, that Garcia had accidentally seen or heard something she never should have. Hotch wasn’t particularly careful with electronics. They were either in his suit pocket or in the back pocket of his trousers, it had never happened, but what if he had butt dialled someone? 

Although, you figured that was unlikely, since Strauss wouldn’t have come if she had any evidence at all, she would have just fired you. But it did explain why she insisted on sticking with you at all times, or why she had demanded a room right above Hotch’s, even though the hotel clerk, clearly wanting to impress the FBI’s section chief, had confessed to her that the room wasn’t all that soundproof. 

No, sadly, the more likely explanation for her overbearing presence was that she hated the team and how it was run. She thought it was too disorganised, too sloppy, and that its subpar running posed a threat to the FBI. You had to roll your eyes at that, you had been in many departments, working as an intern, then a secretary and eventually a full time salaried employee. You had seen more of the FBI than Strauss ever would, and you could say with absolute certainty that the BAU was the only team you had been a part of who ever filed their paperwork on time. Sure, most of the agents had a smidge of a hero complex and were far too eager to place themselves in danger when it came to unsubs, but the cases got cracked. The bad guys got caught. Reports got written and overtime filed.

And yet, she still insisted on making everything difficult. Quantico and the bullpen provided a little protection against her, you could always duck into a cubicle, blame your inability to speak with her on an ever climbing pile of paperwork -- even if you sometimes pulled empty sheets of paper out of the printer to bulk it up a little when it got a little too bare, a technique you had learnt from Rossi and that you had very quickly shared with the rest of the team. Only Aaron, the only agent whose pile was constituted only of real case files and documents wasn’t participating in the charade -- or simply pick the case the state furthest away from Strauss to escape her grip. 

Maybe she had gotten wide to the ruse and wanted to make you pay for it now. 

----

“Not feeling chatty?” Morgan asked the girl. She hadn’t spoken since Hotch and Spencer had apprehended her coming out of a potential victim’s back garden, red paint splashed all over her clothes. Once she was in cuffs and backup arrived, a message had been uncovered, the same message all the other girls had found and reported days before their untimely deaths. It wasn’t uncommon for unsubs to refuse to talk, although most of them at least demanded a lawyer or answered ‘no comment’ after every question. 

Avery Watts had been utterly silent since her arrival twenty minutes ago, and she hadn’t moved or blinked either. It was eerie, and Morgan was feeling it too. He was trying his best not to show it, but he kept glancing at the two way glass every few seconds, almost trying to reassure himself that if anything went wrong, someone would be able to help. He needn’t have worried. Spencer and you had made your way into the observational cubicle adjoining the interrogation room as soon as she had been brought in and you had been joined seconds later by Strauss, hot on your trail, and a rookie officer up for a promotion in a month and eager to learn. 

Avery shrugged

“Fine, I suggest you make yourself comfortable here then. We’ll be back tomorrow,” Morgan said, standing up from his chair and pushing it back underneath the table. Hotch gathered the papers in front of the unsub and placed them all back into his briefcase, leaving the pictures of the various crime scenes and victims last so she could get one last good look and one last chance for you to notice a reaction but none came. Instead, she grinned at Hotch.

“You don’t have any evidence against me,” the girl said, voice raspy from disuse, “You have to let me go.”

“I don’t need evidence,” Hotch replied, looking her straight in the eyes, “I can hold you for 72 hours without cause,” he added, wiping her self-satisfied little smile right off of her face, “And I will.”

Strauss pressed the comms button on the panel in front of you with a neatly manicured nail, “I really don’t think that is a good idea,” she said, sounding so confident in her own non-existent ability that you almost wanted to scream. You held it in, preferring to glare at her instead. Spencer, who had slowly moved to stand next to you -- whether that was to get a better look or to stop you from throwing your career down the drain you didn’t know -- grabbed your arm and squeezed it reassuringly. 

You smiled at him tensely and he returned the gesture. You were the two youngest members of the BAU task force and while a friendship was always bound to form, no one had been able to predict just how quickly the two of you had clicked. He was the resident genius, the model for the definition of a nerd and you were the ex-prom queen and cheerleading captain everyone at your school had voted ‘Most Likely to sell their soul for lipstick’, if either of you had been any less mature, the friendship would never have worked but as it was, there wasn’t a single day where you didn’t text, call, email or meet up for coffee with Spencer Reid. He was charming and kind, and a better friend than anyone else in your life had ever been. 

“Breathe,” he mouthed but you didn’t catch it, behind the two way glass Hotch moved. He placed the briefcase on the floor and walked up to the mirror.

“I am not letting her back onto the streets,” Hotch stated. As soon as the words left his mouth, the unsub moved. With surprising force, she flipped the interrogation table, breaking the cuffs off of the metal loop screwed onto the bottom of it and rearranged the piece of furniture right on top of SSA Hotchner’s trachea. She leaned in, pressing harder. Reflexively, Aaron tried to breathe in, letting out a raspy sound that raised the hair on your arms. 

You were the first to fly out of the cubicle and into the interrogation room, gun drawn and ready to shoot but when you kicked down the door, Avery moved away from the overturned table, hands raised up in surrender. Spencer came in behind you and immediately jumped to Hotch’s aid while the rookie stayed by the door, gun pointed at Avery, blocking her path in case she tried to leave, and blocking Strauss’ path in case she wanted to come in. You put your gun away and pulled out your cuffs, with a swift press of your foot to the back of her knees you got Avery down to the ground and restrained her. 

“Stay down,” Spencer told Hotch, one hand planted on the upper part of his chest, trying to keep the man from moving, “MEDIC,” he shouted. The rookie officer turned around and booked it through various corridors to get to the main office of the Santa Maria police department. Main office was a big word, only three officers operated the three shifts the day was separated into, with a volunteer officer coming in whenever the grocery store he worked for didn’t need him. The FBI’s presence had changed things a little, the BAU’s team of four and one or two medics permanently assisting the team dwarfing the police force without even really trying. It was lucky the police station had been built by an optimist in the late forties, as they had prepared for a mining boom that had never come and made the precinct much bigger than necessary. So big in fact, that half the rooms remained unused and only three of the twelve holding cells had ever been used at the same time. 

Officer Jones, the rookie whose name badge you finally took the time to look at, came back five minutes later, medics and Rossi in tow. They crowded around Hotch as he slowly regained the ability to breathe and then speak. You wanted to stay, seeing him hurt like that roused feelings in you you usually tried so hard to keep down, but Avery stirred and you suddenly remembered the reason Aaron was currently on the floor, recovering from the unsub’s idea of feng shui. You yanked her up and she yelped, feeling a slight bit of vindication you passed Rossi. He grabbed her other hand and helped you manhandle her down the hall into a badly lit holding cell. A ‘bed’ had been prepared, made from a thin mattress, a pillow and a scratchy blanket, and whoever had prepped the room had had the forethought to bring out a plastic cup of water. You walked her into the cell and uncuffed her. Avery glared at you in a way that told you that if looks could kill, you would have been the newest victims in her growing group. You turned around, walking out of the room as Rossi locked it. He turned away, but a strange sound resonated through the air and the both of you froze. Suddenly, you were showered with something cold and wet and Avery cackled, the plastic cup rolling out from under her cell. 

[choke-me-joey]

Matching Tattoos Part II

Read Part I here

Eddie Munson x reader

Content warning: 18+ content minors DNI, smutty smutty smut smut, just porn with a little bit of plot, oral (f receiving), squirting, unprotected sex (kinda), creampie, these two are adorable as fuck, less tattoos more fuckin', fluffy throughout, idiots in love, (will format later cos on a phone it's a pain in the ass)

It had been a week since the tattoo incident. And the blowjob incident. And the whole "You get to keep me" thing.

And both you and Eddie were on Cloud 9.

It was impossible to miss, not only because you were all over each other, but even when you were across the room from each other, you couldn't stop sneaking glances and smiles.

"God, you're both gross." Robin groans, rolling her eyes as you lean over the counter of the video store to smile at Eddie as he browses the horror section waiting for you to finish your shift the following Friday night. Steve yanks you back by the waist of your jeans.

"Agreed. Can you stop making googly eyes at your boyfriend for 5 minutes, Y/N? The rom com section needs reorganising." He grumbles, sitting down and stuffing a Twizzler in his mouth.

"And you can't do it because...?" You snip, folding your arms over your chest and looking him up and down.

He gestures to himself as if to say "duh!" and you kick his chair.

"Oh come on Steve, it's her big night tonight, let the girl relax a little." smirks Robin and you glance at her, wide eyed, making short choppy motions over your neck in an attempt get her to shut the fuck up.

"Seriously?! Jeez, I thought you and Munson were already banging, didn't know you were waiting. What's the special occasion?" Steve asks through a mouthful of candy. Robin scoffs and shoves him.

"It's a Friday night and Eddie's uncle is working a double tonight meaning we can be uninterrupted." You shrug. "Not all of us bang on the first date, Steve."

"No, some of us just suck di-"

"What's up Harrington, Buckley?" Eddie grins, meandering over to the counter with a few tapes in his hands. He grins at you, placing the tapes down onto the counter. "Hey, babe."

"Babe?!" Robin and Steve audibly gag as you and Eddie share a simple, sweet kiss. Without breaking the kiss, you flip your friends off.

"So gross." complains Steve as you and Eddie break apart, grinning like fools. "Do you have to rub your new perfect relationship in the faces of the painfully single?"

"What's the matter, Harrington? Jealous that the freak of Hawkins has a smokin' hot babe and you don't?" Eddie teases. "Don't worry, big boy, we'll hook you up with someone."

"Fuck off." Steve grumbles. He looks at you. "You know your shift doesn't end for another 3 hours, and the rom com section still needs reorganising."

"Ugh fine, let me check Eddie out first." You huff, turning to your stupidly handsome boyfriend.

"Didn't you do that enough whilst I was perusing, babe?" He smirks.

"Not enough if you ask me." You deliberately run your eyes over him slowly, biting your lip.

"Fuck, I can't wait for tonight." Eddie groans to you quietly, reaching for your hand and squeezing it.

"Me neither." You whisper, squeezing back. You shuffle through the tapes. "Did you pick out some decent movies we won't be watching?"

"Only the best babe, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw, A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing. Classics that I know you've seen so you won't be too mad about missing parts."

"You're the best." You grin, pecking his lips again before proceeding to check him out. In the professional sense.

And a little bit more in the non-professional sense.

"Thanks, sweetheart. I'll pick you up at 7, okay?"

"Sounds perfect, stud."

*

7pm rolls around and you can't clock out quick enough, barely garbling out a goodbye to Steve and Robin.

"Use protection!" Robin calls, and you flip her off before you're out the door and diving into Eddie's van.

Your boyfriend chuckles at your eagerness as he leans over the console to kiss you.

"There's my pretty baby, how was the rest of your shift?"

"Excruciating, agony, torture."

"Sounds like a good time." Eddie grins, pulling out of the strip mall parking lot and beginning the 10 minute drive to his trailer. His hand leaves the gearstick and finds your thigh, resting on it. "I missed you, sweetheart."

"I missed you too," you smile, squeezing his hand. "Get up to anything good whilst I was gone?"

"You'll see," Eddie smirks, linking his fingers through yours and bringing your hair to his lips and kissing it.

When you pull up to the trailer, Eddie insists on opening your door for you, helping you out of the van and even holding the trailer door open with a little bow and a "m'lady". You laugh, curtseying and replying "kind sir" before stepping into the trailer.

You stop in your tracks. The trailer is the cleanest you'd ever seen it in all the years of knowing Eddie and his uncle. There isn't an ash tray, beer bottle or empty coffee cup to be seen. On the counter there's a small bunch of flowers in a mason jar full of water - you noted that they looked extremely similar to the wildflowers you'd been admiring on yours and Eddie's 'special smoking walk' you'd taken last weekend. And instead of the usual 'Munson' scent that hits you, you get a waft of...crisp apple?

"Eddie did you...did you light a candle? Did you buy a candle??"

"I may have." Eddie leans against the cabinets with his arms folded across his chest, smiling. "Had to make an effort for you, princess."

"You absolutely did not, but I'm appreciative nonetheless. Does the cleanliness extend to your bedroom, or...?"

"Already wanting to take this to the bedroom, huh?" He smirks, letting you drag him by the hand down the small hallway. You open his bedroom door, gasping at the sight in front of you. Eddie stands behind you, arms wrapped around your waist and chin resting on your shoulder as you take it all in.

Eddie's room was SPOTLESS. Every single piece of clothing was picked up off the floor and in the laundry hamper, the tops of his dressers and bedside table were immaculate, the bedsheets were...Holy shit, they were new. And he actually had two pillows laid out instead of one deformed lump in the middle of his bed. And an actual comforter.

"Holy shit." You breathe out a laugh of disbelief, and Eddie chuckles into your shoulder, peppering kisses over it and up your neck to your cheek. "You have been busy."

"Wanted to make tonight special." Eddie mumbles against your skin, making you hum softly.

"You didn't need to, babe. I'd fuck you in the back of your van parked up on the side of the road. I don't care where we are as long as we're together."

Eddie's eyes widen. "We are going to have to explore that at a later time. For now though..." he spins you around in his arms and walks you backwards until the backs of your knees hit his bed, causing you to fall down. He kicks the door shut behind him and presses play on his tape deck, Home Sweet Home by Motley Crüe starting up.

You sit on the bed giggling as Eddie begins to serenade you along with Vince Neil.

"...take me to your heart, feel me in your bones, just one more night, and I'm coming off this long and winding road" Eddie croons, slowly walking over to you and standing in front of you. "I'm on my way, I'm on my way, home sweet home, tonight- woah!"

You interrupt him by pulling him by his belt loops closer to you, he loses his balance and falls on top of you, both of you laughing like idiots. Eddie pushes himself up onto his arms, smiling down at you.

"What?" You smile, feeling a blush creep over your cheeks. He reaches and brushes some hair away from your face.

"Nothing, you're just...really fucking beautiful." He says softly. You pout at how cute he is, reaching up to kiss his lips.

"So are you." You reply, and he scoffs playfully. "Eddie?"

"Hmm?"

"Kiss me."

He does, kissing you slowly and deep. You moan as his tongue finds its way into your mouth, revelling in the taste of him. The kisses get deeper, wetter, nastier and your bodies start to grind against one another as you paw at each other.

"What-what about the movies?" Eddie pants into your mouth as you tug at the hem of his shirt, trying to get it off.

"Fuck the movies, seen 'em before anyway." You tug harder at this shirt. "Off."

"Yes ma'am." Eddie chuckles, sitting up and stripping off his shirt. Yours quickly follows, as well as both of your jeans, leaving you in your underwear. You bite your lip at the sight of Eddie's cock straining against his plaid boxers. You both scooch further up the bed, Eddie lying you down on the new, plump pillows, before laying his body against yours once more, his mouth finding yours again.

You rock your hips experimentally against his, the thin material of your underwear and his not doing much to dull the sensation. Eddie moans loudly into your mouth. Your pussy clenches at the sound, his moans were something you'd missed since last weekend, but had definitely replayed in your head when you'd fucked yourself with your fingers throughout the week.

"Easy, princess, you keep doing that and I'm gonna need a breather." Eddie mumbles, trailing his lips over your jaw and neck, sucking gently on your collarbone. "Besides..." he pings your bra strap. "I'm dyin' to get this off you."

You laugh, unclasping your bra and allowing your breasts to spill free.

Eddie curses, his eyes going straight to your tits. He cups them in his hands, thumbs ghosting over your nipples.

"Hello, ladies." He mumbles and your laugh is quickly replaced by a gasp as Eddie leans down and licks over your nipple, wrapping his lips around it and sucking. You whine, the flicks of his tongue sending spikes of arousal straight to your cunt. "Fuck, your tits are perfect." Eddie breathes against your skin, leaving a damp trail across your chest as he moves to the other one, rolling your neglected nipple between his fingers. He gives you a little pinch, making you cry out in pleasure.

"Eddie, please!" You whimper, desperately trying to grind your clothed pussy against his cock, needing any sort of friction to ease the ache between your legs.

"Ah, ah, ah, baby, calm down. I'll take care of you, okay? Just enjoying myself right now. And I know you are too, can feel you soaking through those pretty little panties already." You make another pathetic whining noise. "I didn't peg you for a whiner, baby, it's pretty hot how desperate you are for me right now. Makes a change from all that sass you normally give me."

"Eddie, I swear to God-"

Eddie cups your pussy over your underwear, making you promptly shut up. He smirks, teasing you by gently running his fingers over your covered slit.

"Oh, baby, these panties are definitely ruined now. Guess I'll just have to keep them. You're soaked...is this all for me?"

"All for you, Eds," you gasp as he ghosts over your swollen clit. Your hips buck. "Please, Eddie, hurts."

"Aw, it hurts? Well, I can't have my baby in pain, now can I? Especially not after she did such a good job of taking care of me last weekend." Eddie practically rips off your underwear, his eyes travelling over your fully naked body for the first time. "Holy shit, baby...you're blowing my mind with how sexy you are. Hiding this body from me...should be a federal crime." He kisses you again, soft and sweet, then moves downward, pecking at your neck, shoulders, collarbones, inbetween your breasts and down onto your stomach. He chuckles as he kisses around your still healing tattoo. "Nice ink, toots."

"Thanks, some DnD nerd gave it to m-E!" Your sarky response quickly turns into a high pitched moan as Eddie nips your inner thigh.

"Some DnD nerd, huh? Would it be the same DnD nerd who's currently looking at the prettiest fucking pussy he's ever seen? Look at her baby, she's fucking drooling for me. Wonder if she tastes as sweet as she looks?"

Your hands ball into fists, twisting the comforter in your grip as Eddie licks a fat strip from your hole to your clit, leaving a trail of spit as he goes. You look down at the same second as he looks up at you, his eyes practically black with lust. The sight of him between your legs, your juices on his mouth is almost enough to send you over the edge as it is. Eddie grins at you again. "Even sweeter than she looks, baby."

You collapse back onto the pillows as Eddie dives face first into your pussy, tongue flicking and licking at your clit as he eats you like a man starved. He moans into you as you cry out his name, one of your hands reaching for his hair.

Without moving his mouth from your clit, he flicks his eyes up to you, holding up two of his fingers to your mouth. You open your mouth, sucking on his fingers as if they were his dick, hollowing out your cheeks and getting them as wet as possible (not that you needed any more lubrication, Eddie just had a thing for any part of him in your mouth). Once he's satisfied that you have them as wet as possible, he removes them from your mouth and wastes no time pushing them inside your aching cunt.

Your back arches upwards as you gasp out his name, his thick fingers filling you and his skilled tongue on your sensitive bundle of nerves making your eyes roll back in your skull. When he crooks his fingers up and strokes over that spongy spot on your walls, your thighs clamp around his head and he smirks against you, knowing he's definitely found the right spot.

"Eddie, fuck, don't stop, gunna make me cum," you whine. He sucks on your clit, his eyes on you and he strokes and strokes - "Oh my god, Eddie! Yes, baby, I'm cumming!"

A string of expletives leaves your lips, along with his name in a shriek as you cream on his face, your thighs shaking. He doesn't relent, finger fucking you through your orgasm and when you try to pull away when things become too sensitive, his other free hand pins your hips down to the bed. You're moaning uncontrollably, almost weeping with pleasure, the stimulation too much. "Eddie, I cant-"

His head suddenly pulls away from you and your hips try to chase his mouth. "You want me to fuck you?"

"W-what?" You ask, breathless and still a bit dumb from how hard your previous orgasm had hit you. "Y-yes, I want you to fuck me-"

"Then give me another." Eddie spanks your clit, making you squeal. "I know you've got one in there for me princess, cum again for me and I'll fuck you, okay?"

"Okay, okay," you sob, nodding. You almost choke as Eddie attaches his lips back to your clit and his fingers start fucking you again. The rate at which your orgasm builds up again is alarming; it's different. "Eddie, wait, wait, wait-"

He does anything but wait, in fact he pushes his fingers against your spot harder, and moves his tongue quicker. You feel it hit you, a white hot wave of pleasure and you definitely feel something shoot out of you. Eddie groans loudly, the lewd squelching noises filling the room as your body shakes.

You squirted. You fucking squirted. Something you'd only ever seen on those nasty pornos that Harrington lent Eddie from time to time. Something you didn't think you could actually do. And Eddie made you do it.

Eddie slows his movements down, removing his fingers from your twitching cunt and sucking them clean. His chin and neck are drenched with you and it's the sexiest thing you've ever seen.

"Still with me, angel?" He asks softly, pulling himself up over you again. You notice the wet patch on the front of his boxers has doubled in size since he went down on you.

"Where the fuck did you learn that?!" You manage to gasp out and Eddie chuckles.

"Natural talent baby. And Harrington's pornos he sneaks home from the video store. Not just for jerking off to, ya know, there's some educational shit in there too."

"Ugh, forget I asked." You mumble in disgust. Eddie laughs, but soon stops when you palm the front of his boxers, squeezing his cock. "I want this now, please, you promised."

"I did, didn't I baby?" Eddie reaches over into his bedside drawer for the box of rubbers he had in there. You slap his hand away and he looks at you in confusion.

"No condom, wanna feel you, Eds."

"Fuck, sweetheart, you can't say shit like that to me." Eddie groans. "You're on the pill, right?"

"No, Eddie, I'm willing to risk pregnancy to satisfy a breeding kink." You quip, rolling your eyes.

"You're lucky I love you so damn much, baby. Wouldn't let just anyone talk back to me like you do." Eddie mock huffs, shutting his drawer. You freeze. He then realises what he's said, and screws his eyes shut, dropping his head down. "Shit."

"You...love me?" You whisper, unable to stop the stupid grin spreading across your face. Eddie buries his face into your neck, groaning in embarrassment. "Eddie." You place your hands either side of his flushed face and make him look at you. "I love you too."

He opens his eyes and looks at you, his face softening.

"You do?"

"So damn much." You echo his words from seconds earlier. He grins, kissing you hard. You both manage to peel off his boxers and he grinds his cock against your wet pussy lips, teasingly dipping the head into your hole and pulling out. "Eddieee..."

"Say it again." He whispers against your lips, taking a hold of himself and lining his cock up with your hole.

"I love you." You whisper. "I love you."

"I love you, too." He replies, pushing his cock into you slowly. The stretch makes you shiver; he's definitely thicker and longer than anyone you'd ever been with. "Fuck, sweetheart, you're so...so fucking tight."

"Mm, Eddie, s'big," you mewl beneath him, nails biting into his shoulder blades.

"I know angel, but you're taking me so well. God, you look perfect right now."

You kiss him in response, moaning against him as he eventually bottoms out, his thick mushroom head already prodding your cervix. He starts to move slowly, pulling away from your mouth to look deep into your eyes. "So fucking beautiful."

"You too."

Eddie starts to move quicker, never taking his eyes from yours. You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him in deeper and the new angle making you cry out his name. This only spurs him on, his cock delving deeper and deeper into your pussy, the bed beginning to rock back and forth with his movements. Your moans fill the small room, along with Eddie's grunts and whispered praises to you.

"S'fucking good, baby, your pussy is fucking heaven, my beautiful baby, I love you, I love you."

"Eddie, I'm gonna cum again," you breathe out; his pelvis dragging over your clit had started building up another mind blowing orgasm.

"Yeah? Do it baby, wanna feel you cum for me, right on my cock, yeah?" Eddie's short of breath now, you can tell he's holding off his own orgasm just to feel yours first. "Oh shit, sweetheart, please, you're so fucking tight, gonna make me cum-"

"Cum with me, Eddie, fill me up-"

"Christ, I'm gonna cum, fuck, fuck-"

Eddie pushes his cock in to the hilt just as the coil in your belly snaps and you cum around him, both of you groaning out each other's names. His cock twitching inside you and the feel of his hot load filling you makes you sob in pleasure. He finds your mouth with his own, staying inside you for as long as he can, neither one of you wanting to break the connection just yet.

Eventually, his cock slips from you and you both let out mournful sighs. He rolls off of you, onto his back next to you.

"Holy shit." He pants, pushing his damp hair out of his eyes. "Holy fucking shit. Baby...that was-"

"The best sex you've ever had?" You grin, a teasing lilt to your voice. "Me too."

"Shit, yeah, you've ruined me for other women now." Eddie grins as you both roll on to your sides, looking at each other. You giggle, your fingers ghosting over the nearly healed tattoo on his hip.

"Baby, I've left my mark on you, no way other women are having you now."

He mimics you, gently touching the bat inked onto your skin.

"Guess matching tattoos were a good idea then."

Taglist for those who wanted a part 2:

@certain-tragedies @teary-eyed-egg @lulukings92 @elyssa-writes @spear-bearing-bi-witch @littlestarfighter03 @ooo-protean-ooo @wintermunsonreads @witchofhawkins @johntuckermustdie

[immediatebreakfast]

Let's pause the Mina defense squad against social, and plot convenient sexism for a while to talk about some ableism.

Our good man Renfield is talking about going home.

"He then, of his own accord, spoke of going home, a subject he has never mentioned to my knowledge during his sojourn here. In fact, he spoke quite confidently of getting his discharge at once."

It's so sad to think that Renfield has never talked about his home since he was admited. Moreso since he is an upper class man who keeps being able to afford the stay in a private owned asylum, this begs the question of: If Renfield is there, then who is responsible for paying the expenses? A family member? A friend? Some kind of servant? Maybe an old lover? Because it is assumed that no one visits him at all.

A really lonely stay in a place where you have no voice to say anything about your own well being. Less the medical professionals in power use any complains to justify whatever they do to you as "treatment." A sad reality that Renfield knows very well. No wonder the Count was able to manipulate him into working for him.

"I mistrust these quiet moods of his; so I have given the attendant a hint to look closely after him, and to have a strait-waistcoat ready in case of need."

Renfield may use the words master to define his working relationship with Dracula, but in the subtext we can see that what the Count is for Renfield is a means to freedom. It doesn't matter what he has to do, if it means that at the end of the day he will be able to escape the constant dehumanisation, and horrible treatment at the hands of Seward, and the workers of the asylum.

After all Renfield is a victim of Dracula as Lucy was. The difference is that Renfield is already at the very bottom of the societal hierarchy as a mentally ill man. A label that might as well say "free to abuse" in the victorian times since no one in the asylum bats an eye towards the methods that Seward uses on Renfield.

We have to remember that Renfield is an older man, and his decisions are his to make regarding the Count, and how he helps him. However, all of these decisions are done out of desesperation for freedom.